The
Left Bank of the World: Politics, Chimpanzees and Bonobos
"As
retaliation for the massacres which the British commit in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the mujahideen have successfully done it this time in
London."
— al
Qaeda't al-Jihad
"Conservatives
saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war;
liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare
indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."
— Karl Rove
"Dominant
males are always paranoid."
— Frans de Waal
My
first political hit piece — the one featuring Orange County
Congressman Bob Dornan’s head Photoshopped onto the body
of a chimpanzee — was an unexpected success.
Nicknamed
for his zealous support of the disastrous Air Force bomber program
that bilked taxpayers out of $25 billion, “B-1 Bob” was
an easy mark for my creative monkey-wrenching. With two photo
files and only a few deft strokes of the mouse, Dornan was frankensteined
into a chimp in the throes of an exuberantly imposing simian chest-thump.
The raised eyebrows, the bared teeth, and the arched neck blended
perfectly with the fur-covered shoulders, clenched fists, and
erect nipples. It was a fitting posture for the militaristic arch-conservative
Dornan, who in the 1980s compared pro-choice activists to Charles
Manson and called his political opponents “lesbian spear-chuckers.”
When
my completed “Dornan the Chimp” political hit piece
rolled off the printing press into the mailboxes of consistent
voters in California’s 46th Congressional District, my client
was delighted.
“You
know, Nathan,” he said with tears in his eyes, “the
difference between political hawks and doves is the difference
between chimpanzees and bonobos.”
At
the time — as a younger, more self-conscious man — I
didn’t get it and didn’t ask for an explanation. Chimps?
Bonobos? I knew that.
Of
course, I didn’t. I should have asked. An explanation would
have laid bare the strategy contained
in quotes like Karl Rove’s “Conservatives saw the
savagery of 9/11." To understand the difference between chimps
and bonobos is to understand the world's political landscape.
—
In
subsequent years, a squadron of hawkish right-wing political celebrities
joined my hit piece brigade of Photoshopped simians. Newt Gingrich
enjoyed a banana. Jesse Helms groomed for fleas. Tom Delay swung
from a vine.
“Sweet
justice,” an Orange County Congressional candidate once
told me. “Those anti-feminist fundamentalists are getting
what they deserve.”
In
a way they were getting more. With their heads atop a chimpanzee’s
shoulders they were reunited with their political animus. I think
at least one of them, former conservative icon Gingrich, would
agree with me on this point. After all, his political rise was
the upshot of chimpanzee logic.
Seriously.
For real. I’m not kidding. Listen — if you don’t
already know.
Gingrich
based many of his political strategies on Frans de Waal's, Chimpanzee
Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes.
 Published
in 1982, Chimpanzee
Politics charts
the ascendancy of Luit (almost rhymes with Newt), a chimp who
wages a campaign to overthrow Yeroen, the top-ranking alpha male
in his group. Yeroen belongs to the old school privileged class.
Luit, on the other hand, can be seen as a neo-populist — a
homespun opportunist with upper-class tastes who targets his message
of elitist oppression to the lower-middle class chimp demographic.
Like a member of the conservative Club
for Growth, Luit mocks the stodgy Yeroen and punishes Yeroen’s
establishment supporters. As a result, Yeroen is overthrown and
Luit takes power.
Gingrich
was so captivated with chimp hierarchy and strategy that, during
his reign as Speaker of the House, he assigned de Waal’s
book as required reading for freshmen Republicans. Gingrich’s
message to them was simple: If you want to get ahead in politics,
de-evolve, forget nuance, and awaken your political giant within
by aping chimpanzee behavior.
De
Waal’s Luit was the inspiration for Newt’s assault
on then-House Speaker Jim Wright. After a barrage of Luit- and
Newt-instigated right-wing primate power displays, Wright resigned
in 1989. As a result, the young Newt became House minority whip
and eventually Speaker of the House. Looking back, I must say,
Newt looked relaxed and confident with a banana.
—
There
is only so much interspecies head-grafting you can do before you
start to question life’s deeper meanings. By the time George
W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove became co-presidents, my chimpanzee
hit piece business was disremembered history… until I heard
about Moe.
On
March 3, 2005, St. James and LaDonna Davis packed a birthday cake
and left their home in the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley
to be with their old friend Moe for his birthday. A
two-hour drive, north on Interstate 5, beyond Antelope
Valley and Lancaster, down Highway 14 and Tehachapi Boulevard, past
horses and grazing cattle, up a dirt road in a sage
and oak covered canyon, they came to Moe’s home in the outback
town of Havilah, California.
The
Davises and Moe are very close. They lived together in West Covina
for three decades — a happy platonic menage a trios until
one day in 1999, Moe decided to bite off part of a woman's finger
and in the ensuing chaos ruff-up a policeman.
Moe,
by the way, is a chimpanzee. His home, the Animal Haven Ranch
at Havilah, is a site licensed by the state of California to take
in primates. Most of the time they’re zoo rejects — too
old, too ornery, too many. Moe, however, was no zoo creature.
He came from
Africa to live with the Davises after a poacher
killed his mom. Lord only knew, trouble was in his cards.
Moe
is 4 feet tall and 150 pounds. But don’t let his Napoleonic
stature fool you. Like his fellow chimps, he is strong and aggressive
with an upper body strength that could put all of my friends — and
some of my enemies — to shame.
Chimps
aren’t likely to tell you how much they can bench press,
but in tests at the Bronx Zoo in 1924 a male chimpanzee using
a dynamometer recorded a one-handed pull of 847 pounds. By comparison,
a 165-pound zoo employee pulled 210. In dead lifts, chimps have
been known to nonchalantly pump 600 pounds. In the wild, they
routinely kill and gulp down much larger animals.
By
jungle standards, I suppose the woman whose finger Moe chomped-off
should have considered herself lucky. In Los Angeles, however,
county health officials took a hard line. Moe was taken into custody.
Over
the years, the Davises waged a legal battle to be reunited with
their loved one, but to no avail. At the Animal Haven Ranch, Moe
was essentially in a kind of State Pen — where last we looked,
it was time to slice his 39th birthday cake.
St.
James and LaDonna stood outside Moe’s cage. The moment was
festive. Moe was happy and relaxed as birthday greetings were
exchanged.
Then,
without provocation, Buddy and Ollie, two chimpanzees who had
escaped from an adjoining cage staged an ambush — or as
Newt-trained Republicans like to say, “a pre-emptive attack.”
First,
Buddy bit off LaDonna’s thumb. She froze. St. James pulled
his bleeding wife away and faced the attackers. He even attempted
to reason with them. They showed no mercy. It was pure chimpanzee
shock and awe.
Buddy and Ollie chewed
off St. James’ nose,
gouged out an eye, tore
off his cheek, bit off
all his fingers, twisted
and shredded his foot
from his body,
tore off his testicles, and literally mauled his ass.
The
melee went on for seven minutes before a ranch worker shot Buddy
in the head. Ollie was dragging St. James down a walkway when
a bullet took him down.
—
The
chimp attack had a 48 hour media
buzz – bleed lead, interview with friends, stock chimp
shots, Animal Haven Ranch skycam footage, interview with wife,
photos of the hospital (where St. James was recovering), more
interviews with zoo officials and animal rights groups: A shocking
story. What a shame. We’ll be right back.
Not
so fast. The chimpanzee-perpetrated event dropped in my cerebral
mailbox like a red-flagged hit piece.
I
Googled Gingrich and, as luck would have it, found a recent hominid-relevant announcement on
his website. Newt is “in favor of teaching evolution in
schools as part of biology, but not as the source of life.”
Wow.
I guess that means Newt wants to take the "life" out
of "life sciences." Regardless, Newt's convoluted position
on evolution speaks to his fear of facing his, and for that matter
everyone’s, deep dark Darwin past.
Biological
science has confirmed that chimpanzees are more closely related
to humans than to gorillas. In fact, measured by DNA, chimpanzees
and humans differ by just a wee bit more than one percent — with
striking similarities in our blood composition and immune responses.
There's talk of including chimpanzees in the same genus as human
beings. Our shared name? Homo troglodytes.
Chimps
and humans would be even more akin if it weren’t for what
researchers call "lifestyle" changes — things
like sense of smell, hairiness and hearing — that
occurred in the 6 million years since we disengaged from our common
ancestor .
In
their book Demonic
Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, Richard
Wrangham and Dale Peterson point out another similarity we share
with Moe and our chimp relatives.
 "That
chimpanzees and humans kill members of neighboring groups of their
own species is, we have seen, a startling exception to the normal
rule for animals,” they wrote. “Add our close genetic
relationship to these apes and we face the possibility that intergroup
aggression in our two species has a common origin." (See
movie here)
This
means, more
than likely, that war
has its roots in evolution. The London Bombings, 9/11 and the
War in Iraq sure look like intergroup aggression to me — not
to mention "The Four-Year War at Gombe."
What's
that you say?
In
the 1970s, renowned primatologist Jane Goodal’s chimpanzee
acquaintances were engaged in what amounted to primitive warfare.
You’ll find it in your history books under “The
Four-Year War at Gombe.” What prompted this war? Territorial
jealously: An emotion political hawks often confuse with patriotism.
Chimps
are known to be fiercely territorial — constantly patrolling
and defending their borders. In at least two documented cases
of certifiable chimp genocide, a large community of chimpanzees
systematically hunted down a smaller community killing all of
its members.
Wrangham
is also the author of the “Imbalance of Power” hypothesis.
Accordingly, animals that carry out mutual group violence — and
get away with it — win resources and territory. This, in
turn, allows them survive longer and breed more. It’s a
kind of extreme natural selection.
But
there’s a caveat: We
can’t get away with it anymore. We’re too big, too
dangerous, too deadly. It’s Russian Roulette. Suicide.
Wrangham
warns that, compared
to chimps. humans are more apt to overestimate what
they can get away with. We certainly have the capacity to be delusional.
How else do you explain nuclear stockpiles and the War on Terror?
Our
ignorance may stem from that fact that leadership decisions in
war have moved from the battlefield to the boardroom. In extreme
cases, like George W. Bush for example, our leaders have personally
avoided the battlefield while exhorting battle. This can only
lead to gross misunderestimations.
—
 In
the swampy equatorial forests of the left bank of the Congo River
lives the bonobo — a
close relative of the chimpanzee that is being hunted to extinction.
Common
chimps, like Moe, are sometimes referred to as Right Bank chimps.
Their population extends from Tanzania and Uganda to West Africa.
While Right Bank chimps — or Right Wing if you prefer — are
prone to chomping off fingers and detaching testicles, bonobos
are a peaceful lot. They walk upright more easily than chimps.
In fact, evolutionarily speaking, bonobos are more evolved. If
you want to see a body double for what human ancestors looked
and acted like 6-7 million years ago, watch a bonobo.
There
is one other big difference between the chimp and bono. Male chimpanzees
are socially dominant over their female counterparts. Generally,
they are known to have bad relationships with them, batter them
and on occasion rape them.
On
the left bank — in the world of bonobos — males are
still physically larger, but females rule the roost. They are
in power, hear them roar.
So…
“The
difference between a political hawk and dove is the difference
between chimpanzees and bonobos.” That’s what the
man said.
If
I had asked in my hit piece days, he might have told me that the
two species are the yin and yang of the human condition.
On
the right bank of the Congo, representing our worst side, you
have chimpanzees with an aptitude for violence that haunts the
human species.
On
the left bank of the Congo, representing our finest side, you
have bonobos, a species that somehow has found peace.
Left.
Right. Left. Right. It’s the great primate divide. Bush's
brain, Karl Rove, knows that.
"Conservatives
saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war;
liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare
indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."
In
his puffed-up chimp bluster, Karl Rove was at least close to being
accurate. Hawks, Conservatives, chimpanzees, whatever you want
to call them, began preparing for and justifying war with whoever
they could get away with after 9/11. Folks, like myself, saw the
9/11 attacks as yet another example of an evolutionary-rooted
hominid trait reaching blindly for an apocalyptic resolve.
Rove
is yet
another Luit, waging a campaign to mock and destroy those who won't
get behind his chimpanzee crusade. That Democrats in Congress were
offended by Rove's statement is testament to their ignorance of
chimpanzee politics. That they would defend themselves by assuming
a pro-war stance makes them twice the fools.
In
case you don’t already know, I’m a bonobo. I live
on the left bank. There are only so many wars you can engage in
before you start to question life’s deeper meanings.
— Nathan Callahan,
July 7, 2005
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