Country music critics and scholars have noticed an apparent contradiction between the practical identity of country music with the image of the male country singer as the 'rhinestone cowboy'. In this case, the problem is one of how we can make sense of the rural, working-class, ruggedly masculinity persona common to the genre with its elaborately embroidered, brightly colored, and highly embellished male fashion. The intractability of this problem has led some to argue that the simplest solution is to (...) just deny the legitimacy of country music authenticity discourse altogether. That is, all the genre’s talk of the rural working class is inauthentic and should be discarded. Here, I argue that by accounting for country music authenticity in terms of the genre being a dual character concept, we can fully address the skeptic's worries. Beyond merely being compatible with the Nudie suit however, this notion of authenticity is also our best way of understanding the aesthetic value of the rhinestone cowboy image at all. The resulting picture, in which the suit primarily serves as an epistemic signifier of one’s standing in the country music community, allows for the Nudie suit to function as a class, and sometimes queer, commentary on mainstream culture. (shrink)

Westworld is built on pretense. Philosophers have been interested in pretense and deception. Deception is another sort of pretense. This chapter answers whether it is morally permissible to deceive artificial intelligences just so that humans can play Cowboys and Indians. The delicate equilibrium of Westworld begins to fall apart as some of the hosts figure out the truth about themselves and their world. But that just injects a new level of pretense into the story. In order to hide their awakening (...) from the staff, these enlightened hosts have to pretend that they still believe that they are human. Guests at the theme park, such as William and Logan, typically pretend to be cowboys. In order to rule out real cowboys, one needs to adopt an additional constraint in the definition of pretending. It clearly needs to have something to do with the mental state of the individual who is doing the pretending. (shrink)

In the past few decades, a multi-billion-dollar “therapeutic boarding school” industry has emerged for America’s troubled upper-class youth. This article examines the therapeutic models prominent in these programs and the ways they conflict with dominant notions of masculinity. Using in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork inside a Western therapeutic boarding school, I show how privileged young men navigate this masculinity dilemma by constructing hybrid masculinities that incorporate qualities associated with femininities and subordinate masculinities. However, these qualities are incorporated strategically and in (...) ways that reproduce and obscure privileges associated with students’ positions as young, upper-class, white men. Using hybrid masculine styles that include humility, commitment to service, and open emotional expression, students re-assert dominant positions as leaders and as “better” men in contrast to various others. (shrink)

Peter French examines the world of the western, one in which death is annihilation, the culmination of life, and there is nothing else. In that world he finds alternatives to Judeo-Christian traditions that dominate our ethical theories, alternatives that also attack the views of the most prominent ethicists of the past three centuries.

ABSTRACT Even as the division between professional scientists and laypeople became sharper by the end of the nineteenth century, the collaboration of local people remained important in scientific fieldwork, especially in sciences such as vertebrate paleontology that required long‐term extractive access to research sites. In the North American West, the competition between museums and universities for the best fossil quarry sites involved negotiations with locals. The conflict over differing conceptions of the field site is vividly demonstrated through an examination of (...) one site on the High Plains of western Nebraska in the early twentieth century. This case offers a rare opportunity to see not only how professionals regarded such sites but also how the resident ranching family, the Cooks, attempted to exercise leverage over the scientific fieldwork that took place there. While the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh became mired in protracted conflict with the Cooks over discovery claims and the ongoing control of the site, the University of Nebraska and the American Museum of New York developed more harmonious relations with the site's resident ranching family. (shrink)

Geographical features and cultural traits influence the character of big-mountain tourism in Alaska. This research considers the intersectionality of wilderness and frontier concepts on tourism culture, examines guides’ and clients’ motivations for participation, and relates these influences to the larger phenomena of tourism generally and nature tourism specifically. The findings show that Alaska’s big-mountain tourism is globalized in its political and economic scope. Guides imagine themselves as pioneers on a last frontier of mountain pursuits, notions that relate well to images (...) depicted of the region in literature and promoted by the tourism industry. Clients, on the other hand, come to Alaska because of its exceptional geography and unique mountain sporting culture, but are not as enamored with the mythos of the frontier. (shrink)

The article investigates the political cartoon construction of two major `players' on the contemporary political stage, and the semio-linguistic and visual rhetorical tools used to achieve this construction, through an analysis of semiotic-discursive aspects of a small corpus of political cartoons in English and Arabic, all about the two `players' — George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden — in the aftermath of 9/11 and within the ongoing `war on terror', followed by a more detailed analysis of two political cartoon (...) texts from the corpus — one in Arabic about Bush and the other in English about bin Laden. A rationale for the combination of semiotics and critical discourse analysis and a discussion of the nature and functions of political cartoon are provided. These are followed by a review of the relevant literature with a focus on political cartoons. The analysis, drawing upon the `dispositive' model and the incongruity theory of humor, addresses the verbal and visual aspects of the cartoons, instances of blending, incongruity and visual metaphors therein. Some major notions in CDA, for example Van Dijk's ideological square and Chilton's legitimation and proximization, are also utilized in examining the sample cartoons. The detailed analysis of the two cartoons elaborates on the salient features and generic aspects of the sample, specifically on incongruity, blending and visual metaphor, toward an understanding of the messages of the cartoons, the tools used to convey these messages and how they contribute to the ongoing war of ideological misrepresentation. (shrink)

Cowboy Bebop, a popular anime series set in the year 2071 onboard the spaceship Bebop, chronicles the bohemian adventures of a group of bounty hunters. This paper presents how the imaginary characters and their voices are conventionalized to fit hegemonic norms. The social semiotic of desire depicted in Cowboy Bebop caters to a general heterosexual market in which hero and babe characters represent the anime archetypes of heterosexual normativity. Scripted speech used in the anime functions as a role (...) language which indexes common ideological attributes associated with a character’s demeanor. This study focuses on how ideas, including heterosexual normativity and culture-specific practices, are reproduced in media texts in order to negotiate the intertextual distances that link the characters and audience. (shrink)

Agricultural development is an activity with many ethical problems. Nowhere are these problems more evident than in tropical forest regions, like the Amazon. This paper examines ethical issues associated with a particularly controversial activity in the region: pastures research. The paper discusses three general critiques of Amazonian agricultural development: ecological, social equity and cultural survival. A particular pastures research project is then examined. The paper concludes that pastures research can be an ethically sound activity when carried out in a manner (...) that is sensitive to the social, cultural, and ecological context. The paper concludes that ethical decisions regarding agricultural research are context sensitive. A better appreciation of potential ethical dilemmas can be obtained by seeking participation by a variety of social actors in designing and carrying out agricultural research. (shrink)

This essay is my review of Olaf Gersemann’s book, Cowboy Capitalism: European Myths, American Reality. Gersemann was a reporter for Germany’s largest business weekly magazine, and he came to America to write an expose of the weakness of the American economy. What he found instead—and argued in detail—is that the American economy was robust, for better off than commonly believed in Europe. I finish the review by pointing out some things he overlooked, such as the fact that the U.S. (...) has paid and continues to pay disproportionately more for joint American/European defense, and that no European nation has allowed in the vast number of poor immigrants that America has. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 7, Page 30-31, July 2011.

The words we call slurs are just plain vanilla descriptions like ‘cowboy’ and ‘coat hanger’. They don't semantically convey any disparagement of their referents, whether as content, conventional implicature, presupposition, “coloring” or mode of presentation. What distinguishes 'kraut' and 'German' is metadata rather than meaning: the former is the conventional description for Germans among Germanophobes when they are speaking in that capacity, in the same way 'mad' is the conventional expression that some teenagers use as an intensifier when they’re (...) emphasizing that social identity. That is, racists don’t use slurs because they’re derogatory; slurs are derogatory because they’re the words that racists use. To use a slur is to exploit the Maxim of Manner (or Levinson’s M-Principle) to signal one’s affiliation with a group that has a disparaging attitude towards the slur’s referent. This account is sufficient to explain all the familiar properties of slurs, such as their speaker orientation and “nondetachability,” with no need of additional linguistic mechanisms. It also explains some features of slurs that are rarely if ever explored; for example the variation in tone and strength among the different slurs for a particular group, the existence of words we count as slurs, such as 'redskin', which almost all of their users consider to be respectful, and the curious absence in Standard English of any commonly used slurs—by which I mean words used to express a negative attitude toward an entire group—for Muslims and women. (shrink)

The alliance in the United States today between cowboy capitalism and evangelical Christianity cannot be understood sufficiently through the categories of efficient causality or ideological analysis. The constituencies fold similar spiritual dispositions into somewhat different ideologies and creeds. Each party then amplifies these dispositions in the other through the media politics of resonance. The ethos infusing the resonance machine is expressed without being articulated. The inability to grasp this political economy separate from the spiritualities infusing it may carry implications (...) for the form a successful countermovement could assume. (shrink)

Recently, due in part to the research of Angela Duckworth, the cultivation of dispositions in education, grit in particular, has gained the attention of educational policymakers and the educational research community. While much of the research has focused on how to detect grit, there has been little discussion regarding how grit came to be valued as a noncognitive disposition and what its recent prominence might tell us about current social conditions. In this essay, Ariana Gonzalez Stokas attempts to illuminate grit (...) as a concept that has undergone a number of conceptual transformations in American culture. She seeks to show how grit developed as a way to justify social and economic inequality and how this history is bound up in its conceptual structure. Through conducting a genealogical excavation, Stokas reveals the relationship of grit to a cluster of cultural events that occurred at the turn of the twentieth century in the confluence of boxing, cowboys, and Theodore Roosevelt, and aims to illuminate how grit has served as a tool for convincing society that achievement occurs through heroic individual effort despite inadequate social supports. This historical understanding of grit, Stokas concludes, may help us to recognize that the energy and resources currently spent on cultivating grit in children would be better spent on ameliorating the problems of social and economic inequality. (shrink)

Examining changing role models for masculine identity--from cowboy in the 1950s to Terminator in the 1990s, from flesh-and-blood man to machine--this book suggests that men need new role models and that sufficient room needs to be left for the expression of male vulnerability, a psychic space that would accept attitudes and behaviors traditionally labeled as "feminine." This new model, Badinter argues, may reduce the profound effects of homophobia and misogyny.

In this article, we explore the world's response to the increasing impact of carbon emissions on the sobering threat posed by global warming: the carbon offset market. Though the market is a relatively new one, numerous offset providers have quickly emerged under both regulated and voluntary regimes. Owing to the lack of technical literacy of some stakeholders who participate in the market, no common quality or certification structure has yet emerged for providers. To the contrary, the media warns that a (...) relative "cowboy" atmosphere prevails in the current environment, and that there are "widespread instances of people and organizations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions" (Harvey and Fidler, Financial Times, 2007). At this point in the evolution of the market, only a handful of offset provider-rating schemes exist; and, even these systems leave consumers with few answers when they seek to find a means by which to ensure that the said systems are having their intended impact. The purpose of this article is, first, to provide a grounded understanding of the nature of the offset market, a tendency toward carbon neutrality as a possible point of equilibrium, and the ethical tensions that surround it from the perspective of the consuming public. Second, we outline the standards environment for offset providers to illustrate most effectively the need for a single set of criteria among providers that is readily understandable by the common consumer stakeholder. We then explore the differences among the providers and articulate the specific criteria upon which providers may be evaluated by this particular stakeholder constituency, by bringing together best practices based on currently available analyses. Finally, we share the results of preliminary data collection in connection with 117 offset providers and highlight early findings. These findings allow us comparing providers effectively and efficiently on a common scale that services both providers, who thereby have greater guidance for self-assessment purposes, as well as consumer stakeholders, who then have the ability to make useful and more informed choices about carbon emission reduction in the future. (shrink)

In 2003, a photograph taken by Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy) , sold at auction for $332,300. Some might be surprised that a photograph could garner such a sum, but, in this case at least, none more so than Jim Krantz. Krantz might be allowed a certain level of incredulity, for Prince's photograph was a photograph of another photograph, this one taken by Krantz himself. As far as copyright is concerned, Krantz's photograph and Prince's are the same work, and so (...) Krantz is almost certainly infringing on Prince. Copyright protects ‘authored works’, and not art works per se . And unfortunately, while copyright law assumes some metaphysical basis to its objects, this basis tends to go largely uninvestigated. In this paper, I work to develop a comprehensive, coherent, and consistent account of the ontology of authored works suitable for the purposes of copyright law. (shrink)

Our study focuses on the impact of American advertising on local consumers and industry and discusses the relationship between standardization and localization on the global market. Although America seems to be a hybridized, ‘McDonald-ized’ reality, it is in fact grounded on a multicultural and social mix that deems it highly recognizable. Consequently, we argue that reconstructing American identity means sharing similar values with other cultural spaces, whose history, religion, and social customs require a different approach to daily life and finding (...) new means of expression. Our main argument is that advertising disseminates its message in foreign markets and that American campaign models were implemented despite cultural differences. Therefore, we will study the way American heterogeneity becomes homogeneous in the advertising realm, and explain the relationship between standardization and localization in promoting brand values. Our analysis relies on examples of the post-1990 Romanian advertising revolution that showcase the global American influence on Romania’s local industry as reflected by celebrations (Valentine’s Day, Man’s Day) and other American symbols (the cowboy image, the impact of the English language) present in locally broadcast advertisements. Consequently, our paper asks a very controversial question: Does market globalization embed the American spirit in indigenous cultures through advertising, bypassing local culture, ideology and society? (shrink)

Pitchfork Country: The Photography of Bob Moorhouse showcases the beautiful, almost mystical photos taken by the vice president and general manager of the historic Pitchfork Ranch in Guthrie, Texas. Moorhouse's photographic work reflects his trademark style and traditional western subjects that create the illusion of scenes from a bygone era. As a working cowboy who carries his camera sometimes twenty to thirty miles a day on horseback, Moorhouse has been able to record moments in the field few photographers will (...) ever see. With an appreciation for great light and its selected application to the subject, his photographic images are an accurate portrayal of ranch life. Viewed in future years with the work of Erwin E. Smith, Ray Rector, and others who have photographed ranch life of the past 150 years, Moorhouse's images will be the standard for documenting ranching in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Also 04 Activeable in a limited edition. Distributed for the National Ranching Heritage Center. (shrink)

Introduction -- Tales of dominion -- The plow and the gun -- Picturing the West, 1883-1893 -- American idol, 1898 -- The end of nature -- African romance -- The dark continent -- When cowboys go to heaven -- Transplanting Africa -- Of ape-men, sex, and cannibal kings -- Adventures in monkeyland -- Nature, the film -- The world scrubbed clean.

Examining changing role models for masculine identity--from cowboy in the 1950s to Terminator in the 1990s, from flesh-and-blood man to machine--this book suggests that men need new role models and that sufficient room needs to be left for the expression of male vulnerability, a psychic space that would accept attitudes and behaviors traditionally labeled as "feminine." This new model, Badinter argues, may reduce the profound effects of homophobia and misogyny.

Steagall and Hagler examine traditions passed from generation to generation and explore the impact of cowboying on those who choose it as a way of life. 75 photos.

“The women here in Los Terreros are worried,” Don Alonzo says. “Last year, one of them died from invasive cervical cancer. Thirty-eight years old. Never had a pap in her life.” He leans back in his chair and sighs. “Her husband wouldn’t let her, said he didn’t see the point.” A tabby cat rubs against his legs. “So now the women, they keep worrying. They’ve had the day your group is coming memorized for weeks, maybe months.”Don Alonzo is the local (...) health officer, a thin man in his late sixties, never without his cowboy hat and tattered backpack. We sit in front of his house atop a steep hill in Los Terreros, a small Honduran community about a hundred miles northeast of the country’s capital. Around us, dense green... (shrink)

Upon the release of Brokeback Mountain, the conservative film critic, Michael Medved, in a television interview, predicted that a gay western – or maybe he called it a gay cowboy movie – would not attract an audience, presumably on grounds that the intersection of the audience for gay movies and the audience for westerns would yield, as the logicians say, the null set. Medved was proven wrong, as Brokeback, which cost $14 million to produce, went on to earn $83 (...) million on first release in the United States (plus $95 million abroad). But Medved was also wrong in his initial description. Although rodeos, horses, and cattle percolate through the film, Brokeback does not fit the classic American Western movie storyline. From the films of William S. Hart and Tom Mix down through Gary Cooper in The Virginian and High Noon, John Wayne in Stagecoach, Alan Ladd in Shane, and Clint Eastwood in The Unforgiven, the Western hero wears a cowboy hat, rides a horse, and carries a gun. His ultimate goal is to save the good folks from the bad guys, and he always succeeds. Brokeback, of course, is not like these films at all. Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar are not engaged in the Westerner’s project of vanquishing evil. In fact, Ang Lee’s film more closely resembles the stories of such star-crossed lovers as Abelard and Heloise, Tristan and Isolde, and Romeo and Juliet. More interestingly, it fits a narrative pattern common in the nineteenth-century operas of Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, and Wagner. In.. (shrink)

I was initially assigned the working title, “Pursuing Equality in Health Care for the Elderly Is Futile.” I prefer to think of that particular dead end of health policy as one of listening to the wrong music for too long. Hence, this article reprises and revises the title song of the early 1980s movie, Urban Cowboy, but with Johnny Lee’s original lyrics adapted as “Looking for better health [rather than either ‘love’ or ‘love of equality’] in all the wrong (...) places.” The better goal is to achieve more progress in improving health for more people, including the elderly. It need not be as futile as the pursuit of the elusive abstraction of “equality” for all — but only if we first move away from a path-dependent approach of recent times that remains too narrowly focused on statistical disparities in health care services received by particular groups. (shrink)

Introduction -- Media and representation. On the one medium / Eric Gans -- The scapegoat mechanism and the media: beyond the folk devil paradigm / John O'Carroll -- The apocalypse will not be televised / Chris Fleming -- Film. Mirrors of nature: artificial agents in real life and virtual worlds / Paul Dumouchel -- Superheroes, scapegoats, and saviors: the problem of evil and the need for redemption / Joel Hodge -- Sanctified victimage on page and screen: The hunger games as (...) prophetic media / Debra E. Macdonald -- The mimetic e-motion: from The matrix to Avatar / Nidesh Lawtoo -- Apocalypse of the therapeutic: The cabin in the woods and the death of mimetic desire / Peter Y. Paik -- Eyes wide shut: mimesis and historical memory in Stanley Kubrick's The shining / David Humbert -- Against romantic love: mimeticism and satire in Woody Allen's Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona; you will meet a tall dark stranger; and To Rome with love / Scott Cowdell -- A beautiful crisis: Ang Lee's film adaptation of The ice storm / Carly Osborn -- Cowboy metaphysics, the virtuous-enough cowboy, and mimetic desire in Stephen Fears' The hi-lo country / Thomas Ryba -- Television. The self in crisis: watching Mad men and Homeland with Girard and Hegel / Paolo Diego Bubbio -- Media, murder, and memoir: Girardian baroque in Robert Drewe's The shark net / Rosamund Dalziell -- Conversion in Dexter / Matthew John Paul Tan and Joel Hodge. (shrink)

When I think of Will Provine, I think of his Cowboy tie. This, to me, sums him up: only someone with his sense of humor, courage, and lack of self-consciousness could wear that tie. There was no irony in the tie. Will was not being “camp” with his bolo tie with the picture of a cowboy on the front: he did not use the tie as a way to raise eyebrows or convey a knowing look. He simply liked (...) the tie. There was no ironic bone in Will’s body; he was earnestness embodied. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Living Oxymoron: Homo, the Meat‐Eating Herbivore Food Safety, Weapons, and the Birth of Ethics Thinking and Acting with Spears Ride 'em Cowboy? Notes.

At the time of his death in 1984, Foucault’s late career forays into Stoicism and other sets of ancient texts were often little understood, except as part of a larger project on the history of sexuality. Indeed, outside of France and outside of an incipient queer theory, Foucault was often taken up in terms of debates over post-structuralism and postmodernism—themes all but absent from his writings. More than thirty years later, after the publication of all of his lecture courses at (...) the Collège de France from 1970-1984 as well as his collected writings, we have gained a better understanding of the deep continuities in his set of concerns from Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique to the third volume of his history of sexuality series, Le Souci de soi. Yet many Foucault scholars continue to see momentous shifts in his writings, e.g., from knowledge to power to ethics, and the almost bewildering range of texts he covered in the years after finishing the first volume of his history of sexuality series, La Volonté de savoir, lead to very different interpretations concerning what Foucault was attempting to do and how much his rendering of ancient texts differed from his own claims. Stuart Elden’s Foucault’s Last Decade steps into this breach, using archival work to fill in many of the details of this period, from when and on what Foucault was lecturing to listing those with him in that amusing late photo of a beaming Foucault in an ill-fitting cowboy hat. The publication of Elden’s book marks a good time to assess this often misunderstood period in Foucault’s work, and we have gathered Stuart Elden and two more of Foucault’s best interpreters, Eduardo Mendieta and Dianna Taylor, to do so. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 41, no. 2. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 463 Kawika Guillermo Libido Ergo Sum Sitting atop a red beanbag stained with dark splotches, Kelsey watched the tells from the five boys sitting on the carpet in front of her. One by one they gave away their hands, their eyes dodging hers, perhaps afraid of her female intuition. She loved these surreptitious moments, when her boys tried (...) to fool her, believing that they had her in their clutches, as if she couldn’t help but be pulled by their charms. Kelsey went all in, moving her chips into the middle of the carpet. Kaleb’s mouth grinned to the right while Gabriel impatiently tapped on his knee, keeping beat with the remixed 80’s tune coming from the large boom box behind him. Billy’s face was in a gleeful Leave-It-to-Beaver of daffiness, and Michael’s dumbfounded expression—worn to distract her— was put out by a nervous scratch of his neck. After each had pussied out, Kelsey leaned over to distract them further with her cleavage as she picked up the red playing cards, her hair settling onto the boys’ laps as if to imitate fellatio. “Alright, pussy bitches,” she said, collecting the chips and stirring the toothpick in her mouth like a mortar. “Pass’em down,” pointing to the gold dealer’s piece. “Big blind, little blind.” She watched the world as if from a recliner and saw herself dealing the next hand with the finesse of a professional dealer. Her gaze circled the carpet of poker players. Their eyes never met hers. In every house party Kelsey hosted, she always saw a faint bleakness in her guests. She always cleaned them out, her eyes scanning them like food at a supermarket, unveiling their moves with every glance. She watched them all at once: Jackson wiping his mouth, Michael adjusting his glasses, Gabriel 464 Kawika Guillermo chewing on bubblegum in loud smacks, Billy grinning as he mouthed curse words. Finally, Kelsey took only a glimpse at her own cards before doubling the ante. Tommy shrugged and tossed his cards; Michael met her raise and she went all in. She noticed these patterns all between them. She saw their reactions before they even happened: Michael shaking his head and calling her a bitch as he splashed his cards onto her living room carpet. At two in the morning she drank two tequila shots in the kitchen with Paul, one of the many toxic men that she had invited to her party from work. He was a sturdy baseball player/lightweight alcoholic, toxic in his thoughtless remarks on meeting schedules, upcoming due-dates, and portfolios. “Then you put the salt on your thumb, or whatever,” Paul said, shaking up a bottle of Patrón Silver, as if it needed to be shaken. Kelsey stuck out her shot glass for another. A year ago she would have been doing homework, playfully kicking off the dust of the world with a big biology textbook in her hands. Since then, she had discovered that there was a pattern to debauchery that led to some existential fulfillment—a realizing of herself as a living substance—an uber-debauchery. Refusing to dilute her angst into anything but total surrender, she was still a Vegas girl, willing to throw herself into in the Las Vegas rites of passage of drunk driving, diving nude into neighbor’s pools, and waking up in hotel rooms with a hundred dollar bill on the cupboard, weighted in place by Gideon’s Bible. “Another sausage fest,” said a man in a cowboy hat and vintage overalls. Kelsey didn’t know him. He sat on the countertop like the Cheshire Cat and flipped through a book of bumper stickers. He wore one with the words “Libido Ergo Sum” on his forehead. “All right!” another drunken voice shouldered through waves of sound: “Seize the day!” “James’s baby sure looks cute tonight,” said another drunken voice. “’Course no one would try, except this guy.” The man in the cowboy hat smiled up at her. “How come you don’t invite your girlfriends to your parties?” “I don’t have... (shrink)

What is missing from most analyses of the gun crisis in America is an archetypal perspective. Archetypically, the Constitution is in the domain of the Bible in terms of it being the equivalent of a sacred text for Americans, making the Second Amendment a revered text for gun enthusiasts. It enshrines the insidious concept that people can rise up in armed resistance to an oppressive force, including the US government. The Minuteman is an archetypal mythic image in the American collective (...) unconscious for the Second Amendment. A gun confers wakan (Sioux), sacred power, upon its possessor, allowing them to wield in an instant the archetype of death. This moves conflicts into the archetypal categories of good‐vs‐evil and black‐and‐white, circumventing the system of laws upon which our country is based and averting the dialogue upon which a democracy depends. The cowboy is another mythic image, the lonely gun‐toting individual who fought off beasts and savages to tame the Wild West. The very concept of America as “a shining city on the hill” that inspired our Puritan (archetypal image) ancestors is from the Book of Revelation in the Bible. They were not averse to using guns to exterminate the “heathen savages” they encountered. The arsenal of guns in America amplifies growing tensions around income inequality, increasing corporate power and deteriorating racial relations and inner city conditions. (shrink)

Now that she has retired from public life, philosophers can begin to understand the cultural phenomenon that was Cindy Sheehan, the generally recognized (and self-professed) “‘Face’ of the American anti-war movement.”1 Why did the Iraq War produce domestic resistance led by someone whose moral credentials consisted solely in being a mother? Why was the cartoon-cowboy masculinity of the war president opposed by the equally hyperbolic familial femininity of the “eternally grieving mother of Casey Sheehan”? In what follows, I seek (...) to comprehend the emergence of both the Iraq War and the “face” of its opposition through the most notorious account.. (shrink)