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What is Heroism?

I think heroism is above all about selflessness and determination. Defining what is ethical and what is just is difficult because these concepts are subject to arbitrary interpretations, but acts selflessness and hard work speak for themselves. The heroes in our literature have often employed violence in their heroism, but I believe that true heroes can resolve conflict without letting the circumstances escalate (in the case of war, like in the Iliad, violence is more or less necessary, but I think of a character like Odysseus, who used violence in a pretty gratuitous way at the end of the Odyssey). So often we turn to politicians or celebrities to be the heroes in our lives, but I think we should venerate the members of our community who make meaningful sacrifices to improve our society, like helping those are less fortunate, or imparting valuable lessons to others in need of guidance.  

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Contemporary heroism

I think the efforts of Stacey Abrams from Georgia have been heroic in the sense that she was was able to register some 800,000 voters to participate in the political system and make their voices heard. Regardless of political affiliation, I think we can all agree it is imperative that as many people as possible make their voice heard and contribute to society. This is how we can achieve more accurate political representation and help determine the direction of our localities, states, and our nation.

[poliscistudent]

Takeaways from this course

I think one of the most significant ideas I have observed in the texts is the timelessness of their central themes and ideas. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle conjectured varying ideas about how to achieve the best form of government, or the best version of society, but their propositions are premised on the same observation: that government is imperfect and should be improved. The Romans certainly didn’t perfect governance, and two thousand years later neither has the rest of the world. There is always room for improvement and there is always the undermining presence of human error or individuals taking advantage of the flaws in structures of governance. It is important for our current and future officials, and for all citizens, to engage with these cornerstone ideas of what society can or should look like, so that everyone can productively contribute toward persistent improvement, even if incremental. 

[poliscistudent]

10/17/20 in the News

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54980141

As political tensions stir within the Roman Republic and throughout the Mediterranean in ‘Antony and Cleopatra,’ we can be sure that the play will end in conflict. In the present day, America grapples with a complex foreign policy issue of its own - what to do about our military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq? President Trump has ordered that troop presence be cut by 2,500 in each country. To some, this is a positive development which puts less Americans in harm’s way and could reduce the cost of maintaining the war in Afghanistan, which many see as an un-winnable conflict. Senior NATO officials, however, are warning that the uncoordinated and hasty withdrawal could lead to security vacuums that may further destabilize the respective regions. Senior NATO official Jens Stoltenberg warns that Afghanistan could be vulnerable to an insurgency similar to the ones in Syria and Iraq. It is a nuanced and complex foreign policy issue with no obvious solutions. If the Romans (via Shakespeare) have taught us anything, it is not easy to achieve and maintain peace. We can only hope that the multilateral government and military forces overseeing the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are able to make and enforce decisions that can secure a path toward peace and stability.

[poliscistudent]

Song Selection (Aristotle & Music)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9-XbXBq8cl8

*This song has explicit lyrics.

“Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst” is a hip-hop ballad by Kendrick Lamar. The first verse is from the perspective of a deceased childhood friend whose life ended tragically. The second verse is from the perspective of a woman who becomes a prostitute. The third verse is an introspective analysis by Kendrick Lamar, while the final part of the song is a Christian spiritual. I think the song is significant because it meets Aristotle’s criteria for the purpose of music (although if I recall, he is talking about learning / practicing music rather than listening to music - but as someone who cannot sing or play an instrument, I’ll have to compromise a little bit). The song provides entertainment - on its surface level, it is a fun listen because of Kendrick Lamar’s rhyming prowess and the highly professional instrumental. It also improves the character of the listener because it makes us sympathetic to and aware of the disproportionately disadvantaged socioeconomic circumstances of the African-American community. The song also ‘cultivates the mind’ because it is applying interesting storytelling methods like free-indirect discourse. I think it’s a socially significant song because of the important themes it touches on. The song is just as relevant today as it was nine years ago when it was released.

[poliscistudent]

Argumentative Text Week 13

Greek and Shakespearean tragedies like Antigone and Julius Caesar regularly employ murder, suicide, grief, and despair as final act plot devices that help articulate to the audience the severity of characters’ consequences. Depicting the most extreme ramifications for characters’ choices helps communicate how significant their mistakes have been. Sophocles and Shakespeare (and other tragic playwrights throughout history) usually even give their characters a warning to avoid or correct their mistakes that is often ignored. Tiresias, Calpurnia and the soothsayer seem to have some kind of spiritual insight that allows them to foresee the future and warn Creon and Caesar, respectively, that there will be ramifications for their behavior. Although we are lacking today in the mystic wisdom of clairvoyants, we in the twenty first century have been afforded the luxury of hard science and instructional statistics about the anthropological, sociological, economic and political state of affairs across the globe that even the most important political figures of the past would have been ignorant of. Why then are elected officials forgoing reality for their own arbitrary perceptions of the world? The president and his allies have long been known as stringent, vocal critics of science and medical research – but they taken up the fight against a new enemy: math. This notion of oscillating, subjective observations of realities goes back to the Allegory of the Cave, and it would appear that his concerns are frighteningly resonant some two thousand years later. This vast network of information has made the world a more nuanced place in 2020, and in economically developed democracies (well, democratic republics) like the United States, we do not expect our most important elected officials to be met with fates of murder or suicide or unforeseen tragedy as a consequence of their actions in office. We cannot let the lack of visceral sensationalism distract us from the fact that we are in the midst of a tragic political power struggle in which knives are partisan litigators. The failure of a lame duck president to concede defeat and recognize the triumph of his or her political rival is a remarkable assault on democratic American institutions, especially to the credibility of our voting infrastructure. There will be no blood spilt in the executive office, but make no mistake that we are witnessing a historical political tragedy, and the victims are the American people (even if the president sees himself as a victim – a victim of fictitious self-begotten circumstances that have not only been unsubstantiated, but actively refuted by civil servants and election officials around the country). This is the third of the past six presidential elections in which the result has been contested in one way or another (2000, 2016, 2020). The American people are losing faith in the democratic process because our most significant democratically elected official is instructing them to, in what is surely the most counterproductive presidential transition in modern American history. A vast swath of the populace questions the legitimacy of elections even though voters turned out in historic droves in what federal, state, and local officials are calling the “most secure election in American history” (New York Times, link below). Network news titans like FOX vacillate between recognizing a Biden victory and glorifying the president’s litigation efforts while equally as influential, although more subversive pseudo-news sources like Facebook and Reddit are fully the embracing unfounded claims of voter fraud. The president’s transgression against American democracy is nothing short of tragic for this socially and politically fractured nation, and we can and should expect that voters of the future will be obstinate in recognizing the victory of the candidate for whom they did not vote, which undermines the legitimacy not only of elections, but of the authority of elected officials and their capacity to govern. Even in defeat, the most historically dishonest president in American history has managed to use the bully pulpit one last time to weaken the institutions he was elected to protect and divide the people he was meant to govern.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/us/politics/election-officials-contradict-trump.html

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Haha I think the GOP Marc Antony might be Lindsey Graham. I appreciate your response. I think we need to wait a moment before we can determine if Trumpism is any less resonant (even if it isn’t in the executive branch), especially with the uncertainty about what Trump’s post-presidency look like - Will he continue to loom on FOX, or even his start his own news network (as some have speculated)? Will his children and/or other Trump-grown politicians like Ron DeSantis continue to asperse Trumpism in a way that resonates with the electorate in the same way as it did in 2016 and 2020? Does he run again in 2024? He may have lost the election, but he has reshaped tens of millions of conservative voters’ idea of what the GOP should like. 

Caesar 

11/12/20 in the News

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/climate/sizing-up-trumps-legacy.html

Antony says “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them” in the wake of his Caesar’s assassination. I think that he is referring here not only to Caesar, but also to the usurpers Brutus, Cassius, etc. (even if Antony sings their praises shortly after in addressing them as ‘Noble’). After a presidential election with historically old candidates, it’s not outlandish to contemplate how the world will observe their respective legacies in the decades to come once neither Biden nor Trump will be around to rationalize their behavior on social media or apologize for past actions on network television. Both men will (or at the very least, should) be held accountable for their transgressions, in capacities that are difficult to predict. Biden’s complicated history with race and segregation will live on long after he dies, regardless of his accomplishments as a civil servant, and Trump’s controversial decisions on both foreign and domestic policy, many of which were perceived as cruel or irrational even to conservatives (stoking racial division, withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, a lack of critical action on COVID-19, child separation, undermining relationships with key allies). Just as we look onto Caesar though the polarizing lens of the dichotomy of tyrant and hero, future generations will have difficult decisions to make on how they perceive Biden, Trump, other civil servants, and the transgressions that will survive them.

[poliscistudent]

11/12/20 in the News

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/climate/sizing-up-trumps-legacy.html

Antony says “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them” in the wake of his Caesar’s assassination. I think that he is referring here not only to Caesar, but also to the usurpers Brutus, Cassius, etc. (even if Antony sings their praises shortly after in addressing them as ‘Noble’). After a presidential election with historically old candidates, it’s not outlandish to contemplate how the world will observe their respective legacies in the decades to come once neither Biden nor Trump will be around to rationalize their behavior on social media or apologize for past actions on network television. Both men will (or at the very least, should) be held accountable for their transgressions, in capacities that are difficult to predict. Biden’s complicated history with race and segregation will live on long after he dies, regardless of his accomplishments as a civil servant, and Trump’s controversial decisions on both foreign and domestic policy, many of which were perceived as cruel or irrational even to conservatives (stoking racial division, withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, a lack of critical action on COVID-19, child separation, undermining relationships with key allies). Just as we look onto Caesar though the polarizing lens of the dichotomy of tyrant and hero, future generations will have difficult decisions to make on how they perceive Biden, Trump, other civil servants, and the transgressions that will survive them.

[poliscistudent]

11/10/20 in the News

This is not a response to one specific news article, but to a number of news incidents, primarily from the New York Times.

Shakespeare often explores political power struggles, perhaps most notably in the particular plays you have assigned. Although it lacks a certain Shakespearean elegance, we are seeing an unprecedented political power struggle in the United States as the incumbent president refuses to concede (although he may concede if his litigation efforts fail). Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has indicated that there will be no Biden administration or transition, while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to recognize a Biden victory, which only four Republican senators have done. Attorney General William Barr is allowing the DOJ to investigate the election outcome, breaking a longstanding forty year precedent of keeping the Justice Department out of elections. While the Trump administration is within its right to order recounts in states whose presidential voting margin was within 1%, but recount history in the United States has never overturned electoral results with such large margins (the 2000 Florida voting disparity was in the hundreds, while the difference between Trump votes and Biden votes in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia is substantially larger than the margin between Bush and Gore in Florida). Although the ensuing power struggle for the White House is unlikely to end in violent Shakespearean tragedy, the damage to our democratic institutions and our faith in the voting process can be irreparable.

[poliscistudent]

11/04/20 in the News

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/05/us/trump-biden?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Coriolanus may have been disgusted with the lower class, but he recognized the significance of earning their loyalty. We are seeing how this political sentiment is resonant two thousand years later (or four hundred, if we’re examining the political motifs as Shakespearian). As the ballot counting saunters into its third day, we are seeing the magnitude of urban, lower class voters in metropolitan areas (true, one could argue the suburban vote is the most consequential, but the chronology of the vote counting is pointing toward a conclusion that will be determined by urban voters) like Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, and Phoenix. Whether or not Coriolanus is justified in his belief that the political agenda of the working/lower class should be relevant (I believe he is wrong), we are seeing how this demographic still has a voice in a system of American governance not unlike Roman political infrastructure.

[poliscistudent]

11/03/20 in the News

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/02/us/trump-vs-biden?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Aristotle may have preferred polity, or a ruling middle class, to democracy, but here in the United States we have a representative democracy and an incumbent president who is far from being characterized as middle class. Regardless of income or social class, Americans are voting at historic levels - perhaps the highest in a century. Over one hundred million Americans voted before polling stations even opened this morning, almost 75% of the total 2016 voter turnout. With lack of enthusiasm surrounding either candidate, and some three hundred thousand ballots possibly missing, this may not be Aristotle’s perfect vision of government, but it will nonetheless serve effectively as a referendum or affirmation of the Trump presidency.   

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10/29/20 in the News

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/28/explosive-early-voting-is-already-transforming-our-politics/ 

Aristotle contends that man is by nature a political animal. America’s voter turnout during election cycles has been historically inconsistent and at times unimpressive, but we are in the midst of a potentially historic voter rate as more than seventy million ballots have been cast via mail, and over twenty million people have already voted in person. This is obviously, in part, a consequence of COVID-19 and a general reluctance to gather for in-person-voting, but the trajectory would still suggest a high level of civic engagement. I think this validates Aristotle’s idea that we as people are inherently drawn to the political process, and hopefully the results of the 2020 general elections will reflect a broader representation of the will of the American people. The last time that 60% or more of eligible voters participated in a presidential election was in 1968, and - whether the results favor the left or the right - I think it would be a good sign for American democracy to see as many people as possible exercising their right to vote.

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10/27/20 in the News

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/us/politics/senate-confirms-barrett.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Politics

The United States Senate voted yesterday 52-48 to confirm President Trump’s nominee Amy Coney Barrett as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court, the third Supreme Court Justice that the Trump administration has successfully nominated in only one term. She was sworn in today by Chief Justice John Roberts. Only 48, she could serve as long three or more decades alongside the similarly aged Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Her addition the SCOTUS will undoubtedly fortify the court’s conservative direction, which now outnumbers the liberal justices 6-3, making even a conservative swing-vote insufficient to moderate the agenda of the court. As we contemplate the meaning of justice, from the suggestions of Socrates to Plato to Aristotle to Sophocles, the country can only hope that the future rulings of the Supreme Court will deliver just, fair, non-partisan rulings on the litany of legal (and, who are kidding? - political) issues that will make their way before the court in the coming generation of the American judiciary, even with the padded conservative infrastructure that will permit the conservative wing of the court a historic caliber of leniency to enforce a politically motivated agenda. Although the nine-person nature of the Court was intended to allow for a diversity of opinions and an alternating majority, we see here the inveterate flaw in pinning ideologies against one another on such a monumental and consequential stage, rather than facilitate non-partisan cooperation, moderation, and rule of law that is just for all Americans.

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Argumentative Text Week 10 (Revision)

[poliscistudent]

I think you bring up some interesting points here that I touched on in my first argumentative text and some earlier responses (especially related to our reading of “The Allegory of the Cave) about how echo chambers, propaganda media (both network news and social media) and other insidious influences have manipulated how we, from person-to-person, perceive reality and truth, especially in the context of politics. Falsehoods can be retweeted into existence to the point that tens of millions of Americans may be convinced of something that is objectively untrue. I think it’s the most corrupting force in our democracy today and I think we should make it the campaign of this generation to combat misinformation. 

In the News 10/22

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/media-lincoln-project-inadvertently-further-iranian-proud-boys-disinformation-campaign/

This is an interesting piece that adds a level of complexity onto some of the reading we have been doing up to this point. Additionally, it adds another potential way Socrates could say that a Democracy can fail, through the use of mass media; competition between aristocrats of different states can change the narrative seen by the common people. Even though we read the cave allegory a few weeks back, I wanted to touch on this.

Through social media and mass communication what this allows is competing aristocrats to change and rework the shapes and shadows on the wall in the cave. For instance it was confirmed yesterday by the Pentagon that Iranian disinformation agents attempted to send out an email pretending to be the Proud Boys; threatening coercion on the email if the individual did not vote for President Trump in an attempt to hurt public opinion of the President. This was then picked up by various mainstream media outlets before it was confirmed to be true. 

While my personal politics do not hold President Trump in very high regards…at all, it should be a basic level common courtesy that we do not attribute things individuals did not do.

Tying this back to more of what we read this week, I think that through things like this, another way Socrates would say that a Democracy can fail is through the manipulation of the public vote through outside actors, for example. Even if an individual is a citizen of a given country, but gets all of their information/beliefs from a foreign power, this turns them into (in my opinion) a defacto citizen of that countries government; voting and changing policy of their host country to the one where the individual gets all their information from wants.

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Argumentative Text Week 10

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10/22/20 in the News

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/10/08/top-1-of-us-households-hold-15-times-more-wealth-than-bottom-50-combined/#6f980d3c5179

Aristotle discusses distributive justice, the proportionate distribution of wealth, and meritocracy. A recent Forbes article uses new data from the Federal Reserve to explain how the income inequality gap in America has widened significantly this past year, with the wealthiest 1% of Americans owning fifteen times as much money as the bottom 50% (by wealth) of Americans, or $34.2 trillion (30.4% of all wealth in America) compared to $2.1 trillion (1.9%). Billionaires now have a historic combined $10.2 trillion, the highest recorded cumulative number in modern history. While a large number of Americans have struggled financially during the pandemic, most billionaires have expanded their net worths as a result of favorable tax laws and financial protection from many of the challenges faced by the rest of the country (furloughs, unemployment, salary cuts, etc.). The article points out that the median income for a white household (as of 2016) was $171,000 while the median income for an African-American household was $17,150, about ten times less than a white household. Surely this is not Aristotle’s idea of distributive justice. I would say it is an injustice and a consequence of the wealthiest Americans determining how our economy should work, in disregard for the majority of the country.