Is Bernie Sanders Really a Socialist?

Calling Bernie Sanders a  “socialist” reflects how much the center of political gravity in the US has shifted to the right.  Bernie is a classic social democrat, no socialist he.  One way to understand the difference between these political positions, muddied by the infantile political discourse, is to examine the role of the so-called public goods.

Public goods are products or services that have two properties: they are non-excludable and non-rival.  Non-excludability means it is too expensive or impractical to exclude people unwilling or unable to pay for a good from enjoying its benefits or utility.  Non-rivalry means that one person enjoying the utility of that good does not diminish another person’s utility of the same good.  For example, a loaf of bread is a private good because it is rather easy to prevent non-payers from eating it, and if I eat it then you will not be able to eat it.  Clean air is a public good because it is costly and impractical to exclude those who do not pay for it from enjoying its benefits, and my enjoyment of it does not diminish your enjoyment of it.  As a consequence, public goods must be delivered by government through compulsory cost sharing aka taxes, whereas private goods may be delivered through voluntary exchanges aka market transactions.  This is Econ 101.

Contrary to what many bourgeois economists say, there is nothing “natural” about being a public or a private good.  All goods and services have a certain degree of non-excludability and non-rivalry, depending on the institutional mode (or “institutional sector” in the macro-economic parlance) of their production and delivery, which in turn is defined by government policy.  Take, for example, roads.  If the government builds them using general taxes and makes them available to everyone, they are public goods.  That is, it is not possible to exclude non-payers from using them, and one person’s using them does not diminish the utility of another person using them.  If the government turns them into toll roads, however, they become private goods.  Although they are still non-rival (unless congested beyond capacity, but that is a temporary limitation affecting every user equally), non-payers are prevented from using them.  Another example is health care or education – they can be a public good and funded by taxes or private goods and funded by service fees paid by patients or students.

It is clear that it is the government policy that defines not only which particular good is public or private, but also the overall balance between public and private goods in the entire economy.  Here is where it makes sense to distinguish between different overall political doctrines governing the balance of such goods.  They range on a continuum between two extreme positions: on the “right” extreme virtually all goods in the economy are made private, and on the “left” extreme virtually all goods are made public.

Of course, the real life regimes fall in between these two extremes.  Thus, ANARCHO-CAPITALISM, often misleadingly dubbed “libertarianism,” eliminates most but not all public goods.  Public goods typically retained under such a regime include the legal system enforcing contracts and protecting private property, the military protecting property rights overseas, and certain government service to businesses, such as compilation of economic statistics, weather forecast, geological survey, or the maintenance of transportation infrastructure etc. 

The REGULATED variety of CAPITALISM expands the share of public goods in the economy to government management of the economy, limited public transit and education, as well a certain minimum of social protections, such as old age or unemployment insurance, but most other goods remain private.

The SOCIAL DEMOCRACY (aka welfare state) further expands the share of public goods in the economy by adding other types of services to the mix, such as health care, expanded education services, public transportation, public housing, maternity supports, old age and unemployment protection.  However, most other goods, services and assets are still private, and some public goods are funded by a combination of public funds and private user fees, which makes these goods “mixed public/private goods.”

SOCIALISM moves further toward the “left” by expanding public goods even further.  Under socialism, most key industries produce public goods – that is goods that are funded mostly by the public sector, although some limited user fees may be used.  These include not only social welfare services provided in social democracy, but also key durable goods, industry products, mining, agriculture, etc.  The institutional arrangement for producing and delivering such public goods may vary from state to cooperative ownership of the production facilities or some combination thereof. The share of private goods and assets is relatively small and may include retail trade, some services (e.g. taxicabs, catering, etc.), and small scale agriculture.  Variants of this system existed in the some Eastern European countries of the x-Soviet bloc (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, etc.).

Finally GARRISON COMMUNISM is a system under which almost all goods and most assets are public i.e. owned by government that controls both their production and distribution, and the compliance with production and distributions requirements is enforced by regimentation and military force.  Private goods are limited to informal exchanges of goods and services among households (aka “grey economy.”). Variants of such a system existed in the former USSR during the Stalinist period, China under Mao and Cambodia under Pol Pot.  It would be safe to say, however, that the only country that has such a system today is probably North Korea.

The US is a regulated version of capitalism, which the Democrats want to maintain more or less “as is” and Republicans try to push to the right toward anarcho-capitalism.  What Bernie Sanders proposes is to move the status quo to the left, to incorporate more public goods available in a social democracy, but still maintain the dominance of private goods (not to mention assets).  So it not that far removed from the status quo.  If all his policy proposals were implemented, the US would be a right-leaning social democracy that provides a broader array of public goods than those available today, but not as broad as those available in left-leaning social democracies, such as the Scandinavian countries.

Bernie's wager

It is clear by now that the Democrat Party apparatchiks follow the iron rule of institutions, which claims that the power elite in an institution is first and foremost concerned with protecting its own power within the institution than with protecting the power of that institution vis a vis other institutions. The DP apparatchiks would rather have Democrats lose the 2016 election than lose their power within the DP. The party bosses may ruin the DP as a national party as long as they control the ruins.

This is, of course, not an exclusive domain of the DP. Republicans are not much different. You can read about it herehttp://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001705.html So what is to be done about it?

We may accept being "buried alive" by the two party system, as Walter Karp, who recognized this fundamental structural problem of the US politics, aptly dubbed it. Or we may refuse being "buried alive" by party bosses and to "break that integument asunder." How? By making the two party system unusable to those who have vested interests in it.

The role of political parties in general, and especially in the US, is to act as intermediaries to obtain government services, aka selling political patronage. This is of course nothing new or controversial. George Washington acknowledge this is his farewell addresshttp://www.earlyamerica.com/m…/washingtons-farewell-address/. So do the leaders of the French Revolution who passed the Le Chapelier Law in 1791 that effectively banned any "intermediate institutions" between citizens and government (it also abolished the right to strike, but that is another story). However, in the US the patronage peddling role of political parties has been elevated to an unprecedented level by the byzantine legal system full of loopholes and complicated institutional architecture, created by the very same parties. Navigating this byzantine system to obtain government services of any kind is extremely difficult to begin with and made even more difficult by constant tweaking and changes thrown in by both parties. Obamacare is the latest example of it.

While this byzantine architecture and constant shifting may appear as irrational inefficiency - it is anything but that. Its role is to make political parties indispensable for private parties - be it special business interests or broad segments of the general public - to obtain any government services - from sweetheart deals and lucrative contracts to basic services such as water supply or roads. In short, to make peddling political protection and patronage indispensable to anyone who want to obtain government services for which we all pay by our taxes. And it fulfills that role with iron efficiency. This political protection and patronage racket places the US among Third World countries where such practices are common, cf. Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari aka. Mr. 10 percent.

This political protection and patronage system will remain in place as long as the two parties remain indispensable for delivering government services. For businesses, this patronage system is simply the cost of doing business which can be passed on consumers, but the general public gets the short end of the stick in the form inflated prices and shortage of government services, as they generally cannot afford to buy a politician. The "New Deal" was an attempt to make this patronage system to work for the general public, but this has been effectively killed by neoliberalism.

However, cracks start to appear in this protection and patronage system. Those cracks first appeared on the Republican side as the republicans decided to sabotage Obama presidency at any cost by slowing down government operations if not bringing to a standstill. Internal fissures within the Republican party followed. For a while, Democrats appeared to by unified and ready for the coronation of HRC for the next POTUS, but then Bernie came along and cracks within the DP party structure started to appear as well.

Those cracks on both sides of the partisan divide may be bad for party bosses, but they are good for everyone else because they create an opportunity for breaking lose from the bipartisan graveyard. The within- and between-party fighting greatly reduces both party capacity to act as intermediaries and patrons in delivering government services. General public has already suffered from that diminished patronage capacity, as demonstrated for example by the drinking water crisis in Flint and elsewhere, but the businesses still can buy that patronage.

This is why further diminishing of the bipartisan patronage is essential at this point. If the current lopsided status quo of bipartisan patronage for business and doing nothing for the public persists, we will indeed be "buried alive" as Walter Karp quipped. But if the system becomes balanced by diminishing its capacity to deliver business patronage, it will lose it raison d'être and will become the integument for business as well. In this situation, the interests of business and general public will coincide and may start working to burst that integument asunder.

This is why keeping Bernie's bid for presidency is of critical importance. There is little doubt in my mind that Bernie will fail to deliver any of his main campaign promises - breaking up big banks or expanding universal social services. The dark forces conspiring against these reforms are simply too strong at this time. However, Bernie's attempts to bring these reforms will impede the bipartisan capacity to sell political patronage to business and by so doing it will diminish the utility of that system to the business community as well.

This is probably a unique window of opportunity to break the bipartisan system, because the cracks seem to appear on both sides of the partisan divide and the system has already lost its capacity to deliver government services to the general public. Obamacare was probably the last hurrah of the latter, and ended up with a whimper.

So my dear American friends and family - please do not waste that opportunity. Do not settle for business as usual, because if you do, you will surely be "buried alive". Supporting Bernie is the only hope of digging out of this bipartisan grave. Please keep his bid alive by donating to his campaign. Go to Bernie Sanders website and donate $15 or $25, which you can surely afford. This is perhaps the best investment opportunity that you have at the moment, far more promising than keeping your money in the bank, stocks, or for that matter, the mattress (at least the mattress will not eat your investment).

Or, to paraphrase Blaise Pascal, I urge you bet whether Bernie will succeed or not. If he does not, you do not lose much - the cost of a lunch or a Valentine's Day dinner at most. After all, you have already lost whatever government of this country has to offer. But if he wins - and all that it takes him to win is to diminish the system's capacity to deliver political patronage to business - you and the great majority of the American public will win a priceless opportunity to free the country from the 19th century political patronage system and bring it up to the 21st century.

A note on classifying ideological postures

Most common classification is right vs. left.  Its main problem is that it is it is based on conventional ideological content of political parties in European parliamentary system or its US version conservative vs. liberal, which makes it too context specific.  Ideological contents change so this distinction does not explain how people find an “ideological compass” to align themselves with ideological factions with totally new content.  For example, ideologically the Republican Party circa 1860 is the polar opposite of the Republican Party circa 2000, Communist parties circa 1900 are the polar opposite of the Soviet Communist Party circa 1930.  What is more, people often switch political affiliation e.g. Eastern European immigrants who used to be Communist party functionaries switch to the Republican Party upon arriving in the US.  This cannot be explained by the draw of the ideological content.

Another classification is authoritarian vs. liberal.  It is based on cognitive theory linking different modes of cognition to personality types.  From a cognitive point of view, people who have low tolerance for ambiguous moral situations in everyday life and are naturally drawn into authoritarian ideologies and viewpoints that offer them a “mental crutch” to straighten out these ambiguities.  Folks who have high tolerance for ambiguous moral situation are drawn to liberal live-and-let live ideologies.  This approach does better in explaining “ideological turncoats” i.e. why followers of one ideological content in one situation switch to another ideological contents in another situation.  The explanation is their ‘internal compass’ that senses authoritarian vs liberal style of various ideologies and follows this style depending on the personality type.  However, this approach does not do well explaining why certain ideological contents attract both authoritarian and liberal types in the same context.  For example, it does not explain why liberal ideologies in the US attract both liberal and authoritarian personalities.

That explanation can be provided when we add the power dimension.  Power is a central concept in sociology and pursuit of power is perhaps the most universal after sex motivators of human behavior.  However, not all people have the same conceptions of power.  The original authoritarian personality theory (Adorno et al.) distinguished two personality types – authoritarian and liberal- based on conceptualization of power relations.  For authoritarians, power is concrete and vested in individuals, whereas for liberals power is abstract and vested in principles.  This is a different distinction than that based on cognitive approach emphasizing tolerance of ambiguity. 

Putting it all together, ideological preferences can be classified on two dimensions that are relatively independent of each other: tolerance of ambiguity (low vs. high) and conceptualization of power (concrete vested in person and abstract vested in principle).  This results in a four-fold classification shown below.

	Concept of power
Tolerance of ambiguity	Concrete vested in person	Abstract vested in principles
Low	Charismatic authoritarian (e.g. gang leader)	Bureaucratic authoritarian e.g. “grass Nazi” priest or NKVD functionary
High	Perfectionist/ high achiever/libertarian (e.g. saints, Gandhi)	Liberal or anarchist egalitarian (cf. ethnography of them by David Graeber)

Stated differently, people have two compasses pointing in somewhat different directions.  One helps them to follow authoritarian or liberal ideologies defined by doctrinaire rigidity.  Folks with low tolerance for ambiguity will be attracted to rigid doctrines, and folks with high tolerance of ambiguity will follow flexible doctrines.  The second compass will help them align with ideologies emphasizing different conceptions of power: concrete vs. abstract.  Since political parties, ideologies, religions, etc. are not monolithic but embody factions emphasizing different levels of rigidity and different conceptions of power, they may attract both authoritarian and liberal personalities who paradoxically share common ideological content defining this party or religion (e.g. liberal vs. authoritarian Catholics, Muslims, Communists etc.).  For example, a “grass Nazi” reporting his neighbors to authorities for slight transgressions of sanitation or building codes (e.g. their grass being an inch higher than the limit specified in the code) may share the same abstract conception of power (abstract) as liberal egalitarians but he will be at odds with them on the tolerance of ambiguity.  A functionary of the Communist party may share the same concept of power (abstract) as an anarchist egalitarian, but the two will fight over tolerance of ambiguity.

Likewise, both gang leaders and saints may share the same concept of power – concrete vested in person- but differ in their tolerance of ambiguity.  A charismatic gang leader will not tolerate any ambiguity and fight any attempt to upset the rigid hierarchical order (i.e. each time he feels ‘dissed’). A saint, by contrast, has a high tolerance of ambiguity and will raise above it by achieving personal perfection i.e. power vested in his person that is immune to ambiguities of everyday life. 

We're great, you suck!

The military and the police consistently rank as the most trusted institutions by the American public, above all civilian institutions. Despite left wing populist dismissal of such opinion polls, this particular one has some validity. What really matters in this case is the ranking order of institutions, which self-corrects for deficiencies of subjective ranking scales used in opinion polls. That is, the bias inherent in such scales is the same for each individual answering questions, so the ranking order produced by such scales reflects the actual preferences, even though the actual intensity of preferences varies from person to person.

It is telling therefore that the majority of respondents have more confidence in the military and the police than in the "civilian" institutions, although we do not know the actual level of their confidence in absolute terms (if there were such a measure). This is consistent with what many social scientists including myself have been arguing about people's motivation - to maintain a person's "respectability" rather than to maximize wealth or material benefits, as the rat-choice theories and Democrat politicians want us to believe. The notions of power and ability to defeat and humiliate those who "disrespect" us is a central element of it. That is why people identify with institutions that epitomize power, such as the military and the police and dislike institutions perceived as emasculated and powerless.

This is a central part of the Republican strategy to attract voters who otherwise suffer from Republican economic policies - by giving them an illusion of power through humiliating "effeminate" targets, homosexual men, wussy liberals, bleeding heart tree-huggers, etc. People may forgive the military or the police for "collateral damage" of killing some of our own, but they will never forgive them for failing to humiliate and defeat those who 'disrespected' us. This, in my view is also the main reason why so many people on the Right and the Left hate Obama and keep voting Republican. Obama turned out to be a wuss who talks and apologizes instead of kicking ass, whereas Republican kept kicking ass, even if they were in a politically disadvantaged position. This is what they they were rewarded for by the voters.

This is a "true soul" of "da people" - thirst for public spectacle of humiliation of weaklings, from gladiator fights in the antiquity, to public torture in medieval ages, to sports, animal fights, demands for incarceration, harsh punishment and military interventions, and popular politics of the Republican/Tea Party variety, in modern times.

Terrorism fits the same mold - its essence is not fighting a war in a military sense, but rather humiliating those who 'disrespected' the perpetrators in some way, be it by making them wear orange jump suits, showing unfavorable images of their deities, or encouraging "immodest" behavior of 'their' women. In that sense, terrorism gives to the 'Arab street' what their military failed to deliver, and what the US military gave to the American people - a spectacle of public humiliation of those who 'dissed' them.

This is summarized in one sentence "We are great and you suck - if you 'diss' us, we will kick your ass and publicly humiliate you." . Pretty disgusting. Once you realize this, it will cure you from populism for good.

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.

The fifth column on the US left

The "Don't Vote Democrat" club appears to be made of two groups of people. The first, larger group consists of clueless dupes who delude themselves with the idea that some "third" party responding to the will of "da people" is a real possibility. It is not and never has been - third parties of any kind failed to attract popular support beyond single digit numbers, but this does not stop these folks from fantasizing about it. It is, in my view, an outgrowth of American-brand religiosity that borders on magic - if you pray hard enough it will happen.

The second, smaller group consists of the fifth column players whose role is to sabotage Democrat voting deep behind the front lines. To understand the role of this fifth column, it useful to consider a model of the bi-partisan system in the US stipulated by the Hoteling's law.  In short, this law says that in competitive duopolies, the center of gravity for both sides will fall close to the center of gravity of the whole system. That is to say, positions of both sides will be closer to each other than to positions of fringe supporters on each side.

This model implies a two fold electoral strategy. One is frontal assault to control the center, the other one is the "fifth column" to sabotage the territory deeply behind the front lines where main electoral battles are fought. The frontal assault is intended to sway the "median voter" to vote for party A rather than party B, and consists mainly by portraying the position of each side as being closer that that occupied by the "median voter." This is poli-sci 101 and should not be a surprise to anyone with a brain.

However, the frontal tactic to control the center has little effect on guys deep behind the front lines - both the "core" supporters and fringe radical even further removed from the center. It is clear that these guys have no other place to go and no tactical maneuvering to control the center will sway them to vote for the other side. This is where the fifth column strategy comes into play. It purpose is to sabotage voting deep behind the enemy lines among the core and radical supporters who are already far away from the gravity center from voting, a phenomenon known as "splitting the vote."

The fifth column strategy typically operates on the principle of increasing transaction cost of voting. Voting is a low transaction cost - low benefit activity for individuals. I will not benefit if I vote or lose much if I don't, but it does not cost me much to go to a polling station and cast the ballot. Since my transaction cost is low, I may be inclined to vote for emotional reasons even though I know that I will not benefit from voting in any meaningful way. However, if my transaction cost goes up, I may decide not to vote for "my" side of bipartisan divide or not to vote at all.

To accomplish its goal, the fifth column of the "Do not vote Democrat" club creates a subterfuge to increase the real or perceived cost of voting Democrat among its core or far-left supporters. A common tactic, often used by the Republican storm troopers, is increasing the transaction cost of voting, e.g. by requiring proof of registration, ID, or by limiting physical access to polling stations. This tactic can be used by those whose affiliation with the Republican party is no secret to anyone. A second tactic is more subtle, however. It aims to convince potential Democrat voters that voting Democrat has some hidden cost, for example that Democrats are "sell-outs" "turn-coats" or "traitors" so voting for them will make things worse. To be effective, this tactic requires that the identity of the messenger is fake or at least concealed. This advice must come from someone who appears to be on "our" side to be taken seriously. Nobody would believe it if it came from a known Republican hack.

So here comes the fifth column of the "Do not vote Democrat" club on the left. Some of them may be false flag operators, republican functionaries posing as radical lefties. But most of them are probably not - more likely they are useful idiots who willy-nilly play into the hands of the Republicans. They may be genuinely disgusted with the politics of compromise, lack of proper zeal among Democrat politicians, or just the general way things are going. They may be swayed by the idealism of the first group in the club who believer that this country is a populist democracy and casting votes is all that it takes to change the deeply ingrained institutional structures. Or they may be waiting for a savior and when someone who looks like one appears, they may put all their hopes in him, and if those hopes fail to materialize, they become disillusioned and bitter and demand a crucifixion of the "fake savior."

Whatever their motivation, their passion and their convictions are genuine and that is what makes them perfect fifth columnists. Nobody will suspect them of being a false flag operation for the enemy. They are genuine radicals sincerely fighting for the cause. The fact that their efforts help the enemy does not typically enter their consciousness where ideological purity and moral convictions reign supreme and reason has  been relegated to the periphery where it is only a tiny bit away from treason. 

On Clueless Rationalism

I resent the ubiquity of throwing invective - "stupid", "libtard" "bigot" "racist" "fascist" etc. - on other people on the internet. It is a sure sign of intellectual laziness that has become a norm of the discourse these days, not just on the internet but in general. More specifically, it is an act of avoiding the difficult task of trying to understand motivation behind other people's thoughts or behavior in favor of simplistic demonization of them. Someone says or does something we dislike - we judge him a bad person because it is much easier than making an effort to understand the reason behind this behavior.

Take for example, the Left's favorite blood sport of posting quotes by conservative politicians and media personalities and treating them as evidence of ignorance, stupidity, racism, bigotry etc. There is double irony here. First, this practice of publicly deriding "stupid" or "bigoted" figures enormously boosts their public outreach beyond their original audience. That reason alone is sufficient to explain why these politicians and media personality say such things. Any rational person in the business in which his/her success critically depends on his/her popularity would use attention grabbers to expand that popularity. And what is a better attention grabber than saying or doing things that you know will outrage people your perceive as your enemies?

But the second layer of irony lies much deeper than attention grabbing gimmicks. A lot of what people say or do does not have only a utilitarian function - communicate an idea or obtain some utility - but a ritualistic-expressive function as well. This means that people often say or do things to express who they are where they stand in society. In such situations, their choice of words or acts is governed by this ritualistic-expressive function rather than the truth function of what they say or the utilitarian function of what they do. What they say may be patently false and what they do may serve no utilitarian function whatsoever, but they say or do it anyway because it serves the ritualistic-expressive function.  An obvious example is people saying things that may stretch the. truth or be even patently false to bond with their spouses, children or friends.  A kid flunks school because he is lazy, skips classes, and gets zero parental support.  All his family and friends know that darn well, but will tell the kid that it was bad teachers, bad schools and "racist" society that failed to provide him with proper education.   This is not a statement of fact, but a statement of social solidarity.

This is what the rat-choice folk, which includes most of the Left, fail to understand. They hear something they find not only patently false i.e. irrational but also objectionable, but in their reaction to it they focus only on the rational aspect of it (truth function) while totally ignoring the emotive aspect (ritualistic-expressive function). And since the irrationality of what they hear is obvious on its face, they easiest explanation these rat-choice folk can find is that the person saying it is ill-informed or, using the vernacular, "stupid" "bigoted" "racist" and so on.

But this is also a wrong explanation, because the chances are that things in question were said not to communicate the logical truth function, i.e for rational reasons, but to express the social identity position of the speaker- i.e. for ritualistic emotive reasons. If I see myself as a folksy homeboy in the "heart of America," this defines not only who I am and who are my peers are (i.e. my "ingroup") but also who I am not and who are not my peers (i.e. my "outgroup"). Consequently, a lot of what I say or do will serve ritualistic-expressive function to mark who I am and who I am not. Wearing a plaid shirt, driving a pickup truck, avidly watching NASCAR races, carrying a gun, and believing certain common-sense platitudes serves that ritualistic-expressive function because it effectively distinguishes the "in-group" of "homeboys" from the "out-group" of "city dwellers" or "liberal elites."

What is more, this ritualistic-expressive function is likely to be evoked more often when the identity of the "in-group" is being threatened. In such situations, speakers often resort to hyperbole as a more forceful way of marking their social identity and status. If the "homoeboy" identity is threatened by economic and cultural changes, people espousing this identity will likely use exaggeration to mark that identity. This entail conspicuous displays of identity symbols, like pickup trucks, guns, etc, as well as conspicuous displays of markers that differentiate them from out-groups, such as saying or doing things that out-groups consider outrageous, e,g, disparaging comments about minorities and women, disdain for the environment, or various expressions of anti-intellectualism.

This explains the nonsense that politicians and media personalities say - it is designed to mark their in-group affiliation to gain popularity among their target audiences. In the same vein, "converting" to radical Islam, Judaism, Hinduism etc. is a social identity and status marker to differentiate the respective in-groups from out-groups, such as Western liberals, secularists, etc. The extremism of these beliefs is proportional to the sense of threat the believers feel from the out-groups. The greater the threat the more the belief or action would differ from those accepted by out-groups. If the outgroup professes modernity, the ingroup would espouse going back to medieval times. If the outgroup professes equality, the ingroup would espouse extreme inequality. If the outgroup espouses rationality and science, the ingroup espouses extreme-anti-intellectualism. If the outrgoup rejects physical violence, the ingroup would engage in extreme acts of such violence complete with public executions and beheading.

The greatest irony in it is that the folks who engage in these seemingly irrational and barbaric forms of speech and behavior show a greater understanding of their enemies than the rat-choice folk who find their behavior and ideas repulsive. The former understand what motivates their enemies, what makes them like or dislike things, what makes them toe the line, and what makes them cringe, and guide their speech and actions accordingly. The latter, otoh, fail in this difficult intellectual task of understanding their enemies, and cover up their ignorance, or perhaps intellectual laziness, with simplistic demonization.