American Politics

This paper searches for the source of presidential power and finds it in the contributions of a finite number of " magnificent presidencies. " What makes presidents great is not the specific contributions they make when holding office but whether or not their efforts to empower the

Emerging from a matrix of Old Left, Black Nationalist, and bohemian ideologies and institutions, African American artists and intellectuals in the 1960s coalesced to form the Black Arts Movement, the cultural wing of the Black Power Movement
http://ow.ly/HtWx3066Rh6
Historical Overviews of The Black Arts Movement

Jordan, Mandy M. Building Resiliency: The Role of Faith-Based Organizations in the Trauma-Affected Community of Santa Fe, Texas. Master of Science (Applied Anthropology), August 2021, 205 pp., 2 tables, 15 figures, 8 appendices, references, 91 titles. On May 18, 2018, a shooter entered Santa Fe High School, killing eight students and two teachers. Using ethnographic methods, this research examines the role of faith, rituals, language, and symbols in the trauma-affected community during the response, recovery, and resiliency efforts as perceived by the Santa Fe community and those impacted by the tragedy. Qualitative data collected from 100 individuals ages of 17-84 illustrated how historical trauma, community culture, and faith-based organizations impact community resiliency and how illusions of a homogenous view of the community left many feeling shocked, divided, forgotten or muted.

There are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.

Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

The idea of the American Dream is that anyone can progressive themselves in American society, but how can certain groups of people achieve the American Dream if they are being denied certain opportunities. This essay and presentation (both of which are from my American Dream capstone course from my senior year) is to show how African Americans have tried to gain access to the American Dream of equal opportunities through the social movements of the Abolitionists, Civil Rights Movement & Black Power Movement, and Black Lives Matter. A center topic of these documents is to discuss the successes and failures between each African American social movement, and how through the ideologies of integration or nationalism, each movement was able to meet the needs of African American citizens to respond to a certain issue blocking the American Dream, or is lacking in progression.

The paper examines variation in union density in advanced Western countries. It employs newly updated data on unionization which show that differences among industrialized Western nations persist overtime. The analysis includes examination of the role of corporatism, Left party power, Catholic party power, ethnic and linguistic diversity, the religious composition of the population, size of countries and labor force markets, proportion of the government and industry employment, government‟s share of GDP revenue. In addition to cross-national statistical analysis, union density rates are examined by major geographical and cultural clusters of countries, i.e., Northern countries, the Low Countries, English-speaking countries, German-speaking countries and Southern countries. We focus on divergence of union density between the United States and Canada, which belong to the same cluster of Western nations and have similar economic structures. We examine the role of social values and structural, economic, and political factors in divergence of unionism in Canada and the United States. Our analysis employs 1996 Lipset-Meltz survey data on attitudes towards unions in the United States and Canada as well as data from other surveys, such as the World Values Surveys.

The late 1980s ushered in a new era of black politics, the socioeconomic transition era. Coming on the heels of the protest era and politics era, the current stage is characterized by the emergence of a new black middle class that came of age after the Civil Rights struggle. Although class still isn’t a strong factor in the external politics of the black community, it is increasingly a wedge issue in the community’s internal politics. Black politics today is increasingly less about the interest of the larger group and more about the interest of smaller subgroups within the community. The author argues that the greatest threat to the social and political cohesiveness of the so-called black community may be the rise of a socially and economically privileged group among the ranks of black America. This rift has affected blacks’ ability to organize effectively and influence politics. Davis traces the changes in economic status, public opinion, political power and participation, and leadership over three generations of black politics. The result is an insightful analysis of black politics today.

After a quick review of the key points in this article's sister paper ("Donald Trump: Apostle of America's Civil Religion"; also on this site), this article reviews Trump's appointments and early policies to sketch out his strategies and aims. It suggests that his prime tasks are to maintain both the monied and populist blocs of the Republican party, as losing either would diminish the party's political strength, and to maintain his personal political hold. The article looks at how Trump is achieving these aims and concludes that his presidency is neither Hobbesian nor Schmittian but is the highlighting of division, fears, and uncertainty by tapping into nativist, populist, "small government" beliefs for the political and financial gain of those whom the Republican party usually benefits.

The current battle for climate change in the USA represents two visions of the American Way of Life. The current interpretation is that individual liberty, especially to consume, is paramount. However, the sentiment of the Founding Fathers stipulates that people must act in spite of their federal government, which acts as the main obstacle to meaningful climate action

Piece for Stoicism as a Way of Life blog/mag. on Medium, ed. by Don Robertson, on the representation of James Comey in the recent teleseries, The Comey Rule.  I argue that Comey, as represented, exemplifies notable stoic virtues, from caution and non-precipitancy in forming beliefs, via remarkable self-control (if not apatheia) in very difficult circumstances, to the core non-consequentialist position that virtue is the only good, and its own reward--even when following it will foreseeably anger proverbial and real Democrats and Republicans.

In recent years diasporas and their political impact have become an important research issue in political science and international relations science. At the turn of the 21st century, diasporas gained the status of important actors with impact both on the global politics, interstate relations and directions of domestic policies. One of the diasporas which in the 1990s actively participated in the American political life were Polish-Americans, with the reason being the intense efforts undertaken by Poland in 1992 to join NATO. The purpose of this article is to present the activities of the Polish Diaspora in the US undertaken in favour of the accession of Poland to the North Atlantic Alliance, analysed however not in the factual (historical) approach, but against the background of the theory developed so far regarding the functioning of diasporas and ethnic groups in the US political system. The article has
been prepared with the use of the historical method, the comparative method and the behavioural method, the basis for its preparation was primarily literature on the subject, press materials, and source materials (letters, articles and publications) contained in the collection of documents after Jan Nowak- Jeziorański entitled Poland's road to NATO
(Wrocław 2006). The conducted analysis indicates that the merits of Polish Americans for Poland's membership in NATO are invaluable and should be considered one of the most important achievements of the Polish Diaspora for the country of origin. The activities undertaken in 1993-1999 by Polish Americans are the most important but at the same time unfortunately also the isolated manifestation of the involvement and organized influence of the Polish ethnic group on shaping the American politics.

Resenha do filme "The Post" de Steven Spielberg. O texto analisa "The Post" a partir das obras recentes do diretor ("Lincoln" e "A Ponte dos Espiões") e em comparação com outros filmes hollywoodianos sobre a Guerra do Vietnã, como "Platoon" e "O Franco Atirador".

Does Italian-American “ethnic politics” exist at all? In other words, How do Italian-American politicians get themselves elected? To what extent do they try to influence the Italian-American electorate to vote on the basis of their ethnic identity? In order to answer these questions I approach Ethnic Politics within the context of alternative competing models: Local Politics, where the vote is acquired through patronage and clientelism; Issue Politics, where the vote is traded in the global market of opinions and policy preferences; and Party Politics, which encourages voters to align on the basis of partisan cleavages. Based on a series of in-depth interviews with New York State legislators of Italian descent, the study concludes that, although they may have subjective sensibilities that make them more or less receptive to the ethnic factor, Italian-American politicians tend to consider their options pragmatically — their primary goal being not that of fostering ethnic identity per se, but rather the more mundane one of gaining and consolidating power.

As the 2016 American presidential election gathers pace, Richard Jones offers a timely look back at a classic episode which changed political journalism forever in Matt Bai’s account of how Gary Hart’s quest for the Democratic nomination for the US presidency in the 1980s ended up focusing more on the personal than the political.

In America’s culture wars denominations increasingly ally with one another despite differences in theology, church organization and membership. But these developments are not reflected in America’s private K-12 school system or in patterns of public aid for children who attend them where divisions between religious traditions remain stark. I demonstrate, by means of an analysis of critical junctures in American political development supported by statistical analysis, that Catholics who desire a religious education for their children have historically tended to exit for the parochial sector while Evangelicals having similar desires lobbied for reform of the public school system. These differential group responses stem from differing conceptions of identity and belonging, theological understanding and institutional structure. In American education policy, differences between religious groups are surprisingly tenacious.

This revisionary view of identity politics, and the politics of inclusion, was published in the Los Angeles Times. It focuses on a surprising star of the Republican Party--abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Inclusion without racialism  may be a hard message to swallow for those who have made careers out of racial guilt, or racial victimization. But if Republicans follow the lead of the Douglass wing of the Republican Party, they will find that they can speak with moral authority and historical legitimacy.

This paper presented at The Kondiaf conference 2017  is a survey of the era of populism  in the US. By retracing  the genesis, rise, and fall of the  movement of agrarian  in the late nineteenth and early and  twentieth century it elucidates the historical background of a political concept of dubious renown..

The policing of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s appearance by the media over the past two decades culminated with the widespread coverage of the pantsuits worn throughout her presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2016. The simplistic nature of this uniform could have dissuaded media commentary with its subtlety, but instead became emblematic of ‘an uneasy compromise between gender and power’ (Garber 2016).
      Though 47 percent of women voters and 29 percent of men think being a woman does not affect how most Americans judge her (Dutton et al. 2016), HRC’s pantsuits have elicited extensive negative media coverage, while the only criticism of Donald Trump’s wardrobe of suits has been their provenance (Geismar 2016). Despite media posturing that their commentary is not sexist as President Obama was once similarly judged for his choice of a tan suit­ (Cinzilla 2015)­, male-dominated political newsrooms (Wicks and Lang-Dion 2008) may still associate the ensemble with the women’s liberation movement in the 1960s, militant second wave feminists and ‘the spread of feminist values amongst “mainstream” American women (Hillman 2014). I argue that HRC’s pantsuits are controversial because they could represent her challenge of the symbolic gender order in American politics.
      In this essay, I will explore why HRC chose the pantsuit as her signature look and why this choice persists in being political 165 years after women’s dress reform was first introduced in the US (Crane 2010).

Date of Completion Spring 5-1-2019 Thesis Advisor(s) Jeffrey W. Ladewig Honors Major Political Science Disciplines American Politics | Political Science Abstract This thesis explores the extent to which a strong first lady correlates with a strong president, and if she impacts public perceptions of his success. To do this, I have run a cross-tabulation through STATA with comprehensive rankings on presidents and first ladies from C-SPAN and Siena College respectively. Both consist of 10 categories that factor into the overall rankings. I have also compiled brief case studies on statistically significant first ladies in order to discover why some of these women are ranked as such. The correlations between rankings are most prominent at the bottom of the rankings with low ranked presidents having low ranked first ladies but less so at the top of the rankings. The most statistically significant category of the first lady rankings was “Background”, with the least significant being “Accom...

The United States has long grappled with the question of how to maintain an appropriate combination of religion and politics in the public sphere. The current electoral cycle is no different, as Presidential candidates attempt to negotiate both the political and religious landscapes. This essay introduces a special forum on rhetoric and religion in contemporary politics and touches on some recent instances of how religious differences have played out in the current political environment. Some of the issues discussed include the separation of church and state, Mitt Romney’s membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Rick Santorum’s conception of the “war on religion,” and the controversy over contraceptives at religious institutions and Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on a Georgetown law student.

Özellikle Trump'ın, Türkiye'yi tehdit eden terör örgütlerine karşı muhtemel tavrı ve Ortadoğu'da izlemesi beklenen siyasete dair çok sayıda analizle karşılaşıyoruz. Ancak maalesef bunların büyük kısmında, ABD'deki siyasi süreç gerekli derinlikte incelenmiyor ve Türkiye'yi ilgilendiren bazı jeopolitik havzalar gündem dışı bırakılıyor. Söz konusu eksikliğin giderilmesine katkı sağlamak maksadıyla makalemizde, önce Trump'lı Amerika'yı bekleyen farklı gelecek senaryoları üzerinde duracak, ardından da Washington'daki yeni iktidarın Türkistan havzası açısından anlamını sorgulayacağız.

The Left is Seldom Right challenges the age-old formulas of "Right" and Left" in politics. This book explores 25 cases in which today's observers are guaranteed to put their conclusions in the wrong category.  Here is a brief sample - can you guess the correct answers (in parenthesis)?
1- Who handed Hitler his first major foreign policy defeat?
(Benito Mussolini by safeguarding Austria's independence)
2-Who was the Cuban Communist Party's most fervent supporter in the last free Cuban elections of 1940 and 1944?  (Fulgencio Batista)
3-Who led Greece against the Axis and defeated the Italian invasion of 1940 and what was his political background? (Ionnas Metaxas, an Aristocratic, Monarchist, Fascist and Germanophile)?
4- Who were the first Danes to strike out against the Nazi invasion and occupation  of their country in 1940?
The Danish "Far Right" party  "Danish Unity" (Dansk Samling)
5-Which head of state most actively intervened to prevent the deportation and murder of the Jewish citizens of his country? ( King Boris III of Bulgaria)

The purpose of the current study is to identify the readability and simplicity of Donald J. Trump's speech in his media interviews and debates during the 2016 U.S. presidential primary campaign. Ten interviews and debates broadcast on different television networks were analyzed using three of the most commonly used readability formulas: Flesch-Kincaid, SMOG and Gunning-Fog. The analysis revealed that a fourth-to fifth-grade level of education (9-11 year-olds) is required to understand Trump's language. Ten additional interviews and debates of other candidates in the presidential election of 2016, from both the Republican and the Democratic parties, were analyzed, using the same readability formulas, in order to shed additional light on Trump's results. This analysis showed that the average score of all the other candidates was at a ninth-grade level (14-15 year-olds). Furthermore, the study reveals that Trump's sentences and words were significantly shorter and less complex than those of any other candidate. This study suggests that Trump uses low readability and simplicity of language as a rhetorical strategy to gain popularity, in accordance with the trend of anti-intellectualism.