It turns out that we fall into groups according to how we prefer society to be organized and operate. This is vitally important to social animals like us, since we depend on our tribes for our own well-being and even survival. We feel safest when society operates by the rules that our group, our tribe, prefers.

Cultural Cognition identifies us in four groups along two continua.

Individualist ←←← →→→ Communitarian

Hierarchist ←←← →→→ Egalitarian.

• An Individualist prefers a society that mostly leaves the individual alone, where individual rights and choices have the greatest say, in which there is generally less government, not more. Politically, Individualists tend to be Libertarians and conservative Republicans. They support tax and spending cuts because less government results in a more Individualist society.
• A Communitarian prefers a “we’re all in this together” society where the collective is more involved in determining how things go, and government involvement is generally a good thing. Communitarians tend to be more left wing Democrats for whom more spending and government produces the sort of communal society they prefer.
• A Hierarchist prefers a society that operates within fixed divisions of class and race, a caste system status quo constrained by the familiar old way of doing things. Hierarchists tend to be Republicans and conservatives and prefer smaller government and fewer regulations (i.e. less government spending) that are intended to level the playing field.
• Egalitarians bristle at what they see as the injustice of restrictive economic and social class and hierarchy. They prefer a more flexible and fair society, free of the limitations and inequalities of hierarchical class that limit social and economic mobility. Egalitarians tend to be liberal Democrats who prefer active government intervention (e.g,. higher taxes on those at the top of the ladder) to produce a more fair Egalitarian society.

All models are lies to some extent. The basic flaw with this one is the assumption that power is equivalent to government, and those who aim to diminish its power are seeking to increase the power of the individual. Many, possibly even most political “liberals” or “progressives” are strongly motivated by a desire to protect individual liberty against an increasingly oligopolistic corporate sector. In every industry in America, fewer and fewer firms have amassed greater and greater market share, creating an anti-competitive environment where large firms trample on suppliers, employees, customers, and citizens of the communities where they operate. This change is particularly stark over the last thirty years in Agriculture.

The average American is more affected by the arbitrary policies of the companies he works for, buys from, sells to, or lives next to than any laws, regulations or taxes. Much of this infringement has been the result of policies. Changes in tax code to the benefit of corporations and the rich; deregulation by defunding agencies and deflating fines; increased power of money creation and fee proliferation for the benefit of banks; the fact that 2/3 of American corporations do not pay taxes but are awash in trillions in taxpayer largesse; the bizarre doctrine that paper corporations have the same rights as real humans; all of these have impacted the economic, social, cultural and political freedom of 98 percent of the American people. Changing those policies to ones that foster a more sustainable balance of power does not make me Communitarian. Defending their liberties does NOT make me Egalitarian.

Try criticizing your boss to your coworkers. Try to find alternatives to your energy provider, your water company, or your phone service. Try negotiating with the checkout clerk for those bananas. Try finding out what your credit card “agreement” means. Try opening a grocery store next to a WalMart. Try watching a program your cable or satellite provider doesn’t carry. Now tell me how pro-corporate “free market” policies have made you more free.

As a former Libertarian, all that was necessary to my conversion to Progressive politics was the recognition of corporate power and its influence over the lives of Americans. My values did not change. I will continue to watch Government like a hawk and to encourage others to help hold it accountable, but handing absolute power to a handful of corporations is not Libertarian.

If you’re running in, say, the New Hampshire Primary, and a story leaks about something you said seventeen years ago in jest at a party, and the media and opposition whip it up into a referendum on your character, the functional human response is to tell the voters: “If you’re that stupid, you can go screw yourselves. I’m going fishing in Montana.” Anybody who puts up with that is a masochist or a megalomaniac. And that’s the pool from which we pick our presidents.

Politics is an incredibly complex profession with its own lore, nomenclature, and rules, but unlike other such professions, like law, engineering, or medicine, every angry stockbroker or machinist thinks she knows how to do the job. Try complaining about your cancer treatment being dominated by “career oncologists” and see how silly you sound. We suffer severe cognitive dissonance about our political life, dismissing all candidates for office as crooks and deviants, but expecting them to make us opulent and immortal. We can call Congressman Jones an alcoholic reprobate pedophile in one breath while in the next cursing him for not getting our cat out of a tree. Despite that, we think we’re insiders if we choose a screaming heads show with our meatloaf instead of professional wrestling, as if there were any salient difference.

A career in politics tends to alienate one from the concerns of the public because there is NOTHING more distracting than the political process. The endless rush of compromises and deal making on the Hill, and the relentless drive to raise more money and get more press to stay in the job, combine to make one forget the effects that power has on every living thing on this planet. The labyrinthine process of legislation and the public dance of pundits and polls couldn’t have less to do with one another.

Despite these conditions and against all odds, there are people in office who belong there. They can come through the sewer of modern politics clean enough to eat off, always remembering why they are there and who they are there to serve. They can’t always be honest about that because the people they serve just don’t vote in large numbers, but those of us who watch the process know who they are. They are more precious than gold, because the system really would collapse without them and because the system is specifically designed to shuck them off.

I (sorta) know Kendrick Meek, and everything I’ve seen has convinced me he is one of those people. One of the few safe-seat members to show real statewide savvy, he is a skilled and personable retail politician of the old school. Not only does he vote in ways that make sense given the knowledge he has at the time, he has run his campaign in a way specifically designed to obligate himself to rank-and-file Democrats while still courting the big donors he needs to win in a state with 10 Designated Media Markets. His campaign has kept its cool under chaotic conditions, with three major shifts in the race’s outlook. I really don’t know how he could have run a smarter race. I will never agree with everything any politician does or says, but Congressman Meek is as sure a bet as I can find.

So, just when events shift to permit an African-American Progressive Populist to win a Senate seat in a state frightened by all three things, a wrinkle conveniently appears.

A few years ago, a merely very rich man became impressively wealthy by betting big against American homeowners at just the right time. He likes celebrities, fancy parties, and luxury travel. He married an actress and enjoys his privacy. He made a vanity run for Congress as a Republican in California in 1982, in the wake of the millionaire-pleasing Reagan Revolution. He’s pretty much another innocuous, vanilla billionaire in a country where they’re not that rare.

But, for some reason this man woke up one morning and said to himself, “You know what? Not only am I suddenly a public intellectual, I’m also a committed Progressive Democrat! I’m going to run for the open Senate seat. You know, the one in the state I have lived in for three years.”

Now, I don’t know when this internal monologue took place, but giving him the benefit of the doubt, I have to assume this was more than a year ago. So, instead of forming an official exploratory committee and building a base within the party, he waits a year or more and ambushes Meek in a Primary just when the race changes shape with Crist’s jump, a tactic that cost him several million dollars to plug a name-recognition hole that would not have existed had he taken a more conventional approach. There’s a reason many Democratic activists think he’s a spoiler.

So, this man indelibly associated with Credit Default Swaps in the wake of an economic catastrophe indelibly linked in the public’s mind with the proliferation of exactly those instruments knows he has a political problem. How to solve it? Like an only child who has just broken the cookie jar, he runs the other way and blames the dog. (apologies to Kendrick) Jeff Greene is now an anti-poverty crusader whose base is in Liberty City! Now, that’s political dexterity. I mean, I’ve changed parties a couple of times, but Holy Crap! That’s like Pat Buchanan turning into Noam Chomsky! Arianna Huffington, take notes.

So, he spends enough to start a community redevelopment fund, launches into Kendrick Meek, blames him for the economic crisis, pulls some anti-Fannie Mae rants out of his Republican “past,” criticizes him for not creating enough jobs, drags his mother into the race to swear what a good boy Jeff is, and in general sounds like he’s running against Kendrick Meek for the job of chief economic planner rather than freshman Senator. Now, I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of a class of Democratic Primary voter who is not supposed to be insulted by this reasoning and I can’t come up with one.

Greene is using the old line about rich businessmen knowing more about how to create jobs than “career politicians.” This is a strange argument given that he made his money by exploiting exactly the informational asymmetries that have distorted the economy so badly in the first place. His language comes right out of the Rick Scott playbook, and Democrats can be forgiven for expecting him to be just as Progressive as Mr. Scott. He launches into an economic plan as if he doesn’t know the difference between freshman Senator and President.

Most insulting of all, it seems to be working. The polls have pulled even. It remains to be seen what the actual turnout will be in the Primary (always unpredictable), but if Greene can spend his way into the General, the Republicans keep the seat (a child could do their ads), Meek does something more rewarding than human punching bag, and we are all worse off for it. If money alone can turn Jeff Greene into Cesar Chavez, then I might as well go make some money in some other business where we rip people off retail instead of wholesale.