One of the most perplexing political questions of our time is “Why do people vote against their own interests?”
The question is most often directed toward Republicans. This is because the Republican Party favors the interests of the rich. The GOP is the party that cuts taxes for the wealthiest Americans, while raising them on the middle and lower classes. (Tariffs, let us not forget, are a regressive form of taxation.) The GOP is the party of Donald Trump, who just gave a vulgar “Great Gatsby” ball at Mar-a-Lago, even as he’s cutting healthcare and SNAP benefits for tens of millions of Americans who are suffering under the crushing weight of the inflation he falsely promised to end.
But to be honest, the question can be asked of Democrats, too. Consider a town like Oakland, where progressive Democrats have run our city into the ground. Clearly, progressivism/wokeism is not in anyone’s interests, unless they’re part of the grift and graft that infects every woke enterprise. So why do Oakland voters keep electing wokes?
I heard an interesting program on KQED radio the other day that addresses this question. It turns out that people would rather stick with their tribe in elections than vote in their own interests—even when sticking with their tribe hurts them.
What is it about tribalism that makes it such a powerful motivator of human behavior? I’ve often wondered. I see young kids hanging out together but I never see them hanging out with people my age, and vice versa. I see Asians with Asians, Blacks with Blacks, gays with gays, Whites with Whites, women with women. Lawyers hang out with other lawyers, dancers with dancers, MAGAs with MAGAs, Democrats with Democrats, skateboarders with skateboarders, and—the ultimate tribe—family members with each other. These are all tribes.
According to one analysis, “Humans evolved in the context of intense intergroup competition, and groups comprised of loyal members more often succeeded than groups comprised of nonloyal members.” In an overwhelming, often hostile world, we seek the company and safety of those who look and think like us. This is obviously also true of animals. We see seagulls flying with seagulls, not with pigeons, and deer running in herds with other deer, not with dogs or cows.
I’ve never been particularly tribal, never really felt part of a tribe. True, back in the Sixties I ran with what you might call a hippie tribe. We listened to the Beatles, dropped acid, smoked a lot of grass, dressed colorfully in the manner of the times, and loved each other. But I also had a life that had nothing to do with my hippie confreres. As a gay man in the closet (and my friends were not especially understanding of homosexuality), I had that compartment of my life. I also had a compartment that was fascinated with politics, which few of my friends liked, and a compartment that was interested in philosophy. A bit later, I found a compartment focused on the martial arts, and another on wine. In general, I visited whichever compartment I felt like at any given time. So I never truly felt I like belonged to any single tribe.
I’m like that today. I love the Democratic Party, but as you all know there’s a part of it I loathe. I loathe the Republicans, but there are parts of them I agree with. This schizy attitude doesn’t make party affiliation any easier. On the whole, the indecency, homophobia, religious intolerance and mindless MAGA support of Donald Trump incline me to hate and resist the GOP. Were the Republican Party to shed these horrors, who knows, I might re-register as a Republican. Instead, I’m trying to get the Democratic Party to shed its own horrors, especially the racialized wokeness on the left.
What do I mean by racialized wokeness? This: The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s has gone too far. It now stands for a Black-centric obsession that distorts everything else the Democratic Party stands for. It’s become the party of race quotas, of affirmative action, of preferences in contracts and funding, of cancel culture. In pushing a Black agenda, the Democratic Party, or large portions of it, is pushing an anti-White agenda. (Little wonder that Sartre observed, “anti-racist racism is the only road that will lead to the abolition of racial differences.”) We have lots of anti-racist racism in Oakland! When I see all those signs in downtown store windows that say “Black owned,” I know they’re for one purpose only: to urge rioters not to destroy their stores, in the event of the next big demonstration. Their hidden message is: If you want to break a shop window, do it to a White-owned store. When I see a Black cultural zone being funded by the city of Oakland, I wonder why there isn’t a White cultural zone. When I hear Lateefah Simon ranting at a No Kings Day rally about Sudan and Haiti, I wonder why she’s injecting race into something that has to do with all Americans, not just Black ones. When I see Carroll Fife launching legislation to sponsor a Black New Deal study, I wonder if she thinks District 3 elected her to represent only Black people. When I hear Cat Brooks babbling about “police terror” I wonder what kind of terror she would impose on White people if, God forbid, she were dictator. When Brooks writes “The police are not my friend” I envision, with a shudder, what Oakland would be like if Brooks got her wish and OPD was defunded. When I see, as I did yesterday, an unkempt, deranged, angry young Black man terrorizing everyone at Sprouts, including me, I wonder about a City Hall that celebrates, and feels sorry for, psychotics like him, instead of protecting innocent, law-abiding citizens like me by scooping him off the street.
We simply have to eliminate this obsession with everything Black. It’s eating us alive. It’s dividing us by race. The divide between Blacks and Asians is a direct result of our political leaders stoking these divisions. So is the rise of MAGA. I refuse to accept the premise that “racism” is the cause of Black poverty and crime. As long as that lie continues to be spread and believed, we will continue to see our city die. “Equity” is simply a metaphor for a fascist agenda of the left. The next time you hear a politician talk about “equity,” know that you’re listening to a liar, a moron, a fascist, a dangerous race monger, a muckraker, a demagogue!
Steve Heimoff