Notion Places And Forms of Power : Up to which point does power start to become a bad matter?

PLACES AND FORMS OF POWER

This year we studied the notion “Places and Forms of Power”. Firstly, let’s define what power is. Power is a form of influence or authority that one has over another. It’s often linked to strength or other capacities that make someone better than someone else. Power can come under various forms and is very often assigned to a place, such as Washington DC, New York and many others. Up to which point does power start to become a bad matter?

I will first of all talk about the thirst for power of politicians, and then I will explain to you what McCarthyism is through an example.

First, politicians are very powerful people and they very often abuse of their power. We studied in class a document called “Election Speech” in which a man is criticizing his mayor for his lack of success of his mandate. This same man denounces the favouring of the mayor’s in-laws. The mayor had promised many projects during his campaign but didn’t make any of them come true and chose to give a raise to his manager who is also his brother in law. This document shows us that a lot of people are ready to lie to access power. Indeed, in many election campaigns, politicians announce their project, and once they’re elected, they don’t apply some of their ideas. This document shows us the bad side of politicians and denounces politicians’ thirst for power. Nowadays and all around the world, there are many forms of corruption and dishonesty within the political world, all revolving around the need for power.

Another example of politicians abusing of their power is McCarthyism. This period was when the US government was afraid communist foreigners would infiltrate the country. McCarthy, a republican senator, wanted to hunt down all communists across the country. We studied a document that talks about this hunt for soviet communists. This document is a comic-strip called “Guilty by suspicion” that shows that the USA are afraid of communism, they even accused a young actress of being communist even though she was only a little girl. A lot of people were accused of being linked to communists, such as many film directors. An example of this case is Eitel, a successful Hollywood film director, who was accused of being close to the Soviet Union in the document, as shown in the document “A suspect”. He is suspected of being a member of the communist Party, or even a spy, but Eitel manages not to answer the questions of the chairman by using irony and by beating around the bush. Another film maker was accused of being a communist sympathiser because of the ideas he spread in his movies. Those who were suspected of communism were blacklisted and summoned to a trial. Through this document, we can say that politicians are ready to do anything to keep their power.

In a nutshell, we can see that politicians are willing to lie and do many other bad things to access power. Once they have control over a territory, they will do anything to keep it and to get rid of their potential enemies. The Cold War is an example of this, the United States wanted to be the supreme leader of the world and invested lots of money in various domains to be able to spread their culture and way of life all around the world.

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