Political Science is, as far as I can tell, a misnomer. Since Plato and Aristotle first attempted to define the various forms of government, I doubt that science has ever been a fair word to describe what goes on. Maybe it’s because humans are inherently irrational or maybe it’s the nature of large groups of people that they defy the attempt to establish a stable social order. But whatever is the basic reason, history demonstrates that human society only infrequently and temporarily provides happiness to the majority of its citizens.
For most of human history a small royal or hieratic minority enjoyed the lion’s share of the wealth and resources of great nations and empires like Egypt, Sumer, Babylon and Persia. The great mass of the people in these places were dirt farmers or slaves who survived on what the priests and kings left them after the taxes were collected. It only seems to be the case that for short periods after the breaking up of an empire or when new territories are first occupied or if a migratory people manage to remain independent of the settled systems of control that you see freedom and some measure of human happiness.
The Dorian tribes maintained their independence after the downfall of the Mycenean civilization until the Macedonians under Philip and his son Alexander conquered them. The Roman citizens/farmers/soldiers were free men until the patricians figured out how to use foreign slaves to drive the small farmers into bankruptcy. After sacking and pillaging the Roman Empire the various Germanic tribes probably had a thousand years before the industrial revolution rendered them all wage slaves or worse. And the United States had the 1700’s and 1800’s when their government mostly left Americans alone to enjoy their lives.
But eventually, some group figures out how to game every political system to monetize people’s misery. So, I guess there’s no surprise that we are currently staring into the jaws of the latest empire to appear. But I think this one is different. I think they’ve decided they don’t need serfs. At least not many. I think the plan is to just get rid of us altogether. Now, they don’t mean to liquidate us. They just plan to impoverish us and make it so we don’t produce children. And it seems to be working quite well.
So maybe what we are seeing is the first real instance of political science. Of course, happiness for the masses isn’t what they were calculating. Someone ran the numbers and said, “Hey, guess what? I’ve found a stable government. We get rid of everybody but the elite and we let robots do all the work and we live like kings forever! Sure, we’ll need a few Morlocks to keep the machines working and keep the robots in line but we can put them underground or in China so nothing will disturb us while we eat pineapple, passion fruit and papaya in the Garden of Eden.”
So, we’ve been sentenced to extinction by Amazon/Google/Microsoft and our executioner is Joe Biden. The ignominy! I’ll have to say, it’s a little humiliating to be genocided by the Eloi. Things like being hectored about climate crimes by Al Gore, John Kerry and Greta Thornberg are almost as bad as being bankrupted by green energy madness. Being browbeaten about white supremacy and white privilege by an army of AWFL Karens is almost as bad as being told that things like usable highways, reliable electric power and freedom of travel will soon be things of the past.
They do seem to be organized so they may succeed. I hope at least that the Morlocks start eating them before we’re gone. That at least would be a consolation.