The Accuracy of History

Finals are on the mind, and the American studies one is certainly on mine. I've always loved writing essays, and I love philosophy, so the two are often intertwined throughout my educational career. As such, when I heard that the final was about the differentiation between fact and constructed conceptions of history, I was stoked. I'd recently been dipping into Derrida's works and his ideas. One that I've found to be particularly fascinating is his conceptions on how accurately we can learn historical events. There isn't any real "truth" behind the historical accounts that we learn about, given how we never lived through them. They're at best second hand recounts, and usually much more distant than that. Every link on the chain to you adds another filter of bias, predispositions, and slant to the image that is that snapshot of history. Then, when it finally gets to you, it's no longer a pure depiction of the event that took place. It's an image of an image of an image of an image...etc. On the other side of this, I can't really think of a better way to learn history. There is no real objective way, given the current technology we have, to experience the past first hand. Thanks a lot, doc Brown.

#JeSuisCharlie

The Charlie Hebdo attack was a horrific event. The lives of all those lost were taken too soon, and for what purpose? Because they were mentally ill? Perhaps it was due to a violent culture surrounding them? Was it because they were Muslims?

No, no, and no. It's because they were assholes. The rest of it, their religion included, are all just excuses and ideas used by them to mask the real reason they did it. They were just assholes. Going around and pointing fingers at all muslims, or all people with brown skin doesn't do anything to address the issue of assholes being assholes. In fact, it only generates more assholes. Spreading bigotry and religious discrimination does nothing but allow assholes to find new reasons and flags to wave, causes to point to as they continue to carry out their terrible deeds. 

Tokenism and Diversity

TV tokenism, as we've been discussing in our American Studies course, is an issue that plagues the most popular modern media. The way I see it, the issue stems from the noble-hearted, but ill thought-out diversity initiative pushed forward by the networks, cable, and all the other little special snowflake channels. The problem I have with it is that it makes these TV programs (Along with many other aspects of life in our western society) embrace diversity for the sake of diversity. This is the wrong foundation to go about diversity with. A cast shouldn't be diverse merely to fit a quota. It should be diverse because of the diverse amount of people available. Falling into the logic of numbers is essentially saying that X amount is just the right amount of non-white people to have on the screen in any given show, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of the diversity initiative in the first place. As a concept, TV diversity is certainly a good thing, but it's certainly been implemented in the botchiest of piss-poor ways.

The Newest of Years

The new year is a rather common celebration, be it through a ball dropping in some lit up square, fireworks, or any numerous other traditions. One of these traditions that's commonly practiced and has become a part of popular culture is the creation of resolutions. Now, while personal resolutions are grand and all, I think that the US needs to make some resolutions on a whole:

1. Be more environmentally conscious. As I've voiced in prior blog-posts, the environment is pretty damned important. Not only does it have intrinsic value on its own, but it also is key to the survival of a creature called "the human". The US has had no shortage of environmental issues for it to tackle.

2. Be wary of becoming a police state. The tragedies that struck the US in the latter half of 2014 weren't unique, that's to be certain. Many others have died at the hands of the police, both unjustly and in split-second bad decisions. However, these recent events are just what lit the powderkeg. Discontentment with this state of cops being essentially allowed to murder as they choose without punishment has drawn attention to the issue of increasing police power. Lets just try to kill less of our own civilians this year.

3. Balance the budget. Nah, I'm just kidding. After all, these are resolutions I hold somewhat realistic hopes that the US government can actualize.