Walter White's Political Term Differs Slightly from Lyndon B. Johnson's

I already know two other people in class watch Breaking Bad; they're probably more caught up than I am. In this New Yorker article, Ian Crouch argues for the similarity between Bryan Cranston in the role of Walter White to his role of Lyndon B. Johnson in All the Way, which just premiered. The idea, and more viscerally, the picture here (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/09/bryan-cranston-lyndon-johnson-breaking-bad.html) are beautiful.

But the argument:
 "Cranston plays L.B.J. big: he barks, whines, guffaws, and, in a few moments of manic despair, cries, wondering why his political enemies and other human obstacles won’t simply give him the one thing he really wants: love. His Civil Rights Act will lessen the scourge of racism and help bring the South into the modern era, he says, and he’s baffled and enraged when critics on the left dismiss him as a redneck and those on the right call him a traitor. Can’t they see that the choices he’s made, the things he’s had to give up or give away, have all been for them? Alert to his despair, his wife rushes to his aid, but he most often shouts her out of the room.
"Walter White’s foray into meth began as a desperate money grab for his family, protection for when he was no longer around. But that pretense didn’t last long—by the first episode, he was already marveling at the thrill of being an outlaw (“I am awake”)—and later, after he’d gone headlong into the business, the notion that he was working for anyone but himself was a lie that only he believed. All of which makes his constant refrain—some version of “all the sacrifices that I’ve made for this family”—so hollow and false. And like Johnson’s cruelty toward Lady Bird in the play, Walter White’s love of his wife often seems more notional than real—just another emotional lever.
Both are skillful and flexible manipulators."

This argument pulls a classic New Yorker argument style by heaping on so much evidence that a reader couldn't possibly dream of disagreeing with the writer or his article. In case you're wondering, Mr. Crouch italicizes his comparison point. First, from this conclusion, it looks like Crouch's just working with the fact that Cranston fulfills both roles. (Someone didn't pass his media studies class). The point of having these two annoying paragraphs is to demonstrate how someone can put verbosity as an argument and hope that it makes a general claim look revelatory.

Perhaps other Breaking Bad watchers differ and agree with this argument totally. Thoughts?

German Modernists Can Actually Be Logical

"[1]It is always wrong to explain the phenomena of a country simply by the character of its inhabitants.[2] For the inhabitant of a country has at least nine characters: a professional one, a national one, a civic one, a class one, a geographical one, a sex one, a consciousness, an unconsciousness and perhaps even too a private one; [3]he combines them all in himself, but they dissolve him, and he is really nothing but a little channel washed out by all these trickling streams, which flow into it and drain out of it again in order to join other little streams filling another channel. [4]Hence every dweller on earth also has a tenth character, which is nothing more or less than the passive illusion of spaces unfilled" (Robert Musil 34, The Man without Qualities).

The way I formally show this argument is 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 1. 1 is the conclusion, 4 is the sub-conclusion from 2 and 3 used to get to 1. So: (2 +3) --- 4 --- 1 to make it simpler.

Past the metaphor, at its very bareness, I think this argument is well-formed and provides compelling evidence, even if it is all observed evidence, perhaps even based on coherence. As an ex-philosopher, Herr Musil isn't really clear about "the man flowing into the trickling streams" part and other parts may need further clarification but as a simple argument for not generalizing a whole nation by one characteristic, it's pretty decent. And later on Musil uses this argument to discuss patriotism.

Logical rhetoric, despite the lack of logical rhetoric in most other places, does exist in literature; sometimes.

Quoting from Emerson to give an example of argument from a literary perspective is kinda cheating. But here: "Sensible objects conform to the premonitions of Reason and reflect the conscience. All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. Therefore is nature glorious with form, color, and motion; that every globe in the remotest heaven, every chemical change from the rudest crystal up to the laws of life, every change of vegetation from the first principle of growth in the eye of a leaf, to the tropical forest and antediluvian coalmine, every animal function from the sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the Ten Commandments. Therefore is Nature ever the ally of Religion: lends all her pomp and riches to the religious sentiment" (from "Nature", p. 21). We have a lofty couple of statements that very messily conclude into the two therefore-sentences.

Emerson's logic is very flawed but he also lived during a semi-religious period that accepted theories of religion like this one. Mysticism aside and looking at what Emerson does employ, his use of correspondence theory throughout the whole essay is stellar. It's when he leans over to his private diaphanous world of coherence theory that things get muddled. It's unfortunate for Emerson that he can't really prove that this connection exists apart from using a very old analogy of God manifesting himself in nature. Emerson also depends upon the reader's connectability to nature and then to God (and having a conscience to begin with). We need more compelling evidence from Emerson to believe this but to simplify the argument so it actually looks like one and not semicolon-ridden word-spinning: 1. The world (and its objects) shares connection with reason and conscience; 2. The world's objects are moral even if they change; 3. Therefore nature is wonderful in all aspects and explains laws (i.e. the Decalogue) to humankind; 4. Therefore nature's part and parcel of religion.

He's almost there. I'm going to say that this thesis is epistemologically flawed more than anything else and again, religion aside. This argument needs needs to make its statements valid in order to be logically sound, since Emerson is considered a philosopher if and only if theologians count as philosophers.

This post is a bit belated. I'm Chris(topher) Johnson, literature and philosophy major. I don't know if there's anybody in this class who's not taking it for a requirement but I'm super excited about it, requirement aside, because my relationship to math and logical concepts has been Kafkaesque throughout high school and up to recently. I'm hoping this course will teach me some math as well as plenty of logic (i.e. I'll be up til 3:00 AM struggling over the more difficult concepts). Also, I like having philosophical or non-  conversations outside of class.