Brendan the boob
(12/03/15 7:38am)
Writing a column is tricky business.
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Writing a column is tricky business.
“And then she laid off all the 40,000 people. And she says she’s a great CEO. Every time I see her on TV, I want to reach through and strangle her.”
As a Democrat still holding out for that mythical unicorn of a presidential candidate, I have found myself in the middle of a minor identity crisis. I am not ready for Hillary, and I am far from feeling the bern.
It’s been a busy fortnight for American politics. Now it's official, Joe Biden will not run in 2016. If you listened closely enough during his announcement, you should have been able to make out Hillary Clinton weeping tears of ecstasy. Jim Webb dropped out of the Democratic primary on Tuesday, after spending roughly 72 percent of his speaking time in the first debate complaining about his speaking time. His press conference lasted for multiple minutes. On the other side of the political aisle, Donald Trump informed Americans that the Sept. 11 attacks did in fact occur while President George W. Bush occupied the White House, much to the apparent shock of his base of supporters, who continue to claim that even our worst day with President Bush rivaled our best with President Obama.
In the wake of the tragic shooting that claimed nine lives one week ago today, President Obama observed that our reactions to mass shootings have become routine, even numb. At least in my experience, he is not wrong.
I give up. In the style of Stephen Colbert, I’m eating an Oreo. It’s just too irresistible.
Another year, another “scandal.” I use the term loosely. If we call having a porn star a “scandal,” then this probably qualifies as well. Is anyone surprised?
One day in high school I found myself faced with the daunting challenge to think like a scientist. The time had finally come to create a required glorified science project, euphemistically dubbed “Group 4.” After two months of apathy and another month of procrastination, my group faced an impending due date with only a sketch of an idea in mind. With “global warming” trending in the headlines, we hoped to create an apparatus that could model the absorptive effects of carbon dioxide.
It has not been a great year for elections. In DSG’s most recent election, less than a quarter of students sent in their ballots. In the 2014 Midterm Elections, the United States saw its lowest voter turnout since World War II. But despite low turnout, there is an important distinction between these two elections: while DSG makes voting convenient, quick and easy for its students, state legislatures across the country have been busy passing laws that restrict the ease of voting for the supposed purpose of limiting voter fraud.
We have over a year and a half until the next presidential election, yet prospective candidates are already busy estimating their chances of victory and plotting their campaigns. Team Clinton just leased a campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, indicating as per FEC regulations an official announcement of candidacy within the next few weeks. Senator Cruz officially announced his run just last month at Liberty University—in the front row, a group of students ironically cheered while proudly wearing their “Rand Paul 2016” shirts. Granted, the likely Republican candidates spend so much of their time criticizing President Obama’s policies without providing their own alternatives—in recent weeks, regarding the nuclear deal with Iran—that it can at times be a little hard to tell the difference between them.
Fox News has been posing some heavy questions as of late. How can Americans continue to buy into elitist liberal media propaganda after Brian Williams’ fall from grace? Since when is President Obama so obsessed with beer? And why are the Koch Brothers only willing to contribute $889 million dollars to the Republican Party in 2016? Okay, I am embellishing a little with that last one, but the rule of three is just too enticing, especially while criticizing the blatant partisanship of a source of a so-called objective news.
Of the thousands of Muslims I’ve befriended, fallen in love with or randomly passed by on the street, approximately zero have tried to kill me. Now, I know what some readers must be thinking: it’s a trick! The numbers must be lying. Everyone knows that Islam is the religion of pure extremism and that the secretive “Muslim Extremists Unite!” listserv circulates around on a daily basis with devious suggestions of how to gain the trust of unsuspecting Americans.
Rarely do I find myself on the same page, or even in the same book, as Sarah Palin. Our ideological differences aside, she has provided the world with more than her fair share of political blunders in just the past few years. To invoke a famous line from Paul Keating, the probability of Palin offering something genuinely productive to a given political discussion without a prepared script is about the same as that of a typical American finally seeing Russia from his window.
We need to reevaluate the way we talk about race in the United States.
Voting is kind of important. It is a Constitutional right that is sought by much of the world but exercised by only a minority of Americans. It is a right that our leaders and soldiers have fought and died for. It is the most efficient mechanism through which we can hold our representatives accountable to their actions and responsible for our interests.
I am sick of arguments about privilege. It seems that every conversation I enter, every news channel I watch and every online commenting thread I read includes some quip about privilege. Privilege, essentially a measure of the societal benefits individuals derive from their traits and backgrounds, is an important topic to discuss. But far too often “privilege” is employed more as a politicized weapon than as a humanizing tool for students to better understand each other.
Most people stick to the news channels that reinforce their own political views. I do the exact opposite. While a typical Democrat might watch MSNBC for validation and fine-tuned talking points, I turn to Fox News for pure, unfiltered entertainment. Anchors often say something so controversial on social issues in particular that their segments go viral—on any given day in December, I can consistently expect to see a trending video of Gretchen Carlson, Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity denying racism and the “War on Women” one minute while resolutely confirming the “War on Christmas” the next.
The title of this column does not refer to the classic conservative fear that basic expansions of individual liberties must inevitably lead to unanimously understood atrocities. Indeed, I am not worried that legalizing gay marriage will pave the way for polygamy a few years down the line. I do not think that legalizing marijuana will foster an environment in which state legislatures and the federal government condone crystal meth addiction. I do not own a gun, but if I did I would not stay up late at night concerned that more strict background checks for gun ownership would encourage President Obama to show up at my door the next week to demand my personal arsenal. I don’t fret that Duke Student Government’s bill to regulate students’ printing allotments will inspire the representative group to control which classes I am able to take next semester.
I have a friend who loves to debate with me about the merits of gay marriage. Last year, he would come to my room on a weekly basis and tell me about a new argument he had heard or read in opposition to gay marriage. Each week I would listen to him tell me about how gay marriage would corrupt the young, erect societal anarchy and spark the obliteration of Earth. Usually after a half hour of back-and-forth discussion he would leave the room, concluding: “You know, you’re right. Hell, gay marriage might even be a good thing for this country. But if it came down to a vote I would still abstain.” A year of these discussions later, and I am left with a friend who would choose to abstain from a vote securing one of my basic liberties.
With every major American societal revolution, there have been the conservatives, who advocate for social stability and against assumed “slippery slopes,” and the liberals, who advocate for periodic change and against social stigma. Both conservatives and liberals can be further subdivided into extremists and moderates. During the Civil Rights Movement, for example, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X would both have been considered socially liberal, yet MLK’s nonviolent marches and speeches must have seemed at odds with Malcolm X’s more polarized ideology, which supported violence in the name of progressivism.