In Federalist Paper #30, Alexander Hamilton argues that the new American government must possess unrestrained power to impose taxes to support all the basic functions of that government – particularly the power to raise and supply an army or militia. He mentions building fleets and paying debts, but most of his examples deal with the […]
Scholars have recently presented critical analyses of the popularity of zombies, vampires and witches to help explain the social and psychological implications of the undead in contemporary popular culture. Zombies are quick and easy metaphors that can be used for many purposes, representing any number of different themes. The proliferation of zombies in films, video […]
Historians have argued that New Journalism “degenerated” into Yellow Journalism because the lofty, idealistic goals of New Journalism were quickly subsumed into sensationalistic pabulum as newspapers tried to out-do each other for advertising revenue. With so much competition between the newspapers, stories were over-dramatized and altered to correspond to ideas that publishers and editors thought […]
One of the milestones in cinematic history was the first narrative film, The Great Train Robbery (1903). It was directed and shot by Edwin S. Porter, a former associate of Thomas Edison. The movie is only about 10 minutes long, with 14 scenes. It was the most popular and commercially successful film of the pre-nickelodeon […]
No doubt 2025 will be another banner year of record profits for the US weapons makers and multinational oil companies. Even though US troops aren’t currently engaged [officially] anywhere, the war machine still raked in trillions of dollars in profits supplying military operations in Israel and Ukraine. Apparently there is no power in heaven or […]
The USA was birthed as a genocidal White male Christian society. It remains so today. That is the DNA of this nation. It was never a true democracy, and the USA has struggled to embrace women’s equality or civil rights. That’s the root of what MAGA is all about: a desire to return to the […]
Once again the US stands alone against the entire world in opposing any ceasefire in GAZA. I am ashamed and disgusted to be an American. Again. Why must we always be on the wrong side of history? The day after vetoing another UN resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, “president” Biden cynically bypassed Congressional […]
60 years ago today, the greatest coup in the history of mankind was carried out against the American people. And by ‘greatest’ I mean greatest only in the sense that it has endured for so long. It’s astonishing to see how effective the ongoing cover story has been, which is still being pushed by the […]
SENATE APPROVED AMENDMENT THAT WOULD LIMIT GUN BACKGROUND CHECKS FOR VETERANS WOW. Just wow. That headline sure threw me for a loop. Any idiot can tell you that the vast majority of shooters in America are former military [36%]. Duh. This amendment is like, THE LAST thing we need right now. Or ever. Because we […]
The Declaration of Independence, created by Thomas Jefferson, is a classic argumentative work. Jefferson makes his point clearly and convincingly, but his argument is more tightly structured and does not utilize the variety of different rhetorical approaches that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr uses in ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’. In that classic work, Dr. King […]
Jason Darensburg's Blog-o-rama 