Political Science around 12:30

Israel guy in polisci class, looks like there are two now actually, and they’re having a conversation. They are “critiquing” the girl who said Israel is colonizing Palestine, in reality they are talking shit about her while she is not in the room. One guy said bringing up the conflict was out of place. How so? There’s nuance? Thousands of years? It is a colonial project but you can’t bing in the idea of privilege? I don’t know why the one guy is bringing this up, he’s trying to discredit “activists” as the Jewish people weren’t privileged as 80% died… two white men talking about this by the way. He’s mad that privilege is brought up during discussions of Palestine but I don’t know what he’s talking about as the girl who called Israel a colonial state did not bring up “privilege.” He’s trying to shit talk “activists” because they aren’t “historians.” Apparently Israel’s colonialism is different from Canada’s and therefore it’s okay I guess? I’m writing down as they are talking so if it sounds weird thats why. He’s now bringing up how the Cree people displaced another group of indigenous people? I couldn’t catch the name but he’s playing semantics about what “native” means, according to him it is meaningless. They now think definitions and who uses them is playing a political game. These two dudes suck ass. I’m going to have to learn how to cope with this class. This guy is saying it’s so hard being concerned about “dialectics” and “facts” due to people being attached to “definitions,” what a strange thing to say. I wish they would shut the fuck but at least I get to share what I’m dealing with. To give you an image of one of these guys, he’s very self important and speaks with an authority he does not have, like he’s better and smarter than everyone. He also doesn’t seem to have a note book/tablet/laptop/etc so thats something. The other guy is a dudebro.

Their chat slowly fizzled out as more and more students trickled in coming to a stop when my professor entered.

He opened the class by asking us if there was anything international politics related that we wanted to mention. Of course, Israel being taken to The Hague was the big one. My professor believes there will been peace in our time, when he was young no one thought that the Ireland situation would’ve been resolved but it was, so he is optimistic.

(It looks like there are less students than the first so that may be good for me.)

Is Quebec too economically reliant on Canada, if they separated what would happen? This is asked because Quebec separatism was brought up as a thing that may happen once again in this lifetime, it was stated by the same guy crying about dialectics and definitions. Canada also relies on Quebec? A student said this. Canada without Quebec wont be the same country, my professor says. I agree with that, my main concern if with the Indigenous people within and around Quebec, honestly all Indigenous peoples within Canada.

(Okay maybe there is the same amount of students but they’re just late…)

Individual levels of analysis - looking at leaders.

State level of analysis - Palestine’s ownership of its territory has been decaying. In Israel NetanyahuPs leadership is not doing well, as in he is low in the polls. When Israel was asked about its fine, but when the girl bings up Palestine as an example for state analysis suddenly we don’t want to talk about the Palestine conflict, interesting….

International/systemic level of analysis.

Maybe there is a fourth, Global level of analysis - climate change as an example. Overpopulation was brought up as an example, but professor shot it down as not everywhere is overpopulated but also when there is migration to less populated countries that is considered State level. Self-important Israel guy tried to push back against this but professor stated that these problems with migration are dealt with on a state level, not global.

In Britain today there are groups slashing tires of SUVs in protest of climate change. Zionist guy agues that slashing said tires does more to harm the environment more than just driving SUV. The people gluing themselves to the ground in protest were called idiots by the dudebro Zionist. Very cool.

Globalization is the process of connecting all levels, it goes beyond the state. Technology, financial flow, trade, compression of time and space, it is all subsumed in globalization. Global governance where processes and approaches are created to solve global problems. Globalization is leading to Democracy backsliding in many places. How does globalization impact the state? It negatively affects the state via trade, negating choice due to trends in trade, according to student. Race to the bottom was brought up by my professor as an example of this phenomenon. The state is subject to many global competitors, which can be negative but it may be positive as well. For developing states there is a loss of sovereignty and one must fall in line with the Capitalist global order, The IMF puts certain terms on their loans which keeps developing countries in line, this is what we call neo-liberalism, says my professor. States lose power from globalization, you are being driven by forces outside your borders, multinational companies, etc. come in to disrupt. There is also the problem of populism, globalization generates backlash and thus leads to the rise of populism. Globalization removes the state as a middle man. My professor wants to see a world where we can travel without passports, I agree wholeheartedly. As an example, if someone from Mali came to Canada, no questions asked, how does everyone feel? I honestly just shrugged, I don’t mind at all.

We don’t want American attitudes coming to Canada but they due because of technology, AKA globalization. I would argue that “Canadian values” and “American values” are the exact same thing, what is truly the difference? We just like to weaponize our “nice” stereotype.

We then talked about forms of power: soft and hard power. Joseph Nye said if you combine both you get “smart power.” I’ve talked about this in my first semester.

Right this moment, writing this, I had to skeddadle out of class because of a coughing fit. I’m less embarrassed about it now than I would’ve been before, character development I guess.

Anyway I just got back and my professor used the “Russian Propaganda” ban as a form of thought control, either Putin is trying to use thought control or the Canadian government trying to exercise thought control. I guess you could argue it’s both. Thought control was alongside Agenda Setting and another thing that I could not make out (Deanm making?)… Hopefully the textbook has something for me.

Edit: turns out what looked like “Deanm” on the board may have been “decision”

Now on legitimacy, is Putin’s invasion legitimate? He asks. The question was derailed with discussions about the Taliban.

Instrumental power (Decision making), structural power (Agenda setting), and discursive power (thought control). Fungibility is the power to transfer from one place to another: China and the Bellt and Road initiation was brought as an example by student, its a projection of power in Africa. China always gets support from those countries because of this, apparently.

We’re in a multipolar system; the US, China, India, Russia, and EU existing are all examples of it being a multipolar world. Unit Veto (created by some guy) - if every country has nukes, is the world safe? A student says no as some countries would take this power for granted. What if everyone in class had a gun, would it be a safe classroom? Maybe not. Everyone who has nukes has veto powers, each unit has a veto. Would the world be stable if everyone had nukes? If Ukraine had nukes would Putin have attacked? They used to have nukes but gave them up for territorial sovereignty.

All of this above was written as my professor was talking. For some reason I continued to type after listening in on the Zionist conversation, so all of that is half my notes that I’ll have to write down by hand later. That’s also why it sounds so weird and disjointed. Being a court stenographer (or live transcribing person in general) is not in the cards for me, clearly.

The rest of the lecture was about theories. We went over what empirical theory is vs normative theory and theories that question the essence of the truth. This opened up to discussing foundationalist and anti-foundationalist theories. Foundationalists accept the world as is and anti-foundationalists do not. Classical Realism is a foundational theory that sees the world in a very pessimistic way and seeks to “understand” human nature. Humans are inherently evil, and because humans run the state then the state is also evil. States pursue self-interest and nothing more, they seek to maximize their own power. They view the international system as anarchical as there is no common power, and conflictual. It is a win-lose, zero sum game. Classical Realism believes in the security dilemma. An example given was how North Korea is developing nukes and that has made South Korea consider getting nukes. The USA says they will provide South Korea with protection so there is no need but the South Korean government is still thinking about it. Another example is Taiwan building forces via the US to deter China but, in my professor’s words, Taiwan is a very small island so fighting China would not work out; also Xi is a realist, therefore if needed he will “invade.” One of the Zionist guys piped up stating that he doesn’t think the US will use nukes to defend a foreign country as it goes against they own interests, as in why would they help another country by opening themselves up to return firing of nuclear weapons. My professor disagrees with this sentiment. It’s essentially mutually assured destruction. The other Zionist said we as Canadians have to be worried and take the US seriously with their threats as we share a border.

Some of the critiques of Classical Realism we talked about were how it goes against liberal values of “fairness,” it promotes mistrust, and creates a system of winners at the top and losers at the bottom. Don’t we already have that? No, seriously, don’t we ready have that? We couldn’t continue with critiques as class was coming to an end and he wanted to go over Neo-realism a little. Neo-realism believes that structures influence state behaviour. There are two types: defensive realism and offensive realism. Defensive realism seeks to maintain the status-quo while offensive realism seeks to dominate and create a hegemony. He then asked us if we that China was defensive or offensive, most students said “offensive” and that is where we ended class for the week.

He reminded us about our upcoming seminars that we have to prepare for class and that our assigned articles are posted. Essentially, what we have to do is make a PowerPoint summarizing the assigned article and what type of theorist the author is. After class I lingered to ask him more about the seminar but before I could he asked me if I joined the UN club this year, showing that he did remember me! I said no as I didn’t apply in Fall and therefore it’s too late, they already have their New York team. I told him I would join this year in the Fall. Which is might, hopefully I’m not nearly as socially anxious and have enough knowledge to defend and present my country of choice. Anyway, after that brief exchange I asked him about the seminar as I was freaking out about it (yes I told him that, I am an honest person), he asked when my seminar was and I said I was one of the first (which sucks for me), he gave me the run down and I asked whee I was even supposed to get this article. It was in a book he assigned on our syllabus, separate from the textbook, but i could not find this book anywhere for free. He then just straight up gave me his copy. He looked up my article for me and said to give him the book back next week when I finish making my own copy of it. That was very kind of him and I appreciate it. He’s a good professor and a nice person, even if I get frustrated with his statements and his clear… uhh… “dislike” of China. Funnily enough my article is about China so thats neat, I will share it soon enough as I will probably be seeking advice on how to present since I suck at these. He wants to prepare us for when we have to do public speaking in the outside world but I’m not ready! I want to be left alone!