“Prudence or Cruelty?”, 172 "Cutting Food Stamps Will Cost Everyone," "The Economic Case for Food Stamps," "How America's Welfare System Hurts the People It's Supposed to Help"
“Prudence or Cruelty?” by Nicholas Kristof (172)
One. What are the current statistics for food stamps?
47 million Americans receive food stamps to combat hunger.
About 5% of Americans have “very low food security,” meaning food can run out before the next source of income.
In one-third of those households, an adult “reported not eating for the entire day.”
Fourteen percent of toddlers suffer iron deficiency. This can result in impaired brain development.
Impaired brain development and other health problems will cost taxpayers far more than food stamps.
The essay’s author Nicholas Kristof finds it “infuriating” that a wealthy country like America allows this kind of hunger and malnutrition to go on. He expresses his outrage at a time when Congress is debating to slash the food stamp program.
Democrats at the time of this essay wanted to slash food stamps by $4 billion over 10 years; Republicans wanted to slash them by $40 billion.
More than 90% of the families who receive food stamps live below the poverty line. Nearly two-thirds of the recipients are children, the elderly, and the disabled.
Updates:
You can buy food online with food stamps (SNAP)
Kevin Drum of Mother Jones explains how Fox News uses wrong statistics and does so incompetently. MSNBC also discredits Fox News for what are essentially false statistics. Eventually, Fox News retracted its false claim, we read on The Hill.
Food stamp fraud continues to go down, we read in Time, March 30, 2017, issue.
Two. How does the government offer “food stamp” subsidies to the rich?
When they dine at expensive restaurants, the rich can deduct the bill as a tax write-off.
There’s controversy about feeding the poor but no controversy about the government helping to pay the expenses for the rich’s opulent meals, caviar, champagne, etc.
Additionally, the farm bill gives aid to 50 billionaires or companies.
More surprisingly, the government pays Kristof $588 a year to not grow crops on his wooded land in Oregon. He gives the money to a maternity hospital.
The author is outraged at a double standard that rewards the rich and punishes the poor.
Three. What counterargument does Kristof address?
He concedes that food stamps are not perfect. After all, they treat the symptoms, not the root causes, of hunger. He further concedes that we should “chip away at long-term poverty through early education, home visitation for infants, job training, and helping teenagers avoid unwanted pregnancies.”
However, he offers a rebuttal that food stamps are effective in many ways:
They reduce the number of children living in extreme poverty by half.
They give nutrition to the fetus and stave off long-term health problems to that fetus.
He concludes that slashing food stamps would be “a mark of shortsighted cruelty.”
Counterargument-Rebuttal Section Focus:
Your focus should be on food stamp fraud.
Here is an excellent New York Times article: "Food Stamp Fraud, Rare but Troubling"
Using the data from the above article, we could argue that people who use anecdotes to support their argument are committing the anecdotal fallacy, which states that it's easy for us to remember egregious personal examples than plain facts. The personal examples of "hellacious" food stamp fraud do exist, but they don't negate the 97-99% of food stamp users who are benefitting legally from the government aid.
Other Sources
"Cutting Food Stamps Will Cost Everyone" in The Atlantic: The writer Chin Jou points out that childhood obesity will result from SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) cuts and that childhood obesity is more costly to taxpayers in the long-run.
"The Economic Case for Food Stamps" in The Atlantic
Most Welfare Dollars Don't Go the Poor
"How America's Welfare System Hurts the People It's Supposed to Help" in Reason Magazine
Essay Option
Support, refute or complicate Nicholas Kristof’s assertion that slashing food stamps is morally indefensible.
Main Counterarguments:
Food stamps create lifelong dependency. Rebuttal: 87% of recipients will work within a year.
Food stamps create rampant fraud. Fraud is only about 1%, so we should not use anecdotal evidence.
Sample Outline for a 5-Page Essay
Page 1 is Your First Paragraph: For the introduction, you frame the debate: Why some people like Kristof advocate food stamps while others want them to be cut. 250 words.
Or you might know someone on food stamps, and you can tell a compelling story about this person or family that will catch the reader's attention. (also 250 words)
Paragraph 2: Develop a thesis with a concession clause: (150 words, 400 subtotal)
Thesis Sample That Supports Kristof
While I acknowledge that there is some fraud, abuse, and dysfunctional dependency created by food stamps, we must continue to provide them to the poor and disabled because it is not fair to punish innocent children, providing fetal nutrition saves the taxpayers over the long-term, we cannot have the double standard of subsidizing the rich with tax write-offs, essentially paying for 30% of their "business meals," while making the poor starve.
Or a Sample That Partly Supports Kristof
While Kristof makes compelling points about our moral need to provide food stamps to the poor, his essay fails to address the dysfunctional components of a food stamp program that needs deep reform in matters of imposing limits, making mandatory job training as a requirement for food stamps, and stronger barriers for preventing food stamp abuse.
Or a Sample That Excoriates Current Food Stamp Program
The current food stamp program is a farce rooted in moral bankruptcy evidenced by its disregard for any kind of conduct so that people receiving food stamps do so in a limited manner while achieving job training; its racist policy of setting a low standard of behavior resulting in marginalizing entire communities that forever cannot participate in the American Dream; its indifference to the underground economies that are created by the rampant abuses; and its policy of making recipients afraid of making too much money on their own for fear of being cut off support.
Paragraphs 3-6 are your supporting paragraphs at 150 words each. (600 plus 400 is 1,000 subtotal)
Paragraph 7 would address your first counterargument and rebuttal. 200 words (1,200 subtotal)
Paragraph 8 would address your second counterargument and rebuttal. 200 words (1,400 subtotal).
Conclusion: Dramatic restatement of your thesis in 100 words. 1,500 grand total.
Sample of Two Counterarguments and Rebuttals
My opponents will argue that there is food stamp fraud, and that is just reason for cutting food stamps for all. However, my opponents are misguided when we consider that food stamp fraud is less than 3%. (updated: now it's down to less than 1.5%)
Examples of Counterargument-Rebuttal Statements
While author X makes many compelling points, her overall argument collapses under the weight of __________, ___________, ___________, and ______________.
My opponents will point out that X, Y, and Z. However, their points fail to be convincing in light of A, B, and C.
The above would have to be developed into a paragraph that would be about a half page.
Secondly, my opponents will argue that food stamps create a cycle of dependency. However, while there are abuses, most food stamp recipients are employed within a year. It should also be noted that many full-time American workers don't get paid enough money to feed their families and, as many Walmart employees will tell you, they need assistance. Therefore, it is greedy companies like Walmart that are bilking the taxpayers, not poor Americans.
The above would have to be developed into a paragraph that would be about a half page.
Your Conclusion:
A conclusion should be an emotional restatement of your thesis. You want your conclusion to be powerful and emotional so that it sticks with the reader.
Your Works Cited page:
Your MLA Works Cited page should have 3 sources. At least one of those sources should be from the El Camino Library Database.
Writing Effective Introduction Paragraphs for Your Essays
Weak Introductions to Avoid
One. Don’t use overused quotes:
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
“To be or not to be, that is the question.”
Two. Don’t use pretentious, grandiose, overwrought, bloated, self-regarding, clichéd, unintentionally funny openings:
Since the Dawn of Man, people have sought love and happiness . . .
In today’s society, we see more and more people cocooning in their homes . . .
Man has always wondered why happiness and contentment are so elusive like trying to grasp a bar of sudsy, wet soap.
We have now arrived at a Societal Epoch where we no longer truly communicate with one another as we have embarked upon the full-time task of self-aggrandizement through the social media of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, et al.
In this modern world we face a new existential crisis with the advent of newfangled technologies rendering us razzle-dazzled with the overwhelming possibilities of digital splendor on one hand and painfully dislocated and lonely with our noses constantly rubbing our digital screens on the other.
Since Adam and Eve traipsed across the luxuriant Garden of Eden searching for the juicy, succulent Adriatic fig only to find it withered under the attack of mites, ants, and fruit flies, mankind has embarked upon the quest for the perfect pesticide.
Three. Never apologize to the reader:
Sorry for these half-baked chicken scratch thoughts. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and I didn’t have sufficient time to do the necessary research for the topic you assigned me.
I’m hardly an expert on this subject and I don’t know why anyone would take me seriously, but here it goes.
Forgive me but after over-indulging last night at HomeTown Buffet my brain has been rendered in a mindless fog and the ramblings of this essay prove to be rather incoherent.
Four. Don’t throw a thesis cream pie in your reader’s face.
In this essay I am going to prove to you why Americans will never buy those stupid automatic cars that don’t need a driver. The four supports that will support my thesis are ______________, ______________, _______________, and ________________.
It is my purpose in this essay to show you why I'm correct on the subject of the death penalty. My proofs will be _________, _______, _________, and ___________.
Five. Don’t use a dictionary definition (standard procedure for a sixth-grade essay but not a college in which you should use more sophisticated methods such as an extended definition or expert definitions):
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines metacognition as “awareness or analysis of one’s own learning or thinking process.”
General Principles of an Effective Introduction Paragraph
It piques your readers’ interest (often called a “hook”).
It is compelling.
It is timely.
It is relevant to the human condition and to your topic.
It transitions to your topic and/or thesis.
The Ten Types of Paragraph Introductions
One. Use a blunt statement of fact or insight that captures your readers’ attention:
It's good for us to have our feelings hurt.
You've never really lived until someone has handed you your __________ on a stick.
Men who are jealous are cheaters.
We would assume that jealous men are obsessed with fidelity, but in fact, the most salient feature of the jealous man is that he is more often than not cheating on his partner. His jealousy results from projecting his own infidelities on his partner. He says to himself, “I am a cheater and therefore so is she.” We see this sick mentality in the character Dan from Ha Jin’s “The Beauty.” Trapped in his jealousy, Dan embodies the pathological characteristics of learned helplessness evidenced by ___________, _______________, ________________, and _______________.
John Taylor Gatto opens his essay “Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why” as thus:
I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in the world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn’t seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren’t interested in learning more. And the kids were right: Their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.
Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teacher’s lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn’t get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel, they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?
Gatto goes on to argue in his thesis that school trains children to be servants for mediocre (at best) jobs when school should be teaching innovation, individuality, and leadership roles.
Two. Write a definition based on the principles of extended definition (term, class, distinguishing characteristics) or quote an expert in a field of study:
Metacognition is an essential asset to mature people characterized by their ability to value long-term gratification over short-term gratification, their ability to distance themselves from their passions when they’re in a heated emotional state, their ability to stand back and see the forest instead of the trees, and their ability to continuously make assessments of the effectiveness of their major life choices. In the fiction of John Cheever and James Lasdun, we encounter characters that are woefully lacking in metacognition evidenced by _____________, ______________, _____________, and _______________.
According to Alexander Batthanany, member of the Viktor Frankl Institute, logotherapy, which is the search for meaning, “is identified as the primary motivational force in human beings.” Batthanany further explains that logotherapy is “based on three philosophical and psychological concepts: Freedom of Will, Will to Meaning, and Meaning in Life.” Embracing the concepts of logotherapy is vastly more effective than conventional, Freud-based psychotherapy when we consider ________________, ______________, __________________, and ________________.
Example of Definition
In his essay "The Complacent Intellectual Class," Neil Theasby writes:
I WOULD LIKE TO COIN A PHRASE, the complacent intellectual class, to describe the overwhelming number of pundits, thought leaders, and policy wonks who accept, welcome, or even enforce slovenly scholarship. These people might, in the abstract, like research that maintains the highest standards, they might even consider themselves academics or bona fide researchers, when in fact they have lost the capacity of maintaining even the most basic standards of rigor.
I am motivated to do so after reading Tyler Cowen’s new book The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream. I propose the term with some trepidation. Cowen—a George Mason University economist, libertarian theorist, and “legendary blogger” (to quote the book’s inset)—is often a smart commentator who puts his finger on a lot of interesting social phenomena, introduces novel ideas, and proves worth reading from time to time.
But books are different from blog posts and op-eds. And this book fails so glaringly that it makes me despair for this country’s literary culture and intellectual life in general. So let me use Cowen’s latest venture to illustrate what we should all demand from the work of our intellectual class, lest our nation continues to vegetate in the pretend-thinking of #AspenIdeas pseudo-academia.
Three. Use an insightful quotation that has not, to your knowledge anyway, been overused:
George Bernard Shaw once said, “There are two great tragedies in life. The first is not getting what we want. The second is getting it.” Shaw’s insight speaks to the tantalizing chimera, that elusive quest we take for the Mythic She-Beast who becomes a life-altering obsession. As the characters in John Cheever and James Lasdun’s fiction show, the human relationship with the chimera is a source of paradox. On one hand, having a chimera will kill us. On the other, not having a chimera will kill us. Cheever and Lasdun’s characters twist and torment under the paradoxical forces of their chimeras evidenced by _____________, _______________, ______________, and __________________.
Spencer Kornhaber begins with a quote in his essay "Lady Gaga's Illness Is Not a Metaphor":
“Pain without a cause is pain we can’t trust,” the author Leslie Jamison wrote in 2014. “We assume it’s been chosen or fabricated.”
Jamison’s essay “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain” unpacked the suffering-woman archetype, which encompasses literature’s broken hearts (Anna Karenina, Miss Havisham) and society’s sad girls—the depressed, the anorexic, and in the 19th century, the tubercular. Wariness about being defined by suffering, she argued, had led many modern women to adopt a new pose. She wrote, “The post- wounded woman conducts herself as if preempting certain accusations: Don’t cry too loud; don’t play victim.” Jamison questioned whether this was an overcorrection. “The possibility of fetishizing pain is no reason to stop representing it,” she wrote. “Pain that gets performed is still pain.”
Jamison’s work might come to mind when watching Lady Gaga’s new documentary, Gaga: Five Foot Two, or when reading about the singer postponing her European tour. The pop star this month informed the world that she suffers from fibromyalgia, which causes chronic muscle pain. In the documentary, she visits the doctor, she curls up on a couch, she cries in agony. On Instagram, she prays while holding a rosary. The caption is a lengthy apology to her fans for having to postpone upcoming performances due to her condition.
While forthright, Gaga’s statements about her struggle have been somewhat couched in embarrassment—and the public has responded with both sympathy and skepticism. “I use the word ‘suffer’ not for pity, or attention, and have been disappointed to see people online suggest that I’m being dramatic, making this up, or playing the victim to get out of touring,” she wrote. It’s not the first time she’s been doubted or criticized about something that her body has gone through. When hip surgery made her cancel her 2013 tour, some folks accused her of faking her injury because of underwhelming ticket sales.
In many ways, this skepticism is deeply familiar. It is a documented fact that women tend to report more pain than men—but also that their pain is seen as less credible, with women less likely to be given strong pain relievers, facing inordinately long wait times to be treated, and likely to be told that their problems are mental or emotional rather than physical. It’s not hard to draw a line from the presumptions underlying that inequality to the gendered way that literature and music about suffering is often classified. It’s also easy to see how such attitudes give rise to the “post-wounded” affect Jamison writes about.
This bias is, in fact, so familiar that there are scripts that a plugged-in, empathetic person might use to respond to Gaga. “Believe women,” goes the mantra of campaigns to curb sexual assault. “Believe the patient,” counsels medical literature on the topic of pain. But Gaga’s situation presents another test of compassion and trust. Believe the pop star? Who’d be so gullible as to do that?
Four. Use a startling fact to get your reader’s attention:
We read in "Why 'fake news' is an antitrust problem" by Sean Illing:
Five of the world’s largest companies by market capitalization are tech companies. In the past 10 years, Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook have all joined Microsoft at the top of the list.
Each of these companies dominates its primary market, and is gradually expanding its reach into secondary markets. Have they become too big? Are they full-fledged monopolies at this point? And if so, should we rein them in?
To get answers to these questions, I reached out to Sally Hubbard, a senior editor of tech antitrust enforcement at the Capitol Forum, a nonpartisan legal investigative company that offers analysis to policymakers and industry stakeholders. I asked her to walk me through the case for using antitrust laws to regulate the major tech companies.
Antitrust laws exist in order prevent monopolization, which occurs when a company so dominates a market that it effectively eliminates the possibility of competition. This is tricky when it comes to a tech company like, say, Google, which has a monopoly in the search market but not in the digital advertising market.
Antitrust enforcement, at least in the past 40 years or so, has focused on protecting consumers from high prices due to a lack of competition. But the problems created by tech monopolies are different: Consumers aren’t paying higher prices to use these platforms, but they are handing over massive amounts of personal data and allowing companies like Facebook and Google to disproportionately influence the news and information Americans consume.
We don’t need to bust up these companies, Hubbard says, but there are very good reasons to use antitrust law to promote more competition in this space. “Fake news,” she told me, “is partly an antitrust problem” because the dominant algorithms of Facebook and Google control the flow of information. If there were more competition, purveyors of fake news would have to figure out how to game more algorithms.
There are currently more African-American men in prison than there were slaves at the peak of slavery in the United States. We read this disturbing fact in Michelle Alexander’s magisterial The New Jim Crow, which convincingly argues that America’s prison complex is perpetuating the racism of slavery and Jim Crow in several insidious ways.
We read that in the latest study by the Institute for Higher Education, Leadership & Policy at Cal State Sacramento that only 30% of California community college students are transferring or getting their degrees. We have a real challenge in the community college if 70% are falling by the wayside.
8,000 students walk through El Camino's Humanities Building every week. Only 10% will pass English 1A. Only 3% will pass English 1C.
99% of my students acknowledge that most students at El Camino are seriously compromised by their smartphone addiction to the point that the addiction is making them fail or do non-competitive work in college.
Five. Use an anecdote (personal or otherwise) to get your reader’s attention:
Gavin Francis writes in his book review "Irresistible: Why We Can't Stop Checking, Scrolling, Clicking, and Watching":
The school near the GP practice where I work held an internet safety evening recently, subtitled “How to Keep Your Child Safe Online”. It was in the school hall, hosted by police officers, and explained the role of something called the “Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre”. The blurb on the leaflet promised parents of children between five and 11 would learn more about the dangers of the internet, and in particular, social media. I’m not sure when it became normal for kids to have to cope with malicious online messages, and be savvy about paedophiles masquerading as peers. In Irresistible, Adam Alter makes the frightening case that even without these hazards, modern connectivity threatens the health of not just our children, but everyone.
A child I knew of killed herself after a humiliating post was shared widely around her school. An adolescent patient told me that he wakes three or four times each night to check his phone for messages, and struggles to concentrate in class. Last week a social worker told me that children in an “at-risk” family were being neglected – the mum lying on the sofa playing with her phone while the kids put themselves to bed. I know a six-year-old who walks with his hands held to his chest, thumbs blurred by movement, adopting his dad’s habitual posture, though he doesn’t yet have a phone.
Ta-Nehisi Coates from "My President Was Black":
In the waning days of President Barack Obama’s administration, he and his wife, Michelle, hosted a farewell party, the full import of which no one could then grasp. It was late October, Friday the 21st, and the president had spent many of the previous weeks, as he would spend the two subsequent weeks, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. Things were looking up. Polls in the crucial states of Virginia and Pennsylvania showed Clinton with solid advantages. The formidable GOP strongholds of Georgia and Texas were said to be under threat. The moment seemed to buoy Obama. He had been light on his feet in these last few weeks, cracking jokes at the expense of Republican opponents and laughing off hecklers. At a rally in Orlando on October 28, he greeted a student who would be introducing him by dancing toward her and then noting that the song playing over the loudspeakers—the Gap Band’s “Outstanding”—was older than she was. “This is classic!” he said. Then he flashed the smile that had launched America’s first black presidency and started dancing again. Three months still remained before Inauguration Day, but staffers had already begun to count down the days. They did this with a mix of pride and longing—like college seniors in early May. They had no sense of the world they were graduating into. None of us did.
Jeff McMahon:
When my daughter was one year old and I was changing her diaper, she without warning jammed her thumb into my eye, forcing my eyeball into my brain and almost killing me. After the assault, I suffered migraine headaches for several months and frequently would have to wash milky pus from the injured eye.
One afternoon I was napping under the covers when Lara walked into the room talking on the phone to her friend, Hannah. She didn’t know I was in the room, confusing the mound on the bed with a clump of pillows and blankets. I heard her whisper to Hannah, “I found another small package from eBay. He’s buying watches and not telling me.”
That’s when I thought about getting a post office box.
This could be the opening introduction for an essay topic about “economic infidelity.”
As we read in Stephen King’s essay “Write or Die”:
“Hardly a week after being sprung from detention hall, I was once more invited to step down to the principal’s office. I went with a sinking heart, wondering what new sh** I’d stepped in.”
Six. Use a piece of vivid description or a vivid illustration to get your reader’s attention:
My gym looks like an enchanting fitness dome, an extravaganza of taut, sweaty bodies adorned in fluorescent spandex tights contorting on space-age cardio machines, oil-slicked skin shrouded in a synthetic fog of dry ice colored by the dizzying splash of lavender disco lights. Tribal drum music plays loudly. Bottled water flows freely, as if from some Elysian spring, over burnished flesh. The communal purgation appeals to me. My fellow cardio junkies and I are so self-abandoned, free, and euphoric, liberated in our gym paradise.
But right next to our workout heaven is a gastronomical inferno, one of those all-you-can-eat buffets, part of a chain, which is, to my lament, sprouting all over Los Angeles. I despise the buffet, a trough for people of less discriminating tastes who saunter in and out of the restaurant at all hours, entering the doors of the eatery without shame and blind to all the gastrointestinal and health-related horrors that await them. Many of the patrons cannot walk out of their cars to the buffet but have to limp or rely on canes, walkers, wheelchairs, and other ambulatory aids, for it seems a high percentage of the customers are afflicted with obesity, diabetes, arthritis, gout, hypothalamic lesions, elephantiasis, varicose veins and fleshy tumors. Struggling and wheezing as they navigate across the vast parking lot that leads to their gluttonous sanctuary, they seem to worship the very source of their disease.
In front of the buffet is a sign of rules and conduct. One of the rules urges people to stand in the buffet line in an orderly fashion and to be patient because there is plenty of food for everyone. Another rule is that children are not to be left unattended and running freely around the buffet area. My favorite rule is that no hands, tongues, or other body parts are allowed to touch the food. Tongs and other utensils are to be used at all times. The rules give you an idea of the kind of people who eat there. These are people I want to avoid.
But as I walk to the gym from my car, which shares a parking lot with the buffet patrons, I cannot avoid the nauseating smell of stale grease oozing from the buffet’s rear dumpster, army green and stained with splotches and a seaweed-like crust of yellow and brown grime.
Often I see cooks and dishwashers, their bodies covered with soot, coming out of the back kitchen door to throw refuse into the dumpster, a smoldering receptacle with hot fumes of bacteria and flies. Hunchbacked and knobby, the poor employees are old, weary men with sallow, rheumy eyes and cuts and bruises all over their bodies. I imagine them being tortured deep within the bowels of the fiery kitchen on some Medieval rack. They emerge into the blinding sunshine like moles, their eyes squinting, with their plastic garbage bags twice the size of their bodies slung over their shoulders, and then I look into their sad eyes—eyes that seem to beg for my help and mercy. And just when I am about to give them words of hope and consolation or urge them to flee for their lives, it seems they disappear back into the restaurant as if beckoned by some invisible tyrant.
The above could transition to the topic of people of a certain weight being required to buy three airline tickets for an entire row of seats.
Seven. Summarize both sides of a debate.
America is torn by the national healthcare debate. One camp says it’s a crime that 25,000 Americans die unnecessarily each year from treatable disease and that modeling a health system from other developed countries is a moral imperative. However, there is another camp that fears that adopting some version of universal healthcare is tantamount to stepping into the direction of socialism.
Eight. State a misperception, fallacy, or error that your essay will refute.
Americans against universal or national healthcare are quick to say that such a system is “socialist,” “communist,” and “un-American,” but a close look at their rhetoric shows that it is high on knee-jerk, mindless paroxysms and short on reality. Contrary to the enemies of national healthcare, providing universal coverage is very American and compatible with the American brand of capitalism.
Nine. Make a general statement about your topic.
From Sherry Turkle’s essay “How Computers Change the Way We Think”:
The tools we use to think change the ways in which we think. The invention of written language brought about a radical shift in how we process, organize, store, and transmit representations of the world. Although writing remains our primary information technology, today when we think about the impact of technology on our habits of mind, we think primarily of the computer.
Ten. Pose a question your essay will try to answer:
Why are diet books more and more popular, yet Americans are getting more and more fat?
Why is psychotherapy becoming more and more popular, yet Americans are getting more and more crazy?
Why are the people of Qatar the richest people in the world, yet score at the bottom of all Happiness Index metrics?
Why are courses in the Humanities more essential to your well-being that you might think?
What is the difference between thinking and critical thinking?
Eleven. Present the reader with a hypercritical point of view that shows off your assured writing voice. As we read in "Whitewash" by Chris Lehmann:
LIKE A RECUMBENT SLOTH JOLTED INTO A PANICKED FLIGHT RESPONSE, David Brooks has belatedly noticed the rancid politics of right-wing racial confrontation. The New York Times’ most venerable voice of conservative moderation is here to inform you, gentle reader, that the deranged incursion of Trumpinistas into the corridors of conservative power has transformed his beloved GOP into “more of a white party in recent years.” He seeks to nail down the flagrantly bogus argument that the Republicans had, over much of their modern career, been within the bounds of “basic decency on matters of race” via a single cherry-picked statistic: “A greater percentage of congressional Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats.”
Twelve: Use an attention-getting analogy or comparison:
Tim Wu opens his essay "Subtle and Insidious, Technology Is Designed to Addict Us":
Thirty years ago, we accepted secondhand smoke, sugary sodas for kids and tanning salons as simple facts of life. What will we think is crazy 30 years from now? That we lived without enough sleep? Treated animals so badly?
Thirty years ago, we accepted secondhand smoke, sugary sodas for kids and tanning salons as simple facts of life. What will we think is crazy 30 years from now? That we lived without enough sleep? Treated animals so badly?
If psychologist and marketing professor Adam Alter is right, the answer may be our use of addictive technologies. By his account, we have casually let ourselves become hooked in a manner not unlike Victorians taking cocaine and opium, thinking it no big deal. We, like them, are surprised at the consequences.
Subordination and Coordination (Complex and Compound Sentences)
Complex Sentence
A complex sentence has two clauses. One clause is dependent or subordinate; the other clause is independent, that is to say, the independent clause is the complete sentence.
Examples:
While I was tanning in Hermosa Beach, I noticed the clouds were playing hide and seek.
Because I have a tendency to eat entire pizzas, inhaling them within seconds, I must avoid that fattening food.
Whenever I’m driving my car and I see people texting while driving, I stop my car on the side of the road.
I have to workout everyday because I am addicted to exercise-induced dopamine.
I feel overcome with a combination of romantic melancholy and giddy excitement whenever there is a thunderstorm.
We use subordination to show cause and effect. To create subordinate clauses, we must use a subordinate conjunction:
The essential ingredient in a complex sentence is the subordinate conjunction:
|
after |
once |
until |
I workout too much. I have tenderness in my elbow.
Because I workout too much, I suffer tenderness in my elbow.
My elbow hurts. I’m working out.
Even though my elbow hurts, I’m working out.
We use coordination to show the equal rank of ideas. To combine sentences with coordination we use FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
The calculus class has been canceled. We will have to do something else.
The calculus class has been canceled, so we will have to do something else.
I want more pecan pie. They only have apple pie.
I want more pecan pie, but they only have apple pie.
Using FANBOYS creates compound sentences
Angelo loves to buy a new radio every week, but his wife doesn’t like it.
You have high cholesterol, so you have to take statins.
I am tempted to eat all the rocky road ice cream, yet I will force myself to nibble on carrots and celery.
I want to go to the Middle Eastern restaurant today, and I want to see a movie afterward.
I really like the comfort of elastic-waist pants, but wearing them makes me feel like an old man.
Both subordination and coordination combine sentences into smoother, clearer sentences.
The following four sentences are made smoother and clearer with the help of subordination:
McMahon felt gluttonous. He inhaled five pizzas. He felt his waist press against his denim waistband in a cruel, unforgiving fashion. He felt an acute ache in his stomach.
Because McMahon felt gluttonous, he inhaled five pizzas upon which he felt his waist press against his denim waistband resulting in an acute stomachache.
Another Example
Joe ate too much heavily salted popcorn. The saltiness made him thirsty. He consumed several gallons of water before bedtime. He was up going to the bathroom all night. He got a bad night’s sleep. He performed terribly during his job interview.
Due to his foolish consumption of salted popcorn, Joe was so thirsty he drank several gallons of water before bedtime, which caused him to go to the bathroom all night, interfering with his night’s sleep and causing him to do terribly on his job interview.
Another Example
Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure. He leaned over the fence to reach for his sandwich. He fell over the fence. A tiger approached Bob. The zookeeper ran between the stupid zoo customer and the wild beast. The zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger, forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and wild beast. During the struggle, the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
Don’t Do Subordination Overkill
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and the wild beast in such a manner that the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff, which resulted in a prolonged disability leave and the loss of his job, a crisis that compelled the zookeeper to file a lawsuit against Bob for financial damages.
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