Politics is Not About Issues, But Status

Why have Republicans and conservatives failed to reverse the tide of leftism? The answer is simple, according to Joe Katzman. Politics is not about ideas, or issues, or justice. Politics is about status.

Analysis: Leftism is a status machine. A very, very successful status machine. Conservatives have lost status battle after status battle, often because they fought it as a policy battle. It rarely is.

In other words, if you parrot left-wing talking points you gain status. If you try to argue the merits of an issue, you lose status. But if you are sensible you read The New York Times or any women's magazine. These are all about communicating status clues to the status conscious.

That brings us immediately to Donald Trump. Trump's whole shtick is to humiliate "Chuck and Nancy" and the Fake News media. In other words, his game is to lower their status in the eyes of his supporters and possible supporters.

Status and hierarchy are chemical and go all the way back to lobsters, or rather the common ancestor of humans and lobsters. You could say it is part of the basic equipment of social animals, the reduction of conflict by status and hierarchy negotiation.

So that means that status is upstream of religion is upstream of culture is upstream of politics.

Now do you understand why Donald Trump won the support of the white working class and other deplorables? He proposed to raise their/our status by attacking the status of liberals, lefties, Democrats, and the mainstream media.

Yes, I suppose that's a corollary of the lobster status argument. You may not be able to play the status game yourself, but you sure can vote for a guy that does, or at least support the lobster that has high status.

This forthright argument, put forward by Joe Katzman, helps me understand what I am trying to do with my writing. I want to put everything lefty and liberal in a bad light by insulting it, i.e., reducing its status.

(Hmm. So the male Culture of Insult is really a status game, reducing the other guys status by a sham fight of words. And is Trump good at insults. But, of course, women hate it, because their status game is the woman's Culture of Complaint.)

So when I deploy my catchphrases, from Government is Force, to Politics is Division, to System is Domination, to Identity Politics is Neo-Tribalism, to the Welfare State is Neo-Feudalism, all I am trying to do is to reduce the status of government, politics, and lefties on all the ships at sea, by insulting their ideas and their sacred objects as cheap tricks and second-rate rubbish: false idols.

But to get to the bottom line: is Trump's campaign working? Well, according to Katzman,

American belief in the credibility of their news media is now at about 32 percent. That’s the lowest ever polled, and an 8 percent drop from the lowest point of the 2008-2015 period. The media has lost audience, and a lot of power. 

And even noble Facebook has taken note.

Facebook has tried to fight these trend lines by flagging items as “fake news.” Recently, the social media giant decided to stop. Too many people sought out flagged articles. 

Notice an interesting thing here? Back in the day, liberals were the spunky outsiders speaking truth to the establishment. But now that they own the media, the universities, the schools, the culture, they are the establishment, and so plucky outsiders are now the ones that speak truth to liberals.

And they don't like it.

OK, so why didn't anyone think of this before? Well, they did.

In fairness, Newt Gingrich had some success in the 2012 primaries, and Ted Cruz has also tried. But they lacked the full array of tools. Worse, they didn’t understand how to make the media their enemy.

In other words, they weren't good enough at the game of insult.

And that leads directly back to my catchphrase Politics is Division. The art of politics is to find your enemy, and rally the people behind you to attack the enemy and reduce their status by beating them in an election. Hey, you could use a Rule or two from Saul Alinsky.

Rule 5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."
Rule 13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." 

Just saying.