Apocalypse Now is a film that reflects on the ‘curse’ of the American involvement in the Vietnam War, a civil war that occurred in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos from the mid 1950’s until the 1970’s. It is a revisionary film produced in the post-war US by American director and producer Francis Ford Coppola, which was first shown at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival where it took home the prized Palme d’Or. The story follows Captain Benjamin L. Willard, an unstable, self-destructive, alcoholic ‘assassin’…
The Great Depression was a time of desperate need for a large fraction of the American people. In the beginning of this dark period, Americans were holding on to false sense of hope in the name of a very weak and apathetic president that we know today as Herbert Hoover. Hoover is infamous for having ignored the signs of the coming depression and was disapproved of on a wide scale for the majority of his presidency. Following the failed presidency of Herbert Hoover came one of the most beloved…
Different from Garfinkle's point of view, history professor, Melvin Small, disputes with the author about the antiwar movement being a significant factor on the Vietnam War policies that contributed to the end of the war by several reasons. The first reason of the antiwar movement was the pressure it caused on Presidents Nixon's and Johnson's foreign policies. Professor Small explains how antiwar protests like the march on the Pentagon in October 1967 and 1969 affected the Johnson administration…
On November 4, 2008, it was clear who the American citizens had chosen to be their next president. President Barrack Obama won the presidential election and became the president elect of the United States of America. It was a historical moment on 20th January 2009 for the citizens when Barrack Obama was sworn in as the 44th and the first black president of the super power nation. People appeared in large numbers at the West Front of the United States Capitol to witness the historic moment.…
April 18th, 1961, CIA paramilitary groups landed on a beach in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Initially, they overwhelmed the local militia, however, within a few days, they surrendered and were put into Cuban prisons. On April 21st, President John F. Kennedy acknowledged the failure of the mission and laid the blame on himself. However, I argue that by evaluating the Bay of Pigs Invasion through the lens of the cognitive approach, we will be better able to understand the failure of the mission and…
Part 1: Part I: Analyzing the Rhetorical Situation in Ronald Reagan’s Challenger Address There was a significant loss of seven people during a space shuttle explosion on January 28, 1986. Ronald Reagan was originally supposed to deliver the State of Union Address, but after the unfortunate happenstance of the Challenger, he instead gave a short speech, in respect to the loss of the seven challenger members. Rhetorical and contextual information will be discussed and analyzed throughout the rest…
Dr. Martin Luther King Junior was an extremely influential writer, and speaker. In the 1960’s, there was a large Civil Rights movement that caused much violence, many protests, and the rising of strong speakers. Among them, was Martin Luther King Junior. King was very persuasive in his writings and speeches, and I believe that many of them came off as more of an emotional appeal, or patho, over logical (logo), to convince the public to stand up for Civil Rights. Between King’s “I Have a Dream,”…
President Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, only seven-minutes long, enthralled the American public. President Lincoln’s captivating speech, presented on March 4, 1865 in Washington D.C., became the unifying force to rebuilding the nation which had previously been torn apart by a civil war. The purpose of the speech was for the nation to march forward in unity; to achieve this goal, Lincoln utilized rhetorical elements such as figurative language, diction, syntax, persuasive appeals,…
Tracy Lagomarsino History 202 12/12/2017 The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism Andrew J. Bacevich Andrew J. Bacevich, Sr. is the author of The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, a book that offers insight into the problems that Americans face in the 21st century and potentially how to solve them. In this book, Bacevich lends his unique perspective on the American condition as a retired career officer from the United States Army, as well as the father of a…
Abstract The NASA Challenger STS 51-L accident is an archetypal example of a disaster with no clear scapegoat. While it is easy to simply blame the management for disregarding engineers’ warnings about the safety of the mission, this analysis of the Challenger Disaster is erroneous because it fails to consider other factors such as a flawed communication system. In order to comprehensively analyze the ethical violations that led to the Challenger accident, we must consider the scenario…