West Wing S7 E 11 "Internal Displacement"<br /> http://www.westwingtranscripts.com/search.php?flag=getTranscript&id=145<br /> written by Aaron Sorkin & Bradley Whitford

A powerful quote about what really matters in America

Was there a heavy racist tinge to his version of Southern Strategy? Religious?

Frimer, J., Aujla, H., Feinberg, M., Skitka, L., Aquino, K., Eichstaedt, johannes C., & Willer, R. (2022). Incivility is Rising among American Politicians on Twitter. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/2hku3

The forms of rational, skeptical, empirical and conversational forms of debate popularized by the Enlightenment which saw the rejection of arbitrary authority were influenced by the Haudenosaunee nations of Americans.

Interesting to see the reflexive political fallout of this reoccurring with the political right in America beginning in the early 2000s through the 2020s. It's almost as if the Republican party and religious right never experienced the Enlightenment and are still living in the 1700s.

Curious that in modern culture I think of the Jesuits as the embodiment of rationalist, skeptical argumentation and thought now. Apparently they were dramatically transformed since that time.

Timothy Caulfield. (2021, October 19). Politics is derailing a crucial debate over the immunity you get from recovering from #Covid19 https://statnews.com/2021/10/19/politics-is-derailing-a-crucial-debate-over-the-immunity-you-get-from-recovering-from-covid-19/ @levfacher via @statnews “People on the right scream, so people on the left say no. We’re in this horrible, awful feedback loop of vitriol right now.” [Tweet]. @CaulfieldTim. https://twitter.com/CaulfieldTim/status/1450475493262864393

If we mutually exclusively split America into these four classifications, what would be the proportion of people within each?

What do the overlaps of these four groups look like with respect to Colin Woodard's eleven American Nations?

it happened again in 2016

The Republican party will never stop claiming the media is bias, so I am surprised they are claiming they have resolved this issue. I would think they would want to keep acknowledging it as an issue.

"The President has been regulating to death a free market economy" - it's interesting how much this preamble throws Trump under the bus

"our enemies no longer fear us and our friends no long trust us" - I guess the democrats and republicans agree on this.

"This platform is optimistic because the American people are optimistic." This is completely unsupported by everything stated before it.

"covenant" "Creator" "God-given natural resources" "prepared to deal with evil in the world" show religious tone

I feel like there are countries who fear his leadership.

I know that we are making history but it doesn't exactly feel like it. The election feels like a joke. There is a stark difference between what came out of Roosevelt's mouth and either of the presidential candidates mouth's. Now it is a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils than a heroic leader to help our country achieve greatness.

I feel like this goal has been abandoned.

What makes Americans not have a social solidarity?

What makes Americans so individualistic? What is different about Taiwan’s society that made their people more selfless?

This is so true with the Trump Administrations "Alternative Facts" it is as though we will soon be living in the dystopian novel Brave New World.

I want to reference the Netflix documentary Social Dilemma. The documentary says that the reason politics has become so polarized is because of social media. Everyone is operating off of a different set of facts.

Is it within Trump's right to do this?

Is it within trump's rights to do this?

Why did this not happen? I feel like it isn’t the federalist system in general that are failing us— it’s the leaders of the system. Why did congress not make a playbook and create incentives for states to follow them? This reminds me of how the drinking age became 21 in every state from the funding of the highways.

I wonder if a democrat was in office when covid hit if we would have stronger federal leadership. Would we have been in a state of emergency if someone who believed in the facts of science wasn’t in office? I have trouble believing that there is nothing the president could have done to prevent covid from getting this out of hand.

I didn’t know that it is within our rights to travel and associate with whomever we choose. I wouldn’t think the government would be able to control who would be able to leave their house or hang out with who anyway. I guess this shows how right the article about uninformed citizens we read last week is right.

I could not agree with this statement more. I think if the US had some kind of national healthcare program the coronavirus would be much more under control.

Druckman, James, Samara Klar, Yanna Krupnikov, Matthew Levendusky, and John B. Ryan. ‘The Political Impact of Affective Polarization: How Partisan Animus Shapes COVID-19 Attitudes’. Preprint. PsyArXiv, 19 August 2020. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ztgpn.

Calling people out using the constructionist ideals — The American government is not living up to their high ideals.

Poetry as a way to express frustration when there is no way to go up against actual US military power. A weapon of the weak; a powerful message.

This idea has been an overarching theme in western society for the last half century but the roots of this problem goes back further than that. Since the industrial revolution, Americans have developed the reputation as the most wasteful people and rightfully so. Berger refers to the early days of frontier settlement in North America where there was flagrant misuse of natural resources. It is easy to think of examples of this but one that stands out above the rest was the extermination of the American Buffalo in the Great Plains. Ranchers and hunters were just killing these animals and leaving the corpses out in the fields. Other examples of this is the different mining practices that were used throughout North America. This includes surface mining which is a very intrusive process that leaves the entire area barren and destroyed. In many areas, "because of [surface] mining, the environment has been very bad, and destroyed the balance of the ecology, the stability of the water level and the water quality around the mine for long term." Fortunately, there has been a much stronger movement through sustainable practices within the new generation. Earth Day was created in 1970 to bring awareness to the environment and conservation efforts. In Vancouver, there is a yearly march and celebration led by high school students to help raise awareness of issues facing our planet like climate change and pollution. One student says "without this Earth, without the stuff it provides for us, and if we don't do something about it, it's going to be too late in the future." "Vancouver youth help raise awareness about climate change." Xinhua News Agency, April 27, 2015. Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources (accessed May 8, 2017).

Yi, Pan, Liu Yang, Yang Min, WangLinyan, Yang Shuangchun, and Zhang Jinhui. "The environmental impact assessments of oil shale in in-situ mining and surface mining." International Journal of Applied Environmental Sciences 7, no. 4 (2012): 403+. Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources (accessed May 8, 2017).