Boring but somewhat Effective

My initial reaction to the Wave experiment was that the acting was probably the worst showcase of talent that has ever been recorded. Because of this it was hard to concentrate and it was difficult to truly understand the point of the experiment. However, when the entire class is chanting the phrases, "Strength through community, strength through discipline, strength through action" it is hard not to be chilled by seeing such disturbing classroom behavior. Another point that I think is important to recognize is the fact that this group began to grow so quickly and the fact that people outside of the class did not ridicule it, yet they joined it. Truthfully, I believe that this scenario would be a likely failure at Menlo. Menlo parents, teachers, and administrators encourage my classmates and I to create our own thoughts and this idea of a class with a symbol and a salute would soon crumble. I do understand how if the entire class began to join into the experiment and if a respected teacher told us to partake in this group many people would likely join. The main difference I would expect with Menlo students is that they would be able to draw the line unlike these mid 1980s kids could not. The thing that is the scariest to me is that the Wave was a way out for insecure students such as Robert. We can truly see their commitment to the Wave when Robert says, "For the first time in my life I feel like I am a part of something great!" Then one of his fellow female classmates said, "This is like being born again." Both of those statements are deep from within and are very meaningful. To conclude, I will create an obvious connection between Adolf Hitler and Mr. Ross. They both are great public speakers and sometimes a good speech can convince anyone. Both Hitler and Mr. Ross often used the words change and hope to stir up the general public to gather more followers. I hope that our society has moved far enough along to avoid something like this from happening again.

Homework, Tuesday March 10th

Once you've read pages 702 through 707 in the text book, take a look at one (or more) of these videos. The first is footage from a TV special on the "Third Wave," an experiment carried out at Cubberley High School (in Palo Alto) in 1967. The teleplay, aired in 1981, reenacted the experiment. Recently, the story was remade in the German film Die Welle, which won two German film wards in 2008. The second, in the same vein (and the same grainy '80s PSA film) is The Children's Story, a short TV film based off of a story written by James Clavell in 1963. The story wasn't published until 1981; the TV adaptation was made the following year. The premise in a nutshell: life after the Soviet takeover (very much a document of the Cold War, this story). The final two vary in length, but both deal with the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971. The first is a documentary, that includes interviews with participants and Dr. Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford psych prof who ran the study. The second, a bit longer, is the official documentary recapitulation of the experiment (available for sale at the experiment website, run by Zimbardo himself).

Emboldened, not Appeased

Check it out:

Christopher Hitchens' recent piece on Slate.com is little more than a synthesis of what many of you were saying about the Taliban presence in Pakistan's Swat Valley and the principle of appeasement as international policy. You can respond to the piece in the forum set up by Slate. I encourage you all to get in there, see what others are saying, and offer up your two cents.

Proposition 8: What Would Hitler Really Say?

Over the past few decades, very few political parties have equated the opposing side to Nazi Germany. Right here in California such an argument was made in late October over Proposition 8. Since it was passed in November, Prop 8 eliminated the rights for same-sex couples to wed in California. Back in October, a spokesman for the ‘Yes on Prop 8’ campaign preached to a crowd of supporters drawing a parallel between the opponents of Prop 8 and Nazi Germany. In other words, Brad Dacus warned that if Prop 8 were to be struck down, it would be like letting the Nazis win. Brad Dacus is the President of the conservative Pacific Justice Institute, an organization of lawyers who specialize in defending religious freedoms. In a video posted on YouTube and many other prominent websites, Brad Dacus fervently spoke to a group waving yellow “yes on Prop 8” signs. Dacus reasoned that because the Church allowed Hitler to take care of “the soul of Germany” bombs fell on Germany and its churches. He closed with the phrase: “Let us not make that mistake folks.”

In this case, Dacus made the mistake. He mistook the bell of change in favor of equal rights for the threat of terror released by the Nazis. Dacus should have thoroughly explored the history behind his metaphor before preaching it to a group of supporters and a hungry cameraman because his comparison was completely off base. Since Dacus released this can of worms, I felt I had the duty to reassess his comparison. First of all, Dacus and Hitler were both rightwing extremists, who hated homosexuals. I see a much greater similarity between those two men than between the Nazis and supporters of gay rights. Hitler strove to create an Aryan racial state, by eradicating all people who were not Germanic. Does this sound at all like denying marriage that is not between one man and one woman? A form of xenophobia cultivated by religion and propaganda convinced people, even in the twenty first century, that the sanctity of their marriage and their children’s marriage was under attack. In extension, Dacus actually implied that gays should be rounded up and sent off to concentration camps, and maybe even the gas chambers because their differences made them incompatible with the “right” way of life. And, as everyone knows, “might makes right.”

Gay marriage is a particularly difficult issue to bring into political debate. It is almost impossible for people to separate their church from their politics because it is their religion that helped to formulate their views on this topic. I understand that some people voted to enact prop 8 because they feared the “homosexual lifestyle” would be exposed to children, but Dacus made no such argument.

According to Dacus, defeating homosexuals is like defeating Hitler. I believe Dacus used such an analogy because he thought that no one would dare contradict such an argument. But the truth is that Christians were not the ones persecuted during the Holocaust, so Dacus has no right to put forth such a horrendous analogy. Gay people wanted the same rights as every other racial or religious minority. There was no room for such differences in Nazi Germany; I hope that one day everyone in our country will choose to include those who are different.

The foundation of America was built on the idea that religious and racial freedoms would one day be equally acknowledged. At one time it was women’s rights, and then interracial marriage. Our constitution was written to protect minority groups, and that is why the California Supreme Court voted to extend marriage to gays in May of last year. However, the statewide vote on Proposition 8 stood against the foundation of our constitution. This proposition asked the majority to determine the rights of a particular minority group, one that many religions have a particularly hard time accepting. I believe it was wrong to place this question before the public because minority rights are designed to protect the minority from the majority. Because gay people are a minority group, having their rights defined by public majority vote is therefore, by definition, unconstitutional.

A Different Kind of Punch?

The first propaganda poster I saw immediately struck me as different than ones we have seen previously from WWI. It said "Keep punching... every day!" with a picture of a burly man hitting a man that looks suspiciously like Hitler and a man punching in at a time slot for his job. This WWII poster is much more outright violent than the ones I saw from the earlier time period. It actually shows physical harm towards the enemy, when before it was much more focused on the American troops and what we needed help with. I think a partial reason for the shocking depiction of Hitler being punched is because America had just been through a horrifying, grand war. Violence could not be hidden from the public because soldiers had come home and had spread their terrifying war stories. Also I believe that there is violence shown because Americans really were upset about their opposition this time around. There was great dislike for Hitler and the Nazis late into the war and it made people angry. Whereas before, it seemed that America was just dragged in because it was a world power. This poster was supposed to lead people to think that if they punched in hours, it would be a direct hit towards Hitler and the Nazis and I would think it was effective.


Propaganda Poster

This propaganda poster is similar to the ones we looked at earlier this year for WWI. Similar to WWI, they are trying to get the people of the United States to do something. Unlike the ones for WWI though, they don't want people to join the war, but rather eat more rationally and follow the war time nutrition plan because food in scarce during WWII. It says that food is a weapon because the more food that a country has, the longer the people of that country can survive. This is true because if the enemy has a lot of weapons such as guns and cannons, but there mine are starving, their men won't be able to fight because they don't have the energy. If they don't have the energy, they won't be able to operation the machinery and therefore all of the guns are useless. I personally don't think that this is the most powerful propaganda poster, because it doesn't show anything dramatic such as what will happen if you waste food or the success you will have, but rather just a plate of food in which someone ate all of their food. This doesn't show the effects of what happens when you finish your food. The only thing good the pictures shows is fairly nice silverware which shows that if you eat all of your food, you will keep some wealth. I do think however that the words are very effective.

question to everyone

I've noticed that most people bring up negative aspects of appeasement if your the mouse. Can it be good? Is there a point where being the mouse can be good?