Brian Ruiz

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Brian Ruiz Syrian Refugee EC

I found Zada’s very interesting to hear. I actually did learn a couple things that I found interesting. The first was how badly these people were living in current times. I didn’t realize just how dangerous and awful to live there until I saw the videos she presented in class. Her presentation on the history of cinema was also insightful to hear and just how that affected current times and changed some situations for the Syrians.

With that being said, I did have some questions for her that I dint want to ask in person. One of these being, who is meant to be the targeted audience? The problem if the answer is a typical American is that it the movie seemed pretty “out there.” I only got to see one scene and I know it might have gone way over my head and that I missed the point completely but all I seemed to see was a shirtless man eating oranges out of his hands. Maybe when the movie is completely finished it’ll make more sense but I’m not sure. I truly say this as a constructive criticism because her mission of getting this type of information to the general public is an important mission that needs to be done. The public needs to be aware of survivors like the man she interviewed and what he has been through. I just think that the general public is also very picky about what they want to watch. Would they want to watch a video of an man dancing and eating oranges or cat video where it plays the piano. I tend to think the latter but I also c have low expectation of the general public. With that being said I enjoyed her presentation and thought that she did very well, especially since English didn’t seem to be her first language

 P.s I didn’t see any requirement on what we had to write except that it had to be 300 to 500 so I just winged it. Hope this is what you wanted!

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Brian Ruiz Tumblr #9

A couple stand-out topics that I found the most interesting was the reoccurring prejudices this country has in its history as well the topic of America and World War 2. Both of these topics surprised me in a few different ways. I didn’t realize how bad the citizens of America discriminated a certain group of people to the extent that was discussed in history class. Native Americans, Asians, and the Irish were one of many groups of people who were discriminated harshly in America. America and WW2 surprised me as well because I didn’t realize how long it took and to what extent it took for America to finally join WW2. Even though American citizens received photos of how Japan treated China, there was still no reaction from American citizens.

 I believe that this course wasn’t too bias when the professor was presenting the information. Although it became obvious in the first few classes who the professor supported as far as party affiliation, I didn’t sense this actually affecting any information that was given by the professor.

 I don’t think there was  any blind spots or missed opportunities that could have improved the course.

 I would have liked to see WW2 covered more since that is a part of history that I am really interested but it was understandable considering the time frame of the course.

 WW1 and WW2 were definitely my favorite section in this course. My least favorite would be the between 1890 and 1900 because nothing that really fascinated me occurred in that period.

 My understanding of how history is portrayed in popular media changed from taking this course because I didn’t know how badly Hollywood seemed to mess up actual event just for the plot. Taking this course helped me realize how popular media can really mess up actual events that occurred.

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Brian Ruiz Extra Credit Film #2

The film I picked to watch is “public enemies” where the notorious John Dillinger broke out of his jail and was on a bank-robbing spree with his fellow companions. The movie also follows his love life before he was shot and killed by the police. He was seeing a girl by the name of Billie Frechette and was instantly in love with her from the moment he first saw her. John Dillinger is seen more as a hero in this movie rather than a criminal showing how he would rather take the money of the bank instead of the citizens in the bank. He also cares about public image stating that he needed the public to like him because that is how he hides. In the end he was close to the “big score” talked about in the beginning of this movie but as we all know he was shot and killed by the police.

 This ties up to what we talked about in class because a major section that we talked about was the depression era and this is when this piece takes place. The great depression is what helps John Dillinger get away with these things, especially because of how much the public likes him. The public at this time would have hated the banks as talked about in class so seeing John Dillinger rob these banks clean would have gained him a positive image in the public eye. He was portrayed somewhat of a Robin Hood character that the public could get behind.

 This film seems to be historically accurate if one can get past all the Hollywood love seems and over dramatized lines of the actors. A few examples would be his place of death, which was actually in front of the theater depicted in the movie. They even went as far as recreating the gunshot wounds that killed him. He was also betrayed by that woman in real life as well as in the movie. He also did break out of jail and steal the car of the deputy as depicted in the movie. He did have a girl by the name of Billie Frachette and she did serve 2 years in prison. It also seems that the DOI, or future FBI, was following him and trying to capture him. J Edgar hoover did create a special task force for the capture of John Dillinger that was set up in Chicago The inaccuracies seem to be just small mistakes that probably helped dramatize the movie. A few of those mistakes would be that most of his gang appear to have died after John Dillinger died, not before as depicted in the movie. It seems many of the depicted shootouts never really occurred as well, showing how Hollywood just dramatized this movie. The biggest inaccuracy seems to be the relationship with Billie Frachette and John Dillinger. In the movie, it looked like their relationship lasted about two weeks where they were madly in love but could never really spend time together. In real life, they’re relationship lasted about 6 months before the capture of Billie Frachette. Billie Frachette even drove as a getaway driver for john once, though that was not depicted in the movies.

 I would say that this film would be bad history. I thought that the movie contained too much Hollywood love scenes and well as over dramatic lines. I also think that combined with the inaccuracies of the movie that this movie shouldn’t be considered a good historical movie because it is just a typical Hollywood overdramatic movie with too much love scenes and not enough historical scenes.

 The film was made only a few years ago and I think its sole purpose was to make money rather than inform the public of a historical figure of the mid 30s. This influenced the film to be made in the over dramatic way talked about earlier.

As one can tell I didn’t really like this movie because it was just another Hollywood movie rather than a good historical movie. The love scenes were very dramatic and not enough was shown of the characters themselves. I would have like this movie if they toned down these love scenes because that was really the bad part of this movie. I did like all the shootout scenes as well as the bank robbing scenes. But again for this to get a good rating from me, they would have had to cut all those love scenes and dialogue.

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Brian Ruiz Extra Credit Film #1

There will be blood follows an oilman trying to find success in the oil field. It starts with him finding silver in a mine but breaking his leg during the process. He was able to climb out and get money for the silver but I think the purpose of this seen was to show how strong and motivated this man was. Then 4 years later he hits oil and sets up an oil drill at that site. One of his men dies at this site and he takes that man’s baby as his adopted son to raise. It then turns into 1911 where Daniel Day Lewis is told by a man that there is a massive amount of oil in a place called Little Boston in California. Daniel investigates and finds oil seeping through the ground as told by the man who approached him. He then tries to buy the farm only to be halted by a the son of the farmer who is a preacher. The preacher ups the price to 10,000 and the two have a deal.  This oil drill experiences some sets backs which include a man’s death and an explosion that cause Daniel’s adopted son to lose his hearing. He later sends his son to a special school for deaf people. He is also approached by a man who say that he is Daniel’s half brother which is found out to be not true and when Daniel finds out, he kills the imposter and buries him. There is also a deal with union oil as to how oil will be moved and this plan is how Daniel upsets standard oil company. In the end the money did the character no good because he became a mad drunk. He tells his adopted son that he is an orphan and ends up cutting his ties with the son. He is also approached by the preacher and when the two get into an argument Daniel beats the preacher on the head with a bowling pin.

 This is connected to our class because we talked about Standard Oil Company several times and how they were a giant monopoly. In this movie, it can be seen how they reached how to Daniel in hopes that Daniel would sell his sites. This was talked about in class where standard oil sometimes gave these companies no choice but to sell. We also talked about the dangers of jobs like these. We might’ve not talked specifically about oil but we talked about how horrible mining was and there are some parallels to how dangerous oil drilling can be.

 I feel like this movie is historically accurate although very dramatized is some scenes. Some accuracies that are portrayed are how Standard Oil tried to get Daniel’s oil per se but Daniel was able to make a deal with Union Oil. Union Oil was a real company that was able to compete with Standard Oil. Another accuracy would be how dangerous this oil business can be. In the movie a couple people died working under Daniel Day Lewis and in reality, this wouldn’t have been abnormal considering how dangerous it was to work in this field of work.

 This movie does a good job at addressing the conflicts between religion (Evangelical Christians) and the oil companies. It also captures how dangerous oil drilling was back in the day and how, even with the right safety measures, people can die. So, in this sense, I would classify it as “Good” history. When watching it, you can tell which parts are just absurd and intended to be exaggerated and because of this, you get a good sense of what the oil industry was like. It shows he corruption of a greedy industry and, although it was a little bias against the oil industry, shows how an oilman may be harsh. It paints a good picture of how unforgiving mistakes were in the industry while also showing how some towns really were all centered around one church during the time in which this movie was set.

  This film was released when the US was in a war with Iraq. This war was started by what many believe to be motivated by the greed for oil, while the public justification was a religious conflict. This seems to influence how both oil and religion are portrayed in the movie. This war also led to questions about the Republican Party as a whole, which, like Plainview, ended up as a mixture formed out of capitalism and evangelical Christianity. Since, at the time, the war and the Republican Party were in negative light, it probably caused more people to relate to the portrayal of religion, especially Christianity, being used to justify a cruel use of capitalism. It shows how people justified being cruel and only caring about money by saying they were just capitalists.

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Brian Ruiz Tumblr Post #8

The film I watched was called the Act Of Killing where a film maker named Joshua followed a few Indonesian men who were part of a paramilitary organization responsible for the deaths of around 1 million “communists” in the 60s when Indonesia was overthrown by its military. The filmmaker told the men he was making a film to show the how the Indonesians crushed the communists in the sixties and the men happily joined. In the process the filmmaker was able to get remarkable stories through these people and learned how each of them tortured numerous people in order to get rid of the “communist threat.” The film also shows how the paramilitary group is operating in today’s Indonesian society. They are depicted as thugs. In one scene, it looked as though a leader was extorting local Chinese market owners for money. This film also shows the mindset of these men where a couple guys seemed to have had fun and looked back with joy in their life. Another seemed to feel rather apathetic towards the whole situation, saying how it is what it is. Then there was another man who seemed remorseful of his action, saying how he had nightmares of the past.

 My reaction to this film is shock to how a group of men who could have killed thousands of people could be considered heroes as well as not be confined to a jail cell of some sort. It was amazing how some of these people could look back in their life and feel pride in the murdering of thousands of Chinese in order to “purge the communists.” This film really opened my eyes to how societies can become carried away and has results that end up like this, where 60 years later, the guy talking about raping a 14 year-old girl is considered a war hero.

 The filmmaker showed a certain amount of bias by not getting the government’s side to this documentary. It was shown in a pep rally how the vice president of Indonesia was in support of the paramilitary group but that seemed to be the extent to it.

 A missed opportunity that I felt happened was not enough focus on the apathetic person who seemed to not really care about what happened in his life. This guy seemed to be a true psychopath where he showed no remorse for what happened but admitted how it was wrong of him to do what he did. He stated how he was wrongfully cruel to the Chinese but that it is what it is and that in the end nothing can be changed.

 The subjects are related to our class discussion because recently we have been talking about how a society can let something like the holocaust occur where millions upon millions of people can be slaughtered and that something like that could never occur again but 20 years later a similar situation arose. This whole situation seemed to be a similar situation with Germany where a fringe group rose to power and assumed control. So these two topics of the Germans and the Indonesians show big parallels in their history.

 I learned from this documentary how easy it is for people to forget how events like these occurred in today’s modern society and how people can think that something similar to the holocaust could never occur again but whether that is true is another matter. I would like to know more on the Indonesian governments stance on this situation.

 In my opinion, never again can change and become reality in today’s society. It’s easy to think that a developed country could never be capable of such actions but sometimes it can be very easy to manipulate society through power and fear. I feel like my biggest contribution to this never happening would be to stay informed on what’s happening in the world around me. Uneducated and uninformed people seem to be the most easily influence and I for one don’t want to be one of those. Educated opinions as well as educated ideas are in my opinion the best defense against something like the holocaust occurring again.

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Brian Ruiz Tumblr Post 6

This video about the First Gulf War starts by describing how a bankrupt Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein, invaded Kuwait for their oilfields and placed his troops along the border of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. When the world realized what he was doing, they formed a coalition and gave Hussein six weeks to pull his troops out of Kuwait, or the coalition would force his troops out of Kuwait. After the six weeks the coalition launched a massive air-strike offensive and eventually pushed their ground-troops in to retake Kuwait, obliterating the Iraqi forces and ending the war.

I thought that it was a true show of how powerful American is and can be. This was a massive campaign led by the United States and because of how fast and decisively the coalition acted, Saddam was easily defeated in a matter of weeks. It was also cool to see all the new technology that was used back then. The stealth bomber was first used in the war and it was a major success that helped with the daily bombings that were occurring. It was also interesting how this was mostly an air campaign due to the worry of losing casualty lives and having another Vietnam War. To the surprise of the coalition, the air campaigns actually weakened Saddam forces when they finally went to take back Kuwait.

I do think there was a certain amount of bias in this film. There was only one side to show in this film and that side was the coalition side. There was nothing on the Iraqi people and how they felt about this except for the one incident where the coalition bombed a civilian factory instead of a military outpost. So because of the films lack of film on the Iraq’s side, I would say that this film is pretty one-sided.

I believe that this film could have given a bit more history on why Iraq was in debt in the first place. I remember it being on the war between Iran and Iraq but this was the only mention of why Iraq was in debt. So a little more background information would have made the film a little better.

What I learned from this documentary was pretty much everything to do with the Gulf War. As sad as this is to admit, I know very little on what the Gulf War was actually about and why we fought in it. So this documentary was an eye opener to the events of the 1991 Gulf War. What I would like to learn more from this documentary would be the after effect of not invading Iraq and letting Saddam be in power for 12 more years.

I believe that the United States was justified into going to Kuwait. I think that because Saddam was in control of a lot of wealth and without the intervention of the United States and this coalition, Saddam would have kept going to Saudi Arabia and controlled, according to the filmmakers, half the worlds oil deposits. So this was the right call for the United States.

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Brian Ruiz Tumblr Post #4

I think that religious liberty is something that protects religious freedom. Religious freedom is a more inherent right that cannot be taken away by the government while religious liberty is when the government or some authoritative source protects religious freedom. For instance, a person has a religious freedom to turn away a gay customer for wedding services but has no religious liberty to do so, since the law does not necessarily protect them from doing so.

The articles were mostly addressing religious rights regarding gay marriage, either by not providing services to same sex marriages and whether it was wrong to not serve couples because they are gay. There were also some videos where the question of Christian persecution was coming into play in present day America. Bill Maher is one of the spokesmen in these videos that pretty much made fun of the idea of Christian persecution existing in present day. There was a video on the other side of the spectrum that seemed funded by Ted Cruz where Christian Persecution was a very real and very scary movement happening in America. There was another set of videos talking about the Indiana Law where it was legal for business owners to refuse service due to their religious affiliation. Some of the videos were calling it discrimination while other videos were saying that its part of the law that Bill Clinton passed where it guarantees similar rights.            The connection with our class discussions is that some of these modern journalism companies like FOX or CNN can be viewed as stretching these news stories far beyond what they really are. In class we talked about Hearst and how he stretched the news to get more attention. As in with Ted Cruz’s video of the people who were persecuted as Christians, the videos set up with the music and camera angles make the video very sad and somber but in reality it might not be as heartbreaking as this video makes it out to be. This is how William Hearst ran his papers when he was in business. He seemed to overplay what was happening in Cuba, even though there were awful things happening, and William Hearst would get the nations attention with these stories.

My personal opinion is that if a person is asking for goods that are pre-made, that can be picked up before the wedding, there is no right to refuse them. These means flower bouquets, or cakes already in the windows of the shop. I do not think that an owner should have to write anything that condones gay marriage on a cake if they believe it to be against their religion or have to attend a gay marriage that is against their religion. These actions require a business owner to actively participate in the ceremony or write something they do not believe in, and it crosses the threshold of religious freedom. None of the videos really changed my viewpoint on this topic. The video with Bill Maher shifted my viewpoint a little away from his just because he was pretty obnoxious the whole time and then John Stossel shifted me back away from his side to where I started because he sounded like a crazy person.

The guest pastor on Stossel’s show did bring up the interesting points of whether large companies should be able to exercise religious freedom or if no for-profit business should be able to. My personal opinion is that unless it is a business that is not a chain and is owned by an individual, they no longer have a right to make a sweeping decision on behalf on their individual storeowners.

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Brian Ruiz Tumblr Post 3

The videos in this group all had the same general topic of how the United States is helping refugees. One video actually showed what life is like for a Syrian refugee. It showed a little history of the family and how they settled to United States as refugees. It then showed how they live life in America after they were resettled here. The other video clips had various politicians talking about the Syrian refugee crisis. These politicians would include big names like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump and the videos gave their ideological views on what they think what should happen with the refugees. Cruz stated that Christian Syrian refugees would be okay to let in but not Muslim refugees and Trump stated that Syrian refugees should be allowed to come into the United States. There was another video that analyzed the situation that was happening with Syrian Crisis, even referencing Ted Cruzes stance on the Refugee Crisis. Then there was an article that showed how a group of Syrian refugees saved an American Women in France from a group of men that were sexually assaulting her.

 I think all these videos/articles have the same underlying tone that we should help these refugees that are coming. I tend to agree to the idea that we should start letting these Syrian refugees in the United States. The problem always comes from whether or not we would be safe from letting these Syrians in, but even with that risk I still think it would be the moral thing to do to let these Syrian refugees into the country. I didn’t like these videos though because I felt like they were all sympathetic to the Syrian refugees rather than giving non-biased videos that showed both sides of the argument. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump wouldn’t count as showing the other side of the argument because they both seem to be very right sided and radical when they talk about these opinions, which just makes those who disagree with letting in refugees hate infants and non-Christians, which I do not think is necessarily true. Showing those videos will just push most people toward agreeing with allowing Syrian refugees to enter the United States.

 These issues are relevant to class because they can be connected with the mass migration of the Irish, Italians, Jews, and other groups of people that migrated to the United States after being persecuted in their home countries. The United States has a history of ignoring those in need and treating immigrants very poorly, like the Russian Jews that needed to escape their homeland due to persecution after Russia lost their war with Japan. The Jews were hated on both sides of the spectrum just because they were migrating to the US. The Syrians seem to be getting the same type of hate, even almost 100 years after those Russian Jews came.

 The video that came off the strongest to me was the video that showed how the Syrian refugees adjusted to living in the US. One would think that there lives would be a lot more comfortable and a lot less stressful when they come to America but it seemed like that had a whole new set of challenges to live with once they were established here in America.

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Brian Ruiz Tumblr Post 2

The major issue in this documentary was the topic of civil rights. The Native Americans felt that they were not receiving the rights that they were supposed to be granted as American citizens. The Native Americans had a few complaints and examples of how their rights were being taken from them unlawfully. The biggest example of this would be Dick Wilson, the chairman for a Native American reservation, who would use force to subdue and restrain the Native Americans in order to get his way. When the Native Americans tried to legally show others about Wilsons unlawful acts, most people ignored the Native Americans due to Wilsons influence over the area. The Native Americans then tried a bold new way to get attention for their suffering by taking over the town of Wounded Knee. Another right that they thought was being taken away was the relocation and “assimilation” of the Native American. The assimilation aspect was where they would take the children of Native Americans and they would teach these kids English, Math and other subjects whether they wanted to or not. The relocation aspect was where they would “help” the Native Americans by moving them to big cities and help them get homes and jobs. It ended up being bad because they had to stay in cheap motels and they had trouble getting jobs in these cities due to their ethnicity. The biggest contribution this protest gave to these Native Americans would be the publicity. This is clear because of how this documentary gave several statistics on how the publicity was helping them. The documentary said that about 90 percent of Americans were staying in tune on what was happening in Wounded Knee. The good thing that came out of this movement was the Native Americans “entry into Political Activism” where they actually had a voice. There was also more movement where the Native Americans were given the ability to “keep their identity” and that the government stopped their ways in trying to change these Native Americans.

 My reaction to this film is embarrassment because I never knew about this protest, which seemed like it had a big impact at the time. I didn’t realize that still in the 1970s, the Native Americans still had to deal with these issues and that they had to react this way. I feel ashamed because I should have known about this as my duty as an American but I didn’t.

 I feel like all the people interviewed had a certain bias but I feel like most people that are interviewed in this documentary are Native Americans. This gives a sympathy bias towards the Native Americans. On the other hand, this is a historical documentary so there is not so much room for bias. So I think the filmmakers did a good job in making this film, where they tried to show both sides.

 A big blind spot that I noticed were the interviews. I thought that there could’ve been more interviewees on the government’s side to see their perspective on what was happening. This could’ve help get rid of bias in this documentary and help show both sides and their thoughts.

 A question that I have for these Filmmakers would be if they think that there is a similar issue happening today with the Black Lives movement and with that of of 70s and how the Native Americans were treated.

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Brian Ruiz Tumblr post #1

My experience with history has always included lecture-based classes. I have experienced this from my freshman year in high school to my current history class. Although this sounds quite negative, I have always enjoyed these lecture based classes because I am an auditory learner and I learn much better with interesting lectures. It also helped that I would participate a lot when I was in these classes. This participation helped me absorb what I was hearing much better and made history a lot more appealing to me. My best teacher would be my junior year American history teacher where all he did was lecture but for some reason the material intrigued me so much that I found myself paying attention to a lot of what he said in the class. I found out that year that I really enjoyed history. But with that being said I have had some pretty bad experiences with history classes that lecture. The worst class I have had would be American Politics where the teacher seemed to make even the most alert and focused student fall asleep with the sound of his voice. His lectures were very off topic and very dull and I can say that I never really learned anything I was supposed to in that class. His tests were just as hard as staying awake in that class. He would pull stuff of the textbook that had about 45 pages per chapter and a lot of this information wasn’t covered in lecture. So this case is an example of when a lecture based class was not the best things for me.

 I interact with history in my everyday life by just reading the news and staying up-to-date with what is going on with the world. A lot of what happens in the world can be seen in past history. An example of this would be the hot topic of the Syrian refugees where some countries debating whether to take these refugees in or not. The comparison with this to history would be the Jewish refugees that America turned away in World War 2. And although this comparison might’ve been a little extreme, making these connections is how I use history in my everyday life.

 My historical fiction that I picked for this class was Forest Gump. This has many pieces of history in in that includes a few presidents, a few civil right events and other big events in history like the Vietnam War. All the history that is in Forest Gump is all related to American history so I thought it was the perfect historical piece to bring to class. My partner chose to use the book “To Kill A Mockingbird” as his historical piece. My partner explained how it was related to the Great Depression and that it has to do with a lawyer and a rape case that accused 9 black men. And although I don’t know much right now I look forward to reading it in the future.