TWO POLITICAL SPECIES

All my life, I have had to deal with those who have a conservative mind set. For years, I did not associate any particular personality with one or the other political party. However, over the last ten or twenty years, the association of a particular personality with the Republican Party became clear. Upon reflecting about this “political” partitioning of personalities, I could see the association was historical, which means it is deeper than simple learning; in more general terms, it means personalities are innate; thus, only the labels was current. I started reading about this and found that scientists have rejected the blank “slate concept”—the erroneous concept that everything we are, we learned—and came to believe there is a large innate component to behavior hence our behavior. Once said, it is obvious that it is true; dog act like dogs, cats act like cats, people act like people because it is in their genes.

Against this background, we find many well-conserved behavioral traits that cross species line. Some seem more fundamental than others are, for example, gregariousness, xenophobia, hierarchy dominance, and greed or complex combinations of these things. Tribalism or the modern version of it, which is nationalism, is a common example. One example of behavioral irrationality is that people are willing to follow a leader to their own death. For a well known example, marines are willing to “charge up the hill and die” following an officer, someone they believe is their leader, which trashes the concept of self-preservation as the strongest instinct and replaces it with species preservation.

I have concluded, rightly or wrongly, that even when people are fully aware of the circumstances surrounding a situation and still have irrational ideas or act illogically, it relates to innate traits. Scientists tell us from study of twins, etc that genetics contributes around 30% to our political beliefs; the rest they attribute to leaning and environment. Personally, I think the 30% figure is a great understatement. Recently, in the face of the ISIS threat in the Middle East, I have been reading poll results concerning the question about which political party is best to lead the nation in self-defense. Logically, people should make this judgment by effectiveness at governance of the political party involved. The result, when pollsters ask people who are best to lead the nation in domestic affairs, is surprising; in fact, the results are shocking. The polls indicate that people’s approval of congress is about 7%; a figure ten points below things obviously irrelevant to politics such as the popularity of bed bugs or fleas. Clearly, the poll results indicate more than simple approval but indicate an extreme negative feeling toward congress.

People know Republicans control the most powerful House of Representatives. They also know that this body has done nothing positive to contribute to governance of this country. In fact, Republicans are preventing the government from governing; the President stands alone. In addition, they have openly avowed to destroy Obama’s presidency. I have not seen a poll asking the questions of the same person who they believe controls  congress and matching that answer with their rating of what congress is doing; however, the results of the different polls would suggest that people both collectively hate congress for doing nothing and collective approve of what they are doing. This is illogical. Therefore, how can anyone interpret the results such as these; collectively, people clearly know Republicans control congress and have a negative reaction to congress but feel Republicans are better able to govern the country. Where is the rationality in that? It makes no sense. It is the same as saying Republicans want social security, they want Medicare, and they want government programs but do not want government. It makes no sense.

However, there is a powerful clue to what is going on. After the 2008 elections and the people clearly elected Obama President, the right wing radicals immediately filled the literature with seemingly groundless expression of hate for Obama. He was not in office yet and the Republican leadership in Congress was saying they wanted to prevent him from having a second term because he is such a bad leader. Over the past six years or so, they have nurtured that hate and honed their means of attack but have failed to define why they have such intense hate for the man. I read right wing literature extensively and find only one reason why they hate Obama; he is a Democrat. They espouse a deeply felt sense of hate but never articulate even one reason they have such hate. I think they cannot bring themselves to say the truth even to themselves; there is no reason to hate him. I believe their hate is innate; it is in their genes. What is most shocking is that collectively, all conservatives seem to have a same feeling and respond to these poll questions accordingly—irrationally. There has to be a reason they respond the way they do.  

What seems to have happened, or is happening, is we human beings are dividing ourselves up into two groups: conservative and liberals. We have reached a level of social organization in America where we are almost as two species. We are innately gregarious and want to be with our own species, our own “moral group”, part of which is to fear and protect ourselves from the other species: innately xenophobic. We want to follow the innate dictates of hierarchy dominance with leaders and followers but with the restriction that both our followers and leader have to be from our own political party—or should I say from our own “species”. I am sure no reputable biologist would ever recognize us as being two species however saying so makes the point.  

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