American Utopia response

After reading the article about how China is pulling away from America in certain areas leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. I feel that as an American we should always be on top in everything, it may be that I am greedy from growing up during a great time period in America, or it could be that I have a good sense of Nationalism. What myself and others need to realize after reading the article though is that China is so set on overtaking America in everything and becoming the first nation on earth is that China is so strict on everything so that they are able to accomplish this goal. As Americans we are entitled to freedom of speech, religion, press, pretty much we are free to do what we want. In China you are not entitled to any of these rights, not even one of the most powerful companies in the world, Google, is able to run without restrictions in China. I feel that the article is correct in certain areas on how China is becoming a better nation than we are but it fails to realize that we as Americans have more rights than the Chinese. Also, in China the government is so set on creating the most up to date factories and power plants that they are forcing their way into the areas that they need to build them. For example, to build the recently finished Three Gorges Dame, the Chines Government forced out over 250,000 people from villages that had been in these places for thousands of years, destroying monuments and history that these villagers had cherished for centuries. In America this would not have been possible, there are too many organizations that would cause a fuss about anything leaving us no room to expand anymore. In America's thriving period factories, power plants and all kinds of businesses that would help the country were being built wherever they needed to be because people knew that it would help them. Now, you can not even cut a tree down without a group of people complaining about how you are going to ruin the environment. So the article is correct in saying that America is falling behind China, but it is not because China is becoming more powerful, it is because China has no obstacles in its way.

WWII

This painting by Thomas Benton entitled "Cut the Line" shows a crowd of people watching as workers cut the line on a new war ship. This would probably be a pretty common sight during WWII since so many new ships were being built for fighting. In the picture everyone is kind of leaning forward almost like they are nervous to see if the boat goes into the water cleanly or if it will break on impact. I think that this kind of shows how people were throughout the war, everyone was worried about the fate of their loved ones and for the country in general. So this would sort of set the tone of how people would feel throughout the war, if the ship sinks then people are going to be even more leery than usual, if it is a successful put in then people might be less inclined to worry.

This oil and watercolor painting by Richard Moore is of the USS Becuna as it is heading to war in the Pacific Ocean. I think that this picture helps to show how vast and powerful the U.S. Navy fleet is, and that is only one branch of the armed forces. In the picture you can see some kind of ship wherever you look. I think that this also shows the way that everyone felt about the war in that the picture is sort of dark but fading into brightness, which could represent a few different things. It could symbolize the way that people were feeling in that they were unsure about the war itself but yet they knew that something needed to be done. Also, it could be that the light part of the painting is the U.S. and the dark part, the part that the ships are heading too is Japan. Either way the painting shows the force and presence that the United States has in the world.

This is one of the most famous pictures from WWII. It is a picture of American soldiers raising the American flag on the shores of Normandy after conquering the beach on D-day. I feel that this picture really shows how powerful and courageous American people are because of how these soldiers are raising our flag, the flag of the enemy in an enemies territory. If Americans did not have the courage and drive to go after what they want we would not have this picture first off, we would not have our freedom, and potentially we would not have our lives. Along with courage and drive this picture represents love and caring towards other people. America could have sat back and watched as the terrible things happened in Europe but instead we risked hundreds of thousands of young American lives to save the lives of people we do not even know.

WWII/ Connection Across Time

Once the United States got involved in WWII due to the attacks on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, we came in with a vengeance. With the attack on Pearl Harbor and the realization of all the things that Hitler was doing to the the Jews, the United States was not going to let WWII continue on the path that it was going on. Since the war was moving down a very destructive path something had to be done quickly and powerfully, but what could stop one of the most powerful dictators and his allies? The United States had the answer to this problem in the form of the atomic bomb. Many people believe that this was not the best way to end the war. To these people I must ask, how would you propose we should have ended the war in a way that would have caused fear in Hitler and any dictator to come? Many people do not know how to answer this question, they just think that the atomic bomb was not the right way to do it. I think that we made the right decision in dropping the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hirshima because it helped to create a presence in the world that the United States is not someone to mess with. Unfortunately some countries did not get the memo about how powerful the United States is and tried to bring our country down on 9/11. Just like when Japan attacked us we did not sit around and take the attacks we immediately rallied and fought back against the terrorists and we are re-establishing our complete and udder destruction policy towards any country that attacks us or our allies.

WWII

As we started into the subject of WWII I thought to myself, "well this should be easy since we learn about it every year." I was mistaken though, I was unaware of many of the situations that took place during that time period. I was shocked to learn of the Bataan Death March and the Rape of Nanking, I thought that the torture was only confined to areas around Germany. I was absolutely disgusted with what Adolf Hitler was doing to the Jews but when I learned of the things that other people were also doing to innocent people I became angry. I could not understand how the other countries of the world could let all this happen to so many innocent people. It is understandable that the economies of these countries held them back somewhat but that should not stop some effort to try and stop this insanity, these are human lives that are being disposed of like tissues. I am especially surprised that the United States did not get involved sooner, it seems like we are involved immediately in any situation that arises these days. Maybe we realized our mistake in WWII and are trying to make up for it now by trying to eliminate any possible threat to human lives that we can.

The Age of Anxiety

This painting entitled "American Gothic" by Grant Wood depicts a man and his wife who look like average people who are just working their land to just scrape by. I think that this picture shows how people needed to adapt to being lower on the social scale due to the Great Depression. When I first looked at this picture I just thought it was an older married couple who lived on a farm. But when I looked closer I began to notice that the man is wearing overalls with a suit jacket over them, possible representing that he used to be a well off business man. Also, the women looks to be wearing just a plain apron but her broach looks to be gold. So after realizing that the picture contained more than what you see at a glance I felt that it represented the time period of the Great Depression quite well.