Politics | The End of the Page

December 3, 2012
by Luke Goldstein
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Weiwei-isms by Ai Weiwei – Little Book That Packs a Punch

We live in a time when things have taken a noticeable turn for the longer and shorter at the same time. In the explosion of blogging and numerous other forms of online publication, people have greater access than ever before to make their voices heard and at great length. Yet, at the same time, outlets like Facebook and Twitter especially, direct their users to hone their message down, purify it to the most crystallized form before sending it out to the world. Sometimes this makes for completely inane and paltry statements about someone’s present moment of self-reflection, but there are a few out there who can use this strategy to pinpoint their message into weapons of the wordsmith. Those people are dangerous. Those people can change minds. Continue reading →

September 4, 2012
by Luke Goldstein
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American Teacher: A Lesson for the Whole Nation

While we sit back and prepare for election season, we know politicians from both sides are going to tell us repeatedly what our country needs to get going again. We have to fix the economy, we have to balance the budget (or at least get closer), we need to protect our borders, these are all important, yet one item keeps appearing in a near-monastic chant: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs! I agree deeply that this is the most important part of getting the country moving again, but we want to make sure we are moving in the right direction and for that I believe we need to put our focus on teaching jobs. This documentary, American Teacher, helps explain why. Continue reading →

February 6, 2012
by Luke Goldstein
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Operation Homecoming: Words From The Front Lines

There are experiences that can never be truly traded away or passed along, no matter how hard we try. The amazement and beauty of childbirth, the crushing sorrow of losing a parent, or even the serenity of knowing a job is well done. Try as we might, these things exist inside us and everyone else will only feel a sliver of what it is like through how we describe it. One of the most profound and life altering experiences is war and no one is affected by it more than those on the front lines. There is always training, there is always a new method to try to prepare, but no one comes back from war the way they went in. Our country is now in the midst of welcoming home thousands upon thousands of soldiers from the fighting in Middle East and those brave warriors face not only the struggles of reintegrating into society (and finding a job), but figuring out rote answers to that all too common question, “What was it like?” Those can be extremely hard conversations to have, but this film documents a program trying to help those soldier find a path to communication. Continue reading →

J. Edgar Clint Eastwood Leonardo DiCaprio

November 27, 2011
by Luke Goldstein
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J. Edgar: The Crown Weighs Heavy On This One

Every director certainly has a style and while some may try to shake things up every now and again, keep people on their toes, others stay the course and deliver time and time again what you have come to expect from them. That’s not always a bad thing, especially when you have serious accolades and awards already under your belt, but it can also set up a certain type of expectation about the quality and depth of each story you bring to the screen, which sometimes can be a lot to overcome. The truth is there is no end to the sophomore curse. Your last fantastic picture is always quickly overshadowed by your current less than stellar outing. Clint Eastwood is the man under the spotlight right now and what he brings to the table is another tale of power, passion and persecution, all inside one continuously conflicted person. Continue reading →

The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama

December 26, 2010
by Luke Goldstein
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The Backlash: Beneath the Doom and Gloom Lies Money

There are many things that connect us all, no matter where we live, what color we are and which God we believe in. One of the deepest and most integral of those connections is fear. We all have it, whether it’s worrying about the spread of Communism, the shortage of scientific breakthroughs toward a cure for cancer, or maybe just late night jitters about the foul-smelling thing hiding underneath the bed. Most of it can be boiled down to a simple phrase, “fear of the other”. While some fears can be debated and argued as being justified, the underlying problem with fear is that once someone or something knows what your fear is, it can be used against you as a weapon. People throughout history have made their livelihoods based on that fact alone and it is on proud display here in the present day inside the formation of the Tea Party movement and the outlandish opposition to Barack Obama. Continue reading →

September 20, 2010
by Luke Goldstein
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Welcome to Pandora’s Tea Party!

There are two mostly unavoidable facts going into the first midterm elections for President Obama. One, the first midterm election after a new president takes power almost always sees a loss in the seats for his (or someday, her) party. This is commonly referred to as “buyer’s remorse” where the enthusiasm for the president’s party wanes after the win and they sit back on their laurels, while the losing party rallies harder and louder to try and come back from the embarrassing loss of the big seat. Two, in terms of this specific moment of economic hardship, the party in power is held to blame and again they lose more seats. It doesn’t matter where the problem started and how far back the blame can be placed. Most voters will only turn their calendars back so far before deciding that the current governing body had enough time to fix whatever ails the country. True, that sounds a bit illogical, but politics and logic are very, very long distance friends. Continue reading →

August 26, 2010
by Luke Goldstein
2 Comments

2010 Midterms – Feeding Frenzy Overtakes Reason

It’s nearing that time of year again when all the news networks, and partisan sounding boards, break out their horn choirs and play that familiar ‘Decision’ music. It’s meant to inspire, it’s meant to encourage, and it’s meant to fill our hearts with the desire to take part in the core meaning of our democracy. Instead, what it reflects now is the onslaught of fear-mongering and fact distortion in the most heinous of manners. One side is struggling to buck historical trend and not lose too many seats, while the other is struggling to hold on to any semblance of its previous character, having sacrificed themselves at the altar of public reactionaries. Both sides smell blood in the water, but they ignore that too much blood makes the water impossible to drink and it cannot nourish the nation. Continue reading →

May 19, 2010
by Luke Goldstein
1 Comment

Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend

Everyone has heard the popular phrase, “Never judge a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” Well, many people throughout history have judged those gone before us, especially those who went on to change the course of history. Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara Jr. was one of those people. After growing up in Argentina, he took a soon-to-be-famous motorcycle journey with his friend and compatriot, Alberto Granado, into the deep plains and undeveloped areas of Latin America. During that journey he witnesses abject poverty and suffering of the indigenous people. By the time he returned, seeds of political and revolutionary discourse were germinating in his soul and they would very soon sprout and give rise to the man everyone came to know only as ‘Che’. Even years after his execution by a one-man firing squad, scholars and modern-day revolutionaries alike have attempted to explain and understand who the man was, but very few of them remembered that famous parable above, and those who did remember, didn’t take it to heart like Patrick Symmes. Continue reading →

April 28, 2010
by Luke Goldstein
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Arizona moves out of the ‘Land of the Free’

Arizona recently enacted one of the most backwards and revisionist immigration laws in our country. The piece of paper the governor signed into practice states that the police are now under orders to pull over, question or otherwise force any person in the state that “looks to be an illegal immigrant” to immediately show proper documentation of their status as American citizens. Most pundits and newscasters have been referring to this as the “Papers, Please.” bill. While I do not personally live in Arizona, this is a dangerous game to begin because a number of other Southern states with more conservative leaning electorates are watching very closely as to whether this law will withstand the oncoming onslaught of civil liberty and constitutionality law suits. If it does, you can be assured you will see laws like this popping up all along the southern border and spreading upwards. Honestly, do they think every illegal immigrant just stops in the first border town? Continue reading →

March 24, 2010
by Luke Goldstein
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Using the Best, Bringing Out the Worst

Freedom of speech is one of the most widely appreciated and critically lauded rights in our country, yet it is also one of the least understood. Under the protection of this original amendment to the Constitution of the United States, each person has the inherent right to express themselves through the use of words. This is one of the core elements to our democracy, if not the very heart of it. Yet once again we are beginning to see how that right can be mistreated, misunderstood and misdirected against the very ideals it was created for. Continue reading →

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