I guess the saying, “There is no accounting for taste” may be true after all. Nevertheless, some things can be said of choice when it involves contagion and fear. Sometimes taste may be only part of the explanation of political self-destructive behavior. There are, for example, too many reasons why people who really do not like Donald Trump voted for him anyway.
But, it is complicated. To really understand what has severely dismayed half the U.S. population and delighted the other half, we need to grasp some broad cultural trends as well as how the end of industrial civilization is playing out. So-called “culture wars” are expressions of much deeper social malaise.
Boot Lickers Galore
Education was never really meant for ‘the masses.’ It was originally an entertainment and sometimes a serious pursuit of the aristocracy. Later, as the industrial revolution matured, the ‘captains of industry’ realized that they needed workers with increasingly technical skills and compliant personalities. Then, of course, the masters of American democracy concluded that ‘the American experiment’ was more likely to succeed if the general population was at least literate if not intellectually sophisticated, so that they could be properly persuaded by accomplished orators to vote for their leaders.
In any case, the primary goal of American industrialists was to have access to skilled and obedient workers. Despite the establishment of ‘liberal education’ with its broad intellectual intent, the primary emphasis of public education was to produce an effective labor force to ‘man’ the increasingly complicated, yet behaviorally repetitive, assembly lines and also the engineering departments and laboratories meant to contribute to the development and production of an endless array of consumer products.
Of course, the growing industrial capacity required consumers to buy all those things they didn’t quite realize they needed. As Thorstein Veblen described so clearly at the turn of the twentieth century, “conspicuous consumption” became a driving force in motivating higher levels of consumption. Both marketing and personal identity became increasingly complicated, and further separated from genuine interpersonal relationships of family and community. And so it went, decade after decade, until it reached what now seems an end point—except for the expansion of markets into the so-called ‘developing nations,’ which had previously functioned primarily as sources of materials and cheap labor needed by the industries in the ‘advanced’ nations. So, what’s this about ‘boot-lickers’?
Well, as almost everyone knows, to ‘get along’ in the American and most other modern economies, you must ‘go along.’ And that usually means that workers at all levels must be properly subservient to their masters. Not exactly a new phenomenon. However, in the economies of industrial modernism of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, the alienation is quite high. The entire society is shaped around the requirements of industry, making financial and corporate elites the masters of the political economy and the drivers of consumerist culture.
Along the way, industrialization pretty much did away with traditional social relationships as a primary force in society. As a result, many people have a very small component of their identity wrapped up in their family or community; the focus of their personality is their ‘job,’ profession, and/or their status in an economic or political hierarchy. This resulted in more and more people who not only developed skills to ‘play the game’ well, but lost their sense of personal character and honor in the process. Many became accomplished sycophants, no matter how much they resented it.
One only needs to mention the name Mario Rubio, never mind the ruthless grifter-pedophile Matt Gaetz and his cult of no. Many men, and some women, despite previous gross insults and other offenses to their dignity, ended up as political minions, bootlickers, brown noses, yes men, etc., of their party’s new aspiring autocrat. Their political future was put far above their personal dignity, of which they ended up with undetectable amounts.
The Dominator Culture
It is a very long story. Before Europe was really quite a thing, there were peaceful cultures, especially in the Mediterranean, where art and humanistic pursuits prevailed and conflict and warfare were rare. Then, hordes of pastoral nomads swept down from the steppes to the north-east and conquered these peaceful societies, transforming them into hierarchical regimes. That is the simplest summary I can imagine.
The upshot of this trend was that once Europe was conquered, the dominator culture of war over art prevailed and became a key intrinsic part of ‘Western Civilization.’ modern industrial civilizations are driven by this same dominator culture, which Riane Eisler contrasts with the ‘partnership culture’ of harmony among humans and between humans and their habitat. Anyone who wishes to understand modern industrial civilization must read Riane Eisler’s book, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future.
The culture of industrial modernity is the very same ‘mindset’ that has driven the particular forms of hierarchy and oppression that have characterized the course of industrial civilization—formally democratic or not. Its dualistic framing of authority vs. subordinate drives human relations and the separation of people from Nature, which in turn produces extractive destruction of ecosystems, the devastation of racist and nationalistic wars, and the destabilization of our habitat, the Earth System.
Our redemption will be found—if we do find it—in overcoming the dominator culture. However, we live amid the modern cultural consequences of the global spread of the culture of domination. The vitriolic language of the likes of the Proud Boys and the other new American neo-fascist, white racist, and Christian nationalist groups gains cultural power as its racist and autocratic language is ‘given permission’ by their ‘Strong Man’ leader.
Our Culture, Our Future
The dominator culture is central to the mentality of everyone (in differing degrees) who is part of the culture of industrial modernity, which is warlike both in relation to ‘other’ groups of humans and the very Earth System that is our common habitat. It is built into the industrial system itself, is endemic to capitalist economies, and plays out sometimes rather explicitly in the culture of politics as well. The most prominent epitome of the dominator culture is the current president elect, who brazenly displays his obsession with dominating others, both allies and opponents. The autocrats of the world are his role models, and the mendacity of his congressional lackies, with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson the outstanding example, is shocking if not surprising.
Now, there is one thing about the ‘authoritarian personality’ that is central to this modern expression of the dominator culture—and to its current icon, as well as his mendicants and sycophants—they can pretend to be both dominators and be subservient at the same time. If there is anything the narcissistic sociopath needs and demands, it is loyalty and subservience from others. In a strangely symmetrical way, the typical authoritarian seeks approval of the authoritarian leader s/he idolizes, while attempting to dominate the ‘others’ whom s/he sees as inferior, or not quite human.
Many factors in the late stages of industrial civilization have produced a large, mostly male, population of discontented, detached, status-anxious, resentful individuals who seek an authoritarian leader and easily hate whatever vulnerable out-group to which a demagogue may direct their racist rage. People like Donald Trump, who voice their hatred, can easily turn them into an extreme political movement. With their support, and his gang of sycophants, Trump may be able to institute a fascist state, barring a real social movement bent on salvaging a democratic nation out of the growing chaos we find all around us. All this plays out as the Earth System, which is our home, rushes ever closer to total collapse, and is ignored in large part because any viable solutions would require that we abandon the dominator culture and the privileges we either have or desire, as it perpetuates the global political economy that created both our societal crisis and the climate/ecological emergency.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 