Prewriting Blog: Essay #3

In Chapters four and five of her book, The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby writes about the effects of communism and middlebrow cultures on Americans during 1915 and the American involvement in WWII, as well as after. She discusses about how intellectuals were seen as communists, and therefore shouldn't be trusted. Middlebrow culture, which was mostly practiced by the middle class, became more and more popular as the 20th century rapidly approached. This culture emphasized itself as a way to educate oneself. With publications like the BOMC (The Book of the Month Club) and Great Books, these publishings helped young minds as well as adults broaden there range of thought towards literature and science, as well as history and current events. Communism, which is discussed in detail in chapter four, can be linked to everyday thought in America now. For example, recently, Americans have stated that Barak Obama is a terrorist due to the fact that his middle name is Hussien. Hussien, as we all are well aware of, Saddam's last name, and he was a terrorist. This is a connection that is made by the typical middle class citizen who automatically assumes that an intellectual (Obama) is like Hussien (Saddam) because he was a terrorist, so therefore Obama must be a terrorist also. Intellectuals during 1915 and 1941, were considered to be communist simply because they were educated. This assumption was made because Stalin was controlling the Soviet Union and people thought that intellectuals were in this category because the Soviet Union was a country full of intellectuals.