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Governments don’t live together, people live together. With governments you don’t always get a fair word or a fair fight. Well I’ve come here to give you either one, or get either one from you.
— Josey Wales to Chief Ten Bears, The Outlaw Josey Wales
*
Raising hell with the hippies and the cowboys
They don’t care about no trends
— Cody Jinks
Times is hard for a poor boy born to a natural syncretic bent. There’s nuthin’ that won’t send folks running for their ideological corners these days, even a virus, which, let’s face it, doesn’t give a shit who you voted for.
Cliff Young, president of the social and market research firm Ipsos U.S. Public Affairs says:
“How people are actually processing information and assigning credibility to it is 100% partisan.”
I don’t mind telling you — that freaks me out more than a little bit. I don’t like it. At all.
*
I’ve always been one to seek out common ground — not in the Rodney King can’t‑we-all-just-get-along sense so much as the Willie Nelson-bringing-the-shitkickers-and-the-hippies-together-at-the-Armadillo-World-Headquarters‑c. 1974 kinda way. When I was in Austin in February, I stopped by the former site of that hallowed ground and doffed my hat for a moment in honor of a place I never saw, but know to be a kind of spiritual home.
That sort of thing — raising hell with the hippies and the cowboys — always seemed perfectly natural to me. All the music I love is made by maverick personalities too wayward and ornery to allow themselves to be stuffed into a box. Outlaws.
When I headed of to college to gain a little knowledge, I thought that UC Santa Cruz would be the ideal habitat for that outlook. Turns out that there is nothing more conformist and intolerant than a bunch of humorless, bitchy, disaffected lefties. I didn’t like them and they sure didn’t like me.
The sought-after hippie-shitkicker fusion was not to be found on the campus — but there was still plenty of it back in the Santa Cruz Mountains amongst the redwoods. When I moved to Oregon, it had the reputation as a place “where the cowboys smoke weed and the hippies pack guns.” There’s still a vestige of that, but not near enough, as far as I’m concerned.
Art by Timothy Truman.
I’m a natural-born romantic, one of those people who thinks he can live in the world as he imagines it and is constantly confronted with living in the world as it is. Dammit, though — I like mine better.
*
Frontier history has always been map and compass for me, and the sign does not bode well for those who carry multiple cultures in their soul and try to navigate a path that weaves between and among them. There are brief moments of possibility, like that laid out in iron words of Josey Wales to the Comanche Ten Bears:
“Governments don’t live together, people live together. With governments you don’t always get a fair word or a fair fight. Well I’ve come here to give you either one, or get either one from you.”
But state and economic power tends to roll over and grind up individuals who simply try to live together. It happened over and over again in the borderlands we think of as “the frontier” of North America. Take the sad saga of Andrew Montour — the classic Man of the Middle Ground.
Andrew Montour as portrayed by historical interpreter William Hunt.
The 18th Century interpreter, trader and Frontier Partisan was a mixed blood of French/Oneida (Iroquois) descent. He spoke both French and English and a number of native languages and dialects and was thus in demand as an intermediary in trade and statecraft between the British government, colonial governments and companies and the First Nations peoples of the Ohio Valley. He was culturally a mix of European and Indian, which was reflected in his dress. He wore a band of paint around his face and bangles in his ears, and a European coat and waistcoat and stockings and buckle shoes.
Montour served as an intermediary with the tribes of the Ohio Country and served the British during the French & Indian War and Pontiac’s Rebellion, leading raiding parties against the French-allied tribes. Before the war, he tried to establish himself as the proprietor of a community in western Pennsylvania for misfits like himself. The scheme alarmed both the Pennsylvania authorities and the Iroquois, who were worried that “lower orders” of whites and Indians mutually supporting each other would prove intractable and interfere with the schemes of the shot callers.
Montour’s sometime friend and employer, frontier diplomat Conrad Weiser, helped scotch the plan and Montour’s land was sold out from under him. Such troubles navigating the social and political shoals of the Middle Ground embittered many a man like Montour, who were never quite white enough for the English and never quite Indian enough for the Indians.
Montour was generally well-regarded by men of influence on the frontier — to include George Washington — but only when sober. Like so many Frontier Partisans, Montour had a major problem with alcohol. He would get roaring drunk and belligerent, cursing his employers roundly, then sober up and be contrite.
In his magisterial book The First Frontier, Scott Weidensaul offers a sympathetic portrait of Montour:
“In ways that would haunt him all his life, Andrew Montour was the living embodiment of the patchwork human frontier, a shadow of the physical borderlands. And when he tried to create a place where he could find peace — a place for all the other in-betweens and castoffs, half-bloods and immigrants, refugees and wanderers — both of Montour’s worlds, the Indian and the European, conspired to crush his dream. No wonder he drank a lot.”
No wonder indeed. In 1772, one of his Seneca drinking buddies murdered him during a binge. It was a sad — but not untypical — end for a Man of the Middle Ground.
My next project will focus on such men: misfits and mavericks; cultural mediators; bastards of all nations; wanderers in the shadow of the borderlands. Because they are my kind of people and always will be.
Metis Fiddler by John Moyers.
*
Like Montour, those of us who wander along the cultural borderlands risk both camps conspiring to crush us — especially when culture is hijacked by politics.
I have little intrinsic interest in politics, though I am not so naive as to believe one can afford to ignore decisions and actions that make profound impact impact on the way we live our lives. I resent having to pay attention to the words and works of people whom I generally don’t respect and often actively despise, and who have no incentive at all to hear my voice.
There is nothing resembling a political home for the likes of me and mine. That wasn’t always the case; I would have operated comfortably enough in the Republican tradition of Oregon giants such as Tom McCall and Mark Hatfield. But today they would be derided by far lesser men as RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). I have policy preferences on, say, health care and the environment, that could readily be hammered into something practical and worthwhile if it was possible to work in good faith with those of a liberal bent. But that end of the political spectrum has come to be dominated by authoritarians who, for example, exploit the human problem of people using firearms for evil ends by attempting to make felons of me and my kin. What kind of fair word is that?
Whatever political common ground I might have ever been able to walk has been cut away. So I declaim a pox on both houses and continue to assert independence that increasingly feels lonesome, ornery and mean. It earns enmity.
Those who have succumbed to the brainless binary equation — peddled by blackguards who have no interest other than their own aggrandizement — cannot abide independence. They demand purity; they impose loyalty tests. Disagreement is blasphemy or apostasy, nuance is for pussies, and you cannot agree in part and with qualification — it’s a zero sum game.
I hope someday this fever breaks, but I’m not optimistic. There’s too much money in the business of division, too much power to be accrued through pandering to identity politics and the inflamed passions of culture warriors. There’s little room for syncretism and small tolerance for those who, faced with the demand for binary choices, insist on none of the above.
Regardless, I will walk the path that I chose — or the one that chose me. A fair word I will gladly give — or a fair fight if I must.
*Hat tip to Paul McNamee for the inspiration.
Lots of good material here pulled together into a cohesive whole and that ain’t an easy thing to pull off. Kudos to you.
I have little intrinsic interest in politics, though I am not so naive as to believe one can afford to ignore decisions and actions that make profound impact on the way we live our lives. I resent having to pay attention to the words and works of people whom I generally don’t respect and often actively despise, and who have no incentive at all to hear my voice.
I’m feeling this more and more with each passing day.
Thanks Paul — and thanks for the excellent conversation yesterday.
Matthew says
I think that Cable plays a lot in this. Everyone on the right only watches Fox and everyone on the left only watches MSNBC. No one is exposed to other people opinions and it takes getting expose to other people’s opinions to learn to have a thick skin about them.
I always liked that quote from Josey Wales. If there is a way out of this it is between individuals not political parties. I think we’ve lost a lot of community togetherness for a lot of reasons. We’ve become a two tribe nation with the tribes being the Democrats and the Republicans.
Shutting off the cable is a good step. I check in online just to see the “take.” It’s dismaying. CNN has gotten so egregiously bad … All of cable is driven by personalities and commentators. There is almost no real journalism left in those entities.
Miss T. says
Matthew, I appreciate the spirit of your comment, but I’m not so sure about cable as a monolithic force. “Everyone on the right only watches Fox and everyone on the left only watches MSNBC. No one is exposed to other people opinions and it takes getting expose to other people’s opinions to learn to have a thick skin about them.” Well, my dear mother, a conservative Christian Republican, takes care to watch 20 minutes of non-Fox News every day. I haven’t noticed any great changes in her outlook since she started this practice a couple years ago.
Cable polarizes, but shit howdy, social media and YouTube put cable to shame! Those guys are master manipulators and dividers.
I’m also not sure why Government = Bad , unless we’re going to expand that idea to Any Conglomeration of Humans = Bad. Government does bad stuff and good stuff. Corporations do bad stuff and good stuff. Churches do bad stuff and good stuff. Colleges do bad stuff and good stuff. The military does bad stuff and good stuff. Ad infinitum.
Jim, as you know, I’m aligned with you on a lot of this. Syncretic and sick of everybody being locked up inside tight ideological boxes. But what should we do: somehow magically disappear the existence of large groups of people attempting to do anything together? Maybe Covid will help out with that whole “large groups of people” problem… But seriously. Is there a game plan? Or is it just every well-armed man for himself?
Well, to start with, I’m an advocate for well-armed women, too.
You’ve hit on a really intractable problem, re: scale. You’re right, all institutions are fallible, even with the best of intentions, and the larger, more bureaucratic and disconnected from the human touch they get, the more the fallibility metastasizes. That’s assuming good intentions. Evil intent makes institutions of great scale monstrous.
Part of our civilization’s discontent post-Industrial Revolution is that technology and transportation (which have brought many blessings) have allowed institutions of all kinds to develop to an inhuman and perhaps anti-human scale. And one of the 20th century’s primary efforts to redress those discontents (Marxist Socialism and Communism) doubled down on the gigantism and became even more anti-human.
As for a game plan, I don’t think one exists on any level right now. There is zero possibility of a consensus driven game plan at a national level, for the reasons alluded to in the post. My personal game plan, such as it is, remains to focus on supporting or creating “lighthouses and field hospitals,” which obviously still have to exist within the larger structures, and are subject to being buffeted in the spinning gyre.
See you at the Farmer’s Market.
RLT says
“Cable polarizes, but shit howdy, social media and YouTube put cable to shame! Those guys are master manipulators and dividers.”
I couldn’t agree more with you, Miss T; this and the spike in population (which you also mention) are responsible for so many of the ills we see, in my opinion.
One thing I wish we disagreed on is that there appears to be no game plan—but sadly, I don’t see one either.
I hate to be the guy railing against the internet *on* the internet, but the only actionable step I could see would be getting rid of as much of it as possible.
But that’s only “actionable” in that it’s specific and theoretically doable: it will never happen.
I also agree that the government can be equated to churches, large groups of people, etc… I think it’s worth talking about the government specifically, though, because at the moment it’s the most visible of the groups you mention with the biggest impact. As you point out it could just as easily have been churches, and has been in the past.
Rick Schwertfeger says
So much good stuff here. As a result of my American Civilization training at a venerable New England Yankee institution, let me add into the mix what I believe to be a foundational force of America, still powerful to this day: Puritanism. That staid, somber theocracy had a strong influence on pre-Revolutionary America. I’ve always seen Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne and the Rev. Dimmesdale (The Scarlet Letter) as arch symbols of this force in American culture. As a friend always said about that way of thinking: “Some people just don’t want other people to have any fun.”
Jim Webb addresses a telling example of the divide in “Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America” (2004). For when some groups of Scots-Irish fled Ulster in the early 1700s and went to New England, the fact that they and the Puritans both were Calvinists mattered little. “The Puritans liked neither Scots nor Irish. A quick-tempered but sensual and playful people, they often dressed provocatively, acted with volatile belligerence, drank to excess, engaged in competitions in every form, and adamantly defied attempts of outsiders to control them.” Brings to mind how in my own youth “The Right Folks” so disapproved of both us weed-smoking, long-haired hippies and weed-smoking, long-haired cowboys. Even in 1978 I was refused service in a Laramie, Wyoming, diner when I showed up bearded and long-haired.
And as Jim notes above, it has invaded both sides of the divide. So many of the Right are today’s Puritans – except when it comes to their own tendencies to play on the far side of the laws, or to engage in sexual dalliances. And on the Left, there’s a tendency towards advocating political positions with moral certitude and fervor. I’ve received shit because I drive a full-size pickup truck, practice the shotgun sports, and, OMG, have gone bird hunting. Likewise because I stated that Beto O’Rourke had his head up his butt and isn’t ready for prime time. And goodness knows, get out of the way when a Bernie supporter comes around.
So, if you want to live a fun-loving, not so serious, yet principled life in the middle in America today, beware the Puritans on your left and right!
Excellent and critical point. A huge element in the culture and one that has always raised my hackles.
Jim says
I’m not so sure the Puritans are to blame for this mess. I tend to focus on a more insidious group. Humans!
If I recall correctly Puritans were persecuted in England and driven to the Netherlands. It was from the Netherlands that they fled, probably because the dutch were fed up as well, to the new world.
Before that those protestants in their ways needed to be dealt with toot sweet by the Catholics with a little communal burning.
And then we get to the Romans. They had to deal with the Carthaginians. Now there’s a motley group of people that needed to be squashed. And the Jews, and the Egyptian’s, and let’s not forget those body barbarians.
No, I’m pretty sure if we can eradicate the human element in this, we will all live more communally for the rest of the time.
And if not I always return to my mentor Zaphod Beeblebrox from Hitchhiker’s Guide. His sunglasses that would turn black in the presence of danger and recognizing that most problems were considered S.E.P.s. Somebody else’s problem.
Bill Valenti says
Enjoyed reading this, Jim. Thought you might like the chorus of a song I’ve been working on, which reflects similar sentiments:
I am the beast of no nation
I am the pawn of no king
No god calls me sinner
No anthem I sing
I follow my conscience
And suffer no fools
All men are my brothers
Who live by the rule
By the Golden Rule!
One of these days I might actually finish the song…
Finish.
Bill Valenti says
Thanks for the prod!
Jim says
“I resent having to pay attention to the words and works of people whom I generally don’t respect and often actively despise,”…
The current viral fiasco has brought this to the surface more profoundly for me. We are supposed to wear masks up here in Maine while in public but I refuse to play dress up. I can’t live in fear in a state sixth from the bottom in terms of infections. But the nanny staters insist we all crawl into a ball because they said so.
When I go into stores I keep a mask in my pocket because I do not wish to exacerbate the anxieties of people who are too fearful or too compliant to function. It’s not their fault. But only if I’m asked.
What infuriates me most is that I have to do this because some petty tyrant makes decisions by fiat and a large percentage of the population sell off any vestige of logic they had left. We all are individually powerless against such fools until the majority rises up or some judge in Wisconsin tells the governor to stuff it. Even if it is temporary.
The mask thing is really odd to me. The initial guidance was “don’t wear one.” Then it shifted for reasons that are not clear to me. Everything I’ve read that’s serious about this is that short of the N95, protective value is marginal. Nevertheless, if a local business requests that we wear one, I will, because it’s the neighborly thing to do.
Miss T. says
“Don’t wear a mask” was put in place initially so that everyday people wouldn’t run out and buy all the PPEs, of which there were not enough—saving them for the health care workers.
From what I can see, current science on wearing a homemade cloth mask is in the “kinda sorta” department. They kinda-sorta-maybe help a little bit; may not do anything for the fine aerosols spreading the virus, probably do help with the larger particles, the ones resulting from a sneeze or cough.
My observation: homemade cloth masks do help people be more conscious of their faces, noses, and their tendency to touch both. That’s gotta slow some surface-touching virus spread.
Also, it is indeed the neighborly thing to do. Heightening awareness of our mouth-nose-touch, heightening awareness that we should be careful, while reducing anxiety ~ seems like a good deal of benefit right there, especially considering that it takes pretty much zero effort to put on a mask.
On the con side: if people are lulled into thinking that cloth masks will *really* protect them, they might fail to take other measures. The study I looked at was limited, but it suggested that health care workers should not be using the cloth ones. They need the real deal.
So much good stuff here, Jim. I definitely want dope-smoking cowboys and gun-toting hippies for my neighbors — or at least as close to that model as I can find.
I’ve been feeling pretty politically/culturally homeless for more than a few years now — it’s definitely one of the reasons I sidled on up to Frontier Partisans in the first place. As a more-conservative-than-not New Yorker, I’ve got to deal with an authoritarian governor who literally said: “extreme conservatives (whatever the hell that means)… have no place in New York.” I’m not expecting, or even want, people to hold the same views as mine, but I want them to leave me the hell alone to keep them. I admit, if I ever work up the gumption to leave this place, where my family’s been for four hundred years, it’ll be because I don’t want to have fight all the time anymore.
And don’t even get me started on the GOP. All the time my family dedicated to working on campaigns and working elections seems so tarnished now. Long before Trump, the party took the same turn for stupid the Democrats did and gave up the actual task of drafting and passing laws. I’m going to stop because my blood’s boiling up and no one needs to hear any more of this.
Thanks Fletcher.
lane batot says
Yeah, so much good stuff–and it IS heartening to know at least SOME other individuals are securely perched On-The-Fence, and that I’m not alone between rabid partisanship(NOT to be confused with “Frontier Partisans”…ahem!) I tend to have some very different perspectives on all this stupid human political complication of what is REALLY IMPORTANT about LIFE and SURVIVAL, being surrounded by and constantly contemplating things from animal(other than humans…) and Nature’s perspective. Where to get started? First, how about a story regarding all this INANE partisan BLINDNESS! Although I haven’t(yet) found a way to exploit it for my own selfish desires, I do keep in mind a clever wild chimpanzee named “Mustard” I once knew in Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania(lo, those many years ago). I was there as a “Research Assistant”(sort-of…) at a time of the year when all the females of the habituated group I was observing were in estrous–hind ends swollen up provacatively, smelling so alluring, it was driving all the male chimps CRAZY! One of the perks of being a high ranking brute-of-a-male in chimp society is getting the pick of the females for mating when you want–subordinate males usually just get mauled and pushed aside. Usually.…And then there was Mustard. Mustard was rather subordinate, but he was THE lover, not a fighter–a real anthropoid Casanova! While two hulking, dominant males were fighting–beating each other to a pulp over some nearby voluptuous beauty, Mustard would just sit back and WATCH–making sure those hulking males were fully occupied with themselves, then he’d seductively GESTURE to the female in question, who, by this time was tired of the macho types more involved with each other than HER(yes, chimps have all manner of easily recognized gestures that are amazingly similar to human ones–leading me to feel “anthropomorphising” is actually a term that can often be flipped completely for accurate interpretation’s sake!),and get her to come over and join him, upon which they’d quietly disappear in the thick, surrounding forest for a bit of dalliance. The two(or more!) fighting males would eventually get worn slap out, and look around wondering what it was they were fighting over? Who do you think fathered more babies and spread his DNA the most successfully? I have a photo of old Mustard, lying comfortably on his belly, chin in hand contemplating some brutal dominance physicality in the background, just WAITING patiently for the right moment–you can almost see his mind working in this photo! That’s what all this stupid partisan bickering reminds me of, and I continue to remember Mustard’s philosophy on such.…to be continued.…
lane batot says
…Although I can easily see where “Mustard” could be a fine symbolic example of “Putin”, etc.
lane batot says
.…and then there is the REAL WORLD(NOT just a “Reality” TV Show.…) of Nature, that doesn’t give a flying frick about human politics and perceptions(although the end result of some of them can certainly harm Nature!). I mean, you can’t totally ignore crazy human politics and the danger and often tragic outcomes they create(usually so, so unnecessarily!), but in the end, Nature WILL win, and WILL outlast whatever controls selfish humans try to enforce, and one is wise to contemplate and work along with NATURE and not get so tangled in narrow, selfish human political endeavors–that is always a real comfort to me.….A SPLENDID example of how Nature works things out, and doesn’t care a flip about human perceptions, is the currently happening creation(or recreation, some of us think) of a canine predator in Eastern North America(and this goes right along with the “mongrel” society of Frontier America mentioned in this post!). We used to have a “species” of wolf here in the East, commonly known as the “Red Wolf”–some believe it was a legitimate separate species from Gray Wolves and Coyotes, some think(ahem!) it was a naturally occurring hybrid of the two that developed, bred true, and filled a certain Eastern Forest niche a bit better than either Gray Wolves or Coyotes. After all, they can all interbreed and produce fertile offspring. But alas, these easily hunted and slaughtered naive(not just “native” but NAIVE!) Red Wolves were virtually eradicated by the European Invasion of America. Except for a few rescues taken into captivity, of which great attempts have been made to try and reintroduce them in my home state(North Carolina), among other places, with mixed success. Not only human persecution, but the “Red Wolves” tendency to “crossbreed” with the “invading” coyotes has made it very difficult to propagate any “pure” Red Wolves. Of course Coyotes have “invaded”(I keep using italics there, because Coyotes have populated the East long before, in the Pleistocene and before–plenty of fossil evidence of this, so you might more accurately say Coyotes have RETURNED to the East!) every state of the Union now, and are doing quite well despite enormous persecution, and have very effectively, and USEFULLY filled the role of a larger canine predator in the ecosystem. When, lo and behold, it has been discovered Eastern Coyotes have some recent Gray Wolf genetics, as well as a bit of domestic dog in their DNA–a real “Canis Soup” as it is being termed! They often look AMAZINGLY like “Red Wolves”, are of similar size(directly between Gray Wolves and Coyotes) and are most certainly filling the former natural niche of Red Wolves–despite all the persecution, eugenic hand-wringing, battling DNA test results in scientific laboratories–Nature has found a way, and just gone and DONE it, regardless of human politics and ideals of “purity”–a TRULY AMERICAN WOLF that is as much a part of our country’s Melting Pot as we humans are! Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for preserving what little is left of the “old bloodlines” of Red Wolves, if only for comparison’s sake in future studies, and because they ARE entient, living beings. But they will NEVER be influential ecosystem-wise in anything but a very limited way; it is the “New” Red Wolves(or now more popularly called “Coywolves”)–the Elephants-in-the-room that hardly anyone scientifically wants to acknowledge, that HAVE recolonized this niche, and are performing as Nature intended, despite all the best laid plans of wolves and men to the contrary! From Eastern Canada to Florida!!! Anyhoo–ALL THIS to illustrate that Nature is CONSTANTLY reminding us of our silly, inept futility, and we should not to get so down and depressed at the stupid goings on of humans–in the end, NATURE will still always be there, and it is TRULY HER we depend on(always there, remember), and NOT whatever flavor of politician is rearing his/her ugly heads trying to make us believe THEY are the important ones.…Get out in the woods(or any other “wild” place), and absorb what REALLY matters.….
Miss T. says
Mustard figured it out! Just like all those arty boys with eyeliner I knew in the ’80s and ’90s. Didn’t matter how many macho dudes called them f*ggots—those cute eyeliner boys were getting *laid*. No wonder they didn’t feel the need to waste their time with big Alpha male displays.
Matthew says
On those websites on the so called “manosphere” you occasionally post complaining that feminine women end up with effeminate men while they the self-proclaim masculine men don’t. I have a skepticism of that, particularly their claims of masculinity. (The real men I knew had a quiet confidence about them. They did not have to tell you they were masculine.)
Part of me does wonder (and your post seems to indicate) if there was some truth in it. I mean it’s possible that really feminine women went with effeminate because they had more in common with them.
lane batot says
I don’t know near so much about humans, but I there are obviously all manner of individual personalities and tactics that get played out that have little to do with stereotypes, among us, too. In other words, there are all manner of ways to be “male”, and the stereotypes for success don’t always win out. There was certainly NOTHING that was effeminate about Mustard–he was just not quite as big or brawny as some of the more dominant males, and obviously not as aggressive in personality–and ATTITUDE can have A LOT to do with success in any endeavor! In fact, as another example,THE ALPHA when I was in Gombe, was a rather smaller(but STOUT!) male named Goblin–he kept the Alpha position longer than any other male in Gombe’s history(up to that point, and maybe still)–a typical male Alpha keeps the top position usually only a few years–maybe five if he’s lucky. Goblin kept his for over a decade, by pure, determined, never surrender attitude and tactics! All that aggression is very stressful, though, and it disrupts the whole group, so I can see why some females were happy to abscond with a more peaceful-natured, gentler guy! But Mustard did not wear eyeliner, as far as I know.….
lane batot says
.…Mustard WAS taking a big chance, though–had he been caught in the act, there would have been severe repercussions! But as far as I know, he never was…IF he were still alive, he would be very old now, and definitely not bothering with breeding, but I wonder if any of his potential offspring inherited his intellect, and figured out “another way” just as their father/grandfather did–they can get DNA samples from the chimp’s poop these days to verify just WHO a chimp’s father is–not accurately verifiable in the past.….Observing such things makes one realize how little we have changed in some ways, from our ape relatives! I read somewhere that one of our head politicians here in America–was it in Congress?–made reading “Chimpanzee Politics” by Frans De Waal mandatory reading!