BP 8

Question for Ulmer:

Would you think of electracy as a paradigm shift?

Ulmer states, “Socrates is a syncretic figure, partly oral, partly literate, the first person to experience Self.” I am a firm believer in Kuhn’s concept of paradigm shifts. Do you think that electracy is just another shift in our history? Instead of Socrates’ self-realization with the use of orality and literacy, now, with the aftermath of COVID-19 and the change of world order in the same sense that Socrates changed the course of thought with the Socratic method. Does the COVID-19 pandemic mark the turning point in history for electracy? “The quarantine serves as a collective existential epiphany.” Is the pandemic another awakening in history where we evolve through electracy?

Response for Silko:

Surveillance has evolved to a point where it enables discrimination. Slavery may have been abolished, but the stigma and image portrayed of the colored by the media and politicians is subjugation itself and a tactic that maintains the ongoing systematic and structural racism.

“Immigration,” like “street crime” and “welfare fraud,” is a political euphemism that refers to people of color. Politicians and media people talk about “illegal aliens” to dehumanize and demonize undocumented immigrants, who are, for the most part, people of color.”

Politicians and media created a stigma that we must spend billions on border control to keep these “bad people” out of America. At the same time, the government benefits economically w/ the implementation of surveillance and monetization of the border with the use of tolls. In a sense, it’s a system implemented to justify racism and discrimination.

Response for Jason De Leon:

“We’ll have a real fence. Twenty feet high with barbed wire. Electrfied with a sign on the other side that says, ‘It can kill you’… Then I get critizicized: ‘Mr. Cain, that’s insensitive.’  What do you mean insensitive? What’s insensitive is when [people] come to the United States across our border and kill our citizens and kill our Border Patrol people.”

Conservative agenda disseminates this image to the media of the “brown-skinned invaders.” This political strategy convinces the mass that by investing billions into border control, America’s economy and safety will be protected. I found the statement ironic when Mr. Cain said, “… kill our Border Patrol people.” Would there be border patrol to kill had there not been a border? Assuming that incidents like this were really happening, or was it a white lie to spread the conservative agenda? The above quote is significant because it shows how this stigma of “illegal aliens” demonizes “illegal aliens.” This political strategy is being applied to justify the billions of dollars invested into border patrol against the people who can only afford $26 in groceries. This shows us how much inequality and corruption lie in our government.