Law in the Internet Society

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BriannaCummingsSecondEssay 7 - 15 Jan 2016 - Main.BriannaCummings
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The Last Generation That Has a Say

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-Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
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“Donald Trump is like if a comments section ran for office”
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Introduction

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This election cycle has been particularly troubling for me. I consider myself to be a well-informed voter; I read the paper, watch the news and see what the net has to say most days and even vote in mid-term elections. In doing so I find myself wondering; “were people were always this crazy?” or “is this a new kind of craziness?” I see the comparisons of Donald Trump’s campaign to that of Adolf Hitler and reflect on the sordid history and current predicament of my own people in the country and tell myself no there’s always been pervasive evil in the world. I tell myself that evil has always found a way to garner power and support. But the millennial in me still wonders would think have been the same in the past if the masses had access to information in the ways the current generation does?
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When I see comparisons of Donald Trump’s campaign to that of Adolf Hitler I reflect on the sordid history and current predicament of my own people in this country. I tell myself that there has always been pervasive evil in the world and we have always found a way to overcome. I tell myself that evil has always found a way to garner power and support. But the millennial in me still wonders would things have been the same in the past if the masses had access to information in the way the current generation does? I also wonder what the world would look like if the journalistic integrity of the past was more prevalent today.
 

24 Hour Media Cycle

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Having constant access to news is both a blessing and a curse, we have the tools to be the most informed and knowledgeable generation at the least cost in modern history. The world-wide use of personal computer connected to the web has put the world at our finger tips, after all there is nothing Google doesn’t already know anymore. This is a blessing many of us (millennials that never lived in a world without internet) constantly take for granted. The use of personal computers connected to the web also allows independent journalism and blogging to occur without publication costs. This is key for the transmission of information needed for a number of revolutions currently underway. It is also important in the era of corporate sponsored news stations that often pick and choose what stories get coverage and what perspectives are presented. This is a curse, it is exceptionally easy to completely block out any media coverage that does not agree with our beliefs and views. Major “news” outlets such as Fox News, CNN and MSNBC can all cover the same event with such bias that it is hard to recognize the report are for the same event. Fox News has gone so far to the right that a commentator has to refer to the President of the United States as a pussy to be suspended from the air (only for two weeks though).
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Having constant access to news is both a blessing and a curse; we have the tools to be the most informed and knowledgeable generation in modern history (at near zero cost). The world-wide use of personal computer connected to the web has put the world at our finger tips, after all there is nothing Google doesn’t already know anymore. This is a blessing many of us (millennials that never lived in a world without internet) constantly take for granted. The use of the web allows independent journalism and blogging to occur without publication costs. This is key for the transmission of information needed for a number of the revolutions currently underway. It is also important in the era of corporate sponsored news stations driven by advertising that often pick and choose what stories get coverage and what perspectives are presented.
 
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Being so ‘tuned in’ has made following this election nearly unbearable and were still eleven months away from Election Day. A majority of the candidates for president this cycle are particularly disturbing and frankly dangerous with their words. The twenty-four hour media cycle allows us to listen, share and retweet every insane thing that Trump utters of types. This rhetoric is exceptionally dangerous given that even when making objectively false statements Trump and Co. double down and claim to be the victims of the liberal media when called out by fact-checkers.
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This access is also a curse, it has made it exceptionally easy to completely block out any media coverage that does not agree with our beliefs and views. Major “news” outlets such as Fox News, CNN and MSNBC can all cover the same event with such bias that it is hard to recognize the reports are for the same event. Fox News has gone so far to the right that a commentator has to refer to the President of the United States as a pussy to be suspended from the air (only for two weeks though).

The constant media storm has made following this election nearly unbearable and we’re still eleven months away from Election Day. A majority of the candidates for president this cycle are particularly disturbing and frankly dangerous with their words. The twenty-four hour media cycle allows us to listen, share and retweet every insane thing that Trump utters. This rhetoric is exceptionally dangerous when Trump and Co. make objectively false statements and then double down and claim to be the victims of the liberal media when called out by fact-checkers. This indignation allows the masses to remain ignorant.

 

Trump is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

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Many dismiss Trump as ‘crazy’, ‘racist’, ‘sexist’ and unfit to run for office as his antics continue. However, he maintains a strong following and continues to rise in the polls, with each sound bite more outrageous than the next, while liberals and moderates anxiously wait for the moment when even his supports decide he’s gone too far. (I’m losing hope that this day will ever come). Without a doubt Carson, Cruz, Rubio, Fiorina and Huckabee have said things equally outlandish and unsupported by facts as Trump with Christie, Graham and Paul close behind. It is truly concerning with Jeb!Bush and John Kasich have become the ‘voice of reason’. The democrats have been having a fairly uneventful primary and have essentially become the party of boring. Hillary has let her hawkish side show a number of times this fall but not many have noticed or got too caught up in the latest GOP snippet to remember.
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Many dismiss Trump as ‘crazy’, ‘racist’, ‘sexist’ and unfit to run for office as his antics continue. However, he maintains a strong following and continues to rise in the polls, with each sound bite more outrageous than the next, while liberals and moderates anxiously wait for the moment when even his supports decide he’s gone too far. (I’m losing hope that this day will ever come). Without a doubt Carson, Cruz, Rubio, Fiorina and Huckabee have said things equally outlandish and unsupported by facts as Trump with Christie and Paul close behind. It is truly concerning with Jeb!Bush and John Kasich have become the ‘voice of reason’.

The latest slew of ignorance from presidential candidates surrounds Syrian refugees and Muslims more broadly. Some governors went as far as claiming they would not accept Syrian refugees in their state, which is laughable because they have literally no standing or authority to deny placement of refugees in their state. But, this is no laughing matter as the general public (non-law folk) is most likely unaware of this fact. Allowing such Islamophobia rhetoric to flood the media (TV, digital and print) is dangerous to say the least.

 
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The latest slew of ignorance from presidential candidates surrounds Syrian refugees and Muslims more broadly. After last month’s attacks on Beirut, Lebanon and Paris, France several Republican presidential candidates and governors called for on the U.S. to stop granting Syrians refugee status. Others just wanted to stop granting refuge to Muslim Syrians and would allow Christian Syrians to seek refuge here. Some governors went as far as claiming they would not accept Syrian refugees in their state, which is laughable because they have literally no standing or authority to deny placement of refugees in their state. But, this is no laughing matter as the general public (non-law folk) is most likely unaware of this fact. Allowing such Islamophobia rhetoric to flood the media (TV, digital and print) is dangerous to say the least.
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The debate around Syrian refugees and Muslim immigrants highlights a much bigger problem facing our country; lack of journalistic integrity and an uninformed electorate. One should not have to be in a graduate program to know that governors do not possess the power to deny refugees entry into states. Journalists should be allowed to report on candidates also presenting verifiable facts. We cannot prevent candidates from telling lies but we can at least make an effort to present the truth. When a candidate goes on the campaign trail and tells voters that refugees are dangerous and have been infiltrated by terrorists there should be a broadcast the same day comparing that statement to statistics on crimes committed by refugees. This will either prove the candidate’s statement to be true or false.
 

Hate Speech vs. Free Speech

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The Hate Speech readings made me reflect on the false dichotomy of hate speech vs. free speech that has been created in the United States. Countries around the world manage to have free speech while still punishing hate speech (See Canada), but the U.S. continues to struggle with this. The U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and expression but there have been limits put on free speech in our countries history. For instance it is well known that you cannot scream “FIRE” in a crowded movie theater when there is not a fire. I think the same principle should apply to political candidates, especially those running for President (the highest office in the land). Presidential candidates should not have free reign to incite fear and violence by spewing hate speech while hiding behind free speech. This is exactly what they are doing by advocating religious tests for entrance into the United States and calling for open discrimination of Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim.
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The Hate Speech readings made me reflect on the false dichotomy of hate speech vs. free speech that has been created in the United States. Countries around the world manage to have free speech while still punishing hate speech (See Canada), but the U.S. continues to struggle with this. The U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and expression but there have been limits put on free speech in our country’s history. Presidential candidates should not have free reign to incite fear and violence using hate speech without consequence. I am not advocating censorship but we need a system of checks and balances. Journalists could take on this role if corporate sponsorship of news outlets were eliminated.
 

Our Last Chance

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If we as Americans allow this propaganda to take hold of our government and political process we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of Germany during World War II. I am not sure if the U.S. or the world will be able to recover from another Holocaust in the age of nuclear, biological weapons and large-scale complex terrorist organizations such as ISIS/ISIL. This generation must take our place in history and ensure that this does not happen on our watch.

I read this as an opinion piece. It doesn't seem to me to aspire to convey new information. I don't think it's self-consciously engaged in presenting an argument, in which there are steps from point to point in a chain of reasoning. I don't find any passages in which the objections that someone thinking differently might raise are acknowledged and addressed. I think the particular opinion at the center of the essay is that the democritization of technology that has led to a very great democritization of opinion—as the equalization of individuals and media entities has proceeded in the Net—has lowered the tone of public debate. This seems to you particularly evident in the rhetoric on one side (not your favored side) of the two-party contest for the Presidency now ramping up.

In the first place, I'm not sure the history bears you out. I wonder if you have ever had occasion to read the newspapers and campaign oratory of, for example, 1864. Barack Obama, much vilified as he is, is not more vilified than was Abraham Lincoln. Mr Trump's form of anti-immigrant rhetoric is grotesquely distasteful in this nation of immigrants, but if you think about the "Know Nothing" anti-immigrant politics of the 1850s---which Mr Lincoln, Salmon P. Chase and other ardent anti-slavery Whigs carefully danced with and around in order to co-opt Know Nothingism into an anti-slavery but not anti-immigrant Republican Party---I think you will find yourself heartened to discover that we have been through, and survived, this form of xenophobia more than once, without "the Internet."

Your discussion of hate speech regulation would suit better our work next term, in the "Computers, Privacy and the Constitution" course, but let me say here that I don't think you've captured the real dispute between the First Amendment and hate speech regulation. The issue isn't First Amendment absolutism. The issue is whether more speech or less speech is the correct response to upwellings of hate or sedition or other anti-social communication. European hate speech regulation comes from statist origins in regimes that always used censorship, from the adoption of printing onwards, to shape opinion. American attitudes in the direction of "more speech" as the remedy for bad speech begin from the absence of any precedent anti-liberal tradition in American culture, as Louis Hartz famously noted more than fifty years ago. Many ways of expressing the American view could be cited, but this one seems most important to me:

If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

which comes from Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural address. If one adds from the same speech this:

[H]aving banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.

one has, I think, conveniently located in one place the key propositions from which a response to your opinion might be fashioned, and from which, at any rate, you might take the creative tension necessary for another, richer, draft.

To chime in here, I think an issue to consider is whether the rise of a "personalized" Internet degrades the quality of the democratic forum. There is a lot of evidence out there that the manner in which most users acquire information online -- through social media sites, for example -- tends to reinforce rather than challenge existing belief systems. It can be viscerally satisfying to read news you like and agree with, so users who are not vigilant risk falling into partisan wormholes where they never confront opposing ideas.

I do agree with the above proposition that the best response to hate speech is to force it to stand side by side with reason and truth. The proper question then, in my view, is how do we ensure that hateful and erroneous belief systems are exposed to material that will defeat them.

-Shay

I think discussion of the solutions law can, or should, bring to the problems you identify. While Trump is a disgusting man, I think he is red herring for this essay. Not much at all of what he says in new in any meaningful way. Does it make sense to focus on the presidential candidates? Electoral politics are certainly interesting with regards to the modern news media, but there have long been hateful demagogues, as you note with reference to e.g. Hitler. In fact, your reference to "other holocausts" might undermine your pondering whether there is something unusual about this cycle in particular.

Re the final paragraph: what propaganda? Is this term to refer just generally to hateful things that candidates say? Would their victory ensure that those outrageous proposals come to being? How would "our generation" stop this from happening in terms of the law?

Textual edit: "have been limits put on free speech in our countries history." --> "countries" should be "country's."

- Gregg

I actually have to disagree with you on one point Gregg, because I do think there is something important to be said about Mr. Trump that may be brought out in a future draft. To me at least, Trump's whole appeal comes from the fact that he is a master of straddling the contours of hidden meaning in a political noosphere dominated by social media. Repeatedly, Trump says stupid and offensive things with a sarcastic wink and a nod, causing Twitter and Facebook to erupt in arguments over what he actually believes. Our side gets offended, while his supporters simply talk about how all the snooty liberals just "don't get it." Donald Trump, after all, is simply a man who says what he believes and is not afraid to talk about all the subjects the "left-wing PC police" would prefer we avoid. According to them, the fact is that politicians need to talk about how immigration is ruining America and how ISIS is scary; parsing words and calling people names merely serve to detract from those conversations.

The effect of this dynamic is that anyone who raises concerns about anything Trump says at the surface level is ostracized from the public forum, simply written off as butthurt and humorless. I find all of this interesting and functionally distinct from previous forms of demagoguery. Donald Trump's candidacy is, at its root, about silencing dissenting minorities (the "cultural establishment," as he would call them) by mocking and laughing at them. I don't really know what that means for free speech and democracy in the Internet Society, but I believe it is relevant and that a thoughtful discussion of Trump is vital to the essay.

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If we as Americans allow this propaganda to take hold of our government and political process we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of Germany during World War II. I am not sure if the U.S. or the world will be able to physically recover from another Holocaust in the age of complex terrorist organizations such as ISIS and countries with nuclear and biologic weapons. This generation must take our place in history and ensure that this does not happen on our watch.
 

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BriannaCummingsSecondEssay 6 - 13 Jan 2016 - Main.ShayBanerjee
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The Last Generation That Has a Say

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I actually have to disagree with you on one point Gregg, because I do think there is something important to be said about Mr. Trump that may be brought out in a future draft. To me at least, Trump's whole appeal comes from the fact that he is a master of straddling the contours of hidden meaning in a political noosphere dominated by social media. Repeatedly, Trump says stupid and offensive things with a sarcastic wink and a nod, causing Twitter and Facebook to erupt in arguments over what he actually believes. Our side gets offended, while his supporters simply talk about how all the snooty liberals just "don't get it." Donald Trump, after all, is simply a man who says what he believes and is not afraid to talk about all the subjects the "left-wing PC police" would prefer we avoid. According to them, the fact is that politicians need to talk about how immigration is ruining America and how ISIS is scary; parsing words and calling people names merely serve to detract from those conversations.

The effect of this dynamic is that anyone who raises concerns about anything Trump says at the surface level is ostracized from the public forum, simply written off as butthurt and humorless. I find all of this interesting and functionally distinct from previous forms of demagoguery. Donald Trump's candidacy is, at its root, about silencing dissenting minorities (the "cultural establishment," as he would call them) by mocking and laughing at them. I don't really know what that means for free speech and democracy in the Internet Society, but I believe it is relevant and that a thoughtful discussion of Trump is vital to the essay.

 

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BriannaCummingsSecondEssay 5 - 13 Jan 2016 - Main.GreggBadichek
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The Last Generation That Has a Say

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I think discussion of the solutions law can, or should, bring to the problems you identify. While Trump is a disgusting man, I think he is red herring for this essay. Not much at all of what he says in new in any meaningful way. Does it make sense to focus on the presidential candidates? Electoral politics are certainly interesting with regards to the modern news media, but there have long been hateful demagogues, as you note with reference to e.g. Hitler. In fact, your reference to "other holocausts" might undermine your pondering whether there is something unusual about this cycle in particular.

Re the final paragraph: what propaganda? Is this term to refer just generally to hateful things that candidates say? Would their victory ensure that those outrageous proposals come to being? How would "our generation" stop this from happening in terms of the law?

Textual edit: "have been limits put on free speech in our countries history." --> "countries" should be "country's."

- Gregg

 

BriannaCummingsSecondEssay 4 - 10 Jan 2016 - Main.ShayBanerjee
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The Last Generation That Has a Say

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To chime in here, I think an issue to consider is whether the rise of a "personalized" Internet degrades the quality of the democratic forum. There is a lot of evidence out there that the manner in which most users acquire information online -- through social media sites, for example -- tends to reinforce rather than challenge existing belief systems. It can be viscerally satisfying to read news you like and agree with, so users who are not vigilant risk falling into partisan wormholes where they never confront opposing ideas.

I do agree with the above proposition that the best response to hate speech is to force it to stand side by side with reason and truth. The proper question then, in my view, is how do we ensure that hateful and erroneous belief systems are exposed to material that will defeat them.

-Shay

 



BriannaCummingsSecondEssay 3 - 09 Jan 2016 - Main.EbenMoglen
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The Last Generation That Has a Say

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 If we as Americans allow this propaganda to take hold of our government and political process we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of Germany during World War II. I am not sure if the U.S. or the world will be able to recover from another Holocaust in the age of nuclear, biological weapons and large-scale complex terrorist organizations such as ISIS/ISIL. This generation must take our place in history and ensure that this does not happen on our watch.
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I read this as an opinion piece. It doesn't seem to me to aspire to convey new information. I don't think it's self-consciously engaged in presenting an argument, in which there are steps from point to point in a chain of reasoning. I don't find any passages in which the objections that someone thinking differently might raise are acknowledged and addressed. I think the particular opinion at the center of the essay is that the democritization of technology that has led to a very great democritization of opinion—as the equalization of individuals and media entities has proceeded in the Net—has lowered the tone of public debate. This seems to you particularly evident in the rhetoric on one side (not your favored side) of the two-party contest for the Presidency now ramping up.

In the first place, I'm not sure the history bears you out. I wonder if you have ever had occasion to read the newspapers and campaign oratory of, for example, 1864. Barack Obama, much vilified as he is, is not more vilified than was Abraham Lincoln. Mr Trump's form of anti-immigrant rhetoric is grotesquely distasteful in this nation of immigrants, but if you think about the "Know Nothing" anti-immigrant politics of the 1850s---which Mr Lincoln, Salmon P. Chase and other ardent anti-slavery Whigs carefully danced with and around in order to co-opt Know Nothingism into an anti-slavery but not anti-immigrant Republican Party---I think you will find yourself heartened to discover that we have been through, and survived, this form of xenophobia more than once, without "the Internet."

Your discussion of hate speech regulation would suit better our work next term, in the "Computers, Privacy and the Constitution" course, but let me say here that I don't think you've captured the real dispute between the First Amendment and hate speech regulation. The issue isn't First Amendment absolutism. The issue is whether more speech or less speech is the correct response to upwellings of hate or sedition or other anti-social communication. European hate speech regulation comes from statist origins in regimes that always used censorship, from the adoption of printing onwards, to shape opinion. American attitudes in the direction of "more speech" as the remedy for bad speech begin from the absence of any precedent anti-liberal tradition in American culture, as Louis Hartz famously noted more than fifty years ago. Many ways of expressing the American view could be cited, but this one seems most important to me:

If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

which comes from Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural address. If one adds from the same speech this:

[H]aving banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.

one has, I think, conveniently located in one place the key propositions from which a response to your opinion might be fashioned, and from which, at any rate, you might take the creative tension necessary for another, richer, draft.

 

* #Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, BriannaCummings


BriannaCummingsSecondEssay 2 - 09 Dec 2015 - Main.BriannaCummings
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.

The Last Generation that has a say

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The Last Generation That Has a Say

 -- By BriannaCummings - 09 Dec 2015

“We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.”
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Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
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-Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
 
“Donald Trump is like if a comments section ran for office”
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 -Unknown
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Introduction

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Introduction

 This election cycle has been particularly troubling for me. I consider myself to be a well-informed voter; I read the paper, watch the news and see what the net has to say most days and even vote in mid-term elections. In doing so I find myself wondering; “were people were always this crazy?” or “is this a new kind of craziness?” I see the comparisons of Donald Trump’s campaign to that of Adolf Hitler and reflect on the sordid history and current predicament of my own people in the country and tell myself no there’s always been pervasive evil in the world. I tell myself that evil has always found a way to garner power and support. But the millennial in me still wonders would think have been the same in the past if the masses had access to information in the ways the current generation does?

24 Hour Media Cycle

Having constant access to news is both a blessing and a curse, we have the tools to be the most informed and knowledgeable generation at the least cost in modern history. The world-wide use of personal computer connected to the web has put the world at our finger tips, after all there is nothing Google doesn’t already know anymore. This is a blessing many of us (millennials that never lived in a world without internet) constantly take for granted. The use of personal computers connected to the web also allows independent journalism and blogging to occur without publication costs. This is key for the transmission of information needed for a number of revolutions currently underway. It is also important in the era of corporate sponsored news stations that often pick and choose what stories get coverage and what perspectives are presented. This is a curse, it is exceptionally easy to completely block out any media coverage that does not agree with our beliefs and views. Major “news” outlets such as Fox News, CNN and MSNBC can all cover the same event with such bias that it is hard to recognize the report are for the same event. Fox News has gone so far to the right that a commentator has to refer to the President of the United States as a pussy to be suspended from the air (only for two weeks though).
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Subsub 1

Subsection B

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Being so ‘tuned in’ has made following this election nearly unbearable and were still eleven months away from Election Day. A majority of the candidates for president this cycle are particularly disturbing and frankly dangerous with their words. The twenty-four hour media cycle allows us to listen, share and retweet every insane thing that Trump utters of types. This rhetoric is exceptionally dangerous given that even when making objectively false statements Trump and Co. double down and claim to be the victims of the liberal media when called out by fact-checkers.
 
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Trump is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Many dismiss Trump as ‘crazy’, ‘racist’, ‘sexist’ and unfit to run for office as his antics continue. However, he maintains a strong following and continues to rise in the polls, with each sound bite more outrageous than the next, while liberals and moderates anxiously wait for the moment when even his supports decide he’s gone too far. (I’m losing hope that this day will ever come). Without a doubt Carson, Cruz, Rubio, Fiorina and Huckabee have said things equally outlandish and unsupported by facts as Trump with Christie, Graham and Paul close behind. It is truly concerning with Jeb!Bush and John Kasich have become the ‘voice of reason’. The democrats have been having a fairly uneventful primary and have essentially become the party of boring. Hillary has let her hawkish side show a number of times this fall but not many have noticed or got too caught up in the latest GOP snippet to remember.
 
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Section II

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The latest slew of ignorance from presidential candidates surrounds Syrian refugees and Muslims more broadly. After last month’s attacks on Beirut, Lebanon and Paris, France several Republican presidential candidates and governors called for on the U.S. to stop granting Syrians refugee status. Others just wanted to stop granting refuge to Muslim Syrians and would allow Christian Syrians to seek refuge here. Some governors went as far as claiming they would not accept Syrian refugees in their state, which is laughable because they have literally no standing or authority to deny placement of refugees in their state. But, this is no laughing matter as the general public (non-law folk) is most likely unaware of this fact. Allowing such Islamophobia rhetoric to flood the media (TV, digital and print) is dangerous to say the least.
 
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Subsection A

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Hate Speech vs. Free Speech

The Hate Speech readings made me reflect on the false dichotomy of hate speech vs. free speech that has been created in the United States. Countries around the world manage to have free speech while still punishing hate speech (See Canada), but the U.S. continues to struggle with this. The U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and expression but there have been limits put on free speech in our countries history. For instance it is well known that you cannot scream “FIRE” in a crowded movie theater when there is not a fire. I think the same principle should apply to political candidates, especially those running for President (the highest office in the land). Presidential candidates should not have free reign to incite fear and violence by spewing hate speech while hiding behind free speech. This is exactly what they are doing by advocating religious tests for entrance into the United States and calling for open discrimination of Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim.
 
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Subsection B

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Our Last Chance

If we as Americans allow this propaganda to take hold of our government and political process we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of Germany during World War II. I am not sure if the U.S. or the world will be able to recover from another Holocaust in the age of nuclear, biological weapons and large-scale complex terrorist organizations such as ISIS/ISIL. This generation must take our place in history and ensure that this does not happen on our watch.
 


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You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
 
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BriannaCummingsSecondEssay 1 - 09 Dec 2015 - Main.BriannaCummings
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META TOPICPARENT name="SecondEssay"
It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.

The Last Generation that has a say

-- By BriannaCummings - 09 Dec 2015

“We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.”
Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
“Donald Trump is like if a comments section ran for office”
-Unknown

Introduction

This election cycle has been particularly troubling for me. I consider myself to be a well-informed voter; I read the paper, watch the news and see what the net has to say most days and even vote in mid-term elections. In doing so I find myself wondering; “were people were always this crazy?” or “is this a new kind of craziness?” I see the comparisons of Donald Trump’s campaign to that of Adolf Hitler and reflect on the sordid history and current predicament of my own people in the country and tell myself no there’s always been pervasive evil in the world. I tell myself that evil has always found a way to garner power and support. But the millennial in me still wonders would think have been the same in the past if the masses had access to information in the ways the current generation does?

24 Hour Media Cycle

Having constant access to news is both a blessing and a curse, we have the tools to be the most informed and knowledgeable generation at the least cost in modern history. The world-wide use of personal computer connected to the web has put the world at our finger tips, after all there is nothing Google doesn’t already know anymore. This is a blessing many of us (millennials that never lived in a world without internet) constantly take for granted. The use of personal computers connected to the web also allows independent journalism and blogging to occur without publication costs. This is key for the transmission of information needed for a number of revolutions currently underway. It is also important in the era of corporate sponsored news stations that often pick and choose what stories get coverage and what perspectives are presented. This is a curse, it is exceptionally easy to completely block out any media coverage that does not agree with our beliefs and views. Major “news” outlets such as Fox News, CNN and MSNBC can all cover the same event with such bias that it is hard to recognize the report are for the same event. Fox News has gone so far to the right that a commentator has to refer to the President of the United States as a pussy to be suspended from the air (only for two weeks though).

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Revision 7r7 - 15 Jan 2016 - 18:22:31 - BriannaCummings
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