Watch the following: Documentary – The Fog of War: Directed by Errol Morris (onc

Watch the following:
Documentary – The Fog of War: Directed by Errol Morris (once of the greatest documentarians of all time), scored by Philip Glass (one of the greatest modern composers), and centered entirely on Robert McNamara, a former Secretary of Defense who is considered the architect of the Vietnam War, and who has many insights on decades of American foreign policy.
The Fog of War – Part 1 – Dailymotion
The Fog of War – Part 2 – Dailymotion
Upon engaging with the materials, you will then write a reflection based on your experience. This reflection will constitute roughly two paragraphs (around 8-10 sentences).
Some ideas for what you might write about in your reflection; answer only the questions that you think are most interesting/relevant:
What did you learn from the materials this week? Did you encounter something new, or was your previous belief about something changed?
How do the different materials you encountered this week relate to one another? Think of interesting ways to draw connections between whatever you read, watched, and/or interacted with.
How do these materials relate to something talked about in this week’s lectures?
Do the materials relate to your own personal life in some way? How so?
Do you agree or disagree with the materials presented? Why or why not? Did the creators miss something, or get something wrong?
Some materials will be primarily evidence-based, but others may involve reading/watching people relate their personal experiences on some political topic. Were you emotionally affected by any of the materials in the latter case?
Did any of the materials help you to gain some greater insight into what you believe or care about?
Assignments will be graded out of 16 points, based on the following rubric:
16 Points – Exemplary (reserved for particularly thoughtful, lengthy, nuanced, and/or well-sourced submissions)
14-15 Points – Satisfactory in length/quality, but does not stand out (the expected median grade for a submission)
10 Points – Unsatisfactory (does not reflect meaningful effort – for work that is too short or shallow in quality)
0 Points – Submission is irrelevant, far too short, contains inappropriate/hostile language.
Tips for doing well on these assignments:
Make sure your response reflects evidence of having read/watch/interacted with all the required materials! For instance, if you watched a movie and took a personality test, your response should thoughtfully discuss BOTH these materials at length.
Do not merely summarize the material – we want to know what you think about it. See above for suggested ways of writing your response.
Do not “pretend” to have watched/read the material! If we get the sense that you are not doing the work, this will be reflected in your grade.
You can almost certainly improve your grade by writing at greater length, and/or writing more thoughtfully.
Sample Exemplar Assignment:
The following submission would earn full credit:
Chosen Materials: John Adams HBO Miniseries Episodes 1 and 2; Excerpt from “How Democratic is the Constitution?” by Dahl
Reflection: I wasn’t sure what to expect going in, but I found the Adams miniseries really interesting and I think I might want to watch the rest of it. I didn’t know much about John Adams, and history classes can sometimes make the presidents seem boring and lifeless, but Adams had so much personality and was played so well by Paul Giamatti. One thing I found surprising was how much disagreement and animosity there was among the founding fathers, who are often presented as mostly just working together to solve problems. The argument between Jefferson and Adams was a good example of this – even though they were in the same administration, they wanted such different things, and their competing ideas related right back to what we talked about in class regarding the different plans put forth at the Constitutional Convention. I think if I had been in the room during that argument, I probably would have agreed with Jefferson, as it would have been too dangerous to give the federal government too much unchecked power, especially if the president held a lot of that power.
I also thought the Dahl excerpt was really interesting, as the Constitution wasn’t presented in a critical way in my high school classes. I agree that there were a lot of problems left in the Constitution – not just the decision to not address slavery more, but the lack of guaranteed voting rights for so many groups in society, and also the design of the electoral college. That said, I disagree with Dahl that the Supreme Court was designed in an unfair way, as the law is really complicated and that justifies that area of politics being less democratic.
Watch the following:
Short Video – This video does an excellent job capturing both our current state of polarization, as well as demonstrating one technique for surveying opinions – focus groups. While focus groups are non-representative, their open-ended and group-based nature reveals behaviors and attitudes that may otherwise not show up in survey results. This focus group, held just weeks after the storming of the Capitol, is a good example of this method, and a terrifying look into the state of our politics.
Frank Luntz’ 2021 Inauguration Focus Group
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