Ruling Class

The “power elite” according to William Domhoff is the group of upper class, those involved with large corporations, and those who are wealthy. These select few hold the decision making ability in their grip and hold the future of our society in their hands. I see the “power elite” as those who influence us through deciding on laws and guidelines that affect us as citizens. Not necessarily athletes or famous individuals as Dr. Johnson explained during a lecture. Athletes and famous actors/actresses have a certain amount of affect on one’s individual opinion on certain issues, but have no direct affect on how our society works. Those I believe to be in the “power elite” group would be President Bush for instance. According to Mills and Domhoff, both agree that power is owned by those who own the economy, high ranking CEO’s, etc. I feel that we must be very careful of who comes into power by these standards or the U.S. could definitely face some serious issues in the future.

Those in the ruling class seem to be born into the “power elite” status. As we have seen evidence, Bush family, those born into wealthier families are given a better education and are prepared to become politicians, leaders, and even Presidents. I believe that most of the ruling class is there because of their background and their past generations. Wealthy families are one step ahead of others as it takes a vast amount of money to become elected into any political position. It’s just a fact that all politicians must have money in order to be elected. We as a society have painted this poor picture of politicians and we must now accept the consequence. We have elected those into the power positions by which nominee we hear the most positive things about and which one we believe will do the best job based on their history. The ruling class benefits greatly from global conflict being thought of as inevitable. With filtered information going to the lower class standards, society seems to stand behind the decisions made about the conflicts, such as the war in Iraq. But not always is society getting the full background and total plan of what is happening. Some have decided not to support President Bush in any aspects, War in Iraq, No Child Left Behind, etc., but as far as I can tell I don’t feel that they are being totally honest with the public.

In our classroom, we are trying to accomplish a total understanding of global peace and global conflict and what we can do as individuals to help prevent certain actions from happening. To have a true opinion on the current issues in our society, we must have the true story or plan that is being pursued. With the filtration of information to the middle class society, we cannot truly understand the whole concept as we do not get the total view of what is about to happen. Understanding that we may not be receiving totally true or whole information that the ruling class provides us with can help us as students understand that we must us a variety of resources to fully understand a situation. I hope to use all my resources to understand situations and be able to decipher what is happening to our country.

About Me

My name is Sarah VanHorn and I am a sophomore here at WVWC. I do play on the Lady Bobcats basketball team and I am a member of the WVWC Track team as well. I am 20 years old and I am a math education major. I plan to teach high school math near my hometown which is Malta, Ohio. During the first few years, I plan to attend a Graduate School and obtain my Master's Degree in Education. I will be getting married on June 21, 2008 and I plan to stay here in Buckhannon to finish my senior year and student teaching. I am taking Global Peace & Conflict in order to fulfill a general studies credit and it seemed interesting to me.
I anticipate during this course a lot of talk on the current issues going on in our country. I foresee a major discussion on the war in Iraq and many talks on past conflicts, such as 9/11. I am concerned about the amount of reading there is for this course and being able to complete all the reading with the sports that I play. After the first few meetings in class, I feel that the discussions we will have are going to be very interesting and the amount of different perspectives we will have will keep me attentive. With the variety of students in the classroom, I feel we will have many different points of view allowing for very deep conversation. I am excited to see what the future holds in our class and what types of discussions will take place in it.