The Lost Honor of Amerika

The recent wave of Obama hating on both left and right following his decision to stop deportation of some 5 million undocumented immigrants can be quite revealing about the American collective psyche.  It is not simple hatred of a person with opposing political views or even racial prejudice.  He was elected by a significant margin of popular vote, after all.  So what has changed?

As George Lakoff convincingly argues in his book "Moral Politics", POTUS is often seen as the nation's "father figure" and the role of the father is to defend the family honor.  You defend the honor by humiliating others - there is no other way! (David Graeber had some interesting insights on this in his otherwise confused book on debt).  The undocumented immigrants "diss" America in a similar way as members of a rival gang "trespassing" on "our" gang's turf "diss" our honor and need to be beaten up and humiliated.  If you fail to humiliate those who "diss" you, you are a contemptible wuss without honor.

Obama refused to humiliate those who encroached on the America's turf and by so doing "dissed" America.  In fact, he welcomed them.  By so doing he is the "father figure" who failed to protect America's honor when "dissed" and this is what makes him a contemptible wuss and traitor  in the mind of these people. Had he, like his predecessors Bush or Clinton, lashed out and indiscriminately bombed someone, he would have been seen as a hero by the majority of the American people.   It is not just ignorance, ideological differences or even racial prejudice that are speaking here, but the most vile and despicable trait of humanity - purposeful inflicting harm on others to boost one's ego.

To be sure, this is not limited to the US of A.  In fact, we can see this kind of public humiliation spectacles to defend honor of a people all across the world, from medieval Europe to Communist Russia and China, Middle East, Africa, etc.  This makes me doubt whether we are really the same  species, or rather two different species sharing the same form factor and able to interbreed, but otherwise having little in common.