Lessons Learned

Throughout this semester, there have been multiple lessons learned by reading and interpreting American history. However, after much examination there have been two trends that I believe to be the most important. One being how the advancement of technology, more specifically, the creation and use of the atomic bomb created a national security state and also increased the power in the executive branch. The other being how the media, since The Vietnam War, has influenced public opinion and out thoughts about war. 

Upon reading Gary Wills' book Bomb Power, I have come to the understanding that the Executive powers, more specifically, the powers of the president have been dramatically changed due to the invention of the atomic bomb. Gary Wills refers to this shift in presidential power as: Bomb Power. Since World War II and the creation of a national security state, the president has been granted a number of powers that were once unavailable or unnecessary. One of these powers is " the sole and unconstrained authority over all possible uses of the Bomb." With such a power, the president is essentially holding the fate of America in his hands

The reason for the president’s immense amount of power is to protect the American people. So with all of his presidential power, one would expect America and its citizens to be protected. However, after reading: The Deafness Before the Storm, an article written by Kurt Eichwald, I began to second guess the safety of the nation under the protection of the president. The article talks about the neglect that the Bush administration showed in regards to classified reviews and warnings sent by the CIA about possible Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda threats, which began being sent to the administration as early as May of 2001.After the attacks on 9/11, the Bush administration tried to defend their lack of attention to these matters, but in my opinion, no there are no excuses for their actions. What’s the point of the president having all of this power and control if he's not going to use it for the protection and advancement of the American people? He was given these powers for a reason; if he is not using them correctly then they should be taken away. Voltaire stated: "with great power comes great responsibility," and I believe that if the president cannot take responsibility for his neglect and the consequences that occurred because of it, then the presidential powers should not be so "great."

              Vietnam is considered to be the first heavily televised war. The media brought the war into American homes. Vietnam was the first war covered in depth on the nightly news. The film coverage showed the realities of warfare: wounded civilians, children who had lost their parents, villages destroyed, American GIs with various gruesome wounds from land mines and artillery fire. Print news, especially magazines, always sell well with sensational photos and Vietnam provided them with plenty. Babies burned by napalm, poor rural villages burned by our soldiers. 

    

         Many things happen in war that are too terrible and the sight of such things, in glossy vivid color, cannot be forgotten .People would read it and watch it, sitting in their homes, eating dinner, seeing the piles of dead Vietcong and listening to the daily body count. They saw the fresh, young faces of American soldiers and, eventually, came to realize that these young boys were being thrown into a meat grinder. With all our money and technology, we were losing.

Protest in America against Vietnam War

        

       The way the war was portrayed to the citizens in America began to negatively affect the people’s hope in the government and the war. This feeling was amplified when the Pentagon Papers were leaked to the public, which revealed the true statistics of the war and the rates of American causalities, which were far higher than previously reported.The media and what chosen to be shown influenced American citizens and their thoughts about the war.

"Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America--not on the battlefields of Vietnam."1

1 http://voices.yahoo.com/how-media-coverage-vietnam-war-changed-america-667863.html?cat=37

Gary Wills, Bomb Power 

Analzying Art: A Bush View

The 43rd president has managed to do it again! Shocking America must be what he was born to do. After an 8-year term  I thought everyone had just about had enough of George Bush. However, a hacker, whose name has yet to be revealed, thought otherwise. Upon hacking into the personal emails of Bush's sister, the hacker found a lot of interesting things. But the most amazing find was Bush's "artwork."

These "bathroom painting"s are as awkward as it gets. These paintings feature awkwardly shaped body parts and one-dimensional objects. The painting of Bush in the shower makes you wonder how exactly he was able to paint the back of his body. The paintings almost look like he's painting them while standing in the shower and sitting in the bathtub, which wouldn't surprise me at all.

 These next batch of paintings show a slight improvement in Bush's technique, but the objects painted are still simple and they are still very one-dimesional. Apart from the one use of shadow in the painting of the grapes, all of these paintings lack depth.

A mix of landscapes, still lifes, and animal portraits (a subject he returns to time and again) these paintings show a burgeoning, sensitive artist stretching his painterly muscle—toying with perspective, experimenting with color, and giving his work symbolic and thematic heft.[1]

I'm not sure if this critic was joking or not because I don't see any perspective or symbolism in these paintings. The painting of the dog sitting outside of the White House gates doesn't have a deeper meaning and if it's portrayed that way I highly doubt Bush intentionally did it. These paintings show a person who is simple and takes things at face value.There is no depth, no symbolism, no real meanings.

[1]  http://gawker.com/5991732/a-watermelon-a-golf-course-a-horse-and-monstrous-dogs-12-new-paintings-from-george-w-bush

Mayor of Castro Street

Harvey Milk was an American politician and the first openly gay person to be elected to office in California. Although Milk is known for his gay activism, he actually only started participating in civic matters in the 60s after he was exposed to the counterculture. Milk and his groundbreaking election in 1977 symbolized the change in American culture and “freedom to live life with authenticity to millions of LGBT women and men around the world.”

Although Milk’s term lasted shorter than a year before he was brutally assassinated by Dan White , his life changed the lives of a nation. “His courage, passion and sense of justice rocked a country and stirred the very core of a put-down and pushed-out community, bringing forward new hope and a new vision of freedom. Milk’s dream of a better life, filled with equality and tolerance continues to motivate advocacy and action in this generation and others to come. Harvey's legacy is hope, hope in the personal progress, more than the political. Harvey had recorded a will in the event of his assassination. It said, “If a bullet should enter my brain, let it destroy every closet door.”

Sources:

http://www.adl.org/imagine/Milk.html

http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/lgbt/schoolsandyouth/ramona_milk_presentation.pdf

Going Deep

Deep Throat was a pornographic film that was released in 1972 in theaters worldwide. The plot was simple enough: Linda Lovelace can't have an orgasm and after talks to her friend ,Helen, who suggests she visit a doctor. Upon examination, it is revealed that Linda wasn't having orgasms because her clitoris was located in her throat. In order to achieve an orgasm, Linda would have to perform oral sex or "deep throat" on various men. The film ends with the line "The End. And Deep Throat to you all."

The film and its popularity pointed to a coming revolution: a sexual revolution.  Before the advent of Deep Throat, pornographic films represented a small market in the film industry and catered to a small audience. However, Deep Throat showed that “Americans of all walks of life would pay to participate--- at least vicariously--- in the much talked about sexual revolution.”[1] Deep Throat was the first feature film to focus, put express the importance of a woman’s sexual gratification.
This film coupled with Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique encouraged women to embrace their sexuality and the joys of sex and with that notice many women also embraced a revolution.

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[1] David Allyn, Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution : An Unfettered History
Robert Griffith and Paula Baker, Major Problems in American History Since 1945

King's Queen

The Civil Rights Movement was a series of worldwide political movements aimed at gaining equality before the law.  These movements were executed in many forms, usually in nonviolent forms of resistance, but in some instances, civil unrest and rebellion occurred as well.   Although this movement and the many countries who participated in this process didn’t achieve all of their goals, the movement did lead to improvements in the legal rights of previously oppressed groups of people.

 

"The African American struggle for freedom and equality... was a struggle not just for individual leaders, however charismatic, but of ordinary men and women who found the courage and dignity to demand change."[1] 

Many of the activists and leaders who participated in the movement have been people like Martin Luther King Jr., Stokley Carmichael, Jesse James, and Malcolm X. However, there were many influential women who were involved in the movement and its progression. More specifically, the participation of Coretta Scott King in the movement is very interesting. Coretta Scott King was the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. and a civil rights leader. Although Coretta was interested in being a more public figure, her husband had conflicting feelings.

Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1965

 King acknowledged that his wife was a huge part of his success stating: “I am indebted to my wife Coretta, without whose love, sacrifices, and loyalty neither life nor work would bring fulfillment. She has given me words of consolation when I needed them and a well-ordered home where Christian love is a reality.”[2] However he had a hard time accepting Coretta’s desire to be more involved in the movement because he wanted her to be home raising their children. This seems slightly contradictory considering what they were all striving to achieve, but despite these setbacks Coretta did actively participate in the movement. Coretta was an influential character in the movement in the 50s and 60s and she even became the leader of the Civil Rights Movement after the assassination of her husband.

Coretta speaking at a peace demonstration in D.C., 1970

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[1]  Robert Griffith and Paula Baker, Major Problems in American History Since 1945

[2] http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/chapter_5_coretta/