Today’s politics stand at the ends of branches on an ancient tree whose roots run deeper than Plato's Republic, written 2,400 years ago. It’s a safe bet that the philosopher did not write in a political vacuum since this mentor suffered a politically driven suicide. Politics undoubtedly predates even the ancient Greeks. It’s also a safe bet that much of what was true about politics, political parties, and politicians in pre-Socratic and Socratic times is true today. The characteristics of politics have been passed along to our own times like a genome carrying both functional and non-functional (“junk”) DNA. *
The Descendant
Speaking of the Greeks makes me wonder whether or not the genome of politics emerged like Athena, fully formed from the get-go, and not formed slowly through the expanse of human civilization. I speculate thus in light of the tribulations of Socrates who was condemned in a sham trial over trivial matters—really because he did not fall in lockstep with the culture of the dominant political party (supported by the Athenian “deep state”).
With regard to the genetic inheritance of politics and its tie to modern politics, I see a connection to the tribulations of Donald Trump, the victim of obvious political persecution through a hoax called Russia-gate, unfounded accusations of colluding with Ukraine because he wanted the truth about Biden’s quid-pro-quo demands in favor of his son, and similarly unfounded accusations about putting kids in cages (based on a photo from the Obama-Biden era), and finally on “trumped up charges” by New York’s AG and New York City’s DA. Is Trump the modern Socrates? Giving Socrates a death sentence on political grounds was definitely more extreme than convicting Trump over…I’m still puzzled…Was the conviction a mirror image of trying Socrates’ over his free thinking? Was it based on a perceived political threat to Democrat and Deep State control? Was it petty retribution for the offense of winning an election?
Trump will probably not be put to death in spite of the rabid hatred for him in the minds of Democrats (the so-called Trump derangement syndrome). However, as has been revealed, in the raid on his home, the heavily armed agents did have permission to kill. Kill whom? Trump? Secret Service agents? His wife? His son? The maid or gardener? Whoa! Maybe today’s politics aren’t much different from the politics that killed Socrates! What’s that you say? Killing reputations, political careers, and livelihoods is the modern analog of condemning Socrates to death. If you say so.
Functional Political DNA
In every living organism DNA transfers the past to the present, “ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny” as biologists like to say in relating individuals to phylum history. Individuals are different, yes, but they are all related through genetic transfers. We might conclude that political parties and politics of the past have evolved little since Plato’s time. Why is this so?
In part, because it’s a male thing. Patriarchy has kept the political genome much the same. There’s actually some truth in the stereotype of backroom meetings of cigar-smoking men choosing candidates. Matriarchy would enhance the speed of political evolution. Again, why?
Slower evolutionary change occurs in males than in females.. The genome inertia in American political parties maintains the phenotypes and mimics the differences in evolutionary change that derives from the genetic geography of males and females. Marauding males like the Vikings who captured women in the British isles and carried them off to Iceland—where many in today’s population carry Irish genes—plus the widespread practice of women like biblical Ruth going “whither thou shalt go” in following husbands and leaving their ancestral villages ensured the rapid alteration of the matriarchal DNA. Thus, my hypothesis that if women dominated politics, parties might evolve faster. Patriarchal parties slowly fade as weakened telomeres fail with aging male politicians who refuse to retire lest they lose their power.
Look, for example, at the ends of Biden’s chromosomes for the inevitable telomere shortening that comes with age—exemplified in his debate performance and numerous public appearances framed by muttering, stumbling, and incoherence.
Functional Genes
Within any national history, political DNA carries the essence of major views with regard to governance and civil order. Much of today’s Democratic Party recapitulates the Wilsonian gene pool that evolved in a time of unrest and anarchy between the pre-Wilson 1880s and the end of Wilson’s era. Those decades of turmoil were punctuated by Chicago’s Haymarket Square riot led by August Spies, editor of the Anarchist daily Die Arbeiter-Zeitung, and by 1919 race riots in Chicago and D.C. A sign of similar times lies in recent riots and takeovers, such as 2020’s Seattle’s CHOP and incidents of harm, looting, and destruction led by the oxymoronically named Antifa in other cities and culminating in 2024’s takeovers on Ivy League campuses by antisemitic Leftists for whom Democrats seemed to be apologists. The characteristic Democratic response appears to be encapsulated in Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkin’s calling CHOP a “block party,” in Congressman Jerry Nadler’s saying to a street reporter that turmoil in Seattle and Portland was a myth, and in the Biden Administration’s denying the chaos at the border.
Functional DNA carries political principles and passes general characteristics along to ensuing generations of party members. The heritable essence defines the major characteristics of a political species. The operating, or functional DNA, more importantly, prevents interbreeding, thus keeping the parties separate (identifiable) even as they mutate. In contemporary America, that essential DNA allows us to distinguish Right from Left easily. However, subtle variations are more difficult to distinguish: Neo-conservative, Neo-liberal, small-government idealist from large-government idealist, and capitalist from socialist—all recognizable in general terms, but fuzzy in specifics. Analog? We know dogs in general though we might have difficulty distinguishing between a Cumberland Spaniel and a Cocker Spaniel or between a savanna elephant (L. a. africana) and the forest elephant (L. a. cyclotis).
Functional political DNA carries the gross features, the stereotypes, while absorbing subtle mutations, such as Bernie Sanders’s “Democratic Socialism” or, on the other side of the species divide, “Rhino Republicanism.” Functional DNA carries political principles and passes general characteristics along to ensuing generations.
Yet, each party is a hybrid suffused with new genetic material. According to Pew Research Center, “The share of voters who are Hispanic has roughly tripled since the mid-1990s; the share who are Asian has increased sixfold over the same period. Today, 44% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters are Hispanic, Black, Asian, another race or multiracial, compared with 20% of Republicans and Republican leaners.” **
My late father would not identify with today’s leftist Democratic Party but he would still vote exclusively for Democrats. He might admit that today’s Democrats differ from members of his Roosevelt Democratic Party, but he would still see a heritage and unity in his own political species and a similar unity in the Republican Party. With regard to the latter he might say, “Those Republicans look out only for business people and the rich.”
Non-functional DNA
Junk DNA, in contrast, carries along remnants of once important issues that no longer figure meaningfully or figure less meaningfully in the politics of the present. The issue of Vietnam’s turning communist does not sit in the platforms of the Democratic Party once run by Kennedy and then Johnson.The Nixon-Kennedy debate over defending isolated Quemoy and Matsu has now morphed into a larger issue regarding Chinese hegemony in the western Pacific centered on artificial, not natural, islands and on the freedom of Taiwan. I would hazard a guess that few people today would know about those islands of contention in 1958-60. The old issue is now junk. Yet, they it remains in the genome that now centers on the question of defending a free Taiwan, S. Korea, the Philippines, and Japan. And with regard to the southern border there was at one time the free flow of seasonal crop-harvesting Mexican migrants who worked the fields and then returned to their homes in Mexico that has now morphed into open borders and giveaways to illegal aliens, with socialist Democrats spending tax dollars to support the invasion.
Like every organism, humans carry a vast array of junk DNA. And so do political parties. The origin of much of the junk is lost to phylogenetic history, but we can assume it served some past purpose.
It’s All about the Chromosomes, Really
In an era obsessed with X and Y chromosomes in a 21st-century Democratic Party fearful of making comments about men competing on women’s teams and biological males sharing locker rooms, shower rooms, and restrooms with women, the old chromosomes show fatigue. Democrats, worried about being cancelled, have turned to an “inclusiveness” that operates by excluding, censoring, and threatening those who refuse to promulgate DEI, the magical solution to perception of inequality. It is in this and similar matters that the DNA of the party of Jackson has gone the way of shortened telomeres that Joe Biden seems to exemplify.
A party that cannot renew itself because of incestuous homology is a party destined for extinction even before some extinction level event like the Biden presidency occurs.
*My point of departure for this blog was an article I read on a fern . Ferns have been around for a long time, going back deep into the Paleozoic. The particular fern covered by the article has the largest genome. T. oblanceolata, with its enormous genome, made me wonder about the "genome" of political parties. And thus an analogy was born! See https://www.sciencenews.org/article/largest-genome-tiny-fern
**Online at https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/changing-partisan-coalitions-in-a-politically-divided-nation/
The Descendant
Speaking of the Greeks makes me wonder whether or not the genome of politics emerged like Athena, fully formed from the get-go, and not formed slowly through the expanse of human civilization. I speculate thus in light of the tribulations of Socrates who was condemned in a sham trial over trivial matters—really because he did not fall in lockstep with the culture of the dominant political party (supported by the Athenian “deep state”).
With regard to the genetic inheritance of politics and its tie to modern politics, I see a connection to the tribulations of Donald Trump, the victim of obvious political persecution through a hoax called Russia-gate, unfounded accusations of colluding with Ukraine because he wanted the truth about Biden’s quid-pro-quo demands in favor of his son, and similarly unfounded accusations about putting kids in cages (based on a photo from the Obama-Biden era), and finally on “trumped up charges” by New York’s AG and New York City’s DA. Is Trump the modern Socrates? Giving Socrates a death sentence on political grounds was definitely more extreme than convicting Trump over…I’m still puzzled…Was the conviction a mirror image of trying Socrates’ over his free thinking? Was it based on a perceived political threat to Democrat and Deep State control? Was it petty retribution for the offense of winning an election?
Trump will probably not be put to death in spite of the rabid hatred for him in the minds of Democrats (the so-called Trump derangement syndrome). However, as has been revealed, in the raid on his home, the heavily armed agents did have permission to kill. Kill whom? Trump? Secret Service agents? His wife? His son? The maid or gardener? Whoa! Maybe today’s politics aren’t much different from the politics that killed Socrates! What’s that you say? Killing reputations, political careers, and livelihoods is the modern analog of condemning Socrates to death. If you say so.
Functional Political DNA
In every living organism DNA transfers the past to the present, “ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny” as biologists like to say in relating individuals to phylum history. Individuals are different, yes, but they are all related through genetic transfers. We might conclude that political parties and politics of the past have evolved little since Plato’s time. Why is this so?
In part, because it’s a male thing. Patriarchy has kept the political genome much the same. There’s actually some truth in the stereotype of backroom meetings of cigar-smoking men choosing candidates. Matriarchy would enhance the speed of political evolution. Again, why?
Slower evolutionary change occurs in males than in females.. The genome inertia in American political parties maintains the phenotypes and mimics the differences in evolutionary change that derives from the genetic geography of males and females. Marauding males like the Vikings who captured women in the British isles and carried them off to Iceland—where many in today’s population carry Irish genes—plus the widespread practice of women like biblical Ruth going “whither thou shalt go” in following husbands and leaving their ancestral villages ensured the rapid alteration of the matriarchal DNA. Thus, my hypothesis that if women dominated politics, parties might evolve faster. Patriarchal parties slowly fade as weakened telomeres fail with aging male politicians who refuse to retire lest they lose their power.
Look, for example, at the ends of Biden’s chromosomes for the inevitable telomere shortening that comes with age—exemplified in his debate performance and numerous public appearances framed by muttering, stumbling, and incoherence.
Functional Genes
Within any national history, political DNA carries the essence of major views with regard to governance and civil order. Much of today’s Democratic Party recapitulates the Wilsonian gene pool that evolved in a time of unrest and anarchy between the pre-Wilson 1880s and the end of Wilson’s era. Those decades of turmoil were punctuated by Chicago’s Haymarket Square riot led by August Spies, editor of the Anarchist daily Die Arbeiter-Zeitung, and by 1919 race riots in Chicago and D.C. A sign of similar times lies in recent riots and takeovers, such as 2020’s Seattle’s CHOP and incidents of harm, looting, and destruction led by the oxymoronically named Antifa in other cities and culminating in 2024’s takeovers on Ivy League campuses by antisemitic Leftists for whom Democrats seemed to be apologists. The characteristic Democratic response appears to be encapsulated in Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkin’s calling CHOP a “block party,” in Congressman Jerry Nadler’s saying to a street reporter that turmoil in Seattle and Portland was a myth, and in the Biden Administration’s denying the chaos at the border.
Functional DNA carries political principles and passes general characteristics along to ensuing generations of party members. The heritable essence defines the major characteristics of a political species. The operating, or functional DNA, more importantly, prevents interbreeding, thus keeping the parties separate (identifiable) even as they mutate. In contemporary America, that essential DNA allows us to distinguish Right from Left easily. However, subtle variations are more difficult to distinguish: Neo-conservative, Neo-liberal, small-government idealist from large-government idealist, and capitalist from socialist—all recognizable in general terms, but fuzzy in specifics. Analog? We know dogs in general though we might have difficulty distinguishing between a Cumberland Spaniel and a Cocker Spaniel or between a savanna elephant (L. a. africana) and the forest elephant (L. a. cyclotis).
Functional political DNA carries the gross features, the stereotypes, while absorbing subtle mutations, such as Bernie Sanders’s “Democratic Socialism” or, on the other side of the species divide, “Rhino Republicanism.” Functional DNA carries political principles and passes general characteristics along to ensuing generations.
Yet, each party is a hybrid suffused with new genetic material. According to Pew Research Center, “The share of voters who are Hispanic has roughly tripled since the mid-1990s; the share who are Asian has increased sixfold over the same period. Today, 44% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters are Hispanic, Black, Asian, another race or multiracial, compared with 20% of Republicans and Republican leaners.” **
My late father would not identify with today’s leftist Democratic Party but he would still vote exclusively for Democrats. He might admit that today’s Democrats differ from members of his Roosevelt Democratic Party, but he would still see a heritage and unity in his own political species and a similar unity in the Republican Party. With regard to the latter he might say, “Those Republicans look out only for business people and the rich.”
Non-functional DNA
Junk DNA, in contrast, carries along remnants of once important issues that no longer figure meaningfully or figure less meaningfully in the politics of the present. The issue of Vietnam’s turning communist does not sit in the platforms of the Democratic Party once run by Kennedy and then Johnson.The Nixon-Kennedy debate over defending isolated Quemoy and Matsu has now morphed into a larger issue regarding Chinese hegemony in the western Pacific centered on artificial, not natural, islands and on the freedom of Taiwan. I would hazard a guess that few people today would know about those islands of contention in 1958-60. The old issue is now junk. Yet, they it remains in the genome that now centers on the question of defending a free Taiwan, S. Korea, the Philippines, and Japan. And with regard to the southern border there was at one time the free flow of seasonal crop-harvesting Mexican migrants who worked the fields and then returned to their homes in Mexico that has now morphed into open borders and giveaways to illegal aliens, with socialist Democrats spending tax dollars to support the invasion.
Like every organism, humans carry a vast array of junk DNA. And so do political parties. The origin of much of the junk is lost to phylogenetic history, but we can assume it served some past purpose.
It’s All about the Chromosomes, Really
In an era obsessed with X and Y chromosomes in a 21st-century Democratic Party fearful of making comments about men competing on women’s teams and biological males sharing locker rooms, shower rooms, and restrooms with women, the old chromosomes show fatigue. Democrats, worried about being cancelled, have turned to an “inclusiveness” that operates by excluding, censoring, and threatening those who refuse to promulgate DEI, the magical solution to perception of inequality. It is in this and similar matters that the DNA of the party of Jackson has gone the way of shortened telomeres that Joe Biden seems to exemplify.
A party that cannot renew itself because of incestuous homology is a party destined for extinction even before some extinction level event like the Biden presidency occurs.
*My point of departure for this blog was an article I read on a fern . Ferns have been around for a long time, going back deep into the Paleozoic. The particular fern covered by the article has the largest genome. T. oblanceolata, with its enormous genome, made me wonder about the "genome" of political parties. And thus an analogy was born! See https://www.sciencenews.org/article/largest-genome-tiny-fern
**Online at https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/changing-partisan-coalitions-in-a-politically-divided-nation/
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