Rich Horton wrote another column for my blog, and it is – if I may say so – another must read. The subject: political junkies. Excerpt:
Ah, the joys of being young and in a near perpetual state of indignation.
Today, I have a lot more sympathy with my old professors. Yes, I still think it wouldn’t kill them to have some basic knowledge of the present political scene, even if they do nothing else in their careers but study sub-Saharan Africa or IR formal modelling. (Subscribe to Newsweek, for God’s sake.. It takes all of 15 minutes a week to read and you at least have a primer.) But, I think their aloofness was on to something about the political scene. There is a sameness about the disputes and controversies. Pure political junkies don’t really notice this as they can always live “in the moment.†They are like the guy in Memento: everything is perpetually new. Every new issue is taken upon its face value, and analogies are just tools used to bludgeon the other side and not to remind us that we have been here before.
For Political Scientists, however, we have always been here before. Every new political issue can be related to older issues. You don’t have to take anything at its face value, because chances are it is in reality an older controversy dressed up in new clothes. And, as much as it pains me to repudiate the me of 15 years ago, I can see a lot of merit in this view. Political junkies always see the world they live in as a “tipping point†(the most overused trope of the last fifty years). Every issue is of epoch making importance, each setback is a “disasterâ€, and every politician can be categorically labelled as ally, enemy, hero or traitor. Contrary to a common opinion Political Science has actually taught us some things, including that such hyperbole is largely nonsense. Today, I cannot blame these professors for not getting worked up about the controversies of the moment. Why should they? So the political junkies of today get themselves in a tizzy over the guilt or innocence of a man named Scooter? So what? In so many ways it is no different from all of the political junkies who got worked up (and still do) over Sacco & Vanzetti, Whittaker Chambers or Alger Hiss. The names may change, but the motivations remain largely the same. In any event, Political Science is more interested in abstracting out patterns of political behavior as opposed to obsessing about the minutiae of the political tabloids.
Political junkies simply do not and cannot recognize when their world is deja vu all over again.
You can read Rich’s entire column by clicking here.
I am afraid that I have to admit that I am a political junkie myself, albeit one who is getting a little bit tired of it: although it is important to look at what is happening every day, and to keep up with recent developments, it is even more important to see things in their perspective (which is exactly why I decided to ask people to become columnists instead of co-bloggers).
Something new happens every day, but in a way it is always ‘same old, same old.’
Strange, isn’t it?
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