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Humans have been living as hunter/gatherers for almost all of human existence, about two and a half million years. The anthroplogists tell us that humans have been living in small tribes of somewhere around 25 to 50 people for all of that time. Being hunter/gatherers without tools, their ability to survive was dependent on the amount of sustenance they could gather from the amount of territory they could cover. The size of the territory limited the amount of sustenance available and the amount of sustenance limited the size of the tribe. With the primitive methods available, the tribe and the territory were interdependent. When one territory was depleted, the tribe moved on to better pickings. The instinct for survival in a subsistence existence dictated that the individual get all of the food that he could because at the subsistence level, all that he could get would barely allow survival. Other tribes were doing the same thing and were competitors for territory and survival. A tribe encroaching on another's territory was literally a threat to survival, due to limited resources. Strangers were attacked and driven off as the enemy. They were the other. The need to be constantly on the move to find new resources for survival meant that any hindrance to the moving on was a threat to the survival of the tribe. The sick, the lame, the injured, the weak, the old, those unable to keep up were left behind to suffer their fate. It has been only within the last 10,000 to 12,000 years, the paleolithic old stone age, that humans, using the scientific method, observed that a sharp edged rock was better at skinning animals than using their teeth. The conservatives at that time raised hell with the new-fangled methods and ranted against them. The using of sharp edged rocks began the transition from hunter/gather to civilization, where people making sharpened rocks were of as much value as a hunter. The conservatives, those who want things to stay the same, were never able to see the advantage of diversification of labor and the advantages it gave to the tribe. This was the beginning of the split between the old and the new, the conservative and the liberal, the social evolution of the tribes that came to realize that all members of the tribe had something of value to contribute. The evolution of social thought that came to accept that the varied abilities of people leads to a larger, more stable, productive and secure community has been the triumph of liberalism over conservatism. By logical extrapolation, conservatism, the clinging to the old, the wanting things to stay the same, would leave us still living in caves and skinning animals with our teeth. The genetic makeup of those tribesmen who instinctively had those three primitive characteristics, who practiced selfishness to survive, regarded all others as an enemy threat to survival, and practiced complete disregard for the welfare of the less fortunate, had a cold-hearted reasonableness for the survival of the tribe at that time, but, in two and a half million years, times have changed. The three characteristics are what the psychologists describe as symptomatic of the classic psychopath. The people in our midst who have these characteristics are known as conservatives, neocons, libertarians, all synonymous with Republican. They view the rest of the world as the enemy because those strangers are not members of their tribe. They want their leader, the prime example of their primitiveness, George Bush, to attack those strangers in Iraq, Iran and any other country they decide on. They care nothing at all about the suffering of those less fortunate than themselves. They want the government to end any social assistance programs that help the unfortunate, in spite of the fact that the law requires that the government promote the general welfare. And, they want to deregulate all businesses so that they will have a better chance of grabbing everything for themselves. These conservatives, neocons, libertarians, Republicans fit precisely and exactly the profile of the most primitive, savage members of the tribes roaming the world two and a half million years ago. They, due to some genetic defect, are not like us. Their minds are incapable of functioning at the modern level. And even though they represent a very small minority of the population, their influence is enormous, disproportionate to their numbers. That may be because their philosophy of extolling the sanctity of greed appeals to the primitive mind of their followers and supporters. They will fight to the death to preserve their ill-gotten gains. They will not give them up. But, they can be defeated by using their own methods against them. They are the strangers, the aliens amongst us. The Bushes, the Feiths, the Wolfowitzes, the Pearls, the Hannitys, the Coulters, the Limbaughs, the Kristols, the Yoos, the Roves, are just a very few of the many genetic defectives, the throwbacks to our most primitive past. The great majority of people, being decent, don't have the stomach for doing what it takes, is necessary, to rid us of these genetic defects. But, as we can see from the results of the last six years of their control of our government and the disaster the United States has become, it must be done if we are to save our country from their depredations. The most imaginative science fiction cannot portray the true horror of having these alien beings amongst us. We must rid ourselves of them if our country is to survive. I've tried to talk to Republicans to get some understanding of why their minds are so far in the distant past, so remote from and antagonistic to the idea of humanity. But, discourse is impossible. They will not stray from the narrow path of Republican ideology. They will not venture into the woods of reason, the jungle of logic, the swamp of reality. They're afraid they'll be attacked by a lurking intellect.
Ed Martin is an unindicted curmudgeon. He is not a Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal, deist, atheist, or a member of any -ism.
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