One-Way Loyalty

Playwright and political apostate David Mamet (his book, The Secret Knowledge, details his journey from liberal to conservative), recently offered an essay, "How the Democrats betrayed the Jews," wherein he discusses the long-running allegiance of Jewish voters to the Democratic Party. It's a long-running question in many circles, given how the Democrats have offered less and less interest to matters one would expect Jews to prioritize, and more and more succor to those who, for want of a better word, hate Jews.

The Hamas attacks elevated this dissonance to the fore of many conversations, given that those who voice unequivocal support for Hamas and/or the Palestinians in general are overwhelmingly on the Left. While Biden has made it clear that he backs Israel in the conflict, and has sent two carrier groups and other support Israel's way, his party is also pipelining a lot of money to the Palestinians, and his mule-headed pursuit of a "deal" with Iran, a nation committed to genocide and the elimination of Israel, helped set the stage for the Hamas attack.

While there's enough for a cherry-picking and motivated reasoner to stick with the Democrats in judging which party best aligns with the "pro-Israel" litmus test, a big-picture look shows many more anti-Israel pols and voters on the Blue side of the aisle.

And then there's the legacy media. The New York Times utterly disgraced itself (and gave a huge boost to Hamas) by uncritically posting blame on Israel for a missile strike on a Gazan hospital. That narrative fell apart immediately, but it took SIX DAYS for the Times to mush-mouth a correction of sorts. The Times et al have a long record of sympathy for Palestinian terrorists.

All this reveals the peril of tribal loyalty to "your party." If your allegiance and your vote are sure things, if the party's leaders and candidates know they can rely on you to pull the lever for your team, no matter what, they have no reason whatsoever to give you more than lip service, and barely even that. In fact, the greater your tribal loyalty, the less they need to actually care about you.

The only way to matter in the political process, apart from money, is if you make it clear that your vote is in play. Yet, at least 2/3 of the nation would rather chew hot asphalt than vote for the other team.

Loyalty is an asymmetric phenomenon. It flows bottom-up far more than top-down. This holds true in both politics and the workplace. Convincing people to team allegiance over self-interest happens everywhere, and inertia does the rest.

Politicians have been taking advantage of the loyalty phenomenon forever. They ask for it, implore for it, exhort for it, and sometimes offer a few crumbs for it. They reward their proxies - the community leaders and other apparatchiks - but usually give short shrift to the rank-and-file. And, when a crunch hits, guess who goes under the bus.

This behavior is bipartisan - the Left and the Right both play the game - and the starkest example of the one-way nature of loyalty in current politics is a certain Donald J. Trump. How many of his loyal supporters have been under-bussed and called nasty names the moment they dared act against his demands?

If you want your voice to be heard, you have to make it clear that your vote is not a gimme. That you are willing to withhold it, or vote for the other team if need be. You may never actually do so, but if the politicians and bosses lose certainty, they might act more in line with your desires.