Faith-healer parents, child brides, and 12-year-old Tobacco pickers
The day before President Joseph R. Biden’s inauguration, the National Children’s campaign held a virtual children’s inauguration. Speakers included politicians, such as Massachusetts senator Ed Markey (D), and young activists themselves, several of whom called for the creation of a ‘White House office for kids’, arguing that the political establishment fails to consider and protect the rights of young Americans. This article briefly details three areas where children are not protected from harm: medical neglect law, child marriage, and child labour in agriculture. Based on the standards the US federal government applies to other countries, its failure to ratify international agreements on children’s rights, and aspects of the US Constitution, the United States must be considered a failing state when it comes to children’s rights. Children’s Medical and Fourteenth Amendment Rights With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and vaccination response, parental rights to refuse vaccinations for children has once again been […]
Continue ReadingNot Your Grandparents’ Grand Strategy: Rethinking Liberal Hegemony
Since the end of the Cold War, America’s commitment to a grand strategy of liberal hegemony has habitually set the parameters of foreign policy debate. The bipartisan consensus in Washington D.C. sees the United States as the indispensable nation whose leadership is required in perpetuity in the name of upholding the liberal international order. Liberal hegemony is liberal in the sense that it vows to use American power to defend and spread traditional liberal values such as individual freedoms, democratic governance and a market-based economy. The strategy is one of hegemony because it identifies America as the benevolent hegemon that is uniquely qualified to spread these principles abroad. This universalist logic sees the advancement of a liberal international order as not only essential for American security and prosperity, but as desirable for the rest of the world. As such, a moralistic fervour has become axiomatic in US foreign policy making […]
Continue ReadingAmerica Now
In this short series, a group of scholars consider important issues facing the United States as the Biden administration begins and the economic and health crises facing the country continue. Ellis Mallett considers the US position in foreign relations in her article, “Not Your Grandparents’ Grand Strategy: Rethinking Liberal Hegemony“. Jack Hodgson provides a succinct overview of the children’s rights and their status in the United States in his article, “Faith-healer parents, child brides, and 12-year-old Tobacco pickers“. Olga Theirbach-McLean contemplates the US’s relationship to capitalism in her article, “Reality Check or Business as Usual? COVID-19 and the future of US Capitalism“. Emma Woodhead investigates Civil War memory in the work of George Saunders and how it resonates in our current moment in her article, “(Re)Constructing the Past in George Saunders’ ‘CivilWarLand in Bad Decline‘”.
Continue ReadingMcCarthyism and Witch-Hunts: Sylvia Plath’s Perspective
Sylvia Plath was born in the time of the Great Depression, was a child during World War II, and became a young adult during the Cold War era, catalysing her own disapproval of this latter, turbulent period in American history. Her literary representation of McCarthyism and the Cold War is apparent in her only published novel, The Bell Jar (1963) and poems, such as “Lady Lazarus” and “Fever 103°” which mark her strong opposition to authoritarianism. In the US, the late 1940s and early 1950s were characterised by forceful fight against Communists of the Cold War and threats of a nuclear war. President Harry S. Truman and Senator Joseph McCarthy were the key figures associated with the suppression of political enemies and investigating people who were suspected of committing “un-American” activities. Joseph McCarthy gained larger political presence after his speech delivered in 1950 in West Virginia in which he […]
Continue ReadingGolf and Trump’s America
While America might seem tied up in that tiny white golf ball, it hasn’t always been this way. Golf is another of the New World’s ‘Old World’ borrowings. According to the OED the game is of “considerable antiquity in Scotland”. It lends power, lineage, and legitimacy, and so it lends presidency. Trump, despite his usual twitter-friendly lexicon, recently used the definition to his own ends at the Trump National Golf Course in Sterling, Virginia, where he went to play after President-elect Joe Biden’s projected win.[1] It’s one thing for a President to play golf, but what does it mean for a President to turn to the sport in the immediate aftermath of his failure to regain office? The usual claims that golf offers respite from reality, a smooth deflection from abrupt decision-making, or a strategic space to strike up business deals all take a sinister twist. Was Trump trying to […]
Continue ReadingThe Toppling of Þorfinnur: Vandalism as Dialogue and Direct Action
Figure 1. Head of Þorfinnur Karlsefni, 2018 Source: CBS Philly In the early hours of Oct 2nd, 2018, unidentified parties beheaded a one-hundred-year-old bronze sculpture of the Norse explorer Þorfinnur Karlsefni and hurled it into the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. Weighing thousands of pounds and standing more than seven feet tall, the statue of Þorfinnur was discovered the next day, completely submerged. The only evidence was a single crowbar located near the scene. Because the Philadelphia Eagles were scheduled to play the Minnesota Vikings that same week, some wondered if a zealous football fan had targeted the statue. But those well-versed in the history of the left-wing activist movement in Philadelphia inferred a deeper significance to the dramatic toppling of Þorfinnur. Since 2007, the white supremacist group the Keystone State Skinheads, or Keystone United, have held annual rallies in Fairmount Park on Leif Erikson Day (an obscure holiday […]
Continue ReadingA Brief Consideration of the American Empire Through Modern and Contemporary Poetry
For centuries, one of the roles of the poet has been as oracle, acting as witness, interpreter and seer about societies and individuals. Poetry serves to illuminate, even if—especially if—the truths unveiled reflect the shadowed soul of a people. Contemporary American poetry offers ample examples of the frictions and contradictions of the American empire seen through the lens of its verse-makers, presenting a plexus and literary voice to and for those muted by traditional imperial power constructs, and a sacred space from which to reveal, protest, and change the society it reflects without artifice. As part of the Spaces of Empire series, this essay will examine the American empire, its ethos and conflicts, within the nation itself as well as in the global landscape, primarily through the lens of modern poetry of the last century, with particular attention to the juxtaposition of form and content. Poetry and the […]
Continue ReadingThe Alt Right: Trump and Terrorism in the Digital Age (Part One)
In November 2016, former real-estate millionaire and reality television personality Donald J. Trump was announced as the 45th President of the United States. During the Presidential campaign, Trump faced off against Hillary Clinton, the intended Democrat successor to Barack Obama. However, Trump usurped Clinton after an unexpected surge of support came from what Clinton termed “…the basket of deplorables—the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it” [1]. In acknowledging, and denouncing, the emerging Alternate Right – Clinton unknowingly bolstered their campaigns in support of Trump, as scholar Niko Heikkilä writes: “Rather than serve as a nail in the ideology’s coffin, Clinton’s speech instead catapulted the Alt-Right from obscurity into the national spotlight and its supporters could not have been more thrilled” [2]. Only a year later, in August of 2017, it became clear that Trump’s Presidency had legitimised the growing faction of ‘deplorables’; the Unite the Right rally in […]
Continue ReadingThe Dragon’s Back: China, US Foreign Policy and the 2020 Election
Foreign policy is often said to be something that does not win elections, but in certain scenarios it can help lose them. Both Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joseph Biden have focused on presenting different visions in relation to domestic policy, but they also have both made points to outline divergent foreign policy concerns. Biden has made it clear that he wishes the United States to return to Obama-era diplomacy and Trump’s rhetoric against Iran and others has not cooled.[1] However, there is one aspect of foreign policy that both share some similarity in: namely in how to respond to China economically, militarily and culturally. Signs point to both candidates having negative views of China’s emergence as a world power with Vice President Mike Pence declaring, “ But our message to China’s rulers is this: This President will not back down” and Biden remarking how “the South and […]
Continue ReadingOld Dog, Old Tricks: America’s Exhaustion with Donald Trump’s Divisive Rhetoric
In an interview with the journalist Bob Woodward during his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump admitted that he inspired rage in the American people. “I don’t know if that’s an asset or a liability,” he claimed, “but whatever it is, I do.”[i] Trump possessed—and continues to possess—a power unlike many previous candidates to influence and change the news cycle simply by Tweeting.[ii] He used this uncanny ability to manipulate media attention to secure the Republican nomination and push his agenda through outlets such as Fox News during the last election cycle. However, Mr Trump’s shock victory in 2016 was achieved using methods that were an exercise in short-term strategy, which may ultimately help lead to his defeat in 2020. In 2016, Trump used partisan language to engender a siege mentality among his supporters and divide the electorate. This same language, coupled with continued smear campaigns and empty promises, now […]
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