Forum 4 Jamieson and Capellas Importance of Emotion Argument Post Forum #4 Group A Question: 1. Summarize the basic argument that Jamieson and Capella mak

Forum 4 Jamieson and Capellas Importance of Emotion Argument Post Forum #4 Group A Question:

1. Summarize the basic argument that Jamieson and Capella make about the importance of emotion in defining in-groups and out-groups. In your summary, explain how emotion and argument come together in these definitions. Be sure to provide details on why emotion is important, including related concept/definitions from the chapter/lecture, and explain its application to concrete examples.

2. Provide an evaluation of why–in your understanding–emotion is so important for forming and sustaining echo chambers and the senses of political identity within them. In your evaluation, call upon both of the additional required readings from this week – Koebler “How r/the_donald” and Lagorio Chafkin, “Reddit and the God Emperor” – both of which focus on the development of the subreddit r_thedonald.

Discussion Forum Grading Rubric

Wrote a substantive response according to the instructions in your chosen question. Your response incorporated specific conceptual/theoretical vocabulary and content from the assigned readings and from lecture (40%). Theories are useful to us when they tell us how to look at things, and this becomes possible only if we can demonstrate a detailed and specific grasp of theoretical vocabularies. Theoretical vocabularies are contained in the definitions of major course concepts. If understood in a detailed and specific way, theoretical vocabularies direct our attention toward specific aspects of reality and allow us to develop applied critical thinking skills. Often students will think they understand a concept because they recognize an example of it, but this is mistaken. Theoretical vocabularies provide a general way of looking at the world that allows us to critically analyze and evaluate cultural patterns, problems, ways of thinking, tendencies, and so on. In short, a concept or theory serves as a general way of seeing social realities; an example is a specific thing we are able to see through a conceptual or theoretical lens. For these reasons, discussion participation must reflect a grasp of specific theoretical vocabulary from the readings.
Specific conceptual/theoretical vocabulary and content from assigned readings and from lectures applied with analytical rigor (40%). I want to see you taking ownership of course material and applying it to critical analyses. This means that simply describing material from readings and lectures, or stringing together quotes or paraphrases from the readings and lectures, will not receive a high grade. Your forum responses should focus on larger problems raised in the readings and the critical insights offered by particular approaches to these problems. Also, each question will require that you apply the concepts from required academic journal articles/book chapters to the popular news stories assigned for that same week. As you apply the concepts from academic readings, my expectation is that you will provide detailed, substantive connections between the concepts and the popular news articles. The purpose of these connections will be to demonstrate that you are able to apply major course concepts analytically to the events and trends of our current political moment.
Ideas/concepts were expressed in a clear and coherent manner (20%). Contributions will be held to high standards for clarity and coherence, including grammar. While no style formats will be imposed, forum contributions should meet formal academic standards similar to essays, where specific ideas, vocabulary, cases, examples and so on from the readings are referenced. Clear, carefully proofread writing is expected in all posts. 1/5/2019
How Can Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders Both Be ‘Populist’? – The New York Times
FIRST WORDS
How Can Donald Trump and Bernie
Sanders Both Be ‘Populist’?
By Michael Kazin
March 22, 2016
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders share an upbringing in New York’s outer boroughs and a
repugnance for trade deals, but the similarities pretty much end there. Sanders routinely inveighs
against “corporate America”; Trump is an executive of almost 500 business entities, more than
200 of which are named after himself. Trump lends his name to a line of power ties and cuff links;
the adjective most often applied to Sanders’s wardrobe is “rumpled.” Yet journalists routinely
refer to both men as “populists.” How can a word that purports to describe both a proud socialist
and an arrogant billionaire have any meaning?
For half a century, most presidential campaigns have featured one or more “populists” from the
right, the left or somewhere in between. In 1968, reporters and academics pasted the label on
George Wallace, whose campaign literature asked, “Can a former truck driver married to a dime?
store clerk and son of a dirt farmer be elected president?” In 1972, Time dubbed George
McGovern a “prairie populist” because he had a modest plan to redistribute wealth and hailed
from the rural heartland. In 1996, The Atlantic observed that Pat Buchanan’s “hard?right?wing
populism … may be the shape of politics to come.” In 2012, The Hill announced, “Obama cranks up
populist pitch” after the president, who previously shied away from us?versus?them talk, called
for higher taxes on the rich.
There was a time when “populist” meant something more speci?c. The word originated with the
decidedly left?wing People’s Party that emerged in the Midwest and the South amid the economic
turmoil and rampant inequality of the 1890s. Journalists who knew some Latin started calling
them “Populists” as a shorthand, and the name stuck. Those uppercase Populists championed
small farmers and wage?earners who thought “the money power” — banks and industrial
corporations — had seized control of both America’s economy and its government. The party
called for nationalizing the railroads, breaking up the trusts and strengthening labor unions. At
times, their leftism toppled over into paranoia; to explain society’s ills, they invoked “a vast
conspiracy against mankind,” engineered by a plutocratic cabal.

1/3
1/5/2019
How Can Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders Both Be ‘Populist’? – The New York Times
The Populists joined forces with the Democrats for the 1896 election and collapsed soon
afterward. The word “populist” mostly disappeared into academic studies until the 1950s, when
Joseph McCarthy, a previously obscure Republican senator from Wisconsin, rose to prominence
with his claims that Communists had in?ltrated positions of power in the American government
and military. Many targets of his rants were members of the East Coast liberal intelligentsia.
Millions of Americans cheered on McCarthy’s crusade — horrifying liberal intellectuals like the
historian Richard Hofstadter and the sociologist Daniel Bell, who reached back to the precedent of
the Populists to understand the roots of the new anti?elitist fervor. In McCarthy, they heard echoes
of the original Populists’ conspiracy theorizing — only this time, the perpetrators were well?born
“pinkos” or “reds.”
Other scholars dismissed the comparison as deeply unfair, but Hofstadter’s effort to link the
Populists to what he called “the paranoid style” of the new right resonated. And so “populism”
began to morph into a handy tool of journalistic discourse.
In the 1960s, the streets and airwaves were crowded with protesters of all ideological persuasions
who claimed to be ?ghting for the interests and values of a virtuous, exploited people against an
immoral, grasping elite. “Populist” became a handle applied to anyone who fought the powers
that be, however they were de?ned. Wallace protested a federal order to integrate the University
of Alabama by stating, “There can be no submission to the theory that the central government is
anything but a servant of the people.” On the left, young radicals vowed that with “participatory
democracy,” they could topple racists like Wallace, along with the rest of “the power elite.” Ralph
Nader, then a liberal lawyer, stoked a revolt by consumers enraged at auto companies that
increased their pro?ts by concealing design ?aws in their vehicles.
Like Trump and Sanders today, ’60s “populists” chose to blame elites for what ailed the nation.
For Nader, it was greedy corporations and enabling politicians. For Wallace and Ronald Reagan, it
was the federal state. These habits live on today. From the Tea Party to the ?ght for a $15?an?hour
minimum wage, Americans keep turning their ire against institutions that appear to betray the
promise of fair and equitable treatment of ordinary workers, homeowners or taxpayers.
Sometimes, it seems, “populism” is just a synonym for widespread unhappiness with the status
quo.
Yet differences of language matter; they suggest what a candidate will seek to accomplish if he or
she takes power. The 19th?century antecedent that Trump evokes in his nativist appeals to white
working? and middle?class Americans is not the populism of the People’s Party but rather that of
the Know?Nothing Party of the 1850s, which similarly argued that immigrants were taking
Americans’ jobs and breaking the nation’s laws. Trump’s “populism” is a brilliant specimen of
performance art but one that bears little resemblance, even in style, to the capital?P kind. The
earnest activists from the People’s Party of old brandished a lengthy blueprint for reform;
Trump’s personality overshadows his program. His canny lack of ?nesse ?nesses us all.

2/3
1/5/2019
How Can Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders Both Be ‘Populist’? – The New York Times
The original Populists would probably warm up to Sanders, even if their constituents in places
like rural Kansas and Georgia might be puzzled to hear familiar rhetoric spoken by an elderly Jew
with a Brooklyn accent. The Populists’ 1892 platform thundered: “The fruits of the toil of millions
are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few.” Sanders similarly attacks “the billionaire
class,” whose supposed grip on the state has led to “an enormous transfer of wealth from the
middle class and the poor to the wealthiest people in this country.”
Critics of Sanders and Trump often condemn them with the same pejorative. The conservative
National Review, for instance, recently scorned both as “demagogues” who exploit public alarm
and peddle impossible solutions to dif?cult problems. But as that word has been applied to
everyone from Andrew Jackson to Joe McCarthy to President Obama, it has lost much of its sting.
The “populist” whose politics you abhor is always a demagogue disguised as a hero of the masses.
And those who disparage “populism” in general neglect its salutary function. When populist
talkers direct their outrage at elites, in government or business, who neglect the needs and betray
the trust of ordinary citizens, they can perform a service to the nation. They train their language
of discontent on those accused of betraying the core ideal of American democracy — one that is no
less powerful because it can never be fully realized.
In their own fashion, Sanders and Trump are protesting inequalities and the corruption of public
life without calling the entire system into question. (Sanders may speak of “revolution,” but he
still chose to run for president within the two?party system.) You may love such upheavals or
loathe them. Trump’s hostility toward undocumented immigrants and Muslims is certainly
reprehensible. But every major “populist” insurgency is a warning about serious problems
festering in our politics. To simply blame the messenger is an exercise in denial.
Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University and is co?editor of Dissent. He is the author of “War Against War: The
American Fight for Peace, 1914?1918,” which will be published in January 2017 by Simon & Schuster.
Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week.
A version of this article appears in print on March 27, 2016, on Page 13 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Crowd Pleaser
READ 42 COMMENTS

3/3
1/5/2019
How American Politics Became So Ineffective – The Atlantic
How American Politics Went Insane
It happened gradually—and until the U.S. figures out how to treat the problem, it will
only get worse.
JONATHAN RAUCH
JULY/AUGUST 2016 ISSUE | POLITICS
Phil Toledano
Subscribe to T?e A??a?? c’s Politics & Policy Daily, a roundup of ideas and events in
American politics.
Email
SIGN UP
I
T’S
, FOUR YEARS FROM NOW. The campaign is under way to succeed the
president, who is retiring after a single wretched term. Voters are angrier than
ever—at politicians, at compromisers, at the establishment. Congress and the
White House seem incapable of working together on anything, even when their
interests align. With lawmaking at a standstill, the president’s use of executive
?
orders and regulatory discretion has reached a level that Congress views as
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/
1/30
1/5/2019
How American Politics Became So Ineffective – The Atlantic
dictatorial—not that Congress can do anything about it, except ?le lawsuits that the
divided Supreme Court, its three vacancies un?lled, has been unable to resolve.
On Capitol Hill, Speaker Paul Ryan resigned after proving unable to pass a budget,
or much else. The House burned through two more speakers and one “acting”
speaker, a job invented following four speakerless months. The Senate, meanwhile,
is tied in knots by wannabe presidents and aspiring talk-show hosts, who use the
chamber as a social-media platform to build their brands by obstructing—well,
everything. The Defense Department is among hundreds of agencies that have not
been reauthorized, the government has shut down three times, and, yes, it ?nally
happened: The United States brie?y defaulted on the national debt, precipitating a
market collapse and an economic downturn. No one wanted that outcome, but no
one was able to prevent it.
As the presidential primaries unfold, Kanye West is leading a fractured ?eld of
Democrats. The Republican front-runner is Phil Robertson, of Duck Dynasty fame.
Elected governor of Louisiana only a few months ago, he is promising to defy the
Washington establishment by never trimming his beard. Party elders have given up
all pretense of being more than spectators, and most of the candidates have given
up all pretense of party loyalty. On the debate stages, and everywhere else,
anything goes.
I could continue, but you get the gist. Yes, the political future I’ve described is
unreal. But it is also a linear extrapolation of several trends on vivid display right
now. Astonishingly, the 2016 Republican presidential race has been dominated by
a candidate who is not, in any meaningful sense, a Republican. According to
registration records, since 1987 Donald Trump has been a Republican, then an
independent, then a Democrat, then a Republican, then “I do not wish to enroll in a
party,” then a Republican; he has donated to both parties; he has shown loyalty to
and a?nity for neither. The second-place candidate, Republican Senator Ted Cruz,
built his brand by tearing down his party’s: slurring the Senate Republican leader,
railing against the Republican establishment, and closing the government as a
career move.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/
?
2/30
1/5/2019
How American Politics Became So Ineffective – The Atlantic
Former presidential hopeful Jeb Bush called Donald Trump “a chaos candidate.” Unfortunately for
Bush, Trump’s supporters didn’t mind. They ? ?ed that about him. (Charles Rex Arbogast / AP)
The Republicans’ noisy breakdown has been echoed eerily, albeit less loudly, on the
Democratic side, where, after the early primaries, one of the two remaining
contestants for the nomination was not, in any meaningful sense, a Democrat.
Senator Bernie Sanders was an independent who switched to nominal Democratic
a?liation on the day he ?led for the New Hampshire primary, only three months
before that election. He surged into second place by winning independents while
losing Democrats. If it had been up to Democrats to choose their party’s nominee,
Sanders’s bid would have collapsed after Super Tuesday. In their various ways,
Trump, Cruz, and Sanders are demonstrating a new principle: The political parties
no longer have either intelligible boundaries or enforceable norms, and, as a result,
renegade political behavior pays.
Political disintegration plagues Congress, too. House Republicans barely managed
to elect a speaker last year. Congress did agree in the fall on a budget framework
intended to keep the government open through the election—a signal
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/
?
3/30
1/5/2019
How American Politics Became So Ineffective – The Atlantic
accomplishment, by today’s low standards—but by April, hard-line conservatives
had revoked the deal, thereby humiliating the new speaker and potentially causing
another shutdown crisis this fall. As of this writing, it’s not clear whether the hardliners will push to the brink, but the bigger point is this: If they do, there is not much
that party leaders can do about it.
And here is the still bigger point: The very term party leaders has become an
anachronism. Although Capitol Hill and the campaign trail are miles apart, the
breakdown in order in both places re?ects the underlying reality that there no
longer is any such thing as a party leader. There are only individual actors, pursuing
their own political interests and ideological missions willy-nilly, like excited gas
molecules in an overheated balloon.
No wonder Paul Ryan, taking the gavel as the new (and reluctant) House speaker in
October, complained that the American people “look at Washington, and all they
see is chaos. What a relief to them it would be if we ?nally got our act together.” No
one seemed inclined to disagree. Nor was there much argument two months later
when Jeb Bush, his presidential campaign sinking, used the c-word in a di?erent but
equally apt context. Donald Trump, he said, is “a chaos candidate, and he’d be a
chaos president.” Unfortunately for Bush, Trump’s supporters didn’t mind. They
liked that about him.
?
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/
4/30
1/5/2019
How American Politics Became So Ineffective – The Atlantic
In their different ways, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have demonstrated that the major
political parties no longer have intelligible boundaries or enforceable norms. (Charlie Neibergall /
AP)
Trump, however, didn’t cause the chaos. The chaos caused Trump. What we are
seeing is not a temporary spasm of chaos but a chaos syndrome.
Chaos syndrome is a chronic decline in the political system’s capacity for selforganization. It begins with the weakening of the institutions and brokers—political
parties, career politicians, and congressional leaders and committees—that have
historically held politicians accountable to one another and prevented everyone in
the system from pursuing naked self-interest all the time. As these intermediaries’
in?uence fades, politicians, activists, and voters all become more individualistic
and unaccountable. The system atomizes. Chaos becomes the new normal—both in
campaigns and in the government itself.
?
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/
5/30
1/5/2019
How American Politics Became So Ineffective – The Atlantic
Our intricate, informal system of political intermediation, which took many
decades to build, did not commit suicide or die of old age; we reformed it to death.
For decades, well-meaning political reformers have attacked intermediaries as
corrupt, undemocratic, unnecessary, or (usually) all of the above. Americans have
been busy demonizing and disempowering political professionals and parties,
which is like spending decades abusing and attacking your own immune system.
Eventually, you will get sick.
The disorder has other causes, too: developments such as ideological polarization,
the rise of social media, and the radicalization of the Republican base. But chaos
syndrome compounds the e?ects of those developments, by impeding the task of
organizing to counteract them. Insurgencies in presidential races and on Capitol
Hill are nothing new, and they are not necessarily bad, as long as the governing
process can accommodate them. Years before the Senate had to cope with Ted
Cruz, it had to cope with Jesse Helms. The di?erence is that Cruz shut down the
government, which Helms could not have done had he even imagined trying.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/
?
6/30
1/5/2019
How American Politics Became So Ineffective – The Atlantic
Like many disorders, chaos syndrome is self-reinforcing. It causes governmental
dysfunction, which fuels public anger, which incites political disruption, which
causes yet more governmental dysfunction. Reversing the spiral will require
understanding it. Consider, then, the etiology of a political disease: the immune
system that defended the body politic for two centuries; the gradual dismantling of
that immune system; the emergence of pathogens capable of exploiting the new
vulnerability; the symptoms of the disorder; and, ?nally, its prognosis and
treatment.
T
Immunity
Why the political class is a good thing
he Founders knew all too well about chaos. It was the condition that
brought them together in 1787 under the Articles of Confederation. The
central government had too few powers and powers of the wrong kinds, so
they gave it more powers, and also multiple power centers. The core idea of the
Constitution was to restrain ambition and excess by forcing competing powers and
factions to bargain and compromise.
The Framers worried about demagogic excess and populist caprice, so they created
bu?ers and gatekeepers between voters and the government. Only one chamber,
the House of Representatives, would be directly elected. A radical who wanted to
get into the Senate would need to get past the state legislature, which selected
senators; a usurper who wanted to seize the presidency would need to get past the
Electoral College, a convocation of elders who chose the president; and so on.
They were visionaries, those men in Philadelphia, but they could not foresee
everything, and they made a serious omission. Unlike the British parliamentary
system, the Constitution makes no provision for holding politicians accountable to
one another. A rogue member of Congress can’t be “?red” by his party leaders, as a
member of Parliament can; a renegade president cannot be evicted in a vote of no
con?dence, as a British prime minister can. By and large, American politicians are
?
…
Purchase answer to see full
attachment