Modeling reactive attention among congressional witnesses during the COVID-19 pandemic

Although often considered dichotomous drivers of congressional agenda activity, indicators and focusing events may exist on a continuum if indicators are capable of culminating in a singular event that focuses attention. Identifying this culmination point could help explain how anticipatory, indicator-driven threats such as COVID-19 can dominate policy agendas in a manner similar to a focusing event. This paper investigates whether the culmination point can be identified by quantifying anticipatory and reactive attention of congressional committee witnesses towards an indicator-driven threat. The findings demonstrate that peaks in congressional witness numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with a transition from anticipatory to reactive attention, which was associated with rapid increases in unemployment. This demonstrates that a transition from anticipatory to reactive attention could mark the culmination point of an indicator-driven event such as COVID-19, and explain how and why some indicators are capable of focusing attention, but others are not.

Nietzsche in the Nursery

The concluding chapter addresses ways in which the novel as genre has provoked and stimulated cognate activities outside its normative parameters as literary genre. These are registered most recently in the exorbitant rise of the “graphic novel.” This chapter goes back more than half a century to an earlier graphic format, the comic book, particularly the transformational treatment of novels in the Classics Illustrated publishing series from 1941 into the 1960s. The focus is on debates about mass culture in the Cold War setting of congressional committee investigations of juvenile delinquency and the comic book craze. A conspicuous feature of cultural preoccupations was with the status of the classic, on the one hand (epitomized in the Great Books publishing enterprise), and lowbrow dissemination of existing “classics” in comic book format. A full-scale assault on comics by psychiatrist Fredric Wertham was instrumental in chastening the industry into self-censorship. Ironically, the pedagogic claims behind Classics Illustrated were highlighted as a threat to the supposedly innocent “mind of the child,” revealing an abiding split between the cultural eminence accorded the classic and the aptitude of the target audience. The audience as consumer had been the commercial engine behind the rise of the novel, but the specter of the innocent child now conflated cultural symbolism with political agendas. We’ve inherited the trauma of that moment in the form of “political correctness” and “cancel culture,” with old (and new) novels continuing to be singled out as affronts to public decency, malignant records of bygone traumas, or obstreperous reminders of an imaginative fertility in the human imagination that won’t go away.

Trouble in New York

This chapter presents a brief story of the first hint of a major scandal involving the New York Custom House and Bahamian merchants. It follows an interesting story about the New York Custom House officers who boarded the Corsica soon after it arrived from Nassau and seized papers held by British citizen George Wolf. The papers the officers confiscated from Wolf helped lift the lid off the blockade-running activity in Nassau and elsewhere. The ensuing congressional investigation would make it clear to everyone that many people in the North, including those in the New York Custom House, were involved in the Great Carnival. The chapter then shifts to examine several ways to bypass the bond system. One of these was to hide contraband cargo so it did not show up on the manifest. A similar method was to “hide” contraband in plain sight. This technique made use of the fact that customs officials only checked about one case out of ten in the cargo. The chapter also argues that the other method of deception was to ship to another British port and then to Nassau. Ultimately, the chapter presents what US Congressional Committee on Public Expenditures discovered after they began to call witnesses and investigate what was happening at the custom house and between New York and Nassau. It provides a fascinating look at the inner workings of the blockade-running business.

The Ukrainian Diaspora of the USA in the Formation of International Image of Ukraine (1991-2018)

The article is dedicated to the research of contribution of diaspora to recognition of Ukrainian independency by the United States of America. The influence of diaspora on the development of international cooperation is clarified; its role on protection of national internal and external interests and consolidation of Ukraine on the world stage are highlighted. The results of diaspora participation in the foreign policy activity of the Ukrainian state are analyzed. In 2008, the contractual framework between Ukraine and the USA was supplemented by an extremely important document – the Strategic Partnership and Security Charter. With the support of the United States, the Ukrainian side has made progress in its relations with NATO, receiving the prospect of membership in April 2008, in December of the same year – a similar format to the MAP for further preparation for NATO membership – Annual National Programs. It is emphasized that the main directions of cooperation of the Ukrainian Diaspora with official institutions of the USA correspond to the internal and external interests of Ukraine. Congress Ukrainian Caucus, Ukrainian National Information Service, Ukrainian Congressional Committee of America, a network of other organizations are active in covering major problems of the Ukrainians, ensuring the international image of Ukraine.

Wise Man?

In the final chapter I widen the chronology to consider Taylor’s advice and commentary into the 1980s. Taylor appeared as a “Wise Man” in deliberations on Vietnam; he was one of the final holdouts who thought the president should stay the course even after the Tet Offensive. He remained a liberal Cold War hawk in his public commentaries throughout the 1970s, when he became a member of the Committee on the Present Danger. In his 1984 testimony before a congressional committee that would ultimately craft the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, Taylor stated that the JCS could not be reformed—the committee needed to be torn down. He remained consistent: he preferred one general to command the armed forces and offer powerful advice aligned with the president’s foreign policy.