Politics, Tribalism, Religion – the Usual Light Relief
Not that I mean to make things even more pompous and portentous around here than they already are, but I just read an article about Evangelical Christians in America causing family schisms by switching their vote to the Democrats and found myself bubbling away with inane chatter once more. Sorry.
Articles like this show up human rationalism and thought for the sham that it is, if you ask me. We humans are so proud of our brains, of the power of thought, analysis and all this other shit, but ultimately even on subjects as important as political decision-making we are basically tribal.
I have never entirely understood how Evangelical Christians can almost invariably end up as Republicans, apart from the unavoidable conclusion that for a great many of them terms like ‘the love of Jesus Christ’ seems to rather oddly translate as ‘vicious, petty, small-minded bigotry’. I have my doubts as to whether that was quite what a bearded Jewish hippy would have had in mind, to be honest.
That Biblical teaching translates so directly into the policies of Conservatism, the right wing and free market fundamentalism strikes me as far from obvious. I have always tended to assume, despite my rather venomous antipathy towards devout belief, that most devoutly religious people actually do think that the teachings of their religion centre around love and kindness, compassion and generosity. Don’t they? I mean seriously? Otherwise, why not just fucking throw the whole fucking lot in the bin right now?
When you look at it that way, love and kindness, compassion and generosity are palpably absent from most of the political teachings of the politicians most such people tend to choose as their leaders. Quite how the parents in that particular article came to ask their children ‘how can you vote for abortion?’, without ever asking themselves how they can vote for a party whose attitude to its own poor seems to be to cut them entirely adrift and fuck ‘em if they can’t survive, indicates a childlike, bovine credulity that I find baffling. How exactly does ‘protecting the family’ involve attacking other people’s families? Do you honestly think that Jesus really would persecute, terrify and ridicule homosexuals? Do you really take it as a given that Jesus would hate basic socialised medicine, well-funded state schools and some form of protection for the unemployed and unemployable? I am not saying a religious person should automatically take a left-wing line these things either, but I am not convinced that trying to support the weak and the poor is exactly an anti-Christian sentiment.
This shows up on the other side as well. Most left-leaning types slaughter the Bush administration for its cheerful disregard for the US Constitution and in particular the checks and balances imposed on government therein. Those same lefties also tend also to lionise Bill Clinton, particularly after the utter debacle of the Bush years, but Clinton was just as aggressive in undermining government oversight as Bush is. He was, at heart, an authoritarian. He may have been an authoritarian whose policies we preferred and whose bungling was generally restricted to his administering of the Presidential Saucisson d’Amour, but that doesn’t excuse it in the slightest. Or at least it shouldn’t.
My mother became positively tearful with agitation when I said that I could never, ever bring myself to vote for Tony Blair, I guess because her politics are still quite firmly rooted in the partisan wars between Labour and Tory that she grew up with. I had to point out to her that voting for Blair would involve voting for so many things she didn’t believe in that it would be crazy to do so, but I doubt I entirely persuaded her.
Basically, all the article above exposes is that we vote tribally. What we believe depends almost entirely on who is telling us, irrespective of what they are actually saying, and we will not listen to arguments from ‘the other side’ even if they make sense. We all do it and it can lead to egregious mistakes.
Not one of us, I would imagine, examines our political decisions on their own merits, and free from the knee-jerk instinct to support our sort. We all tend to see only the evidence that supports our own theories and this only gets worse as we get older and increasingly surround ourselves with people with whom we agree on most matters. What does that mean? Well it means that we aren’t using our brains, doesn’t it. It’s a more gut reaction than that – it’s basically the same instinct that leads to street gangs. Human beings, in other words, are fucking idiots, despite what our species’ colossal vanity might tell us.
We really should make an effort to try and have these inner dialogues more directly between our own consciences and the actual facts at hand, rather than seeing it through the lens of these sorts of silly, falsely dichotomised tribal shouting matches.
Billy Bragg – Ideology




