One of the most insidious forms of political con has to be the Orchid Mantis – which I’ve named after the predatory arthropod that takes on the appearance of a nectar-giving flower, to attract unsuspecting insects so as to capture and feed on them.
In politics this con works on two levels. First, it picks on certain notions which are likely to appeal to a large number of voters, and pretends it champions them when it is more likely to harm those who get close to them. Secondly, the con is amplified when even otherwise sensible commentators help it along by referring to the con as if it is sincere in what it professes.
Let’s look at three notable examples.
[1] The ‘Patriotic’ mimicry
These politicians present themselves as flag-waving champions of their nation. They are keen to use force to show how strong their country is under their leadership. They talk down others and insist ‘their’ people matter more than everybody else. In practice, they will take foreign political donations and business benefits so long as they help them personally. They will risk the security of soldiers and civilians through counter-productive or provocative military posturing. They decry diplomacy and arms control if that hinders the profit-making of their arms manufacturing and trading backers. And they are the ones who consistently vote against better support for veterans in the military, but always for more to fund corporate contractors. Far from being patriotic, they are all too ready to sacrifice other members of the country to advance their own ambition.
[2] The ‘Religious’ mimicry
Then there are the politicians who position themselves as devoted ‘Christians’, ‘Muslims’, or whatever sect they want backing from. They will tirelessly attack anyone who disagrees with them as a heretic, an infidel, an immoral atheist. They will selectively pick out a few texts that lend themselves to hateful or oppressive interpretation, and promote them as the defining doctrines of the One True Faith. For anyone who derive from religion a sense of compassion, human fellowship, fairness, reciprocity, these fundamentalists will have nothing but contempt. They will do everything they can to sound pious and surround themselves with symbols of the religion they seek to exploit, but their true nature is embedded in their callous disregard for the suffering they cause to others. They will justify their cruelties by pretending that everything they do is authorised by ‘God’, and dismiss any evidence of their wrongdoing as an affront to their ‘sacred’ beliefs.
[3] The ‘Pro-Business’ mimicry
Alongside the pseudo-patriots and faux-faithful, there are the politicians who set themselves up as ‘pro-business’/’pro-market’ as though they have found the formula for prosperity for all, and they are the only ones decent enough to want to implement it. In reality, what they have found is that a rigged market system will concentrate wealth and power in them and their rich allies, while increasing inequality gaps so the majority will be made weaker and more vulnerable. They say they want deregulation to make the market free, when what they seek is to remove regulations that will hold them back from exploiting consumers, workers and suppliers. They are fully behind laws and subsidies that help them take advantage of others. They are pro those big businesses that donate to them as co-conspirators, but they care little for the dire consequences their biased policies may have for other businesses or the economy at large.
Expose the Con
In biology the behaviour of Orchid Mantis is known as ‘aggressive mimicry’, as it involves masquerading as something helpful in order to inflict severe harm on others. That is precisely what Orchid Mantis politics is about. The last thing commentators should do is to help the perpetrators of this con by referring to them as ‘patriotic’, ‘Christian’ (or whatever religion they are trying to co-opt), or ‘pro-business’. Call them out for the tricksters that they are, and stop them harming unsuspecting voters.
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