Political Scientists have become something of a well-loved meme in the political landscape, they seem to generate a few fans, while others tend to think of these people as a collection of turbo-putzes. I’m kind of in the middle on them. On one hand, their child-like simplicity is really adorable. The political scientist is proud of his history as a retired political science professor, and in fact once boasted that he came from a poor background but rose to the point where he could in fact become a retired political science professor, as if somehow this combination of words is worthy of an actual accomplishment in life … hey, I stand on a little stage in front of a bunch of young adults who have to take a class to fulfill their mandatory courses and every now and then, a student asks me a question that makes me think they really want me to help them find their place in the world!
Yeah, it’s pretty damned adorable … thinking that politics can be a “science” with actual feedback and control, and not a barely manageable shitshow of public sentiment and chaos is kind of admirable, in a way. Even sociologists, who have shown themselves as increasingly indispensible in our “build it back better” world have to admit that their science is so close to the edge of human chaos that it’s all they can do to try to manage sociological theory and application to actually get homeless people and those with addictions and disorders out of their cycles and back into the kind of lives that they really prefer. But political scientists have none of that reality to deal with. They simply stake a claim on the political landscape, and when something fits their “science” they declare the success of their process, and when something doesn’t fit, they tend to reclassify the fringes of their classifications. It’s not so different from a weird little backwater of physics, where we declare certain ill-posed and ill-behaved systems as “non-Newtonian” because they’re in fact so violently non-Newtonian that we have no choice but to do so. And then as we type or scribble the words “non-Newtonian” across the surface on a nonlinear, non-homogeneous differential, we know in fact that the entire world is non-Newtonian, because Newtonian physics is wrong, and in fact F=m(dv/dt) only when we ignore the quantum realities … but sometimes Mother Nature gives us a freebie and allows us to ignore those quantum realities well enough to do what our employers tell us to do.
And sure, as a fellow doctor, I want to be respectful of someone like Dr. Political Scientist, and I do find him somewhat likeable to the degree that he seems to outwardly support the same kind of progressive politics that I support. But ultimately, he is what we used to call in high school, a “poseur.” He’ll donate money to causes to demonstrate his commitment to his supposed ideals, and even challenge others to do the same, as he has done many times on the internet with his assorted “bets.” But he’s a poseur because he outright rejects the capstones of progressivism. When someone writes something with which he disagrees, he wants those words eliminated. When someone challenges him, he actively recruits support (apparently with his charity) to suppress the thoughts and ideas that challenge him. Of course that takes time, so in the short run, his method is to set up his lawn chair on the political landscape and declare that those who disagree with him must in fact be non-Newtonian … or his political sciency words “enemies of the cause” or “fake” or “agent provacateurs” or whatever his Ph.D. advisor taught him to say to quell dissent. Because ultimately, the reason politicos are not “scientists” in any real sense is because there is no absolute arbiter of their “truth” other than their ability to donate a few Euros to this cause or that cause and then try to control the discussion.
A biologist is a scientist because that person can stake a claim, and then with specific measurements, support or disprove other claims with the process of measurement. A chemist can measure energies, a mathematician can generate a logical proof, unassailable in many cases because at the end of the thing, one hundred and seventeen must still equal one hundred and seventeen. And of course, a physicist can drink a bunch of Michelob for breakfast because he or she just worked all night on an aerosol model for a pharmaceutical company, and in fact, the predicted mass and potential function from the Navier-Stokes model is right on the matzo-ball with the actual measurements in the environmental chamber with the mass and potential function. Apologies for the digression, but it’s worthwhile to explain to non-physicist what something like this feels like when you’re a physicist, when you set your lawn chair on the landscape with a claim something along the lines of a “mesosonic energy front can divert a non-negligible mass of submicron particulates from a pathogenic target” and then that physicist actually builds the device and his or her mathematical predictions are spot on. That feeling, it’s just indescribable … like waking up next to a supermodel in the county jail, because the sheriff was so impressed with your massive prank, that his deputies gave the two of you a private cell to copulate and make prison supermodel babies that will someday think of a way to top the epic prank you just played on the city of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. It feels that good because that’s what actual science does, it feels good to understand Mother Nature and non-Newtonian potential flows to the point where you can not only predict what a female as intoxicating as Mama Nature will do, but then use her own tools to change the world, to save lives, to help make the world a more happy and healthy place for your fellow humans, plants and animals.
But politico scientists don’t get this luxury. They can measure opinions, polls and make predictions that are often true. But when they aren’t true, the façade collapses, and their “science” is shown to be another facet of the complexity of human thoughts, emotion and the indecisive nature of biological action. That’s what life is after all, the choice of a cell not react to a certain osmotic overload, the choice of a person to vote against his or her better judgment and against his or her better futures. Do we contradict ourselves? So we contradict ourselves, as Descartes said, we are complex, we contain multitudes, and these multitudes make a mockery of things that masquerade as “science” that are not science.
I’ve little doubt that I just killed a vast chunk of my career with that statement, but so be it. Science still does mean something real and something specific. It relies on the nature of measurement, and it’s not science if that process can’t be repeated precisely over and over and lead to the same result.
So why is it that politicos like retired political science professors get so deeply offended when their “science” is exposed as a kind of pseudo-science? Do business people get upset when they realize they are not scientists? Do politicians get upset when they realize they are not scientists? Why does this retired dipshit pound his sad little warpath when this undeniable truth is pointed out to him?
It reminds me of the old Yiddish joke … a highly prominent Jewish cardiologist wishes to impress his parents with his success and wealth. He sends a limousine to pick them up at their house and delivers them to his afternoon party on his yacht. On his yacht, he has also invited influential politicians, leaders of business, academics, all people whom he has saved their lives or the lives of their loved-ones. The cardiologist takes his parents on the grand tour, feeds them the most exotic foods, flown in from the corners of the Earth. He introduces them to the dignitaries of the day, and all these people fawn over their son, proclaim their love for him for saving their lives, for bringing back their loved ones from the bring of death itself. And then he shows them the yacht, the extravagant staterooms, the richly appointed bar with exotic hardwoods, the powerful engine room staffed by a highly-trained engineers, the giant masts made from the strongest trees and the sails made form the finest canvas, with a crew who deftly maneuvers the ship through the afternoon and which none of the guests even spill a drop of their champagne. And then at the end of this majestic afternoon, he presents his dad with a gold-braided captain hat, just like the one that he wears, as his crew and his guests all call him Captain. His parents are happy to see their success with his son, once just a little pisher studying the Mishna, and now, a beacon of cardiac surgery, a titan of culture. He walks them back to the limousine, and notices that his dad has not put on his captains hat, but rather it sits in his lap. “Don’t you like it?” he asks. “Yes, the hat is lovely, your yacht is beautiful and you have saved so many people, your mother and I are very proud of you.” “Then why won’t you wear the captains hat like I wear mine?” His dad looks up his son, so proud of everything that he has accomplished, but he still sees the little pisher who sometimes forgot his place in the world. “Son, to your mother, you are a captain. To me, you are a captain. But to a captain, you are not a captain.”
The reality is that science is as science does. A half-decent scientist will drink himself or herself into a stupor to find that the work is wrong. But he or she will open that Schrodinger’s box to determine the state of that cat. Because more important than pride, or success, or happiness to the scientist, is simply knowing what the fuck is inside the box. And while the politico prides himself on not simply taking the millions and billions of Euros that he simply could have taken if only he wanted to take them, he instead says something like “I instead chose to help the world with my science.”
And yes, he’ll actually believe that, as he rocks himself to sleep at night, convinced in the tangibility of this alternate reality.
But of course, the non-alternate reality is that he did well enough in school to stay in school, and then he kept moving through the academic landscape to the point where he graduated high school, then college, then graduate school and then someone needed to hire a professor of politics because that’s the way the sausages are made, and the school can’t expect to be the single largest private property holder in the tri-state region without creating an accredited curriculum. But he never got that memo, that memo was from He Who Shall Not be Named, the unspoken truth. So instead, he viewed his progress as tantamount to an intellectual contribution. And as he bullied his students with subtle hits to the grades of those who said “I disagree” and rewarded those who “yes perfesser” him in just the right, non-cloying way, he started to believe that he was in fact, a captain. That he did know how to set the sails, how to tune the engine, how to manage the navigation … that his skills as fixing hearts were not the result of a lot of people showing him how to do it, but rather the result of his excellence as a human. And if only he wanted, he could repack the stuffing box, and rebuild the raw-water strainer, rewind the jiggered windlass and even fix the intermittent flaw in the box thruster. But of course, he chose not to do these things, because he had to save his majestic hands for surgery. “But if I had,” he thought to himself as he walked away from the limousine, “I could have been a better captain than the captain.”
Extraction is a bitch.
We find ourselves in these positions in life, faced with the truth, and all we can do is chew slowly, accept that at some point, we cannot change the things in life that we cannot change, and then we lie to ourselves some more.
So when a politico scientist tells the world that he is a progressive, while simultaneously accusing those with whom he disagrees of Nazism, he becomes about the same as the fershlugginer putz who runs social experiments because he’s too lazy to do actual work, and he rewards himself with his daily dose of sparkling ganja, delivered to his lungs with the stuff that is going to end his life sooner rather than later, as coughs up the sputum that resembles the alien that his wife and her lover laugh at on the screen in their room at the Marriot, and he does things to her that actually resemble the kind of love that she could never get from her husband, the International Idiot.
Didn’t I warn you? Extraction is a bitch.
Intelligent people welcome dissent because it’s an opportunity to find truth. Idiots rally support for their lies, because it’s the only way they can generate something which gives them sufficient illusion of truth that they can go to sleep at night without being high or without bullying their wife like he does every damned night, which is why she’s snuggling with that guy and watching cartoons in the Marriot.