Are There Any Nice Politicians?
The fascist worm sniggers.
This file expands on the principles in my monograph on power, Narcisso-Fascism, showing how they apply in real life.
Danny Haiphong is a print and video journalist based in the US who posts well-regarded critical analysis of mainstream US politics – and politicians. In a recent video, he interviewed Brian Berletic, an American “geopolitical analyst and debunker,” for his opinion on the speech given to the Ukraine Contact Group meeting by the new American Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth. By signalling abrupt shifts in US geopolitical policy that left the other delegations stunned, it was probably the most consequential event since France withdrew from NATO command in 1966. Discussing its significance, Berletic said:
3.45: The US is basing its foreign policy on an irrational premise, that a nation with less than 5% of world population can dominate and control rest of world indefinitely … When you pursue such an irrational policy to such an extent, nuclear weapons and all, it can only end in catastrophe.
The US, Hegseth said in his speech, was over-stretched and would certainly not be involved in a shooting war with Russia over Ukraine. There was an ocean between the US and the battlefields whereas Europe was just down the road from the fighting. While the US would tighten sanctions against Russia, Europe had to take over and sort out its destiny. Berletic commented that this was admitting…:
6.35: The sanctions aren’t working and they probably aren’t going to work but they (Trump administration) don’t know what else to do… It goes back to the core issue, America wanting to maintain primacy over the entire planet. It is physically incapable of doing it but it insists on trying anyway … a war on China is a war of Russia because it’s actually a war on the multi-polar world…
He is absolutely correct: the war in Ukraine is the direct result of the US denying Russia what it reserves for itself, a cordon sanitaire around its borders. No great power will tolerate the enemy’s military on its doorstep. The US has been attacked once in over 200 years but it has been throttling Cuba for 65 years just because Cuba refuses to jump when Washington orders it. Prior to 2022, the US repeatedly said it wanted to bring Ukraine into NATO, which means nuclear-armed American bases just kilometres from the border with Russia. Since it has lost count of the times invasions have swept across its vast plains into its heartland, Russia has good reason to fear hostile military forces, as NATO is, close enough to throw stones over its border. Why did anybody think it would be a good idea to bring Ukraine into NATO? Why didn’t they look at the history books and realise that, since 1945, Russia is not just neuralgic about threats, but is fully justified? The answer, as Berletic says, is because America.
It is now part of the American national psyche that it is the most wonderful, amazing, heart-stopping, inspirational place on earth, populated by the most brilliant, thrilling, God-fearing, creative and all-round hot guys (and a few gals) who have built the shining city on the hill as an inspiration to the rest of the god-forsaken, miserable, lazy and good for nothing masses on the planet to adore and emulate. Or something like that. As such, the US has both the right and the duty to drag others out of the mire so they too can love apple pie, motherhood, freedom, capitalism, golf and democracy, and hate socialism, other religions, other races and cultures as God intended, and if they aren’t keen on the offer of a helping hand, well, here’s a fleet of bombers to help you see reason.
The US has been at war practically the whole of the time since independence in 1776. Since 1945, it has killed at least 25million people directly, and huge numbers indirectly, the overwhelming majority of them people fighting to defend their home countries against foreigners. It spends more on its military than the next ten nations; it has the biggest stock of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them; the biggest spy agencies; the most pervasive and intrusive international surveillance systems; and it’s still not satisfied. As it freely and openly says, it wants full spectrum dominance. That means everything: every person, every movement and every word, in every place in every country, regardless of what that person is doing or why. Essentially, it wants to be God. As Brian Berletic pointed out, “America want(s) to maintain primacy over the entire planet.” But. And this is a very big But: It doesn’t know why.
We, however, do know why, and it has nothing to do with apple pie, motherhood, freedom, capitalism, democracy, God or any of that blah blah. They’re just window dressing, hollow words that are trotted out for speeches to impress boy scouts and foreigners. The real reason is that they want to dominate for domination’s sake, just because being Number One feels so damned good. Oh boy it feels so good, let’s send more bombers so they get the message.
The thrill of domination is a primary biological imperative in human affairs. As such, it comes before any verbal justification. There was a time when it was widely believed that we humans are quite unique creatures, located halfway between animals and angels. The central idea of Narcisso-Fascism [1] is that, in one crucial respect, we are 100% animal, influenced by the same instincts as a snarling pack of dogs in the street. Like dogs, we are social animals, meaning we like to form packs and hang around together. Also like dogs, we are driven by an intense biological urge to form ourselves into dominance hierarchies. In the main, we understand this about as well as dogs do. Since our drive to dominate comes equipped with an equal and opposite drive to resist domination, conflict would seem inevitable.
However, while powerful, the human urge to dominate is not absolute. Unlike dogs, we have the cognitive ability to recognise our urges and control them – if we choose. We can have another drink, or we can decline. We can get up for work on a cold morning, or we can switch off the alarm and snuggle down. We can look at an attractive person, or we can pay attention to the road. We can bristle and shape up at an insult, or we can walk away. Unlike dogs, we can make moral decisions about our biological impulses. We can say “Even though this is potentially risky, I feel I ought to do it,” or “As tempting as that is, I’ll go without it.” Dogs can’t do that because we have something they don’t: abstract and therefore self-reflective cognitive capacities. That’s the role of mind: as an emergent informational entity [2], it opens another realm of causation, freeing us from the deterministic physical universe. Specifically, the biocognitive model outlines the precise mechanism that grants us free will, defined as: “However I acted one minute ago, I could have acted differently.”
The problem is that our moral power over the dominance drive is not recognised. Starting from early childhood, practically everything we do is competitive to the point where we don’t even notice it, so most people don’t realise it can be controlled. Fewer still would choose to do so. Every society is a hierarchy, but only a few people can occupy the top rungs. What they don’t know, what most ordinary people don’t realise, is what drives them, why they are so keen on getting to the top: winning is its own reward. Holding first prize just feels so much better than being an also-ran. Critically, you don’t get to be boss of anything by being polite and diligent and patient. You only get to be top dog by savaging all the other dogs and crawling over their bodies. Even in the local knitting group, it’s “Knitting needles at dawn, damn you.”
So we can answer the question posed in the title of this piece: “Are There Any Nice Politicians?” Recall that Betteridge’s Law says that any title or heading posed as a question can be answered with a firm “No.” In this case, he’s right. In fact, we can firmly state that children should be warned to beware of nice politicians (see Owen Jones’ excellent commentary on one who got to the top by pretending to be genuine, thereby confirming Groucho Marx’s rule that in politics, sincerity is everything, so if you can fake that, you’re made). McLaren’s Law (I just made it up) says that nice people never get to the top, they’re weeded out in the process until those left are arseholes. Essentially, only psychopaths get to the top. Even for those who are polite and considerate at the start and somehow rise through the ranks, after a while, the power gets to them, their sense of privilege and entitlement grows and their nice points fade as their inner psychopath take over.
All this adds up to a massive reorientation in how we view politics. Instead of seeing political leaders as (on our side) caring and fair-minded servants of a well-crafted and moral world-view, or as greedy, merciless and hate-filled agents of the devil on the other side, we should look at all political matters from the point of view of humans as hierarchical animals. This applies across the board, not just to what we normally call “politics.” Any human grouping will eventually form itself into a dominance hierarchy. The people who rise up the ladder do so because they want to. For example, most of us avoid meetings where possible, but political animals like them, partly because they get a thrill of power but also because they soon learn how to manipulate meetings to get their own way. As a result, they go up the ladder while the rest of us lose interest and jump off – or get pushed off.
For eighty years now, the US has dominated the international scene. In that time, their sense of privilege and entitlement has grown, as WJ Clinton made clear in various addresses: “…the United States is entitled to resort to the unilateral use of military power … (to ensure) uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources.” This attitude is deeply ingrained in the US mentality, as conservative commentator and author, William F Buckley pronounced:
The white community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically … because it is the advanced race (National Review, Aug. 24, 1957).
Charity may begin at home, but it is quickly elbowed aside by self-righteous greed and brutality.
The international situation today is bad and getting worse almost by the day. The reason the US is reducing its interest and involvement in Europe is, as Hegseth made clear to his astounded audience, because of the Chinese threat in Asia. In fact, he meant “threat,” as China threatens no part of the US except its fragile self-perception as divinely-appointed leader of the human race. The US wants hegemony but 1.45billion Chinese are a little tired of being treated as dim-witted coolies. In the Monroe Doctrine from 200 years ago, the US reserved the Western hemisphere as its exclusive zone of influence. After its “two centuries of humiliation,” China is simply asserting its right to its own zone of influence.
Common sense dictates that the US should be grateful and hand, say, policing of the South China Sea to the nation with the greatest interest in seeing stability in that region, China. However, a healthy store of common sense will never get you entry to the corridors of power. By the time a person gets that far, he has dumped common sense in the bin, along with common courtesy, common decency, common law and so on. Trump, of courses, had none of those to start with and has surrounded himself with people who won’t threaten him. Does he believe as firmly in the American Imperium, is he as hostile to a multipolar world, as all the others? I don’t think so. His only interest is “What’s in it for me?” After the US sank billions into Ukraine, and realising he can’t have $500billion worth of minerals in return, he’s lost interest. Essentially, he’s saying “Well, if I can’t grab that pussy, I’ll get another one.” If that means the Ukraine war may grind to a halt, we should be grateful for small mercies. With luck, he may lose interest in the Middle East as well but I wouldn’t bet on it. The drive to be world hegemon is now buried so deep in the American psyche that only major surgery (e.g. Germany, 1945; Japan, 1945) will remove it. But even then, it will come back. The lesson that people don’t need to be dominant in order to lead satisfying lives is soon forgotten. The fascist worm never dies; it sniggers and starts to grow again.
References:
McLaren N (2023): Narcisso-Fascism: The psychopathology of right wing extremism. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. Amazon.
McLaren N (2021): Natural Dualism and Mental Disorder: The biocognitive model for psychiatry. London, Routledge. Amazon.
Some excellent commentary:
Chris Hedges: The Purge of the Deep State and the Road to Dictatorship. Substack.
Michael Moore: The Coup d’État Has Begun. Substack.
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