Politics in class

My HIST 590B class - history of the dead and undead - is an interesting study of ghosts, myths, legends, and concepts of death in a historical perspective. This week, we read about medieval views of ghosts, stemming from Augustine onwards.

In class today, however, we talked politics. Our teacher, who wouldn't say if she supported any of our potential politicians, started the discussion and asked around for various opinions. She phrased almost everything as "I do not support position X, but how can you support opposing position Y? Do you not see anything wrong with that?" It was pretty funny to watch - all the Republicans in the class (which was most of the class - stupid Indiana) touted the same talking points repeated by Hannity, Limbaugh and the other frigtarded jokers of the Republican noise machine. It seemed most people hadn't thought about any of the issues surrounding the Iraq war beyond the talking points they had heard.

A big issue that came up three or four times in 30 minutes of discussion was miscommunication. Our teacher kept bringing in examples to challenge students to compare our current situation to historical events. Students would then misunderstand what she was talking about, and she would miss the fact that they were on two different subjects. It seems people tend to hear what they want to in political debates, rather than actually listening to anyone challenging their viewpoint. Or they're all just very poor communicators, and lack any sort of articulation. I'm not sure which is better.

In any case, I'd say it was more fun than our regular discussions, which can be drier than good gin. Except that I have to move to the other side of the room now - I can't sit next to Huckabee supporters. *shudder*