On the Study of Political Science

Yesterday we read somewhere, someone talking about political scientists being scientists.

[What the fuck does that even mean?-Ed]

Anyhoo...Political science is not a science. We really don't know what it is. At least Poli-sci isn't sociology, a bullshit field if there ever was one. We bet Mike Stivik was a Sociology major...meathead.

We should know, back in our Wesley College days we majored in Poli-sci. Wesley was a small school, and the actual poli-sci student contingent was small, there couldn't have been more than a dozen of us. That included me, Paul, Ben, Lorna and a few others. The poli-sci faculty was smaller still, numbering only two profs, one of whom looked exactly like  Mr. Van Drieson in Beavis and Butthead. We kid thee not. Tony as he insisted we call him, was a great prof and a mentor. He was a leftist who didn't care what you thought so long as you were thoughtful. Sometimes he'd have class at the bar. The other prof in the department was a chain smoking drunk we nicknamed 'shakey lady'.

What did we actually study? During the fall of Freshman year we took Intro to Political Science. We found we liked the subject. Also it was the first time we were the class braniac, so that was kind of cool.

From there we took intro to US Politics and Intro to International Relations. If one wanted to fall asleep one took Public Administration with Shakey Lady.  From there one took Politics in the Third World where we studied the planet's shithole regions. When we did our country reports the class had a contest to see who could find the biggest crap-hole on the planet. We took the bronze with Chad, Paul got silver with Djibouti and Ben took home the gold with Spanish Sahara. It didn't even have a flag. Later we wrote a paper on Paraguay, mostly because PJ O'Rourke visited the place. Then there was the great nuclear war catastrophe of the International Relations Diplomacy Simulation. Oh, and once Tony  tasked us with creating peace in the middle east. Took about an hour.

Did we learn anything? Sure. We learned we could write papers three hours before class after being at our frat party the night before. AXP! We learned Poli-sci was mostly opinion. Pro-tip, use words like 'periphery' and 'hegemony' a lot. Thanks to Tony we also learned to challenge authority. As he once told us while he donned his elbow-patched blazer, 'Never show proper deferentiation to anybody. You're Americans.' We learned political science is not science.

Did the study of political science lead to careers in politics? For some of us. Paul and Ben both worked for congressman before moving on to other government and non-government positions in Washington. Even we interned at the Senate. We used to joke with Paul that one day we'd have a power lunch in Washington. We're at about that stage in our careers. He's deputy assistant something or other, while we're a highly successful writer. 

[Highly? Author, please-Ed]

Mostly Poli-sci was just a major. Got to major in something.