We are mammals. Hierarchy, the pecking order from top-dog to runt, is something that's in our nature. We innately judge people by first impression - evolution has taught us to do that. Predator or prey?
Yet we are civilised human beings too - by 'civilised', I mean we have evolved biologically and behaviourally to live in ever-closer proximity to each other in ever-larger towns and cities. The top-dog concept that 'might is right' does not make for a pleasant life or a sustainable community. Evolutionarily, 'might-is-right' is being displaced by 'win-win'. 'Might-is-right' as a model still survives in Russia and in many parts of Africa; sadly now after decades of retreat, it seems to be making a comeback in the West.
With alpha-male status, once you could have got away with anything. The Big Man has been pulled down time and time again, usually by force of law - but "when justice is gone, there's always force". Why has someone like Trump, whose baggage of misdemeanour would have crushed any political carrier, been allowed to become - and remain - President?
Social conventions, politeness, manners, have evolved over millennia to oil the human-human interface. We try not to hurt each others' feelings - it makes sense not to do so, as life in a city of ill-mannered, crude, brutal people is sub-optimal and unsustainable. In general - with many reverses in our human story - we have been evolving in this direction.
So why Boris Johnson? Why Trump?
Like Trump, Boris Johnson can lie, cheat, bullshit, bluff and charm his way to the top job in politics, unrestrained by any usual behavioural norms, the breaking of which usually put an end to any chance of advancement. Dark forces (the Kremlin) are trying their damnedest to destabilise the West and supporting any narcissist bully into the top job is a good way of going about this. And the anti-liberal trick of getting people to vote for someone who hates the same people as them works too. Something that the social media is all to good at amplifying.
People who know Johnson well are scathing of him, of his behaviour and motivation in a way that I cannot recall happening to any would-be prime minister in waiting. And these are mainly people of Johnson's political persuasion and background, people like Max Hastings, Sonia Purnell or Matthew Parris who have seen the man behind the PR gloss and spin.
Why Johnson then?
The right wing seems to revel in the idea of 'natural order'. "The rich man in his castle/the poor man at his gate." And yet conservatism should revolve around conserving that which is good and worth conserving. How people with Christian values can remotely identify with serial cheats such as Johnson and Trump is difficult to grasp. How these men can be held up as exemplars of morality and protectors of decency and civilised values?
Johnson at least has enough self-awareness and emotional intelligence to want to avoid being seen as a pompous jackass; his polished jocularity and charm wins many over. Trump's IQ and emotional intelligence are both lower than Johnson's; unlike Johnson, Trump doesn't know when to stop. Trump had won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote, so he made out that Democrats had been engaged in voting fraud. He probably still believes that.
Johnson's main political strength is in his party's belief that only he can keep the spectre of a Corbyn government at bay. This belief is misplaced. Corbyn is so terminally useless that at a time when the Tory party is ripping itself to pieces, Labour under Corbyn can only manage fourth place in the latest opinion poll.
Political correctness is little more than basic politeness. We should not wish to offend other people either consciously or unconsciously or even subconsciously. Political correctness is little more than extended guidelines for avoiding words or phrases that can make those around us feel uncomfortable.
We are on a spiritual journey from barbarism to civilisation, from the bestial to the angelic; it seems that for the moment a step back has been taken. May this regression be short in duration and mild in symptoms.
This time three years ago:
Laughin' just to keep from cryin'
This time seven years ago:
Modlin Airport open day, just ahead of its inauguration
This time eight years ago:
Along Austro-Hungary's strategic railway
This time nine years ago:
Gone is the threat of Państwo Smoleńskie
This time ten years ago:
Get on your bike and RIDE!
This time 11 years ago:
Moles in my own garden
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2 comments:
We have been spared the excesses of politicians in our rather anodyne, humdrum and strait-laced politics of post-war Europe and America. Credit to political correctness perhaps? Profumo, Clinton, Nixon – naah! Compared to historical models, Trump and Johnson are positively puritanical. A certain Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (no less), French foreign affairs minister in the 18th century, slept with three generations of the Duchess of Dino apparently: grandmother, mother and daughter.
That aside, I surprise myself how often my current views of human motives are shaped by instincts developed in early childhood. (There is a book entitled All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, by Robert Fulghum, where the title, if - disappointingly for a non-American - not the content, captures this philosophy perfectly.) Anyway, we are dealing here with the primary actors (politicians, parties, regimes, etc) and their audiences (voters). It was always thus, I remember from my primary school, that if some dude couldn’t be stronger, smarter, more popular and so on, he made it his goal to make his rivals appear weaker, dumber or less attractive. In short, drag them down to his level. And the audience? The audience love a spectacle. Without a spectacle, life is a burden. If coaxed and steered in the right direction, people will indulge their atavistic yearnings for violence, annihilation (even self-destruction), absurdity (the more absurd something is the more they believe it), grotesque, caricature, irrationality, etc. They will also justify it to themselves. Mencken said that democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Others have done a much better job than me in coming to terms with the events of the last decade. Fintan O’Toole has x-rayed the architects of Brexit in Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain, while Timothy Snyder says much of what I suspect Muller’s report would have done had it not been interfered with in The Road To Unfreedom.
@Jacek - sound points. H.L. Mencken is always good for a quote.
I believe that low unemployment encourages voters take bigger risks at the ballot box, voting in a way to bring about a tipping point. "OK, so Brexit will close my factory? I'm bored of my job and everyone's looking for workers right now, so I'll find something else... Now, let's give those unelected bureaucrats in Brussels a good kicking"
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