Before getting in a political argument, get educated
In a recent column, Maria Amante begged for CMU students to care about politics. I guess I can’t really knock that position, as I wrote a piece myself back in September of last year that essentially argued the same thing.
However, I would like to ask for something in addition: If you’re going to start getting involved, do some research and educate yourself. I’m not just saying know who the candidates are, but actually be able to analyze the various other things involved as well.
As an example, I had an e-mail exchange with a reader last semester arguing Virg Bernero had a good record as Lansing’s mayor by citing that jobs were saved “through city projects like the Accident Fund and Lansing City Market”.
This was after he misinterpreted something I said in the column I had printed on April 7.
In it, I claimed that the ignorance (which itself is not stupidity) of the populace on different subjects, such as finance, is what allows for people like Bernero to take advantage of them. Clearly, you can’t make a good decision if you don’t have the information or can’t analyze it.
This reader, however, thought that I was calling him politically ignorant, and that he had a right to be offended, due to the fact he was a history and social studies double major.
Well, if that’s the case, then wouldn’t he know that Accident Fund is a workers comp insurance company that was originally run by the state? Wouldn’t he know it was later sold to Blue Cross circa 1993-1994 and was never a city project, much less one that was overseen by Bernero?
Needless to say, homeboy’s lack of research deep-sixed one of his arguments, as well as proved he is indeed ignorant on some things.
The example above should be evidence of what happens when you aren’t able to research or analyze what’s going on and then proceed to shoot your mouth. The problem is, things get even worse if you don’t do your research and then shoot off votes, because at that point, you’re doing harm for everyone else, not just yourself.
Get educated before you practice politics.
