As Daft Punk would say...

One more time
One more time we're gonna celebrate yeah
Oh yeah all right don´t stop the dancing


Alright, we've reached the end of the World Politics course. Now what?
Who knows? But I'll reflect on it one more time (we're gonna celebrate).

This class has been...an experience. I'm not placing any particular adjective on that, partially because I am such a neutral person (really) and partially because no word could adequately describe this class. Not even 1500 words.

There were good times, bad times, what the hell are you talking about times and oh snap times...all in all, I think I'm glad I took this class. But I don't know.

This class probably has made me a lot more ambivalent than I ever thought I could (or wanted to be).

Oddly, I think that might be the point. PTJ said this class was about learning to argue, learning to make a point and then convince someone else that point is the correct one (or just the better one).

Whether or not I've learned how to effectively argue is debatable (lame pun), but...maybe by being less sure in what I've said, I had learned how to argue better.

If I'm not sure in what I say, then I'll listen more to what others are saying. By listening, I'll understand what they are saying....and then figure out how I agree or disagree based off of that, not based off of the assumptions I made walking into the discussion.

So...I guess this class made me less sure of who I am, but more sure of who I am because I'm less sure. WTF.

“I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.” (Socrates knows what's up.)

Oh, and totally going to say Venezuela kicked ass in the debate today. Why? Because my two goals were accomplished: get us kicked out of the debate [I actually wanted that to be the first motion, because it was going to happen anyway] and don't get a solidified development policy passed...whoo! The Venezuelan Way = the kick-ass way.

Justify this.

Once again, getting this reflection typed off early so I have one less thing to do Sunday.

Let's talk about today's class.
Was it the best run? Probably not. PTJ gave us the suggestion to put Cortes (and actually La Malinche too, but whatever on that) on trial. And that's it. Since he's in Italy right now, he couldn't give us a lot more guidance, so we had to come up with what he meant by "put on trial".

Mnadler said he couldn't come up with a better way to practice justice than the current legal system because we're all "just freshmen". ...Alright, on that same vein, we're just freshmen who aren't exactly experts in the legal system, so how to run a court trial without witnesses and without a real clue as to the formal proceedings of any court means we did the best we could with what we thought.

Whatever, some will think I'm just trying to provide excuses. Don't care.

The point of the debate/trial was to look at how you discuss justice. What is justice? What is just? Is something that is just and justice two different things?

And, going with this week's question, is our way of practicing justice better than older forms of "justice"?

Let's look at some fiction, which reflects pretty well the court system in the 1930s, and apart from that is an excellent piece of writing (with an amazing performance by Gregory Peck):



Sorry to spoil it for those who haven't read the book (and you should, by the way), but they lose the case. Racism (combined with fear and ignorance) meant thousands of people died because of how they were. Not because they necessarily committed a crime, but because they were considered inferior.

Let's go back farther, to the Salem Witch Trials. Were the people convicted of being witches really anything of the sort? Probably not. Fear and ignorance, however, are powerful things, and in this case resulted in the deaths of innocents.

Let's go into the 1950s and the Red Scare. Untold numbers of people were blacklisted...even if they had nothing to do with communism (and so what if they did?). Lives were ruined based off of fear and the need for a scapegoat.

Let's look at now. The more money you have, the better lawyer you can get. The better lawyer, the more likely you are to win a case. Even if you are, in fact, guilty.

Where, throughout history, is the justice in that? And yes, I realize I'm only looking at the American court history here, but that's the history I'm most familiar with. But, it can be imagined similar occurrences happen in other court systems across the globe.

So where's the justice? How is it just?
I don't know. Yes, I'm looking at just certain examples of when the court system in all likelihood failed in its duty to uphold what is right (or what is law? There's a difference there too.) There are countless times when people are tried and correctly convicted.

...Maybe that brings in another question. Do we maybe just have to settle for an imperfect system? Is "just" a perfect abstract, and we, as imperfect beings, can never hope to fully practice it and deliver the fault to the correct party?

I think yes to that last one.

And finally, because you know that Common is fantastic:





Testify.