THE MEANING OF LIFE

Meritory:Just kidding, I don't really feel like writing about that at the moment.

After reading Something Awful and their forums one day I discovered there was this little thing called RealPolitik. I had not heard the details of this idea before so I decided to look into it.

What is RealPolitik?

Essentially it's this way of thinking and discussing politics that involves excluding idealistic notions. One might want to claim things would be better "if it were like [this]," but Real Politik is out there to dissolve this manner of thinking altogether claiming that thinking idealogically is not looking at the whole picture. This method is the same thing as Realism in politics and is used primarily by conservatives to articulate their ideas against those of their opponents. One of the ways they use Real Politik is to diminish the validity of liberal arguments by pointing out that they are "too idealistic" and not realistic enough.

To make it clearer, I've decided to compare some paraphrased passages between idealogical political discussion and Real Politik style.

1.

Idealogical: There should be peace in the world!

POLITIK: There should be peace in the world, but it will require war with countries that oppose peace in the world.

2.

Idealogical: We should impeach our President because he has lied to us as a nation!

POLITIK: Sure, it is important that we question our government, but imagine how much worse the problems in the world will get if we're busy arguing over whether or not our president is good. There are much worse people to go after in the world.

3.

Idealogicial: We need to conserve our energy and waste less.

POLITIK: Waste less? If anything, focusing on our energy is wasteful. We have peoples' needs to meet, here, and they do not lessen by the day. In fact, if we don't worry about getting power and homes to our population, then soon everyone will be homeless! And plus, nothing is going to sell if it is overpriced because it has to go through millions of tests to make sure no little precious animals are hurt in its production. Why don't you just take your skinny liberal ass and go stop all of the cars and all of the factories and every institution in the United States of America so nothing gets hurt and dies anymore.

4.

Idealogical: Conservatives tend to have better judgement than liberals.

POLITIK: Well, I mean yea that's right.

5.

Idealogical: Progressively changing into a more socialistic institution will help provide more jobs, develop better health care, and insure that cities are developing as a whole and not simply to raise profits temporarily.

POLITIK: How the hell do you know that, asshole? Seriously, you liberals all think you're smarter than us. Well I have to tell you something: your idealogical notions are worth NOTHING and everything you say is nothing but bull crap that is not realistic. To survive in this world you need to let your stupid hippie ideas go and stop pretending you KNOW EVERYTHING. Gah. And read this article, too, while you're at it:

REAL POLITIK