Part of The Ship, Part of The Crew

Growing up, I loved the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. My cousin and I would get together and do a big movie marathon to try to watch all of the movies all the way through. In the third movie, Will Turner cuts the heart of Davy Jones and, in turn, his heart must be the one to replace Jones’ that ties him to the ship forever. The crew comes out chatting, “part of the ship, part of the crew,” and Turner’s destiny is bound to the ship.

This scene came to mind reading Green’s article and Brooks’ study because of our stubborn partisanships. Green paraphrases Lyndon Johnson, “our party may be jerks, but they’re our jerks” (Green, 11). People have fundamental elements of their social identities, which play an important role in their political partisan. Though many might assume that political cleavages originating from social group memberships have declined, Brooks’ study proved this to be untrue and actually, the overall social cleavage has remained stable and even increased in some ways.

The application of this alliance has differed among the years, according to Green. He wants to assume that it has become much more of a “candidate-centered, rather than a party-centered, political environment,” but these party attachments are still very influential in people’s voting decisions (Green 4). I think that this has been very evident in the current presidential election. We have two very controversial candidates with their own “scandals,” yet people stay committed to their political parties despite the controversial actions of their candidates.