PROTOCOL 3.31.11

AH Sorry for the late post.... Busy day left me with a forgetful mind I guess!

Before class the difficultation group from tuesday wrote up the diagram from tuesdays class to refresh our memories of what we talked about.

Ben rushes in a little after 11 15, and apologizes for the little bit of a late start. He mentions that all the copy machines were taken so he'd have to run out later to get copies. In his normal speedy manner, he rushes on to the next topic of discussion. He brought two of Flynn's other novels to class and wanted us to read the inscription on one book that was written by Flynn himself, to Ben. It read; Ben, keep making history -Vince Flynn. And he wanted us to read the first page from the other book because "it is really interesting." Before he passed them around he made sure to mention Vince's picture on the back of the book.. very BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU type.

Ben starts taking attendance and notices Shukri is missing and also Hali, who had promised him that she would be there today. He had run into her at the sit-in protest thing she is doing and has been missing class because of it. As Ben continued with attendance, he had us discuss what the protest was and try to put everything together from the little bits and pieces of info people have picked up on the last couple of days. We knew it was at the Social Sciences building and had something to do with being upset over the budget cuts. But after that our discussion turned more gossip-y and people started to speculate about the protesters they saw -- only three of them, with the same sign, looked bored/dispassionate -- Someone said that they looked weird and homeless... ouch? We all basically came to the conclusion that they are ineffective. Ben wanted us to theorize about this and put it in terms of what we have been learning. Emily said that they lack the charismatic authority. Marika mentions that they aren't doing anything drastic, like laying in the road -- makes it hard for people to care about your cause if you don't even look like you care... Need a better variety of signs - not so uniform. Ben agrees with Emily and also wonders about lack of world spirit and brings us back to Howard Beale. Ben said it is utterly unimportant if the world spirit exists but you have to make people believe its on your side to get people to rally around you and your cause. Ways to do this would be by laying in the road - like Marika mentioned or by getting media coverage. Hegel and Weber's idea meet at this point in our discussion - Ben prosed the question again, How can we theorize this? This led to another fast ramble by Ben (may have missed a few parts of it) We don't really understand the aim of this protest... there is a history of students staying in buildings like during the Vietnam War - Students got campuses temporarily shut down by there anti-war rallies. And then Ben mentions how we get fake impressions of the past and he gave us a new keyword- nostalgia which is used to have glorios radical protests. Ben mentions that textbooks take the people out of the events and strip the story down to its core. Ben then turns back to a discussion he had with Hali when she asked if class could be moved to the social sciences building - But Ben told her no, because when presented with the choice he had to pick a side and when it comes down to it, he doesn't really agree with the protest and doesn't think this is a state of exception. Marika wonders why they are doing it at that building instead of a bigger building like Coffman - they would get a lot more foot traffic and share their concerns with more people but Ben answered by saying it is easier for them to take over the smaller building - not as important and won't cause as much of a problem for them since they are staying overnight there due to an agreement they came to with the police. Then Ben goes to his computer and looks up the protest blog so we can see their demands and Marika comments that they seem to be asking a lot. Ben says the way they are going about this is bad. They're strategy sucks and they don't seem to be very well organized. I argued that throughout the whole discussion about this protest and hearing what they're doing and why and what they're demanding I keep just wanting to say "so what?" I really don't think they will have any luck at getting what they want by staying overnight in a building for a while and educating people about the problems they have with the cuts. I think they are going to have a very hard time getting people to give a shit about what they're trying to do and I think they are much better ways to go about getting things done. This just seems childish to me. Ben thinks that Hali would defend saying their purpose is just to educate everyone about what's going on. Sophie then mentions how she thinks its interesting that we unwilling we are to accept what they are saying at face value just because they're students and that they have to prove themselves. Whereas if the President of the University said something - we would take it at face value. Ben says that this is about bureaucratic authority. Mentions how boring Bruininks is as a person, and that he sucks at speaking but when he is behind a podium, we listen. Same goes for when Bush was President - no explanation needed. Sophie said that even at her old school where everyone knew everyone, protesters would get a lot of backlash just because the President of the school didn't agree with the protests.

Ben then shows us some articles. One is about how Bachmann disagrees with what Obama is doing in Libya. She doesn't think we are in a state of exception, while Obama seems to believe we are and rushed in. Ben says this is a reality based community where we often disagree on what is fact - especially to do with if we are in a state of exception or not. Marika mentions that this Gadhafi stuff isn't new, her dad is from chicago and says something about a drug trade that was run by Gadhafi through Chicago so why is this stuff coming into light now? Is Obama really just upset because of his relation to Chicago? Ben thinks this is really interesting and mentions that the possible exoteric could be the slaughtering of the people while the esoteric for going into Libya has more to do with his personal issues he has made because of his relation to Chicago. People speculated about Bush's reasons to go into Iraq as well - was it about 9/11 or about Saddam's attempt to kill his father?

Ben's other article he showed us was about some state parks might be shut down because of the budget not having enough in it to fund them. Republicans and tea partiers are arguing for this and that we are in a state of exception with the budget crisis. But Paul Krugman, a brilliant economist says that this is just a tactic. Ben hopes that we will start to see exceptions everywhere.

Then we kind of switched gears - Ben is mad that some of us missed the part of the posting assignment about the comment character - I tried to provide some insight, saying it was in an easy place to miss, but Ben wasn't having it. He then asked if any of us had any questions about our external writing #3. Someone asked for some ideas, and Ben said something to do with the WTF poster we made in class - which pretty much relates to everything we have done so far. Marika asked if she can use personal interviews for her sources instead of book sources and Ben said yes and wanted her to talk to him outside of class to give her some pointers on how to go about doing that. And then Jordan asked if our topic has to be something that's currently happening and Ben said no.

Ben then brings up the book Dark Alliance by Gary Webb and talks about things he heard from homeless people in Chicago and after checking their sources he found out that they were factual. Interesting how he had to go look up the sources while if someone like the President told him something he probably wouldn't question it in the same way.

Then the difficultation resumed from Tuesday, we took out our reactions from the two skits we were in/watched. Marika said it was funny, one was nonchalant while the other was serious. Then we moved on to a discussion about the characters. Someone brought up how at first they thought that Adams was the good guy and Rapp was bad and that they kind of had to flip flop their mindset a little to get into the book. I mentioned that when Dr. Lewis diagnosed him it helped me with the flip because his mindset made more sense to me after the diagnosis. Emily and Kate disagreed, that they knew right away the Rapp was the good guy. Sophie mentions how that without Rapp there isn't really a hero in the book, so there isn't much room for people who don't agree with Rapp as a hero. Brittany said that everyone is breaking the law, it's just about deciding who you think is breaking the law for the right reasons. In the book, everyone that disagrees with Rapp's ways ends up doing something worse. I brought up the character dynamic of Nash. I thought his purpose of being unsure was to give those readers who were unsure, a character they could relate to. Liz brought up that the characters were all represented in a very binary way, not very complex, in both groups of characters there is a thesis/antithesis type of relationship. But i also mentioned again the importance of the third character, like Ahmed to the story... kind of represents the common ground or gray area between the two strong black and white characters. With our discussion we kind of already answered the difficultators next question - let the agent do what they have to do? For them, always in the state of exception (like I mentioned in my blog) and Ben thought it was interesting that in the books, everything ends up the way it should. They don't capture and torture someone who turns out to be innocent.

Now Ben had us split up into groups he made, Friend, Enemy, Dialectics/World Spirit, Truth Rhetoric and Empathy. We were suppose to take 5 minutes and see what we could come up with. I was in a group with Ahmed, Sophie, Shukri and Tom. We primarily discussed the Nash Family. I brought up how I thought it brought a great dynamic to the book. They are the typical American dream family... great 4 kids, still happy marriage, father is the authority figure... And we struggled a bit after that so Ben helped us. He wanted us to see that the family was the grand prize in the end. After the five minutes we discussed. Enemy went first, and they talked about the morale issue with Adams and how Karim was diagnosed exactly the same as Adams, Extremely narcissistic. They also mention how Flynn really utilizes the whole story and how the reader figures out the diagnosis before the doctor validates it. As a side note Brittany mentioned that Jared Lee Laughner is under medical review and she said she would let us know if she finds out more. Then my group discussed what we learned and then we went to the Hegel group. They spent the time trying to figure out Rapp's aim - is is currently fulfilling it or did he fall off? Ben brings up that maybe he lost it when his chance at a family was destroyed. They also talked about how the FBI protects the terrorists cuz they have rights and the state of emergency is not the exception but the rule. Next the Rhetoric group talked, they spent most of their time on the first quote that was given to them in the handout, "the conversion of a limousine liberal who gets mugged" (316) they mainly discussed how Lonsdale converted after she actually had to live through something terrible, and also a lot of her colleagues were gunned down.

Class was over by a few minutes, and Ben mentions how he is sad we didn't have a chance to discuss the relation in this book about abortion and terrorism. And he also mentioned that the blog post would be up by the end of the day and to have a good weekend!

By the way everyone, if you get the chance to -- GO SEE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU. Super interesting and really relates to what we have been discussing. Talks a lot about free will and how the adjustment bureau needs to step in (LIKE THEIR OWN DEFINITION OF THE STATE OF EXCEPTION) and adjust people back so they stick to their "plan." Great movie, plus great eye candy with Matt Damon being the lead. ENJOY!