Thursday, May 21, 2015

Blog entry #11 - Maaz Mateen 1B

For the past few weeks of American Studies, we have been studying the Cold war and its entirety. It was a very long war and it had many components to it, so I am not disappointed. However another thing that was important to American history during the cold war was the civil rights outbreak. It was led by MLK Jr. and LBJ, and as we see often in American history. When there is a civil rights outburst then a women's rights movement will come along and so will many other of the rights movements. Why does this happen? My hypothesis is that of all of the rights/equality movements, civil rights is the most prominent at least in Am. history. This is why it creates a confidence in the other movements. Is this important though, does it matter? I don't really know. Does this belittle the other movements? Probably not, but it is something to think about.

Another thing I want to mention is that we are practically skipping the 70s and 80s. Although Mr. Hoffman basically said it was fine, according to the research I did for my video that's not quite true. A lot of Cold war events took place in the seventies (SALT). I am not trying to argue or anything, just voicing an opinion I think I share with others.

The third thing I wanted to talk about was about President JFK. He was a very prominent figure in the 1960s, probably because of his assassination. He promised great things and accomplished even more. However the fact that the American people did not see his full and true potential and capability must have created a great media hype at the time. Perhaps JFK led the legacy he did because of his legacy, to create a parallel I will demonstrate an example. I have done a bit of research on President Richard Nixon (A president we are not going to learn about because of the skipping of the 70-80s) and from what I see. A lot of people hated him for some reasons, but the main hate came at the end of his term where he was caught doing a scandal dubbed the Watergate scandal. If Nixon had been assassinated before the Watergate scandal, would his legacy be similar to that of JFK?
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2 comments:

  1. UnknownMay 30, 2015 at 6:03 AM

    In regards to your last paragraph and question, I believe that his legacy would have been similar. When we students first think of JFK, maybe some would think of the events in his term, such as the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Berlin Wall, but most would think of his assassination. Being assassinated creates, as least in most cases, a sense of sympathy. That person is victimized, and because of that the public can forgive any mistakes that that person made. In conclusion, yes, many would have felt sympathetic, and if it had happened before the Watergate scandal, many would have no reason to dislike him.

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  2. AnonymousJune 10, 2015 at 6:41 AM

    I would agree with you, Maaz: the 70s and 80s were important decades, and I regret that we skipped them. We covered them very superficially through the videos we watched, but it is not enough to do justice to the complexity of the Ford, Carter, or Reagan administrations. I'm hoping to improve in my pacing of the class next year. Sigh...

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