#complexities of FORMING and PRESERVING jewish community in the present when it always feels like a fight. always is a form of rebellion

[rotzaprachim]

the vaguely fleabag-inspired awkward jewish dramedy of my dreams au

Well, Jyn may have had a list of methods to ruin her estranged father’s second marriage, but punching her boss’s shmuck of a husband during the rehearsal dinner sure wasn’t one of them.

And neither was shagging the rabbi.

[wakingdreamland]

Argumentative Essay Sample

One of the services I offer is the critique and review of essays, as well as custom examples for students to use as references when constructing their own works. 

The argumentative essay is often one of the most challenging to write, as it must be presented with multiple sides of an issue, but a clear opinion on the part of the author that can be argued by others. Even finding an appropriate topic can be difficult, as the writer must immerse themselves in the issue to understand multiple viewpoints involved, state through the writing their stance (or just the stance they are choosing to present) on the topic, and attempt to sway the opinions of the readers. It should also be tailored to the audience, be it the teacher, classmates, or a larger group, so anticipating the viewpoints of the audience is crucial. 

The essay beneath the cut is just shy of 2500 words, and could be trimmed or expanded to fit an assignment if it was needed. It lacks any source citations or footnotes, though those could be provided in whatever format an assignment required.

The topic for this sample argumentative essay is the current controversy over Marvel’s upcoming story-arc, Secret Empire, and how Magneto, a canonically Jewish character, could potentially ally with Hydra, an organization that once had strong Nazi ties. 

Please remember that this is a sample of an argumentative essay only. It is not intended to spark debate in comments or reblogs, nor is it intended for others to plagiarize for themselves.

Magneto And Hydra;  Attract Or Repel?

“What makes a man a man? A friend of mine once wondered. Is it his origins, the way he comes to life? I don't think so. It’s the choices he makes; not how he starts things but how he decides to end things.”  -John Meyers, Hellboy

If you're a nerd and not living under a rock that the Mars Rover is about to inspect, you've borne witness to the chaos swirling around Marvel's Secret Empire. Or at least the part that is spreading through the internet like secrets through the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Thanks to how the Marvel Cinematic Universe has taken stories once only found in comics and stray movies and spread them out for a far wider audience, many people are weighing in heavily on the matter of Magneto vs. Hydra. There is outrage aplenty that a canonically Jewish character who survived the Holocaust would ever join an organization as heavily associated with Nazis as Hydra, but as John Meyers said regarding Hellboy, it is not the origins of a man that defines him, but the choices he makes along the way.

Before we examine the character of Magneto as he's developed over the years as well as Hydra, the fascist organization that has allied with the Nazis during WWII and has been seen as an allegory for the Nazis since, it is important to note why this is a sensitive issue for a significant number of people. The current political climate in the US appears to be encouraging a rise in hate crimes; while these bigots have always been among us, believing themselves superior, now they have become more brazen. Bomb threats have been called in to many Jewish Community Centers and Muslim Mosques, and cemeteries have been vandalized; swastikas are appearing in far greater numbers than any time in recent memory. Marvel has already taken a beloved hero, Captain America, and through the use of a Cosmic Cube plot-line, has turned him into an agent of Hydra, which generated intense outrage. Now, there are strong implications that a canonically Jewish character will be a turncoat as well. Readers --or even just people who have enjoyed the movies-- may feel as though their heroes are being taken away from them in a darkening time, to join The Enemy. In all likelihood, this is intentional; comic books have long been known for touching on real-world issues, and these particular story arcs are taking both heroes and villains into a grim and uncertain new reality.

It should also be noted that this controversy is in response to a Marvel variant cover, which don't often have much, if anything,  to do with the story; various other heroes like Hulk, Thor, and Captain Marvel are depicted as secret Hydra agents as well, and even a poster for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. displays a looming threat of Hydra. Nothing on the variant covers hint at what the story arc of Secret Empire will involve, besides a likely conflict between the heroes and villains of several Marvel groups and Cosmic Cubed Captain America.

Magneto is a very well-known super villain of Marvel even to those who have never touched a comic book. He's played big parts in anything related to X-Men, which means significant appearances in cartoons and movies over decades, but many of those depictions focus on Magneto rather than Max Eisenhardt, who after enough name changes to confuse even a comic book writer a little, including Erik Lehnsherr, became Magneto. How does one go about creating such a charismatic super villain? Well, judging by his background, apparently one shoves the character through at least three levels of hell from childhood, makes sure they are repeatedly betrayed and lose multiple loved ones, and makes certain they slaughter a large number of people in a rage that also forces them to lose a loved one. While different variations of the story exist due to the complexities of translating comics to TV shows to movies, the basics of this Intro To Super Villainy are as follows: Through the 1930s and into the 1940s, young Max Eisenhardt suffered the loss of mother, father, and sister by execution, after which he escaped a mass grave. He was captured again and sent to Auschwitz, the horrors of which could have their own essay. While there, he found a "bright side", reuniting with Magda, a Romani girl he'd fallen in love with. They escaped the prison camp and lived an uneventful life until a manifestation of his powers drove an angry mob to attack, burning down their home and killing his daughter. Magneto, or Magnus, as he was calling himself at the time, retaliated by destroying everyone he could get his magnets on. Magda, terrified by the display of power and violence, fled, and would later give birth to Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch.

Looking at what this character went through in his formative years thanks to the Nazis, it's incredibly difficult for many to accept that he would align his interests with Hydra. These are events that can shape a man in many different ways. Stan Lee, the creator of Magneto, said in a 2008 interview that he didn't think of Magneto as a bad guy. He was dangerous, he was driven, but not a villain. This is particularly interesting, and a display of the concept: Villains are the heroes of their own stories. From the outside, it is clear that Magneto is absolutely a villain, but from the perspective of the character, he is doing whatever it takes to protect mutant-kind, "Homo superior" from the horrific results of bigotry and fear combining. Even as Magneto wanders off and makes an orbital base in a hollowed out asteroid and gathers a bunch of pissed-off mutants to form the "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants", --seriously, there was no name creativity happening here-- which is probably one of the most super villainy things one can possibly do, his goal is to protect the mutants from the rest of mankind. In his own narrative, and in Stan Lee's mind, he's not the "bad guy"; he's simply willing to do whatever it takes to keep what happened during the Holocaust to the Jews from happening to the mutants.

Magneto goes through a great number of character development arcs, as do most long-term characters that exist in comic books that span decade after decade. Some to the point of becoming utterly nonsensical when looked at with hindsight. At one point, it is discovered that the use of his mutant powers has made him extremely paranoid and aggressive, traits which show during several attempts to conquer or destroy humanity. At another point, Magneto is inwardly horrified that he's become a supremacist himself; in an encounter with the X-Men he nearly kills Kitty Pryde, stopping himself barely in time when he realizes that she's just a child. He also realizes that he's started to view those who oppose him to be as worthless as the Nazis considered his people to be. One of the most unique story arcs he was involved in was called Secret Wars, in which an alien being took heroes and villains to pit against each other so he could view the concept of "good vs. evil" in action. Significantly, it sorted Magneto in with the heroes, because regardless of his methods, his desires were based on a wish to help mutant-kind rather than the more selfish motivations we often see in villains.

Some of these arcs are off-set by others that show just how far he is willing to go with regard to helping mutant-kind; kidnapping, torture, and aiming stolen nuclear warheads at Earth from an asteroid-base are all fine examples of this. He is perfectly willing, at numerous points, to slaughter as much of humanity as his paranoia insists is necessary to preserve mutants, even if he has to kill other mutants to do it. Marvel also repeatedly created spin-off universes, such as the House of M, in which Scarlet Witch warps reality so that those in her family can receive their heart's desires. It says a good deal about the character Magneto that this arc involves him as the leader of the world's much larger mutant population, using Genosha as a base for dominating the rest of the world and placing mutantkind above humanity.

Now we take a look at Hydra. In many instances, members of Hydra can be easily identified by a habit of wearing green with a serpent motif which has probably led to Slytherin / Hydra cross-over fan-fiction somewhere on the internet. Marvel has tried quite a bit, especially in recent times, to distance Hydra from real-world Nazis, though many fans can't --or won't-- see a distinction. The wider fan-based reached by the Marvel Cinematic Universe has seen Hydra in association with Nazis repeatedly, while the comic book canon shows a far more diverse cast for the history of Hydra, which spans back to dynastic Egypt. Red Skull is the villain that many see as the head of Hydra, forgetting that the hydra has many heads; cut off one and two more will grow.

Red Skull is significant because unlike the overwhelming majority of Hydra, he really is a Nazi. Red Skull first appeared in 1941 as a Nazi agent and enemy of Captain America and of the free world in general. What might surprise people is that he has had several incarnations, including having his mind placed into a clone of Steve Rogers. Time and again, the world believes he has gone, only to have him return time and again with schemes of world domination and genocide. People focusing on the allegory of Hydra as Nazis because of Red Skull's association with both miss that Red Skull himself is an allegory of how some enemies will never be truly gone. The ideals he espouses of fascism, bigotry, rule-by-intimidation, and superiority are problems that the real world sees time and again, in many different forms. In a way, he is Captain America's opposite; trained by Hitler himself and appointed head of terrorist activities, given a grotesque mask of a red skull to strike fearful obedience in others while Captain America's costume and shield have stood for hope, uniting against an enemy of the free people, leading others through inspiration. It was Red Skull who took over the reins of Hydra during World War II, thus giving Hydra an association with Nazis that Marvel has been trying, with little success, to break away from.

So why would Magneto join forces with Hydra? We have no real way to know even that he is going to, much less the reasons that will be provided in the upcoming story arc. Art and teasers that Marvel has made available strongly suggest that many groups from the Cinematic Universe, including the X-Men, the Avengers, and even the Guardians of the Galaxy will be swept up in this year-long story, Secret Empire.

People look at one facet of Magneto, the fact that Max Eisenhardt is a Jew. Not just a Jew, but one who survived the horrors of the concentration camps and lost his family in the process. And from that viewpoint, it does seem appalling that he would join with Hydra. While it now lacks any true Nazi ties, the fascist organization has its tentacles squeezing tight on the Marvel universe, subverting Captain America to their side while utilizing S.H.I.E.L.D. as an intelligence gathering unit, surely with intent to (as all villainous organizations wish) take over the world.

But Magneto is not only a Jew. The character has made a number of choices in his life, choices that have led down paths of possible redemption and paths that would make most other super villains anxious and wary of hostile take-over. What he experienced as a young Jew during the Holocaust has led him to desire, beyond all else, protection of mutantkind. He even qualifies as a supremacist himself, over and over, to the point that he'd be willing to eradicate the rest of humanity so that mutants can ascend to their rightful place, believing that they are far superior. A place above a humanity that is so often cruel to the unknown, that lets fear of the things they do not understand lead to war and tragedy over and over. From that perspective, perhaps we can see why he might throw himself in with Hydra, even with the organization's history.

Magneto is not only a mutant with incredibly dangerous and extremely powerful abilities, he is also a brilliant tactician (various asteroid-base debacles aside.) He is cunning, and ruthless, and if he saw a way to utilize Hydra in his ever-present goal of protecting and uplifting mutantkind, he would very likely take it. It is also possible that he would make use of his intelligence and wit to infiltrate the organization with the thought of causing it to topple from within; he is often depicted as a patient man willing to go to great lengths, even ones he may question himself, in order to achieve his goals. To us, the readers, that makes him not just a super villain, but one that can have a certain amount of admiration. Unlike many comic characters, his origins and his experiences have combined to make a fairly steady character in a genre that often sends characters through roller-coaster loops that baffle the laws of physics; no matter what Magneto does, always in the back of his mind is the goal of keeping what happened to his people, the Jews, from happening to his people, the mutants.

Right now, in the real world, minorities are feeling not just oppressed, but scared. Sacred spaces of many cultures are being violated in the name of bigotry or "progress", to the point that it's become difficult to tell the difference between the two anymore. The behavior of US officials has been dismissive over these frequent horrors, sweeping them under the rug, only adding to the hurt and anxiety that many people all over the world are feeling. And while many of us look toward fiction to lift us up, hints and theories suggest that Marvel's Secret Empire will lead our heroes into darkness. Looking at the US today, Captain America being subverted by propaganda and putting Hydra on display as American military is terrifyingly on the nose; those who see Hydra as allegory for Nazis may now see Hydra as allegory for America, and that is a horrifying thought. But comics have often reflected the real world quite intentionally, and perhaps the choices Magneto will make, the way he decides to end things within the story-arc of Secret Empire, will reveal a man we can admire as a hero.