Author: Megan Geher

Out of the living room ads for Obama’s 2012 campaign against Mitt Romney, the one that really stood out to me was the “Big Bird” ad. This ad was a remarkable change of pace from the majority of ads which highlighted Romney’s corruption and Obama’s dedication to prosperity and unity. Though still an attack ad as the majority of the ads were, this one was primarily focused on the fact that Romney lacked vision and policies aside from wanting to cut subsidies to PBS. This ad made fun of Romney, for lack of a more accurate phrase, for wanting to take on the corruption of Sesame Street as opposed to Wall Street. I thought that this ad was an effective comedic ad, though hard to take at all seriously if it was intended that way.

I did find it very interesting that Obama was using almost entirely an attack ad strategy in his 2012 campaign as he was the incumbent and could have used this time to promote his vision for the next four years of his presidency along with his accomplishments from his previous four years in office. Of course, there was a lot of material to attack Romney, as there is with most politicians, but almost none of the ads actually discussed Obama’s policies and/or successes. Now that he was an established candidate and incumbent, one would think Obama would have shifted strategies a bit. It is interesting to think that his campaign team thought that attacking Romney for not wanting to subsidize PBS should take precedence over actually discussing the Obama administrations’ successes of future.

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In November I attended Pure Confidence, a play written by Carlyle Brown performed at the Modlin Center with a few student actors and the rest of the cast comprised of hired and professional actors. The play details the story of a slave who is attempting to pay his way to freedom by horse racing. Simon Cato and his horse Pure Confidence attempt to race their way to freedom and though Simon is not leading a large audience, he is an example of working hard to achieve something. Though the system of slavery is corrupt and immoral to begin with and it is incredibly difficult and unfair to escape, Simon and his motivation to escape the system can be seen as an inspiration to other slaves who can raise their morales to escape as well.

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In October, I attended the College Democrats and College Republicans debate. Two students debated on the Democrats side and two students debated for the Republicans side with a Moderator asking questions and making sure the debate did not get out of hand or anything. The debate focused on various policy issues which are very relevant in politics right now especially with the race for the 2020 Democratic nominee to take on Donald Trump in November. There were three main policy issues which the debaters focused on: namely gun violence, immigration and the environment. Though the debaters disagreed significantly on all of these issues, they all managed to remain civil and intellectual when addressing the other representatives. The issues which were chosen are each prominent issues which are complex and difficult to untangle or argue. Both sides represented the prominent arguments of the actual Democrat and Republican parties, which become difficult to argue against as they become strengthened into each party and cemented into each member of the respective party.

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When reading the Archer reading, I was very intrigued by how Trump interacts with the press and how his condemnation of certain medias has led to these sources being considered less credible by many people, likely Trump’s supporters who take everything he says at face value. The idea that these sources would be less credible due to falsely predicting the results of the 2016 is abhorrent to me, there are many factors which led to that false prediction which had nothing to do with the media’s credibility and had much to do with people lying about where they would cast their votes or not speaking up in any polls at all.

I was especially interested in the fact that Trump considers Fox News a highly credible source because it presents him in a tremendously positive light unlike many other sources. It seems very hypocritical that he would approve of and promote a media source which reciprocally promotes him.

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I was very impacted by the youth who were so involved in these protests. College students, young adults and even teenagers banded together to speak out against unnecessary violence and war and spoke to promote peace. In this case, children and young people were more pacifist than many adults or older people, which seems to be frequently the case, but was very concrete and obvious in this specific case.

In a broader sense, young people oftentimes seem to be the ones speaking against violence and inequality and advocating for equality and progressive values. These people are often not listened to on account of their youthfulness, such as Greta Thunberg, the 16 year old who advocated for action to be taken against climate change. Older people have more ‘life experience’ or ‘wisdom’ and somehow in their minds this equates to accuracy and more knowledge. It is crucial that people of all demographics, including age, listen to one another.

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When reading The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, a certain quote struck me as the most objective and most interesting was “Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive.” This is a concept I never would have thought to explore or consider before reading this excerpt, but it certainly seems that there is a definitive basis for happiness.

This quantification of happiness made me think of Thomas Jefferson’s “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” One’s right to life is very objective – one has the right to not be killed by others whether it is on purpose or on accident. One’s right to liberty is more subjective, but still can be made objective when discussed as the right to self-autonomy and right to make one’s own decisions. One’s right to happiness, however, has always been super subjective; it seems impossible to ensure that any individual has the right to be happy as there are a bunch of factors which impact happiness, some being uncontrollable such as mental illness. This line, however, made this right much more clear-cut in my eyes. As long as one has the right to anything that is necessary in his or her life, then he or she is being granted the right to happiness.

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Of both the readings for Tuesday, the quote on page 177 of A People’s History of the United States: “religion was used for control” struck me as the most significant. The context of this quote pertains to religious leaders’ control during slavery, where religion aided in keeping slaves in a submissive position. The mentality that was force-fed to these slaves by the slave owners and by black preachers was that slavery was God’s will and this was where everyone was supposed to be until they reached salvation, in which case their suffering would come to an end but would be fully worth it when these slaves could finally live freely and happily. Thus, any kind of revolution or push-back was not worth it, it would simply cause conflict and potentially get in the way of achieving salvation. This method of utilizing leadership positions, especially religious ones, to manipulate followers from speaking out against unfair treatment is manipulative and does not truly follow guidelines of religion and is incredibly immoral.

Religious bonds, whether those be community bonds between members of the same church or leader/follower relationships are a very special type of bond. According to Darwin’s Cathedral by David Sloan Wilson, people are much more inclined to feel close to people who share a religion with them; they see themselves as very similar with similar morals and ideas of what is right or wrong and same end goal. This also applies to leader/follower bonds being closer due to these similarities; followers are more likely to follow these religious leaders without doubt or hesitation due to this strong bond. This can be mutually beneficial for sure and lead to higher levels of morality, but can also be extremely problematic, such as in the case of slavery.

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Today on October 23rd, 2019 I went to a presentation by Thomas Pickering who is the former U.S. ambassador to Iran. His talk was informative and additionally gave some possibilities for future relations. He is in a very unique position of power – one where civility and diplomacy are prioritized over any other aspect of a scenario which he has to deal with. This allows Pickering to make decisions and state opinions that other powerful figures would not be able to make or state due to other ties and other priorities.

Pickering began his presentation by explaining a brief history of United States relations with Iran. He explained that Iran’s nuclear interest and its comprehensive plan of action to build up its nuclear repertoire created tensions with the U.S. Regardless of administration, the same problems would remain. These issues existed during the Obama administration, remain to this day during the Trump administration, and would be inevitable to cease whether the Trump administration was elected for another four years or a new more progressive agenda was elected. Under the Shah, Iran had a lot of great ambitions which led to attempts to utilize more chemical weapons and in greater quantities. These ambitions to be more of a force also led to developing a Nuclear program which was based especially around a French reactor. Using equipment from Pakistan, Iran tried to make Plutonium. U.S. sanctions were promptly placed on Iran as an incentive to get Iran to stop this production.

Currently, Iran is still working on the reactor to produce Plutonium. However, the legislature passed under the Obama administration indicates that if any one party finds Iran in violation of this resolution, all of the former sanctions will be reinstated. President Trump took the United States out of this agreement, and Iran has taken up the quantity and quality of its enrichment, and is now moving closer and closer to producing nuclear weapons. The U.S. tightened its sanctions on Iran, and the problems continue. At the end of the day, United States policy is essentially villainizing Iran. As Pickering admitted, Iran has made mistakes in its policy, but not unlike the United States, or any other nation. To conclude, Pickering delivered a powerful final line: “you have to negotiate with your enemies, not your allies.” Despite controversial choices by the Iranian government and the United States government alike, it is absolutely essential that there is some negotiation between these two nations if these continuous and repetitive problems are ever to come to an end.

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Economic inequality has cemented itself as one of the most prominent features of American politics, There is a lot of discussion about how to share the wealth, “trickle down economics” and the 1% by politicians, the working class, the upper class, and pretty much everyone else in America. It is a common discussion point with regards to the American future and how to fix this problem, but it is rarely talked about in the context of how this dilemma came to be. Reading these excerpts, a lot suddenly made sense about how America got to where it is in terms of a huge wealth gap that is growing every day.

I never would have connected the American Revolution with America’s current economic issues, but it makes sense that the struggle to gain independence from the British was the “forecast of the long history of American politics, the mobilization of lower-class energy by upper-class politicians.” This is still one of the most significant aspects of American economic equality; upper-class politicians sympathize with lower-class citizens and recognize their grievances in order to gain their support, but few of these upper-class leaders actually do anything about the lower class’ struggles. In order to ever overturn this cycle, it is fundamental that some politicians actually reciprocate the lower-class energy and support which they gain.

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An aspect of the dynamics between dominant groups and subordinate groups which stood out to me is the tendencies for some members to imitate the dominants. This imitation could mean subordinates imitating the poor treatment demonstrated by the dominants or potentially adopting positive behaviors/qualities that they have witnessed from the dominants. It is interesting that depending on the group, this imitation can be very negative or very positive.

This idea reminded me a lot of the Stanford Prison Experiment; “prisoners” and “guards” imitated what they expect a dominant group to act like vs. what they expect a subordinate group to act like. This led to the notorious corruptness of the “guards” and maltreatment of the “prisoners.” Additionally, some “prisoners” took it upon themselves to be destructive or mean towards other “prisoners;” imitating the dominant group’s behavior of the “prisoner” class as a whole. It is very intriguing to think about how groups act when interacting with other groups and how quickly behaviors are to transfer between groups, most commonly in terms of subordinate groups learning from their dominants.

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What stood out to me most about the Burns reading was the contrast between transactional leadership and transformational leadership.  I found this sentence especially meaningful: “Leadership, unlike naked power-wielding, is thus inseparable from followers’ needs and goals.” Both transactional and transformational leadership require this inseparability of leaders and followers, but in different ways. I was intrigued by the comparison; transformational leadership is clearly a more effective method of leadership.

Transactional leadership involves an exchange of things such as goods, it is not just simply to engage with others in order to boost morale and motivate, which is what a leader should be doing. Transactional leaders can easily have ulterior motives and be more interested in what they get out of the leadership as opposed to transformational leaders who only get higher levels of motivation and morality of their followers out of leadership. Clearly, if one of these two types of leaders were to be less sincere and less genuinely follow-oriented, it would be a transactional leader.

This being said, I think that this comparison is an effective method of comparing and contrasting various leader’s motivations and therefore their dedications and effectivenesses. Leadership is a very subjective field, but I think differentiating between transactional and transformational leaders is one manner of determining a leader’s effectiveness.

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A line that really resonates with me in Ruscio’s piece was “They were not perfect. The point, though, is not how we see them. What matters is that they saw themselves as imperfect.” (Page 10). After outlining a few concrete examples including Abraham Lincoln, JFK and George Washington, it is very moving to see how Ruscio explains the imperfections of these great leaders who we consider such heroes. Just because these leaders had flaws has no bearing on how we consider these leaders to be some of the most iconic leaders in  history. This line also reminded me of the significance of a leader’s ‘relatibility.’ If a leader is too perfect and pristine and flawless, his or her followers could easily be intimidated by him or her and not feel a strong connection which draws the followers to follow. A leader who is humble and shows flaws is automatically more relatable to an audience and will likely have more sway over the audience’s opinions.

For example, when Ruscio mentions the Trump presidency, my first thought was that there seems to be a disconnect in this ideology when discussing Trump as a leader. He is not at all humble; he was born at the top and stayed at the top and is very aware and open about this fact, yet his supporters seem to perceive him as a man who represents the common American. Despite his disturbingly wealthy background and frequent outwardly narcissistic and ego-centric comments, poor working-class citizens are more likely to support him and his ideas than those who are wealthy and educated like he is. He technically should not be a relatable leader, but somehow is. My best guess is that though Trump does not view himself as imperfect and views those who are poorer than him as inferior to him, his supports perceive him as imperfect and relatable. It is certainly interesting to think about how Trump utilizes humility and relatibility to gather support, even if it is an act.

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While reading the Gardner piece, I was especially struck by how important followers are in a leader/follower relationship. To be frank, leaders are more reliant on their followers than the audience is on their leaders. Every decision that a leader makes is supposed to be as reflective as possible of the common good to maximize the most happiness and success of his or her constituency. One of the hardest parts of being a leader is being elected and well-liked in the first place, and even after that initial success, s/he often attempts to be elected again while maintaining high approval ratings. For example, the representative democracy that the United States has is so hugely impacted by leaders attempting to represent as much as possible of their constituency’s wishes. When writing a platform, a candidate is hugely biased by what the public has voted on lately. However, I appreciated how Gardner referred to this relationship as a “two-way conversation” in which social norms hugely impacted how both social groups, the audience and those who represent them, acted and what they expect from one another.

It is interesting to consider how constituencies may act without policy-maker’s influence and the impacts of those around them. Societal pressures definitely lead both parties of this relationship to make different decisions than they would have without these societal expectations.

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Regardless of whether or not Charles I deserved to be executed, I was fascinated by the fact that he felt confident in the fact that he was destined to go to Heaven after his execution. A short paragraph in “The Trial and Execution of Charles I” stuck out to me because it was unlike the majority of the passage and other passages; it was not merely weighing the validity of his actions. It seems to me that it was almost as if Charles I was not even concerned with the justification or validity as long as he was going to be saved by going to Heaven. This is interesting to me because in modern day if leaders were to be assassinated or executed, many of them would be very concerned and focus most of their attention on the truthfulness and fairness of the reasoning behind their executions.

It would also make sense that during this time period the citizens would also be comforted by the notion that even if Charles I was wrongfully executed, at least he was going to go to Heaven. This could mean that they would potentially disregard the morality of the sentence because they felt so confident in the wildly unknown. Killing a leader even if he or she is likely a tyrant just because of the sureness of Heaven is not necessarily morally permissible. Thus, the concept of the punishment of an unjust leader being contingent on civilians’ faith in the possibility of an enchanted world and afterlife is very shocking to me. Conclusively, I was surprised to see that even Charles I thought that as long as Heaven was on the horizon, any consequence served for potentially being a poor leader was permissible.

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Reading the articles, the most attention-catching passage for me was in “The Perennially Difficult Debate Around Tyrannicide” which discussed the utilitarian view of executing a dictator. The logic behind this reasoning is fairly obvious to me, especially when considering how many historical cases exist where various despots had to be forced out of power by being killed because it was seen by the people as the only way to seize their own liberties and gain a fair rule by a just leader. Tyrannicide should not have to be viewed as bloodshed and violence for the thrill of it, but rather as removing a corrupt and toxic leader for the greater good of the society as a whole.

I was especially fascinated by the portion of this article which discusses the “Trolley Problem,” a classic manner of discussing many scenarios. In this case, I found it incredibly fitting for the morality of executing tyrants; especially the more specified scenario of throwing a fat man off of a bridge in order to stop the death of five individuals. Though this is much harder to reconcile as a human being than the traditional “Trolley Problem,” where all one has to do is pull a lever, hardcore utilitarianswould ultimately make the call that although it is significantly increased participation in the one man’s death, one death is much better than five. In terms of applying this scenario to tyrannies, the numbers are even more drastic. A whole nation versus one person should be easy to reconcile, even if it requires fairly active participation to kill a dictator. The bottom line of this moral dilemma is that the one thing that has to be measured to ensure the one life is worth taking to save many others. Executing the tyrannical leader has to be beneficial to the entire society, or at least a large majority of people in order for his or her death to be morally justified. This is certainly where things can get messy; it is hard to determine what is beneficial for individual’s lives. There are certainly some cases where it is beyond worth it to destroy a corrupt despot, but actually deciding which ones are morally permissible is undoubtedly tricky.

 

 

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As I read these two articles, I could not help but think of President Donald Trump. Though he is already possibly one of the most historical American political figures, many Americans can likely agree, whether they despise every one of his policies and his entire administrations or follow him with the mindset that he is the most powerful and intelligent leader in the world, he is a person with charisma. A politician with such extreme views and who gives such outrageous speeches would never be able to get away with acting so divisively and aggressively if he or she was not charismatic and magnetic. Charisma is an interesting quality of a leader to me because it does not necessarily translate to solid leadership skills but is oftentimes very beneficial in terms of securing leadership positions. In my opinion, regardless of one’s opinion on Trump, it is undeniable that his communication skills and ability to manipulate a crowd using emotional intelligence strategies certainly helped him to campaign and draw a specific audience.

Reading about the significance of charisma in terms of leadership, being charismatic is very common in prototypical leaders, I heavily considered how important charisma actually is in leadership. A potential leader can appear energetic and motivated and express other characteristics of the six most typical characteristics associated with charisma, yet these traits could all be very natural to whoever possesses them. In other words, someone who is not dedicated to a certain cause or someone who does not care to engage in conversations but has a natural sense of charisma can appear to act a certain way in order to be elected or step up into a leadership role. It is very easy as well for a message to get lost if the leader is appealing and enthusiastic but does not actually have a strong and clear plan or ideology. Thus, charisma may be a common trait in many leaders and is beneficial for being chosen or pointed out as a leader, but it is certainly not necessary and in my opinion can either distract from the leader’s ideas or even trick followers into blindly following someone because they present themselves in such a socially appealing way.

For example, going back to President Donald Trump, at this point in his career, he can say almost anything and the specific audience that he has attracted will support what he says because they are so devoted to him. Many of his supporters do not even fully understand what he stands for, but it does not matter due to how captivated they are by someone so bold with such an air of arrogance or self-confidence who knows exactly how to communicate with his followers.

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Hero – Bernie Sanders

Leader – Antonio Delgado

Role Model – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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