An Essay: What my Political Science class has taught me.

I tried to come up with a clever title for this political essay, but whatever random witticism that usually comes to my mind eluded me during the making of this essay. Now considering the broad and ridiculous amount of topics that we've covered this semester, I would find it practically impossible to zero down what I've learned to five things. But Hell, the word "practically" never meant much to me, so let's give this a shot. While there are only a handful of specific things involving politics that this class taught me, the class has moreso taught me about the concept of how people argue and how they articulate their points and the interpretation of human morality ever so blatantly present in the discussion of politics. I already knew about a lot of these things, but interacting with people in this field has advanced my opinions behind them. Let's get this started then, and I'm going to try and make this entertaining to read because God-forbid you read anything dull.

First off, one of the most important things I've learned was how facts aren't really "facts" and they're frequently undermined in the art of debate and politics. That's an ugly truth people don't want to look at, do they? Both political sides have their own separate sets of facts to validate the arguments they're attempting to make, while both of them are often omitting important merits of discussion, usually provided by the other side coincidentally enough. A source isn't immediately valid in this day and age because of the possibility of ill-refined research or how researchers might place a personal stake in the information to slant or skew it in their particular direction. It's difficult if not impossible to find research that isn't being reinterpreted due to some sort of personal bias. But the facts can still shine through under these circumstances; if you have enough sources that appear to be pointing towards some general point, then chances are that your information is pretty stable. And sometimes it's just common sense anyway, so who gives a fuck?

This brings me to the second ugly truth that this class has taught me; people are bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling and bias will always exist, even in the interpretation and presentation of facts. Understanding the psychology of people will get you a Hell of a way through Politics. It's how Burke, Paine and Locke developed wholly different stances on revolution and the reconstruction of government. It's why stupid shit like Terrorism exists. It's why Patriotism exists. People are inherently selfish by nature and serve to only save their own asses. That may seem good to them, but in a bloated and complicated political system like the American Democracy, someone will always be getting unjustly screwed over. People know this and take advantage of it. This is why corruption will always be in politics; they just go hand-in-hand. The facts are important, but the basic idea of manipulating human psychology is what wins the political wars. It's how people can overlook and misinterpret facts for their own benefits.

Which brings us to the third thing that I learned, and perhaps the most important; the art of manipulation through language. There's that old saying that people can talk a lot yet manage to say so little, and the reason that old saying was created was because of politicians. And lawyers. But mainly politicians. Your public image is the most important thing when you're a politician, so you have to choose your words and language use carefully so you come across to the ignorant uninformed populace in a particular way that lets them know you're smarter than they are but are still "just like the average joe" as your fly private industrial airliner to political conferences collecting 100,000 dollar donations that you'll spend on manipulating them to vote you into office. Or you can come across as a completely unlikeable jackass even though you might occasionally have some valid points to put forth; no one comes to mind faster than Steve Milloy in his book "Green Hell". The man is fairly intelligent and does call environmentalists on a lot of bullshit they do with legitimate arguments, but his manner of speech is so pompous, derogatory and riddled with malice that it's almost impossible to take him seriously. In fact if it weren't for the book, I wouldn't be entirely sure if the man was literate.

This leads me to the fourth nail in my coffin of fatalistic views; Utopias are a pathetic man's dream that will never exist. This ties into the previous points being made. The quintessential concept of a Utopia will never exist without a masterful level of psychological manipulation and propaganda brought on by the government. The government has to shape and condition the populace's standards for living in order to create the illusion of happy or healthy living. This means complete control and regulation of information brought on by the government. Pretty much a Totalitarian nations are the kinds of a government where faux Utopias can emerge, but you can only keep the populace in that reverie for so long before it all goes down the shitter far enough to be rattling the plumbing in Satan's apartment.

Finally, perhaps the most important or second-most important thing your class has taught me. And that is that we're fucked. There's no elegant or sophisticated way of saying it because there's nothing elegant or sophisticated about an inevitable social and economic collapse in America. That would be like attempting to find an elegant way to watch the Hindenburg crash. America it outsourcing the living Hell out of itself, Universal Healthcare is bullshit, we have a war, we have illegals both damaging our economy while simultaneously making us dependent on them, it just spells doom. Before we knew that Business and Government were in bed with each other, now they're just fucking wildly out in the open like stray dogs during heat. The level of corruption and change intermingling at the same time is enough to keep a man stuck in his chair for a week.

So there you have it. Your class has taught me about the art of manipulating language and information so that greedy politicians will feed their own selfish and corrupt ambitions while our country is on the highway to Hell and how you say you'll be gone when we have to put up with it. Your class has managed to reinforce my already-prevalent beliefs in fatalism to an unhealthy degree. Now if you excuse me, I'm getting my tin-foil hat while I crawl into my basement waiting for the inevitable arrival of the dystopian future due to the motherland's collapse.