Make Our Ugly Discourse Better: Join the Civilogue kyle simpkin

This was a very interesting piece that goes into detail about all Americans are labeled in different ways, coming from there political views and beliefs, ways of life, culture and so on. One of the "hot spots" I found in the piece that I find very interesting "To be wrong is not necessarily the same as to be evil. Those with whom I disagree count among their number many whose love of country and adherence to moral standards are as admirable as can be found in many who stand on my side." I find this very interesting and true because being a human its part of life to be wrong and to make mistake and that's how we humans as a whole gain insight and become smarter to not repeat the wrongs of yesterday. One of the arguments that i agree with  "And the belief that government is the best solution to some of our biggest problems is an idea with a long and honorable American history -- one that includes notable successes." I strongly agree with this statement because there are many problems with in our american culture that government can only fix, because some problems are so big that not just the "people" can't fix on their own. I ran in to difficulties in the begging of the piece when he would state things like if your conservative friend said this to you, you reply with this. I felt as if the writer was trying to preach things to us that were not necessarily factual.

Why I like vicious, anonymous online comment kyle simpkin

Today there are billions of people on the internet at any one given time doing all sorts of things. Many people go online these days to write criticism about other things going on in peoples  lives. People do this through blogs and other sorts of information posting sites. I have difficult on why people think they have the right to write vicious comments about things that people post about there lives. People have all the time in the world to post comments on the web about nothing that has to do with there lives, people get some weird feeling of accomplishment doing this in my mind. I agree with the points being made in this piece "The protective force field of anonymity or pseudonymity brings out the worst in some people. They say things they would never say in the presence of flesh-and-blood human beings. You see this phenomenon all over the Internet." People do make these vicious, anonymous online comments because they no what they say will never come back to them, people feel protected. This quote "They show us what the species is really like: the full spectrum of human behavior, not just the part that we find reassuring and enlightening," I feel like is one of the "hot spots" of the piece because what the writers says is very true, these kinds of comments does show human behavior at its best and worst.
 

Two Wars kyle simpkin

When I first started watching this video I had the expectation of it focusing on just how America was in the wrong of involving themselves in this war. After watching I learned that this man was out for other's opinion's to make a bigger picture of what this war on terrorism is. One part that stuck out to me in particular was when the man was talking to a citizen he said " he thought Sadanm was in the wrong". This quote made me inherent a new view on what this documentary was about,  it was about living a free life and gaining opinions on U.S. citizens thoughts on the war, living in a "free" country. The Iraqi makes a statement about how he thinks the war was for the worse not the better because of how much destruction there was and how him and his family had lost everything. I do feel the pain for him his family along with all Iraqi's about there country getting destroyed to a certain extent, but If people look at the bigger picture, there are things that come along with it that were not pleasant, but are necessarily to accomplish what we are striving for, freedom. It was not our right to invade there home country's but it was necessary to take down Sadam because he was technically committing genocide, so being human beings something needed to be done. I did have trouble relating to the whole big picture of this video because i'am personally not a big follower of world events, which should change, and also this is coming from a white California boy that hasn't left the United States his whole life. I wish I had the opportunity to travel around our world and live and learn about other country's culture and way of life and i wish to do so someday.