PC Chapters 11-15

Chapter 11

I couldn’t agree more with the beginning of this chapter. The authors blatantly state that we cannot obtain the truth from any media sources. Americans have been faced with the decline of wages over the last thirty five years. I found out that 50 million or more Americans lack healthcare that results in the deaths of 18,000 people per year. If more Americans actually heard this news the way they hear about Britney Spears and her family daily, things may actually change. I really loved how this PC chapter quoted Postman, “As a result the US has become the best entertained and least informed society in the world.” Which couldn’t be less true. Without reading this chapter, I probably would have never been informed about the Truth Emergency Movement.

My question is…Why aren’t Americans more informed about these media activist through other forms of media?

Chapter 12

Reading this chapter brought back feelings about my own personal family experience with Veteran’s Healthcare. My grandfather served over 30 years in the US Navy. The last few years of his life he was deemed 100% disabled by the Veteran’s Hospital and he needed constant care by professionals. Unfortunately my grandma wasn’t able to fulfill his medical needs and she put him in a Veteran’s Hospital in Central Jersey to get the attention he needed. She would visit him everyday and make sure he was being cared for properly and was comfortable. I can remember visiting him at the VA, it was very dirty, carelessly run, and many vets there had no one like my grandma to speak up for them. It was very hard to see the poor conditions these veterans were living in. To think that these people served a good portion of their lives for our country and the way we repay them is with awful living conditions and medical services.

My question is…Why doesn’t our country give veterans the rights and services that they deserve?

Chapter 13

After reading chapter 12, thinking about the lack of veteran’s healthcare, no wonder the government has to spend so much money on recruiting. So many people are 1, afraid to go into the service at a time of war, and 2, people have seen the lack of government aid that their grandparents or great grandparents receive. Just in 2003, $4 billion was used just for recruitment. A great deal of this money is used on recruiting children in high schools. These recruiters know how to appeal to adolescents because of the exposure of violent video games and images; recruiters are able to capture them with false pretenses.

My question is…Is it really appropriate for military recruiters to promote enlisting in any armed services at such a young age? I’m 21 years old, graduating college, and I still don’t know what I want to. How can an 18 year old know if they really want to serve time for their country?

Chapter 14

9/11 will be a day in our lives that will always remember where we were when it happened. An investigation of the events should have been conducted right after the towers went down. 9/11 has certainly changed everything. The past eight years I feel like the media has just filled us all up with ideas and facts that are exactly true. As Americans we should be told everything so it’s black and white. However, the media has presented most of this material in a very gray way. After 9/11, I can remember President Bush talking on TV, saying that our nation and world has just been split into two sides, good and evil. Once Bush said that, most people I knew claimed to good because they didn’t want to be seen as evil.

My question is…It’s been eight years since this tragic event, why haven’t we be informed what really happened? I feel as though the government should at least tell the families who lost someone that day what happened.

Chapter 15

This chapter outlined more questions in my head about our government and how our system works. Just because we have all of this power doesn’t mean we should only use it for our advantage. There are plenty of countries out there that need extra help that we could give to them. If our country was able to help some of these countries, some of these problems like the deforestation of the rainforest or problems with our neighbors in Mexico and Canada.

My question is … Why does our country feel as though they have the right to just jump into any country and do whatever?