How has individualism been a defining force throughout American history?
Anvith Annapureddy
Ms. Robinson - Period 6
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Letter of Introduction
Dear Reader,
This great nation, whatever its faults and blemishes, has been based on individualism and nonconformity since before the days of European arrival in the New World. In seeking to further explore the ways that individualism has manifested itself throughout American history, starting with the early 20th century, I hope to deepen your understanding of the ways in which our nation has been shaped by the often harsh force of individualism and how that force has in some ways been tempered since the days of unbridled free-for-alls. Through the use of four original pieces from various genres and four reproduced pieces, each of the eight with its own rationale explaining its connection to individualism, my portfolio attempts to answer my essential question to the best of my abilities. Individualism has been restricted in its extent by socioeconomic and racial barriers throughout American history, but I hope that the varying perspectives presented in my portfolio adequately expound upon the various intricacies of American individualism. Anticipating any responses or criticisms I may receive, any questions regarding my portfolio can be directed to anvith at gmail dot com.
Sincerely,
Anvith Annapureddy
Timeline
Timeline of events relating to individualism
1. 1922 - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button published (reproduced piece)
2. 1925 - The Great Gatsby published (anchor text)
3. 1955- Beginning of organized civil rights movement (historical event)
4. 1970 - FBI’s Kent State shooting report published internally (reproduced)
5. 1974 - President Richard Nixon resigns as a result of the Watergate scandal
6. 1975 - Who Lost Vietnam? cartoon published (reproduced)
7. 1998 - Monica Lewinsky scandal emerged (historical)
8. 2000 - GW Bush wins presidency despite minority of votes (historical)
9. 2006 - WikiLeaks created in Iceland (historical)
10. 2009 - Notorious film review published (reproduced)
11. 2011 - Occupy Movement begins (historical)
Historical events
3. The civil rights movement was included on this timeline because the momentous social upheaval that it caused impacted society in innumerable ways, and expanded the hopes of individual freedom and self-determination to a far wiser segment of society than in previous years.
5. The Watergate scandal and President Nixon’s subsequent resignation betrayed the American people’s trust in the government to an irreparable extent, and hedonistic cynicism in regards to governmental affairs took root after this scandal. Even today, the suffix “-gate” is used to denote political scandals throughout the world.
7. By the time “Sexgate” emerged in 1998, faith in the trustworthiness of the government was at an all-time low, and the revelation that the President himself was a philanderer came as no surprise to Americans, nor did his dishonest, self-serving testimony to Congress.
8. For only the fourth time in American history, a presidential election was won by the candidate with less popular votes than his opposition, in the case of George W. Bush in the year 2000. Approximately half of Americans were satisfied with the result, while the other half were completely outraged. Despite the supposed unity of American, the election in 2000 showed that people in the United States were just as bitterly opposed to one another as people in the world’s worst war zones.
9. WikiLeaks was created as an organization dedicated to truth and transparency in all facets of public life, and despite the attempts of governments worldwide to prevent them from working towards this goal, the bombastic and unprecedented use of force to stop protesters from revealing injustice did not stop the revelation of documents that caused public embarrassment to the US government and led people to question the motives of their leaders in attempting to control the spread of information. Technology allowed innumerable people to make their own decisions with the facts presented to them, rather than blindly drinking from one, government-approved source.
11. Beginning in New York with Occupy Wall Street, a protest against financial mismanagement and socioeconomic inequality blamed on financial speculators, the Occupy movement quickly grew into a worldwide protest with various branches dedicated to protesting governmental and organizational ineptitude when dealing with social and economic issues. Although opposed by governments worldwide and subverted by the FBI in the United States, Occupy succeeded in awakening people’s consciousness to social issues.
Portfolio Pieces & Rationales
Reproduced piece #1 - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald (http://bit.ly/1jqoOgC)
Rationale
Written by the same author who penned my anchor text, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the same themes that were present in the Great Gatsby are noticeably present in The Curious Case. Benjamin Button, a man who is born with a physical age of seventy and grows younger as he ages, doesn’t quite fit into society wherever he goes, like Gatsby. For a period of time, some people, such as his father and his wife, are able to tolerate and even like him, but they can never truly love him as one of their own. Faced with isolation due to his physical impediment, Button sticks it out on his own and continues his father’s successful business, but as he grows younger physically, he finds his mental age declining as well, and he is all but unable to continue his adult life given his declining mental faculties. Button’s son, Roscoe, serves as a cruel tyrant, imprisoning his father as he grows younger and, in some cases, forcing him to act like a small child (which he appears to be physically) rather than a wise and successful man. Roscoe shows the worst of human nature as Fitzgerald imagined it, and individualist with no concern for the lives of others, rather than one with deep and profound human sensitivities, like Benjamin. As Benjamin dies a painless death growing into a nonexistent child, the story seems to come full circle and serve as an allegory, individualism can serve as the backdrop to a moral and righteous life, as in the case of Benjamin, or it can serve as the context for immorality and sin, as in the case of Roscoe.
Rationale
At the height of protests against the Vietnam War in the United States, students on college campuses nationwide held marches, vigils, and sometimes less than peaceful protests against the perceived injustice of dying and fighting for a lost cause in Vietnam. So in May 1970, when students at Kent State University in Ohio protested the injustice of the Vietnam War, National Guard troops came in to prevent any unreasonable civil disturbances. However, when under orders to force the crowd to disperse, troops unleashed tear gas on the students when they refused to leave the area of the protest, but the wind made tear gas ineffective and caused the troops to be hit by their own tear gas. Finally, surrounded by student protesters, the guards panicked and opened fire, shooting sixty seven rounds, killing four students, and wounding nine. Regarded as a moral and spiritual outrage by students across the country, a march on Washington, D.C. forced President Nixon to leave the White House, and only last minute negotiations with student leaders prevented an all-out riot. In the FBI’s report regarding the shootings, they detailed that the attack may have been deliberate and that the guardsmen may have been directed to fire and did not simply panic (the exact records are still classified). Regardless, the moral outrage over the Vietnam War led many Americans to give up relying on their government for information or justice, and liberals began to view themselves as the sole proprietors of justice, as individual morally-conscious people. Seeing that the government did nothing to stop the war and in fact killed its own people who tried to change the course chosen by those on power, people took the burden of stopping injustice upon themselves as individuals, and used civic involvement as merely a tool to continue their personal struggles for justice.
Reproduced piece #3 - “Who Lost Vietnam” political cartoon (http://bit.ly/1jdNoLH)
Rationale
Contrary to the liberal perspective in the previous piece, which was one of happiness that the Vietnam War had ended, conservatives were incredulous that the supposedly infallible United States had, for the first time in its storied history, decisively lost a military conflict. Seeking answers as to the reason of this worldwide humiliation, they found none because, as indicated by the political cartoon, no one was willing to take responsibility for either starting or losing the Vietnam War. Everyone in the government merely pointed to their predecessor and indicated that they were merely following his lead (except for Gerald Ford, whose perceived stupidity is parodied when he asks “What was the question?”), indicating that they were incapable of thinking as individuals and merely followed the pervasive groupthink of the time. Even Kissinger, architect of the war in terms of dollars and cents, points the blame at the American people, who supposedly didn’t trust their leaders. But when one half of the population has no trust in their leaders whatsoever and tries to function as individuals entirely, and the other half has complete blind faith in their leaders and attempts to function as symmetrical cogs in the war machine, the end result will be neither unified solidarity nor unopposed militarism, but disunion, polarization, and eventual failure. The United States during the Vietnam War was a nation of extreme opposing views, and the lack of moderating influences in government, media, and public life led to a gap in understanding and a lack of social cohesion not seen since the Depression-era days of the haves and the have-nots.
Reproduced piece #4 - The Future of Weed : HIGH COUNTRY documentary (http://bit.ly/1m2WkXh)
Rationale
The recent legalization of the long-illicit psychotropic drug cannabis in the states of Colorado and Washington has been controversial worldwide and has been fraught with tension and concern domestically, but by exploring the business side of the cannabis equation in Colorado, the Vice crew shows that not only is the cannabis business booming, but also that everyone wants a piece of the pie. Unbridled hedonism, as in the case of hashish extractors practically salivating at the profits they will make off of drugs, is rampant throughout the documentary, and everybody and their mother seems to want to profit from the cannabis industry. Concerns over safety, efficacy, long-term effects, and the morality of selling a drug are all but disregarded as the almighty dollar takes precedence over human lives throughout the documentary. Despite speaking briefly about the medical benefits of cannabis, the industry seems to be all about getting high, and licit production and regulation seem to be focused on increasing potency and yield (and therefore profit) and not on conducting scientific research on the medical uses of the plant. Whereas in the 1930s we saw the crossroads of individualism and hedonism, as unbridled self-indulgence became the domain of group activity and social reinforcement, in Colorado in the year 2013 we see the intersection of the two, as making money for yourself and medicating away the raw and often painful experience of life meet at the common junction of cannabis, with the common people often involved in the subsequent collision.
Self-Assessment
Although I have always been confident in my abilities as a writer and in my capacity to write essays, the creation of this multigenre portfolio has taught me immensely that my greatest strength is in writing. When it came to doing my own visual piece, I struggled immensely with drawing or producing tangible visual output, so I decided to critique someone else's art, knowing full well that I would be lucky over the course of my lifetime to produce a hundredth of what any acclaimed artist has done in a single painting. However, my capacity as a student to judge my own work on a relative rather than objective level has increased, and I am no longer satisfied with creating work that is verbose and unnecessarily pretentious, but rather I am focused on creating writing that is at once compelling and nuanced, but also casual and readable. Doing work that I didn't like, for example critiquing art, has taught me that I need to be more visual when it comes to writing, and evoking physical sensation in the reader is one aspect of my writing that I feel has improved due to this portfolio. Besides learning about myself, I feel that the rigorous research required to complete this project has taught me how to glean the few valuable nuggets of information hidden among the enormous pile of drivel that is easily available. More than at any other time in my academic life, I feel that completing multigenre portfolios both for Catfish and Mandala and also on the question of individualism has been the most rewarding scholastic undertaking I have concluded thus far.
Notes & Rough Drafts
Notes
_________
_________
Johnson furthered Kennedy’s ideas about the role of government in the life of the individual. These programs cost immense amounts of money, and the costs associated with them led to billions in federal deficits, and, combined with the tremendous costs of the Vietnam War, gave the United States a level of debt unseen since World War 2 - New Deal type spending. The “safety net” created by Johnson for the poorest Americans survived conservative backlash and continues to exist to this day.
The Great Society legislation set up Johnson for failure in the 1960s, he couldn’t have his cake and eat it too.
The colossal military budgets necessary to sustain the Vietnam War drained the country of much-needed tax dollars that could have been used for internal improvements in such crucial areas as education and science in a decade in which rapidly developing technology made these areas ever more crucial. Also, huge welfare programs at home that included Social Security, Medicare, and Lyndon Johnson’s Great society programs further crippled the government treasury and caused severe inflation as the two-headed monster of government military and domestic spending was not funded by increased taxes.
The murder of four students at Kent State and two more at Jackson State led to violence and riots as more and more people grew convinced that the government was not fighting this war to protect the people.
The nation was becoming increasingly polarized, and by 1971, it seemed like there was no middle ground. You were either a pro-government, pro-military “hawk” or an anti-government, anti-military, “dove”.
Nixon’s socially conservative Republican views and cautious pandering to Southern voters limited his effectiveness as an agent of social justice, therefore, he was never popular to begin with.
Whistleblower and Pentagon official Daniel Ellsburg leaked top-secret documents regarding the Vietnam War to the New York Times, which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. With these, the public now knew the extent of manipulation and deception used by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to keep the American public in the dark in regards to the war.
Nixon’s cronies - CREEP (Committee for re election of the President) were caught breaking into the Watergate hotel, “bugging” the Democratic Convention. Nixon denied any wrongdoing, especially when it came to covering up the controversy, but refused to release recorded telephone conversations that would have revealed his innocence or guilt in the face of accusations from a White House lawyer, John Dean. Eventually forced to turn over the tapes by the Supreme Court, the tapes revealed that not only was Nixon complicit in the break-in, but he had abused his power as President to obstruct justice and protect himself and his friends. Facing impeachment and almost sure conviction, Nixon chose to publicly resign and keep his pension.
The only President not elected, Ford was regarded as dimwitted, and his pardoning of Nixon caused further controversy over his competence.
Great Society programs such as welfare payments were frowned upon by fiscal conservatives, who
sought to replace welfare spending with military spending, intending to force the Soviets into an arms race that the American economy could bear better than the Soviet economy.
Works Cited Page
Works Cited
1. Albrecht, James M. (2012) Reconstructing Individualism : A Pragmatic Tradition from Emerson to Ellison. Fordham University Press.
2. Caputo, Philip. (2005). 13 Seconds: A Look Back at the Kent State Shootings with DVD. New York: Chamberlain Bros. ISBN 1-59609-080-4
3. Holland, Max (2012). Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat. Lawrence, KN: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-1829-3.
4. "Cannabis sativa information from NPGS/GRIN". www.ars-grin.gov. Retrieved 19 May 2014.
5. Dorling, Philip (29 October 2011). "Assange can still Occupy centre stage". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
6. "Faces and reasons behind 'Occupy". The Globe and Mail (Toronto). Published Thursday, 17 Nov, 2011 9:23 am EST.
8. Grant, Drew (24 December 2012). "Just Because You Are Paranoid Doesn't Mean the FBI Wasn't Monitoring You: Occupy Wall Street Edition". The New York Observer.
9. York, Anthony (September 2, 1999) "Life of the Party?" Salon News.
10. Rather, Dan. CBSNews.com. Out of the Shadows. August 9, 2000.
11. Commission on Presidential Debates". Debates.org. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
12. "Libertarian Party Presidential Ticket". The Green Papers. July 2, 2000. Retrieved 21 May 2014.
13."2000 General Election Turnout Rates". George Mason University. Retrieved 21 May 2014
14. Overvote county summary". USA Today. May 10, 2001.
15. "ACLU v. Santillanes, 506 F. Supp. 2d 598 (D.N.M. 2007)"
16. "Bush v. Gore, Brief of Respondent"
17. "Election 2000 Timeline". PG Publishing Co., Inc. December 17, 2000. Retrieved 21 May 2014
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