Why do “working class whites” continue to vote against their own best interests?

Posted on by Marc Jampole

It’s truly befuddling to me why the group labeled working class whites continue to prefer Republican candidates.

The results of the latest Associated Press-GfK survey says that this group favors Republicans 58% to 36% of Democrats, an incredible 22% margin.  The AP story announcing the survey results contrasts that poor showing with the last two elections, in which working class whites supported Republicans over Democrats by a margin of 11% and 9%.

Before we can go any further, we need to define white working class.  The survey and virtually all other researchers and pundits use this definition: “whites without four-year college degrees.”

Now this group currently represented 39% of all voters in the last presidential election (in which it was the only “racial group” to go for McCain). But a 2009 study by Roy Teixeira shows that over the past 20 years, the percentage of total voters who are white working class declined by 15%.  Teixeira also shows that all other “racial groups” are becoming more liberal, including middle class white.  Teixeira concludes that working class whites remain the only reliable group for Republicans.

Let’s keep in mind that attitudes might be slightly different today as a result of the mainstream media’s its incessant driving of the political dialogue rightward over the past year and its preoccupation with the Tea Party.  But Teixeira is talking about long-term trends, which may fluctuate from year to year but show a steady decline in the importance of the working class white voter and the continued movement of the rest of electorate leftward. 

The AP-GfK poll has not been posted at www.ap-gfkpoll.com yet, so I can’t delve into the details of the questions asked, the findings, the sample or the methodology.  The article did not mention the decline of the white working class population.  Nor did it cite the analysis by Sherry Linkon of the Center for Working-Class Studies, which suggests that the white working class voting pattern is more a function of geography than of race or education (57% of white workers in Massachusetts voted for Obama, but only 9% voted for him in Alabama). If the Republican lead in this group is regional, its impact on mid-term elections will be less important.

But despite the flaws in the AP story and the possible flaws in the initial survey, the results speak loud and clear.  On a national basis, working white class voters prefer Republicans so much today that for a Democratic candidate to win a national election, he or she would have to gain 59% of all other voters, a near impossible task, when you consider that 53% is typically called a landslide. 

The question remains, why? Economic and social theories and “laws” usually take it for granted that people always act in their best interests.  But how could it be in the best interests of people without college degrees, white or black, to vote Republican?  On average, people without four-year degrees earn less money than those with four-year degrees, regardless of their racial or ethnic background.  That means that they should be supporting policies that help those of modest means.

Let’s take a look at some of the positions that most Republicans have supported:

  • Many Republicans oppose the minimum wage and virtually all vote against any bill to raise the minimum wage.  And yet, when the minimum wage rises, so do all wages, a boon to the white working class.
  • Most Republicans are against labor unions.  What labor unions have tended to do historically is raise the wages and benefits of people without college diplomas, plus those with college degrees who make lower wages such as teachers and nurses.
  • Virtually all Republicans support lower taxes for higher incomes, which results in some combination of higher taxes for others and the creation of safe-haven investment opportunities for those wealthy enough to buy a lot of government bonds.  As a result of too low taxes and lots of government debt, those lower down on the economic ladder such as the white working class end up  paying more than their share because the rich are paying less than their share.  See my blogs of June 14  and 15 for more details.
  • Republicans are more apt to want to gut Social Security, and it was the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan that first started to roll the Social Security Trust Fund into the general budget and then claimed that the Trust Fund was near bankruptcy when all it needs to remain strong is get the money back that it lent the federal government.  Social Security has been one of the foundations of the retirement of most working class whites for years.

So what’s the attraction that the white working class has to Republican candidates?

It would be easy to evoke the pat answers of racism, resentment at losing wealth/power, social values, gun control or security, but I think it’s more complicated than any of these concepts and issues even as it involves most of them. 

Consider this analogy: No matter how much he hated the cook and how many times he heard that he’s already had his supper, the starving man will eat! The German playwright Berthold Brecht put it best when he said, “Erst kommt fressen, dann kommt Moralen,” which means, “first comes eating, then comes morals.”  The additional nuance in German is that Brecht says “fressen,” which is an animal eating, not “essen,” which is a human being eating. The meaning is clear, as is its application to voting: We vote with our stomachs, that is, we vote on economic issues. And yet, the white working class does not.

I want to do a little additional research and then explore with my readers more on this question: why do white working class voters vote against their own best economic interests?

After giving expanded coverage to Beck rally, media puts a same-sized rally of left-centrists on the back burner.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Many of you probably won’t know that on this past Saturday, labor unions, the NAACP and hundreds of other liberal-centrist and progressive groups rallied in Washington in support of liberal economic policies, President Obama and Democratic candidates in the November election.

The reason you may not have heard of this rally is that the news media didn’t cover it much.   Remember that when Glen Beck held his so-called “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington in August, more than 5,300 stories appeared on Google News.

But the news media showed much less in this past Saturday’s rally of liberals.  A search of Google News could only find about 930 stories about the rally.  And the stories that did appear seemed to be smaller and less prominent.  For example, the New York Times did not even put its story on the liberal rally on the first page of the national news section, but buried it at the bottom of the page deep in the paper.  The Times gave front page and front of the national section coverage to the Beck rally.

Now let’s consider the issue of attendance.  Most significantly, CBS News, which hired an independent consultant to estimate the Beck Rally at 87,000, made the decision ahead of time not to rehire the firm to do an estimate of the liberal rally.  Perhaps the CBS news executives were frustrated that much of the media preferred to ignore its honest and scientific estimate for the outrageous overestimates of Beck (500,000) and Republican Congressional Representative Michelle Bachman (2 million, but she may have been counting fingers and toes, and maybes ears, too!).  But I think not, seeing that CBS did not even file its own story about the liberal rally online, preferring to use the Associated Press’ version of events.

Most articles ignored attendance at the liberal rally, said it was around 100,000 or commented that it “appeared to be less” than the number at the Beck rally.  A few media published the organizers’ estimate of 175,000.  After looking at a few photos, my uneducated guess is that attendance at these two rallies was about the same.

With or without attendance numbers, the question remains: Why did the media give so much more coverage to Beck than it did to these 400 liberal, labor and progressive groups?  I’m thinking that it’s for the same reason that throughout the 2010 primary season, most media focused on Republican races, almost to the exclusion of the Democratic races.   I’m thinking it’s the same reason that this past week the national edition of the New York Times found room for four personality profiles of Republican candidates (Whitman, O’Donnell and Paladino twice) and none of Democratic candidates.

I’m thinking it’s because the mainstream news media wants the Republicans to win in November.

With one PR blunder, Meg Whitman may have wiped out $120 million in election spending.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Let’s say one subgroup who represented 18% of all voters all cast their ballot against one candidate, which in the United States would usually mean they cast their vote for the one other candidate.  That means that the candidate against whom that one subgroup voted would have to win about 61% of the rest of all voters to win the election.

Getting 61% of any non-ethnic group to vote one way is very tough to do, especially if the candidate is a Republican in blue-state California.  And that’s why yesterday Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for Governor, may have committed the very worst public relations blunder of the 2010 election season.

Earlier this week, a former housekeeper for Whitman, the billionaire founder CEO of E-Bay, said that Whitman knew for years that the housekeeper was an illegal alien, but kept her on illegally all the same.  Whitman has denied she ever knew the housekeeper was illegal.  The crux of the dispute comes down to a letter that the Social Security Administration sent to Whitman in 2003, which Whitman claims she never got.  The letter said that the housekeeper’s name did not match the Social Security number she had submitted to Whitman.

Here is the Associate Press version of Whitman’s explanation today of why she never got the letter:

When asked at a news conference whether the worker, Nicky Diaz Santillan, might have taken the letter intended for Whitman, she said “it’s very possible.” The housekeeper was in charge of going through the mail, she said.

“She might have been on the lookout for that letter,” Whitman said. “It would pain me to believe that that’s what she might have done but I have no other explanation.”

In other words, the billionaire white lady accused her Hispanic housekeeper of thievery!

How do you think Whitman’s comments will sit with Hispanic voters, who every day experience the prejudice of being stereotyped as dishonest, especially as hired help?  The stereotype of the dishonest Hispanic maid or hired hand is almost a standard caricature in TV and movies.

It was okay for Whitman to deny the allegation that she knew her housekeeper was illegal.  But to accuse the Hispanic maid of stealing the letter was a big step into deep doo-doo, or, if you prefer, a whale’s mouthful of foot.  I’m certain that most if not all Hispanic voters will get a shiver of disgust when they read or hear Whitman’s comments.  It reminded me of George Allen, 2008 Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Virginia calling someone at a rally a “macaca,” considered an odious racial slur in much of the world.

Luckily for Whitman, Hispanics constitute 37% of the population of California, but only 18% of its voters.

We know that a certain part of the population everywhere believes the stereotype or have other racist opinions about Hispanics.  But those people were never going to vote for Jerry Brown or any other Democratic candidate.  Hispanics, an economically and even socially diverse group of people, might have voted for a Republican.  Political candidates from both parties have actively courted the Hispanic vote in California for years.  But I don’t think they’ll vote for anyone who trades in an awful and untrue stereotype about them.

When asked the question, Whitman should have said, “I don’t know why I never received the letter, but I know I never did” and left it at that.

And to think, Meg-Bay has spent $120 million of her own money getting elected Governor so she could fight for lower taxes and other standard Republican positions.  Could it all be down the drain because she or her public relations advisors went into attack mode with no evidence?  She violated one of the most important rules of PR: don’t attack unless you have a clean kill.  With nothing but speculation on her side, Whitman’s verbal attack on her former maid did nothing but hurt her own cause.

O’Donnell, Paladino and other political candidates behaving badly.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

The news hit earlier today that Christine O’Donnell, queen of the small and shrinking anti-masturbation movement and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Delaware, lied about her academic career—yet again! 

A few months back, officials at Oxford University said that O’Donnell did not attend their university, as she had claimed.  Now Claremont Graduate University is disputing her claim to have attended there.

O’Donnell is far from the first politician to be caught in a bold-faced lie about past accomplishments.  Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has referred to his past service in Viet Nam so many times that he may actually think he served under fire in Viet Nam during our illegal war there.  But in fact, he did not.  He’s either a liar or delusional—and which is worse?

What’s wrong with the thinking process of those candidates who lie about their past educational, military or other accomplishments?  When you lie about what you’re going to do in office or what you believe in, it’s likely that you won’t get caught, at least until years after the election.  And it’s understandable why candidates lie about their sexual peccadilloes or predilections (but it’s too bad that includes being gay and shame on those closeted politicians like Larry Craig who bash gays or vote against gay rights).

But in our era of computerized records and long institutional memories, why would any politician lie about a resume fact?  It shows a lack of judgment.  The best lying politicians have the good judgment to know when they can’t lie.  I believe that as soon as a lie emerges on a resume that the political party should disassociate itself from the candidate and select someone else to run.  Period, no questions asked.

Judgment is also the issue in the Paladino email scandal.  It’s now well documented that Carl Paladino, the Republican candidate for Governor, has sent a large number of offensive sexist and racist emails to friends and acquaintances. 

As Bob Herbert pointedly put in his article about Paladino’s disgusting emails, Paladino himself admits it showed “poor judgment.”  Here are some examples Herbert lists of Paladino’s “poor judgment”:

“Example: A photo showing a group of black men trying to get out of the way of an airplane that is apparently moving across a field. The caption reads: “Run niggers, run.”

Example: A doctored photo of President and Mrs. Obama showing the president in a stereotypical pimp’s costume holding the hand of the first lady, who is dressed as a prostitute in a grotesquely revealing outfit.

Example: A video clip of a nude couple engaged in intercourse with the title: “Miss France [expletive].” Mr. Paladino characterized it as “a keeper.”

Example: An image showing a woman performing a sexual act on a horse.”

No one in the Republican Party has taken the obvious next step and realized that these repeated emails call into question if Paladino’s judgment is good enough to put so much responsibility into his hands.  I hope voters in New York ignore the differences between Paladino and his opponent Andrew Cuomo.  After all, the New York state legislature will put reigns on both Paladino’s ultra right-wing proposals such as putting poor people into prison work camps and on Andrew Cuomo’s progressive instincts. Instead, New Yorkers, ask yourself if you want as Governor someone who would send these racist and degrading images.

And Maryland voters should ask themselves if they really want someone who is stupid enough to lie on her resume voting for them on nuclear treaties, war resolutions, economic recovery programs and other issues of national importance.

Money for Halloween but not for ancient sewers: Is this the 21st century American apocalypse?

Posted on by Marc Jampole

The National Retail Federation told us yesterday that the average American plans to spend $66.28 on decorations, food and costumes for Halloween this year, up almost 18% from the $56.31 per person we spent last year.  I learned about it from the always interesting Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter, Teresa Lindeman.  

The same day, the news media also told us of the many mayors who have endured or face recalls from an angry citizenry.  The New York Times report on the trend begins with the truly sad news that the voters of Livingston, a town of 11,000 in central California, booted out the mayor because he pushed through an increase in the water rate, the first one in more than a decade, to fix Livingston’s aging water system. 

Water systems and sewers that municipalities constructed 50, 75 and 100 years ago are now breaking down and must be replaced all over the country.  Our roads and bridges are in dire need of repair.  Mass transit systems continue to pare lines as costs mount.  But all we hear is that we can’t raise taxes.  Most of our politicians are too craven to propose raising taxes, and many, especially Republicans, constantly rail against taxes.

How can we pay for repairing our infrastructure if we don’t raise enough revenues through taxes?  The last 30 years has seen a tremendous drop in the rate of taxes that all Americans pay, with those with the highest income and wealth enjoying the lion’s share of the extra money produced by these tax cuts.  The result: more deficits and fewer government services.  But everyone sure has a great time getting sick on candy and dressing as someone else on Halloween!

Let’s assume that the good people of Livingston (and anywhere else that has a sewer, water or other infrastructure building project on hold because there’s no money) would spend $33 on Halloween instead of $66—maybe made their own costume or decorations, or used last year’s, maybe give less candy, since the kids are going to a lot of houses.

Now let’s say people found a way to cut away $33 in unnecessary expenses every month.  In Livingston, it would probably be enough to fix the water line problems.  But it’ll really be more than $33 for many people, because that $66 per person on average includes people so poor that they don’t spend a penny on Halloween.  Those people, by the way, can usually get help paying their water bill.

The money that goes to taxes instead of Halloween will not leave the hands of American commerce, just be spent repairing infrastructure instead of manufacturing and selling candy, clothes, clothing accessories and paper goods. 

But will it happen?  If it doesn’t, I have this apocalyptic nightmare vision of the future of this country: A bunch of people shivering in outdoor toilets in the dead of winter or in long lines for hours stuffing their faces with candy while they wait for bottled water or to fill their pails at a community spigot about five miles down a road that’s half dirt and half asphalt fragments.

More tendencies and trends while fending off some propaganda bends of truth.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Another blog full of short takes, beginning with a political cartoon I saw a few weeks back that gratuitously communicated a “big lie” through conflation, which is when someone equates two things that aren’t comparable, like comparing Bush II’s national guard record to John Kerry’s Viet Nam combat experience.  

The cartoon, by Steve Breen, depicts the similar reactions to the news in 1945 announcing the European armistice and in 2010 announcing the end of the combat mission in Iraq.  Both hear the same news, in 1945 from the radio, in 2010 from the TV: “After thousands of troops lost their lives and billions of dollars spent, combat ops are over in….” For 1945, it ends with “…in Europe…” and in 2010 it ends with “…in Iraq…”  The pudgy middle aged guy listening to the radio in 1945 rejoices, while his 2010 alter ego sits with the expressionless expression of the shell-shocked.

Let’s forget that there is a certain duplicity about Obama “marking the end of combat” when 50,000 troops and another 80,000 mercenaries remain in a country involved in “non-combat” operations.

Let’s focus instead on the manipulative conflation of deaths between World War II and Iraq, saying both were in the “thousands.”  I can’t tell if Breen was in favor of or against the war in Iraq—you could read it both ways.  But either way, to compare the dead in these two wars shows a poor understanding of history.  The United States suffered about 416,800 military deaths in World War II, compared to 4,421 during the conflict in Iraq (or at least so far).  And remember that we currently have about 2.5 times the population than we had during World War II.  Whatever Breen was trying to say, he magnified the impact of the Iraq War on the population.  About the money, though, he did get it right on the money.  Paying for the unnecessary and ill-managed Iraq War is bleeding the country financially and will continue to do so for years. 

Now turning to one of my favorite subjects, Wal-Mart’s marketing campaigns: I’ve been following Wal-Mart’s recent series of lifestyle commercials, which follow years of the mass market retailer focusing TV ads exclusively on prices.  One thing that’s been hard to miss in these ads is the lack of men: be it celebrating Christmas or doing back-to-school shopping, men are nowhere to be seen in Wal-Mart’s portrayals of the life of families.

Now finally, Wal-Mart has put a man into a TV spot about how it helps families pursue their lifestyle.  No, he doesn’t shop, but he’s right there on the couch watching football with the kids while munching on all the goodies mom bought at Wal-Mart.  And true to the real world as Wal-Mart always is in these commercials, dad is carrying a big load around his middle.

FYI, the week before the start of the NFL season the airwaves were saturated with commercials for food products that are traditional game-time munch foods, like grilling sausages, chips, beer and both frozen and delivery pizza.

Finally, in case you had the idea that Parade was the only celebrity-obsessed general interest magazine, check out the latest issue of AARP, the slick bimonthly magazine published by the American Association of Retired People for those over 50, or contemplating being over 50 one day.  From the photo of actor Dennis Quaid on the cover to the very last page, AARP is obsessed with celebrity.  The issue does contain AARP’s usual tip-focused articles on personal finance, travel, mental and physical health and retirement living.  But as much as possible, it covers TV and movie personalities: Jane Pauley on finding hidden strengths; Quaid’s campaign to improve hospital safety; Lady Gaga, Pink and 6 other young celebrities who dye their hair gray.

The focus on cheap celebrity as opposed to the real accomplishments of politicians, writers, inventors, business people, scientists, teachers, researchers and explorers (yes, they still exist!) is always best seen in round-up columns in which a group of people are asked something or the same fact is revealed about each, e.g., where they all went to college.

In the case of AARP, it’s the regular feature on the very last page in which AARP tells us what prominent people turn 50, 60, 70 (and sometimes 80) this month.  For the most recent issue, AARP features seven people, as follows: turning 50 – Hugh Grant, Damon Wayans and Colin Firth; turning 60 – Fred Flintstone, Joan Lunden and Bill Murray; and turning 70 – Raquel Welch.

We have 5 actors, 1 news personality and a fictional cartoon character.  As the Latin used to say, “res ipso loquitor,” which means it’s a thing that speaks for itself.

Let’s tie up loose ends, examine new tendencies, look at some trends.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Instead of a long essay today, I want to provide some quick takes on recent news:

I’ll start by commending U-Mass professor Robert Pollin for his article on rising inequality in the United States since the mid-70’s in the most recent Nation magazine.

Pollin pulls statistics from Larry Bartels’ Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age to compare the income collectively earned by the top 20% of workers with that earned by the bottom 20%.  So for example, 60 years ago the top 20% earned just around three times what the bottom 20% collectively earned; today it’s more than four times.  What’s really interesting is that before the Carter administration, the ratio went up and down in a very narrow margin, but since Carter, it has gone straight up, except for the Clinton years in which the growth in income inequality temporarily stalled, but at a much higher level than during the 50’s and 60’s.  So it’s not just the parties, but the political temper of the last 40 years that has led the United States to become a nation of rich and poor, with a rapidly shrinking middle class.

Now to the Corn Refiners Association, my latest nominee for a “Ketchup” award, named after the glop that the Reagan administration wanted to declare a vegetable for the school lunch program.  At the end of the year, I am going to make a special “Ketchup” award to the most absurd bending of language of the prior year.   

The Corn Boys want to change the name “high fructose corn syrup” (HFCS) to “corn sugar.”  Cane, beets and corn all produce fast-digesting sugars, but cane/beet sugar—also known as table sugar—has managed to brand itself as being natural and therefore healthier than corn syrup.  Because consumers believe that HFCS is a health risk, food processors are abandoning it in favor of table sugar.  So the Corn Boys want to make their product seem as healthy as an easy-to-abuse processed food product.  Truly bizarre!

Finally, an anecdote that suggests to what extreme the mainstream news media has really oversold the Tea Party:  Someone I follow on Facebook described Tea Party anti-masturbation activist Christine O’Donnell as winning an election earlier this week.  In fact, O’Donnell was not elected to anything, merely nominated by the Republican Party for a U.S. Senate seat. 

But it’s no wonder my FBF got confused.  The mainstream media covered this last round of primary voting for 2010 just as they have been covering the elections all year—focus almost exclusively on the Republican races, while assuming that the country was going to experience massive memory loss of the Bush II economic debacle and throw out the Democrats as perpetrators of our economic woes.   The New York Times version of the Delaware primary voting did not even mention the well-known and popular Democratic candidate, New Castle County Executive Chris Coons, until well into the last quarter of the article.

The news media is counting the Democratic candidates out because it wants to keep moving them, and public discourse, to the right.  I am confident that many centrists, when faced with the choice between Democrats looking their way and the extreme right-wing Tea-partiers, will vote for the Democrat.

I also want to remind the readers that the only way to keep the temporary tax cuts for the middle class and poor that are set to run out after this year is for Congress to pass a bill.  If the Republicans block or try to block that bill because it doesn’t include extending the temporary tax cuts to the wealthy, it doesn’t matter how many times they shout “Class warfare” or “You’ll stunt growth.”  All most voters will hear is, “I won’t let you have your money” and they won’t like that message one bit.

At the end of the day, though, this fall election all comes down to who gets more of their solid voters to the polls.  The Democrats should be dedicating significant resources for vans and car pools to get urban seniors, college students and minorities to the polls in November.

Even when discussing families recently made homeless, the emphasis is on buying things as a way of life.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Michael Luo had a poignant article in this past Sunday’s New York Times about the 40,000 leap in the number of families with children in homeless shelters across the country since the current recession began.  The article has a lot of interesting information about a group that has seen their American Dream dissolve. 

But Luo couldn’t just give us the information.  He had to use the news that more families are losing their homes as a platform for reminding us that living the American Dream revolves completely around buying things in malls in suburbs.

Like many journalists writing about the impact of the recession on people, Luo begins his story with a case history.  Now he might have selected a family new to living in a homeless shelter who can’t get used to going to the library instead of buying books.  Or a family that takes two buses to take their kids to Little League practice.  Or a family of immigrants who are learning how to make old country specialties on a hot plate.

Here is the story that Luo selected to tell:

“For a few hours at the mall here this month, Nick Griffith, his wife, Lacey Lennon, and their two young children got to feel like a regular family again.

Never mind that they were just killing time away from the homeless shelter where they are staying, or that they had to take two city buses to get to the shopping center because they pawned one car earlier this year and had another repossessed, or that the debit card Ms. Lennon inserted into the A.T.M. was courtesy of the state’s welfare program.

They ate lunch at the food court, browsed for clothes and just strolled, blending in with everyone else out on a scorching hot summer day. ‘It’s exactly why we come here,’ Ms. Lennon said. ‘It reminds us of our old life.'”

Yes, their old life when recreation meant shopping for more stuff in a suburban mall. 

Luo had his choice of 15 families at the Rhode Island shelter at which he found the Griffith-Lennon family.  He also could have chosen to feature a family at another shelter. 

Or he might have tried to highlight another aspect of the Griffith-Lennon family life, maybe what they’re telling their two young children about what has happened to them. 

But Luo selected this particular family and this particular aspect of its life because he wanted to transfer the symbolic humiliation of losing one’s home onto the broad ideological imperative upon which the mass media thinks we should build our lives: the commercial transaction, that is, buying something, is the basis of all relationships, celebrations, manifestations of love, respect and all other emotional states, and every other emotional component of life.

War helps no one but the wealthy, and yet countries seem to find poor people willing to fight.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

War used to be a great way to make a living for poor males or younger sons with no other prospects.  But in today’s global, technology-driven society, war can help no one but the wealthy and their chosen governments, corporations and factotums.

Franz de Waal has an attractive theory that man has two simian ancestors:  chimpanzees who are warlike and will drink the blood of other chimps, and bonobos who are passive and friendly and practice free love. I am suspicious of theories that find the source of human activity in other animals, mainly because in my experience I have seen humans from time to time exhibit behavioral traits of virtually all other animals.  For example, John Eisenberg’s The Mammalian Radiations describes 10 or so mating patterns among mammals, all of which you can observe among human beings, although a few are pretty kinky. 

I am much more inclined to believe that our aggression came about as a result of reacting to our environment, which in the early history of humankind means responding to the presence of a major competitor in our ecosystem, the Neanderthals. Our reaction (about which I first read years ago in Steven Stanley’s The New Evolutionary Timetable): to make war upon our enemies.

Once mankind extirpated the Neanderthal, there was little logical reason to wage war for a long time.  When humans roamed in bands, hunting and gathering for food and everything else they needed to live, rival groups may have had reason to fight from time to time-over carrion, camping grounds or hunting preserves. The idea of attacking another tribe as a source of wealth probably occurred to more than one tribal leader. But throughout this so-called prehistoric period, the abundance of game probably made it less than good economic sense to pillage and rape as a way of life. 

Agriculture changed the war equation.  Farmers and animal husbanders could store food and live in easy-to-target permanent locations.  It was the golden age of war for those who waged it, and in some parts of the world, it lasted into the 20th century.  From the Cimmerian raiders to Genghis, the crusaders and the Nazis, armies could literally live off the land, commandeering locals for slave labor, rampaging fields and barns for food, raping women for sexual satisfaction.  Sometimes, nomadic raiders wandered a serendipitous path. Sometimes, raiders returned to the same location on a regular basis, like migratory animals.  This strategy often transformed into a policy of extortion of agricultural or trading communities, as the Comanche, Osage, Norse and Chinese warlords did, with the ransom or protection generally paid in seed, drink, pottery, precious metals or humans. 

Whatever the rampaging strategy, even if the leader and his circle culled the largest share, the distribution by definition had to be fairly equitable to keep the men fighting.  The general and his army were a literal band of brothers, held together by their common desire to earn their way through the world by looting. Before the industrial revolution, war was typically good for warriors.  And when it wasn’t good, as under the relentlessly restless Alexander of Macedonia, the soldiers rebelled or deserted.

As agricultural centers grew and trade developed between them, I imagine that the emerging urban civilizations across the globe began to consider war as a solution to a myriad of challenges.  Perhaps the population was expanding too fast for the food supply. As victors, the city could expropriate the wealth of defeated cities or destroy trade competitors.  Perhaps by waging war, the city could bring new regions into its sphere of influence.  Or, the city could defeat another city of substance which was threatening to attack it.

The problem facing cities wishing to go to war was finding soldiers to fight it. Almost from the beginning, war should have lost its appeal to anyone with the industry and knowledge to pursue agriculture or animal husbandry, that is, unless the urge to kill our own kind was as great as the urge to have a regular and plentiful source of sustenance. Beyond these basic instincts, the agricultural life seemed to hold all the advantages: the ability to sleep in beds instead of on the ground, with a roof over one’s head, even if it were nothing more than dried mud; a constant source for sexual release instead of infrequent orgies of rape.  And as agriculture led to the growth of cities, there were ever more attractive professions than looting the countryside: ceramics, engineering, cobbling, quarry work.  

Yet even if there have always been more farmers than warriors, the warriors end up in charge of things, always, and for good reason—they are willing to kill for their power. All they need is someone to do the killing for them. So slowly, the ruling elite began to propose reasons other than economic reward to convince ordinary citizens that they should go to war:

  • Religion
  • Patriotism
  • Defense against an imminent threat, e.g. Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

It is my belief that the great political partnerships between church and state we see in virtually all societies throughout history result from state and religious rulers making the same deal that Constantine made with one faction of early Christianity:  Support my war and I will support your religion. It is now fairly well accepted among scholars, for example, that the crusades were fought in part as a safety valve, i.e., to transfer Western Europe’s criminal and pillaging class from Christian lands to the land of the economic enemy.  God or the gods have been used to authenticate virtually all recorded wars, and often both sides have claimed god’s mantle, as in all of the current conflicts in the Middle East.

War has always been and continues to be part of the bag of tricks by which the wealthy get those less fortunate to support their concentrated power and wealth.  If we follow the flow of money and disregard religion, it’s easy to see who prospers in war:  the wealthy and those soldiers such as Sudanese and Croatian who choose to rape and pillage.  But for the average person in most countries —the person who would continue to teach school, develop software, repair shoes, clean streets, sell merchandise or build cars, even if a new regime took over—for this average person war only means dead family members and higher taxes.

If soldiers and citizens refused to serve, there could be no war.  And yet it continues, perhaps, again, because of a basic need in humans to kill other humans.  The best argument that there is such a basic genocidal urge is the very fact that in wealthy nations, the ruling elite can still find people willing to die, kill or both for the state.

Palin’s “despicable” illiteracy serves as the “inception” of thousands running to the dictionary.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

I subscribe to Merriam-Webster’s online unabridged dictionary, which contains the definition and spelling of more than a million words and also gives me access to a myriad of online resources that are helpful to a writer, including the Collegiate Dictionary, Collegiate Encyclopedia, Thesaurus, Atlas, medical dictionary, style guide, French-English dictionary and Spanish-English dictionary.  It’s a great bargain at under $30 a year and I recommend it to any student, teacher, communications professional or frequent reader.    

Once a quarter, Merriam-Webster sends me an online newsletter, the highlight of which is the list of the 20 words that people looked up the most over the past three months.  Some words, such as “ubiquitous,” “conundrum,” “integrity” and “love” always make the list.  So do “affect” and “effect,” which makes a lot of sense since these two words are so similar in spelling and meaning.

Then there are the words that become popular look-ups because of blips in mass culture.  For example, this quarter’s list, which I received a few days ago, includes “inception” and “despicable,” both in titles of movies this past summer, Inception and Despicable Me.

But the most looked-up word over the past quarter isn’t even a word, it’s a slip of the tongue made by Sarah Palin in early July: refudiate.  Palin spouts so much nonsense, makes so many mistakes in word usage and misstates so many facts that I didn’t follow the controversy at the time she used this neologism (for which the good dictionary gives two definitions: 1) “a new word, usage, or expression”; 2) “a usually compound word coined by a psychotic and meaningless to the hearer.”) 

After much online mocking, Palin compared her use of the word favorably to Shakespeare’s invention of words. While Shakespeare did invent or bring many words into written use for the first time, the comparison is absurd: The job of the creative writer includes stretching the boundaries of language and expression, whereas the job of the politician and civic leader is to articulate precisely his or her positions.  The essence of every good speech, be it the Gettysburg Address or Martin Luther’s King’s “I have a dream…” is clarity.  I’m not saying that politicians can’t make up words, but when they do, they should immediately define the new word for the audience and general public.  A good speech often creates new phrases, such as “the New Deal,” “The Great Society” and “The Contract with America.”  Palin merely dug herself into a deeper hole of ridicule with her defense of combining “refute” and “repudiate,” which have very different meanings, to form a nonsense word.

But lambasting Palin’s incoherence and her foolish excuses for it is akin to shooting large fish in a very narrow barrel.  I want instead to take a look at what the silly controversy about refudiate says about the current state of public discourse. 

On the one hand, the fact that so many people looked up the word in the dictionary is a sign that people do pay attention, which is a good thing.

But consider this fact:  On the first day after Merriam-Webster’s release of its online newsletter, my search on Google News found 551 articles or blog entries about refudiate achieving the number one position on the Merriam-Webster list.

I’ve used Google News results in the past to suggest how much the mainstream news media is covering a story, especially one that no one has to cover.  Let’s compare the coverage of the Merriam-Webster newsletter to some feature stories over the past few months that I think got short shrift on the news media:

  • University of Washington study shows, “opposition and frustration with government is going hand in hand with a frustration and opposition to racial and ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians” – 40 stories.
  • Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco research proves that immigrants increase both wages and productivity of all workers – 18.
  • Study by a Stanford professor shows that 74% of all Americans believe the earth is getting warmer – 37.

An analysis of Palin’s position on any number of issues would, alas, certainly be newsworthy, but how could the aftermath of yet another slip of Palin’s tongue be more important than these significant studies?  It’s absolutely incredible, except for two factors:

  • All of the studies I’m mentioning go against current trends in media coverage, i.e., the news media is giving the Tea Party a pass on the discriminatory essence of many of its followers; the news media is complicit in the great and unfortunate wave of anti-immigration feeling rolling over the country; the news media has kept alive the false and anti-scientific idea that global warming may not be occurring.
  • The news media has demonstrated time and again that they want to reduce political campaigns to personality battles, candidate miscues and scandals.

Let’s take a look now at how many hits were on Google News for some real news stories on September 11, that is, stories that the news media must cover (and keep in mind that I’m taking a moment in time and when you look up these stories, you may see more, or even fewer):

  • The natural gas explosion in San Bruno, California raises safety issues – 3,832 stories.
  • Iran cancels release of U.S. hiker – 2,058.
  • Tropical storm Igor nears hurricane strength – 1,295.
  • FAA proposes more rest for pilots – 779.

We would expect that these real news stories would achieve greater penetration than a feature story.  But compare this coverage to the announcement that Pastor Terry Jones is canceling his scheduled burning of copies of the Koran – 13,093 stories!! 

I believe that the news media should never have covered the planned hate-mongering antics of an obscure pastor in a small college town in the first place.  Once the news media made this non-story into the kind of sideshow that prevents us from considering real issues, coverage snowballed as religious and political leaders felt the need to take a stand against the planned protest.  What happened is that the news media created a news snowball that turned into an avalanche of coverage that buried alive more important stories and issues. 

The sad thing, of course, is that be it coverage of the ramblings of the incoherent Palin or the pronouncements of an intolerant ignoramus like Pastor Jones, this trivialization of news happens all the time.