The tragedy of political science
I’ve really had it with political science. Little of what political scientists do has any relevance whatsoever. The general public knows this only too well. No one reads political science books or political science journals and not even politicians ask for their advice. If politics is show business for ugly people then political science is academia for irreverent people. The discipline is completely self-referential and self-propelling.
Like some nasty computer virus the number of academic papers just keeps on multiplying. You become professor since you have 70 articles on ministerial resignations or on the European parliament or some equally useless topic. What a waste of the time and effort of allegedly intelligent people! Surely they will have to answer for their actions on Judgement Day. But perhaps writing 70 papers on such topics already is considered punishment enough?
Could it be that I’m actually a sociologist? Are these people my new best friends? Can you be a sociologist without even knowing it? Should I come out of the closet? But what will my mother think, and my students? I feel a strong urge to apologise to someone, but I don’t know to whom. Maybe to my employer for misleading them for more than 10 years. But maybe they’ll ask for my salary back?