The Bully President

We are seeing a rather unprecedented, for this country, heavy handed takeover of a major American party.

It doesn't seem like this is going to be the new norm or even if it will last any time at all, but we have seen a large group of Americans who were elected to represent the American people, representing one person who may or may not even care about the country.

Without arguing about the motives of the party dictator, the more interesting factor relates to how they were forced to toe the line?

As always the primary motivator was fear, fear of losing their seat to his rabid followers.

One of the problems we have in this country is our process of selecting party nominees.

They are all subject to potential primaries after which they have to win an election.

Not long ago, a sitting politician hardly worried about the first, he was likely unchallenged and many were fairly assured of winning the second.

Today we see a situation in which, using social media, an upset President can turn his followers against you overnight.

So step out of line and face an expensive primary fight which even if you win is likely to hurt you badly in the general election as his followers aren't the type to turn around and support you.

It didn't take a lot of this to scare the bejesus out of the politicians who primarily only care about their continued employment.

The bully President has no loyalty to anyone in his party who steps out of line and they know it.

In the soviet union the penalties for stepping our of line were often a trip to the GULAG, here its simply having to get a real job, a terrifying prospect for many of them.

Dominant Behavior

If you watch enough nature shows you get a general idea of how evolution has resulted in the survival and continuance of the strongest individuals.  They are able to dominate their rivals and generally attract females.

So in most species you see males either fight or display their skills and the females are predisposed to pick the most dominant males.

There would be no reason to believe that humans evolved any differently and whether we want to admit it or not most of us behave the same ways instinctively.  We can certainly make different choices and it might also be true that in today's world, physical attributes may not be the most significant for success, but our instincts are formed based on a very long evolutionary past.  In fact to some extent this instinctive behavior may be the basis for much of the bullying that goes on.

None of this excuses bad behavior, we are able to make decisions based on moral and legal rules, but it is an underlying factor in how we behave.  It leads to the alpha's in a group exerting a certain dominance and perhaps trying to display that dominance to the rest of the group.

This behavior may even be done at the subconscious level, where our instincts still rule, and lead to behavior that may make others uncomfortable.

It is not something that can be changed easily, it is too embedded, but it can be controlled.  Still it will still exhibit itself in certain situations.

In most situations dominant personalities will emerge and sometimes they will make other uncomfortable.  What the proper reaction is to this obviously varies based on the individual circumstances, but it isn't just going to stop, its too ingrained.