Final Exam

Question 1

Booker T. Washington

Answer 1

• Need to improve lives of African Americans
• Tied to education and training—Differences in type of education and strategies
• Fate of the South is tied to the fate of African Americans
• “Atlanta Compromise”
• Largely white audience
• Aware of white backlash against black positions in politics
• Provided aims that would benefit the audience and the black race
• “Cast your bucket down”—Be satisfied to make what they can of themselves where they are and not striving to start at the top but to take satisfaction in more menial work before pursuing politics, art, or more prestigious roles
• Five fingers metaphor—Desire for blacks and white to work together for Southern economic progress while conceding social segregation
• Beginning with economics—Working from bottom to top
• Proposes a problematic starting ground

Question 2

W.E.B. Du Bois

Answer 2

• Need to improve lives of African Americans
• Tied to education and training—Differences in type of education and strategies
• Fate of the South is tied to the fate of fate of African Americans
• “Souls of the Black Folk”
• Friendly audience to the situation of African Americans; based out of New England (North)
• The Negro Problem
• The Veil metaphor—Separation and segregation is a huge obstacle to the future of African Americans and the nation
• Addresses Washington in his text “is there not life more than meat, and body more than raiment?”
• Desires higher education for blacks and pursuit in history, art, politics, science

Question 3

Emma Lazarus

Answer 3

• “The New Colossus” sonnet
• Placement on the Statue of Liberty
• “Mother of exiles” caring for and nursing back to health all the world’s outcasts
• “Huddled masses” referred to immigrants

Question 4

Jacob Riis

Answer 4

• “How the Other Half Lives” (1890)
• Place some of the blame for society’s problem on the bad home life of immigrant children and not necessarily on the immigrants themselves
• Home life and tenements create poor domestic spheres
• High crime rate, drunkenness, reckless behavior
• Metaphor of America as a neglectful parent
• Upper class will not only profit financially, but they have the moral obligation

Question 5

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Answer 5

• “Women and Economics” (1898)
• Scientific and economic arguments over differentiation along gender lines
• “Excessive sex distinction”
• Men: Self expression and activity
• Women: Attract a mate
• Women’s gains come from man— “Mere egg sac”
• Concerning privileged women

Question 6

Jane Addams

Answer 6

• “Twenty Years at Hull House” essay
• Offered education, social programs, and recreation to her city’s immigrant populations
• Hellenistic event that had proven in the past to be successful
• Describes the importance of creating bridges between immigrants and their more Americanized children to adjust to life in the United States and to learn to respect and appreciate old world traditions and accomplishments
• American growth and pride would not be possible without immigration

Question 7

“Making an American Citizen”

Answer 7

• Filmmaker Alice Guy-Blanché
• Silent film
• Measures civilization and fitness for belonging in American society through the immigrant’s treatment of wife
• Immigration, assimilation, and what it means to be a “good American”
• Ivan was given lessons of Americanism throughout his early arrival to the United States

Question 8

Edward Alsworth Ross

Answer 8

• “The Old World in the New” (1914)
• Supports nativism
• Immigrants were a “drag on social progress”—Illiteracy, poor mental health, itinerancy
• Presence of non-Anglo Saxon immigrants will lower the quality of America ultimately ruining it

Question 9

Horace Kallen

Answer 9

• “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot” essay
• Promotes diversity
• Assimiliate to America out of economic need then develop a sense of ethnic pride retaining some of their heritage and traditions
• Against forcing “unison”—To be American would go against the basic law of America
• Democracy means allowing many different ethnicities that makeup the United States to express themselves
• Believed American race is a totally unknown thing
• American growth and pride would not be possible without immigration

Question 10

Henry Ford

Answer 10

• “Work and Life” (1922) proposes the manual for business philosophy, scientific analysis as central, effect on workers was dehumanizing and union-busting
• Applied Taylorism to business model
• Craftspeople transferred single-task automations
• Increase of efficiency
  Keynotes of production created
• Led to market dominance but model quickly copied
• Propelled into American cultural imagination

Question 11

Smedley Butler

Answer 11

• “War is a Racket: To Hell With War” (1935)
• USMC general who was a critic of the military-industrial complex
• Believed it to be a threat to military’s duty and honor
• Accused United States government of using military for propping business interests and exploiting weaker countries to secure access to new financial markets
• Influenced Eisenhower’s sentiments

Question 12

Beatrice Hinkle

Answer 12

• “Woman and the New Mortality” (1930)
• Resistance to masculine ideas about sexuality reflected in dress and social situations—Smoking and drinking in public
• Economic independence by finding more meaningful employment though in limited number of professions

Question 13

“The Great Gatsby” (1925)

Answer 13

• Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Inspired by lavish parties
• Simple-language but complicated themes—Wealth, excess, classism, idealism, change, “growing up,” self-making
• “New Money” vs. “Old Money” (inheritance)
• New ideas about what served as the “American Dream”
• Product of literary modernism—Hurt, fragmented perspective
• Image-driven—Parties, fashion, etes, trappings go luxury (illusion)
• Gatsby’s self-making and wealth borne on the backs of invisible underclass

Question 14

Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd

Answer 14

• “Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture”
• Technological rationale in production made possible by cars
• Cultural shift to small town environment
• Muncie, Indiana study
• Commodity culture on the rise as “remaking” Americans’ free time
• Need to buy before one can “properly” undertake leisure

Question 15

Ralph Martin

Answer 15

• “Life in the New Suburbia”
• Suburban development in Long Island
• Promote conformist thinking and rampant consumerism
• Part factual description, part mockery

Question 16

Advertising culture

Answer 16

• Industry based on the need to get people buying
• Drive consumerism
• “Mad Men” shows how our feelings and ideas are manifested through the marketplace
• Creates the differences between largely similar products so consumers can choose
• More important was affective economy of images and slogans
• Frequently acts as an archive of racist, sexist, or deplorable attitudes of the past

Question 17

Modern art (gallery from class)

Answer 17

• Imaged obsessed
• Fragmentation, disorder, and indvidual perspective
• Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942)
• Jackson Pollock’s Convergence (1950)
• Grant Wood’s American Gothic (1930)
• Dorothea Lange’s White Angel Bread Line (1933)
• Aaron Douglas’s Aspiration (1936)
• Georgia O’Keefe’s Music, Pink and Blue No. 2 (1919)

Question 18

Civil Rights era

Answer 18

• Civil resistance—Aimed at achieving change through nonviolent legal forms of resistance, operates through appeals to the adversary, pressure, and coercion, examples: picketing, signing petitions, marching
• Civil disobedience—Form of civil disobedience, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government or of an occupying international power, relates back to Henry David Thoreau, individual may choose to deliberately break laws, example: sit-ins
• Ensure the rights of all people are equally protected by the law
• Elimination of Jim Crow segregation and racism found in American life
• Brown vs. The Board of Education—Outlawed segregated education

Question 19

Disability rights movement

Answer 19

• Encouraged by Civil Rights and Feminist movements
• Rehabilitation Act of 1973—Signed by President Nixon, provided opportunities for equal education and employment for people with disabilities, required information technology to be universally accessible
• Equal rights and opportunities for people with disabilities
• Goals and demands service from nature of person’s disability
• Role of Vietnam War veterans
• Accessibility and safety in transportation, architecture, and the physical environment
• Equal opportunities in independent living, employment, education, and housing
• Freedom from abuse, neglect, and violation of patient’s rights
• Right to independent life without assistance

Question 20

Pearl S. Buck

Answer 20

• “The Child Who Never Grew”
• Advocate for the rights of women and minority groups
• Mainly known for work in disability rights movement
• Book based on experiences as mother of daughter with PKU
• Brought awareness to issues faced by people with disabilities, frustration felt by those who cared for loved ones with disabilities and witnessed their lack of rights, and the lack of attention to understand how a person became disabled and how to care for them
• All of humanity should have the same human rights
• Wanted to garner acceptance from public
• Helped influence the Disability Rights movement

Question 21

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Answer 21

• “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
• Organized many nonviolent protests—Montgomery Bus Boycott, March on Washington
• Fought to end poverty and the Vietnam War
• Supported nonviolent civil disobedience

Question 22

Malcolm X

Answer 22

• “Message to the Grass Roots”
• Muslim minister and human rights activist
• Promoted black supremacy
• Advocated for the separation of black and white Americans
• For pan-Activism, black self-determination, and self-defense
• Black revolution (violent) vs. Negro revolution (nonviolent) or “turn-the-other-cheek revolution”

Question 23

Student movements

Answer 23

• Inspired by political and social movements occurring at the same time
• Student activism on college campuses nationwide
• Produced counterculture that became synonymous with anti-Vietnam protestation
• Realized many U.S. citizens were being denied their “self-evident” rights such as liberty and equality
• Urged people of generation to avoid the draft
• Peacefully demonstrated against U.S. government and military
• “Port Huron Statement”—Manifesto of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), against racial inequality and participation in the Cold War, against the idea that everything in the country is as it should be as claimed by the apathetic middle class, individualistic democracy for social changes to be made
• Student for a Democratic Society—Main representation of the New Left, focused on schools as an agent which can oppress society or uplift it, new incarnation of the SDS with 150 chapters in the United States
• Kent Shootings—Poorly handled student protest over Cambodian Campaign and arrival of the National Guard

Question 24

Ernesto Galarza

Answer 24

• “Barrio Boy”
• Labor activist, professor, poet, writers
• Immigrated from Mexico to California
• Led several strikes for American Federation of Labor

Question 25

“Yellow Power” movement

Answer 25

• Asian American Civil Rights Movement; discrimination
• Alienation as a minority but shows racial pride and self-respect
• Inspired by the Black Power Movement
• Also faced segregation, discrimination, and inequality
• Challenged stereotypes about Asian “passivity” and “oriental” lobes

Question 26

Feminism

Answer 26

• Betty Friedan’s “Feminine Mystique”—Inquired women from 15th college reunion about their lives, quality of life and overall happiness were low in the homemaker women, “the problem that has no name,” sociological study of housewives in suburban America, depression in housewives, against cult of domesticity, argued women were capable of any career path they choose and will find greater fulfillment outside the household, housewife syndrome
• Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex”— Discussed how patriarchal ideologies of male superiority served to oppress women and gender their bodies (biological differences), feminists celebrate women’s uniqueness and wanted to enhance female sex understanding, theories of gender and sex spurned debate about differences between the terms

Question 27

Ella Baker

Answer 27

• Grass roots organizer and civil rights activist
• “Developing Community Leadership”—Argues women working behind the scenes to organize grassroots movements had the most profound effect on the Civil Rights movement
• Skeptical of charismatic leaders acknowledging their work as necessary but arguing that they heavily rely on the media for influence

Question 28

Vietnam War

Answer 28

• Limited engagement to reduce threat of Communism from spreading
• Stubborn commitment leads to evermore soldiers and the draft
• Lost nearly 60,000 lives
• Confusion on the home-front as to why the United Staes should care—No clear moral or political narrative for public
• Atrocities and shame—Soldiers were seen as villains and not as heroes; My Lai village massacre
• Unpopular war

Question 29

Protest music

Answer 29

• Bob Dylan’s “John Brown”
• Pete Seeger’s “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy”
• Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Sons”
• Edwin Starr’s “War”
• Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s “Ohio”
• Freda Payne’s “Bring the Boys Home”

Question 30

“The Things They Carried”

Answer 30

• Tim O’Brien
• Short story about the objects soldiers carried with them in Vietnam
• Showcases the heavy weaponry, necessities, and meaningful personal objects they had to carry
• More importantly mentions objects from Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’ love, but the death of his platoon member Ted Lavender causes him to relinquish all reminders of his life outside of war to prevent distractions and guilt

Question 31

Marilyn Young

Answer 31

• “The Vietnam Eras”
• Effects of PTSD on soldiers—Sleep problems, flashbacks, depression, rage
• Moral backlash
• Felt stigmatized, contaminated, spat on—”psychotic killers, crazies with weapons”
• Bread and butter problems because many men did not attend college to join the army

Question 32

Era of neoliberalism

Answer 32

• Free market and the promises of civil liberties
• Dominant ideology today
• Free trade is the common goal
• “First World” (capitalist countries) began expanding to the “Third World” (developing world) while the “Second World” (communist countries) were eyed with deep suspicion
• Increasing influence of International Monetary Fund and World Bank; offered loans to countries wanting to develop their economies and infrastructure at the cost of significant social or fiscal concessions
• Source of global policy decisions—Protection and promotion of free market capitalism on the global stage

Question 33

Music video culture

Answer 33

• Mode of transmission

- Transformed the way Americans understood class struggle

Question 34

Milton Friedman

Answer 34

• “Social Responsibility of Business to Increase Profits”
• Economist, founder and leader of the Chicago School
• Supported the neoliberal ideology and promoted it among global power players
• Developing world as laboratory for neoliberal doctrines
• Chile as economic system experiment mirroring pure free market capitalism eventually leading to the collapse of Chilean economy
• Social responsibility outside their interest to increase profits
• State hindered business
• Free market capitalism is flawless and a moral entity that benefits social good for all by bringing wealth and happiness to middle-class America
• Appealed to many people because it rationalized what they already did

Question 35

Ronald Reagan

Answer 35

• “Farewell Address”
• Enacted sweeping neoliberal policies during Presidency on a global stream
• Leveraged Communism in campaign ads to induce a coercive paranoia new common
• Threat of a bear (metaphor of Russians) is enough to be scared; need to be prepared just in case it does exist
• Effectively argued points through angle of morality by asserting America had a moral obligation to lead the economic world and free market ideology
• Appropriation of Puritan metaphor—Wanted to affirm American exceptionalism but neglected the history of abuses that can with the ideological standpoint
• Final merger of economic policy and moral argument

Question 36

David Harvey

Answer 36

• “Brief History of Neoliberalism”
• Rise to prominence after the Vietnam War
• Appeared because the right conditions were met for it in historical context
• Seen as morally sound economic system
• Difficult in criticizing because of its hegemonic familiarity

Question 37

Benjamin Barber

Answer 37

• “Jihad vs. McWorld”
• Unrest in cultural values between United States and Middle East
• Both extreme views taken to the strongest view
• Jihad—Tribalism, localism, identity politics fought against those who do not agree
• McWorld—Speed, globalism, technology, capitalism as a basis for identity that can be bought and sold
• Two sources cannot coexist as American economic and cultural values continue to transcend international borders and puts a strain on the factions of the Middle East that are resistant to the Western world
• Both undermine democracy
• Western capitalist world and fundamental resistance

Question 38

Events of September 11th, 2001

Answer 38

• Multinational group of Islamic extremists
• Attacks exercised on capitalist free market ideology
• Religion, capitalism, permissiveness in Western culture, hate
• Decline of global communism led to rise of U.S. hegemony in cultural and economic realms
• Persian Gulf War—U.S. intervention into Middle Western politics after Iraq’s invasion
• Deepening of U.S. anti sentiment
• Radical social conservatism expressed due to intense distrust of federal government
• Coordinated and well-planned attacks on commercial flights
• Symbolically and materially destructive to capitalist hegemony since nearly every major capitalism entity in the nation and world had offices or did business with companies having offices in the buildings
• Size of building made its destruction a potent symbol
• One plane flew to the Pentagon—Attack on U.S. military power

Question 39

George W. Bush

Answer 39

• “Message to Congress and the American People”
• Nine days after the events of 9/11
• About unity and healing—Rhetoric to garner American support for domestic and foreign policy decisions
• Policy of preemption—Contain terrorism in Middle East assuring it will never reach American soil again
• “U.S.” vs. “terrorists”—Justify the invasion of Afghanistan and oil-rich Iraq
• Measured response to people of Islamic faith
• In response to acts of violence against people of Islamic faith or who appeared Arab

Question 40

Barack Obama

Answer 40

• “A More Perfect Union”
• First African-American and non-white president
• Made blackness visible in American politics and opened avenue for discussing racial matters
• Drew on key phrase in Constitution in order to explain how the project of American democracy is able to accommodate a plurality of opinions, not all of which are held by the majority of he people, but that through deliberate processes, we come to better understand ourselves as people
• Changing focus of discussion about race relations

Question 41

Emma Watson

Answer 41

• “Gender Equality is Your Issue, Too”
• Changing terms of gender equality
• Sexual harassment, assault on college campuses, representation of women in television and film, “rape culture,” institutionalized sexism
• Unjustifiable complaints of men who feel alienated from women’s movement
• Asked men to lend support
• Argued women’s movement needed a male presence in order to successfully cohere and begin to make real changes in the world
• U.S. film and television industry is the source of degrading images of women, but it can harness its power for good
• HeForShe movement
• Presses the United States who has potential to show leadership in global gender equality

Question 42

“The Visitor” (2007)

Answer 42

• In regards to immigration
• Feelings about foreigners and cultural differences after 9/11
• Under-middle class professor of international politics Walter finds two Muslim-American immigrants squatting in his mostly vacated NYC apartment
• Interracial friendship
• Dramatization of flaws in immigration policy
• Suggets all immigration stories including the more public visible ones
• Message that intercultural understanding takes time and will

Question 43

Racial and ethnic changes to American culture, including their place within

Answer 43

• Southern Reconstruction was deemed a failure in terms of racial prospects since racism still persisted; position of Southern blacks deteriorated
• Anti-immigrant sentiment—Extends to other minorities such as Mexican and Asian Americans
• Nativism (protect interests of native and tradition customs) vs. diversity (Americanization without total assimilation)
• Worldwide civil rights movement encompassing different races and ethnicities
• Protection by the law
• Blacks, Mexican American, Asian American movements fought against discrimination, exploitation, segregation, racial pride, self-respect

Potential texts:

• “Atlanta Compromise”—Collectively work together to promote economic progress, cast down your bucket or use what you have and stop seeking for something better claiming African Americans may overlook prosperity in common labour before the arts, cast down your bucket to white Americans to help and encourage the emerging of the races, proven loyalists in the past, offers white race the patience and sympathy as they have in the past to bring material prosperity to the South
• “Souls of the Black Folk”— To be a Negro and an American, The Veil, right to vote, higher education, equality and justice, termed double-consciousness (the idea of looking at oneself through the eyes of others)
• “New Colossus”—Statue of Liberty was Mother of Exiles, huddling masses wanting to breathe free
• “Democracy and the Melting Pot”— For diversity, idea of Americanization, plurality, contradiction of the premise of democracy since melting pot is assimilation to white Anglo-Saxon American identity, American race is an unknown thing,
• “From the World into the New”—For nativism, degradation of American society believing not all can melt into American culture, illiteracy, housing, more freedom for women in America, overgrowth of cities,
• “Black Panther Party”—Black nationalist demands, want freedom, full employment, end robbery of capitalists of oppressed black communities, housing, education, free health care, police brutality, immediate end to all wars of aggression, freedom for all held in federal prison and jails, control of technology, combination of Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights
• “Barrio Boy”—Lower quarters as a mix of nationalities: Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Koreans, Yugo Slavs, rented quarters, secondhand stores, people tried to turn American except the elderly, no place in public places for Mexican immigrants, only when the immigrants went uptown that they felt like aliens in a foreign land
• “Letter from Birmingham Jail”—Explains he is at Birmingham because of injustice, sorry for demonstrations taking place but also sorry for the city’s white power structure, explains the parts of a nonviolent campaign: collection of facts, negotiation, self-purification, direct action, degradation of human personality, will reach the goal of freedom through America eventually, defends nonviolent resistance to combat racism, encourages sit ins
• “Message to the Grass Roots”—Against King’s nonviolent approach,
• “A More Perfect Union”—Stated selections from the Constitution, different stories but the same hope, explains his relationship with the reverend and how he cannot disown him just like he cannot disown his race, achievement gap, lack of employment opportunities, plurality of opinions is the path to a more perfect union, union may never be perfect but after generations it has shown that it can be perfected

Question 44

Capitalism as a way of life, including those for it and those critiquing it

Answer 44

• With the coming of modernity
• Began to gain prominence in the 20th century
• Industry produces cheap goods at a fast pace
• Business became a science
• Frederick Taylor and Taylorism—Decrease waste, increase profit
• Consumerism—Increase production and supply, decreases price and increases sales
• Advertising culture is secondary to consumerism—Based on the need to get people to buy

Potential texts:

• “My Life and Work”—Skilled men are not necessary for production anymore, Model T, assembly line, dividing and subdividing the operations and keeping the tasks in motion, efficient money and time-wise
• “War is a Racket: To Hell With War”—Military is the most profitable and vicious industry, benefit few at the expense of many, general public suffers from economic instability, bankers, shipbuilders, speculators, manufactures make big dividends, private labor is a power sector of the capitalist economy, takes away from the military’s duty and honor
• “Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture”—Automobiles allow people to move to suburbia, allows for leisure time, motion pictures, and radios to take over commodity culture
• Mad Men—Our feelings and ideas are manifested through the marketplace, cigarette advertising with identical companies making identical products, Lucky Strife’s Its Toasted, adverting is happiness, the smell of the new car, freedom from fear
• “Brief History of Neoliberalism”—Transformation do no occur on accident (right conditions were met at the right times), guiding principle of economic thought, liberating individual entrepreneurship, private property rights, free market, free trade, states’ role is to create and guarantee institutional framework, hegemonic
• “Social Responsibility of Business to Increase Its Profit”—Only people can have responsibilities, social responsibility is to people not to business, would result the corporate executive to spend someone else’s money for the a general social interest, business’ responsibility is to use resources and engage in activity to increase profits to continue in open free market participation without deception and fraud, pure unadulterated socialism

Question 45

Shifts in gender roles and how these affected both home and public life

Answer 45

• Angel of the House idea still uphold—Moral support to husband and the nation, raised young men
• Small changes but nevertheless important beginnings
• Gained voting rights through the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920
• Suburban life included many middle and upper class women as stay-at-home moms and homemakers

Potential texts:

• “Women and Economics”—Sex and economic relation, change cultural identity, man is women’s economic environment, women attracts mate and her livelihood, sex distinction is exposed as children (dos and don’ts), “there is no female mind, the brain is not an organ of sex,” women have been left behind in human progress, spirit of personal independence
• “New Morality”—Artificial conceptions were created due to the repression and power of customs of the old sex morality, economic emancipation beginning, new mortality does not depend on external cultural forces, women in the past were sexual creatures, women has lived for men in which he was unable to live for himself (expose to men their weakness), new relation of women toward each other, losing biological role as a race bearer, important for women to accept and value themselves rather than falling for masculine psychology, women are demanding new reality they have been refused in the past, no longer going to cater to the past where their thoughts and presence were denied
• “Feminine Mystique”—Problem that has no name, is this all, discussed what feminine women were taught to do: make marriage exciting, prevent sons from turning into delinquents, pity unfeminine women who wanted careers, she is everything what women dreamed of, occupation of housewives, dissatisfaction to the point that women went to psychiatrists and counselors to try to figure out the problem, feeling of incompleteness and emptiness, give up college and life for marriage, I want something more than my husband and children and my home
• Gender Equality is Your Issue, Too”—Wants male advocates for gender equality, discusses males who at the age of 18 are not able to express their feelings, no country in the world has achieved gender equality, less valued role of the father in society, men suffering from mental illness (macho man), it is about freedom, be the “he” for “she”

Question 46

The ways in which “American exceptionalism” continues to be a term worth defending or drawing into question

Answer 46

• American exceptionalism- Nation’s special place in world affairs separate from all others
• Cold War—International agenda to promote democracy
• Vietnam War—Need to contain communism from spreading, stubborn commitment with escalating forces
• South America (Chile), Cuba, Iraq, Kuawit (Persian Gulf War), Afghanistan presence
• First world (capitalist nations) intervene and expand in Third world (developing countries) eyeing Second world (communism) with suspicion
• International Monetary Fund and World Bank—Loans to countries wanting to develop economy at the expense of social or fiscal concessions
• United States was the sources of global policy decisions having to benefit the global stage—Hegemony!!

Potential texts:

• “Farewell Address to the Nation”—Preserve the peace, reduce nuclear weapons around the globe, no longer Persian Gulf, Cambodians in Vietnam, Soviets in Afghanistan, troops in Cuba, once you begin a movement, there is no telling where it will end, we meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed the world, free market and free speech, uses “shining city upon a hill” metaphor to describe America and its exceptionalism progress, neglected abuses that came the ideological standpoint
• “Jihad vs. McWorld”—Middle East religious values vs. Americanized culture, explains neither of the two extremes are desirable, both states undermine democracy, everyone is a consumer and everyone belongs to a tribe, but no one is a citizen
• “President Bush Addresses the Nation”—Explains the terrorist attacks of Al Qaeda who wants to remake the world and spread radical beliefs, demands the Taliban to give up Al Qaeda leaders in their land without negotiation or discussion, hate on democratic government and their freedom, either you are with “us” or you are with the “terrorists,” this is the world’s fight for pluralism, tolerance, and freedom