Big Man Politics

[elfs]

Evolutionary psychology, despite getting its hand seriously burned in its overreaching attempt to explain too much of what human beings do and are, has an interesting series of just-so stories, some of which sound plausible enough to bear repeating.

One of those stories is called Big Man Politics. Robert Wright covered this theory extensively in his underappreciated book, The Moral Animal. It's the most primitive form of politics we have: our tribe is centered around a Big Man, the silverback, who we worship and admire. Because the tribal world is brutal and nasty and lives are short, we don't go looking for alternatives: to do so would be admitting that we don't want to be part of the Big Man's tribe, no matter how bad living under him is, because to do so would bring down the wrath of his loyalists.

Eventually, goes the popular story, the Big Man evolved in two directions: upward, into more distant forms of godhood, and downward, distributed among a bureacracy as the interaction of economics, agricultural traditions, and population growth led to civilization (in its most literal term; the root term for civilization is "civis," or city, and the best definition for civilization I've ever heard was "a framework for living among people whose names you do not know." See Monkeysphere).

I was reminded of Big Man theory twice today. John Hindraker, the owner/operator of the far-right-wing blog Powerline, once wrote that George Bush was "a great communicator," and that listening to him speak was "an absolutely riveting experience" and "the most inspiring forty minutes I've experienced in politics," called Barack Obama "the most gaffe-ridden politician in recent memory."

Radley Balko calls this "out of the Rovian playbook," but I think it's less than that. Hindraker is not a man of deep intellectual capacity and is swayed by power politics (I suspect the "powerline" is a leash attached to his cockring), and this is just raw big man power politics at its finest. His tribe is in the lead, so he's happy, and he has to do what he can to denigrate the other tribe.

Reports are now filtering in on the way the Clintonites are planning on destroying the Democratic party, and they're playing Big Man politics to the hilt. This woman will vote for McCain, as will this woman, if Hillary doesn't get the nomination. And I don't think it's out of spite. I think it's out of a deep-seated, desperately fed belief that only Hillary can beat McCain. And since Hillary isn't going to be allowed to beat McCain, they want to be able to say: I belong to the tribe in power. That's it. Even if the tribe in power is (according to Kos) "an exclusive club of racist, union-busting, woman-suppressing, bedroom-peering, rights-scoffing, warmongering, torture-backing, buccaneering, global warming-denying, privatizing, public land-grabbing, Supreme Court stuffing, empire-building, Constitution-shredding raptors" rather than the man who's policy objectives are almost exactly like Hillary's.

It's the voting for a "woman-supressing party" part that surprises the Hell out of me; it must be a very deep instinct to side with the perceived "powers that be" that overrides one's own self-interest so vociferously.

Comments

[solarbird]

It's been my opinion for some time that the entire "wasted vote" theory of not voting for the candidate you actually prefer if that candidate is perceived of having little chance of winning is a direct artifact of this sort of thinking. Voting for who you think will win rather than whose policies you actually prefer is a clearly visible phenomenon to me, and has been for some time. I think a vigourous education campaign against that sort of thing - in the form (or guise) of civics classes would help; third parties haven't always been this damn near impossible to get off the ground, even in this screwed-up system, and that was in eras of less communication and organisational capability, not more.

[(Anonymous)]

Noone has the right to criticise anyone for "gaffs" after praising Bush. How about the time he referred to people from Pakistan as Pakkies in a speech, or in greeting to the public while visiting Australia gave them the old V sign (and not the one for peace). Bush is the most monumental idiot when it comes to ballsing up whenever possible.

[slutdiary.livejournal.com]

You will always have blinders-on, one-issue, voters. Given that, there are some folks out there who apparently feel that Hillary is the only woman capable of election to the Presidency. Therefore, if she can't have it they'll break the gameboard for everyone else.

I started off willing to support whoever the Democratic candidate turned out to be, but it's been quite some months now that I decided - separately - that I [1] like Obama and [2] dislike Hillary. She looks to be a very sore loser.

The idea is to get the war criminals out of the White House.

[erisiansaint]

There are rumors floating about that if she doesn't win the nomination, she's going to run as an independent, which pretty much screws Democrats and Nader-izes her.

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not, the same thing is being said about McCain vis-a-vis Bob Barr's run for the presidency on the Libertarian ticket.

It's even in this week's issue of The Economist.

Oh, and Nader is running again this year.

[erisiansaint]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Make Nader quit it! Ahem. Well, maybe Clinton and Barr will cancel each other out.