Impoverished Politics: The first 100 and going forward
In the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency, the world has become a very different place. Not just here in the United States, but around the world. Rising right-wing populism from India to Turkey paired with the rising powers of executive office over other governmental branches suggests a scary trend of democracy receding in globally. Beyond that, spikes in hate crime, Islamophobia, as well as a resurgence of Nazism, and white nationalism eerily mimics ideologies which circulated Europe in the 1930s. Instead of targeting Jewish communities, Muslims and immigrants are the victims of discrimination, both in social spheres and directly through policy. Has Trump been normalized? After the administration’s Muslim Ban failed there seemed to be a lull in ridiculous policy until now again we are faced with senseless bombings, agitation of nations we’ve had dicey relationships with...
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Impoverished Politics: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb
I was struggling this week to figure out what to write about, and then Assad dropped chemical weapons on Syrian civilians. And then Trump bombed a Syrian air-base in response. I found myself reacting the way I always do: skeptically, angrily and helplessly. A few years of history, culture and politics classes have taught me that United States’ aggression and involvement in other regions often does a better job of further destabilizing situations than helping them. The current state of the Middle East is part of our legacy as a modern empire. When the news of dozens of US tomahawk missiles being rained down on Syria made its way to me, the anti-war, anti-military ideologue within me was shocked and livid. In the past Trump has condemned further aggression in Syria, and now here we are. The problem is,...
Read MoreImpoverished Politics: You gotta fight for your right (to be a human being)
There is one thing I know for sure: Our country does not care about poor people. In fact, it goes out of its way to make things harder for poor people to survive. Due to factors like the price of health care, food deserts and gentrification, the war on poverty has only one casualty: the lower classes. The capitalist values that drive our nation beg a single question: Why does anyone have to earn the right to live? We supposedly work for what we have, yet most of the wealth in our country is inherited and hoarded. Somehow that means if you don’t work hard enough, you don’t deserve things like food, shelter or clean water. We have enough resources to feed the entire nation, so why don’t we? There is this amazing cognitive dissonance in which we don’t...
Read MoreSenior Virginia Johnson reflects on work with refugees in Bangkok, Thailand
Before you go abroad, part of the anticipation is knowing that you’re about to embark on a journey that will completely alter your life, but you have no way to conceive how exactly it will be altered. When I left for my semester abroad in Bangkok, Thailand, I was incredibly anxious for all the transformative experiences that were ahead of me, but I never expected to find so many professional outlets abroad that would shape my career goals. Some of my closest American friends at my Thai university were from the University of California school system, and, through their program, they could do internships for course credit during their time abroad. A few girls I knew interned together at a humanitarian and immigration law firm teaching English to refugees, and they invited me to go. Not having a very...
Read MoreImpoverished Politics: Fascist Europe wasn’t built in a day, either
We’re only a few weeks into the Trump presidency and everything is pretty much as bad as we thought it would be. Not only is it apparent that Trump plans to carry out much of the heinous policy he promised during his campaign, that Steve Bannon is our white-supremacist-in-chief, but also that this administration can deny facts and blatantly violate ethics without any real repercussions. When Donald Trump declares that any news source publishing the low ratings of his presidency is ‘fake news,’ and he attempts to shut down federal employees for posting facts regarding climate change on social media, it is clear he is living in a very different reality. It is also alarming because there is a set precedent for this: the myriad of fascist and dictatorial regimes modern history has seen. Along the campaign trail, the...
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