Does the Skull of the "Dragon Man" Denisovan Support the Human Self-Domestication Hypothesis?

 

A Video on the "Dragon Man" Skull That Has Been Recently Identified by DNA Evidence as Denisovan

Four years ago, I wrote about the "Dragon Man" fossil skull found in the Dragon River region of northeastern China.  This week new studies of this skull have been published in Cell (Qiaomei Fu et al. 2025) and Science (Qiaomei Fu et al. 2025b) showing that the DNA in this fossilized skull identifies it as one of the Denisovans, a group of humans that split from the Neanderthal line and survived for hundreds of thousands of years before going extinct.  Carl Zimmer (2025) has written a good article on this research.

Denisovan fossils were first discovered in 2010 in the Denisova Cave in Siberia.  Since then, other Denisovan fossils have been found in a high-altitude cave in Tibet, in a cave in Laos, and in both the highlands and lowlands of New Guinea, which indicates that these people were flexible enough to live in a wide range of environments.

Billions of people today carry Denisovan DNA, inherited from human interbreeding with Denisovans hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Until now the Denisovan fossils have been a few small fragments--half a broken jaw, a finger bone, a small fragment of a skull, three loose teeth, and four chips of bone.  But now the identification of the Dragon Man skull as Denisovan allows us for the first time to see what a Denisovan face looked like.

The Dragon Man skull's cranial capacity is around 1,420 cubic centimeters, which puts it within the range of modern humans.  But there are some differences in the fossil skulls that point to ways that Homo sapiens surpasses other Homo species.  One of the most evident differences is in the brow ridges.  Notice how far the brow ridge of Dragon Man projects from the face, much farther out than for a typical Homo sapiens skull.  A similar difference can be seen even within the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens.  The older human skulls show a more prominent brow ridge than the younger human skulls.  Men tend to have thicker, more overhanging brow ridges than women, which is caused by men having higher levels of testosterone than women during their development, particularly during puberty.  So we can say that the skulls of Homo sapiens are more "feminized" than the skulls of other Homo species like Dragon Man, just as younger human skulls are more "feminized" than older human skulls.  You can see this craniofacial feminization in these human skulls:

On the left, you see a 110,000 to 90,000 years-old human male in lateral (top) and frontal (bottom) views, compared to that of a recent African male (right).  The older skull on the left shows the large brow ridges and long and narrow, masculinized face characteristic of Middle Stone Age/Middle Paleolithic-associated humans, as compared to the more feminized face of recent humans.

As I indicated in my previous post, this can be seen as evidence for the Human Self-Domestication Hypothesis: just as some wild animals have evolved through domestication to become tame animals living around human beings, so have human beings domesticated themselves in that ancient human ancestors were selected for being less aggressive and more socially tolerant individuals; and thus human beings have evolved by self-domestication through what Brian Hare has called "survival of the friendliest."  Some of the evidence for this is found in our anatomy, particularly in our faces.

The neurotransmitters and hormones that mediate aggressiveness have effects on skeletal development, particularly in craniofacial growth and development.  So if there has been evolutionary selection for social tolerance--for survival of the friendliest--we can expect to see changes in skeletal morphology, so that in human evolution younger human skulls are more "feminized" than older human skulls.

This could explain why Homo sapiens has survived to the present, while the other Homo species--like the Denisovans--have gone extinct.  Through self-domestication, human ancestors were selected for being less aggressive and more socially cooperative individuals.  Because of this increase in social tolerance, people in densely populated groups could cooperate with one another rather than fall into conflict.  This would allow for increasing human populations with dense social networks, so that more people interacting with one another promoted the generation, retention, and diffusion of cultural innovations, which would stimulate complex symbolic and cultural behavior as indicated by language, art, ornamentation, hunting and fishing technology, music, and long-distance trade.

The Denisovans like Dragon Man failed to achieve this, and consequently they went extinct except for some of their DNA that survives today in Homo sapiens because of ancient interbreeding between the different hominid species.

REFERENCES

Qiaomei Fu et al. 2025a. "Denisovan Mitochondrial DNA from Dental Calculus of the >146,000-year-old Harbin Cranium." Cell 188: 1-8.

Qiaomei Fu et al.  2025b. "The Proteome of the Late Middle Pleistocene Harbin Individual." Science (June 19).

Zimmer, Carl. 2025. "Mysterious Ancient Humans Now Have a Face." The New York Times (June 18).

"No Kings!" Is the Waa-Bark of America's Chimpanzee Politics of Resistance to Trump

Last Saturday, we saw a massive display of chimpanzee political rhetoric.  Subordinate chimpanzees utter pant-grunts to signal their fear and submission before a dominant chimp.  But subordinates can also utter waa-barks to signal their defiance of a dominant chimp.  If enough subordinates scream their waa-barks, and if the dominant chimp does not have a sufficiently strong coalition of supporters, he can be overthrown.  The five million people in the "No Kings" protests against Trump were shouting their waa-barks.  The people at Trump's military parade celebrating his birthday were pant-grunting their submission to Trump.  But reporters noticed that the number of spectators at the parade was small, and many of them were looking at their phones to see images of the massive crowds at the "No Kings" protests.  The waa-barks were louder than the pant-grunts.

Although chimpanzees do not have language, they do communicate with one another through sounds, postures, and facial expressions that convey information.  Often that information is about social rank.  An alpha male might engage in a loud display of intimidation that asserts his dominance over the group.  Other chimps might respond to this by signaling their submission to him.  Or they might respond with signs of resistance and defiance.  And some might even signal that they want to overthrow him.  Thus chimps engage in political rhetoric, because they try to persuade one another as to how their social order should be organized.  

We could also identify this chimpanzee political rhetoric as Lockean insofar as subordinate chimpanzees can protest against despotic dominance by the alpha male and thus limit his power, which moves towards the egalitarian social arrangement seen in human hunter-gatherer bands with an egalitarian style of hierarchy in which the leader is only primus inter pares ("first among equals").  This is what Locke saw in the state of nature in which all men are by nature equally free.  Not that all are absolutely equal, because some will have higher status than others, and some will become leaders of their social groups.  But that all adults have the natural right to be free from being unduly subordinated to anyone else without their consent, and that they have the natural right to punish those who threaten their life, liberty, or property (Second Treatise, pars. 4-10, 54, 94, 105).  

To explain the Darwinian evolution of this human state of nature, we should expect to find precursors of this human egalitarianism in our pre-human primate ancestors.  And if we assume that the common ancestor of humans and the African great apes was similar to a chimpanzee, then we might expect to see evolutionary preadaptations for an egalitarian style of dominance in chimpanzee groups.  In fact, as Christopher Boehm has argued, we can see in chimpanzees similarities to the ambivalent political nature of human hunter-gatherers that shows a tense balance between dominance, deference, and counter-dominance (Boehm 1993, 1999).  

Dominance is the natural propensity of individuals to seek the power over others that comes from superior rank in a group.  The political life of primates is organized around dominance hierarchies in which the old tend to have dominance over the young and males tend to have dominance over females, although females can also have a dominance hierarchy, and sometimes coalitions of females can resist male dominance.  This is a political universal for chimpanzees, both in the wild and in captivity; and for human beings throughout history.  Winning or losing dominance is determined by patterns of coalition formation that depend on shifting circumstances and individual decisions.

Deference is the natural propensity of individuals to submit to those who are dominant.  As political universals, deference is the correlative of dominance.  Among the various species of political primates, there are distinctive behavioral cues, both verbal and nonverbal, by which subordinates defer to dominants.

Counter-dominance is the natural propensity of individuals to resist being dominated.  Among some primates, subordinate individuals can resist excessive dominance and thus limit the power of dominant individuals.  Subordinate individuals can form large coalitions to challenge those at the top of the hierarchy.

The variation in this behavior creates differences in dominance style across species.  As Frans de Waal has observed, rhesus monkeys show a "despotic dominance style" in which subordinates cannot challenge dominants; but chimpanzees show an "egalitarian dominance style" in which subordinates can restrain dominants (de Waal 1996).  Dominant chimpanzees are expected to mediate conflicts within the group and to lead the group in conflicts with other groups.  Dominant chimpanzees can be challenged or even deposed if they do not properly carry out their conflict-mediation role.

Like chimpanzee politics, human politics shows a dominance hierarchy that can be egalitarian in style, based on the principle that leaders are only first among equals.  This egalitarianism is most evident among human hunter-gatherers who use various kinds of sanctions (from ridicule and disobedience to ostracism and execution) to punish leaders who become too despotic in their dominance.  This resistance to dominance was probably a crucial part of human evolutionary history in the Paleolithic era (from about two million years ago to 10,000 years ago).  But with the establishment of large bureaucratic states based on agricultural production, which began more than 5,000 years ago, many states have been more despotic than egalitarian.  The emergence and spread of Lockean liberal democracies over the past three centuries is in some ways a return to the egalitarian dominance of the foraging way of life in which subordinates limit the power of dominants.

To the old question in political philosophy as to whether human beings are naturally hierarchical or naturally egalitarian, the answer from biopolitical science is that human beings are both.  Niccolo Machiavelli was right to see that human political nature is torn by the tension between the propensity of the few to dominance and the propensity of the many to submit to dominance while also resisting oppressive dominance.  The history of political practice and political thought turns on this natural ambivalence interacting over time with particular political circumstances and decisions.

As an illustration of this political ambivalence among chimpanzees, here is Jane Goodall's description of an incident she observed in July of 1964 in Gombe:

"Mike, the new alpha, rests in the shade of a tree.  A sudden crashing in the undergrowth heralds the arrival of Goliath, recently deposed from the top position.  Mike does not move as Goliath charges flat out toward him, dragging a huge branch.  At the last moment Goliath turns aside, swings into a nearby tree, and sits motionless.  Only now does Mike begin to display, swaying the vegetation, hurling a few rocks, then climbing into Goliath's tree and swaying branches there.  When he stops, Goliath displays again, leaping ever closer to his adversary until Mike responds.  For a few moments both are wildly swaying foliage within 2 meters of each other; but there is no fight.  They swing to the ground and charge off through the undergrowth, running parallel, then sit staring at each other.  Goliath stands upright and rocks a sapling; Mike hurtles past, throwing a large rock.  For the next twenty-three minutes the performance continues, and during the whole episode the only physical contact between them is when one is hit by the end of a bough swayed by the other.  Finally, after a three-minute pause, Goliath moves rapidly toward Mike, crouches beside him with loud, submissive pant-grunts, and begins to groom him vigorously.  For half a minute, Mike ignores him, then turns and grooms his vanquished rival with equal intensity.  For more than an hour, they groom until both are relaxed and peaceful" (Goodall 1986, 409).

Notice the ambivalent political rhetoric in this incident.  The male dominance hierarchy is determined by the directionality of displays and pant-grunting among the adult males.  Goodall has kept a quantitative record of this for many years so that she can track the ever-changing history of the dominance hierarchy. If an alpha male is secure in his dominance, he displays towards the others in the group, and he receives pant-grunts from the others; but he never pant-grunts toward any of them.  When Goliath displays towards Mike, Goliath is challenging him, attempting to take the alpha position.  Both are feeling aggressive and fearful at the same time.  Each is trying to bluff down the other.  But while Goliath wants dominance, his fear of Mike finally drives him to signal his submission through pant-grunting; and Mike accepts his submission by reconciling with him.

Displays are more common than physical attacks, because chimps would rather avoid the danger of serious physical injuries that come from attacks.  Charging displays are threats that serve to maintain or challenge the existing order of dominance.  But reversals in rank among the males are usually the result of physical fights.  And while size and strength are important for success in displays and fights, psychological traits--such as intelligence, ingenuity, boldness, persistence, and shrewdness in forming coalitions--are crucial for success.  Mike was actually one of the smaller adult males when he overthrew Goliath, but he figured out how to use empty kerosene cans in his noisy charging displays to shock the other males and throw them into confusion until they submitted to him.  As I indicated in a previous post, Boehm and Goodall have compared Donald Trump's bombastic rhetoric to Mike's displays.

The vocal rhetoric of chimpanzees is complex.  Goodall and other primatologists have identified at least 32 distinct calls that convey particular emotions or feelings (Goodall 1986, 127; Arcadi 2018, 116-23).  One of them is the pant-grunt that Goliath uttered to signal a feeling of social apprehension and submission.  Another is the waa-bark that signals anger and defiance.  Dominant individuals can use waas as a warning to subordinates.  But from his careful study of chimp videotaped vocalizations, Boehm has concluded that most waas are used by subordinates to express their defiance of dominants (Boehm 1999, 164-69).

Boehm has seen this illustrated by what de Waal reports in his studies of the chimps in the Yerkes Primate Research Center in Georgia.  When new adult males were introduced into the community, the Yerkes females acted as a power coalition that rejected males seeking the alpha male position.  Finally, they accepted Jimoh as the alpha male.  But when he acted as a bully, the females punished him.  

For example, one day Jimoh saw that Socko, an adolescent male, was mating with one of Jomoh's favorite females.  Jimoh chased Socko around the enclosure and refused to stop.  Socko was screaming and defecating in fear.

Several females nearby began to waa bark.  They looked around to see the reaction of others.  When others began to join in the waa barking, the intensity of their protests became deafening.  Finally, Jimoh got the message.  He broke off his attack to avoid any further attacks from the females.  It was as though the chimps were taking a vote, and Jimoh had lost the vote.  If Jimoh had not stopped his attack, he might have been overthrown and even killed.

Here are the evolved primate roots of Lockean political rhetoric, in which we see the political ambivalence in the tense balance between dominance, deference, and counter-dominance.

Last Saturday, we saw a great debate between the deference to Trump at his military parade and the counter-dominance of resistance to Trump at the "No Kings" protests.

Steven Cheung, the communications director for Trump, has said: "The so-called No Kings protests have been a complete and utter failure with minuscule attendance."  Of course, that is what he has to say--he has to tell those of us who attended one of the protests that we must not believe what we saw with our own eyes.

Like I say, that's chimpanzee politics.

(Some of the material in this post comes from a previous post.)

REFERENCES

Arcadi, Adam. 2018. Wild Chimpanzees: Social Behavior of an Endangered Species. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Boehm, Christopher. 1993. "Egalitarian Behavior and Reverse Dominance Hierarchy." Current Anthropology 34:227-254.

Boehm, Christopher. 1999. Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Goodall, Jane. 1986. The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

de Waal, Frans. 1996. Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

June 14, 2025: The Day Donald Trump Lost the Consent of the People

 As I have thought more about the "No Kings" protests on June 14, and what I saw in the Grand Rapids protest, the more I am inclined to think that was a turning point for the resistance to Trump's dictatorship.

As many as five million Americans participated in the "No Kings" protests across America in over 1,500 communities.  This was possibly the single biggest mass protest in American history.  At the same time, the military parade for Trump's birthday in Washington was a pathetic flop.  If you don't think so, just Google the images of the "No Trumps" protests and the military parade.  Look at Trump and Melania.  Do they look enthusiastic about the parade?  Decide for yourself.  Look at the images of people scattered over the grass and the stands.  Does that look like a big turnout for Trump?  Why were there no Trump supporters at the Grand Rapids "No Kings" demonstrations--or at other "No Kings" gatherings as far as I can tell?

Why didn't my wife and I see Trump supporters at the Grand Rapids rally?  Were they all in Washington for the military parade?  Well, apparently not.  Because the parade was not well attended.

Now, I understand that most of us might assume that overturning a monarchic dictator like Trump might require that a great majority of people would have to rebel against his rule.  But as Chenoweth has indicated, as few as 3.5 percent of the people actively involved in a resistance movement might be enough  to overturn a dictatorial regime.

Most human beings are passively deferential to whatever regime rules over them.  A smaller group are actively supportive of the regime--like Trump's fervent supporters.  But that leaves an active third or so of the people who might actively resist--by protesting--like the "No Kings" protesters.

Donald Trump is aware of that.  That's why he's so visibly disturbed by the fact that his people did not turn out on June 14--either to  support his military parade or to harass the "No Kings" protests.

Popular Lockeans at the "No Kings" Protests Against Trump

 

On February 19, 2025, this picture was posted on the official White House "X" account.  Trump had posted: "CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD.  Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED.  LONG LIVE THE KING!"

My wife and I participated in the "No Kings" protest in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  This was one of over 2,000 protest gatherings across the United States attracting millions of participants.  We were surprised by the size of the crowd.  There appeared to be something over 20,000 people, which is about ten percent of the population of the city of Grand Rapids.  The first rally was in the park on the Grand River in front of the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum.  When we arrived, the park was so packed with people that it was impossible for us to get in, which was also true for thousands of other people milling around the area.

We were also surprised that there were no police anywhere, as if the Grand Rapids police had decided that there was no reason to expect any disruptions from the protest crowds.  Moreover, there were no "Proud Boys" or "Michigan militia" types carrying guns who might have caused trouble.  Later in the afternoon, we heard about the political assassination in Minnesota that reportedly caused some of the "No Kings" protests in Minnesota to be cancelled.

These protests were scheduled for June 14 to counter Trump's military parade in Washington to celebrate his birthday and the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army.  I watched the parade on CSPAN.  The CSPAN cameras showed remarkably small crowds in the bleachers and on the grass.  Of course, the White House claimed that over 250,000 people attended.  But if that were true, the Mall would have been completely covered with people, which was not the case.

To me, Trump's military parade was really dull and lifeless.  Many of the spectators at the parade showed the same reaction.  Here's a picture of some of them:

The "No Kings" protests raise at least two kinds of questions.  First, what motivates millions of people to turn out for these mass protests?  What do they expect to achieve?  And how likely are they to succeed?  

Secondly, what's wrong with monarchy?  Why do most Americans--and perhaps most people around the world today--assume that monarchy is bad?  Should we take seriously the argument of some intellectuals supporting Trump (such as Curtis Yarvin) that monarchy is a better form of government than democracy, and therefore Americans should be happy to have Donald Trump as their king?

NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE AS LOCKEAN NATURAL PUNISHMENT OF DICTATORS

The people participating in these mass protests can be identified as "popular Lockeans."  I have written about that term as used by historian T. H. Breen to describe the ordinary Americans who supported the American Revolution in acting according to the principles of John Locke even though most of them had never read Locke.  In the state of nature, Locke thought, everyone has the "executive power of the law of nature," which is the natural right to punish those who violate the law of nature; and this can be expressed in both violent and nonviolent resistance to tyranny.  The American Revolution began with American nonviolent resistance from 1761 to 1775, followed by the violent resistance in the Revolutionary War from 1775 to 1783.  June 14, 1775 was the day that George Washington was formally appointed Commander of the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress.  In July of that year, the "Appeal to Heaven" Flag was adopted as a battle flag for the American Army, which explicitly invoked Locke's term for revolutionary violence.

Erica Chenoweth and her colleagues see the "No Kings" protests as part of the growing nonviolent resistance to Trump.  As indicated in some previous posts, Chenoweth has compiled an impressive data set (from 1900 to the present) for violent and nonviolent resistance movements that shows that every campaign of nonviolent protest that achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population was successful.  As indicated on the "No Kings" website, the organizers are inspired by the "3.5 principle"--believing that mobilizing only a small proportion of the people in mass protests can overturn a dictatorial ruler.

Over the past 40 years, scholars like Chenoweth and Gene Sharp have developed practical rules for organizing successful nonviolent resistance movements.  One of the most important features of this is avoiding violence by having well-trained "marshals" at every protest whose job is to manage the crowd to suppress any disturbance that might become violent.  We saw those marshals at work at the Grand Rapids protest.

The political theory of nonviolent resistance is Lockean in being founded on the fundamental principle that all governmental authority depends on the consent of the governed, and therefore governments fall when the people withdraw their consent through nonviolent or violent resistance.

As Chenoweth has indicated, protest movements succeed when they gain momentum.  And momentum can be measured through a simple law of physics:  momentum equals mass times velocity (p = mv).  The momentum of dissent is a product of participation (mass) and the number of protest events in a week (velocity).  So as the number of participants in the "No Kings" movement increases, and as the number of protests per week increase, the movement gains momentum, and thus becomes more successful.

The test will come when law enforcement and military people are ordered to shoot the protestors.  Will they obey their orders?  If they disobey, then the protestors have won.  Even if they obey, this will provoke a moral revulsion in the country that will draw more people into the protests.

Another test will come in the mid-term elections in November of 2026.  If opponents of Trump take control of the two Houses of Congress, then the Congress can impeach him.  If Trump's Republicans cancel the elections, then the popular movement to overturn Trump's rule becomes stronger.

THE RISE AND DECLINE OF MONARCHY

But why "No Kings"?  Why are so many Americans not persuaded by Yarvin's argument that Robert Filmer's defense of divine-right monarchy was superior to Locke's theory of government by popular consent?

As I have indicated in previous posts, monarchy was the most common form of government for over 5,000 years, but then around 1900, the number of nonmonarchies began to surpass the number of monarchies.  There are two possible reasons for this.  First, monarchy has always depended on perceiving society as a rigid hierarchy in the chain of command, in which everyone knew his place.  At the top was a ruling elite--the monarch and one or two percent of the people who were nobles and priests.  At the bottom, about 80-90% of the population were peasants.  One possible answer as to why this premodern conception of natural and divine hierarchy has been undermined in modern culture is that modernity has adopted the Lockean evolutionary symbolic niche construction of the bourgeois culture of equal liberty.  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ."

Consequently, as I have written previously, the few monarchic governments that survive today--like the British monarchy of King Charles III--are not real monarchies because the king is only a ceremonial head of state without any absolute power.

A second reason for the decline of monarchy is that the development of mass communications has made monarchy unnecessary.  In the past, democratic or republican forms of government were possible only in small societies where the people or their representatives could meet all together at one public assembly--Athenian democracy or the Roman Republic, for example.  Larger societies were so disconnected that they needed monarchy as a focal point to which everyone could look as the central authority.  But then with the growth of communications technology--the printing press, newspapers, national postal systems, the telegraph, radio, television, and finally the internet--large societies have become so highly mobilized and interconnected that there is less need for a monarch as a focal point for authority.  

The internet has made it easy for popular mass movements like the "No Kings" protests to form across large societies and even around the globe.  And that's why it's so hard to preserve autocratic rule in the modern world without shutting down or at least censoring the internet.

How Leo Strauss Predicted the Nietzschean Nihilism of Trump's Intellectuals

                                                                          Leo Strauss

Francis Fukuyama has published an essay for Persuasion on "A Chilling Prediction by Leo Strauss."  He reproduces an excerpt from a lecture on "German Nihilism" that Strauss gave in 1941 at the New School for Social Research.  In his prefatory remarks, Fukuyama says that we should find this text "chilling" because Strauss's intellectual analysis of the young German nihilists supporting Hitler's Nazism describes perfectly the thinking of those far-right intellectuals who today are supporting Trump.

Just like the German nihilists described by Strauss, Fukuyama observes, American far-right thinkers today--like Adrian Vermeule, Patrick Deneen, Curtis Yarvin, and Costin Alamariu ("Bronze Age Pervert")--want to destroy liberalism because it is morally degrading in promoting the soft hedonism of the open society rather than the hard heroism of the closed society. 

This points to Strauss's primary claim in his lecture:  "German nihilism desires the destruction of modern civilization as far as modern civilization has a moral meaning." He explained: 

It is a moral protest.  That protest proceeds from the conviction that the internationalism inherent in modern civilization, or, more precisely, that the establishment of a perfectly open society which is as it were the goal of modern civilization, and therefore all aspirations directed toward that goal, are irreconcilable with the basic demands of moral life.  That protest proceeds from the conviction that the root of all moral life is essentially and therefore eternally the closed society; from the conviction that the open society is bound to be, if not immoral, at least amoral: the meeting ground of seekers of pleasure, of gain, of irresponsible power, indeed of any kind of irresponsibility and lack of seriousness.

Strauss saw that the intellectual godfather of this German nihilism is Friedrich Nietzsche--the Nietzsche who scorned the ignoble pleasure-seeking life of the "Last Man" based on the slave morality dictated by the Christian principle of the equal dignity of all human beings, which denied the master morality of the few noble masters fit to rule over the multitude of inferior human beings.  In foreseeing the future emergence of a new nobility of those few superhuman higher men entitled to enslave the many subhuman lower men, Nietzsche has had a seductive appeal to those young nihilists who imagine themselves becoming the masters at the top of the natural order of rank in a new hierarchical closed society at war with its liberal enemies.

As Strauss indicated, what made this intellectual attitude "nihilistic" was that while it was clear about what it denied--liberalism--it was not clear about what it affirmed because its preferred alternative to liberalism was vague.  Since its No was more emphatic than its Yes, it was nihilistic in its passion for destruction--for Nothing--without offering any vision of what exactly would replace liberalism.

Similarly, Fukuyama suggests, today's "post-liberals" have no coherent conception of what should replace liberalism.  On the one hand, Deneen and Vermeule seem to want something like Catholic integralism--a Catholic theocracy enforcing a religious morality.  On the other hand, Yarvin and Alamariu are atheists who want to return to some kind of pagan hierarchy enforced by a strong, even tyrannical, government.  All that the two sides have in common is their hatred of liberalism.

This hatred of liberalism is also what moved the German nihilists to support Nazism.  And, as Fukuyama indicates, Strauss seemed to clearly reject Nazism in his 1941 lecture when he identified it as the "lowest, most provincial, most unenlightened and most dishonorable form" of German nihilism.  But still, Strauss argued, liberals needed to understand the nihilistic roots of illiberal politics in order to see the power of the Nietzschean nihilistic critique of liberalism.  Fukuyama thinks the same is true today in America: liberals need to understand why the American far-right intellectuals hate liberalism and why that hatred of liberalism as rooted in Nietzschean nihilism has such an appeal for many people today--particularly, the young men supporting Trump.  

Actually, Fukuyama does not explicitly mention Trump in his remarks, but the implicit reference to Trump is clear.  It should be noted, however, that while Fukuyama explains the far-right intellectuals supporting Trump as illiberal nihilists, he has explained Trump himself as motivated not by any ideology but by what Nietzsche called ressentiment--"acute resentment of others based on wounded pride, perceived disregard, fears of inadequacy, and a desire to exact revenge on those who had earlier failed to pay adequate respect."  I have explained this resentment as an expression of Trump's chimpanzee grandiose narcissism.  Moreover, Fukuyama has suggested, the core of the MAGA movement is mostly moved not by any ideology--like the illiberal nihilism of the far-right intellectuals--but by the shared resentment of people who think they have not been respected by those who belong to the elites and look down on them with disdain.  This explains why Trump's staunchest supporters will remain loyal to him even when they suffer economically from his policies--such as high tariffs that will harm many of Trump's voters.

I agree with everything Fukuyama says here.  By the way, I also agree with Fukuyama's defense of liberalism as first announced in his 1989 "End of History?" article.  

But I do think Fukuyama misses three crucial flaws in Strauss's reasoning that should come out of a careful reading of his "German Nihilism" lecture that are pertinent to our understanding of, and our response to, both German and American nihilism.  

First, Fukuyama does not notice Strauss's quiet endorsement of the "young nihilists" that Will Altman and others have identified as evidence that Strauss was attracted to the nihilism of the Nazis.  

Second, Fukuyama also does not notice that in naming Nietzsche as the godfather of illiberal nihilism, Strauss failed to recognize Nietzsche's support for liberalism in the writings of his middle period (particularly, Human, All Too Human).  

Third, Strauss had also failed to see how philosophic proponents of liberalism like John Locke and Adam Smith had shown that liberalism cultivates the moral and intellectual virtues, which refutes the charge of the illiberal nihilists that liberalism must be ignoble and degrading.

Since I have previously elaborated each of these points, I will only briefly summarize them here with links to previous posts and references to the 4th edition of Political Questions (PQ4).

STRAUSS'S NAZISM?

Fukuyama's excerpt from "German Nihilism" does not include this passage:

I have tried to circumscribe the intellectual and moral situation in which a nihilism emerged which was not in all cases base in its origin.  Moreover, I take it for granted that not everything to which the young nihilists objected was unobjectionable, and that not every writer or speaker whom they despised, was respectable. . . . Let us then not hesitate to look for one moment at the phenomenon which I called nihilism, from the point of view of the nihilists. . . . A new reality is in the making; it is transforming the whole world; in the meantime there is: nothing, but--a fertile nothing.

Notice that in taking "the point of view of the nihilists," Strauss actually goes a long way towards endorsing their position: some (most?) of that to which the nihilists objected really was objectionable, and some (most?) of the writers and speakers whom they despised really were despicable.  This is one piece of evidence cited by Will Altman for his provocative claim that Strauss supported Nazi nihilism in its attack on liberalism (PQ4, 491-99).

In "German Nihilism," Strauss took "the point of view of the nihilists" in explaining their argument that an illiberal "closed society" was ennobling, while a liberal "open society" was degrading.  Any reader of Strauss will know that he often embraced this idea that every healthy society--and particularly, the premodern societies like Athens and Sparta--was a closed society as opposed to the modern open societies of liberalism that inevitably became corrupt.  Actually, as I have argued, Athens was a much more open and liberal society than Strauss was willing to admit--that's why the philosophical schools of Plato and Aristotle could flourish in Athens but not in Sparta.

Strauss did not allow "German Nihilism" to be published while he was alive.  It was not published until 1999 (in Interpretation), which was 26 years after his death in 1973.  Was this because he feared that it was too open in suggesting his sympathy for German nihilism?

Similarly, Strauss's praise of Martin Heidegger in "Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism" was not published until 1989 (in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism), 16 years after his death.  Heidegger joined the Nazi Party in 1933.  He offered vigorous philosophic defenses of Hitler and the Nazi Party.  And he never apologized for his support of the Nazis--right up to his death in 1976.

Strauss had been a student of Heidegger, and he praised Heidegger as the greatest thinker of the twentieth century.  In "Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism," he left his reader doubting whether there was any good refutation of Heidegger's Nazi attack on liberalism:

All rational liberal philosophic positions have lost their significance and power.  One may deplore this, but I for one cannot bring myself to clinging to philosophic positions which have been shown to be inadequate.  I am afraid that we shall have to make a very great effort in order to find a solid basis for rational liberalism.  Only a great thinker could help us in our intellectual plight.  But here is the great trouble: the only great thinker in our time is Heidegger.

Notice how emphatic Strauss is in using the word "I" here.  He once explained that one form of esoteric writing was to use the word "we" to seemingly endorse a common opinion, rather than saying "I," which suggested that one was truly endorsing that opinion. 

This is part of the evidence supporting Altman's argument that Strauss saw himself as the culmination of the "Third Wave of Modernity" that overthrew liberalism--first Nietzsche, then Heidegger, and finally Strauss.

Although I am not fully persuaded by Altman, I am persuaded that he has proven that Strauss often implied some endorsement of the Nazi attack on liberalism, and he never publicly and emphatically rejected Nazi nihilism and affirmed liberalism--as did some of his friends like Hans Jonas.  That was a moral and intellectual failure on the part of Strauss. 

NIETZSCHE'S DARWINIAN LIBERALISM

Another of Strauss's failures was in saying that Nietzsche initiated the Third Wave of Modernity that would lead to the illiberal nihilism of Nazism.  Although this might be true for the early and late writings of Nietzsche that were so often praised by the Nazis, it is not true for the writings of the middle period, and particularly Human, All Too Human.

In this book, Nietzsche defended a Darwinian liberalism that rejected many of the main ideas of his later writing--such as the celebration of the Ubermensch (the Superman or Overman), which became a theme for the Nazis.  

One can make a good case (as Bruce Detwiler does) for "Dionysian aristocratic radicalism" as the political teaching of Nietzsche in his early and late writings.  But one also needs to recognize that Nietzsche's endorsement of liberal democracy rooted in Darwinian evolution in the writings of his middle period contradicts what he says in his other writings.  Then, if one compares those two teachings, one can make a good argument that Nietzsche's Darwinian aristocratic liberalism is morally and intellectually superior to his Dionysian aristocratic radicalism (PQ4, 457-60).  This is Nietzsche's defense of liberalism against the attack of the German nihilists.

Strauss failed to see this.

LOCKE AND SMITH ON LIBERAL VIRTUES

Strauss also failed to see how Locke and Smith had made powerful arguments for liberalism's moral and intellectual virtues.  One of Strauss's most influential pieces of writing--particularly among the far-right intellectual critics of liberalism--is his interpretation of Locke in Natural Right and History, which presents Lockean liberalism as promoting a vulgar and soul-deadening soft hedonism, which Strauss famously called "a joyless quest for joy."  This is the Locke that "post-liberals" like Patrick Deneen have scorned.

But as I have argued, this ignores much of what Locke wrote about how a free society secures the liberty that allows for the cultivation of moral and intellectual excellence--including the freedom to live the philosophic life (for people like Strauss!) (PQ4, 489-91).  So, while critics of liberalism like Deneen insist that Lockean liberalism teaches "pursuit of immediate gratification" and the "absence of restraints upon one's desires," he says nothing about how Locke contradicts this claim in Some Thoughts Concerning Education.  In that book, Locke stresses the importance of parents educating their children so that they have a sense of shame in caring about their good reputation (secs. 56, 61, 78).  Locke says that "the great principle and foundation of all virtue and worth is placed in this, that a man is able to deny himself his own desires, cross his own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs as best though the appetite lean the other way" (sec. 33). "It seems plain to me that the principle of all virtue and excellency lies in a power of denying ourselves the satisfaction of our own desires where reason does not authorize them" (sec. 38). Children must be taught that "covetousness and the desire of having in our possession and under our dominion more than we have need of" is "the root of all evil" (sec. 110). 

Above all, Locke insists, children must be taught and habituated to show "civility"--respect and good will to all people (secs. 66-67, 70, 109, 117, 143-44). Here Locke's emphasis on the need for "civility" is part of what Norbert Elias identified as the "civilizing process" promoted by early modern liberalism to overcome the incivility, violence, and corrupt manners of medieval pre-modern Europe.  Deneen and Strauss are silent about all of this.

They are also silent about Smith's argument about how a liberal society--"allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice"--promotes the moral and intellectual virtues.  Strauss said almost nothing about Smith, but Strauss's thinking about liberal political philosophy shaped the interpretation of Smith developed by Joseph Cropsey, Strauss's student and colleague.  Cropsey claimed that in Smith's "commercial society," commerce takes the place of virtue.  But as I have indicated, Cropsey ignored or played down everything Smith said--particularly, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments--about how the moral and intellectual virtues are cultivated in a free society (PQ4, 340-48).

Moreover, Cropsey was completely silent about how Charles Darwin saw that Smith's moral philosophy was confirmed by his scientific theory of moral evolution, and how this has been deepened by the evolutionary studies of morality over the 150 years since Darwin's Descent of Man (PQ4, 316-28).

Strauss and the Straussians have failed to see how a careful reading of Nietzsche, Locke, and Smith can reveal the nobility of liberalism in securing the liberty that makes virtue possible, thus refuting the moral critique of liberalism by the illiberal nihilists, including those today who try to provide the intellectual justification for Trump's illiberalism.

Smuggling as a Natural Right to Evade Trump's Tariffs

THE NATURAL RIGHT TO FREE TRADE--AND TO SMUGGLING

I have argued that the desire for trade--or what Adam Smith called "the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange"--arose early in human evolution.  I have also argued that that evolved natural desire for trade supports a natural right to free trade, and therefore any despotic interference with free trade will provoke resistance from those who want to trade.  This led me to predict--about six weeks ago--that Trump's despotic tariffs would move people to evade those tariffs through smuggling.  Now there's a good article in the New York Times confirming that prediction.

When a good is imported into the U.S., the importer must report to the U.S. customs agency the identity of the good, its dollar value, and its country of origin.  The tariff charge on that good will depend upon those three factors.  So, for example, if the tariff rate for a plastic toy from China is 50%, and if the declared value of that toy is $10, then the tariff due is $5.

Consequently, there are at least four ways of evading this tariff.  The importer can avoid the tariff completely by sneaking the imported good into the U.S. without notifying the customs agents.  Or the importer can give the customs agents false information about the identity of the good, its declared value, or its country of origin that will result in a lower tariff than what the law requires.

Customs agents have the power to inspect shipping containers to see if importers are being dishonest in their reporting of what they are importing.  But since there are only 26,000 U.S. customs agents, and the number of containers entering the Port of Los Angeles per day is about 27,400, it is impossible for those agents to inspect more than a small proportion of those containers; and therefore smuggling by dishonest importers is easy.

One of the most common ways of dodging Trump's tariffs over the past few months has been what is called "transshipping."  For example, a U.S. importer pays a special fee to a Chinese shipping company that moves Chinese goods from China to Vietnam and then ships those goods to the U.S., so that the importer can identify the imported good as coming from Vietnam, which means a lower tariff than the tariff on Chinese goods.  This illustrates how despotically unfair tariffs create huge economic incentives for smuggling.

I call Trump's tariffs despotic because they arise from his personal whims in exercising his arbitrary absolute power without any deliberative process in Congress for deciding whether such tariffs are fair and reasonable.

"ENLIGHTENED STATESMEN WILL NOT ALWAYS BE AT THE HELM"

Writing at the Law & Liberty website, Erik Matson ("No Tariffs Without Representation," March 19, 2025) has surveyed the history of how Congress has delegated its constitutional power to levy tariffs to the President, and how Trump has twisted that power to serve his despotic dominance of global trade.

In the Declaration of Independence, the list of grievances against Great Britain included denunciation of the King and Parliament "for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world."  Later, in the Constitution, the Founders entrusted Congress with the power over international trade by giving Congress the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises" and the power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations" (Article I, section 8, clauses 1 & 3).

The Founders feared, however, that this power over foreign trade would be used by factional groups to promote protectionist policies that would advance their selfish interests contrary to the public interest of the community.  In Federalist Number 10, James Madison warned: "Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes, and probably by neither with a sole regard to justice and the public good."  Madison thought: "It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good.  Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm."  Donald Trump's presidency confirms this warning.

In 1930, the Congress enacted the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised average U.S. tariffs to almost 60%.  Other countries around the world retaliated with high tariffs of their own.  As a result of this global trade war, worldwide commerce fell below its 1929 level over the next three years, which created the Great Depression.

Once the folly of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff became clear, the Congress in 1934 began to delegate its tariff powers to the Executive Branch with the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA), which allowed the president to reduce tariff rates by up to 50% as long as there were comparable reductions by other nations.  The RTAA had to be reauthorized by Congress every three years.  Allowing the president to bypass the Congress in reducing tariffs was seen as a way of escaping the problem of factionalism in trade policy, where lobbyists for particular interest groups demand protectionist tariffs from Congress that create harmful trade wars.

As Erik Matson has indicated, the RTAA and later trade legislation along with international trade agreements after World War II have allowed presidents who understood the wisdom of free trade to promote the liberalization of global trade.  But that ended in 2016 with the election of a president for whom "tariff" was a "beautiful word."

Trump has exploited the vague language in some of the international trade laws that allow the president to increase tariffs in response to "national security" threats (the Trade Expansion Act of 1962), cases of "unfair trade practice" (Trade Act of 1974), or "unusual and extraordinary" threats in an "emergency" (the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977).  Trump's advisors have told him that he can impose an arbitrary protectionism based on his personal whims of the moment by pretending that this is justified by concerns for "national security" or "fair trade."

NO TARIFFS WITHOUT REPRESENTATION

Tariffs are taxes.  And so just as the American revolutionaries demanded "no taxation without representation," Americans today can demand "no tariffs without representation."  That's why the Constitution gives Congress--the body that is most representative of the people--the power to levy taxes and tariffs.

The problem is that Congress has gone too far in delegating its power over tariffs to the president.  There are legislative proposals in Congress now that would say that the president cannot raise tariffs without getting explicit congressional approval.

Unfortunately, as long as the Congress is controlled by Republicans who slavishly obey Trump, we cannot expect that the Congress will pass this kind of legislation.

Of course, we have seen that from day to day, if not from hour to hour, Trump changes his mind about his tariffs.  The Financial Times has called this his TACO trade policy--"Trump Always Chickens Out."   So we can hope that he finally decides that his tariffs are not beautiful but boring.

In the meantime, let's Make American Smuggling Great Again.

The Chimpanzee Politics of Joe Biden's Betrayal of America

Like many people I have been trying to understand why and how the Democratic Party threw the presidential election of 2024 to Donald Trump.  I now think the answer to that question will come from reading two books--Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, It's Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again and Frans de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics.  

When Joe Biden announced in 2023 that he would run for a second term, most American voters thought he was too old to serve out a second term.  He was already the oldest man to be President of the United States, and by the end of a second term, he would have been 86 years old.  Moreover, throughout 2023 and 2024, the voters saw his drastic physical and cognitive decline.  At the same time, after inflation peaked at 9.1% in the summer of 2022, the highest in 40 years, many voters thought Biden's economic policies had failed, and they continued to believe that even when inflation rates came down slightly by 2024.  Consequently, by early 2024, the polls indicated that Biden was going to lose to Trump.  But it was also clear, that most voters were unhappy with the choice between Trump and Biden, and that if the Democrats had nominated a moderate Democrat not identified with Biden and his economic policies, the Democrats would have won because Trump was not the first choice for the majority of voters.

So why did the Democrats allow Biden to run for a second term?  Why did they not organize an open presidential primary to identify a good alternative to both Biden and Trump?  Why did they wait until the end of July in 2024 to force Biden to withdraw from the race?  And why did they then allow Kamala Harris to become the nominee, even though she was even more unpopular than Biden, and she ran as a proponent of "Bidenomics" despite the unpopularity of Biden's inflation?

The answer is that it was all chimpanzee politics.  Once Joe Biden and Jill Biden had won political dominance as the alpha male and alpha female ("First Lady"), they didn't want to give it up, even though they had lost their minimum winning coalition by 2024.  Other Democrat politicians who could have defeated Trump refused to enter the race because they thought they could not risk being disloyal to the Bidens.  Even after Harris replaced Biden as the nominee, she refused to show disloyalty by renouncing Biden's unpopular policies (particularly on inflation).  This allowed Trump to win even though he was not the first choice of the voters.  Now he's the dominant chimp, who proudly announces his dictatorial rule: "I run the country and the world."

I have written many posts about the chimpanzee politics of dominance hierarchies.  People often assume that among animals the dominance hierarchy must be determined by fighting in which the biggest and strongest animal wins and becomes the alpha.  But primatologists like de Waal and Jane Goodall have shown that this is false.  Among chimpanzees and other animals, physical strength is only one of many traits required for becoming the dominant alpha leader.  To become the alpha, one needs supporters.  One must form coalitions with partners, and to win the support of the females and the children, one needs to act as a mediator in intervening in disputes to enforce peace and unity either through impartial intervention or by supporting the weaker party against the stronger.  One must know how to reconcile after disputes.  And one must know how to achieve mutual cooperation through reciprocity by returning favors and by punishing those who are not cooperative.

Males tend to reach their peak in the hierarchy between age twenty and twenty-six years.  Goodall explains: "Factors other than age, which determine the position of a male in the dominance hierarchy include physical fitness, aggressiveness, skill at fighting, ability to form coalitions, intelligence, and a number of personality factors such as boldness and determination. . . . At Gombe some males strive with much energy to better their social status over a period of years; others work hard for a short while, but give up if they encounter a serious setback; a few seem remarkably unconcerned about their social rank."

Chimp male canine teeth are powerful weapons for killing.  But remarkably, chimp fighting almost never leads to killing, except when male chimps are attacking chimps outside their community.  Fighting for dominance within a community is carried out through the bluffing of spectacular, charging displays of intimidation.

Goodall and De Waal have seen among chimpanzees what some political scientists have called government by the "minimal winning coalition."  No one individual can rule without supporters, and so there must always be a ruling coalition supporting the leader, who must satisfy his supporters.  A dictatorship is rule by a small coalition.  Democracy is rule by a large coalition.  The leader must serve the interests of his coalition, and so the larger the coalition, the closer this approximates to serving the common interests of society.

One can also see among chimpanzees confirmation for Machiavelli's political psychology of the one, the few, and the many.  In every society, there are a few people who are ambitious to rule over others, and out of these ambitious few, one individual will emerge as the dominant ruler over all.  Most people do not want to rule, and they will defer to the rule of the few, but the many do not want to be exploited by those ruling few.  To avoid an exploitative despotic rule, there needs to be a balance between the one, the few, and the many.  The hope of the American founders--perhaps most clearly expressed by John Adams--was that American government would separate and balance these three powers: 

Adams believed that human nature is such that every human society must decide the question, Who is the first man?  "It is a question that must be decided, in every species of gregarious animals, as well as men."  Even in the most civilized societies, "the same nature remains," and the contest for first rank must be decided, whether by peaceful or by violent rivalry.  The balance of powers answers this question by providing for a supreme executive office to be filled by one person with sufficient ambition to strive for it, while still checking the power of this executive officer with the powers of other offices--the legislative and judicial offices--filled by the ambitious few, with the ultimate check on power coming from the great multitude of people who defer to their rulers while also resisting exploitative dominance by their rulers.

Consider how this explains the history of American presidential politics over the past two years.  Joe Biden has been driven by a life-long ambition to be President of the United States.  In 1972, he was elected Senator from Delaware at age 30, which is the minimum age for a Senator set by the Constitution.  He failed in his first two runs for the presidency in 1988 and 2008.  But he did become Vice-President in 2008 after being selected by Barack Obama as his running mate.  In 2016, Biden wanted to run again for the presidency, but Obama supported Hillary Clinton, which created a deep resentment in Biden.  He ran again in 2020--without Obama's support in the primaries--and this time he finally won in defeating Trump.

Since his inauguration as President in 2021--the oldest president at 79--fulfilled a lifetime of striving to be Number One, it is not surprising that in the summer of 2023, he announced he would run for reelection, despite the fact that most Americans saw the physical and mental decline that came with his advanced age.  It is hard for a man like Biden to give up the power and fame of being President of the United States.  As Tapper and Thompson report, four-time California Governor Jerry Brown understood why Biden stubbornly refused to drop out of the race for a second term: "Politics is addictive.  It's exciting.  It's kind of psychic cocaine.  People just don't want to just go back to their former boring lives" (50).

But then why didn't Biden follow the example of Lyndon Johnson in 1968?  Johnson was elected to his first full term in a landslide victory in 1964, after becoming president in the wake of JFK's assassination.  In 1968, Johnson chose to run for reelection even though he was very unpopular because of his prosecution of the Vietnam War.  It was widely assumed that a sitting president could not be denied renomination by his party for a second term if he ran.  But after running in some early primaries, and being challenged by the candidacies of Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy--part of a "Dump Johnson" movement--Johnson announced on March 31, 1968, that he would no longer run for the nomination.  This allowed his Vice President--Hubert Humphrey--to run as the Democrat candidate, although he was defeated by Richard Nixon in the election.

LBJ was similar to Biden in many ways.  Like Biden, LBJ had a life-long ambition to achieve political dominance.  In 1937, at age 29, he was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives.  In 1948, was elected to the U.S. Senate.  In 1954, he became Senate Majority Leader.  In 1960, he ran for President.  But when Kennedy won the party's nomination, he selected Johnson as his Vice-President.  Becoming President fulfilled his driving ambition for power.  And so he did not want to give up that power in 1968, even though he was unpopular.  But unlike Biden, he ended his campaign early--almost four months earlier than did Biden.  What explains this difference?

One difference is that Biden was surrounded by a small inner circle of advisors that controlled the information he received and that insulated him from public view.  The most important member of this inner circle was Jill Biden who protected Biden from bad news (such as unfavorable polls) and thus protected her own power as First Lady.  The rest of the inner circle was known in the White House as "the Politburo": long-time Biden aides Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Ron Klain, and Bruce Reed.  These five people supported Biden's run for reelection because their powerful prominence in government depended on extending Biden's presidency.  David Axelrod saw "that Donilon was so blinded by his emotional attachment to Joe Biden--his fate and life inextricably bound up with the president's--that he just couldn't let go" (207).  As Democrat congressman Peter Aguilar observed, "folks like Ricchetti and Donilon--they're living the first line of their obituaries right now.  People don't give that up" (253).

Another difference from Johnson is that Biden did not face anything like the "Dump Johnson" movement--popular candidates challenging him in the presidential primaries.  Beginning as early as 2022, Congressman Dean Phillips, a member of the House Democratic leadership team, began warning that Biden's evident cognitive decline would make it impossible for him to communicate clearly to voters, and so the party would need to find someone else to run for president in 2024.  He suggested that the best candidates would be one of the Democrat governors in the Midwest--such as Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.  Phillips had tried to speak directly with Pritzker and Whitmer, but they refused to even take his calls.  Although he admitted that he was not the best candidate, Phillips announced his presidential campaign on October 27, 2023.  He said his aim was to force Biden into a debate, in which Biden would show that he lacked the cognitive ability to win another presidential campaign.  The Democratic Party obstructed Phillips' efforts.  He suspended his campaign after a bad showing on Super Tuesday (March 6, 2024), and he endorsed Joe Biden.

So, for two years, from the summer of 2022 to the summer of 2024, the elite politicians of the Democratic Party refused to challenge Biden's decision to run for a second term because having loyally supported him in 2020, they were afraid to show disloyalty to Biden as their party leader.  Thus, they lacked the political shrewdness of chimpanzees who understand that politics is all about shifting coalitions, so that the loyal supporters of the dominant chimp will withdraw their support as soon as he manifests any signs of weakness, and then a new coalition forms to support a new alpha male.

For example, when de Waal began studying the chimpanzees at the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands in 1975, he saw that Yeroen was dominant over the group, with the support of Luit and Nikkie.  The political hierarchy among chimps is indicated by a special form of greeting.  Chimpanzees show a submissive greeting that is a sequence of short panting grunts by the subordinate individual as he looks up at the superior individual, which is usually accompanied by a series of deep bobbing bows by the subordinate.  Sometimes the subordinate will stretch out a hand to the superior or kiss the superior's feet, neck, or chest.  The superior reacts to this by rising up and making his hair stand on end, so that he looks very large in contrast to the groveling subordinate.  The alpha male is the male who is "greeted" by the other males.  Generally, the alpha male is also "greeted" by the females and the children in a group.

The male on the left is dominant.  The male on the right is subordinate.  Although they are actually the same size, the dominant male makes himself look bigger.

In 1976, de Waal saw the first of two power take-overs, which he understood with the help of Machiavelli, and this is what became the central focus of his book Chimpanzee Politics.  In the spring of 1976, Luit stopped "greeting" Yeroen, which initiated months of tense conflict between them as they fought over which would be dominant.  Luit formed a coalition with Nikkie, so that Nikkie would help Luit against Yeroen. On June 21st, Yeroen bared his teeth for the first time, which is a sign of fear in chimps.  On September 1, Yeroen "greeted" Luit for the first time.  Luit began to take on the control role of the alpha male in mediating fights to restore peace in the group.  On October 31, Yeroen "greeted" Nikkie for the first time.  So, now, Luit was the alpha male, Nikkie was second in command, and Yeroen was ranked third.  But then, in the spring of 1977, Nikkie formed a coalition with Yeroen to challenge Luit, and by December of 1977, Luit was "greeting" Nikkie as his superior. Nikkie had become the alpha male, with Yeroen second in command. 

Congressman Phillips saw that there was a similar opportunity for a power take-over among Democratic politicians once Biden showed his vulnerability in 2023 and 2024. But it's hard to understand why ambitious Democratic politicians like Whitmer, Pritzker, Shapiro, and Newsom did not see that this was the time to betray their party leader and put together a new coalition to support a new person in the position of dominance.

It was not until Biden's disastrous debate with Trump on June 27, 2024, that everyone saw what Phillips and a few others had seen much earlier--that Biden's cognitive decline would make it impossible for him to be a competent campaigner for reelection.  Even then, however, it took three weeks for party leaders to persuade Biden to withdraw.  When that finally happened, they then allowed Kamala Harris to lock up her nomination in only two days of phone calls (July 21-22).  They refused to take seriously the suggestion of Obama and others that there should be a short "mini-primary" or an open convention that would allow a few candidates to compete for the nomination.

Strangely, as Harris campaigned she refused the advice of her campaign people to separate herself from Biden and the unpopular policies of the Biden administration (particularly in connection with inflation).  Tapper and Thompson report that in one meeting with her campaign staff, Harris asked: "If I were to really distinguish myself, how would that make me look?"  She then answered her own question: "Disloyal."

On October 8, Harris went on The View.  At one point in the interview, Sunny Hostin asked: "Well, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?"  Harris answered: "There is not a thing that comes to mind."  The Trump campaign people were happy to use this footage in a new Trump TV ad (298).

Because of her fear of being disloyal to Biden, she did not say what she should have said to distance herself from Biden and his unpopular policies: As a Vice-President, I have had to defend my boss.  But now I am running my own campaign for president, and I can say that Biden has made many mistakes--such as economic policies that promoted high inflation--and I pledge to avoid those mistakes.

Although Trump won the popular vote by over 2 million.  The election was actually very close.  If Harris had beat the margins of 1.44 percent in Michigan, 1.73 percent in Pennsylvania, and 0.87 percent in Wisconsin, she would have been elected president.  She could have done that by radically separating herself from Biden's policies.

Alternatively, since Harris began the campaign as even less popular than Biden, the Democratic Party could have won the presidential election by a large margin by selecting a moderate Democratic candidate--perhaps one of those Midwestern governors.

That did not happen because the Democratic leaders did not understand how to play the game of chimpanzee politics.