Leonard Park

214s tandem :D

Hi I'm Leonard Park and I like, uh, old games. I like Doom. Doom is better than almost, no all shooters ever.

Summer Assignment

The Glass Castle is a memoir written by Jeannette Walls describing her upbringing from her dysfunctional, yet loving family and how her experiences defined her as a person. The book describes how her family, despite their flaws as human beings, gave her support and love that helped her mature and become successful without them. That being said, Jeanette and her family do suffer mental illnesses that affect their lives and how they grow up. These mental illnesses result in one of the main parts of the book, which is the constant moving of her family, and impacting the characters with it.

One of the main pieces of evidence that supports the claim that there is mental illness present in the Glass Castle affecting the characters is Jeanette’s trust in her parents deteriorating over time as she gets older as she feels as if they can’t protect her anymore from the dangers of life. For instance, on pages 148 and 150, the book states, “I went into Grandpa’s bedroom and saw Erma kneeling on the floor in front of Brian, grabbing at the crotch of his pants, squeezing and kneading while mumbling to herself and telling Brian to hold still, goddammit… ‘Brian's a man, he can take it," he said. "I don't want to hear another

word of this. Do you hear me?’”. Erma, who is the mother of Jeanette’s dad, sexually assaulted Brian, Jeanette’s younger brother, by grabbing at his privates. Many people would agree that parents have an obligation to protect their children from dangerous things like sexual harassment and help them cope with them if it ever happens. The fact that Rex, the dad, is tolerating this behavior, let alone defending it, is appalling to Jeanette and her siblings who were traumatized and are seeking help from their parents. Furthermore, on page 187, it goes, “A few minutes later, the hand came creeping back. I looked down and saw that Uncle Stanley's pants were unzipped and he was playing with himself. I felt like hitting him, but I was afraid I'd get in trouble.” Now Jeanette herself has been sexually assaulted by Uncle Stanley, Rex’s brother. Jeanette remembers the last time when Bryan got sexually assaulted and how her parents didn’t seem to care about harmful things like that going on. Plus, later in that same page, Jeanette’s mom laters says that sexual harassment is merely “a crime of perception” and that "If you don't think you're hurt, then you aren't." This is not comforting advice at all and causes Jeanette to lose a lot of trust in her parents to do the right thing. Plus, now that Jeanette doesn’t trust her parents to protect her, she feels less safe overall since she knows that her parents can’t protect her from the many other dangers of the outside world. Jeanette’s demolished trust, in short, hashad her trust to her parents deteriorated, which affects how she views the world and her parents. This makes her feel insecure about herself as she feels the people she is closest to are not great moral guides or trustworthy ones.

Mental illness isn't just confined to Jeanette, but can also be found within Jeanette’s parents, Rex and Rose Mary. These are characters that are wild cards as their actions and emotions are unpredictable, which is also a sign that someone isn’t mentally stable. They can range from heroic good and supportive of their kids to sulking away by themselves to seemingly ignoring what's happening to their kids to risking the lives of them and the kids as well as putting themselves in dangerous situations. Early on in the book, the author recalls an experience with her mother in the city where she “tried to help them countless times, but Dad would insist they didn't need anything, and Mom would ask for something silly, like a perfume atomizer or a membership in a health club. They said that they were living the way they wanted to”. Rose Mary and Rex are aware of their homelessness lifestyle and how other people think of them. Despite this, they prefer this lifestyle over living with Jeanette or any of their siblings and even refuse any help from them except from items like perfume atomizer which seem silly and nonsensical if you are homeless and trying to live on the streets. In a Huffington Post article^1, it states that people who have mental illnesses probably don't have the mental capacity and ability to choose a house over living in the streets. Another sign of mental illness in the book on page 49 is, “Dad took off. He said that if the cops stopped us, they'd find out that we had no registration or insurance and that the license plate had been taken off another car, and they'd arrest us all. After barreling down the highway, he made a screeching U-turn, with us kids feeling like the car was going to tumble over on its side, but the squad car made one, too. Dad peeled through Blythe at a hundred miles an hour, ran a red light, cut the wrong way up a one-way street, the other cars honking and pulling over.” Rex driving at 100 mph, running red lights, and cutting the wrong way while ignoring the fact that there are other drivers on the road, but also that there are his wife and kids in this car, all because he wasn’t willing to register his car, not have proper tail lights, and not getting a proper license plate. All of these are questionable actions in their own right, but when combined with each other, they are downright bizarre and unfathomable to think of committing in the first place. The only reason someone would commit them would be if something is wrong with them mentally and their mind has been altered to such an extent that it can’t be repaired. Rex and Rose Mary, however, have demonstrated that they are mentally ill and that their minds are very different compared to that of a normal, rational person.

In conclusion, illness is a core part of the book and Jeanette’s childhood as it affected how she views the world along with how she thinks of herself and her parents. Mental illness can also be found within Jeanette’s parents as they have bipolar disorder, meaning they have mood swings that make them act differently from one instance to another. These intense mood swings wreak havoc on almost anything they interact with, from traumatizing their kids to not taking proper care of their house to being a nuisance to other people. Despite these flaws, Rex and Rose Mary demonstrate that they do act for the good of their kids and do truly care about them deep down, although how they express it may not be in a typical way.

1^https://www.huffpost.com/entry/homelessness-myth-14-they_b_669861

ELA Writing Baseline

In an age where information is easily accessible, but the truth seems harder to find, and there are many online resources for learning alongside lots of distractions, is the internet still worth using? Should we just ditch it and go back to learning from pieces of paper and pen on what the capital of Kazakhstan is? No, it’s simply not worth doing that. The internet doesn’t have a negative effect on the learning process as long as it is used properly because information can be made much more accessible to more people and communicating with others is faster and easier than ever.

One of the ways the internet isn’t harming, but helping the learning process is the vast amount of information available that gives readily available answers and solutions. For instance, paragraph 7 of text 3 states, “So where were you on that February night three years ago? If you use a modern email program like Gmail, there’s a good chance you can piece it together by calling up your emails from that date.”. Unlike your brain, which forgets information like where you were 3 years ago on a February night, the internet stores information like that, and when you do need to find out stuff like that, it’s there for you. Furthermore, paragraph 3 of text 3 states, “When it comes to trivia, the difference between a world-class savant and your average modern technophile is perhaps five seconds. And Watson’s Jeopardy! triumph over Ken Jennings suggests even that time lag might soon be erased—especially as wearable technology like Google Glass begins to collapse the distance between our minds and the cloud”. Trivia emphasizes quick thinking and knowledge of a topic. When Watson beat Ken Jennings, a master of trivia, at Jeopardy, it showed how fast knowledge can be accessed from the internet and how accurate it is. The unprecedented speed that information can be gathered from is especially important in today’s fast-paced world with quick, demanding tasks that strive for accuracy.

Another strength of the internet for the learning process is how communication with others has become much faster, more reliable, and easier. This allows not only for people to learn about old ideas quickly and efficiently, but also allows new ideas that might be revolutionary to spread. For instance, text 4 paragraph 4 states, “For example, a computer game may promote critical thinking or diminish it. Reading on the Internet may ratchet up one’s ability to analyze while chasing an endless array of hyperlinks may undercut deeper

Thought”. With unprecedented communication, new things like computer games and deep libraries of information can be spread quickly, which can allow people to be more educated about the world around them and make smarter decisions. With that said, there are also plenty of distractions and links that don’t benefit the user. If those are cut out, the learning process can be made much more efficient as people know exactly what they are learning about and all the ins and outs of it. Furthermore, text 2 paragraph 7 elaborates on how, “We rely on that capability to personalize the workings of the system, to program the vast database to respond to our particular needs, interests, and desires. We want to be interrupted, because each interruption—email, tweet, instant message, RSS[Really Simple Syndication] headline—brings us a valuable piece of information”. The internet sends out reminders, messages, and notifications that all help us remember important events like when you have an important meeting, or if you want to socialize with other people along with keeping us up to date with what’s new and current events. By taking it out of the learning process means potential for ideas to spread and people to help communicate and work together is gutted out in favor of having met someone on the street at a coordinated place which you may not even agree on.

Some people, however, would argue that there are so many distractions on the net that any information or communication potential ends up being lost with the endless amount of games, entertainment, and ads swarming them along with the fact that since information is available, it overwhelms people and causes them to forget about it. However, this fails to consider that firstly, in a learning environment like a school or library, many games, entertainment media, ads, and distracting websites are disabled, meaning that any students or intellectuals searching the web for resources won’t get bombarded with ads telling them to go to hundreds of other websites. Secondly, as stated in paragraph 4 text, “They argued that certain technological tools—computer modeling, navigation by slide rule,7 long division via pencil and paper—can be every bit as integral to our mental operations as the internal workings of our brains. They wrote: “If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognizing as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (so we claim) part of the cognitive process.” The human mind adapts to all these new resources and uses them alongside its resources to learn more efficiently, effectively, and accurately.

In summary, the internet is not as evil as some people make it out to be. The internet ushered in an era of virtually unlimited information and communication with people almost anywhere on earth. Without it, many advancements humans made would have taken much longer and been set back by years. Communication would men having to dial into a telephone and using a phone number system. The information would be confined to books, pieces of paper, and lectures that can’t be stored for long periods.

Writing in Steps

Gun violence in the U.S. has been increasing with the multiple shootings happening each year. Since guns are mainly used, people are advocating to ban guns like the AR-15 to prevent shootings from happening. However, with riots across much of the country, people need to defend themselves and to do that, concealed guns should be made legal to carry for adults. Concealed guns are guns that are hidden by the user and under their control. People should have concealed guns because more people defend themselves than kill each other, cities with gun laws have lower crime than those without them, and people don’t have to resort to a black market for guns.

A major reason people should have guns is that more often than not, people use them to defend themselves or someone else. According to a CDC study, “about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008,"and defensive gun uses ranged "from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year." Since most people are not crazy people who are out to do harm to others, they learn to respect each other since they all have guns and only use them to defend themselves. Furthermore, in an FBI chart, states like Alabama, Montana, North and South Dakota, and Vermont, which allow concealed weapons, have low overall murders compared to states like New York and Pennsylvania, which have stringent gun laws. Gun crime and murder especially pop in states like Pennslyvania and New York in the bigger inner cities like Philadelphia, where it's harder to get a gun than someone who lives in a suburban or rural place of the state. Contrary to popular belief, the good guy with a gun is not a total myth and there are people out there who are good people that use guns to defend themselves.

The second reason to allow concealed guns is that cities with them have lower crime rates than cities without them. In a CBS article, the cities with the highest crime rates like Washington D.C., Rochester, NY, and Chicago, IL, have high crime rates while states like Alabama, Vermont, and North and South Dakota are absent. The only people with guns are people who bribe officials, sometimes with millions of dollars, or criminals smuggling them and selling them on a black market, or people that are rich and powerful enough to know all the fine print.Similarly, a Guardian article points out that cities like Minneapolis, New York City, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles are the cities with the most riots in 2020. The sudden surge in riots are most noticeable in the cities where getting a gun is a complex process and gun laws are strict. Because very few people have access to guns, the vast majority of residents are hurt as their business and property get trashed, they get hurt by rioters, or their life gets interrupted by all the noise. Guns are the best option for self defense compared to knives or belts or other choices and can come in clutch when needed.

Lastly, people should also have concealed guns because people won’t get in trouble for getting guns illegally. A PBS article states that, “one of the most common ways criminals get guns is through straw purchase sales. A straw purchase occurs when someone who may not legally acquire a firearm, or who wants to do so anonymously, has a companion buy it on their behalf”. Since criminals don’t abide by laws like normal people, gun laws, no matter how strict, won’t stop them from getting guns. Since normal people can’t have guns with them, they are defenseless against them and more crime ends up happening. Adding on to this, a FOX article states that, “90% of these guns don't come from New York. They come along I-95 — they come from states with lax gun laws.” The majority of guns in New York are illegal ones smuggled in via criminals. Combined with the strict gun laws in place, and getting a legal concealed gun is near impossible with the only way getting on is being one of the rich and powerful who have connections. Relaxing gun laws means that criminals and the rich and powerful no longer have a lot of power over the gun market and most normal, average people, can protect themselves better.

Some people may argue that if everyones has guns, people would start dueling and fighting each other, causing the crime rate to skyrocket and leading to the degradation of society.For instance, most people who kill themselves use guns because of how quick of a death it is. Furthermore, there are more mass shootings each year. While there are people out there who would genuinely do that, they make up a tiny minority. The vast majority of people are law abiding citizens who are responsible with what they have. In a VOX article, “ Michael Planty and Jennifer Truman of the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that between 1993 and 2011, gun homicides fell 39 percent, and non-fatal firearm crimes fell 69 percent”. Most people with guns know how to use them responsibly and as more and more people gain access to them and learn , gun crimes go down. Plus, a study from Rand.org studied multiple studies about mass shootings and concluded “From 2016 to 2018, the annual rate of mass public shooting incidents was about one incident per 50 million people in the United States (Duwe, 2020). Considering the number of fatalities in these shootings, this corresponds to approximately 0.4 percent of all homicides, or approximately 0.2 percent of all firearm deaths, over that period”. Mass shootings are not in the hundreds of cases as many people are expected to believe. The definition of them has gotten so loose to the point where people can’t exactly define it, leading to people making the number of mass shootings look much bigger than it actually is.

To sum the above, people should have concealed guns because states and cities that allow concealed guns have lower crime rates overall and people don’t have to resort to black markets to gain access to them. By allowing concealed guns, normal, responsible people won’t have to worry about criminals who used to freely terrorize them. The Second Amendment also brings up the point of tyrannical government and that guns are necessary to defend your rights. Taking away someone's right to defend themselves with a gun means that they can’t defend themselves. A similar pattern happened across countries like China, North Korea, and Cuba, where guns are heavily restricted and the governments there completely dominate their citizens' lives.

VOX: https://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/18000474/gun-homicides-decline

FOX: https://www.fox5ny.com/news/iron-pipeline-illegal-guns-new-york

PBS: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/guns/procon/guns.html

CBS :https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-most-dangerous-cities-in-america/16/

Fbi chart: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/table-12

The Guardian:https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/31/george-floyd-protests-us-cities-hotspots-unrest

Unit 1 Final Draft

Leonard Park

Caleb Haraguchi-Combs

English Regents 809

3rd of December, 2021

Why do People Commit Bad Deeds

A “bad deed” is one constituted as something wrong, evil, or immoral. Notions of evil come based on our sense of morality which is what society tells us is right and wrong, what parents tell us is right and wrong, our own personal experiences and or if we gain a reward. One’s morality also comes from their Texts like Button, Button, and Ruthless showcase that focusing on greed and personal possessions could lead to your morality and decision making being affected negatively while the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment demonstrate how authority can lead people to do bad deeds with little to no questioning of these actions. People are motivated to do bad things because a figure of authority commands them to, they are protecting themselves, or they are searching for personal rewards.

One of the main reasons people are encouraged to do bad things is that figures of authority give them orders to carry out. People see authority figures as people that earned their positions and are reliable, so whatever they say or tell them to do must be trustworthy and good. Even if the authority figures command them to do actions that may harm others, because they are seen as the high and mighty upholders of the law, those actions are taken seriously. In the Milgram experiment, where people were told to administer shocks to people who answered incorrectly, “50% of the subjects obey the experimenter’s commands fully”(Milgram 1963). Later on, when the “teacher” is questioning whether or not he should continue the test, an experimenter says “I’m responsible for anything that happens here”(Milgram 1963). When the responsibility was removed from the “teacher”, he felt that he was in power and continued administering the shocks under the guise that the experimenter was responsible for everything. This means that the man feels he can get away with almost anything because someone in power will take the blame. This has happened time and time again in history where there are people who follow orders from a charismatic leader , even if the deeds are bad and they know it. During the Nuremberg Trials when many Nazis were being tried for war crimes, many of them often said that they were following orders. The same thing happened when China enforced its One Child Policy and the people who killed the extra children said they had no choice and were ordered to. Questioning authority often means you get ostracized, you lose your job, and potentially your life. The Stanford Prison Experiment carried out in 1971 by Philip Zimbardo shows similarly frightening results as when guards were told to maintain order at any cost, they resorted to sadistic means like stripping them of food, privileges, and clothes. The guards isolated prisoners and sowed distrust amongst them, causing them to ostracize each other and Zimbardo had to end the experiment by day 6 because the participants were too absorbed in their role as prisoners or guards and were in serious emotional condition (1973). Zimbardo’s experiment demonstrated how not only authority can greenlight people to do bad deeds and justify them, but also how authority can be abused. The guards were mere college students that were normal people and under normal conditions wouldn’t commit such horrendous acts. However, because of the natural tendency for authority to gain absurd amounts of power, the students became self absorbed in their role as guards and forgot that they were just test subjects in an experiment. Zimbardo himself said that he became absorbed in the role of a supervisor and lost his original role as a researcher, focusing on his authoritative powers and abusing them. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and the result is people who end up doing horrible deeds to others under the guise that authority will take the blame for it or they need to carry out any means necessary to complete a task.

Another reason people do bad deeds is they are protecting themselves or others down the road. When push comes to shove, people will look at whether or not they or others they see as important will be affected, so they choose the option that benefits them. Sometimes, the person making the decision has the time to decide whether or not they should commit their act out while other times they are making an impulse decision. For instance, in Lamb to the Slaughter, when Mary Malone, the wife of Patrick Malone, finds out he cheated on her, “Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause, she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head. She might just as well have hit him with a steel club”(3). Later on, as Mary is figuring out what to do, she then worries about her child thinking “What were the laws about murderers with unborn children? Did they kill them both — mother and child? Or did they wait until the tenth month? What did they do?”. Mary is acting out of a knee-jerk reaction that could not only be affected by what she did for her husband and how he responded, but also her pregnancy emotions. This all combines in a fuzzy mind that loses its concentration and Mary’s priorities and thoughts to be focused on herself and child only and protecting her child forming out of Mary trying to justify to herself what she did is right. A similar situation occurs in Lather and Nothing Else where a barber has Captain Torres, a brutal dictator that kills anyone that slightly disagrees with him, right in front of him. Even though the barber himself says “I was a clandestine revolutionary”(Téllez 2)that is opposed to Torres’ regime, he has the time to think about what happens if he does kill him. He then comes to the realization that “No one is worth the sacrifice of becoming a murderer. What could be gained from it? Nothing. Others come along, and then others, and the first ones kill the second ones and they kill the third group, and it goes on and on until everything is a sea of blood”(Téllez 3). Murdering someone, whether it is out of impulse or because they are a bad person that you disagree with, is still murder at the end of the day. Given Torres’ position as the leader of the country, if the news was to spread of the barber killing Torres, the barber would be put on a hit list and be a high profile target in the country, damaging his reputation and risking his life as well. This forces the barber to let Torres live and have his authoritative regime continue, with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people to die over time. In Russia, after the Russian Revolution, a totalitarian, communist government was set in place and it took over countries like Ukraine and Georgia while setting up satellite states in Eastern Europe in countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia. Multiple times, uprisings occurred in those countries and got squashed down. Unlike the barber, the countries kept on fighting and eventually, with the fall of the Soviet Union, a new Russian government was set up, but it has turned out to be corrupt and not much better than the Soviet system where it has switched to authoritative capitalism. Protecting others and yourself comes down to decisions that in the moment, you see as justifiable and even good, but in hindsight and after a little bit of thought, turn out to be bad deeds.

Greed is also another common reason people act out and do bad deeds. When people are enticed by a reward or the idea of getting a reward, they don’t think twice about it and if the consequences of it are worth the payoff. This negligence results in severe consequences, affecting not only the person carrying out the bad deeds and any close ones to them, but other people as well that may be unrelated to them. Ruthless by William DeMille demonstrates this perfectly as the protagonist, Judson, is told that he “ loved his personal possessions and felt a sense of deep outrage if they were touched by any hand but his own”(1). Judson’s greed leads to him having a twisted sense of justice where everyone is equal under the law, so regardless of the severity of their crime, the punishment for them is the same. Judson himself says “If a man holds me up and robs me of five dollars it makes me just as sore as if he took a hundred. A thief’s a thief.”(Ruthless 2). This twisted sense of justice based around greed and just rewards has led to rules and regulations that benefit the few and hurt most people. The bail system is a famous case of this as it once started as people paying a reasonable fine to get out of jail, but spiraled into a system where bail is excessively high, which disproportionately affects low-income communities and people of color who get higher bail than their white counterparts for the same crime. This results in many people sitting in jail while waiting for trial, which leads to further rearrests or for innocent people to plead guilty to get out of jail, which taints their record and can lead to them losing their job, essential service, and other consequences. Greed can also include searching for a huge reward that seemingly has no strings attached to it, but has grave consequences upon further inspection or with hindsight. Button, Button by Richard Matheson exemplifies this as Norma, the main character of this story, is given the choice to press a button that awards her $50,000, but kills someone she doesn’t know. Arthur, her husband, objects to this, saying “How about a baby boy in Pennsylvania?Some beautiful little girl on the next block?”(Button, Button 2). When Norma pushed aside Arthur’s valid concerns of someone being murdered and pressed the button, the one killed by it was ironically Arthur(Button, Button 3). Norma ignoring the consequences of pressing the button and Arthur’s concerns could mean that Arthur was someone she didn’t know or at least pay little to no attention to, making him the target of button death. Even if someone else that wasn’t relevant to Norma’s life died from the button, Norma is playing god and deciding to kill someone based on her feelings and thoughts without consideration of others. When greed is left unchecked and a person becomes too indulged with it, they lose sight of their morals and any consequences down the road and while it may bring short term gratification, in the long run something always invariably happens.

People who believe that evil deeds stem from other reasons believe that people don’t always look up to figures of authority like politicians or government officials and more often than not, they speak out against what they say, the laws they pass, and their beliefs. Pew Research Center points out that “Only about one-quarter of Americans say they can trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (2%) or “most of the time” (22%)”(1). Despite this, lots of government activities often go under the radar or are justified that they are “patriotic” and “good for the country”. This ranges from protectionism laws that place tariffs on products like lightweight trucks and steel to getting us involved in countless wars that don’t actually protect us, but instead harm other countries that are falsely believed to be threats and have our civil liberties infringed upon. For example, after 9/11, America was in a state of panic, greif, and anger and many Americans said that we should go to Afghanistan and take out the Taliban and their leader, Osama bin Laden while ignoring the repercussions it may have. President George W. Bush later signed the PATRIOT Act saying it would protect the country from terrorist attacks, which many people believed in. This led to the government wiretapping many people’s phone calls in an attempt to prevent future terrorist plots, which evenutally culminated to the government monitoring almost all online activty, which led to censorship of speech and people being arrested based on online activty, violations of the first and fourth amendment. People do end up listening to figures of authority and are willing to sacrifice their rights and liberty in the name of security, which often isn’t guaranteed and if anything, you are less safe when your rights are given up.6

People are motivated to do bad things because they are only interested in themselves and looking for a reward, an authoritative person they see as legitimate commands them to, or they are protecting themselves or another person. The Milgram experiment demonstrates that people will do what authorities tell them to, even if their moral compass tells them otherwise. Button, Button and Ruthless demonstrate how personal gain and greed can lead to people making choices that end up harming not only others, but themselves. Lamb to Slaughter showcases not only vengeance by Mary, but also how she is protecting herself and her unborn child. Good and bad in the real world is often not clear cut with many reasons, decisions, circumstances, and other things involved. Being able to find the reasons people do bad deeds can help get to the root of the problem and prevent them from happening.

Works Cited

Milgram, Stanley. Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. New York: Harper & Row, 1974. Print.

Zimbardo, Philip, Craig Haney, W. Curtis Banks, and David Jaffe. “The Stanford Prison Experiment”

History, Weird, director. The Stanford Prison Experiment Was One of the Most Disturbing Studies Ever. YouTube, 10 July 2020, https://youtu.be/IRR7CwdHxUE. Accessed 28 Nov. 2021.

Dahl, Roald. “Lamb to the Slaughter.” CommonLit, Sept. 1953, https://www.commonlit.org/en/students/student_lessons/9807639.

Téllez, Hernando. “Lather and Nothing Else” CommonLit, 1950, https://www.commonlit.org/en/students/student_lessons/9847730.

DeMille, William. “Ruthless” CommonLit, 1945, https://www.commonlit.org/en/students/student_lessons/9510617.

Matheson, Richard. “Button, Button.” CommonLit, 1953, https://www.commonlit.org/en/students/student_lessons/9582510.

“Public Trust in Government: 1958-2021.” Pew Research Center - U.S. Politics & Policy, Pew Research Center, 17 May 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/05/17/public-trust-in-government-1958-2021/.

Unit 2 Baseline Research Paper

Leonard Park

Mr. Caleb Haraguchi-Combs

ELA Regents

04 December 2021

The Dangers of Climate Alarmism and Its Effects on Legislation and Policy in the U.S

After Greta Thunberg’s infamous speech in 2019 slandering politicians for ineffective action against climate change and how the planet will die in 10 years or less, it magically seemed as if every activist, politician and their dog cared about climate change. Young activists all of a sudden popped up around the world all chanting the same rhetoric of humans destroying the Earth because of industrial capitalism, that are “in the beginning of a mass extinction” while glorifying Greta as a saint. Despite this, many of the best scientists, activists, and politicians say that while climate change is an issue that needs to be addressed, they shouldn’t panic over it and that the world isn’t ending in a decade. Even before Greta, actions like the Green New Deal attempted radical change via strict government regulations like higher prices of fossil fuels and to heavily invest in green technology to avert the climate crisis. Despite their good intentions, this sensationalism around climate change is based on fear mongering and worse case scenarios that are next to impossible, it restricts the conversation about climate change and differing perspectives, and the actions alarmists propose in order to “save the Earth” will only do more harm than good.

The main proposed ideas to help Earth be safe from climate change in 10ish years are to essentially destroy the fossil fuel industry, impose heavy regulations on businesses, increase investments in green energy, mainly in the billions. These feel good, ambitious policies include focusing efforts on renewable energy sources like solar and wind, but not nuclear. Obama, for instance, wanted to reduce American carbon emissions by 32% from their 2005 levels and increase renewable energy creation by 30%(White House 1). The only feasible solution to achieving such a low number would be making a 180 on America’s energy sources, American’s habits like transportation, the food they eat, and a myriad of other activities. The source of the idea that the world will end by 2030 or Earth will suddenly worsen by 2030, a worst case scenario detailed in a UN climate report. However, it said that a 1.5 degrees increase in temperature was to take place between 2030 or 2052, a large range of time given.(Brown 1). The world won’t end in just 10 years or less and that we can take time developing methods that won’t sacrifice the economy or quality of life like building more nuclear plants, tapping into ways to extract carbon and reuse it, more efficient recycling, and so on and so forth. If the deadline is set by 2030, short term shortcuts like using solar and wind, putting a giant carbon cap, or heavily regulating businesses and consumers to the point where it interferes with many daily activities is authoritative and can prove more destructive to the environment than taking calmer, slower methods.This cherry picking of data while ignoring the full picture and complex reality of climate causes lots of false fear, especially on impressionable children to develop about the world ending or them dying because of climate change(Schellenberg 1). A fearful group of people is also much easier to control and not just for climate change, but in politics as a whole, and since absolute power corrupts absolutely, what started as just giving government power to “solve climate change” will spiral out of control and lead to the government passing more and more rules.

Climate alarmism only focuses on one highly specific perspective on climate change and that the Earth is going to die in the next few years, ignoring other complex factors as to why Earth could be warming up like variations in the sun’s power or cooling and warming periods. Journalist John Stossel reported that Micheal Shellenberger, a renowned scientist with a “Hero of the Environment” award by TIME magazine in 2008, was censored on Facebook because he said that we are not in the middle of a sixth mass extinction, which is 50-75% of all species on Earth going extinct.(Stossel 1). Tech giants like Facebook have an unprecedented amount of power over the control of data and only approve of facts they like, so despite Shellenberger’s well earned reputation as a credible scientist and dispersing cold hard facts that even the climate censors agreed with, Facebook still shuts him down, restricting his information from reaching others and giving them a different idea on climate change. Another example is the idea of reducing cold deaths under global warming. Bjorn Lomberg, another well respected scientist and statistician, brings up another point that as the planet warms, cooling deaths are massively reduced (Stossel 2). Lomberg’s point is largely unheard of, let alone mentioned when climate change is brought up and that's because it goes against the alarmist point of view that global warming will only kill people. Just like Shellenberger, he too was censored for going against the narrative. Fact Checkers like the ones hired by Facebook that censored those scientists aren’t just sifting out the false from the true and reducing misinformation, but instead actively preventing the spread of information, leading to an echo chamber of ideas turning climate change activism into a religion.

The proposed actions to stop climate change are short-term solutions that are like putting a bandaid on a broken arm where it does little to nothing to help the situation while ignoring legitimate solutions based on false fears. For instance, nuclear power is something that politicians say is dangerous just because it has the same materials in nuclear bombs, even though the process of creating energy from things like uranium and plutnium is vastly different from how a atomic bomb explodes. This irrational fear of nuclear power resulted in the state of Vermont to shut down a nuclear plant, which led to increased carbon emissions in Vermont(Serreze 1). Nuclear energy has no emissions except for the water vapor released from cooling the plants, which is leagues better than any other greenhouse gas and it's very stable since you don’t need a lot of materials to get a lot of energy. Other power sources like solar and wind are often unstable since the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. To make things worse, Congress is giving hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to renewable technologies, mainly wind and solar power(Storrow 1), but wind makes up only 8.4% of all total energy output while solar makes up around 2.3% of all energy output. Meanwhile, nuclear is providing 19.7% of all energy despite having lower funding(eia 1). Wind and solar shouldn’t be the prime focus as many alarmists make them out to be because in order to extract the minerals needed for them, you need not only powerful machines that run on fossil fuels, but deal with toxic minerals. Plus, you need batteries in case there isn’t sunlight or wind, which are a lousy way to energy since those also are made of rare minerals that are toxic and also need heavy duty machines running on fossil fuels. Had those billions of dollars been at least partially invested into nuclear or other options like geothermal energy, not only can more nuclear plants be built and allow cleaner energy that alarmists want, but they could also be innovated on and find new discoveries in. Nuclear is already proven highly and by ignoring it, alarmists are being climate hypocrites that end up not helping the environment at all.

Some climate change alarmists say that man-made activities and free market industrial capitalism are reasons that CO2 emissions are rising and that the government is the only way to prevent a climate catastrophe. For instance, it was Theordore Roosevelt who had hundreds of thousands of acres of land for forests in order to preserve them. The EPA under Richard Nixon was created with the sole purpose of protecting the environment and helped create regulations and laws to protect the environment. The industrial revolution led to a massive spike in carbon dioxide emissions, which contributed to global warming. While it is true that the Industrial Revolution was the main reason carbon dioxide levels spiked up, corporations and the free market capitalism that is the main scapegoat for global warming can also be solutions to climate change. For instance, logging and paper companies are the ones who constantly replenish and take care of forests so that they have enough stock. Honey bee farmers are responsible for making sure bees are healthy and helping grow their population. Plus, modern storage technology can hold vast amounts of information and hundreds of millions of pages of paper, helping save trees from being cut down. Businesses help develop new products and innovations that can reduce the amount of natural resources used and can help preserve environments, countering the stereotypical evil corporation that spreads pollution everywhere.

In summary, climate alarmism has become its own cult or religion where people worship the idea that we need big government to step in and pass laws to “save and protect the environment”. Climate alarmism has caused prominent scientific minds to be shut down just because they brought differing perspectives to the table, its proposed policies are temporary fixes that will accomplish little to nothing or will harm the environment further, and are reinforcing panic and fear into a new generation who will only join and continue such a movement. If the world is to prevent climate change and its so-called catastrophic events, panic should not be the first thing they think of. As FDR said, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” A panicked generation of people who lead a sham of a crusade will only help the interests of politicians and the powerful who want this message in order to gain power.

Works Cited

Obama, B. O. (2015, December 12). CLIMATE CHANGE AND PRESIDENT OBAMA’S ACTION PLAN. The White House. Retrieved December 13, 2021, from https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/president-obama-climate-action-plan

Brown, A. (2021, April 30). 12 Years to Disaster? How Climate Activists Distort the Evidence. Reason.Com. Retrieved December 13, 2021, from https://reason.com/video/2021/04/30/12-years-to-disaster-how-climate-activists-distort-the-evidence/

Shellenberger, M. (2019, December 6). Why Climate Alarmism Hurts Us All. Forbes. Retrieved December 13, 2021, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/12/04/why-climate-alarmism-hurts-us-all/

Stossel, J. [ John Stossel]. (2021, November 30). Fact-BLOCKERS [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCOvFLlsjI4&feature=youtu.be

Mary C. Serreze, Special to The Republican. (2017, February 18). Closure of Vermont Yankee nuclear plant boosted greenhouse gas emissions in New England. Masslive. Retrieved December 13, 2021, from https://www.masslive.com/news/2017/02/report_closure_of_vermont_yank.html

Storrow, B. (2021, December 7). Congress eyes $235B in clean energy subsidies. Here they are. E&E News. Retrieved December 13, 2021, from https://www.eenews.net/articles/congress-eyes-235b-in-clean-energy-subsidies-here-they-are/

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). (2021, November 2). U.S Energy Information Administration. Retrieved December 13, 2021, from https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

Unit 2 Summative Assessment: Research Paper

Leonard Park

Caleb Haraguchi Combs

ELA Regents

06 February 2022

The Failure of the War on Drugs

When Richard Nixon started the War on Drugs in 1971, drugs were seen as dangerous substances, especially for young kids, and something that was a social rot (Vox, 2016). Future presidents like Ronald Reagan took this concept further with the DARE Program and the “Just Say No” campaign. Many proponents of the War on Drugs do rightfully point out how drug usage can destroy one’s health and social life. That being said, these attempts to stigmatize drugs haven’t done much for public health, but have, instead, harmed it. The War on Drugs is a massive failure since drug usage has increased, it led to an increase in incarcerations, and it is expensive to maintain.

When a substance is made illegal and has high demand, regardless of its health effects, people are gonna get it one way or another. Since people can’t get it from legal sources, they will turn to black market dealers. According to the addiction center, “Whole numbers of drug abuse have generally decreased between then and now, recent research has shown rises in drug abuse. The prevalence of the Opioid Epidemic has caused patients seeking care for chronic pain and ailments to become addicted to prescription Opioids. When their supply of medications ends, or they crave stronger chemicals, some seek illicit alternatives like Heroin or Fentanyl. In some cases, some seeking Heroin gets bad batches that can be laced with Fentanyl without their knowledge, creating a more intense addiction and increasing their risk for overdose” (Murray). The fundamental problem of America’s drug crisis is not where the drugs are coming from, but people’s desire for said drugs. Drug addicts, the main customers for drug traffickers, don’t care about the price so long as they get their drugs. To address the number of drugs coming in, you have to focus on the people using drugs and not just tell kids to not do drugs. A problem with getting drugs from the black market is that drugs can’t be regulated, meaning that anybody, even teenagers, can get their hands on these drugs. For instance, it's so easy to get drugs that “Teenagers get marijuana more easily than beer because drug dealers don't ask for proof of age” (McNamara and Downing, 2010). When something is made legal, you can control and regulate it, making it much easier to set prices, put taxes, put on an age limit, etc. However, if the said substance is made illegal, you don’t have such control and regulations, leading to the creation of a black market that criminals willingly fulfill. Prohibition, for example, saw many criminals like Al Capone bootlegging alcohol, often disregarding the law to supply people with alcohol. With alcohol’s illegal nature, that meant that laws like age restrictions were gone and the government couldn’t receive tax revenue on it. The banning of substances in the false hopes to stop their usage or at least decrease them has rarely happened because of human nature.

The focus on putting people with drugs in prisons has led to a massive expansion in the U.S prison system. The official estimate for the prison system budget is “The U.S. spends $81 billion a year on mass incarceration, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and that figure might be an underestimate. In 2017, the Prison Policy Initiative estimated the actual cost on state and federal governments and impacted families is roughly $182 billion”(Kuhn, par.1). America’s total population only makes up 4% of the world population, yet it makes up 25% of all imprisoned people in the world. Just trying to keep them alive and provide basic needs is already gonna cost millions of dollars, so setting up all the prison facilities, the guards, and a police force to make sure they don’t escape and catch these “criminals” is gonna strain the economy. It's also no secret that since 1972, which was when the War on Drugs was started, the number of people in custody has spiked up from less than 10,000 in 1970 to over 50,000 by 1990.

The War on Drugs has exponentially blown up in scale, with multiple federal agencies, campaigns, and programs along with hundreds of thousands of agents all working to hopelessly decrease the drug supply. For example, the DARE Program, an anti-drug program started by Ronald Reagan, “costs taxpayers some $600 million a year” (PBS, par.1). However, DARE was more of a scare program that tremendously exaggerated the threat of drugs and scared kids out of drug users instead of actually informing kids and adults about the detrimental effects of drugs, treatments to help cope with drug usage, or genuine ways to prevent kids from taking drugs without scaring them. With this many agencies and programs comes a plethora of regulations surrounding usage. In the state of New York for instance, under Title: Section 1004.1 under chapter 13 of Medical Use of Marijuana where “No practitioner shall be authorized to issue a patient certification as set forth in section 1004.2 unless the practitioner:

(1) is qualified to treat patients with one or more of the serious conditions set forth in subdivision 1004.2(a)(8) of this Part;

(2) is licensed, in good standing as a physician and practicing medicine, as defined in article 131 of the Education Law, in New York State, or is certified, in good standing as a nurse practitioner and practicing, as defined in article 139 of the Education Law, in New York State, or is licensed, in good standing as a physician assistant and practicing in New York State, as defined in article 131-B of the Education Law, under the supervision of a physician registered under this Part;”. If someone wants to register as a practitioner that can give people marijuana, they need to prove they have a certificate from a commissioner after taking multiple courses and following a bunch of other rules. This heavy amount of regulation artificially limits how many people want to be practitioners and encourages people to resort to black-market sources.

Some people have been seriously affected by drug addiction, crime related to drug trafficking, or have relatives, friends, or other close people affected by drugs, so, naturally, they support the War on Drugs and its efforts to outlaw drugs. For instance, drug trafficking in Mexico, a major source of drugs like cocaine and marijuana, has led to “the number of drug-related homicides in Mexico rose to 33,341, a 15 percent increase from the previous year—and a record high. Moreover, Mexican cartels killed at least 130 candidates and politicians in the lead-up to Mexico’s 2018 presidential elections”(Council on Foreign Affairs). The black market for drugs is highly lucrative and demand for it is high, so organized crime is going to follow. However, what led to the moving of drugs to Mexico and thus making it a center of crime was the War on Drugs emphasis on criminalization instead of efforts to reeducate the population and reduce demand for drugs. The U.S fought a supply-side war, which in layman's terms means that they tried to reduce the number of drugs. This however was done through military force, burning down the plants that created the drugs and destroying them. However, the demand for the drugs is still there, so “To minimize the risk of detection per amount of narcotic supplied, suppliers make drugs as small and light as possible. This means higher potency. Economist Mark Thornton has found that increased federal expenditures on interdiction explain 93 percent of the increase in marijuana’s potency”(Powell). Given how harmful drugs like opium, heroin, and fentanyl can be, more potent drugs are only going to worsen the situation for victims. With the concentration of drugs increasing, there would be more deaths and illnesses from the drugs and more crime, which reinforces the supply of these drugs. Once again, the same case happened in Prohibition. During the 1920s and ’30s, crime rose exponentially to cater to the demand for alcohol. When alcohol got legalized under the 21st amendment, crime dropped significantly as legal businesses were able to keep up with the demand.

In short, the War on Drugs has been nothing more than a failure that has led to drug usage skyrocketing, a massive increase in the U.S prison system, and it comprising a significant portion of the government budget. While drug use is a bad thing and must be stopped, the vast majority of individuals using them shouldn’t be receiving punishments that often set the stage for them to continue doing bad deeds in their life. When given therapy or rehabilitation, drug users are getting the message that they are getting genuine care and are willing to listen to instructions and help that does end up getting them off drugs. The vast majority of soldiers in Vietnam were drug addicts on things like cocaine and heroin, yet when they came back home to their family and friends, they were able to have social bonds and connections that helped them get over drug usage, not a giant government forcing them to.

Works Cited

Lopez, German. “Was Nixon's War on Drugs a Racially Motivated Crusade? It's a Bit More Complicated.” Vox, Vox, 29 Mar. 2016, www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs.

Murray, Krystina. “US Drug Use Peaks After 50 Year War On Drugs” Addiction Center, 7 July. 2021, www.addictioncenter.com/news/2021/07/drug-use-peaks-after-50-year-war-on-drugs.

McNamara, Joseph, and Stephen Downing. "'Prohibition is a disaster'." USA Today, 20 Oct. 2010, p. 08A. Gale In Context: Middle School, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A239973228/MSIC?u=nysl_me_jhs118ww&sid=bookmark-MSIC&xid=48593bb1. Accessed 27 Dec. 2021.

PBS. “D.a.r.e. - Truth and D.a.r.e | Busted - America’s War On Marijuana | FRONTLINE | PBS.” PBS, 5 Mar. 1998, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/dare/truth.html.

Kuhn, Casey. “The U.S. Spends Billions to Lock People up, but Very Little to Help Them Once They’re Released.” PBS NewsHour, PBS, 8 Apr. 2021, www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/the-u-s-spends-billions-to-lock-people-up-but-very-little-to-help-them-once-theyre-released#:%7E:text=The%20U.S.%20spends%20%2481%20billion,families%20is%20roughly%20%24182%20billion.

Powell, Benjamin. “The Economics Behind the U.S. Government’s Unwinnable War on Drugs.” Econlib, 25 June 2018, www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2013/Powelldrugs.html.

Statista. “The Evolution Of America’s Federal Prison Population.” Statista Infographics, 25 Feb. 2021, www.statista.com/chart/24289/federal-inmates-in-custody.

“Title: Section 1004.1 - Practitioner Registration | New York Codes, Rules and Regulations.” New York Codes, Rules and Regulations, New York State, 27 Dec. 2018, regs.health.ny.gov/content/section-10041-practitioner-registration.

Council on Foreign Affairs. “Criminal Violence in Mexico.” Global Conflict Tracker, 4 Feb. 2022, www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/criminal-violence-mexico.

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