Mimetic Rivalry

The New York Times columnist David Brooks calls it “the greatest political shock of our lifetime.” At the end of August, it seemed as though Donald Trump was destined to fail in his bid to become the 45th President of the United States. After months of new revelations of sexual harassments and use of vulgar language, spectators of the political sport were almost certain that Secretary Clinton would win, and then that fateful day came. Everyone, including some of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters were shocked at the outcome of the election, leaving many to ask how such a thing could happen. While still shocking, ideas and concepts learned in the Election the President seminar have helped to explain the process, the results, and even the candidates themselves.

Third parties in American politics have had limited influence on a national level due to the winner-take-all nature of elections. While they have had some success in local and Congressional elections, it has been limited, and they have certainly stopped short of reaching the presidency. One significant exception to the marginalization of third parties was the Progressive Party of 1912. Their influence was bolstered by Theodore Roosevelt’s popularity, public disapproval toward Taft, and the mass agreement with policies of the Progressive Party.

Have you ever known a war veteran? A family member, a friend, or a complete stranger that gave up years in their prime to serve their country? Have you ever envisioned yourself in their shoes, adapted to civilian life, and in as little as a year having to make choices like deciding whether to pull the trigger of an assault rifle or not? Now, begin to empathize with the soldiers who lived that reality and had to see their friends die in battle. To some of us, this would sound extreme in nature and connecting to the ones who have sacrificed their pasts to preserve our futures sounds repulsive almost and an insurmountable task.

Last year, Yiannopoulos was permanently banned from Twitter for his role in a campaign of racist, sexist harassment directed at Leslie Jones, a “Saturday Night Live” cast member. When Twitter suspended his account, Yiannopoulos denounced it as “cowardly” and declared himself a martyr for the cause of free speech. Twitter, he said, was “a no-go zone for conservatives.” The tacit admission that Yiannopoulos sees targeted abuse of a female African-American comedian as “conservative” is revealing, if only in that it strips away the fig leaf of euphemism separating the alt-right from the hive of racism and sexism that defined last year’s Presidential election. That it was the Berkeley College Republicans who invited him to campus further supported this association. No chemistry department would extend an invitation to an alchemist; no reputable department of psychology would entertain a lecture espousing phrenology. But amid the student conservatives at Berkeley—and along the lecture circuit where he is a sought-after speaker—Yiannopoulos’s toxic brew of bigotries apparently meets their standard for credibility. And this recognition is as big a problem as anything he has said in his talks or in his erstwhile existence as a Twitter troll.

Credibility is important for networking with others. It demonstrates one can be trusted and without it many dangers are at stake. In the article “How America Is Losing the Credibility War” Antony J. Blinker offers his own insight on President Trump’s global relations. He reveals that Trump’s super ego and reckless tweeting is diminishing America’s credibility. His intentions of exposing domestic media for providing the public “fake news” can undoubtedly convince the people; causing them to protest. In addition, his careless tweets about countries whom we have growing tensions with, North Korea and Russia, can appear offensive to them ultimately triggering a war. Blinker believes Trump’s disruptive use of social media places the United States

A lie is neither a false proposition, nor a mistake, nor a mere fiction; it is a type of intentional fiction, a precise act that calls for a twist in reality. This act, the lie, produces effects. The cause-effect relationship of a lie affects an individual or group in a way that twists the personal reality of the subject(s) from the objective reality (the way that things truthfully are) (Raspa 105). Examples of how reality is twisted by lies are rather prevalent in today’s media. Leaders have always tried to manipulate the truth, with modern politics wanting to control the narrative. The most relevant of these examples is mutability of fact for which President Trump has become notorious. He lies, repeats the lie, and his urge to tell them purely reflect a present day Big Brother, from George Orwell’s 1984. When lies are told so often, and so repeatedly, fighting the lie becomes not simply more dangerous, but more exhausting than repeating it. The act of falsifying reality is merely a secondarily way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power. This can be exemplified in one particular circumstance when Trump falsely claimed that millions of illegal votes were cast against him in addition to his administration making unfounded allegations that Trump’s inauguration had record attendance. In response, Kellyanne Conway, infamously coined the false number as “alternative facts,” as opposed to the actual statistics (Beale, We're living

The 2016 presidential election had been a contentious one even before the primaries began. A divide within parties and between the public grew increasingly evident over the past year, ultimately leading to a candidate with no prior political experience beating out a candidate with forty-plus years on her resume. Scandals plagued both campaigns, however, polls and positive media coverage stayed firmly in Hillary Clinton’s favor throughout the duration of the election process with Donald Trump even claiming that the polls were “rigged” and the media was biased. While the veracity of these claims cannot be verified, today we know that the polls were wrong and the media that all but handed the election to Clinton were wrong as well. So how did Trump, someone many said would need a miracle to make it to the White House, beat all the odds and his seemingly strong opponent to become President? Though pundits are still struggling to understand it, the rise of Donald Trump shouldn’t have surprised anyone. For the pioneering German sociologist Max Weber, it would have been entirely predictable, a classic example of the politics of charisma.

The final votes are cast by what’s called the Electoral College, which is a system put in place by Article II of the Constitution where citizens vote in the general election to select a group of electors who are pledged to vote for a party’s candidate. Each state has a certain number of electoral votes that are given to the winner of the state’s popular vote. Trump managed to win some important Swing States, which are states that could go to either candidate and are highly competitive. Found in these states are the electoral votes most candidates consider necessary to win the election. This explains how Clinton managed to lose overall despite the 2.8 million vote victory in the general election. The next section of the article deals with the election results in different areas and how it contributed to Clinton’s loss. This connects to our class through the term political ideology, which is a person’s consistent set of ideas about politics that they learn through culture, life experience, education, etc. People living in mainly white, non-urban areas usually vote republican, and on the other hand, people who live in big cities or who minorities typically vote democrat. A big part of Trump’s victory was the surge of republican votes cast from those rural communities. Finally, towards the end of the article shows the role the media could’ve played in Clinton’s loss. As a Linkage Institution, the media connects the people of the United States to the government, or in this case, the candidates. When the news came out that the FBI was going to reopen their case on Clinton due to the finding of new possible evidence. Two weeks before the election, it was not good for Clinton’s campaign and may have resulted in more votes for trump. That goes to show how influential the media can be on an

Donald Trump was elected president of the United States of America on November 8th, 2016, and now has been running our country for over a year. As Trump’s first year in office slowly began, his reputation seems to be creating different outside views of our nation and arguments started producing everywhere. After competing with Hillary Clinton for the presidential term in office, Trump defeated her along with her democratic supporters causing one of the most shocking elections in U.S. history. Using public media web pages, we are reviewing both sides of the argument regarding Trump’s election and we are going to decipher why each arguer supports their side, and why each side is reasonable for the benefit of our country.

Being a woman is problematic. Whether you see it or not, discrimination against women occurs daily. People need to be informed on how discrimination occurs in the US, worldwide and in “The Handmaid’s Tale”. Taking a look at how discrimination occurs worldwide, will help us to better understand the topic. There are 195 countries in this world, and discrimination occurs in each one.

The outcome of the 2016 election came as a surprise to many, pleasant to some and unpleasant to others. However, when looking at the theories and ideas in political psychology, the election of Republican nominee Donald Trump over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is not entirely shocking. Cognitive dissonance theory, schemas and heuristics, and social influence, specifically conformity, can all help to explain why Donald Trump is America’s new president-elect.

Confessing one 's political identity in 2016 truly embodies the phrase “walking on eggshells”. Whether you’re a liberal or conservative, owning up to your political resolutions sometimes comes with some intense backlash. In this years’ presidential election we have an intense candidate with very radical views, and if you don 't know who I’m talking about you should probably move from the rock you are living under. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has gained a immense popularity amongst not only the American public but Internationally as well. His chauvinist rhetoric, egotistical outlook, and how he continuously fabricates lies upon lies has truly brought him into the public eye. Hearing Trumps incredibly horrifying agenda makes me proud to admit that I am a Democrat, a solid liberal to be exact. As a solid liberal I believe in the power of the people and that means all people.Whether you are rich, poor, black, white, gay, or straight building and creating a nation that caters to people inherently means doing right by the economy and when we do well for the economy we do well for everyone.

The New York Daily News has decided to criticize Donald J. Trump’s victory in New Hampshire on 11th February by making the cover page to a terrifying image of a grinning Trump decked out in red and white clown makeup, titled: "Dawn of the Brain Dead.” The action of the tabloid is highly unacceptable despite the racist, sexist and fascist demeanours of Donald Trump himself. The businessman turned celebrity and now Presumptive Presidential Candidate of The Republican party have been extremely popular in the social media for his outspoken statement during the course of his campaign for 2016 Presidential Campaign. Albeit his loud personality, the media should not tarnish his image and his voters selection on the leadership. Moral philosophies breached in this situation are The Virtue Ethics, Golden Rule and Egalitarian ethics.

President Donald Trump is a notorious key player in social media and news stories. During the 2016 Presidential Election, many of Trump’s tweets were deemed inappropriate or outrageous by news outlets and the American public. Now, the tweets being sent from Trump’s account no longer comes off as a shock, rather than as something expected. With tweets ranging from self-adoration, animosity, and false claims, it is not difficult to discover one of these tweets within the 36.1K tweets he has released since joining Twitter in March of 2009. Trump’s egotism, misleading content, and intense narcissism are present in his interviews, online presence, and tweets. One of the misleading claims that he had made in late February was that he decreased the National Debt. Earlier this year Trump insisted that within the first month of his presidency, he had decreased National Debt. However, his claim is misleading and deceitful to the public. By taking credit for the debt without providing empirical supporting data, Trump has committed a false cause fallacy. The false cause fallacy is when an argument is made claiming that sequential events are caused by each other. False cause fallacy uses sequential events as evidence that the first thing caused the second thing.

Within the last few months the American people have experienced an event which has caused the most division this country has seen since the days of the Civil War. The incident in question is that of the 2016 presidential election, in which Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump single-handedly managed to create a powerful divide within the country over something as menial as political views. Due to the controversy incited by this event our two major political parties escalated to hold unprecedented levels of ambiguity towards one another. Nobody can dispute the fact that this separation has occurred. The only topics up for debate are those of why division grew to such a large degree and whether it was warranted. Is it possible that the masses were swayed into such a staunch devotion towards a political side by the media; rather than their own devotion to their parties cause? Maybe the reason that this country hasn’t seen this division in ages is because that no generation before ours has had the capacity to reach millions with their agenda with such simple means. As the voting date of November 8th, 2016 drew closer, the prevalence of candidate advertisement