I’ve been incommunicado all day long, pressing flesh and making contacts at the Utah League of Cities and Towns convention.

I come back, and what do I find?

The best post I’ve ever read on a blog. I know nothing about Vervet monkeys (until now!) but I’ve been searching for SOME reason for the bizarre behaviour of the folks on the other side of the political table, and I think you’ve nailed it.

Shucks – make that shot it, skinned it, and fed the hungry masses. Brava, ma’am.

Interesting.

I was shocked when I heard Raleigh’s lecture, because I guess I’d always confused violence with dominance myself.

But when I thought about it, it made sense.

I’ve been trying to put my finger on why I’ve felt all along that Kerry couldn’t possibly win, and why I felt this way even during the weeks when Kerry was ahead. (I realize I could still be wrong, now; Kerry could win. I have no idea whether to put any credence in my perceptions.)

Anyway, regardless of whether I’m tuning into something real or not, I’ve figured out what has been affecting me, and it’s simple: George Bush “is the man.”

John Kerry is not.

I don’t like talking that way, because it seems unkind. (Uh, no, it doesn’t seem unkind; it is unkind.)

But I do believe that people feel this way, especially during a time of war.

Here’s a paragraph from Dick Morris’s latest column on Kerry:

Underscoring Kerry’s popularity problems, voters rate Bush better on a host of adjectives. Who is the stronger leader? Bush, by 51-37. Who is more honest and trustworthy? Bush, 42-37. Who will make the United States a stronger country? Bush, 46-40. Who takes strong stands and sticks with them? Bush, 56-27.

Kerry only wins “Who understands the average American better?” ÔøΩ and by only 43-36.

“Strength” is perceived to be a masculine quality, “understanding” a feminine quality.

If you’re running for president, and you’ve got a choice between having people think you’re strong versus having people think you’re understanding, you better go for strong.

Because that’s what people are going to be voting for.

Kerry is a wannabe dominant monkey.

Someone’s gottabe a dominant monkey.

Might as well be a BUSHy monkey.

Thank you! That was brilliant. I’d never heard about the monkey experiment before but I have observed exactly that sort of behavior many times among male humans. The lower status ones become shrill and nasty and angry and it ends up being counterproductive to their cause. For examle, they just sentenced a local man to six years in jail because of exactly such behavior with respect to a judge. He was some sort of survivalist nut, very low-status. The judge was dominant. It seems to me the story of the Iranian girl who was hung that Roger has linked to several times is another grisly example of the same phenomenon from a different culture.

You’ll notice it’s usually low-power males in out of the way spots who become obsessed with guns and survivalism and all that. High power males running Citicorp and Disney and the federal government are calm and cool and collected, spending time at their local health clubs (or their ranches in Texas). When was the last time you saw Spielberg raging about anything? Serendipitously, I just this moment looked out my window and saw my CEO off on his daily bike ride: calm, cool, collected.

David Thomson

I’m afraid I have to disagree with you a bit. I’ve read both Bertrand Russell (nearly everything he ever wrote) and Wittgenstein and I have to say that Wittgenstein was definitely the deeper of the two. Wittgenstein was no mediocrity and the problems that obsessed him are serious problems. The philosophical underpinnings of probability theory are still quite shaky.

Okay, since you’ve done defamation work, I’ll bow to your expertise on it. I’ve mostly handled criminal law and utility regulation, not tort.

Yeah I know the combination of criminal and utility sounds wierd, but I’ve had different employers over the years.

It almost certainly is some young punk from a left-wing organization.

Not only is it stupid, its absolutely fatal. Saying you are going CYA in a memo sets you up as the fall guy with IG comes around. Failure to properly assess is derliction of duty.

The whole situation reminds me of wide receivers and running backs remaining in motion, as yet unaware that the quarterback has already been sacked.

That’s a keeper!

Also an excellent of pointless, flailing aggression.

Look, Mom!

I’m Hitting Back Hard!

The Dems analysis, still, as it always has been for every election as long as I’ve paid atention, is that they always lose because they don’t know how to be as mean as the Republicans. I’m utterly gobsmacked by the fact that they think this, and I have no idea how or where they got this idea, but they really do think this.

Absolutely, this is a core Democratic belief.

I have heard this exact line from my husband over and over and over again—–and in fact, our “Conversation Breakthrough” happened over this exact issue.

I told him Democrats will get nowhere until they stop seeing themselves as the innocent victims of evil, lying, smearing Republicans; the Democrats will get nowhere until they “own” their own acts of aggression, lying, and smearing, until they stop telling themselves, “The mean Republicans made me do it.”

I think I’ve said this to him before, though maybe not so clearly or directly.

In any case, this time around he suddenly had a look of recognition on his face. He stopped arguing the point, and he hasn’t said a word about evil, lying, smearing Republicans since.

This meme is a huge weakness for the Democrats.

Whenever you consciously define yourself as an innocent victim you’ve given up he game for lost.

The problem goes deeper, though.

A couple of days ago, in response to something Samuel said about how it’s puzzling how often Bush does not jump into the fray and defend himself, I had a moment of recognition.

There is a famous study of dominance, aggression, and serotonin in vervet monkeys, done by Michael Raleigh & others at UCLA. I heard Raleigh talk about it.

He found that the dominant monkey always has the highest levels of serotonin.

AND: the dominant monkey does not have the highest levels of aggression.

The Democrats think they have a problem with “aggression.”

What they really have a problem with is “dominance.”

The dominant animal in a group of primates uses aggression sparingly, effectively, and only when he has to.

The subordinate animal flails out wildly and unpredictably.

Last night I heard two men on NPR discussing the Democrats’ meanness deficit.

The interviewer sounded weak and almost foppish (I’m not using “foppish” as code for gay). He used phrasing like, “Kerry supporters do not feel pleasure in Kerry’s campaign. So what can be done to increase the pleasure Kerry supporters feel in Kerry’s campaign, or to decrease the lack of pleasure they feel?” He must have said the word “pleasure” about 10 times.

That’s not guy talk.

The guest’s answer was, and I could have written this out on an index card for him, “When Kerry gets hit he has to hit back hard.”

Democrats are obsessed with that.

“Hitting back hard.”

Well, of course, that’s the exact problem we all had with Kerry’s convention speech: If attacked I will respond agressively, or whatever it was he said.

The point being: I’m giving the bad guys the first swing.

Democrats seem to have almost no concept of staying on the offensive. To them, aggression is defensive.

And they seem to have almost no idea how to use aggression effectively.

Even the Clintonistas don’t have a clue, ultimately.

Look at Susan Estrich’s column.

If she were a male vervet monkey, she’d be at the bottom of the troop. Her column is the ultimate example of impulsive, unpredictable, and ineffective aggression.

She even starts out that way: “My Democratic friends are mad,” she says. “So we’re going to get nasty.”

That’s not a dominant animal talking.

It’s entirely possible that a dominant animal doesn’t really get mad, but instead uses a kind of rational, or cool, aggression. (This isn’t fully established, but there is research showing that “intermale aggression” doesn’t activate the rage circuits in the brain.)

The Democratic notion of aggression is akin to a tantrum. You get furiously angry, you pick up your machine gun, and you just start shooting.

That’s why we keep seeing so much collateral damage in the Democratic campaign.

Smear the bloggers!

Smear the Right Wingers!

Smear the experts!

That’s a whole lot of folks to smear in one story cycle.

CBS is flailing.

Terry McAuliffe is flailing.

Bush is way at the top of the dominance hierarchy, and he’s using aggression the way the dominant animal uses aggression.

Sparingly, and effectively.

I haven’t found a good link for Raleigh’s study, but this discussion isn’t bad.

http://nazaggression.tripod.com/brainfunction.html