Politics Channels Hatred

I agree completely, but I would add that politics doesn’t just channel hatred, it channels greed as well, and usually not in a healthy way, either. It’s a system that lends itself quite well to organized theft, also. For examples of this, see Solyndra and the related green energy scams, much of the military-industrial complex, Medicare and its inability to not get robbed by every dim-witted clown who flunked out of nursing school, etc.

Not only is democratic politics the systematic organization of hatreds, but of theft, extortion, and embezzlement, also.

Humans have inbuilt urges that manifest themselves in different ways, depending on their environment.

One of these is looking down upon those that are different (out-group) and/or doing things you disapprove of (sinners, so to speak). There’s a part of many of us that enjoys putting others down and, when we can, either punishing them for not thinking or behaving as we’d prefer, or dominating and coercing them into some state of compliance.

Many of us also enjoy: (a) affirmation that we are special and (b) the existence of a good leader who will lead us, while affirming us and punishing those we consider to be heathen (or forcing compliance).

On the right, this urge sometimes manifests itself as religious extremism. On the left, the tool for affirmation while punishing others or compelling them to do what we think is proper, is often government. God (or benevolent govt. leaders) loves me but hates you, He (or they) guides us but you will not listen, you should be punished and/or forced to obey us. We are enlightened and of good heart. You are…what’s the word…oh yeah, there are two of them: stupid and evil. (I can hear Tyler Cowen channeling Schumpeter and saying, “I can hear your IQ dropping.”)

I’m not saying, of course, that one is wrong to worship God or believe in government. Most are able to do so just fine. I’m merely saying that urges have outlets, this is a strong urge, and these are two outlets sometimes used by extremists who enjoy hate and domination. The extreme religious right and left; same people, in this respect, who merely found different outlets.

Perhaps someday we will find better outlets for the more enthusiastic among us in this regard. One may argue that sports are a good outlet for the tendency to form in-groups and go to war. Yankees fans and Red Sox fans are better than ethnic cleansers. Perhaps a better outlet exists for the urge to dominate? (Heck, maybe watching Fox News or MSNBC *is* the equivalent of watching a baseball game…as long as those fans don’t get to dominate the rest of us at the ballot box.)

(Btw, I’m not saying these urges aren’t useful when kept in check. There’s something to be said for group cohesiveness. Punishing defectors – and punishing those that refuse to punish even more so than actual defectors – is probably in our DNA for a reason. Or maybe it’s not as helpful today, e.g., Savannah Principle and our love of sugar and fat, I don’t know…)

In a democracy the voters, as individuals, do not have to bear the social costs of their decisions. This encourages them to express various emotions that, while passionate enough, are shallow, in the sense that the individual is not really willing to act on them unless he can do so very cheaply (to himself). Besides hatreds, they include nicer emotions that favor the poor and unfortunate, species threatened with extinction, etc. Many of the actions that naturally express these emotions produce enormous social costs which, however, are not borne by the voters as individuals. The market comes much closer to equalizing social costs with the costs borne by the decision-maker.

Arnold Kling: What I want to suggest is that government embodies an even more base emotion: hatred. Politics channels the base emotion of hatred. A lot of political actions derive from hatred of the other.

I think you’re being too cynical here. It seems more likely that what we’re seeing is collective decision-making pitting one interest against another, together with the natural human tendency to mistake one’s self-interest for a moral imperative. (Think about how often a child will scream “not fair!” when he doesn’t get what he wants. As adults we often do much the same, but with more sophisticated language.)

Arnold Kling: Watch the extent to which the Republican and Democratic conventions turn into hatefests. Think about Republicans bashing illegal immigrants or Democrats bashing Chick-Fil-A.

There’s a danger here in assuming a moral equivalence that doesn’t exist. Notice that in these two examples, illegal immigration and the withholding of business licenses to spite a private citizen with whose personal opinions a government official disagrees, with are both violations of the law.

Steve: “We” … need to banish the word “greed” from our economic lexicon and replace it with “self-interest.” Maybe over time, our explanations of how markets operate based on self-interest would give less opportunity for politicians to play to division, hate and envy to win votes.

Agreed! A better use of “greed” is to describe an active desire for and attempt to acquire un-earned benefits.

Let’s also stop using the word “inequality” to describe the quantitative variation between personal incomes: Its true meaning in American politics is the qualitative condition of possessing an identical set of God-given rights as part of our human nature.

Well, now you just need a theory of hatred. Why does it exist (exogenously?) and need to be channeled? Perhaps affiliation, status, and signaling better describe the underlying motivations. As for war, commandeering resources seems much more salient as a cause than a vague notion of hatred.

Reminds me of Hayek’s brief discussion of purpose-based politics and the promotion of a politic of the “friend-enemy relation”. See Hayek, L,L and L, Volume 2, at 144.