WUPR 25.2: Election

Washington University

POLITICAL REVIEW 25.2 | Oct.–Nov. 2016 | wupr.org

TABLE OF CONTENTS 6

Two Candidates and 2 Corinthians:

ELECTION

Ali Rayef

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Saudi Arabia”

Cole Campbell

Hanna Khalil

1824 and 2016

United States Election National

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Divya Walia

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The Case for the National Popular Vote Michael Fogarty

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You’re Not Convincing Anyone Jack Goldberg

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Ask What You Can Do for Your State Maya Samuels-Fair

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Late-Night Election Natalie Martinez

Not Hungary for Refugees: Viktor Orbán and the Rise of Fear Politics in the West Ryan Mendelson

Elected Office

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Post-Olympic Brazil Huayu Gao

Coroners: America’s Strangest Alex Yenkin

Finding Clarity In Chaos: A Response to “Fractured Lands”

Media Shmedia Sophie Attie

Uz-what-istan?

Jacob Finke

Trump: The Final Blow to the Peñata Delmar Tarragó

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Why We Should Be “Hard On

Looking Beyond the Highest Office

Turnout Rate

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Losing a Local Hero Liza Sivriver

Nicholas Kinberg

INTERNATIONAL

An Afternoon Chat with Vox's Ezra Klein Grace Portelance and Sam Klein

Gary Johnson: The Sane Candidate Andrew Eichen

NATIONAL

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Religion in the 2016 General Election

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Parting Words: Clayton's Choices

EDITORS’ NOTE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY POLITICAL REVIEW THE UNDERGRADUATE POLITICAL PUBLICATION OF WASHINGTON UNIVERISTY IN ST. LOUIS EST. 2004 Executive Director Billie Mandelbaum Editors-in-Chief Sam Klein Grace Portelance Staff Editors Rachel Butler Bisma Mufti Dan Sicorsky Katelyn Taira Features Editors Michael Fogarty Max Handler Finance Director Lauren Berger Director of Design Zeke Saucedo

Dear reader, Election season is in full swing, and with the presidential debate on our campus, the energy level here could not be higher. While we here at WUPR constantly refrain that ‘everything is politics’ (a slogan often accompanied by groans), right now politics is definitely on the forefront of everyone’s minds. While this election has been inspiring, combative, divisive, and troubling all at the same time, we here at WUPR are hoping that America meets its challenges head on.

We felt compelled to center this issue on those events that, in the words of Cronkite, “alter and illuminate our times.” Elections, and especially the one before us, are the ultimate public decisions and bellwethers. During these exciting political times we must reflect on what it means to be a part of American democracy, and how the institution of election has been shaped over time.

In this issue you will find critical evaluations not just of this election, but of the way that all elections are influenced, run, and won by the political systems behind them. You will read our interview with Ezra Klein, who we were fortunate enough to bring to campus for an audience at Graham Chapel. Alex Yenkin explores the strange process of electing county coroners, and Michael Fogarty argues that a popular vote is a better way to elect those who represent our republic than the electoral college. Natalie Martinez writes on how late-night talk shows engage with the political process.

Finally, if you are eligible to vote, please vote on or before Election Day, November 8. Read on, and remember how much there is to decide on ballots in St. Louis and elsewhere.

Enjoy!

Assistant Director of Design Bohao Zhang

Sam Klein Director of New Media Tomek Cebrat

Grace Portelance

Programming Director

Editors-in-Chief

Sabrina Wang Director of External Operations Jack Goldberg Front Cover Zeke Saucedo Theme Spread Susan Lee

ELECTION

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | ELECTION

TWO CANDIDATES AND 2 CORINTHIANS: RELIGION IN THE 2016 GENERAL ELECTION Ali Rayef | Illustration by Maddy Angstreich

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remember a time, not long ago, when presidential candidates quoted the Bible like millennials quote "The Breakfast Club." When Ted Cruz touted preserving the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance as a primary accomplishment during his time as a state senator. When Marco Rubio assured a debate audience that he was not, in fact, their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Or even when, in both of his bids for the presidency, Barack Obama extolled his devotion to Christianity to dispel the ludicrous rumors that he was secretly a Muslim who sympathized with terrorists.

Public displays of faith such as these are an archetypal strategy in presidential politics; be religious, and religious voters will support you.

Knowing this, we might ask why the two candidates in this election rarely employ this religious appeal effectively.

Donald Trump’s championing of Christian voters is like his toupee: It looks more obviously fake every day. In the past, he has identified himself as pro-choice, objectified and lusted over women, and cheated on his wife—all actions the religious right sees as blasphemous.

Not only do Trump’s values contrast heavily with those of Evangelical voters, but it seems as if the Republican nominee is barely aware of this critical voting bloc’s values in the first place. In August 2015, he said the Bible was his favorite book, but declined to name his favorite verses.

Later, in January of this year, while speaking at the Christian Liberty University, he mislabeled the Second Corinthians Bible book as “Two Corinthians”—a damaging mistake for someone who intends to win the presidential race by riding on the support of religious voters.

I simply don’t believe Trump is that religious.

Unsurprisingly, neither does the American public, with a Pew survey from January 2016 indicating that voters rate him as the least religious candidate. Regardless, his irreligiosity, ineptitude regarding Biblical scripture, and consequential lack of religious appeals has not

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Donald Trump’s championing of Christian voters is like his toupee: It looks more obviously fake every day. been a liability; Trump is still Evangelicals’ top choice. The Trump campaign recognizes that the Republican nominee’s bumbled appeals to court Christian voters could be used by the left to frame the candidate as uninformed, but they have managed to avoid this impression thus far.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has a different story. A proud Methodist, Clinton and her sweatshop of hip, media-savvy advisors have done their very best to craft religious statements that put the cool back in Christ. A highlight of this approach was the lengthy exposition Clinton gave during the March primary debate of her daily religious rituals and relationship with God. However, like her deleted emails, Clinton’s religiously-charged discourse is nowhere to be found in the general election. This shift in religiosity can be attributed to the end of the primary, which featured the end of an interesting religious dynamic with Senator Bernie Sanders.

In her fantasies about effortlessly defeating a series of Lincoln Chafees in the primary, Clinton did not account for an elderly, socialist Yosemite Sam galvanizing young people. During the same March primary debate, when pressed about his belief in God and devotion to Judaism, Senator Bernie Sanders—who joins Clinton and Trump as one of the three candidates voters see as least religious—answered instead by saying he

wished people would live by a common set of morals. This statement resonated with young people, who are part of the growing trend of irreligiosity in America and who made up a large part of Sanders’ base.

When Clinton won the nomination, she hoped to finally get past the threat Bernie Sanders posed to her candidacy. In its place, Clinton saw polls indicating a close general election race, and saw herself forced to reevaluate her strategy in order to attract the young voters left behind by her primary opponent. To do this, she emulated Sanders, and adopted, somewhere within the platform of tuition-free public college and opposition to the TPP, a reduction in her references to her faith. Clinton has subdued her true religiousness in an effort to imitate Sanders’s success with millennials. Despite this effort, a September CNBC poll showed Clinton’s lead over Trump with young people slimming to a mere 5 points (down from a 24-point lead in August). This indicates that, like thoughts of wagging debate fingers and $27 campaign contributions, concerns over the right amount of religious expression will haunt Clinton until the bitter end.

Both candidates have been reluctant to make religious appeals for different reasons: Clinton, because they do not work, and Trump, because he does not have the knowledge to make them.

Religion’s role in 2016 is an excellent example of how voters define their candidates in the general election. The candidates are experiencing the intricacies of campaigning for an electorate so unlike Trump’s hands and Clinton’s closet—large and diverse, especially in its religious makeup.

Ali Rayef is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at ali.rayef@wustl.edu.

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GARY JOHNSON: THE SANE CANDIDATE Andrew Eichen

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ary Johnson isn't just the best choice for President of the United States—he’s the only choice. Faced with two of the worst, most unpopular major party nominees in modern US history, there is simply no other option.

Donald Trump: an uninformed egomaniac and pathological liar whose authoritarian nature, racially-charged rhetoric, and lack of coherent policy should be enough to make anyone fear his presidency. Hillary Clinton: a corrupt establishment politician involved in repeated scandals, whose lack of transparency, history of cronyism, and overwhelming disingenuousness would only reinforce the tie between money and politics. These aren’t two options; they’re two deplorables. This is the United States of America, where choice thrives. You can pick from over a hundred flavors of ice cream, types of cell phones, and varieties of clothing. Why should your choice for President, one infinitely more consequential, be limited to two options? It simply shouldn't.

Gary Johnson is running for president on the Libertarian ticket and will be on the ballot in all 50 states and DC. He is not merely a third party; he is a third legitimate candidate for President of the United States. He, along with his running mate Bill Weld, were successful two-term governors. Both were popular Republicans in blue states. Both won re-election by massive margins. Both cut spending, balanced their state budgets, and lowered taxes, all while working with Democratic legislatures. The Libertarian ticket is one of the most experienced ever to be on the ballot. Unlike their opponents, Johnson and Weld aren’t peddling vaporware. They’ve been there and done that. They’ve worked across the aisle. They’ve passed effective legislation. They’ve reformed government.

Johnson is running on a refreshing platform, a far cry from the recycled ideas of his competitors.

He holds that people should be free to make personal decisions in their own lives as long as those choices don't affect others. He wants the government “out of your pocketbook and out of your bedroom.” He’s consistently supported a woman's right to choose even as a Republican and remains the first (and only) governor to call for the legalization of marijuana in 1999. As

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president, he wants to cut taxes, balance the budget, and enact congressional term limits.

He’s also in favor of immigration, pro-civil liberties, and against NSA spying. He’s the only candidate concerned about our excessive interventions abroad and the only candidate in favor of free trade, a policy lauded by a whopping 83% of economists. Most importantly, he’s the only honest candidate. Unlike Clinton and Trump, Gary Johnson feels like a genuine person. He speaks from his heart, admits when he’s wrong, and owns up to his flubs.

Will everyone agree with 100% of Gary Johnson’s platform? Of course not. But there’s enough sensible policies to appeal to the vast majority of the US electorate. As a result, Johnson is an excellent compromise candidate, something desperately needed in this increasingly polarized and hostile political climate. As a Libertarian, he shares policy positions with both parties, facilitating compromise and collaboration with Congress. As president, he would bring a functioning government back to Washington, reaching out to both sides of the aisle to pass meaningful legislation. A Johnson presidency would certainly serve to ease the tension in Washington and, by extension, the nation as a whole. Alternatively, under either a Clinton or Trump presidency, our nation would be more divided than ever and doomed to four more years of gridlock. Whether you support the Republican or Democratic nominee, you’re voting for a nation divided.

[Johnson] holds that people should be free to make personal decisions in their own lives as long as those choices don't affect others. their ballot for the lesser evil either will have voted for a loser they despised, or added to the margins of a winner they hated. All will have done is successfully bloat the vote count of a candidate they don’t support. If that’s not a wasted vote, I don’t know what is. Those who vote their conscience will walk away from the ballot box satisfied that they’ve had their input in the political system, regardless of whether their candidate wins. The election isn't a game.

You don't try to vote for who you think will win.

You vote for who you believe in. Your vote is too valuable, too precious to be wasted on the lesser of two evils. Vote your conscience. Vote for liberty. Vote Gary Johnson.

The case for Gary Johnson is a strong one, yet millions of Americans won’t so much as open their ears to a third party, chiefly on the concern of wasting their vote. To the contrary, the millions of Americans who will cast their ballot for the lesser of two evils are wasting their votes. The harsh reality of elections is that you will never break the tie. Ever. The mathematical odds that the election is decided by one vote are so infinitesimally small that they’re hardly worth considering in casting your ballot. The only effective and satisfying approach to voting is to vote your conscience.

Ultimately, when election day is over and the votes are counted, every single voter who cast

Andrew Eichen is a junior in the Olin Business School.

He can be reached at aeichen@wustl.edu.

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LOOKING BEYOND THE HIGHEST OFFICE Cole Campbell | Illustration by Bowie Chen

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n August 4, 2016, I was reading a FiveThirtyEight article by David Wasserman discussing the oft-ignored elections of state and local primaries and their impacts on our country’s deepening political division, as well as the disconnect between the interests of politicians and voters across all levels of government.

In his analysis, Wasserman describes how low voter turnout has resulted in an overwhelming number of politicians who are more concerned with appeasing a vocal minority of their party’s voters, rather than serving as many of their constituents as possible. Nodding my head in agreement, I sighed at how broken and misrepresentative our politics have become, and later went home to realize that all my state’s primaries took place that day and that I never even knew.

While a lot of Americans talk a fair amount about who they plan to vote for in 2016 or about just how awful our whole system is right now, far too many voters like me have to Google which U.S. House or state Senate district they live in just to find out who the candidates are for upcoming state and local elections, and when those elections take place.

This discrepancy between national and local attention to elected government seems especially potent for progressive voters dissatisfied with the current options for this presidential election.

Many proud Bernie supporters like me are now left wondering what can be done to sustain the political and cultural momentum stirred up by Senator Sanders’ campaign that has, at least for the moment, seemed to shift Democratic politics further to the left than they otherwise would have been.

I feel confident saying that the answer does not include voting for Jill Stein for president. Beyond her lack of policy experience, her questionable stances on vaccines and GMOs, and her incredibly oversimplified positions on key issues, the biggest problem with Stein’s candidacy is that it offers very little real change.

The Green Party’s lack of local infrastructure is a grievance cited by many leftists as a sign that it are more focused on publicity than grassroots action. Green funds are fairly scarce to start with,

and the fact that the party seems to always devote more money and attention to failed presidential bids instead of a ground-up political infrastructure makes them seem both laughable and remarkably insincere to the general public. At the end of the day, a “conscience” vote for Jill Stein would do little to advance progressive causes, and, based on poll studies, would likely just siphon votes from Hillary Clinton.

While there are no ideal options for progressives or Berniecrats in this presidential election, receding into apathy toward our current system is not the solution either, especially for the millennials who helped power Sanders’s campaign to start with. After all, independent and third-party voices have played crucial roles in bringing less recognized issues to light. Dating back from the eras of abolition and the New Deal to more recent examples like the Tea Party and Our Revolution, large numbers of dissatisfied voters can effect real change in American politics, whether through the creation of a new party or the co-opting of their messages by one of the two major ones.

Even now, U.S. House candidates like Zephyr Teachout in New York and Lucy Flores in Nevada are making waves for sustaining the kind of reform for working-class people and marginalized groups that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and other left-wing politicians have helped bring to the forefront of national politics. Hopefully, the renewed enthusiasm and increasing diversity of these possible new leaders can help shift the national conversation toward issues of income inequality, campaign finance reform, and racial and

gender justice, among many others.

The bottom line is that whoever ends up being the next president of the United States, tackling issues that affect average people’s everyday lives will likely occur in non-presidential elections. We may not be close to a satisfactory level of progressive politicians yet, but if the success of Sanders’s campaign has taught the country one thing, it’s that the country is ripe for revolution. Well, a slow revolution anyway.

Granted, some states are easier than others to start grassroots support for progressive candidates, but the change that many on this campus and around the country claim to want simply cannot end with support for a presidential nominee whose run ended in the primaries. Too many people around the country depend on our continued support for us to give up on the election now because Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee.

While I am in no way indicting the Green Party or any other faction, the path to real progressive change ultimately does not lie in checking a box for commander-in-chief this November.

It may not be glamorous or sexy or a fun conversation starter, but if you are asking yourself what you can do to support change in this and future election cycles, you may want to take a closer look at offices outside the presidency.

Cole Campbell is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at colecampbell@wustl.edu.

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1824 AND 2016

Nicholas Kinberg | Illustration by Cathy O'Malley

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itizens are so preoccupied with the spectacle of the current election cycle that they forget a precedent exists for their current times; those who wonder what Clinton and Trump presidencies would be like need look no further than John Quincy Adams and “Old Hickory” himself, Andrew Jackson. It’s 1824, and the United States is gearing up to choose the next president. After eight years of the first president, four of the second, and three consecutive two-termers, the country is aching for someone fresh. In that desire, they find the aforementioned Jackson, a populist who menaces Washington’s Old Guard. His main opponent is none other than the consummate representative of that Old Guard - Adams. To make things even more bizarre, this election cycle sees a significant rise in voter turnout. Sound familiar?

Multiple pundits have called the 2016 election cycle unprecedented, mostly because of all its implications, foremost of which are change versus the status quo and populism versus centrism. The shockwaves that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders sent throughout the initial stages of the election gave new meaning to the politically scientific terms “party realignment” and “party dealignment.” After decades of division down party lines, the citizens of the United States had finally begun ignoring their differences in favor of their commonalities: hatred for the “ruling class,” the “Washington power brokers,” the Establishment.

The Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, who has been prominent on the Washington scene for more than twenty years, thus finds a formidable candidate in an individual at whom most scoffed a year ago. Like the representatives of today, politicians of the 1820s jeered at the candidacy of Andrew Jackson, a “Washington outsider,” with his claim to fame being his unnecessary victory against the British after the War of 1812 had already ended. However, what they did not factor in was that this victory, among other achievements during Jackson’s time in the military, made him very popular among working-class voters. Just like his 200-year-old counterpart, Trump appeals to that very same demographic, adding credence to the claim of similarity.

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Moreover, like 1824, 2016 comes at the tail end of a cycle that started with trendsetters Ronald Reagan and George Washington, Northern “one-percenters” who were born into politics, George H. W. Bush and John Adams, Southerners and consummate politicians, Bill Clinton and Thomas Jefferson, warhawks and controversial presidents George W. Bush and James Madison, and moderately popular leaders Barack Obama and James Monroe. Unnervingly, the pattern of terms is also the same. The first men served two terms, the second set one each, and the last three two each. In both form and content, the parallels between the periods of 1788 to 1824 and 1980 to 2016 are striking.

If these coincidences keep popping up, the nation could see no candidate win a majority of the electoral vote, as happened in 1824, when Andrew Jackson secured not a majority, but the most popular and Electoral votes. That election saw the contest thrown to the House of Representatives, where “shady backroom deals”—essentially political bargains —were made between Speaker of the House Henry Clay, and John Quincy Adams, the electoral runner-up. Adams won that election, and though his presidency included the implementation of “internal improvements,” unfortunately for him, 1828 was not a forgiving election cycle. His opponent of four years prior, Jackson, again trounced him in the popular and electoral votes. No House vote could save Adams this time, and as a result, eight years of Andrew Jackson followed.

This history of the antebellum era casts light on what the Clinton and Trump presidencies might be. The administration of John Quincy Adams saw the work of a technical, handson-man attempting to better transportation and communication across the fledgling nation. The leadership of Andrew Jackson, like that of his predecessor, saw the strengthening of federal power as a result of his enforcement of the “Tariff of Abominations” in 1830 against the nullification of the federal legislation by South Carolina. More ominously, he also flouted an order issued by the Supreme Court not to remove Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Native Americans from the southeastern United States, leading to

the deaths of thousands of Native Americans— an impeachable offense.

Through these connections, Clinton, comparatively speaking, is this election’s Adams, and Trump, with his vitriol and lack of political experience, its Jackson. Trump, again like Jackson, has questions of legitimacy surrounding his marriage, his own problems stemming from multiple unions. Clinton, again like Adams, is related to a president in the aforementioned cycle. She wants to stay the general course, like Adams did, while Trump has something completely different in mind, á la Jackson. Perhaps Clinton will be President until 2021, and then Trump will take the helm for the rest of the 2020s. Regardless, saying that this election is unprecedented is simply incorrect. Americans have a road map for this cycle, and they would be wise to use it.

Nicholas Kinberg is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at nicholaskinberg@wustl.edu.

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UNITED STATES ELECTION NATIONAL TURNOUT RATE Data from www.electionproject.org

Presidential Election Turnout Rate Midterm Election Turnout Rate

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TRUMP: THE FINAL BLOW TO THE PEÑATA Delmar Tarragó | Illustration by Avni Joshi

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pon assuming the presidency in December 2012, Enrique Peña Nieto was to be the new face of Mexico. The youngest president ever to be elected and the husband of a soap opera star, Peña Nieto was a new hope for the PRI in its return to power. He started off his presidency initiating major reforms, seeking to improve the country’s education, energy, and telecommunications industries. A February 2014 Time magazine cover said Peña Nieto was “Saving Mexico.” Today, few would say that he has succeeded. His plan to open the petroleum industry to foreign investment coincided with the drop in global oil prices; his ambitious education reforms resulted in on-going violent protests from Mexico’s strong teachers’ union.

These failed reforms, coupled with the numerous missteps and blunders that have characterized his presidency, have left the Mexican public utterly disappointed.

According to the newspaper Reforma, the Mexican President sits at a 23 percent approval rating, the lowest for a president since the paper began polling in 1995 and a big difference from the 50 percent approval rating he held when he first took office. Peña Nieto’s presidency has been plagued by corruption scandals, a struggling economy, and a high crime rate. Mexicans perceive their president as out of touch with their concerns and doing little to combat the country’s problems.

Arguably, the first major misstep was Peña Nieto’s handling of the 43 missing students from Ayotzinapa. On September 24, 2014, 43 male students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College disappeared while en route to Mexico City to commemorate the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre. The students, who were traveling together in a convoy of buses that they had hijacked, were stopped by police in the city of Iguala, Guerrero. The student practice of hijacking buses, and later returning them, was not uncommon and largely tolerated. However, that night students clashed violently with police and 43 of roughly 100 were taken into custody. That was the last time they were seen.

Official reports would later conclude that police

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Was it possible that Peña Nieto was so out of touch with his country’s people that he would invite the Republican nominee? had handed students over to the Guerreros Unidos (“United Warriors”), a local crime syndicate that presumably killed the students. Mass protests erupted in the following months as citizens demanded answers and were unhappy with the President’s handling of the event.

Thousands called for Peña Nieto to resign.

Obviously, a major incident such as this one would incite backlash against the government; however, it was Peña Nieto’s handling of the situation that made matters worse. After news broke of the missing students, it took the Mexican president 11 days to address what had occurred and 33 days to meet with the families of the missing students. Instead of traveling to see them in their state of Guerrero, the Mexican president invited them to Los Pinos, the presidential residence in Mexico City. His move was seen as inconsiderate and helped paint a picture of an aloof, disinterested president.

In November 2014, in the midst of the missing student debacle, Peña Nieto’s second major misstep occurred. Prominent Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui revealed that a home purchased by Peña Nieto’s wife was registered in the name of Juan Armando Hinojosa Cantú, the owner of a construction company that won government contracts when Peña Nieto was both governor and president. The potential conflict of interest looked a lot like a corruption scandal and further marred the already struggling president’s image. To make matters worse, it was later found that Peña Nieto had used another house owned by Hinojosa Cantú during his 2012 presidential campaign and, despite official

statements saying otherwise, while he was also in office. These conflict-of-interest scandals damaged the president’s reputation, as he made anti-corruption an essential part of his platform.

Peña Nieto’s mistakes and inability to deal with major domestic issues have caused the Mexican people to ridicule their own president. He is characterized as aloof and unconcerned, out of touch with the people whom he governs, merely a pretty-boy puppet of his party. Unfortunately, he has hardly been successful in combatting this image. When running for president, Peña Nieto struggled to name three books that influenced him, naming the Bible and stumbling through his other two answers, mismatching authors and titles. More recently, a report accused the Mexican president of plagiarizing large portions of his thesis for his law degree.

It was revealed that nearly one-third of the 682 paragraphs in the 202-page document were plagiarized, with 20 paragraphs being copied word-for-word from a book written by a former Mexican president. Peña Nieto’s alma mater has since confirmed the president’s plagiarism and thousands have appealed for his law degree to be nullified. These crucial missteps have prompted his critics, growing in number, to paint him as inept, a man who has benefited from privilege, excused from the hard work which the majority of Mexicans have endured.

But it was Peña Nieto’s most recent misstep that could be his final blow. It came as a shock when in the midst of the plagiarism scandal, economic struggles, and a rising murder rate, Peña Nieto invited Trump to visit Mexico. The Republican nominee had hit the campaign trail running last summer with his disparaging comments about Mexican migrants, calling them criminals and “rapists” and accusing Mexico of not “sending their best.” The presidential hopeful took the issue even further, promising to build a wall along the border and assuring that Mexico would pay for it. While resonating with his supporters, these remarks sparked outrage with many in the U.S., with major companies breaking ties with the presidential candidate. Following Trump’s comments, Univision, the American Spanish language television network, canceled its plans to broadcast the Miss Universe and Miss U.S.A.

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editor of Mexican magazine Nexos, “I think it was the biggest humiliation a Mexican president has suffered on his own territory in the last 50 years.” And although this might sound extreme, this is an accurate reflection of how those in Mexico are perceiving the event. Again, smelling opportunity, smart entrepreneurs sprang into action. Today, Peña Nieto piñatas marketed as “peñatas” join those depicting Donald Trump.

beauty pageants, which were owned by Trump at the time. Other companies such as Macy’s and NBC Universal soon followed.

The anger over Trump’s inflammatory remarks and border wall plans was not confined to the U.S.—Latinos and Mexicans everywhere spoke out. While online there were songs and viral videos that bashed the presidential candidate, the bashing was also done quite literally in Mexico.

In response to Trump’s presidential campaign, innovative entrepreneurs began making piñatas depicting the Republican candidate, which, to no surprise, have proved to be a smash hit.

According to a June poll in The Politico, Trump carries a mere two percent approval rating in Mexico. This is the man that former Mexican president, Vicente Fox, has called a “liar,” “absolutely crazy,” and “the hated gringo.” Countless Mexican politicians and celebrities have weighed in. Peña Nieto himself has compared the presidential candidate to Mussolini and Hitler. So what in the world led Peña Nieto to invite Donald Trump to Mexico?

Mexico’s arch nemesis was coming to Mexico because the country’s president was welcoming him. Now, to give Peña Nieto credit, the Mexican president had invited both Clinton and

Trump to visit. Clinton declined, while Trump, on the other hand, jumped at the opportunity. There was nothing for him to lose. It was a chance for Trump to show off his ability to be presidential and negotiate with foreign dignitaries, with a nice photo op of him shaking hands with Peña Nieto, all while in Mexico.

Unfortunately for those in Mexico, unlike with a real piñata, the ending to this story isn’t so sweet.

While the U.S. is in the midst of election season, Mexico has two more years until its presidential elections in 2018. And until then, Peña Nieto faces a serious uphill battle. Local elections occurred this past June and the President’s party, the longstanding PRI, performed the worst it has ever performed in its 87-year history. As Peña Nieto continues to lose support, it seems unlikely that he can save his sinking ship. His missteps have defined his presidency, vastly overshadowing any achievements, and unfortunately for the Peña Nieto administration, his latest one appears to be unforgivable. It was a self-inflicted mistake, as it was Peña Nieto himself who opened the door for Trump, the brash presidential candidate, to come in and give the final blow to Mexico’s “peñata.”

Mexicans couldn’t believe what was happening.

Was it possible that Peña Nieto was so out of touch with his country’s people that he would invite the Republican nominee? Although already a blunder, there was still a chance for the Mexican president to save face. Maybe Peña Nieto would stand up to Trump and defend his country and Mexican migrants in the U.S. But unfortunately, in the eyes of most Mexicans, Peña Nieto did no such thing. Instead of correcting the visiting presidential hopeful or demanding an apology, Peña Nieto was tame. He stood silently as Trump repeated his promise to build a wall. He referred to Trump’s incendiary comments about Mexicans as “misunderstandings” and emphasized the importance of mutual respect. After their meeting he called the exchange “open and productive.”

Public opinion in Mexico viewed the meeting as an utter disaster. In the words of Esteban Illades,

Delmar Tarragó is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at delmar.tarrago@wustl.edu.

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MEDIA SHMEDIA Sophie Attie | Illustration by Grace Lancaster

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he 2016 presidential election has been broadcast across all media thanks to the technological advances of the new digital age. News is no longer limited to print and television; social media outlets, like Twitter and Facebook, and global networks, like Buzzfeed and YouTube, are increasingly relevant.

Traditional news is quickly losing touch with viewers—especially young viewers—due to these developing and accessible sources. People are turning to a different kind of broadcasting this election: political comedians. Critics of traditional news sources, such as CNN and Fox News, have claimed that comedians like John Oliver and Trevor Noah now provide more reliable information to viewers. These claims raise the question: will political comedians surpass traditional news sources?

Surveys from recent years, including one from the University of Delaware, suggest that viewers might be better informed when watching political comedians as opposed to traditional cable news. Television news tends to cover specific stories or headlines in a shorter amount of time than comedians do, resulting in traditional news skimming topics and not fully informing viewers on what actually happened. Often, TV news tends to stray from the issue actually being discussed to instead focus on comments or sideline occurrences, such as what Hillary Clinton was wearing when an event happened.

Political satirists tend to load significantly more information into their segments and include reliable sources and information when explaining what happened. John Oliver, for example, supports his information with trustworthy quotes and data that he displays and cites in all his segments. Although comedians also tend to deviate from the topic being discussed with humorous comments, these digressions might actually benefit both the comedians and their viewers.

These jokes may help viewers maintain their interest and better understand the topic being discussed. This humor is likely to attract younger viewers who tend to prefer quicker and faster ways to get their news.

Some argue that political comedians are not as reliable as other news sources; this is due to the fact that they are, obviously, comedians and

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often blatantly advocate for their side of the political spectrum. However, this shouldn’t undermine the well-explained and accessible information they provide on their shows. It’s their job to be humorous, and often being obvious about their political standing comes with being witty.

Yet this doesn’t detract from the fact that oftentimes well-known political comedians are able to dispense more information in twenty minutes than most news channels can in an hour.

Popular television news sources such as Fox News and CNN have been subject to backlash during the 2016 presidential elections, mostly attributed to accusations that they are untrustworthy and somewhat corrupt. Both sources have been caught giving incorrect information surrounding the debates and other presidential events. Earlier this year, CNN was quick to assume that Hillary Clinton won the Democratic debate, despite the fact that a majority of online voters agreed that Bernie Sanders was the clear winner. Meanwhile, PolitiFact found that Fox News’ percentage of statements that were ranked as “false” or “mostly false” went up to a whopping 60 percent in 2015. Perhaps this is their method of competing with social media, which has had a significantly higher influential

role in this election. But it is likely these falsehoods and potentially unethical tendencies that are turning viewers away from these networks.

This presidential election has highlighted the role of the media in broadcasting the truth, whether it be with a side of humor or a side of dishonesty, and the reputation of supposedly reliable news sources is at stake due to new and seemingly more honest sources. Political comedians have taken this election and its viewers by storm, even earning John Oliver an Emmy award this year. Popular news channels, however, have been opaque in their motivations and provided a significant amount of incorrect information.

Even though it seems somewhat impossible to find an absolutely trustworthy news source nowadays, it’s not hard to realize where the most information can be found, and thus viewers are turning to comedic broadcasters for their quick, engaging, and dependable news.

Sophie Attie is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at sattie@wustl.edu.

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CORONERSHIP: AMERICA’S STRANGEST ELECTED OFFICE Alex Yenkin | Illustration by Molly Magnell

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lmost no one questions the reasoning behind electing the President of the United States, barring the occasional person who thinks that America should be ruled by King Barack I. The president needs to be a representative of the people, and to ensure that the President’s first and foremost duty is to represent, we hold elections. Despite what you might have to say about who the President really represents, this reasoning is the bedrock of our government.

This logic applies to all elected officials, from congressman all the way down to village trustees and school board members. However, in over 1,000 counties, there is one local elected official who doesn’t seem as though they should necessarily be included within this democratic principle. That individual would be the county coroner.

Yes, in many parts of the country, the person in charge of all the cadavers is elected.

The position of coroner goes all the way back to England in the 12th century. The monarchy had been having some issues with the sheriffs becoming too powerful, so Richard I created an office that would oversee the investigation of criminal cases and deliver preliminary investigations to the royal courts. Because these officials served the king directly, they were called “coroners,” from the Latin coronam, meaning “crown.”

By the 16th century, the office of coroner had evolved into the more familiar position of someone who is elected to investigate deaths. Since the American colonies were at the time under the control of the British, famed for their imposition of British systems onto wherever they “owned,” the American colonies also developed this coroner system.

In the subsequent 400 years, our knowledge of the human body and the technology we use to investigate cause of death have evolved. In the United States, 21 states and Washington DC have a death investigation system to reflect that change, based entirely on medical examiners.

These are death investigators who almost always have some degree in pathology or forensic pathology and are allowed to perform autopsies,

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and are always appointed by a government official. In other parts of the country, the person who looks into the cause of death is quite different. Twenty-nine states still use a system based on coroners, although 18 of those states have a few counties with medical examiners. Coroners, unlike medical examiners, have widely varying requirements, and whether they are elected or not varies county to county. Only 16 states specify training requirements for being a coroner, and only four of those states require that the coroner actually be a physician.

Even the requirements that some states do have can be lackluster. Alabama, for example, only requires the coroner to complete training within the first 180 days after assuming office and each subsequent year thereafter. This may sound at least mildly effective, but any notion of effectiveness disappears when you consider that the training is for a paltry 12 hours. For the states without training requirements, reading the laws governing the coroner can make you squirm.

Missouri, a state with a mix of elected coroners and appointed medical examiners, for example, allows the county coroner to perform autopsies with no required training. The state requires that the coroner use their own judgment on whether to get a physician to do the autopsy instead, even though the coroner may not have received any training on when to get a physician.

The truly odd thing about the position of county coroner is that it is, in many cases, an elected one. The reason for their election is that according to state and local laws, the coroner is not a medical professional as much as a part of law enforcement. This association seems surprising to many because the historical idea of a coroner is not what we typically see in pop culture.

The coroners that appear on TV crime dramas seem closer to experienced medical professionals than deputy sheriffs. After reading through state laws, the original law enforcement roots of the coroner’s office can still be seen, since coroners often have the power to arrest the sheriff or take over if the sheriff is incapacitated. Since we

elect sheriffs, it makes sense to elect a coroner as a substitute sheriff. This close relationship between law enforcement and coroners, elected or appointed, can be problematic, as it was in New Orleans. There, Dr. Paul McGarry allegedly covered up several deaths by reporting a natural or self-inflicted cause, when the person had really been killed while in police custody.

Despite the dearth of real knowledge that is needed to be a county coroner, it could still be argued that it is reasonable for coroners to be elected. After all, there are no job requirements for the president of the United States besides being of a certain age and having been a natural born citizen. The president (so far) has always been qualified to hold the job. But it’s safe to say that county coroner elections probably do not have the rigorous public vetting processes that national elections do. Local elections are usually more about getting to know people rather than about qualifications and policy positions. This is especially the case for coroners, where there could not be such a vast difference of opinion on how to test for drug overdose. In an interview with NPR, June Wood—the incumbent who ran for one of four county coroner positions in 2013 in St. Lawrence County, New York—said it best: “Basically, to be a coroner, you just have to be publicly popular. I guess it’s more of a popularity contest. Then you learn the job as you go.” The last thing one wants to hear from someone who cuts open cadavers is that “you learn the job as you go.”

The other problem with electing county coroners is the exposure to politics. Since coroners have to be elected, there is a disincentive to make any decisions that might cause a stir, even if it is factually correct. In Lake County, Illinois, coroner Thomas Rudd made several controversial decisions. One involved changing the cause of death from homicide to undetermined for the death of a child in a daycare facility after noticing evidence that had not been brought up previously. Rudd also drew up a storm when he declared that the death of a beloved police officer

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in Fox Lake could have been a suicide despite there being evidence of homicide. Weeks later, the investigation led to the discovery that the dead police officer had been less than ethical and that he had in fact committed suicide, but had staged the scene to look like a murder. Due to his negative portrayal and “Lake County politics,” Rudd decided not to run again. He left behind two candidates for the upcoming election of Lake County coroner, one of whom has since been fired from his position as deputy coroner after he was drunk and shouting while selling beer outside a movie theater.

In addition to the politicization of death investigation, the election of coroners becomes quite a bit stranger: not only do we elect coroners, we elect Democratic and Republican coroners. June Wood was a Republican candidate for coroner, and Thomas Rudd was elected as a Democratic coroner. There is no good reason for this, other than local parties trying to have a foothold. In fact, it can cause some serious problems. Recently, Thomas Rudd decided to run again for Lake County coroner, but because he missed the Democratic primary, he tried to file as an independent. But the remaining Democratic candidate for coroner, Michael

Donnenwirth—the person who was fired from deputy coroner—challenged Rudd’s candidacy based on an Illinois law that prevents candidates from changing parties within an election cycle. The Illinois Supreme Court sided with Donnenwirth, so Rudd can only be a write-in candidate in November. If there were no party politics in county coroner elections, Rudd simply would have filed his candidacy slightly later than usual. Instead, there was a lawsuit that removed the qualified candidate from the ballot.

Due to party politics of people voting down the ballot for one party, Donnenwirth or his Republican opponent, Dr. Howard Cooper, could be elected for simply having a little D or R next to their name, not for their knowledge or experience. While this is an issue for politicians of all levels, voters can rely on and want party affiliations to represent different ideas and approaches for most politicians, but ideological differences are the last thing we want for the person who declares cause of death. The fact that coroner elections happen within the party system is mindboggling and only creates political nonsense.

The human body is no longer the mystery it

once was. We can measure the human body with specific data and scientific standards, and we expect anyone who investigates a human body to adhere to those standards. The people who examine living bodies are doctors and scientists, yet often those who look at dead bodies are elected politicians. There is a reason that the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and many other national scientific organizations are independent: science does not mix well with politics. I would never want to elect my personal physician, so why elect a coroner?

Alex Yenkin is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at alyenkin@wustl.edu.

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THE CASE FOR THE NATIONAL POPULAR VOTE Michael Fogarty

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hen I cast my ballot by mail later this year, it is extremely unlikely that it will influence the results of the election. I live in Illinois, a Democratic stronghold. No matter which candidate I vote for, Hillary Clinton will almost certainly win the state’s 20 electoral college votes. Based on current polling, FiveThirtyEight predicts that Clinton has a 94.8 percent chance of winning the state. The New York Times’ Upshot model forecasts that she has a 98 percent chance of victory. The Princeton Election Consortium model has Clinton with a greater than 95 percent chance to win Illinois.

The PredictWise model, based on online betting markets, gives her a 100 percent chance of victory in the state. Suffice it to say, it seems all but certain that Clinton will win, no matter how I decide to vote.

However, this is not the case for the inhabitants of other states. Residents of battleground states such as Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio will have a much larger impact on the results of the election when they vote on November 8 than the voters who live in Democratic and Republican strongholds. FiveThirtyEight calculates a “tipping point chance,” which determines the relative likelihood that a given state will swing the election towards one candidate or the other, as well as a “voter power index,” which determines the relative likelihood that an individual voter in a state will influence the overall Electoral College winner.

Although the exact probabilities will fluctuate based on polling changes, the overarching lesson from these two measures is that battleground states have a larger impact on determining the President than partisan strongholds, and that voters in smaller states have more influence than voters in large states. Illinois happens to be both relatively large and securely Democratic. Consequently, my vote will have essentially no impact on which candidate will become the next president.

American presidential elections are hardly the

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democratic processes they are widely considered to be. We in America believe that all elections should be democratic and reflect the will of the people. Our elections are nominally democratic, in the sense that every citizen gets to cast a vote for the president. However, the Electoral College has a distortionary impact on our voting system. According to FiveThirtyEight’s Voter power index, a voter in New Hampshire or Nevada is about 200-250 times as likely to determine the Electoral College winner as I, a voter in Illinois, am. This hardly reflects the democratic ideal of our politics.

In fact, the Electoral College was intentionally designed to be this way. The Framers of the Constitution were afraid of having too much democracy. The politics of the day upheld a republican ideal that espoused the existence of a common good and rulers selflessly devoted to public service. Over time, however, our politics have changed. The republican ideal of the Founding period was gradually supplanted by a democratic ideal. The United States self-identifies as a democracy and works to spread democratic institutions around the world. Yet our own institutions have not changed to reflect the transformation of our values. We in the United States arguably regard democracy as superior to all other values, but one of our most important political institutions fails to reflect this value.

One possible change that would better reflect our democratic principles would be to adopt the popular vote system to elect our president.

It has the virtue of being extremely simple and easy to understand: whomever wins the most votes wins the election. Under this system, we would avoid situations like the 2000 presidential election, when George W. Bush won the presidency even though he did not win the largest share of the popular vote.

There are significant obstacles to implementing a popular vote system. The Electoral College is enshrined in the Constitution, and any modification to that arrangement would require an

One possible change that would better reflect our democratic principles would be to adopt the popular vote system to elect our president. amendment. Given the highly polarized and adversarial nature of our current political situation, it would be hard to imagine any proposed amendments meeting the strict requirements laid out in Article V. Although the amendment process may seem to be an insurmountable obstacle, it may not be the only path. The National Popular Vote interstate compact is an initiative that circumvents the amendment process by working within the Electoral College system. It is an agreement between states to award all of their electoral votes to the candidate that wins the national popular vote. The agreement will only take effect when enough states have passed the legislation so the participating states have at least 270 electoral votes, enough to ensure that they will always select the winner by voting in a bloc. Currently, eleven states with 165 electoral votes have enacted the legislation. Although this plan does not follow the spirit of the law, it is a pragmatic solution that would align America’s political institutions with its deeply held democratic ethos.

Michael Fogarty is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at michael.fogarty@wustl.edu.

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YOU’RE NOT CONVINCING ANYONE Jack Goldberg

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f you’re following this election, you probably have strong feelings about one or both candidates. Odds are, you’ve tried to convince friends and family to vote one way or another. If that’s you, then you’ve probably had the following conversation:

Voter A: You should vote for Candidate X because he/she is the lesser of two evils, and we need to make sure the other candidate doesn’t win.

Voter B: I could never vote for Candidate X. He/ She is a disgrace to the party and I won’t cast a ballot for a candidate that I despise.

My point here isn’t to say that anyone should vote for Hillary because Trump is evil, or that people should stay home in protest if they think the party system has failed the public this election cycle. I’m not here to convince you one or the other is correct. I’m here to emphasize the divide between these two statements, and how they demonstrate fundamentally different conceptions of voting. I’m here, most of all, to tell you that if we’re operating on completely different principles, the argument itself is an exercise in futility.

If we’re operating on completely different principles, the argument itself is an exercise in futility.

Voter A believes that the act of voting is fundamentally a chance to impact the election in a material way. The goal is to influence the outcome of the election, and to improve the odds of electing one candidate or another. In that sense, it’s a strategic decision. Voter A might prefer Jill Stein, but he’ll vote for Hillary Clinton instead if he believes that his vote won’t help Stein, who is doomed, but might help Hillary, who could potentially win. If a certain candidate

is judged as incomprehensibly terrible, Voter A will bite the bullet and vote for a candidate he dislikes, or even hates, in order to decrease the likelihood of the terrible candidate being elected. He’ll give up his favorite candidate as a lost cause if need be, if he believes a vote cast for that candidate is a wasted vote. This strategic, “lesser of two evils” mentality is driving a significant number of Trump and Hillary supporters to vote, many of whom may dislike their candidate, but truly revile the opposition.

Voter B believes that the act of voting is a decision about identity rather than outcome. In this conception, voting for a candidate is a personal matter, an ideological statement. Obviously this voter would prefer that the candidate he supports wins the election, but he won’t hesitate to vote for a lost cause if that cause is a candidate who he feels represents his beliefs. If there is no such candidate, he may not vote at all, no matter how politically engaged he is. Voter B might hate Hillary and merely dislike Trump, but he won’t vote for a candidate he dislikes just to hurt a candidate he hates. He’ll vote for Johnson, material impact on the election or not. Or, if he hates Trump and merely dislikes Hillary, he may vote for Stein. For this voter, the ballot he casts has significance beyond its meager impact on the candidates’ odds of victory; it is a statement of where he stands, of what he believes. This “voting as a statement of identity” mentality motivates many of those who vote for third party candidates, or write in their preferred choice, or stay home on a particular election despite voting in previous cycles.

Voters who feel deep allegiance to a political party—proud Democrats who would never think about voting red, born-and-bred Republicans who can’t stand the idea of voting blue—seem to fall between the cracks here. Their existence may pose a problem for this concept of dividing voters. Take a die-hard Republican who detests Trump but will vote for him anyway—it seems this voter is voting on identity in one sense, but against it in another. But we can resolve this issue by comparing this voter to one who identifies with a candidate despite not identifying with one of that candidate’s positions. It seems

that this person is simply a different subset of Voter B. My point here isn’t to demean either conception of voting. On one hand, voting is a profound statement of belief that says magnitudes about our values, and shouldn’t be thrown away tactically as though it were without significance. On the other hand, it is crucial that we elect capable presidents who will work to fix America’s problems rather than add to them, and so how can we prioritize immaterial value statements over meaningful impacts? I see logic on both sides of the divide. I only hope that others can now see it as well, and have some compassion for those who think and vote differently, however frustrating it may be.

Jack Goldberg is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at jackgoldberg@wustl.edu.

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ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR STATE Maya Samuels-Fair

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ny college freshman can tell you that America is not as homogeneous as we pretend. We come to Washington University in St. Louis knowing we will meet people of different cultural backgrounds, but heritage manifests itself in ways we do not expect. No one talks about North Dakota’s culture, West Virginia’s culture, or Michigan’s culture, but our home state’s unique history is imbibed in our values, the way we were taught history, and the kind of life we expect to lead. State pride fell by the wayside in the whiplash of history, and now we fail to acknowledge this beautiful kind of diversity.

The United States is an enormous country, with fifty nation-sized states. Many empires have failed to organize so many disparate communities on even a tenth the scale. The Founders’ great insight that has kept this unwieldy clot of humanity together is the division of power between federal, state, and local government:

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federalism. Each of the thirteen original colonies had its own culture and pride to the point of tribalism, and the Union was a wary compromise.

Even now in the era of interstates, national news media, and Starbucks, each state is unique.

I had always thought state borders were perhaps the least significant divisions amongst humanity. I was surrounded my whole life with reminders of national heritage, immigrant heritage, and political partisanship, but until college I never noticed how much my state’s heritage had molded me. I am an American, I am a mixed race woman, I am a Democrat, but I am also an Alabamian. My state heritage is growing up in the tracks of civil rights marches and an economy ignorant of its own dependence on a healthy environment. I joined the Washington University Political Review to experience a political spectrum I knew Alabama had been missing. My suspicions were valid; Democratic and Republican beliefs and platforms vary across the

states. In fact, the two parties can often agree on local policies that would disgust party members elsewhere. The politicians we defend on party lines in some far off suburb may be farther from our beliefs than our opposing party member next door. Thinking this disparity goes unnoticed, I wanted to see what people assumed Democrats and Republicans to stand for based on their home state.

I built a survey. I asked my voluntary and anonymous respondents to identify their home state, and then rank from one to five how they believed Democrats and Republicans to stand on a variety of current issues, one being ‘very against’ and five being ‘very in favor’. A second section asked respondents how concerned Democrats and Republicans in their home state were about general policy areas such as education, climate change, and immigration, one being ‘least concern’ and five being ‘greatest concern’. A final, open-ended section encouraged respondents

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Bipartisan compromise is best built at the local level up, where your neighbor is too close to demonize. to explain any policy perspectives they believed to be unique to their state. Not a scientific endeavor, my open survey was meant to let different individual voices demonstrate the spectrum of political opinion even within a political party. Together, my seventy-five respondents showed that there is no single definition of what a Democrat or Republican stands for. In particular, when survey respondents were gathered by home state and their responses averaged, the perspective of Democrats and Republicans on gun control and their level of concern about police brutality and unemployment varied greatly by state even within a party. The media’s focus on federal bipartisanship simplifies the compromising reason of the American individual to one-dimensional punchlines. There is nuance and compromise in the philosophy of our citizenry, just as there must be in our policy. Several survey respondents gave examples of the bipartisan state and local politics the media overlooks. A student from Maryland reported bipartisan support for a generous education budget and environmental legislation to protect the economic and cultural value of Chesapeake Bay. Perhaps bipartisan compromise is best built at the local level up, where your neighbor is too close to demonize. If so, participating in state and local politics could go a long way toward healing America’s political divide.

The state is the long-forgotten original unit of government. Still, returning to politics at the state and local rather than the federal level is not about shutting down federal agencies or waiting for an act of Congress. The South fought every stage of the civil rights movement, and progress came in fits of federal intervention. Intervention has always been necessary, because state and local governments have not accurately represented their constituent populations. They have not acted in the best interest of their people, because they were not elected by their people. If state and township politicians are going to act the will of their constituents without a

top down order, their constituents are going to have to choose them carefully. For the majority of American history, over half of the population could not vote. Lack of representation was legislated. This is the century where lack of representation can be blamed on constituent apathy. We vote in the presidential election of course; this is the one ballot we are pressured to cast. We may also cast straight tickets for the congressmen on that presidential ballot, maybe even the lucky few state and local politicians further down that list. But when we only consistently try to be informed and participatory for the presidential election, we make the federal government the only level of government that even gets close to representing us. Naturally, we want the body that represents us to be the body with all of the power, and we call on the federal government to exercise powers it was never intended to have.

I am an American, I am a mixed race woman, I am a Democrat, but I am also an Alabamian.

The nation is too populous, diverse, and physically spacious for this one body to comprehend its small scale issues and solve them efficiently.

How many states have the presidential candidates lived in? How many have they even visited? They can not and do not understand the perspective of every state. We spend so much time on the presidential election that we only think of our parties on the national level. We do not even show the same involvement we show at the presidential election for our states’ most important federal representatives, our congressmen. In reality, the two parties’ policy goals at the state and local levels are what determine the reality of our immediate communities.

Regardless of party, our neighbors have greater personal investment in resolving our local issues anyway, because they see and share our troubles firsthand. We need state and local government. Let’s make state and local government do its job; let’s make state and local government represent us; let’s get out and vote in our state and local elections. Once the federal government stops getting called on to intervene, it can finally focus on the issues it is meant to address. If each of us considers our mayor, school

board, city council, state legislators, Governor, Senators, Representatives, and every official in between, the sum of our representation’s power is much greater than even the President’s. Yet, we do not vote for the people that most closely regulate our everyday lives.

Freshmen, at no point in your life will it be easier to start a good habit. Our generation is inheriting responsibility for choosing all 513,200 of the United States’ public officials. The Missouri state and St. Louis County local election schedules are only a Google search away. In 2016 alone, Missouri residents are responsible for a bond election, municipal election, and state government primary, on top of the presidential primary and election. And if you too are disgusted by the way presidential elections disseminate into name-calling and banner-waving, a populace that votes every couple of months would be a lot less zealous and petty. We would stay more informed and predict doomsday less often. We would link our votes to outcomes and test ideological policies on a small scale before we choose the next Commander in Chief. But we would see the most crucial growth in the diversity of our politicians. Make sure the next Liquor Control Board, the next County Executive, the next Election Board – or any of the other under-the-radar officials controlling you – represents your interests. Though I have often said this begrudgingly, I am an Alabamian. I am responsible for making it the Alabama I want it to be. Participating in state and local elections makes these politicians more representative of their constituency and therefore more effective, which is better for the truly heterogeneous America. Ask what you can do for your state, and you’ll see what your country can do for you.

Maya Samuels-Fair is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at msamuels-fair@wustl.edu.

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LATE-NIGHT ELECTION Natalie Martinez | Illustration by Avni Joshi

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n what feels like a daily basis, unbelievable lines are thrown out by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns. From “I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and I wouldn’t lose voters,” to more cringe-worthy lines like “basket of deplorables,” this election season has produced incredibly ridiculous political rhetoric.

It’s comical—in a terrifying way.

It is hard to downplay the prominence late night comedy has had on news coverage of this election cycle. At its finest, satirical news politicizes the absurdity of a system to which the people in this country are subjected. During the 2000 election, Jon Stewart made a reputation for himself by playing on the stacking confusion of voters, political pundits, and news media outlets during the Florida electoral controversy and producing a series of segments known as “Indecision 2000.” During a live episode that aired in conjunction with the announcement of the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court decision, Stewart broke down a clip of Bush’s acceptance speech in which the president-elect said “I was not elected to serve one party.” Stewart responded with a deadpan delivery: “You were not elected.”

Indecision 2000 marked the beginning of Stewart’s signature nihilistic poignancy. Where other late night television comedians of the time took to poking fun at the news from a higher-ground, outsider perspective, Stewart’s passivity towards politics and policy situated him comfortably within the same hopeless frustrations as his audience.

In The Daily Show spinoff, The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert took an even more cynical approach to the news. As a satirical “feeling-overfact” conservative media personality, Colbert not only provided commentary on the news media, but also performed the absurd legality of election politics. During the 2012 election, Colbert successfully created a political action committee (or Super PAC) called “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow” and a 501(4) (c) shell corporation named “Colbert Super PAC SHH.” He used this shell corporation to funnel anonymous donations to the Super PAC. He later transferred the Super PAC to his

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business partner, renaming it “The Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC,” so that Colbert could legally receive financial support to run for “President of the United States of South Carolina.”

The politics of Stewart and Colbert’s entertainment hit two key components of satirical news: mocking news content and performing news production. The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart were first and foremost performance critiques. These shows’ actors performed jokes that ranged anywhere from impressions of newsmakers to playbacks of news segments. The mass media cycle behind 24hour news networks like CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC was mocked for its dramatization of news, its personality commentary that spewed extremist rhetoric, and its constant facade of “expertise” that favored prediction over fact.

2016 changed the way we joke about politics.

2016 changed the way we joke about politics.

News production this election has been even more hectic in speed and quantity; however, comedians have refrained from acting out its chaos. Satirical news segments have taken a stronger liking to making jokes about the election itself, rather than to performing its inherent absurdity. Late night comedians have expressed a range of styles, from more “cool” personalities (like John Oliver, Seth Meyers, and Colbert as the new Late Show host) to more passionate approaches (such as Samantha Bee and Trevor Noah as the new host of The Daily Show).

However varied in their tones, 2016’s late night hosts do have one thing in common: they are all comedians, not characters. Although all of the aforementioned hosts mimic desk segment or news-style shows, they do not parody media figures. Instead, late-night programs have become direct reflections of their hosts, and

as a result, their jokes are now subject to being factually and morally right. This pressure to be correct has prevented late night election comedy from engaging with the candidates’ acres of grey area. Hosts take positions (almost exclusively democratic and pro-Clinton) that agree with their target demographics, and make jokes on sound bites or news topics, often ending with a definitive, advocative stance.

Their segments often open with clips from rallies, interviews, or news outlets, but almost always end with a critical or forgiving response to the news of the candidate.

Last Week Tonight’s retrospective coverage of the Democratic National Convention exemplifies this election’s style of satire. John Oliver spent the majority of the segment comparing the DNC to the RNC, taking the last three minutes of the desk-portion of the segment to talk solely about Trump. The final component of the show then featured a montage of DNC speakers attempting to motivate their audience with objectively silly speeches.

Although this final montage poked fun at the way political rhetoric places the performative aspects of inspiring and relating to audiences over the actual content of speeches, it was missing one key figure: Hillary Clinton. Oliver said that “conventions are judged by the two people on the party ticket,” yet he spent only a minute commenting on Clinton’s speech, and used clips from it just once to joke that she would micromanage the government.

Hillary’s performance at the DNC was not the only thing missing from this segment; Oliver also barely touched on the trove of controversy surrounding the convention, namely then-Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s email scandal. But even the punchline of Wasserman Schultz’s joke was not about her scandal or the questionable ethics of the Democratic Party. Oliver chose to show a clip of Wasserman Schultz telling a riled group of Bernie Sanders’ supporters that their behavior was “not the Florida that we know.” Oliver interrupted the clip, saying “Disruptive, borderline unhinged, and getting ready to f--- up a vote?

That is literally the only Florida we know.” Oliver

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There is little disruption to this cycle if all participants remain singular and like-minded in the content they produce. The problem is that this self-contained ideology of news-entertainment-audience does not allow for any critical disruption of individuals and the institutions that support them.

used Wasserman’s quote as a vehicle to mock Sanders’ supporters, allowing him to comment on the DNC email scandal without actually providing any sort of commentary on it.

It’s not that Oliver’s segment was unfunny.

It’s that by failing to critique specific performances, Oliver did not produce actual satirical news; he produced comedy attempting to pass as informative.

One of the most viral election-related comedy segments this past year was Colbert’s Late Show “All Trump Debate” sketch. It was adapted from Stewart’s 2003 Daily Show sketch “Bush v. Bush,” which pit 2000’s Texas Governor Bush against 2003’s President Bush on their foreign policy stances, with Stewart acting as moderator.

In his sketch this election, Colbert moderated a Trump-on-Trump debate, pointing out contradictions in the Republican nominee’s opinions and generally outlandish remarks. Colbert’s sketch did not stick to one specific topic, and generally strayed from asking about issues on policy. It did not follow an actual mock debate format, acting instead as a compilation of inconsistencies, with Colbert delivering the punchlines. On the

other hand, the comedy in Bush v. Bush was in the actual debate format. Stewart set up clips that were edited to put Bush in conversation with himself, and the jokes of the sketch were in Bush’s responses to himself. While both sketches received positive reception, Stewart’s humor was a long-form escalating performance, where the organization of Bush clips contained the core of the segment’s comedy, while Colbert’s was a compilation of one-liners, without any notable methodology.

This year, the punchline of satirical news has been replaced with moderate-to-liberal lessons.

Audiences who at least generally agree with the positions of the comedians they watch can unwind by laughing about their fears and later reading or watching similarly-minded media sources comment on how “John Oliver Shut Down Trump.” In this way, satirical news in 2016 has participated in the liberal media’s self-contained circulation of validation and security. It operates on the idea that if there is an unchallenged agreement between comedians, news outlets, and the audience, then everything will be okay.

Entertainment is the most widely accessible form of commentary. The politics of funny is that it makes wide audiences engage with what they laugh at, whether that means feeling happy, angry, or disturbed. By reacting, audiences are automatically participating in dialogue with the topic and the critique that a joke presents.

After the end of The Colbert Report in 2014 and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in 2015, media critics and audiences mourned what was seen as the end of a satirical news era. The gap in election comedy we feel in 2016 is not because Colbert and Stewart were irreplaceable—it’s because nobody is replacing them. In their place, there is a saturation of late night comedians playing the part of political critic informing the public in the most comical way possible.

But satirical news was never about informing the public or telling it like it is; it was about making an audience so uncomfortable, they laughed.

In an information culture where news is treated as social capital, late night election comedy has become a distraction from productive engagement. In 2016, the politics of satirical news—in which we used to laugh at jokes about the people and institutions that regulate information, and in the process were forced to see that we are all disempowered in the cycle of mass media—no longer exist.

Natalie Martinez is a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at nati.martinez@wustl.edu.

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | NATIONAL

NATIONAL A LATE-AFTERNOON CHAT WITH VOX’S EZRA KLEIN Interview by Grace Portelance and Sam Klein | Photo by Zeke Saucedo WUPR invited Ezra Klein, editor-in-chief of Vox, to address the Wash U community last month before the debate on our campus. Before his speech in Graham Chapel, editors-in-chief Grace Portelance and Sam Klein (no relation) sat down with Mr. Klein for an interview on politics, the modern media landscape, and a bit of career advice. The following is a transcript of that conversation that has been edited for clarity and length.

Grace Portelance: Because this is such an election-focused season, are there any big political issues that are important to you that are being overshadowed by the election?

Ezra Klein: So, everything is being overshadowed by the election. I think about a relative of this question a lot, which is, when people write a history of this era, from 2075, what will they write about? I don’t think they’re going to write about the things we’re talking about. Building a wall, for instance, is not going to be a major piece of it. So there are bunch of things I think about, but I don’t think they’re anywhere near the political agenda. It’s not like I think the era is going to be defined by whether or not we’re able to come to a deal on repatriating overseas corporate tax income. What is within the zone of the possible doesn’t seem to me like the most important things right now. But I think there are really big things happening. We are developing the capacity to do genuine gene editing with CRISPR. I think that it’s possible when people write the history of this era, that’s what they’re going to write about. Driverless cars are emergent. I think how quickly those get adopted and

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under which regulatory scheme they get adopted is important.

I think we have a tendency to get very trapped in the problems of the Middle East in a way that makes it a little more difficult to think about some of the other major international trends, primarily among those what looks to me like a genuinely existential crisis for the European project. I worry that we are very far from having the right issue set in our politics.

Sam Klein: One thing that historians do try to look at is legacy of presidents, of congresses.

Apart from being the first black president, do you think Obamacare will be the President’s legacy issue, assuming it holds? Or is there something else you think could be a legacy for him?

I think he’s going to have no surfeit of legacy.

As you say, he’s the first black president. He steered the US without the Federal Reserve— with some policy that came out of the George W. Bush administration—but substantially helped steer the US through the most serious recession since the Great Depression. It’s pretty clear now that against international benchmarks, and against how bad it could’ve been, this went better than one might have feared. He brought the Iraq and Afghanistan wars more or less to a close, passed a massive set of financial regulations, passed Obamacare. We’re currently in the longest sustained run of private-sector job growth the country’s ever seen.

We have a tendency in this country to like presidents a lot better a few years after they leave office. George W. Bush left basically a loathed figure, and is now a basically liked, if not revered,

“Explainer journalism at its core is taking things that you’re hearing about and you’re curious about and then giving you the contextual information necessary to understand them.” one. I think it’s pretty likely that Obama ends up quite highly ranked, ten, fifteen years from now. I didn’t mention there the Iran nuclear deal, which, assuming it works, is a very big deal, and the Paris climate agreements. He has gotten a lot done. And getting a lot done blazing the political trail he has—there is a lot that historians are going to be able to work with as they assess his presidency. Whether you like Obama or hate him, one thing you can’t deny is that he’s been tremendously consequential. I think this is going to go down as one of those presidencies that was a bit of a pivot point in American history.

GP: One of the things that strikes me about the Obama presidency is that it seems like it was

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | NATIONAL

the first celebrity presidency. I feel like Obama was in front of the media a lot more than previous presidents. What do you see in the future of this “media presidency,” and do you think that this election is different in that respect?

I think that the media is changing more than the presidency is changing. I think people have been talking about notions of that at least going back to Kennedy. There were FDR’s fireside chats. I think you’re feeling that there’s an omnipresence to media that is beyond anything we’ve ever experienced as a species, and Obama has, depending on how you think about it, benefitted or suffered from that. I think that will continue, just because the underlying trends like having a smartphone in your pocket, are going to continue.

I’m not sure how much it changes his presidency. He is out there, but he’s not that accessible.

Members of the media do not consider Obama to be an especially accessible president. There were presidents before him who did many more

press conferences, who did many more interviews. He is not unusually open.

One thing that has been interesting that [the Obama administration] has not necessarily pioneered, but that they have emphasized more heavily is using non-political forms of media in semi-political ways. They’ve been very aggressive about things like “Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis” and appearing in a lot of magazines that have nothing to do with politics, trying to reach people where their political defenses aren’t already up.

SK: Would you say people are consuming media in smaller increments now, and how can organizations adapt?

I guess in the sense that smaller increments are now available. They’re sure consuming a lot of media. It’s true that they don’t consume it all in a singular bundle in the way they used to.

The amount of time people spend on Facebook is astounding, and the amount of media they

see in a day on Facebook is astounding. The quantity of that kind of information people are absorbing might be higher than ever even as it is more fractured than ever.

I think the primary way [the media] is adapting to that is by pumping out more volume. Past technologies constrained how much we could do—you only had so many pages in a newspaper or magazine, there’s only so many hours of news on the network. Now there’s the endless expanse of the internet. It puts less focus on individual units of content and more focus on just blasting a lot out. I don’t think just doing as much as you can is a strategy for success, but doing more and trying to hit more groups and appeal to more digital constituencies is part of what folks are doing.

The other thing that is changing is that now it’s pretty cheap to make good videos and pretty seamless to distribute them through Youtube, through Facebook, through Snapchat. Video divisions are becoming a more central part of our

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | NATIONAL identity.

GP: How do you cut through the bullshit?

What is your vision for the future of Vox within this endless landscape?

I think the abundance of bullshit actually creates a lot of opportunity. People are overwhelmed by the amount of information coming at them, so if you have the ability to rationalize that, to slow it down, to give people a certain amount of empowerment around the news space they’re in, there’s a lot of hunger for that.

We are providing a service that a pretty overwhelmed group of folks needed or found useful.

Explainer journalism at its core is taking things that you’re hearing about and you’re curious about and then giving you the contextual information necessary to understand them. The problem that we’re trying to solve is that by the time most of us are made aware of a story, that story has already been going on for days, weeks, months, maybe even years. And a lot of the foundational information necessary for understanding the latest twists and turns has already been distributed, and so we missed it. We are developing a lot of different formats that are able to give you that information and provide a

“What I’m trying to find is how [candidates] think the thing is working, not just what their policy advisor has said to do about it.” grounding so that you’re able to catch up. It’s a thing I think people need more than ever.

SK: If you were moderating a presidential debate, and you had to ask both of the candidates the same question, what would you ask them?

I probably would give it more thought than to think of it on the spot. But with that disclaimer said, I’ve interviewed a bunch of politicians,

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and I like asking politicians questions that force them to articulate their theories and not their plans. I think they go on autopilot when they talk about plans, and so what you want to try to get to is more fundamental questions of how they think the underlying problems work. So let’s say the question was on the economy. A question I would like to hear both of them answer is, “why do you think labor force participation rates have fallen all through the developed world?”

Because what I’m trying to find is how they think the thing is working, not just what their policy advisor has said to do about it. Similarly on health care, I would like to hear why they think prices for surgeries, drugs, doctor’s visits, nights in a hospital are multiples higher in the US than in Germany, in the UK, in Canada, in Japan, and if they think we’re getting enough for our money. Questions like that I think can be pretty revealing because they help you understand why the politician is coming up with their answer or if they even have an underlying framework for the answers they’re coming up with. I’m not certain that all the candidates currently running for president do. The one thing I would not ask at all about is anything that’s in current events.

GP: No emails?

I think it would be very interesting to ask them both about their underlying views on government communications. I think it is beyond doubt that Hillary Clinton screwed up having a private email server. But there’s also an interesting question of whether emails should be seen as informal or formal. And that is only getting more severe as we have this profusion of digital communication. There’s a real issue around whether we want to drive communications of government officials into less technologically intense mediums because they are afraid of seeing everything they say off-the-cuff show up in a congressional hearing some day. That doesn’t absolve Hillary Clinton of anything, but it is a very real question. It is interesting to me that somehow all the people interested in this don’t seem interested in making the laws around recordkeeping any more sensible or clear or useful.

Sometimes I wonder if people care about email management at all. [laughter] Maybe there’s another reason they’re so fascinated by this.

And the f---ing classification system. Say what you will about Hillary Clinton, but there is a real issue of over-classification in the government that is a really bad thing, and it would be great to have a real conversation about that.

GP: Whose responsibility is it then to push for this additional transparency, to realign what these candidates are talking about?

The media is responsible!

GP: Is that something people agree on that the media has been unsuccessful at?

I think I have idiosyncratic opinions about how the media should work.

SK: If you were sitting across from your 20-yearold self, and you had to give one piece of career advice, what would you give?

I don’t think I’d want to screw anything up! The career advice went OK. SK: What career advice would you give us?

For journalists, the best is to trade prestige for opportunity. It’s better to be at a place that maybe is not as well-known where you actually get to write or edit or do photojournalism or whatever it is you want to do than to be at a place where it’s better-known but all you do is get coffee. I think a lot of people are fighting for the prestige of the résumé line as opposed to the experience of actually getting to do the work. For me it was useful because I was in the early days of blogging, and it was just my blog. I definitely needed to be writing on it, so I got a lot of writing experience. I think sometimes people are going for the stuff that sounds good rather than the stuff that’s good for them.

SK: Well thank you so much!

GP: Thank you for taking the time to talk with us.

Grace Portelance is a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at grace.portelance@wustl.edu.

Sam Klein is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at klein.s@wustl.edu.

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | NATIONAL

LOSING A LOCAL HERO Liza Sivriver | Illustration by Ruby Rose

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n September 6th, St. Louis lost an influential figure. Just short of 10 miles away from the Wash U campus, the body of activist Darren Seals was found inside a burning car with a fatal gunshot wound. Seals, often referred to as a “day-one” Ferguson protester, was known as a central figure within the local community of anti-police brutality activists. Seals himself remarked to reporters that he had arrived at the scene of Michael Brown’s fatal shooting just 45 minutes after the incident had occurred. Soon after, he emerged as a prominent leader of the protests in Ferguson that would later capture the nation.

activists and #BlackLivesMatter organizations for co-opting the coordination and the spirit of the protests in Ferguson. According to Seals, many out-of-town activists came to Ferguson not for real work, but for reputation and profit.

Keith Rose, a prominent activist in St. Louis told the Guardian of Seals’ loyalty to his hometown, “He didn’t go out to the national level like many of the organizers. He stayed home and tried to fix Ferguson first.” Claiming that the national #BlackLivesMatter movement was shifting away from serving working-class black people, Seals firmly believed that the most impactful activism was executed at the local level.

As an outspoken anti-violence activist and a co-founder of Hands Up United, an anti-police brutality group, Seals functioned as a powerful organizer within the St. Louis community.

Whether it was planning an economic boycott to highlight police violence or voting for Republicans exclusively to show dissatisfaction with the Democratic leaders of Ferguson, Seals excelled in his role as a main strategist. Seals was responsible for behind-the-scenes work with the protests in Ferguson, but also for setting the tone for the protests themselves. For example, fellow activist Tory Russell recalls a conversation between Seals and a group of young men who were tear gassed at a protest. The men wanted to attack the police in response, but Seals urged the young men to resist the police without the use of physical violence. Members of the community remember countless instances in which Seals shaped the direction of the protests. Alexis Templeton, a Ferguson activist, recalled her impression of Seals to the Washington Post: “He represented the authenticity of Ferguson: that rawness, that realness, that readiness.” As a credible and influential leader within the community, Seals created a commitment to powerful but peaceful resistance in Ferguson. By setting the tone for protests in Ferguson, Seals indirectly set the tone for anti-police brutality protests around the world.

Much of Seals’ work is present in demonstrations even today, because Ferguson still functions as a model for anti-police brutality protests.

His untimely death shocked the St. Louis community, but also raised some questions. Police are investigating his death as a homicide, but some members of the community claim that there was police involvement in his death. In the months preceding his death, Seals claimed that police were often harassing him. Heather de Mian, a prominent activist known for live-streaming St. Louis demonstrations, remarked that police left behind vehicle debris and shell casings at the scene of the crime. “The memorial is constructed on top of his car door, which the police just left there. You would think the car door would be important evidence, that there might be fingerprints, you know. The police just left it there,” she remarked in one of her videos. Members of the community have expressed the sentiment that police have treated the crime with carelessness. On September 11th, armed protestors linked with the Revolutionary Black Panther Party took to the streets of the Central West End to not only raise awareness and express grief over the death of Darren Seals, but also to demand answers for the questions surrounding his death. Later that night, protestors unaffiliated with the earlier group made their presence known in the Loop, entering establishments such as Seoul Taco and Salt + Smoke. Many in St. Louis feel that the circumstances surrounding the death of Darren Seals lack transparency.

Although Seals was a powerful leader within the St. Louis community, he attracted his fair share of controversy. He criticized notable national

Seals often discussed his dream of creating a youth center run by those who were formerly incarcerated or with street backgrounds. The center would offer programs such as job training,

practical money management, and voter registration. Seals’ life was brutally cut short before he could build what he imagined, but his friends have begun to raise money to make the Darren Seals Youth Center a reality. Darren Seals focused on his local community first and foremost, which can teach Wash U students the importance of investing in our immediate surroundings. Before thinking nationally or globally, Darren Seals asks us to improve what’s in front of us first. His death being so close to home can help spark dialogue about what it means to defend controversial values and beliefs. Although our city has lost a hero, a friend, and a changemaker, the passion and commitment Seals felt for St. Louis is impossible to erase.

Liza Sivriver is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at lizasivriver@wustl.edu.

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | INTERNATIONAL

INTERNATIONAL WHY WE SHOULD BE HARD ON SAUDI ARABIA Hanna Khalil

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hroughout this election cycle an important topic has been the role of the United States in combatting terror at home and abroad. Conservatives have accused liberals of being too weak in acknowledging the reality of extremist Islamic terrorism, while the left has criticized Republican rhetoric as espousing intolerance and hate and lacking in real solutions.

While both sides debate America’s best strategy in cooperating with Arab allies in military strategy, reclaiming land from, and ultimately destroying ISIS, one key topic is consistently avoided across party lines—Saudi Arabia.

There is a deep-rooted hypocrisy in considering our country a leader in combatting terrorism while shaking hands with a country that fuels its underlying ideology. During the 1970s, Wahhabism, a fanatical and fundamentalist strain of Islamic thought that started in the 18th century, boomed in popularity throughout Saudi Arabia. Since then it has garnered support in other Arab as well as western countries.

Wahhabism’s expansion in the 70s was made possible by the rise in funding of Wahhabi madrassas, or schools, by Saudi charities. When analyzing the teaching of Wahhabism, it becomes clear that it acts as the underlying logic behind the messages of groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS. Wahhabism preaches rigid intolerance—a belief that all people who do not practice Islam under these specific terms are heathens and deserve to die. And, it depends on an extremely literal interpretation and distortion of religious text.

While no group of people should be judged by the actions of select extremists, and while not every Saudi citizen is responsible for the actions of its government, as a nation, Saudi Arabia has

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faced little accountability for its role in promoting fanaticism and violence. The World Affairs Journal states: “...Saudi Arabia spent $4 billion per year on mosques, madrassas, preachers, students, and textbooks to spread the Wahhabi creed over the next decades. Thousands of Muslim centers sprang up along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan and then in Afghanistan itself—training not scholars but jihadis equipped with Wahhabi ideology and American weapons. The madrassas in Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan produced al-Qaeda and the Taliban.” In this way, Wahhabism was, and is, state-sponsored by Saudi Arabia and directly underlies the terrorism America claims to lead the fight against. While not representative of the 1.6 billion Muslims who practice Islam peacefully, Wahhabism is representative of the successful efforts of Saudi Arabia to spread its international influence. Furthermore, its promulgation is directly tied to the huge amount of revenue the government has gained since discovering profitable oil. And it is this same oil that keeps America quiet.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “the scale of the kingdom's energy output gives it great influence over energy markets, and protecting Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf producers has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for decades.” Saudi Arabia became the world’s leading exporter of oil following the discovery of huge reserves by the Arabian American Oil Company in 1944. Since then, American foreign policy has been influenced by its need to preserve this trade. The United States has chosen to prioritize its economic oil interests over challenging Saudi Arabia’s stance on Wahhabism, even though this attitude may ultimately jeopardize our security in regards to extremist groups that

feed off of Wahhabi rhetoric, such as ISIS. When trying to understand how a group as dark as ISIS can function, it can be hard to wrap one’s head around why an individual would ever find such a message appealing. Understanding the source and promotion of this extremist ideology is key to understanding how humans can be manipulated and brainwashed into taking such a path and is essential in finding a long-term solution. Acknowledging Saudi Arabia’s role in promoting violent, fundamentalist thought through Wahhabism is key to this understanding. While it is essential that the United States consider military, diplomatic, and economic strategies to combat ISIS, these steps are not enough. The U.S. cannot ignore the root of the problem—its own complicity in standing by the nation spearheading the rhetoric that it is now trying to break down.

When Saudi Arabia discovered its oil reserves, it had the opportunity to become a leader in the Arab world toward progress and advancement.

Instead, it resorted to fear and bigotry to preserve its own status. Its cowardice should not go unnoted. America’s conflicting attitude toward ISIS and the country promoting its ideological basis is puzzling but not surprising. In its efforts to preserve American economic interests as a partner to Saudi Arabia’s oil money, our country risks undermining its overall counterterrorism strategy. Until Saudi Arabia is held accountable to the messages it is spreading, there will continue to be populations who absorb, believe, and gain inspiration from these messages of fear, violence, and terror.

Hanna Khalil is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at hannakhalil@wustl.edu.

WU POLITICAL REVIEW | INTERNATIONAL

UZ-WHAT-ISTAN? Jacob Finke

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n September 2, 2016, Islam Karimov, President of Uzbekistan, suffered a brain hemorrhage and died. He was 78 when he died. Why does it matter that an aging executive of a largely-irrelevant Caucasus country died? Because it has never happened before.

After serving two years as head of the Soviet Bloc’s Uzbek Communist Party, Karimov came to power in 1991 when Uzbekistan was established. He has ruled Uzbekistan with an iron fist for 25 years, rigging elections and winning with more than 90 percent of the popular vote.

During his 25-year tenure, Karimov led with strength. Fiercely determined to raise Uzbekistan’s place in the world of geopolitics, he never feared pitting Russia against the United States and its allies to get what he wanted, which was often aid from both countries. He ruled, however, as an authoritarian leader, suppressing civil and human rights in Uzbekistan.

In 1996, according to the BBC, he declared a war on Islamic terrorism in a country with a 90 percent Muslim population. He used the front of a “war on terror” to persecute, arrest, and, in extreme cases, torture and kill political opponents and dissidents. In 2005, Uzbek troops opened fire on a peaceful protest in the city of Andijan. According to eyewitness accounts, military forces shot to kill. And kill they did. Roughly 500 people were killed at the scene. Human Rights Watch reports that around 200 more were arrested, tortured, and sentenced jail time.

The violence was barely covered by Western media sources. A quick Google News search of “Andijan” will yield articles from sources such as South China Morning Post, The Diplomat, and Sputnik International; no New York Times or Washington Post articles are to be found.

By now, one thing should be clear: Karimov was a bad—but cunning—man. But despite all of his cunning, he never thought about the fact that he would die. There is no clear successor in Uzbekistan.

A few things might happen.

Even if Karimov thought he would live forever, other politicians were not so sure. The Uzbek Constitution stipulates that a presidential election must be held within three months of a presidential death in office. However, considering Uzbekistan’s history with fraudulent elections, it is not a foregone conclusion that those elections will occur.

In the meantime, the chairman of the Uzbek Senate is supposed to step up to be interim president. Instead, he pointed to Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyaev to be appointed interim president.

Mirziyaev has been a loyal supporter of Karimov since he was appointed Prime Minister in 2003.

According to a government statement, lawmakers appointed Mirziyaev due to his years of experience serving the people in the Karimov regime.

What does this mean? Most likely, not much will change.

Officials will continue to silence political opposition. People will keep dying. Human rights will continue to be infringed.

Or maybe none of that will happen.

Maybe Mirziyaev will allow for democratic elections in a country where they have never existed before. Political parties, suppressed for 25 years, will crop up all over the country. Citizens, newly freed from authoritarian rule, will form social

groups and advocacy organizations. Democracy will flourish in yet another country. Free and critical media will broadcast.

With newfound freedoms will come newfound problems. Uzbekistan’s economy, which is heavily reliant on energy exportation, will be privatized and those companies will jockey to find new markets abroad, such as the United States.

The Islamic terrorists who fled the country under Karimov’s rule may return to wreak havoc in their homeland. Taxpayer dollars will finance free elections and will pay for overseers of those elections.

Why does it matter that the aging executive of a largely irrelevant Caucasus nation died?

Because no part of that statement is true. Islam Karimov was not an aging executive—he was a ruthless dictator who shunned and manipulated the international community while oppressing his people. Uzbekistan is not an irrelevant nation—it lies conveniently between Asia and Europe. It is a trade route, has vast natural resources, and is ripe for democracy.

Nobody really knows what is happening in Uzbekistan. But whatever happens, we’ll be hearing about it.

Jacob Finke is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at jbfinke@wustl.edu.

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | INTERNATIONAL

FINDING CLARITY IN CHAOS: A RESPONSE TO “FRACTURED LANDS” Divya Walia

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he term ‘Middle East’ has become a word so loaded with connotation in the world of US foreign policy that I sometimes find myself turning away from the topic—the narrative is too complex, the opinions too emotional, the debate too heated. As a region and a history, the Middle East (or ‘Arab World’—whatever term is in style at the moment) is lumped together in a confusion of religion, ethnicity, and tragedy. In fact, an area with such staggering diversity can hardly be viewed under one lens, and perhaps doing so has been the root of my struggle in having a conversation about it. What I had been searching for was something to make this story comprehensible and personal—to make sense of the madness.

In August, The New York Times Magazine devoted their issue to a feature by journalist Scott Anderson entitled, “Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart.” More than any other piece of literature that I have read on the Middle East, this was the one that came the closest to ending my search. Journalistically, the article reflects a golden-era past; it is a well-funded, longterm, intensive work that blows the lid off the current crisis. Anderson spent over a year constructing this piece, which frames the narrative of the region through the eyes of six individuals in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iraq, and what is known as Iraqi Kurdistan. He follows these characters through the arc of the modern conflict, and begins in 1972, when the friction between Western influence and regional leaders was at its height.

He goes into the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Arab Spring, and the rise of ISIS up to the present day.

In the present discussion of the Middle East, everyone can agree on one key point: something went wrong. The story, as it stands today, is a devastating tragedy, as the region reaches a point of unprecedented violence and conflict.

Anderson thus begins by begging the question: what went wrong? He doesn’t give us the answer. Instead, he tells a story through human faces—an upper middle class Egyptian academic whose family is separated by the events

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of the revolution, a brave women’s right activist allied with American troops forced out of Afghanistan, a Syrian student whose education is interrupted by war, a Kurdish doctor leading the fight against ISIS in northern Iraq. We contextualize these characters within their daily lives and watch their world evolve as the region unravels. Though there was no singular thesis to Anderson’s work, I was able to come away with some overarching conclusions.

Whether or not we choose to see it, the fingerprints of Western intervention are all over the mess that is now the Middle East. This careless pattern of involvement began after World War I, when imperialist powers began artificially constructing states with no regard to sectarian divides. Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the countries most destroyed by violence today, were formed haphazardly from the remains of the Ottoman Empire. The lack of a cohesive identity is seen in today’s chaos. The subsequent entrances and exits of the U.S. military in the twentieth and twenty-first century continued to damage this fragile cohesion, as our interventions sparked social unrest that opened old wounds. A particularly vivid example of this are the events following Operation Desert Storm, when U.S. invasion of Hussein’s Iraq caused an American-encouraged uprising of the historically-oppressed minority Shiite population in the South. When the Americans unexpectedly backed down, the Shiites were left merciless against the forces of the Iraqi army and were quickly decimated. This anecdote and similar ones show that we, as Americans, cannot remove ourselves from the region’s narrative. Our actions, or inactions, have led to violence and instability that continues today. This is an important idea to keep in mind as we evaluate the current state of the region. While it is easy to get caught up in the distancing narrative of oppressive regimes, controversial social policies, and religious extremism, if we probe a little further, we see that we cannot so easily position ourselves as the benevolent actor. By viewing the

conflict from the perspective of nationals from a range of countries, I realized how ingrained this legacy of the U.S. and Western intervention is in the totality of conflict across the region.

Through this story, I also began to see the grave danger of lumping together ethnicities and religions without a true concept of the nuanced divides between them. By failing to consider the makeup and history of these factions in shaping Middle East policy, the U.S. and the West instigated the continuation of centuries-old violence.

Anderson describes this danger in the story of the Kurds, who have been both prized and vilified by the West in their pursuits in the region.

In fact, the history of the Kurds involves more violence within the group than conflict with those outside of it. In his dialogue with Azar Mirkhan, the Kurdish doctor-turned-military leader, Anderson explores the political and ethnic split between the divided groups that make up the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq. Politically, the Iraqi Kurds are split into the Kurdish Democratic Party (K.D.P) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (P.U.K), both of which clash fundamentally over the future direction of the region. But, digging deeper, this divide actually reflects an ethnic split within the Kurdish population between two rival tribes, the Barzani and the Talabani, whose enduring conflict led to a civil war in the 1990s. Iraqi Kurdistan is geographically divided between these two camps, each village marked by their respective flag. Mirkhan points to a lack of alliance between the two groups as the reason for the Kurd’s vulnerability to ISIS; information and defense had no way of reaching each other in time to preempt attack. How can we make such sweeping generalizations as “arming the Kurds” without recognizing the differences within the group? Though it may be tempting to view an oppressed minority as one disenfranchised entity, we must recognize that factionalism exists in all groups in order to prevent further conflict.

Interests and rivalries within nationalities and ethnicities are often not binary, but rather reflect

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Kurdish refugees flee to Turkey

a constantly changing drama that shifts priorities over time.

The article also helped me to grasp the meaning behind the emergence of ISIS, perhaps the issue that weighs the greatest on the mind of the Western World. Anderson’s analysis demonstrated the breadth of the group’s terror in the region. He follows the journey of a young Iraqi man who fell into ISIS’s lure, only to realize that the terror of the organization also falls upon those who are within it—once you join ISIS, your survival is dependent on your obedience. Like many other impoverished laborers, his choice to join largely came from economic incentives rather than ideology. The most powerful explanation of the group was a quote from one of Anderson’s interviewees: “ ‘ISIS isn’t just an organization, it’s an idea.’- It is also a kind of tribe, of course, and if this incarnation is destroyed, the conditions that created ISIS will remain in the form of a generation of disaffected and futureless young men who find purpose and power and belonging by picking up a gun.”

Again, we must ask ourselves to go beyond a

one-dimensional understanding of the issue. By looking at ISIS as a regional phenomenon that surpasses a single terrorist group, we see what it will take to address this problem in the longterm: not just a knee-jerk military reaction, but also a solution geared toward economic and social restoration of the region.

Ultimately, there is no simple cause, solution, or explanation to what happened and is happening in the Middle East. As Anderson points out, history rarely works in this fashion. But Anderson’s piece allowed me to come away with an understanding of the issue that is at once logical and emotional. I couldn’t help but form a personal attachment to these individuals and their struggles. I could hear the guilt in the voice of the Kurdish military leader who realized that he had reached a village too late to save it from ISIS’ destruction and could see the pained longing in the eyes of a Syrian student-turned-refugee forced to make his way through Europe but determined to one day return to his home and life. Anderson’s telling of the story goes beyond mere description. It reveals what’s at stake in

the lives of his interviewees. It is a piece that is more personally compelling than any scholarly text. He broke apart the complexity with the knowledge that this is an inherently complex narrative, that though we may try to attribute some sense of chronological linearity to the Arab World, we will only be able to truly grasp it as a story of human lives.

Divya Walia is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at dwalia@wustl.edu.

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POST-OLYMPIC BRAZIL Huayu Gao

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s the international spotlight fades on Rio, the Olympics may have been the best disaster that could’ve happened to Brazil.

In August 2015, less than one year before Brazil was due to host the Summer Olympics, it slipped into a deep recession. The prices for its key exports—oil, coffee, sugar, and metal— fell sharply. This, coupled with the high-level corruption and money laundering scandal with Petrobras, the state-run oil company, led to the economy contracting 3.8 percent in 2015.

Inflation and unemployment levels reached the highest the country has seen in years.

The recession had devastating implications on the country’s growth. It coincided with then-president Dilma Rousseff’s plummeting approval rating, which fell from 70, when she was first elected, to eight percent. After many called for her impeachment, she was impeached in May 2016. Her vice president, Michel Temer, stepped in as acting president. He had been a 75-year-old law professor and major politician in Brazil’s biggest political group, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMBD). For years, he paired the PMBD with the President, but when Rousseff refused to address the party’s concerns, the PMBD abandoned the partnership.

Her impeachment came shortly thereafter, and she claims this was PMBD’s attempt to carry out a political coup. News of the turnover quickly spread since the Olympics were to be held in Brazil a few months later. News of corruption and government inadequacies, however, didn’t end at the national government.

Rio borrowed billions of dollars from the federal government and international lenders to fund the Olympics. Rio’s interim governor, Francisco Dornelles, even declared that the state was suffering from a financial “public calamity.”

In addition, to fund preparations, Brazil levied heavy taxes on citizens mostly in impoverished situations to make areas around Olympic stadiums nicer for tourists and athletes. In one case, citizens were taxed with the understanding that a train line would be built, but it was later understood that the train station would run through the richer areas to the Olympic stadiums, instead of to the major living areas of Rio’s citizens. Rather than Brazil improving infrastructure where it is desperately needed, Brazil is improving the affluent tourist destinations. In some areas, Brazil pushed poorer residents out of their homes. The government reports that more than 4,210 families have been removed from their homes due to the Olympics. Furthermore, since 2009, more than 22,000 families have been relocated from Rio’s illegally settled areas, commonly called favelas. Favelas are located in the urban slums around major cities and are built in close quarters to one another on mountainsides.

The disastrous preparation and management of the Rio Olympics reflected the chaos within the national government. The problems were widely reported and garnered international attention.

No Olympics have been without some bumps in the road, but many matters could have been handled better.

The living condition concerns only further complicated matters. Zika started spreading in Brazil in early 2015, leading some top-notch athletes to drop out before the games started. Since the games were held in Brazil’s winter, officials stated that the threat was not as high, but the CDC still issued a travel advisory for the area.

The bodies of water used for rowing and sailing were contaminated with raw sewage and water-born diseases. At the beginning of August, the Associated Press reported that only three teaspoons of the water would almost definitely result in contracting a virus. Although officials tried to clean up as many of the waterways as possible, Rio ended up going over budget, resulting in diverted funds.

From an economic standpoint, Rio, estimated to cost 20 billion dollars, did not cost as much as the two most recent Olympics, but it is important to acknowledge that when Brazil accepted the Olympic bid in 2009, the state of its economy was growing. However, due to the recession,

Despite all setbacks, the games were mostly a success. In fact, Temer called the games an “absolute success.” Brazil won a record 19 gold medals. 27 world records were broken. The closing ceremony ended with both joy and sadness after the tragic death of Iranian cyclist Bahman

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Golbarnezhad. The Maracana Stadium was packed for the ceremony and ticket sales surpassed the 1.5 million sold in the 2008 Beijing games. The athletes themselves generated significant amounts of interest. According to Temer, 87 percent of tourists wanted to come back to Brazil. In monetary terms, the games yielded some of the most profits ever in Olympic history. Networks paid more than four billion dollars to screen the event and the event brought in more than nine billion dollars in marketing revenue. Now that the curtains have closed on Rio and attention has turned elsewhere, Brazil is left with many unresolved issues. For one, Brazilians are looking to President Temer to be an effective leader. Though many have protested his presidency, since he was not democratically elected, he is in charge of moving Brazil forward.

Temer is left with several challenges, one of which is to work with Rio to ensure their Olympic legacy. Unfortunately, many citizens will never benefit from this historic event. The International Olympic Committee boasts about its past repurposed stadiums and gentrification, but in reality many stadiums fall into ruin and abandonment.

Since the 2014 Sochi Olympics, the stadiums and areas remain desolate and deteriorated. The Olympic Village lies in ruins and many housing centers remain incomplete and deserted. The 2012 London Olympics boasted that they rejuvenated their older, less safe neighborhoods, while in reality gentrification increased the cost of housing and pushed many residents out. With every development comes unintended consequences, and Rio is no different.

This time, many new changes have been made in attempt to make the Olympic legacy stick.

Many of Rio’s stadiums were designed to be Arenas of the Future, where they could be easily disassembled and repurposed. Such is the case with the handball stadium; the pieces will be dissembled and rebuilt into four schools for about 500 students each. Other stadiums will be transformed into housing for an estimated 80,000 residents and the swimming pools will be turned into public pools for citizens. These small steps, if successful, would show the world that Brazil is actively trying to help its citizens gain from the games, as well as show the world

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that hosting the Olympic games is not a oneand-done deal.

officials has fostered a currently ongoing sense of frustration.

President Temer’s next challenge is to regain public trust while cleaning up the continuing problem of corruption. On September 13, the politician who led the charge to impeach Rousseff was expelled for corruption and the obstruction of justice. Just one day later, Rousseff’s predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was charged with corruption. In a surprising turn of events, President Temer later admitted in a speech to international policy leaders that Rousseff was impeached because she refused to accept his economic policy. The Brazilian Supreme Court has allowed an investigation to be opened on Temer. The purging of public

What will ultimately lead to political reform is all the international attention the corruption has garnered. Brazilians and the rest of the world are calling for the government to be more transparent. As a result, more and more of the scandal is coming to light. In order to effectively maintain the post-Olympic glow, Temer should come clean with his involvement in the impeachment of Rouseff and should ensure that the revenue earned from hosting the games is invested in the interests of all citizens, not just the wealthy upper class. The Olympics have been a great boost to Brazil’s shaky economy, but direct action will be necessary for investor confidence to

return to its pre-recession levels.

For Brazilians, anyone other than Dilma Rousseff would make their country better, but President Temer is now put in a difficult position. With more than two years but little political capital to use, he must prove to both Brazilians and the international community that the recession and rampant corruption in the country can be managed and that his highly contested presidency was not another misstep for Brazil.

Huayu Gao is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at Huayu.gao@wustl.edu.

NOT HUNGARY FOR REFUGEES: VIKTOR ORBÁN AND THE RISE OF FEAR POLITICS Ryan Mendelson

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his summer, I had the opportunity to travel to Budapest. My cousin had been working there for a few weeks, and I decided that I had saved up enough money to hop over and visit him. On the evening of July 15th, I boarded a red-eye flight in Washington, DC and was in Vienna, Austria by morning. When I arrived, I handed the immigration attendant my passport, received admittance to the country, and ate some breakfast. After a short layover, I boarded a small plane to the Budapest airport, picked up my suitcase, and took an Uber to my cousin’s flat. In twelve hours, I had crossed the Atlantic Ocean, entered the European Union, and unpacked my luggage in a small apartment on the outskirts of the Hungarian capital. In that time, the only calamity I faced was my jet lag.

Whereas my only major obstacle in making the trip was its expense, to many thousands of

refugees, this journey remains an unimaginable and unrealizable feat.

Today, Hungary is perhaps the single most polarizing country as it pertains to the European refugee crisis. While Hungary has the highest number of asylum applications per capita of any country in Europe, there remains a tremendous level of anti-migrant sentiment in the country that has undoubtedly been bolstered and propagated by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his ruling right-wing Fidesz party. Orbán has gained a reputation as a controversial figure who does not hesitate to convey his radical opposition to migration, saying that “every single migrant poses a public security and terror risk” and that migration into Hungary is a “poison.” From my experience in Hungary, while I failed to notice overt manifestations of this radicalism, I noticed

no opposition to it either. Immigrant advocacy seems invisible among the Hungarian populace, for as I blissfully toured the historical streets of Budapest, there seemed to be no reminders of the thousands of migrants locked outside the razor wire border fence.

Ultimately, while Orbán’s opinions may seem radical and specific, his policies represent a mere stepping-stone in the rise of radicalism in the Western world. Thus, the normalization of Orbán’s anti-immigrant sentiment reflects a larger global trend that indicates that fear, not factual understanding, is the main driver for political change around the world.

Orbán demonstrated precisely this fear-overfact politics in an interview with Business Insider.

When pressed about his resistance to the EU proposal for all member nations to share the

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WU POLITICAL REVIEW | INTERNATIONAL refugee burden, Orbán explained that Hungary seeks not to “divide Europe,” but rather to “protect [its own] citizens.” He then added, “This means that we do not want migrants to come to us.” In this interview, although Orbán directly articulated his opposition to refugee resettlement in Hungary, he failed to provide evidence that this act would protect Hungarian citizens in any way. While the threat of migrants in Europe remains highly disputed, without tangible statistics, Orbán’s mention of the threat of migrants creates the intangible feeling of fear.

Later in the interview, Orbán not only invoked fear of difference in the broad sense, but he also directly pushed the more specific categories of cultural ignorance and xenophobia.

Orbán articulated his belief that taking in masses of Middle Eastern migrants “means importing terrorism, criminalism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia. This claim lacks facts to back it up, but more importantly, Orbán is perpetuating discrimination based on race. He went a step further still when he called Hungary a “cultural melting pot,” claiming the fact that “Europe’s largest synagogue is here in Budapest” as a justification for this blanket statement. This comment is particularly harmful because it misrepresents and ignores Hungary’s brutal history of anti-Semitism. His remark emphasizing the size of the synagogue ignores the 565,000 Jews murdered during World War II and the relatively small number of Jews that remain. Instead, he picks and chooses his facts to convey a sense of nationalism and exclude a different foreign group. Evidently, as the face of contemporary Hungarian politics, Orbán is using fear and misrepresentation of facts as tools not only for personal gain, but also as tools for political change in the broader sphere. Moreover, in doing so, he contributes to a strong sentiment of nationalism that promotes the cycle of fear, ignorance, and discrimination in Hungary.

The scope of Orbán’s radical rhetoric spreads much farther than this one interview. Globally, Orbán is known more for his xenophobic refugee policies than for his economic ones. Despite a drop in support in the first half of last year, the construction of the border fence in October was enough for the Fidesz party to retain its majority in the Hungarian and European parliaments.

But how do Hungary’s strict anti-migrant policies affect the country fiscally? In other words, are these policies really the best option for Hungary’s economic and internal affairs? It

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certainly doesn’t seem that way. In recent years, Hungary has faced a severe labor shortage as a result of its accession into the EU. Because wages are far higher in other EU countries like France (the GDP per capita in France is $41,200 compared to Hungary’s $26,200), a growing number of native Hungarians are moving overseas to work. It is therefore quite possible that the presence of migrants could counter this labor shortage, yet Orbán refuses to back down. Hungary’s hardline anti-migration stance may not only fabricate an overblown threat, but it may also stand in the way of overall economic benefit.

Hungarian politics today are largely dictated by anti-migrant sentiment, of which Prime Minister Orbán remains at the forefront. Since Orbán’s rhetoric has spread throughout mainstream Hungarian politics, it is now no longer radical; xenophobia has become the norm throughout the country. But this right-wing nationalist sentiment spreads beyond Hungary’s borders. Take Brexit, for example. For many Brits who supported the leave campaign, there were legitimate arguments for increased national sovereignty and autonomy. However, stubborn resistance and opposition to immigration blanketed these arguments.

Despite the increasing pervasiveness of fear politics, they fail to yield any tangible benefits to the countries in which they are found. As we have seen, Hungary could benefit enormously by relaxing its refugee policies. In a country whose people are leaving to pursue higher wages, destitute migrants, who would appreciate any wages at all, could fill these gaps. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, the choice to leave the European Union has already caused the pound to lose value and will reduce the size of Britain’s economy in the long run. Additionally, if the UK does leave the EU, the EU will remain its largest trading partner and the UK must continue to abide by EU regulations. Evidently, leaving the EU yields little to no tangible benefit for the Brits.

Thus, fear politics not only lack factual basis, but they also stand directly in the way of the interests of peoples and nations.

As xenophobic sentiment spreads through both national and international spheres, it becomes normalized and legitimized. This process has already begun in the United States. Donald Trump, now the figurehead of the Republican Party, has garnered support by inciting fears that Mexicans and Muslims are the primary threats facing our nation. These perceived threats resist

the facts that most terror attacks originate at home and that net immigration from Mexico is zero. Instead of taking steps to reform the visa process with Mexico or to fight homegrown terrorism, Trump and others are demonizing millions of Americans. As in both Hungary and the UK, xenophobia is responsible for preventing constructive policies that would actually better the country.

Hungary, therefore, is not the only country in the world whose politics are dictated by xenophobia. It merely represents one example of the damage that fear politics do. In countries like Hungary, the UK, and the US, xenophobia exists because uncontrolled migration represents a perceived threat to the status quo. With the absence of tangible facts and trends, that’s all that migration is: a fear. Unless nations can embrace policies that address tangible issues and not ones based on unjustified and irrational fear, their populations will continue to act against their own best interests because the creation of fear covers up substantive political issues.

If Hungary continues along this path, to an outsider, not much will change. Many thousands of others will travel to Hungary like I did and find themselves lost among the beautiful architecture and centuries-old history. But Hungary will continue to lose its workforce, and refugees will continue to be neglected outside of the border fence. Unless the world wakes up to its fears, the interests of many millions—of refugees and citizens—will remain tucked away.

Ryan Mendelson is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at ryanmendelson@wustl.edu

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CLAYTON'S CHOICES: BALLOT PREVIEW Data from League of Women Voters, Ballotopedia

U.S. Senator

Roy Blunt (R) Incumbent

Jason Kander (D) Missouri secretary of state

U.S. Representative, District 1

Steven G. Bailey (R) Business Professor, UMSL Community College at Meramec

Lacy Clay (D) Incumbent

Governor

Eric Greitens (R) Founder and former CEO The Misson Countinues

Chris Koster (D) Attorney general

Lieutenant Governor

Russ Carnahan (D) Attorney, consultant

Mike Parson (R) Small businessman

Secretary of State

Robin Smith (D) Retired news anchor

John (Jay) Ashcroft (R) Attorney, Ashcroft Law Firm

State Treasurer

Judy Baker (D) Adjunct professor, Washington University Senior fellow, Governing Institute

Eric Schmitt (R) State senator, attorney

Attorney General

Josh Hawley (R) Constitutional lawyer

Teresa Hensley (D) Attorney

State Representative, District 87

Stacey Newman (D) Incumbent

Six ballot measures are certified to appear on the Missouri ballot on November 8.

Constitutional Amendment 1 would renew the existing sales and use tax of 0.1 percent for 10 years.

on any service or activity that was not subject to a sales or use tax as of January 1, 2015.

Constitutional Amendment 2 would establish limits on campaign contributions to candidates for state or judicial office.

Constitutional Amendment 6 would empower the state government to require the presentation of voter IDs at public elections for the purpose of identifying and proving national and state citizenship.

Constitutional Amendment 3 would increase the taxes on cigarette packs to 60 cents by 2020.

Constitutional Amendment 4 would prohibit a new state sales or use tax

Proposition A would increase taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products a total of 23 cents per pack by 2021.

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VOTE NOV 8