Columbus Baby! | Lucozade Sport
Just came back from a 5K, and I am drinking a Lucozade SPORT. Yep, I am one of those guys now! Need to get those electrolytes in, you know what I mean. What would I be drinking if I was not trying so hard? Good question! Some cheap whiskey, with a lot of ice, a couple of drops of Angostura bitters, drowned in some melted brown sugar. All mixing into this beautiful concoction I would most definitely ask for if I was on death row. Oh, my life was good before detox.
Before I dive into today's topic, I quickly want to acknowledge this article I came across from Politico, which describes alcohol as the lubricant of most backroom deals and the cause of more than one political downfall. Different stakes here, definitely feels like there is not much to fall from. However, I am of the opinion of one of the greatest political minds of our era - Churchill - who used to say he has taken more out from alcohol than alcohol has taken out of him. Very cool man; one day I will have a quote. However, be careful what you pick as your poison when politicizing, as universities like Michigan and Penn argue that a blonde one (beer) will make you look less intelligent. Sometimes a madman sipping on some Negronis at 9 AM beats an imbecile having a cold one on the weekend. Pick your poisons carefully, team.
But anyway, as per usual, I digress! What I am looking to cover today is analysis, the political type, of course. What is political analysis? Aside from a set of peer-reviewed articles on the topic by some of the brightest minds? Not today. Let's refocus on me and my little political adventure. Dahl defines it quite simply as the analysis of the nature, exercise, and distribution of power. So let's unpack this fancy definition and define it as the act of understanding and analyzing anything political. As you will have seen from the previous articles, I have tried to provide some theoretical introduction to politics, but transparently there is a side of me that just wants to jump into the thick of it. Did Columbus keep on drawing his travels on paper? Most likely. Did I also just compare my writing to one of the biggest adventures leading to a shocking discovery for the European world? Bet you!
Murphy's first three laws dictate that: Anything that can go wrong will, nothing is as easy as it looks, and everything will take longer than you think. Flip that around, sprinkle some whiskey-loving session, and you get Boozelitics.
If I am going to jump straight into this, let's at least cover the basic criteria of what would prevent me from doing any absolute garbage political analysis. First, never forget that whatever analysis you read is always riddled with the subconscious goals and ideas of the analyst itself. I could be trying, through the medium of politics and boozy discovery, to get you all to drop beer and start adventuring into the curves of sensual southern whiskey, creating an army of limp penises and overly confident women, ruling future generations to come. Basically, if you ever find yourself reading the thoughts of some rando on the internet, do your own critical analysis of the analysis piece itself. Cross-reference everything, talk about the topic with others, and get as many opinions involved as possible.
Start small and be pragmatic; when one day I inevitably try to introduce only Whisky Sundays followed by pub crawl Mondays as a human right and obligation, make sure you question my reasoning.
This one is being a wild one, but more seriously, I do want to become better at creating my own accurate and hopefully precise opinions when analyzing any current piece. I owe it to myself and whoever else got lost in this blog when doing some midnight soul-searching.
The first thing I can think about is having a structure I typically follow when addressing any written piece, making it easier for myself and anyone reading. Being able to revert back and question my thought process in a structured manner is the only way there is going to be any development moving forward. If anything, I can start finally introducing some of my academic years of hardship into this. Coming from a Politics, Philosophy, and Economics degree (sounds fancier than it actually is), I always liked the fact that we would be pushed to view everything we did from three different lenses, which more often than not did not go hand in hand: Politics, Ethics, and making it all make sense in financial terms is harder than it sounds. There are always thousands of variables being thrown at an issue in point, and covering all of them is often impossible, so keep it small, be pragmatic, and check yourself constantly.
To conclude this, I will make sure that I will do more reading about what is good political analysis and what are some actual theoretical and proven ways of doing this properly. So moving forward, expect another article covering in more detail what this would look like. So, I guess I cannot really jump into the thick of it yet without navigating my adventure frégate blindly.
Hopefully, catch you next week. Don't trust anybody, just your whiskey buddy.
James-Alexander