Prom Queens and Presidents

I'm currently indulging in John Julius Norwich's "The Middle Sea", which is a history of the Mediterranean area from prehistory into WWI. I like Norwich--have to restrain myself from spending a not-inconsiderable sum on his three-volume History of Byzantium, actually--because he (and/or his editors) have this uncanny sense of how much detail to offer. I also admire his ability to struggle away from the classic disease of historians--namely to become serial biographers. Too often the true movers and shakers are treated like the chorus of classical Greek tragedy while the attention is lavished on the more dashing/romantic/outrageous characters who--in the parlance of our mainstream media--make for good press. Not to mention a certain retrospective (and unilaterally inaccurate) cult of personality. Which is never a good thing, whether in history or in present life.

As we swing into the last year of a U.S. Presidential election-cycle, I find myself cringing at what can only be termed "tribalism" in politics. Honestly, there's no better word for it. Mind you, I detested pep rallies in high school. And party politics are, at their roots, a pointless waving of the colors by a numbers-drunk, but otherwise passive crowd in the bleachers. Thus we send sports teams to the field, soldiers to mutilation and death and defilement of their basic humanity. And also, of course, our political "gladiators" to the arena. There is absolutely no difference between the three in terms of crowd dynamics.

It can be said of politicians more so than our other tribal champions that they--to ape Hamlet--did make love to this employment. Yet, I do wonder what it says about us that we must have our champions at all, and more so to demand that they be the vessels of every several hope we have, not to mention that they be anathema to the vices that we find most noxious. What is wrong with us that we cannot be our own champions, our own liberators?

Perhaps it's because I'm a loner by nature, but I think that we can leave at least a third (and I'm being conservative with that guesstimate) of the problems of the human race at the feet of pure tribalism, which in itself implies hero-worship: For all tribes must have their chieftains, no? To what end the Ponzi scheme of power? Sadly--to my mind--evolution (biological and especially social) does not appear to select for loners in our species. Perhaps in a more loner-friendly environment, ideas would (for once) have to stand on their own merits, rather than boiling down to popularity contests. That certainly wouldn't be the worst thing to happen to this species or what passes for civilization.