Black Friday

     Upton's words definitely rang true on Black Friday once again this year when thousands of people got up before 3am to get in line at the stores with all the deals.  Upton's statement about materialism and consumption definitely was proved accurate when stores' opening hours were pushed up to Thanksgiving night and midnight on Friday morning.  Kohl's went to 3am while Target went to 4am.  It amazes me what people will do to get the items they want at the best(?) price of the year.  It just points to the place materialism has pushed us to as well as how important physical things are to us.  Last year, one man even died while people rushed into a store on Black Friday.  It's crazy how material things were valued over a human life.  I think that's irresponsible and doesn't speak well to our nation's ideals and values.      

An American Icon

"To put it another way, consumption is a quest for identity through sensual means.  We buy what we think we see in an object, to obtain the unsaleable quality.  The catch, however, is that the longing for identity is diffuse, unfocused, and not described by any specific missing quality, so no particular commodity can satisfy it.  We desire, we buy, we are inevitably disappointed, and we buy again, and again." -Upton's "An American Icon"
     This is such a great explanation of consumption and the idea of materialism.  I haven't really put much thought into why we buy the things we buy, so this made so much sense to me.  I think Upton captures an excellent explanation for the psychology that goes into materialism.  I can totally picture myself considering buying an object and thinking about what life would be like with that object, what kind of image that would give me, and the view of other people if I had that object.  It sounds so stupid now that I think about it, but it's exactly what we do when we shop!  We see things and imagine how great our lives would be if we just had that one thing, so great in fact that we can't even glimpse the reality of the situation and the fact that one object will not change your life so much so that you're perfectly happy and content.  It's interesting to ponder this process of consumption and the individual quest for identity as the holiday season begins to unravel (although at Target, the unraveling began as soon as Halloween was over) and Black Friday is upon us.  I'll definitely be keeping Upton's words in mind when I'm joining the hordes of people around Ridgedale in Minnetonka on Friday next week. Yikes.

Freedom in the Airports

     On Saturday a man from Oceanside, CA was thrown out of the San Diego International Airport because he refused to submit to a full body scan and a pat down body search by TSA agents.  He may be prosecuted and possibly faces fines of $11,000.  He said that he felt full body scans are "a huge invasion of privacy" and did not want to opt for the other choice of going through the usual metal scanner followed by a pat down search.  He even referred to a pat down search as sexual assault.  While this whole event was going on, he turned on his cell phone and set it on top of his luggage where it recorded the next half hour of his interactions with the TSA.  He put this recording on his own blog later that day and by that same night 70,000 of people had listened to it, 5% of which he says think his actions were idiotic.  The whole story can be found on http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/nov/14/tsa-ejects-oceanside-man-airport-refusing-security/.

     While I also don't enjoy pat down searches and the whole security process at airports, I feel that they are important and unfortunately, a part of traveling today.  The TSA supervisor said to Tyner that "By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights"  to which Tyner countered, "I think the government took them away after 9/11."  I feel like this is true to a point.  After September 11th, the government had to tighten up security because the events of that day could have been stopped by better security.  I think that if the government had left security the way it was and left the airport procedures the same, people would have been more outraged than they are now about full body scanners.  Unfortunately, September 11th did happen and not only did it take some of your rights in the airport away, it also took people's moms, dads, children, and heroes.  This is the kind of world we live in now and I think that airport security measures are for your own safety and not just government rules put in place so that TSA agents can "sexually assault" you.  I think Tyner handled the situation somewhat immaturely and the fact that he said "Touch my junk and I'm going to have you arrested" to the TSA agent was very unnecessary.  In my opinion, he was putting his own personal feelings before the security of other Americans.  I can't assess the situation completely because I would need to find out more about how security works and what exactly the rules are in writing for flying passengers, but I'd rather have someone run their hand over my clothes for ten seconds than allow another situation like September 11th to occur again.  If Tyner has that big of an issue with any airport security, he should have driven to his destination of South Dakota rather than fly.   
(also I have no idea if this picture is a real toy or what...) 

Another Comment on Thomas Jefferson

     As yet another connection to class, I read something interesting about Thomas Jefferson in Marcus J. Borg's book Jesus that I'm reading for my Religion class.  He writes "Thomas Jefferson's way of seeing Jesus provides a striking example.  While president, he spent some evenings with the gospels and a pair of scissors cutting out the parts that in his judgment did not go back to Jesus.  What remained was the moral teaching of Jesus, purified of the miraculous, provincial, and time-bound elements, including much of the theology.  The result was The Jefferson Bible, a collection of the moral wisdom of Jesus" (13).  For one thing, it seems like a pretty bold move to take the Bible and cut whatever you want out of it.  So I think it speaks to the person of Jefferson a little bit.  It does make sense that he would do something like that, after learning about how much he valued books in architechture.  It would be somewhat helpful to read Jefferson's Bible and see how the New Testament looked after his procedure.  Seeing Jesus' writing without all the contextual elements, just as his moral wisdom could make things very clear.  But it also could make things harder to understand since you'd be missing a lot of social context from that time period among other things.  I'd have liked to sit at the table with Jefferson during his presidency and asked him what he thought about certain verses or why he removed certain parts.  It was a really random snippet of information in a completely different book from other AmCon readings, but I think it could be used as a dense fact to point to aspects of Jefferson's character and ideologies as a scholar and as a moral human being.

Thomas Jefferson

     I really didn't know very much about Jefferson before doing the readings we have for class today besides the fact that he was the third President, wrote the Declaration, and lived at Monticello.  The information I learned from the readings about his passion for architecture and the University of Virginia made me admire him a lot more than I did before.  For one thing, I am extremely impressed that he didn't even begin official work on his idea of the Central College until he was 75 years old.  "Something Very Great and New" mentions that he "rode to the site almost daily that summer, staying home only during the worst thunderstorms" (Crawford, 154).  I don't know many people who can ride horses, although this is a very different era than Jefferson's, but I definitely can't imagine many 75 year old men horseback riding on a daily basis.  Even this simple action shows how much he invests in the things he embarks on.  I liked how he utilized multiple styles and elements of architechture in all the pavilions at the University of Virginia to create an "encyclopedia" of architechture.  He made use of every element that he could, and that increased the value and meaning of the atmosphere he was creating.  Jefferson's very unique style of architechture could certainly be used as a dense fact to point to the shift of the colonies having a very British culture to their own culture for the first time.  Not only did Jefferson build a beautiful university, he began the creation of a new style for America at a time when the new nation was sorely lacking any evidence of creative architechture and a purely American culture.  

Declaration of Independence

     Johnson devotes a good three pages to the Declaration of Independence, the changes that were made to it, its creation in general, and those involved in its synthesis.  I liked that he includes the change Congress made to the Declaration regarding slavery.  It shows that he is striving to give an honest, complete history of the United States rather than a nice rosy one.  He even calls the issue of slavery a black hole "at the heart of America's claim to liberty" (155).  I also like how he says "So the slavery passage was removed, the first of the many compromises over the issue during the next eighty years, until it was finally resolved in an ocean of tears and blood" (156).  So true.  I also enjoyed Franklin's statement when signing the Declaration took place (Johnson said all the delegates signed on the same day, but Lytle and Davidson believe otherwise).  According to Hancock, Franklin said, "Well, Gentlemen, we must now hang together, or we shall most assuredly hang separately."  He reiterates how important it is to stick together in order to win this battle against the Crown of England.  He reminds them that this is all pointless if they don't stand together as one body.  It goes along well with Davidson and Lytle's idea that the Declaration had an audience of one for that one moment when each man signed it.  It also fascinated me that Franklin's statement was said 136 years earlier by Cromwell at the start of England's Civil War.  I wonder if everyone present when he said it were immediately aware of the irony in that.

The Brothers K

     A couple weeks ago Deane told us to keep in mind the ways that our other classes have connections to AmCon.  I found one really obvious connection to an idea we've discussed and even have a book with its  title- the American Dream.  For my religion class, we're reading a book called The Brothers K by David James Duncan, which has a few small connections to The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  Each chapter has a quote at the beginning, and the last chapter's is "I want the magnificent American dream: a wife, a dog, a house, a bathroom" -Laotian refugee (644).  It stuck out to me since we're reading Cullen's book and the mere fact that the refugee mentioned a bathroom.  But then again it makes perfect sense coming from a refugee of a country with a Marxist government and "reeducation camps."  It made me think about the fact that there are people in the world who believe that one of the best things you can receive in the United States is a bathroom.  To us, that seems crazy, but they really just wanted the same things the Founding Fathers wanted.  They wanted the ability to live how they wanted to live and have the things human beings should possess, the ability to choose.  I think the quote from the book could be helpful to think about and remember as we continue reading Cullen and what he has to say about the American Dream as it changes along with the nation and the eras.  It was a very random connection to AmCon, but a connection nonetheless.  Even in one sentence, it offers a peek inside a perspective we would definitely not encounter or consider often about a widely known, yet unique idea.

Tea Party Account in the Boston Gazette

     "A number of brave & resolute men, determined to do all in their power to save their country from the ruin which their enemies had plotted, in less than four hours, emptied every chest of tea on board the three ships commanded by the captains Hall, Bruce, and Coffin, amounting to 342 chests, into the sea!! without the least damage done to the ships or any other property. The matters and owners are well pleas'd that their ships are thus clear'd; and the people are almost universally congratulating each other on this happy event." -Boston Gazette Account of the Boston Tea Party (http://www.boston-tea-party.org/account-boston-gazette.html)
    
     I agreed with what Patrick said about the article on the Tea Party in the Boston Gazette in class on Wednesday.  He brought up how the article praises what the men did and focused on the heroic nature of their actions.  It doesn't address the danger or risk of the situation at all besides using the word brave to describe the party goers.  I like how the writer said "342 chests into the sea!! without the least damage done to the ships or any other property."  Even though they just did something incredibly dangerous in order to show the British that no one would even have a chance at drinking the tea, the writer makes it sound like they just saved the world, and they didn't even damage anything!!  The writer also calls it a "happy event," but I'm not sure it is the word I would choose to describe an event that just defied the King of England.  It does make sense that the writer would be excited about this event and what it signifies for the colonies, but I would have added some sense of caution in a city-wide newspaper article.    It's entertaining to look at different people's accounts and see how they viewed a monumentous event that we can only look back on today and be able to see the big picture and the risk it involved while these things may not have been quite as obvious and in the open for those alive at the time.

Ben Franklin & Son

     In response to Deane's comment on my last post about Benjamin Franklin: I think that in the context he writes in about the death of his son, he is continuing his narrative of his life chronologically.  However, this event must have affected him so much that he includes it in this narrative.  He also says, "I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation" (79).  Throughout the rest of his autobiography, he often mentions the big "errors" in his life that he tried his best to correct later on.  I think this is one of those big errors that he regrets he can not fix at all, but warns other parents to inoculate their children instead of passing it up and possibly losing their children.  He says that some parents are afraid that their child will die if inoculated, but that either way their death is caused, it hurts just as much.  I think this event had a big impact on him as a parent.  He felt personally responsible for his child's death when he was trying his best not to be responsible for his death by having him inoculated.  For once in his life, no amount of studying or writing or doing good could fix a situation for him.  This was certainly enough to urge him to record the event in his autobiography.  I think that by writing this, he is trying to subtly admit that he is not perfect and was incapable of saving someone who he was supposed to protect as much as possible.  He is putting aside the pride he often conveys in his autobiography and saying for the first time, I failed both my son and myself.