Author’s Note / Introduction
The full title of
this article is “Why Political Science Students at the University of Wisconsin
at Madison Should Consider Dropping Out (Or at Least Changing Their Major)”.
The following letter was written for the
University of Wisconsin at Madison’s “Political Science at Work” event.
That event took place at Great Hall at
Memorial Union, and was organized by SuccessWorks Alumni Relations Team (at the
College of Letters and Science Center for Personal and Professional
Development), on October 23rd, 2023.
The purpose of the event was to introduce students to alumni working in professions which theoretically might be available to contemporary students, when they complete their studies, graduate, and enter the work-force.
This letter was provided – before editing was complete – to students who were in attendance.
This article has been edited
and expanded since it was delivered to the two students who chose to speak to
me at that event.
The Letter
Dear Students:
I suppose that I am here to
tell you how to use your degree to help yourselves get a job. But the truth is
that I have never used my degree to help myself get a job.
In fact, I told my parents
repeatedly that I suspected that I would never use my degree for that
purpose, and that I had no intention of doing so.
While I changed my mind about my intentions at times – working for the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution (a lobbying organization founded by former Jill Stein presidential campaign manager Ben Manski), and by running for the U.S. House of Representatives four times – I am still struggling to use my degree in order to get a job.
It has been thirteen years since I graduated. I currently drive the cheapest car I can afford, live in the cheapest apartment I can afford, and still have to work 48 hours per week, at fifteen dollars an hour. I even struggled with drug addiction and homelessness after leaving college.
For
one thing, this is because the economy (by which I mean the job market) was
terrible when I enrolled at U.W. (in 2005). I spent years thinking, “I won’t
have a good job until these Baby Boomers start retiring, and some spaces for me
open up, and they’re too greedy to do that until decades from now.” And I was
right.
For another thing, I chose Political Science as my major, after at least five years of knowing that our government is so irredeemably corrupt, that a person like me would never belong as part of it. Granted, my home state (Illinois) is more corrupt than Wisconsin is. But neither state truly embraces freedom.
Additionally, I have difficulty getting a high-paying job – and using my degree to do so – because I ended up with a 2.3 G.P.A.. [Notes: 1) G.P.A. stands for "Grade Point Average". 2) A 2.3 G.P.A. is the equivalent of a D+.]
You might assume, from this fact, that my low grades were entirely my own fault. But the truth is that my grades had been steadily slipping since early-on in high school.
And the reason why my grades had been slipping, was because I was depressed. And the reason why I was depressed, was because of my father (whose controlling nature and failure to help me plan, caused me to miss an opportunity to graduate high school a full year early).
My father also sexually abused and assaulted me as a child. Not that I was aware of this fact; you see, I suffered from repressed memories of sexual abuse between the ages of 13 and 28 (2000 to 2015).
For most of you, this will (hopefully) be a difficult thing to relate to. But it needs to be brought up; even if only one person can be helped by it.
Who among you can honestly say that you are here at college solely due to your own choices? Now, maybe none of you were forced to go to college by your abusive parents in order to help cover-up and distract from the fact that they abused you as children (in fact, Jeffrey Epstein paid for the college tuition of several of his own victims, in order to assuage them, and to legitimize his own abuses). And I hope that none of you were.
But who among you can say, additionally, that you are not here at college simply because you were expected to do so? That you were told, and expected, to go to some college, because your high school had high rates of students who went on to college, and because not going to college would make you “the odd man out”?
Is
that really a good-enough reason to go to college? Does that reflect the kind
of independent thinking that this university thinks can be taught? You should
at least understand what you’re getting yourself into, and you should consent
to it, right?
The
fact is, I was never asked, even once – during my entire four years at
U.W.-Madison – whether I was here of my own volition. Not in freshman
orientation, not by my guidance counselors (who were more focused on helping me
navigate the frustratingly slow course registration programs, which would often
require a commitment of days and days waiting to register for a simple set of
four or five classes).
If
you are not here of your own volition, then it logically follows that you are
here as a hostage (most likely, of your parents).
In
my opinion, it seems that this happened because U.W.-Madison does not value
consent; or if it does, then it is only for sexual purposes, and not for
economic, social, political, nor contractual purposes.
You
see, when I first enrolled at U.W.-Madison, it was 2005. This was a full six
years before almost anybody had ever read headlines indicating that
Jeffrey Epstein was friends with Prince Andrew (which was only in British
tabloids at the time), six years before it became acceptable to question
whether governments could be complicit in child trafficking, and fourteen years
before Epstein was finally caught (and the full corruption of the system began
to be revealed).
In
2011 – while in a haze, having forgotten the abuse I suffered at the hands of
my father, due to being repeatedly re-traumatized, and forced to depend on my
abuser for survival – I knew, somewhere deep within myself, that there were
people associated with the government (even people not directly employed by it,
such as my attorney father, whose clients include people accused of rape) who
abused children. Therefore, I was nearly afraid to discuss the possibility that
people who seek political power often do so because they want to abuse
children.
One
major fact demonstrating that U.W.-Madison does not value consent, is that it
preys upon impressionable young 18-year-olds, who are either making decisions
using their parents’ money, or else are dependent and nearly helpless due to
having to depend on the university and its career advice while working their
way through college at low wages.
Another
fact – although I was scarcely aware of it at the time - is that U.W.’s
Sociology Department employed a professor named John DeLaMater. This man, who
has since passed away, after my time here, served as the instructor of the
university’s Human Sexuality courses in sociology.
Once,
while offering interested students an extra-credit opportunity, Professor
DeLaMater held up a prize to students who won a contest related to researching
human sexuality. That prize was a red T-shirt that read, “Teach your children
about sex, or I will”.
We
snickered when we saw that shirt, and heard what it said on it. But I only understood the problematic nature of
this prize, and this statement, years later, when I put some things together.
You see, another optional assignment that we were afforded in that course, was
to view the film Kinsey, starring Kevin Kline. That film depicts sex
researcher Alfred Kinsey interviewing a man who had confessed to raping
children and animals.
Since
leaving college, I have discovered several disturbing things about Kinsey.
First, that he thought it was normal and healthy and beneficial for children to
engage in sexual activity. Second, that his inordinate focus on sex criminals,
in his research, has been described as unethical, and skewed the results of his
research in favor of the perverted and the criminal. Third, that he has been
accused by his biographers of attempting to solicit a former Nazi for
photographic evidence of sex crimes against children. Fourth, that a statue
of Mr. Kinsey has been erected in his home state of Indiana, at its university.
The
University of Wisconsin is not telling you this, however; because they want
your money. According to financialaid.wisc.edu, the cost of a four-year degree,
for in-state students, is currently about $45,000 for tuition for in-state
students, plus $54,000 for meals and housing; amounting to a whopping $99,000.
And for out-of-state students, this figure rises to a total of $214,000.
The
university is teaching students to choose a major, and then to become graduate
students and then professors of that major, in order to set up what basically
amounts to an Amway-style, “divide-and-conquer”-oriented Ponzi scheme,
to teach people to teach how to teach useless subjects which students could not
possibly help the world, or themselves, by learning. The objective of this is
to burden students with more and more student debt (through F.A.F.S.A.), and
trick students into thinking that – if they vote for the right control-freak
for president – he will forgive all the student debt. But this, too, is a scam;
as Joe Biden’s debt forgiveness plan only amounts to a total debt forgiveness
for students who attended college at particular times, had less than a certain
amount of debt, and have no criminal records whatsoever. Another objective of
this cycle is to grow the government, and its cost, until the public sector
eats-up the entire economy, eventually swallowing the private sector whole,
until there are no unlicensed or lightly-regulated businesses left in this
country.
Speaking
of the problem of high expenses of attending college: One of the things that we
were sold in 2005, as part of our required purchases in order to attend
classes, was an expensive digital surveying device, which allowed us to
remotely submit answers to questions asked in class. Strangely, I don’t
remember any class, aside from Human Sexuality, in which I used this expensive
device. And one of the things I was asked – at age 18 or 19 – was how often I
was engaging in sexual activity. I was asked this, without any hint of caution
as to how or why it may be unethical for professors to ask such questions.
I
repeat: this university does not care about your consent, in economic, social,
political, or contractual contexts. It only wants you to consent to sex
enthusiastically, so it can normalize the fraternity and sorority systems (and
the sometimes sexual hazing which they practice), and so that they can take
thousands upon thousands of dollars of your (or your parents’) hard-earned
money.
What is the point of spending between $100,000 and $214,000 on a Big Ten University education, when the internet exists; that is, when most books are already in PDF form, which you can download for free online? Why would they need to take so much of your money, when they can simply teach you how to use a library, a card catalog, and the internet? I don’t know what things are like now, but far too little emphasis was placed on these skills when I was attending.
When I told a friend that I was about to attend this SuccessWorks event today, he told me that I was supposed to use my degree - and the fact that I had chosen a Legal Studies or Political Science major – to get an internship with a local politician. I was supposed to volunteer my time; which, for students who were strapped for cash, simply amounted to unpaid labor, free for those politicians, which is not much different from pressuring a person into involuntary servitude.
But then, of course, these opportunities supposedly offered us “exposure”. But the university never told us this, and they certainly never told us that you can die of exposure.
This university wants you to be utterly reliant on its guidance counselors (whom, in my time here, were rarely available) for career advice.
But alas, here you are at college. But have you ever stopped to ask yourself “What is the purpose of education”? I bet you haven’t.
If you must know, the purpose of higher education is supposed to be to equip students with the skills and knowledge necessary to get high-paying jobs, so they can compete in a modern, interconnected, global economy.
The problem is, however; we never stop to ask ourselves, “Why is competition necessary?” Couldn’t we be cooperating instead? Competition is only justifiable in lifeboat scenarios involving scarcity, but even then, competition is only tolerable; it is still not preferable, nor equitable.
Additionally: “Why aren’t they teaching us to help other students learn the material?” Just as fifth-grade students are not expected to be able to teach everything they learned last year to the fourth-grade students, you will not be expected to teach younger students unless and until you become a graduate student. But why should things be that way?
Nevermind the issue of “What do you do if you can’t find a politician to volunteer for, who shares your values and morality”, and what to do if you are disillusioned by that politician’s lack of scruples, or by their commitment to towing the party line to the detriment of the freedom and equality of the people. Nevermind the issue of which politician to volunteer for, if you are a libertarian, a progressive, or a communist.
As a matter of fact, during my time, a teacher’s assistant told us, point-blank, that “communism doesn’t work”. He said this without supplying evidence, without disclosing that there are literally dozens of formulations of communism which have never been tried, and without entertaining the possibility that the actions of the U.S. military are among the chief reasons why regimes that attempt communism are forced into collapse.
Nevermind the issue of why your professors won’t tell you that what’s “necessary and proper” (see McCulloch v. Marlyand) for the government to do, is largely a matter of opinion, until it occurs to you that you need to ask them that question, ten or fifteen years after graduating.
Put all that to the side.
Instead of “How am I going to use my degree to get a job”, you should be saying to yourself “I don’t even know what I don’t know”, and asking “What do I need to find out about, that I need to find out about?"
Do you really think that your professors are going to tell you that there were fourteen people who held the post of “president” before George Washington and before the Constitution was signed?
Do you really think your professors are going to tell you that there are two asteroid belts in our solar system instead of one? Or that the debate about how many planets we have, is not between eight vs. nine (because of Pluto), but rather, eight vs. thirteen (because other dwarf planet exist)? Of course not. Why would they offer you free information up-front, when they could, instead, simply take your money, and teach you nothing?
Most people enter politics for one reason: because they want power. And sadly, it seems that many people are entering education for the same reason.
Have you realized yet that the state wields legitimate violence, and, in so doing, legitimizes violence (the use of which is always unethical)?
Have you realized yet that a government is nothing more than a criminal gang – a mafia – which has legalized the use of violence when it is exercised by itself, but which criminalizes the use of defensive force when it is used by the people without begging and paying their government for the right to do so beforehand?
Have you realized yet that the public employees who police our street are only obligated to protect and serve people who have private property and private contracts with said police (due to the decision in Warren v. District of Columbia, 1981), while so-called private security guards (which happens to be my profession) are, bizarrely, trained to believe that their purpose is to protect individual members of the public, instead of the private properties which they patrol?
The world is upside-down. That is why you need people like me, asking you the difficult questions; to shake things up, to get the world right-side up again.
If you care about getting health care to people who need it, then don’t study political science or try to learn how to write legislation; go to medical school and become a doctor.
If you are more interested in how to distribute resources to people who sorely need them, then you should be an economist, not a political scientist.
If you care about expanding the private sector, then don’t get into political science in order to figure out ways to get the government support the private sector. That defeats the purpose, and is antithetical to free-market ideals. Instead, go to business school, or study economics.
If you are more interested in current events than politics, then you should be a journalist, not a political scientist.
If you care about other peoples in the world, then don’t study political science. Study languages or linguistics or communication.
If you are worried about the lack of opportunities which young Americans face (for example, in comparison to people in Germany and China) in acquiring marketable technical skills (rather than simply writing articles that nobody will ever read), then don’t advocate for more student loans, and access to tech courses, through legislation; you should, instead, simply drop out of this college and go to a technical school.
I never did go to a technical school, and I regret it all the time, because I don’t have any marketable skills. I would have liked to go to school for music production, woodworking, or electrical engineering, but my rapist father said I could only do so after graduating. I did graduate, but he stopped supporting me after that, so I never went back to school. I started educating myself, which was always – and always will be – an option available to you.
Now, this is all very different from saying that you should drop out of college because young people who are pressured into performing child labor have an edge at getting and staying employed, compared to people who go to college and choose useless majors.
Not that that isn't true.
But the result is the same, because your professors are not going to tell you that there are plenty of businesses that post job offers of $12 or $15 an hour, while expecting people to have Masters’ Degrees (which theoretically entitle them to teach college).
The point that I’m driving at, here, is that - if you stay in college - then you are probably going to get scammed. Do you really want to dedicate four years of your life regurgitating what is said by people who last had to look for a job forty years ago? Do you really value grades and “money” (whatever that is; really, it is Mammon) more than your own integrity? To paraphrase Mark Twain, “Never let your schooling interfere with your education”.
And why do we need jobs anyway, or money? It’s not like if you run out of money, or stop using money, you die, anyway. Look up a man named Daniel Suelo; he lives without using money. We are being indoctrinated into thinking that man will die if he does not use money, and it is simply not true.
We are led to assume that it is necessary to pull as much legal tender out of the economy as possible, because there is scarcity. But is there really? We are being led to assume that scarcity, limitedness, fixedness, and finitude are all the same thing, but they aren’t.
Water falls from the sky for free, and government sometimes makes it illegal for us to collect it. We are told “nothing is free”, yet the air we breathe is free.
Most of the things that cost money, only cost money because they legally have to cost money. We will not die without money; we will die without resources.
We are told that we need money to buy food; yet 1/3 of all the food in the world is thrown away. Does this sound like scarcity (a situation in which we have less than we need) to you?
So if we don’t have scarcity, then we have abundance. Resources which are abundant, rather than scarce, do not need to be distributed. Not through government, nor through competition, nor even through economic science, nor even economizing itself. Such resources are simply not necessary to distribute; people should just be able to come and collect them, because there are enough to go around. So why do we need politics and government, and economics, to distribute resources which are abundant and therefore don’t need to be distributed in the first place? Nobody at this university is asking this question or thinking this way.
And a university which fails to impel you to ask important questions like these, is only doing one thing: It is committing widespread education fraud, whether passively or actively and intentionally.
And if you come out of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, with bad grades, finding difficulty getting a job, then it is not necessarily solely your fault. It is the fault of your professors, who indoctrinated you with propaganda, and led you to assume things that are simply not true; contributing to your forced dependence upon whomever tells you lies the most confidently.
Get out while you still can. RUN. And never look back.
Get a low-stress job. Start reading whatever you want in your spare time. Learn how to do something productive like building a table, for your own sake.
Invest in yourself, and in your own ethics and integrity; not in this university. I beg of you. You don’t want to be like me; sad and ignored, and begging for help and attention that I know I will never receive.
Do you want to be a real person, or do you want to be a piece of paper? Do you want to be so smart that people can’t understand you? Do you want to be so smart, that you’ll end up wishing you weren’t so smart that you can’t relate to ordinary people? Do you want to view everything through the lens of politics, such that you can’t relate to any problem in the world except through how people and resources can be controlled? Do you want to fail to become the well-rounded person that this university falsely promises that you will be, when you get enough “breadth and depth” in various topics, through your coursework? Do you want to be – as Ronald Reagan said about Democrats – so smart that the things you think you know, just aren’t so?
If the answer to all of these is “yes”, then you do belong here, but you also probably need therapy.
Speaking of which, the school psychologist (if he or she exists) should probably try harder to make him- or herself better-known. During my first month studying here, a young woman jumped off a parking garage and killed herself; possibly because she was homesick, was pressured to attend college, or both. Perhaps she had been sexually assaulted; I don’t know. Either way, psychologists and grief counselors need to make themselves more available – or available at all – to help counsel students after such sad events.
Additional complaints that I have about this university are that: 1) it didn’t teach me time-management skills, and I still have a problem leaving everything – including this letter – to the last minute; 2) I had nightmares about missing classes and tests for years after graduating; 3) nobody here ever told me that, if I wanted to get into Harvard or Yale law schools, it would help if I knew Latin, Greek, or Hebrew; and 4) this university has failed to produce any politician capable of defeating Joe Biden (who molested a child live on C-SPAN2 on January 6th, 2015) for president.
Hopefully that will be enough to make my point: these people do not give a fuck about you, nor the facts, nor your feelings. They want your money.
Your intellectual freedom begins today. Congratulations.
I have so much more to say, but so little space; and it would be unfair of me to pressure you to read any more of the things I would like to say, because they are things that I may have wrongly been led to assume. As Bruce Lee once said, "A good teacher protects his pupils from his own influence."
As I said, independent thinking cannot be taught, it is certainly not taught here, and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to scam you.
Please contact me, Joseph W. Kopsick; not if you would like to learn more, but if you would like to challenge yourself to think harder, and think more independently.
- Joseph W. Kopsick,
University of Wisconsin – Madison,
Graduating Class of 2009
- Private Security
Officer with Howe, Security, Inc.
- Highest wages I have ever earned:
$15 per hour, working
legally and taxably;
$20 per hour working a “side
hustle” doing personal home organizing
- Only political job I
have ever worked:
$9 an hour, walking
door to door asking hard-working people to hand me their money,
for the Liberty Tree
Foundation for the Democratic Revolution (headed by Ben Manski),
in Madison, Wisconsin,
for one month
- Based in Waukegan, Illinois
- E-Mail Address: jwkopsick@gmail.com
- Phone Number: 618-751-3229
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