Never hate your
enemies, it affects your judgement. (Michael Corleone, The Godfather pt 2)
Michael Corleone had a talent which set him apart from every
other character in the Godfather films. Unlike his hot-headed brothers and
rivals, he had an empathetic understanding of his opponents. This was the gift
which let him to rise to the top of his fictional mafia empire, because it
allowed him to understand exactly how others thought and reacted to certain
situations. It is a gift which is lacking in a great many people who are
interested, or indeed active, in politics today.
To understand what I mean, think about the process which
causes some on the left to claim that child sex abuse is the result of “a
small minority of rich white men”, or some on the right to claim that Obama’s
election victory means “bye
bye western civilisation”. The root cause of these obviously ridiculous
claims is that the people who make them see the world as being divided up in to
the good, who agree with them, and the evil, who don’t. I use the terms good
and evil deliberately, because those who hold this dualistic world view choose
not to engage with their opponent’s arguments, but instead with their
motivations. This effect is amplified by groupthink, where many people coalesce
around a particular viewpoint, reinforcing each other’s belief in their own
virtue and demonising their opponents.
This effect is not confined to the extremist fringes;
actually it infects more or less every level of public debate. If a right
leaning government decides to cut tax on high earners, a left leaning
opposition will cry that they are doing it for the benefit of their wealthy
friends. The debate is never conducted in terms of what level of taxation best balances
economic growth with state revenue, because the left leaning opposition can
never accept that the right leaning government has the national interest at
heart, and assumes a sinister motivation instead.
In a similar way, if a left leaning government increases the
size of the welfare state, a right leaning opposition will claim that they are
trying to create
a client state of ‘takers’ who will always vote left to keep their
benefits, at the expense of the ‘makers’. It is assumed by the right that those
on the left must have a sinister ulterior motive for their actions, and the
idea that they simply want to improve the lives of the poor is discounted.
Michael Corleone would not make this mistake, because he
would realise that in the end misunderstanding your opponents in this way is a
form of self delusion which can be highly self destructive. Just because you
sincerely believe yourself to be right, and your enemies to be evil, does not
make it true. If you base your actions on this false premise, the chances are
that you will find yourself isolated from more rational people, who can see
things more objectively. This is what has happened to the US Republican Party
in recent years. So convinced were they of their own essential rightness,
contrasted with Obama’s inherent evil, they failed to spot that most people
didn’t see things this way. Lest we get too smug, it is also a pretty good
explanation of the irrelevance of the British Labour Party during the 1980’s,
or indeed the British Conservative Party during the Blair years. It is the
curious fate of political movements in these situations that they cast round
for some kind of ideologically pure saint to save them, when they would in fact
be better off looking for Michael Corleone. In the words of Don Vito himself; “there was no greater natural advantage in
life than having an enemy overestimate your faults, unless it was to have a
friend underestimate your virtues”.
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