How do I build myself a proper political education? - Polidicks

You should probably be educated before you take stands on issues you don't fully understand

One of these things is not like the other.

beware of 5g ... the facts are out there ...

Ideally yes but in practice that can be a very good way to turn your interest in politics in to nothing but an act of intellectual masturbation. The extent to which this is true is entirely dependent on what you mean by "fully understand" Besides lets assume the worst case scenario and you end up working on some completely bullshit issue. If while working on that bullshit issue you end up developing skills to facilitate organization and protest you have still obtained something valuable. If you believe that you are incompetent in picking a goal 50% of the time you could still do more good then harm by selecting areas of politics where the risk of actively doing harm is minimal. Now lets look at one of the primary stated goals of OP "I need to more finely identify my own views and have at least a general understanding of the political world stage, if only to be able to do my basic duties as a citizen." If he wants to do his find his own views and get better at what he views as a general understanding of civic duties doing anything so long as its something rather then nothing is not a waste of time.

Stay away from any news / articles coming from tabloids, blogs, youtubers, Facebook, Reddit or 4chan, take everything with a pinch of salt when you have doubts and over all, investigate, investigate, investigate. Learning history is very important as is an excellent way to remember past acts and to call bullshit to some politicians ( especially important nowadays when we are repeating the same steps like in the 30's ). I'll leave economics to you since I'm a leftist and as such I believe in the state providing basic services to guarantee universal rights.

Depends on what kind of political education you want. As far as I'm concerned there are two types: the political views you hold and your ability to defend and reason them. In order to really get a solid grasp and develop your political opinions to strengthen the former, you're going to have to read. A good place to start I'd argue is history. Learning just how previous systems rose and fell, and how we got to the current state of our politics, gives a lot of insight on what does and doesn't work. If you're not into reading actual books like I am, Wikipedia is a great place to look through different ideologies and how they rose and fell, as well as the development of modern politics such as the Third Way as well as social democracy and modern conservatism. While it's not as good as reading sources about specific ideas and policies, it can be very helpful to actually just talk with someone about their political ideals and such. Just keep in mind not to be as understanding as possible without letting them directly influence you in unreasonable ways, which leads into my second part Learn to think critically. This is largely what the latter half of a political education is focused on. No matter what source you read from, everything will have its biases and skews. The most important thing anyone can do is learn to cut through bullshit and see what someone is actually saying. For a lot it's not easy to do, but whenever your talking to someone or reading a source or anything, you have to think about what this source or person is trying to get you to do, how credible they are in doing so, and whether it matters to you if there is any biases. A good way to exercise this once you obtain it is to debate with others and try to come up with what they're trying to argue about and how you knowing what you know can then disprove it, but until you have your foundations of your political ideals, it's hard to do so. All of this will take time. Politics are a skill, one that most will discount just as you demonstrated in your original post, but the truth is that not all politicians are inherently corrupt, it's just that people often don't want to take the time to learn politics and use that as a justification for why they won;t.

https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1493671492207.jpg https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1493671522224.jpg Perhaps.

Wow, I've seen crashed trains that derailed less hard than this particular couple of pictures.

I would start with this. It's the single greatest video lecture I've ever seen about politics. It's amazingly comprehensive and just incredible. Put it on .75 speed, open up word, and write notes or a summary. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-modern-political-tradition-hobbes-to-habermas.html These are also really good https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/thinking-about-capitalism.html https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/conservative-tradition.html https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-skeptic-s-guide-to-american-history.html When you're bored and only have a phone, find good subreddits and political or history forums to lurk. Or read Wikipedia. The first one is actually pretty good, except instead of Capital just read these. They're pamphlets and are much shorter and easier. What Is Marxism? by Emile Burns 1939 https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm Even the second has a few that can help. The Burke, Hayek, Hoppe, and Mencken ones are helpful since they're influential conservative and libertarian thinkers. Spengler and Schmitt are influential illiberal conservative and nationalist authors. More liberal authors that are helpful are Niebuhr, Popper, and Rawls. Random good books to pick from: The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker - one of the best evolutionary psychologists touching on constructivism and essentialism Bowling Alone or Coming Apart by Charles Murray - great books on culture and atomization The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism by Daniel Bell - same A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell - sort of like a people's history Liberalism, Fascism, or Social-Democracy by Greg Luebbert - my favorite book about class and politics in the interwar era. It's basically a must read. The Great Interwar Crisis by Robert Boyce - also good Common Wealth or The Price of Civilization by Jeffrey Sachs - great books by the one of prominent economists that advised Poland and Russia during their post-communist transitions Ukraine Crisis by Andrew Wilson - self-explanatory Burning Country by Robin Yassin-Kassar - about Syria The Invention of Russia by Arkady Ostrovsky - good book on modern Russia People and Empires, Worlds at War, or The Enlightenment by Anthony Pagden - the first one is a good history of European expansion, I haven't read the others unfortunately American Nations by Colin Woodard - all about America's regional identities Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell - great introduction to economics The Alchemy of Finance by George Soros - who knew he could write? Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky - the greatest book on the media I've read Who Are We? by Samuel Huntington - all about America's evolution in identity Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft by Alain de Benoist - reactionary critique of culture Free Trade Doesn’t Work by Ian Fletcher - self-explanatory Some of these I haven't finished or read yet, but I had a lot of help in finding them. Some of these graphical books are good introductions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introducing..._(book_series)#Graphic_Guides

Look into Ethics and Ethics theory, it kinda goes into other topics as well. It isn't really political but it helps you understand how people think or how organizations can think.

Pretty weird how people with better educations will in general be more left leaning lol

Goto a library with an extensive section on politics, and just spend a few hours reading. Always make sure to have reading materials from all areas of the political compass, as locking yourself in one area is bad for growth.

Think about the things you genuinely care about and find which political party is the least worse at also caring about those same issues. But don't take their word for it. Look at what they've actually done when they felt nobody could stop them and/or hold them accountable. Political parties may say they're for the little guy but carefully watch where the dollars go.

I'd recommend buying A Level (or equivalent) economics, history and philosophy textbooks and subscribing to the Economist. But I think it's fair to warn you that everything you find out there is going to be quite big on the status quo. A lot of political and economic injustice is just kind of written off as "just the way the world works" with no thought to how and why we'd go about changing that. You're going to encounter the same issue at university, it's not the 70s anymore. I met so many borderline Blairites in the Labour Society at my uni. And so many backroom conversations did not mirror the public personas of the leaders of the society, like a prominent exec claiming to support Corbyn because it was popular with members, but being straight up right wing to the point of voting Tory behind closed doors. tl;dr proceed with caution when it comes to education and uni societies, but don't let that stop you getting involved. That being said: books and all kinds of media. It doesn't have to be non-fiction to inform your political understanding. All sorts of literature, classic sci-fi and even modern TV shows explores political philosophy in terms that are more emotionally accessible than some dude explaning it. Truth be told it's a lot harder to find decent right wing fiction than left wing. But there's still a wealth of left, center and right non-ficiton out there if you want a balanced™ understanding of the situation. I'd argue non-fiction is more useful for the more indepth stuff, where a critical reading of non-fiction is better for the basics. In terms of actual non fiction, I'd honestly recommend just reading what you can find in libraries and online. Since it sounds like you're at uni, this will probably be quite easy if you've got time. You may have noticed I haven't recommended anything specific, and yeah bias is part of that. I could just recommend you a bunch of books and talking heads that inform my poltical opinions but tbh that wouldn't teach you, it'd just either make you lean or push you away from my direction. Which, after a fair bit of exploring, beginning as quite right wing, incidentally ended up being as left as the political compass allows. Things like working back office in a large company have actually informed my opinion too, I've seen how the hotdogs are made, and it ain't good. I could just plug Capitalism Realism and then ignore the angry replies. Further and further left has been the direction my lived experiences and read understandings have drifted me too, after all. I'm going to sound like my grandad here, but honestly: to find your own opinions you'll need a wide base of knowledge and lived experience. Take every experience you can get, and always be open to new things and ideas.