2. The tone is this piece is very sarcastic. He realizes how completely absurd the claim made by the Patriots PR department sounds, but just to show you how absurd it is, he defends it. You can see a prevalent example when he writes, "Brady was actually making a Public Service Announcement. Maybe he fumbled the words a little. But it's a great message. When you drink a lot of water, it not only helps you feel healthy, but it also does foster rowdiness. Yes get 'lubed up' on Aquafina. Brady is worred about your health, your diet and probably your carb intake, too." When he phrases it like that, it makes you as the reader realize its ridiculous that Brady wants his fans to get riled up on water. There is the humor of it too. In a humorous sarcastic way the author insults Tom Brady and the the Patriots PR department. Then he changes tone towards the end. He switches to a more serious tone, and conveys his true message of how players and coaches need to be more responsible with their words, given the amount of influence they have. When he switches tone, the readers knows he means business. The drastic change in tone and style grab the reader's attention and let he or she know that the author now means business. This is really effective, because through this tone switch he grabs the attention of the reader, and then can drive his point home really easily He already won us over, now he just needs to sell the message. Overall, the tone is really effective, and makes the piece really convincing.
its a blog
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Football editorial reply
1. The argument the author is trying to make is that football fights and violence are inevitable. People get riled up about the game. When people go to an away game, there will probably be a fight. That is just the nature of the game, and the teams can do little to prevent that. The author brings in all of these statistics showing how fights are common. In the New England- Miami game there was a fight every three minutes. 78 people were ejected. It is not something you can just stop. However, his main point is that players and coach's can't be encouraging this sort of behavior. If they encourage this type of behavior it will only become more prevalent. Big time quarterbacks like Tom Brady have a lot of influence, and if he tells them to start drinking early, people are going to show up to the game drunk, and start fights.The author even says at the end, "There is no use in pretending its not going to happen. Still, a coach, or a quarterback, or anyone else should not be egging it on." The author admits there is no way to stop the fights, but provoking people will only make it worse. If players and coaches discourage such behavior there might be a small decrease, but there won't be a definite increase like when players and coaches are encouraging it.
2. The tone is this piece is very sarcastic. He realizes how completely absurd the claim made by the Patriots PR department sounds, but just to show you how absurd it is, he defends it. You can see a prevalent example when he writes, "Brady was actually making a Public Service Announcement. Maybe he fumbled the words a little. But it's a great message. When you drink a lot of water, it not only helps you feel healthy, but it also does foster rowdiness. Yes get 'lubed up' on Aquafina. Brady is worred about your health, your diet and probably your carb intake, too." When he phrases it like that, it makes you as the reader realize its ridiculous that Brady wants his fans to get riled up on water. There is the humor of it too. In a humorous sarcastic way the author insults Tom Brady and the the Patriots PR department. Then he changes tone towards the end. He switches to a more serious tone, and conveys his true message of how players and coaches need to be more responsible with their words, given the amount of influence they have. When he switches tone, the readers knows he means business. The drastic change in tone and style grab the reader's attention and let he or she know that the author now means business. This is really effective, because through this tone switch he grabs the attention of the reader, and then can drive his point home really easily He already won us over, now he just needs to sell the message. Overall, the tone is really effective, and makes the piece really convincing.
2. The tone is this piece is very sarcastic. He realizes how completely absurd the claim made by the Patriots PR department sounds, but just to show you how absurd it is, he defends it. You can see a prevalent example when he writes, "Brady was actually making a Public Service Announcement. Maybe he fumbled the words a little. But it's a great message. When you drink a lot of water, it not only helps you feel healthy, but it also does foster rowdiness. Yes get 'lubed up' on Aquafina. Brady is worred about your health, your diet and probably your carb intake, too." When he phrases it like that, it makes you as the reader realize its ridiculous that Brady wants his fans to get riled up on water. There is the humor of it too. In a humorous sarcastic way the author insults Tom Brady and the the Patriots PR department. Then he changes tone towards the end. He switches to a more serious tone, and conveys his true message of how players and coaches need to be more responsible with their words, given the amount of influence they have. When he switches tone, the readers knows he means business. The drastic change in tone and style grab the reader's attention and let he or she know that the author now means business. This is really effective, because through this tone switch he grabs the attention of the reader, and then can drive his point home really easily He already won us over, now he just needs to sell the message. Overall, the tone is really effective, and makes the piece really convincing.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Third Freakonomics Response
Steven
Malanga offers harsh criticism to Levitt’s book, Freakonomics. He contends that Levitt makes too many hasty
generalizations in arguments. He is especially critical in chapter four, when
Levitt makes the argument that the drop in the crime rates in the 1990s are
because of legalized abortion in years prior. Malanga is very critical of this
point, saying it’s not abortion, but more police, and better policing tactics.
Malanga is correct in his contentions. He brings up the fact that Levitt makes
too many hasty generalizations, and that he ignores evidence brought up against
him. The real reason for the drop in abortion rate is the increase of police,
and innovation in policing strategies.
Levitt’s
big argument throughout chapter four is that the legalization of abortion is
what caused the drop in crime in the 1990s. His rationale behind this is quite
simple. Poor people are typically the one’s who would raise criminals, and they
are also the people who could not afford illegal abortions prior to the legalization.
Thus it must be that because poor people can get abortions, fewer criminals
will be born, and the crime rate will surely drop. To prove this further he
discusses all the other ideas about what may have caused the drop in the crime
rate. He investigated everything from increased reliance of prisons, to a
stronger economy. He was able to refute all but two reasons- increased number
of police, and more innovative policing strategies. Levitt will even concede to
these points being drops in the crime rate. On page 124, Levitt writes, “The
policing trend was put in reverse, whit wide scale hiring in cities across the
country…the hiring of additional police accounted for roughly 10 percent of the
crime drop.” Then he writes about new innovative policing strategies employed
by the NYPD, saying they would account for roughly 18 percent of the crime
drop. Then he contends that the remaining 72 percent of the crime drop was
caused by the legalization of abortion. It would seem to make sense, but if one
looks closer the holes in Levitt’s logic become clear.
Malanga
does not agree with Levitt’s theories on the drop in the crime rate. According
to Malanga the drop in the crime rate can not be caused by the legalization of
abortion, and to prove his point he brings in some counter studies. First Ted
Joyce argues that the there was a more rapid drop in homicides by a group of
people too old to be affected by the legalization of abortion, meanwhile, those
who were affected by the legalization of abortion committed more homicides. By
Joyce’s findings the legalization of abortion wouldn’t have done anything, the
people in that age group who were supposed to have fewer criminals in it were
committing more homicides. This is the first flaw of Levitt’s logic; he disregards
new studies that would contradict his own. The next attack on Levit’s logic
comes from John Lott and John Whitley. They have a new study that suggests that
the legalization of abortion actually leads to more illegitimate births, and it
would actually lead to more crime. Again we can see major flaws in Levitt’s
logic. The reason we look to these new studies instead of Levit’s is because
they are newer and more relevant. They had access to more information than
Levitt did when he wrote Freakonomics. Even
if you don’t buy into these new studies, Levitt would still fail to bring in
any real evidence showing the direct link between abortion and crime rates. His
only logic is that poor people raise criminals, and abortion would reduce that,
thus lowering the crime rate, but the problem there is he is putting down an
unjustifiable blanket statement. He doesn’t have any empirical evidence to back
himself up. He does show the connection between poor people and how it is an
environment that raises criminals, but he fails to show how exactly more
legalizing abortion means that only poor people will be the ones to get these
abortions, and not how it could be in other social classes. In general there
are just too many flaws in Levitt’s logic, and the new counter evidence, backed
by empirical evidence, is too strong of a rebuttal.
Levitt
also discounts the evidence on policing, he says they only make up about 27
percent of the crime drop, but he may be a little mixed up with his numbers
here. According to Malanga, if you compare New York, who had a huge increase in
the number of officers, and the employed innovative police strategies, to other
cities in the 1990s who did not, like Chicago, you can see that crime rate went
down in New York, but it actually went up in Chicago, and it also went up in
other major cities. This would lead to one to wonder, if abortion is legal
everywhere in the country, why is there only a crime drop in New York ? The answer is quite simple; it had
nothing to do with abortion. It must have been the police force. We can only
accept Levitt’s argument that abortion was able to reduce the national crime
rate if we can see the trend in all major cities under similar conditions. The
problem is we can’t see the trend in other cities. The crime rate went up;
Levitt only looked at New York
which had the unaccounted variable of police force. We can’t buy into Levitt’s
abortion article because it only takes a look at one city and disregards
everything else. You can, however, buy into the fact that it was police force
innovation, because in New York , unlike other
cities, the police force was increased, and in New York , unlike other cities, the crime
rate went down.
Levitt’s
argument may sound very convincing. On the outside it appears to have sound
logic. Poor families raise criminals, thus a legalization of abortion would
account for the decrease in crime levels in the 1990s. However, there are
faults in his logic. He discounts recent studies that show how abortion may
actually raise more criminals, and how the legalization of abortion wouldn’t
help the crime rate at all. Then he makes hasty generalizations that the police
force only accounted for a small fraction of the crime drop, but the neglects
the other cities that had raises in crime, which would be consistent with the
two studies brought in by Malanga. The evidence is staked against Levitt. He
made a false claim, and he didn’t have enough evidence to back it up, so we
can’t accept it as fact. Malanga brings up good points, and he has stronger
evidence.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Opinion Editorial Post
- He doesn’t agree with Santorum’s claim that going to college makes you more liberal and less religious.
- He first introduces the problem. Then he introduces the opposing view point in the opening, and he says why the republicans think what they think. Then he brings in research and statistics to show why they are wrong. He concludes by showing the opposing view again and the reason they would make these claims.
- In one example he says, contrary to conservative rhetoric, similarly, but contrary. These are able to show the opposite sides, and possibly why they are wrong, and similarly is able to bring in another example to support his side.
- He brings in a lot of research. He has many credible political scientists and sociologists in his paper. In the following quote the author is able to demonstrate ethos, “The sociologists Jeremy Uecker, Mark Regnerus and Margaret Vaaler examined data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and found that Americans who pursued bachelor’s degrees were more likely to retain their faith than those who did not.” He also has a lot of studies that show a lot of empirical evidence. I think he is pretty trustworthy. He has proof to back his thoughts, and he doesn’t have any post hoc fallacies.
- An opinion editorial is where you express your thoughts and beliefs in a certain subject. The author is responding to a claim made by someone else, in this case by Rick Santorum. There also should be evidence to back up the opinion. The piece should be dogmatic, expressing strong views against the paper it is in response to. It should also try and refute the opinions made in the previous paper.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Question two:
In the book
Freakonomics, Levit explores the idea
of information abuse and information asymmetry. Information abuse is the idea
that some people use information that people don’t know to their advantage. And
information asymmetry is the idea of others having advanced knowledge in a
field and using it to their advantage. They are pretty similar. Levit will
discuss the ideas in chapter two and then further relate them in chapter three.
Prime examples of the abuse and asymmetry can be seen in chapter two with the
KKK, and the real-estate agent, and then these ideas are brought to a new level
in chapter three in the crack dealing gangs, and it can even be seen in real
life.
The idea of
hoarding information and abusing information is very prevalent in the KKK. The
KKK, of course, was an organization that used tactics of fear to get what they
wanted. In the early days they would lynch quite a few black people. On page
56, a chart depicts the number of people lynched the KKK did per decade. From
1890-1899, the numbers are quite high. 1,111 people were killed by the KKK. However,
as the gang’s influence grew throughout time the number of people lynched went
down, to the point where in the 1960s only 3 people were lynched. This time
period was when the KKK was in its prime, so the question is why were the
numbers so low, yet the gang’s influence so large? Levit explains the
phenomenon on page 57, “The most compelling explanation is that all those early
lynchings worked…had through their actions and their rhetoric developed a
strong incentive scheme that was terribly clear and terribly frightening. If a
black person violated the accepted code of behavior…he knew he might well be
punished, perhaps by death.” So what we have here is an example of information
abuse. The KKK, while they were known for killing people, didn’t actually kill
that many people in the later years of the Klan. However, black people didn’t
know that, nobody except the Klan leaders knew just how few people they
actually killed, and only the Klan leaders knew that they didn’t want to kill.
The leaders flat out said that they didn’t want to kill; they didn’t even want
to use that much violence. The thing is that only they knew that. Black thought
that if they violated any of the Klan’s social
code then they would be lynched. The abuse and asymmetry of information
caused a whole race of people to voluntarily act like second class citizens
just out of fear. Had they had the information the Klan had the civil rights
movement may have began much earlier. Regardless, we can see how information
hoarding can lead to nation wide fear and irrational action.
Information
hoarding can also happen on a very small level, it’s not always done by large
organizations. It happens all the time in real-estate. Real-estate agents are
experts in the field of real-estate; the person selling his or her house is
not. We look to real-estate agents because we think they will get us a good
deal, and make us money. However, that’s not exactly how the agents see it. They,
of course, want to make money too, but they also don’t want to spend too much
time on your house when they can move on to other houses, and in doing this
make more money. Levit shows proof of this on page 69, “the problem is that the
agent only stands to personally gain and additional $150 by selling your house
for $10,000 more, which isn’t that much more of a reward for a lot of extra
work. So her job is to convince you that a $300,000 offer is in fact a very
good offer, even a generous one, and that only a fool would refuse it.” So the
idea that Levit brings up here is an example of information asymmetry, in that
you don’t know what the real-estate agent knows, so you trust her, even though
she knows that you could make a lot more money if you held out a little longer.
This imbalance of information causes the real-estate agent to make a lot of
money by being able to move on to a different house and make another commission
sooner, and for you to lose a lot of money by being fooled into selling your
house preemptively. So this whole idea of information abuse and information
asymmetry is very powerful. It’s good for those who have information and bad
for those who don’t.
Levit
expands the idea of information abuse even further in the next chapter. In
crack gangs, like the one discussed with J.T. in Chicago, there is a leader and his “foot
soldiers” that do the actual work. In this case the leader is J.T., and the
work is selling crack and defending against rival gangs. J.T., being the
leader, has access to all of the information of the gang, including salaries.
He keeps records on transactions and how much everyone in the gang earns. He
makes $8,500 a month, or about $66 an hour. A foot soldier, on the other hand,
makes a mere $3.30 an hour. So why is it that crack dealers, who risk their
lives everyday selling crack make such miniscule amounts, compared to J.T. who
makes so much more money do doing less dangerous work? Levit explains why this
happens on page 103, “The problem with crack dealing is the same as in every
other glamour profession: a lot of people are competing for very few prizes. Earning
big money in the crack gang wasn’t much more likely than the Wisconsin
farm girl becoming a movie star…but criminals, like everyone else respond to
incentives, and if the prize is big enough, they will form a line a block long
just hoping for a chance.” Levit brings up the idea of information abuse. He
knows that people will get killed trying to get his job. He knows that after
four years there is a 25% chance of getting being in the crack business, but he
also knows that people will line up for the job of being a crack dealer, so he
can pay them minuscule amounts, and the supply of crack dealers won’t go down.
J.T. is abusing information to get people to work for him, and he exploits them
to make huge profits for himself. Once again Levit shows how information
asymmetry is good for the experts, but bad for the commoner.
We can also
see this idea of information hoarding in real life. We can see it in Wall
Street. The commoner does not know much about investing, but he will still try
his hand at the stock market anyway, but to take off some of the stress he
hires someone to help him make his investments. The consultant will probably
make some sort of commission off of every transaction, so he will encourage the
investor to buy and sell often, even if he knows that it’s not the best deal.
The consultant will be making a lot of money of commission and transaction
fees, while the investor will make less money. Again we can see another example
that experts will use information to make money, while the common person
suffers from a lack of information.
Levit goes
very in depth with the idea of information hoarding. He talks a lot about how
everyone who has information can use it to their advantage. Wheatear it be the
KKK, real-estate agents, crack dealers, or financial consultants, everyone uses
information to take advantage of other people. Everyone has different
incentives, but the common theme is influence or power, and experts win, while
those without the information lose.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
In
the book Freakonomics many underlying
themes are explored in the first chapter, such as subtle cause and effect
relationships, and the value of information. However, if there was to be one
theme that would be more important than all others it would be the exploration
on incentives. Levit writes, “Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life,”
(Levit 12). He is basically saying that all actions have incentives behind
them, and that incentives are what cause to people to either perform, or
withhold and action. Levit breaks it down into two main types of incentives. We
can see these in chapter one. There are economic incentives, causing people to
abstain from homicide, and causing teachers to cheat on high risk tests, and
moral incentives, causing people to pick up their kids on time from day care.
There are also examples of this in real life like the economic incentives of
doing this paper, or the moral incentives behind not cheating on this paper.
First,
Levit explores the political incentives for why people don’t commit homicide.
On page 19 he offers a table of number of homicides per 100,000 people in
various European countries over the pas 700 years. Some numbers like in Italy
offer extreme drops from numbers of 56 in the 13th and 14th
century, to a mere 1.5 in the later half of the 20th century. The
question is what causes this? Levit
writes, “The chance of going to jail- thereby losing your job, your house, and
your freedom, all of which are essentially economic penalties- is certainly a
strong incentive.” People know that being part of a society comes with certain
obligations, mainly fallowing the law- people also know that when they break
these obligations there are repercussions, you go to jail. As we can see from
the graph, as law enforcement goes up, and the threat of going to jail becomes
more prominent, the incentive to kill someone, or commit any crime is reduced,
by the stronger possibility you go to jail. The 13th century there
was a higher incentive for people to kill and commit crimes, because there were
fewer people arrested for it, and there were fewer negative impacts. Thus, the
conclusion can be drawn that people act based off of incentives. The only
reason the numbers would have dropped is that people fear the repercussions,
and negative economic impact which is enough incentive to abstain from doing an
action.
Next,
Levit brings up another example of an economic incentive of why teachers in Chicago would cheat on
high risk state tests. It seems ridiculous that teachers would have their
students cheat on state test. At first glance, it seems as if they have nothing
to gain, but that’s where hidden incentives lie. Levit writes on page 32, “An
analysis of the Chicago data reveals evidence of teacher cheating in more than
200 classrooms, roughly 5 percent of the total…What are the incentives of a
cheating teacher?...It was the teachers with the lowest test scores who were
most likely to cheat,” (Levit 32). Levit also mentions that in California there was a
$25,000 bonus to teachers who were able to raise test scores. Levit contends
that the reason teachers cheat is one, to keep their job, and two to get a
bonus from high test scores. Teachers will do anything from write the answers
on the board, to change the answer keys after students leave. The reason is
quite clear, they want the money. There would be no other reason why they would
cheat. In 1996 before the test was giving out money to school districts that
did well there was far less cheating. When the new economic incentives were
introduced to the schools, there was a spike of cheating. Logical progression
of thought would have us believe that the school wanted money, so they offered
money as an incentive to teachers to do well, who then cheated to get the
money. Again, we are able to see another example of how incentives cause us to
do things we wouldn’t normally do. Everything is done for a reason.
Next,
Levit is going to bring up the idea about morality, he observes how moral
incentives cause people to pick up their children on time from day care. A test
was carried out on a day care center in Israel . The owners were concerned
about how many kids were picked up late, so they decided to run a test to see
if causing a $3 penalty would be enough of an incentive to get parents to pick
up the kids on time. The results were counter intuitive. There were actually
more kids who were picked up late. Levit describes the reason for this, “For
just a few more dollars each day, parents could buy off their guilt,” (Levit
20). Before the $3 incentive was added most parents would pick up their kids on
time because they felt bad, they inherently thought it was immoral, however,
now they felt like it was ok to do this because they were paying for the extra
time. It may have seemed like stealing to them before, but now it was all
balanced out. This brings out the core in Levit’s incentive argument. Moral
incentives are greater than economic incentives. He brings up another example
on page 20. He writes that a blood donation that offered money to those who donated
actually received less blood than a blood drive that didn’t. He writes to
explain this concept, “When people are given a small stipend for donating blood
rather than simply being praised for their altruism, they tend to donate less
blood. The stipend turned a noble act of charity into a painful way to make a
few dollars,” (Levit 20). Looking to the blood drive example, we can see that
acting in a way we deem to be moral is worth the pain, but an economic incentive
is not. Going back to the cheating teachers, that was an extreme case. The
reward was so high, and risk seemed very low, that the teachers cheated because
every once in a while the opportunity cost is just too high. They may have even
lost their jobs for poor teaching. It was an extreme example, and cannot be
looked to on the argument of which incentive is greater on balance. Levit will
imply that moral incentives are greater than economic incentives, however, the
point still remains that people will act based off of incentives. This can even
be applied to real life.
Personally,
I am driven by incentives. Why am I doing this paper right now? The answer is
simple. I want to get a good grade in this class, I want to have a high GPA, I
want to go to a good college, and I want to have a good career and make money.
School is a lot of work, and typically students don’t just do assignments for
the sheer enjoyment of it, we do it (that is if we actually do it) for the
economic incentives promised to us. If we do well and go to college we will
make money and in turn be happier, making the work worth it in the long run. By
writing this paper, I am only affirming the idea further that people act based
off of incentives. The opportunity cost of me being here in school right now is
sleeping in a nice, warm bed. However, I come to school because I want to do
well and have a good job, therefore I forgo the extra sleep to come to school,
write this paper, and hold on to the whim that I will be better off for it.
I
will give out full disclosure that I have not cheated on this paper. There is a
moral incentive for me not to cheat on this paper, but there is also an
economic incentive for me to do well on this paper, which prompts the idea to
cheat to get ahead in school. There exist two incentives to do two opposite
actions. By not cheating I have chosen to follow the moral incentive, because
the moral incentive on not cheating outweighs the fact that I may do a little
better by cheating. This paper in of itself affirms Levit’s idea that moral
incentives are greater than economic incentives. Regardless, the fact that I am
doing this paper to begin with proves that people act based off of incentives.
Levit
does a very good job getting his point across. His clear underlying theme is
that people act based off of incentives. He brings in many examples like the
homicide rates, the high stakes test cheating, the day care example, and the
blood drive. Through the example he is able to prove that on balance, moral
incentives outweigh economic incentives. He also makes it relatable back to the
reader, seeing as I was able to come up how I was acting off incentives even as
I wrote this paper.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Army Marketing
I think this whole army marketing thing has gotten a little out of hand. Sure, the army is good, and recruitment is also good. The problem lies in the fact that each side has gone too far. Let's start with the U.S. army. I agree with the fact that they have to make recruitment goals to sustain the defense of the country, however, the means in which they do this may have gone a little too far. Putting army recruitment games in Dave and Busters is not really necessary, the army is just presenting a glorified version of war to the public. The simulation isn't even realistic. These simulations are giving people false ideas about war. If they think its all fun and games of course they are going to join. I think we should go back to the ways of WWI, where people joined the army for the shear love of their country, fighting for what they believe in, and not just because they think it will be a fun game. In no way am I advocating against the actions of the U.S. army soldiers, but I do not agree with the way they get their recruits. They have this massive recruitment goal, but I just don't think its necessary. We, as a country, spend more on national defense than the next five countries combined. I have mad respect for the men and women who serve in the army, but I don't think we need to spend all of our money of defense.
Now moving on to the other side of the coin. The accusations made by a few individuals are a bit ridiculous. There is a claim that Sears and other clothing stores are releasing a line of clothing related to the army, and that they are trying to brainwash the youth. This claim is felicitous and outrageous. Its simply clothing, its not like the clothes and brain controlling micro chips in them, or that every single person who wears the clothes is going to join the army. First of all people who would buy the clothing in the first place are probably people with some interest in the army to begin with, so they are not being brainwashed, they are buying clothes that support what they like. To make this claim is like saying that everyone who buys and NFL jersey is going to try and join the NFL. This simply is not true. People who buy an NFL jersey are people who like the team and want to support them. Second, the military look has always been a style, and it was never criticized until now. I think people are complaining just to complain. People need to realize that the army is in charge of our national security, and they are going to use recruitment methods. I don't believe they are overstepping their bounds by selling a clothing line.People need to calm down and show some respect for the organization who is protecting their country.
I think this whole army marketing thing has gotten a little out of hand. Sure, the army is good, and recruitment is also good. The problem lies in the fact that each side has gone too far. Let's start with the U.S. army. I agree with the fact that they have to make recruitment goals to sustain the defense of the country, however, the means in which they do this may have gone a little too far. Putting army recruitment games in Dave and Busters is not really necessary, the army is just presenting a glorified version of war to the public. The simulation isn't even realistic. These simulations are giving people false ideas about war. If they think its all fun and games of course they are going to join. I think we should go back to the ways of WWI, where people joined the army for the shear love of their country, fighting for what they believe in, and not just because they think it will be a fun game. In no way am I advocating against the actions of the U.S. army soldiers, but I do not agree with the way they get their recruits. They have this massive recruitment goal, but I just don't think its necessary. We, as a country, spend more on national defense than the next five countries combined. I have mad respect for the men and women who serve in the army, but I don't think we need to spend all of our money of defense.
Now moving on to the other side of the coin. The accusations made by a few individuals are a bit ridiculous. There is a claim that Sears and other clothing stores are releasing a line of clothing related to the army, and that they are trying to brainwash the youth. This claim is felicitous and outrageous. Its simply clothing, its not like the clothes and brain controlling micro chips in them, or that every single person who wears the clothes is going to join the army. First of all people who would buy the clothing in the first place are probably people with some interest in the army to begin with, so they are not being brainwashed, they are buying clothes that support what they like. To make this claim is like saying that everyone who buys and NFL jersey is going to try and join the NFL. This simply is not true. People who buy an NFL jersey are people who like the team and want to support them. Second, the military look has always been a style, and it was never criticized until now. I think people are complaining just to complain. People need to realize that the army is in charge of our national security, and they are going to use recruitment methods. I don't believe they are overstepping their bounds by selling a clothing line.People need to calm down and show some respect for the organization who is protecting their country.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)