Loyalty is one of the most powerful forces in human nature.
But it can be broken, as anyone whose spouse has cheated on them knows.
Abandoning loyalty is painful. We avoid it even after it’s proven worth less. We defend it even when it’s proven worthless. Usually, we abandon it privately. Whoever or whatever abused our loyalty is often the last to know.
Getting and keeping loyalty is a big topic in business schools. So is getting it back. Not enough study is devoted to losing it. We just know it when it’s happened, when sales at Kmart, or Blackberry, fall off a cliff. When that happens, we usually look at Walmart, or Apple. We don’t study the loss of loyalty. In retrospect, it’s obvious.
While it’s happening, however, it’s not obvious. Loyalty dissipates slowly, then all at once.
What is true in our personal and business lives is also true in politics. The last few years have seen a growing test of Republican loyalty. It has been tested slowly as it demanded more from its members, then all at once as the abuse has been unmasked.
Sexism, racism, fascism, and religious extremism aren’t the majority view in America. Calling them culture, or nationalism, doesn’t alter the fact.
Our democratic system is based on the idea that people aren’t stupid. You can’t fool all of us all the time. Pollsters try to measure shifting loyalty but, as with other forms of loyalty, we lose political loyalty privately. Something in us snaps and it’s gone.
You don’t have to lose all your loyalists to lose an election. About 10% will do in our first-past-the-post system. They don’t all switch, either. Some just fall away, don’t show up, find other interests. Parties are usually able to adjust within that band to make questions close.
But the events of the last week are turning to acid in America’s stomach. The Trump coup is now proven. Whole swaths of our law have been rewritten at a stroke. Guns are now more protected than our lives, a few religions more protected than all others, sperm are allowed to enslave women. All this within a week.
Anyone who thinks Americans are going to walk by all this and not have their loyalties tested thinks we’re stupid. If we’re stupid, democracy is a joke, a lie that deserves to die.
There are still more than four months until the next general election. That’s four months to test loyalty, four months to defend it, and billions of dollars to spend on it.
We’ll see. Some time in November, we’ll know.
