Rescuing the Future | The January 6 hearings limp on | why we should be patient

Did it trouble you that it took so long for the Congressional hearings on the Jan 6/21 storming of the American capital to start? Do you get impatient with the slow pace of the inquiry?

Well, it’s an old old problem. Johnathan Swift, the great 18^th century political analyst, social commentator and satirist, explained:

Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after.

Yes, lies are so easy to throw out there, verbal hand grenades. Why in homo sapiens, the supposed ‘wise hominid’, so many of us prefer lies to the truth isn’t so hard to understand. Homo selfish might be a better name. Or homo tribalis – for as I’ve pointed out in my book The Shyness Guide, disregard for others in favor of one’s own group doesn’t appear to have been a prominent trait of hunter-gatherers but it seems well established now. That, along with wars of conquest and genocide, and complex language apparently, seem to have started with the arrival of tribalism somewhere around 50,000 years ago.

I would say homo tribalis established dominance about 10,000 years ago, while homo sapiens is struggling now to stay in the game.

Beware of these people who keep saying that the problem is the polarization of beliefs. The way they talk, and not just in the USA, the political left is as much to blame as those on the right. This is a liar’s trick – you’re just as dishonest as I am.

In fact though, as Noam Chomsky has repeatedly said, there no longer is a ‘Left’ in the USA. The Democratic party has been in the centre at least since Bill Clinton was elected, while, beginning with Ronald Reagan in 1980, the Republicans have moved farther and farther to the right, until now they’re not even on the political spectrum. They are radicals trying to gain power through force and trickery the way Mussolini and Hitler did. This is twentieth century fascism come back.  It’s only about 1/3 of the voting population that supports them, but somehow they’ve got this group to vote more aggressively.

Meanwhile the Democrats may have their faults, but they’re still plodding along in the footsteps of genuine leaders in America’s history. At the moment, they are the only hope – and it isn’t only Americans hoping. Many of us all over the world are following this drama closely.

Yes, today we’re still, world-wide, trying to say goodbye to tribalism. In the last century, the tribes we call nations created two world wars, and many smaller ones, some lasting decades. After the two big wars, we flirted for a while with things like equality for all, elections that included everyone, better income distribution, full rule of law, even against the rich and powerful, and for a while that created a rich, economically stable and socially vibrant society in much of the world. Now its slipping away.

Or will enough Americans, in their elections next November (and all of us wherever and whenever elections are held), choose to support the Truth, limping along as we see it day after day in the January 6 hearings, so we can finally get back on the road to a better world?