Post by Karina CardielCulture WarThe United States faced many obstacles in the 1908’s. President Reagan

Post by Karina Cardiel
Culture WarThe United States faced many obstacles in the 1908’s. President Reagan gave a speech at his inauguration about the the nations greatest feat. He believes the government had too much interference in the lives of individuals. He is going to work toward fixing it and trying to get the taxes of individuals to a state where not one specific group is treated differently. With inflation many people find themselves working long and hard hours just to be paid a fraction of what their labor is worth. He believes that as a nation if the people band together they can turn the system around and make it a great experience for everyone without making the government the center of it all.The other issue at the time would be the fight for women’s rights. Gloria Steinem believed that women should be able to do anything a man can do. She states many researches proving that men are not superior and that women should not be discriminated against solely on the reproductive stem they were born with. She then begins to go into detail about all the injustices done to her in her working experience that she is still very lucky as many other women have it way worse. Phyllis Schlafly on the other had disagrees. She believes that women don’t actually want to work and the only time a women gets sexually harassed is because they hold themselves in a way that men believe to be as a way of showing that they are asking for such harassments. She basically tells Congress that no good things come from integrating women into a “man’s world.”
I believed that the United States has reevaluated how we we view things. We now see that, being a power house, there are many other nations who are jealous and will not stop until they are able to rid of the threat. From then on America has focused their energy on defense in the case that an intruder were to step foot on American soil. They also no longer see a heinous crime from an individual and instantly blame it on their country of origin or their religious stance.

New Post by Claire Dittelmier

Steinem strongly defends the fact that there is sex-based oppression in the United States and that there is a long way to go in dismantling it. She says that men are expected to go out into the world and become educated and do great things, while women are meant to exist only for biological reasons (i.e. their ability to give birth). She believes that the idea of male supremacy is completely inaccurate. 
Schlafly’s stance is incredibly misogynistic in a number of ways that I don’t have the energy to explain, as I would be typing for quite a long time. It’s a load of victim-blaming and sympathy for sexual harassers by essentially saying “Boys will be boys”. Here’s the thing- they aren’t boys, they’re grown men, so they should be held accountable and expected to understand the basics of consent. She says the way a woman walks may cause her to get assaulted, as they aren’t virtuous (such as herself), but since when does a gait equal an invitation? Her comment about assault in the military reminds me of Trump’s “Well what did they expect?” about putting women and men in the military together. I wholeheartedly agree that men are a threat to women, but Schlafy approaches it from a standpoint of victim blaming and excuses. Rather than fighting for change, for equality, for improved socialization to teach men and boys to treat women with -basic human decency-, she takes this as a sign that women shouldn’t be working at all, they should just return to the home to perform unpaid labor (yes, being a housewife is labor)… She completely forgets that it is WOMEN themselves fighting for fair treatment, for the right to work, for the right to live independently from a man (as women couldn’t even create a bank account without a male’s permission); nobody is “forcing” them to work. After WWII, the book even says that the majority of women wished to keep their jobs, but were often laid off when men returned, which was 30 years before this. I wish I could say that all of these viewpoints were outdated, but unfortunately they persist today.

Reagan was most passionate about economic issues, and took the approach of attacking the government. His economic policies were most focused on cutting taxes for the upper class and reducing regulations for big businesses, creating the famous theory of “trickle-down economics”. He promised that this would lead to prosperity throughout the country. This also led to the cutting of many social programs and less environmental regulation. Raegan appealed to people who had been resistant to the great changes which occurred in the 1960s-70s, who all wanted to go back to “how America used to be”, according to Raegan’s nostalgic image. Of course, the wealthy people supported him as well because of the tax breaks. 

The United States has slightly reduced its foreign involvement, but I think the majority of the message still applies to the country’s philosophy now. Although the document says at the end that Islam is not the problem, the rest of the report seems to suggest otherwise. I don’t think something written today would be written in such an anti-Islamist manner. I agree when it is said that the change cannot come from American influence, but from within the countries themselves. I disagree with the enormous increase in military spending, and that ridiculous portion of the budget still exists today.