The Coming Anarchy, by Robert D. Kaplan

“America’s ‘Oh Sh*t!’ Moment”, written by Niall Ferguson, a historian who teaches at Harvard University, in 2011, explores why civilizations collapse, and how America can avoid this. He does not focus only on America, but many civilizations in the past that have collapsed. Niall Ferguson is the author of Civilization: The West and The Rest. The article is creatively and cleverly written using the metaphor of modern technology to describe the way in which the societal collapse occurs. This shows that the article was written for adults who are highly educated and understand and relate to technology. The article discusses the possibilities of what complete collapse would look like in American society. I believe the author successfully

Americanization can be both negative and positive depending on the perception of America by other countries. According to The Revolution Is Us by Thomas L. Friedman, the globalization of America is perceived as lazy, fast food based, technology advanced, and liberal in regards to tradition. “Today globalization often wears Mickey Mouse ears, eats Big Macs, drinks Coke or Pepsi, and does its computing on an IBM PC, using Windows 98, with an intel Pentium II processor, and a network link from Cisco Systems. While the distinction between what is globalization and what is Americanization may be clear to most Americans, it is not -unfortunately- to many others around the world.” If this perception is taken into Americanization, the effect would

Gladwell sends a very strong message about how social media cannot cause a major revolution in society; likewise, Baron is sending across the same message. Revolutions continue even after the internet is shut down. As crowds gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Baron describes how they “continued to grow during the five days that the Mubarak government shut down the internet” (330). The crowds increased in size without the help of social media. Somehow, word got out and people came to support the cause. Also, Baron brings into realization that Americans are too involved in the world of social media. Americans fail to realize all of the news that they are missing because they “can’t seem to survive without the constant stimulus of digital multitasking” (Baron 330). American citizens are too busy tweeting about what they ate for breakfast to worry about the hungry that is going on overseas. They depend on social networking to tell them the news rather that picking up a newspaper and reading about what is going on in their country or maybe even overseas in a different country.

In the book “Overthrow” Stephen Kinzer breaks down the three different kinds of interference that the United States used to overthrow 14 countries. At the beginning of the book, we see that the United States overthrew Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines because of their imperialistic grounds. The United States overthrew this countries to expand its power and also because they wanted to protect American businesses. In the second section of the book Kinzer discusses how America overthrew leaders that they felt were leaning towards communism; countries such as Iran, Chile, South Vietnamese, and Guatemala were some of these countries that got overthrown. Threats of communism was either misinterpreted or a veil to disguise imperialist

David M. Potter theme of Impending Crisis is the study of sectional conflict dealing primarily with political events that led up to or caused southern states to secede from the Union resulting in the Civil War. Potter contends that during the expansionist period of the 1840s the country was experiencing a growth of American nationalism, but “the emergence of the sectionalism which almost destroyed the nation was symbolized by an amendment to an appropriation bill which was never enacted.” For the next fifteen years the Wilmot Proviso (1846) and the issue of slavery would become “a catalyst of all sectional antagonisms, political, economic, and cultural…opened the floodgates of sectionalism, for now all the pent-up moral indignation which had been walled in by the constitutional inhibition could be vented into the territorial question.”

When founding the United States, the founding fathers sought to avoid the tyrannical rule they thought Great Britain exemplified. In order to do this, the founding fathers looked to history, specifically, the failed democracies of Ancient Greece and Rome, to model their country after. Now, the United States is regarded as a nation being founded upon and one that upholds the principles of democracy and liberty. Due to the United States’ association with liberty and democracy, it has become the common assumption that tyrannical rule could never occur here. However, recent occurrences of authoritarianism in Europe throughout the twentieth century, show that there is not much of a difference between Americans today and

Anthem is a book written by Ayn Rand and is about a boy who lives in a future society where there are numerous rules and controls which keep people in line. It is forbidden to be alone therefore everyone is required to say plural pronouns and it is illegal to say personal pronouns. In real life, the present is the past in anthem and is called the unmentionable times. The extensive rules may be present because of what the people of the unmentionable times has done to the Earth like pollution or destroying other life on Earth so the new society was created to fix this and create a new population which would not pollute the Earth and destroy the wildlife as much as their counterparts from the unmentionable times. The main character

Donald Kettl presents many controversial ideas in his book The Next Government of the United States. While some ideas he provides many be disagreed upon by some he gives excellent validation for reasoning. Two ideas that I believe are well worth discussing is the Mildred paradox that correlates with the Mildred Corollary and the irresponsible governance provided by the federal government. Each of these ideas brings about aspects that should be considered by citizens when thinking of the U.S. government. Kettl’s ideas are important in considering what the government does and does not do for citizens. Consequently, some may trust and some may not trust the United States government, and Kettl is providing reasoning behind distrust.

There is a common belief in the United States that we are, unlike many other countries in the U.S, protected from the threat of ever becoming a country who is ruled by an authoritarian regime. Hence the statement as mentioned by Timothy Snyder, the city on the hill, in which many tend to belief that the United States is protected from any threat of it falling in an authoritarian regime. In reality, this is not true, as discussed by Timothy Snyder in his book On Tyranny. In this book he gives many points on how possible it is for any country including the U.S. into falling into a tyrannical regime. Even though there are many points discussed in the novel, there will be one main point discussed to show how real imminent is the potential for authoritarianism

We are encountering problems that we started long ago and it's up to the American people to bring a change. Ehrenreich reminds us, “In the eighties, US companies began outsourcing the manufacturing of everything from garments to steel, leaving whole cities to die” (609). By outsourcing we are leaving people, towns and even cities out of business. If you take a main factory out of a town the whole town will likely crash. It's a chain reaction. Zakaria declares, “We are now living through the third great power shift of the modern era. It could be called The Rise of the Rest” (612). The concept is that as we are staying moderately the same while other countries are springing to higher levels all around us. Why is this happening? It’s because

According to the Struggle for Democracy you need to exhibit all three guidelines of democracy, (popular sovereignty, political equality, and political liberty), to become democratic. It states that in popular sovereignty the supreme source of government authority and policies they make are the people, and that political equality is the concept that every person has equal weight in the management of public business. It also specifies that political liberty is the right of the people to practice the range of basic freedom, for instants the freedom of speech, association, and conscience, without the governments meddling.

Generation Y are less brand loyal and the speed of the Internet has helped with the flexibility to change in its fashion, style consciousness and where and how it is communicated with. Lastly, Generation Y whichranges from 1995-2012. According to Generational Kinetics there are currently over 23 million Gen Z in the United States. Gen Z members are still largely kids and adolescents but have earlyindications of being increasingly self-aware, self-reliant, innovative and goal-oriented.One key difference from Millennials and Gen Z is that they don’t remember a time before social media. As a result, they tend to live much more of their entire lives from interacting with friends and family to making major purchases online and via their smartphones. Therefore, Gen Z kids will grow up with a highly sophisticated media and computer environment and will be more Internet savvy and expert than their Gen Y

Robert Vincent Daniels was an American historian at the University of Vermont. He had written beautifully about the “Evolution of the Communist Mind-In Russia” till the “End of Communism”. Almost all of the books written by him were about the Russian history, mostly about communism. Among the famous books, he had written The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia (published in 1960), Soviet Communism: The Era of Controversy, The Stalin Revolution: Fulfillment or Betrayal of Communism (1965) were few of his well-known works.

Today, the world is much different than it was fifteen years ago, much less fifty years ago. The progression of technology has been even more significant than ever before in the last several years, but has ultimately lead us astray from our core character. The production of cell phones, social media updates, websites, and technological tools is constant, but these new and improved technologies have left the world with very few longstanding advancements. Though the internet has brought the world innumerable innovative opportunities, life before technology was much more efficient, filled with many more promising benefits: responsibility, socialization skills, and controversy.

Morozov states this subject is about economics and logistics. He claims we confuse the intended uses of technology with the actual uses. Cyber-utopians truly believe in the power of the web to change societies for the better. People believe that if all persons can get online, and have enough connectivity, through collaboration they can get what they want, and democracy is inevitable. His argument is that this ideation disregards political, cultural, and sociological elements, and paints a precise deterministic picture of the role technology plays. A myth is that authoritarian leaders fear technology like the internet, when in fact they are actively using and allowing its use. The younger generations, having not been subject to brainwashing and by using digital media in all aspects of their lives are assumed to have a healthier chance of a revolution or democracy.