Respond to TWO of the following essay prompts. Please write 3 pages for each essay.
1) The eight dominant ideologies on Earth today are Nationalism,
Socialism, Liberal Liberalism, Conservative Liberalism, Populist Liberalism,
Fascism, and Fundamentalism. Communism suffered a catastrophic setback 30 years
ago and is still globally declining. Liberal Liberalism and Socialism have
suffered serious setbacks over the course of the last 20 years and are still in
decline as well. Over the course of the last seven years in the US, Conservative
Liberalism has also suffered and has for the most part been replaced. So far,
this century is proving to be the century of nationalism, fundamentalism, and fascism,
and often in some sort of mixture. For example, Putin and Modi are both nationalist
fundamentalist fascists.
Each ideology has its own definition of what a just society
is. Compare and contrast each ideology’s definition of justice. Then explain what
you think is driving the world towards ideologies that socialists, liberal
liberals, conservative liberals, populist liberals, and communists banded together
to destroy militarily in the 1930s and 40s.
2) The US Presidency is an ever-evolving institution. Each period has its own culture. First, describe this evolution in
detail. Why do you think it keeps changing? What pushes the presidency in one direction
and then into a different one? Is there a repeating pattern? If so describe
that pattern. What does the future hold? Does social media favor one kind of presidency over the other?
3) It has been said that the world should be allowed to elect the US president. This of course is because of the massive role that the US president plays in shaping the condition of the global arrangement, since WWII. If the Spanish-American War was our debutante ball, then WWI was our engagement, and finally WWII was our shotgun wedding with the world. Over the time since WWII the US has played a pivotal role in upending democracies (Syria 1949, Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, the Democratic Republic of Congo 1961, Indonesia 1967, and Chile 1973, and Haiti 1988, 1988 again, 1991, and 2004 (both 1991 and 2004 were against the same guy!) to give some of the more dramatic examples. In addition to this the US has a long history of military engagements that spans before and after WWII. You can see here https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan/interventions/ that we have been in about as many military adventures as there are years since 1890. Our big post WWII wars are Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iraq again. Between the four wars about nine million people died. In addition, we have founded and directed proxy wars in places like Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Somalia, Iran, Pakistan, India, Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, etc. Millions more have died in those conflicts. To frame it all there has been a steady evolution of policies that change from president to president. The Truman doctrine was to fight communism at all costs. The Eisenhower doctrine prioritized disassembling and replacing the British and French Empires, then fighting against pan-Arabism (the goal of unifying the Arabs), and finally it put fighting communism in third place. The US ultimately won all three of those endeavors. Reagan and Bush, Sr. fought back against the “Vietnam Syndrome.” Clinton shifted money from diplomacy to war. Bush, Jr. attempted to expand the US empire by creating permanent footholds in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under the Obama administration we saw the end of the Iraq war in a humiliating defeat, only to have to go back to Iraq to fight ISIL (aka Daesh). Obama expanded our global footprint by sending US special forces to multiple states including places like Syria and Niger, and he increased the size of our presence in Afghanistan. Trump surrendered in Afghanistan and Biden carried out the surrender treaty.
Consider this, now construct a thesis and support it.
4)
Two philosophies about the role of the public dominate. The first one is that the knowledge that public has doesn’t matter. The dumber the better. Political actors and the wealthy class will employ advertisers to manipulate the public into voting in ways that support the bidding of elites.
The other philosophy says that an informed public will make better decisions. Towards those ends then, the two most critical institution in a healthy
an electoral republic or a democracy
would be education and the news media. The quality of both in the US has been in serious decline for 40 years. Then throw in the role that social media plays in misinforming people, defund the schools under Reagan, and add a powerful quantity of cognitive dissonance and we got really awful results, really fast.
To make things more complicated the US changed the way it selects the president 46 years ago. Prior to 1972, party bosses selected the Democratic candidate and prior to 1976 party bosses picked the Republican candidates. So for the first time in US history both political parties used the primaries to pick their candidate for president in 1976. Prior to that we voted in November from two mystery candidates who just sort of appeared out of nowhere. But beginning in 1976 multiple candidates (the number grows every four years) battled it out for five or six weeks, sometimes longer, and then once both parties pick their candidate, they compete for the White House. Party bosses are of course very informed political actors. Their selections where based on an enormous foundation. So switching over to the public to make those decisions required that the US news media make some attempt to fill them in.
Discuss the weaknesses and strengths of the US news media. Now consider the fact that the citizens play such a massive role in picking the president, members of congress, and their state governments. Has the US news media filled its obligation to the public. Why or why not? Make sure to discuss the new media’s underlying considerations, conflict of interests, and limitations.
Please form your own deep opinions about each topic. He loves individuality. This paper can be pretty informal, with use of “I”.
Here is the link to his lectures. They should be used as the primary source of information for this paper. Thank you!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG1NADbefbEOugqpltd29hSp4Pt7FUPKU
