In
the mid-twentieth century, a social psychologist by the name of Harold
Garfinkle (1965) wrote an article titled “Conditions of Successful Degradation
Ceremonies.” This became one of those articles – one of those stand-out pieces
that becomes a signpost for a way of looking at the world. Now largely subsumed
under the rubric of Social Identity Theory in psychology, there is a sizeable
literature of twentieth century social psychology that issued forth from peculiarly
sociological camps. I say peculiar because these sociologists had a way of
codifying the structural force of social life and portraying the individual as
an unwitting dupe in the ongoing sit-com of social life.
For
example, in this piece, Garfinkle says that in every society there is a body of
thinking and belief that qualifies what is right, true and good. This is so
fundamental to the project of any society that in every society we will also
find the mechanisms for dealing with people who do not conform with the normative
order. The mechanism for bringing down shame, disgrace, and
punishment, is what we refer to here as the degradation ceremony. It is as if
people must be shamed when they do wrong, they must be officially degraded in
front of others for having done wrong, and then they must exist in a state of
humiliation until they can find a way to get back on track, and become a member
in good standing once again. This is just how it all works.
The
basis of executing a degradation ceremony for someone who is being recognized
as having deviated from the norm is this thing called the normative order. It
is there in every society. It is the value system, it is formalized in legal
sanctions for crime and punishment, but it begins bubbling up informally from
the very beginning of social life in the form of the shame that accompanies bad
behavior. As the two-year-old learns that No means No, the learning of it is accompanied
by much crying, and the feeling of shame is what is really being learned.
These
are life’s first degradation ceremonies. Now imagine that all of social life is
a dance of the normative order, a contest to see who is in charge of adjudicating
the normative order. What is amazing about Garfinkle’s article is that he qualified
the conditions that must exist for any degradation ceremony to be successful.
Let me give you the short version.
A
successful degradation ceremony requires a denouncer and the denounced. The
denouncer is presiding over the degradation of the denounced for having
violated society’s mandate for normative order. The violation must be clear and
indisputable. There must be no question that the denounced has deviated from
the norm and is standing in violation of a value that most people in the society
have deemed as inappropriate and unacceptable.
That
much is kind of obvious, but here is the part I always found the most
interesting. The denouncer must be ritually set apart from the denounced and be
occupying a qualitatively different space that sets them apart from the
denounced. Furthermore, the denounced is not only standing apart from the
denouncer, and occupying the shamed state of the denounced, but the result of
the degradation ceremony is itself the ritual separation of the denounced from
the herd of society. The ritualistic separation of social spaces is the
critical dynamic at work here. The denounced is ritualistically set apart and
in their own space as a result.
In
school, when you are little, and you get shamed, and when you go through a
degradation ceremony and receive the title of humiliated and deserving of being
punished, then you are ritually separated from the group and made to stand in
the corner. At home, you might get sent to your room, or you might have a
time-out. When you are an adult, then you might go to jail, and be sentenced to
court-mandated anger management counseling, or you might be sent away to
prison. But, in every case, the conditions for successful degradation
ceremonies are quite clear.
That
does not mean they are always fair, but that does mean they will work that way
and according to those dynamics – every single time. One of the strangest
things I have seen was the way Hillary Clinton left her supporters at the Jacob
Javits Center on election night, waiting for her to stop by and talk to them.
As the election creeped on into the night, and the Clinton supporters grew weary,
the scene of the Clinton supporters assembled in the Jacob Javits Center became
more and more of a spectacle in and of itself. In my lifetime, a concession
speech usually lasts about two minutes. In the rarest of circumstances, one
could imagine it being delayed. Yet, no one was prepared for what happened
after midnight at the Jacob Javits Center. After all the talk about a President
being able to be there for that call that might come at 3 am, it was the most
ironic thing to see toady John Podesta show up at 2 am at the Jacob Javits
Center and tell everybody that Hillary was proud of them and that it was time
for them to go home. That was it. Talk about being hit with a bucket of cold
water.
Decorum
and simple grace suggested she should stop by, and say thanks for all the
support, and let’s finish this up in the morning if we can. But, the supporters
were all dressed up with no place to go, and they knew the whole nation was
watching, and at their moment of deepest pain, when they needed their leader to
just pay attention to them and say something to them, they were summarily
ejected into the cold-void-streets of public scrutiny at 2 am in the morning.
To
be honest, I grew up Democrat, and when I was a college professor I voted
Democrat, but I am now 57 and I have been a Republican in my fifties. I am
saying this to communicate to you that even I was hurting for those people when
I saw what happened to them. The real weight of the system we have is the way
we have to honor the office and honor the process even if we do not like the
result. That is part of the magic of the peaceful transfer of power that sets
us apart from the monarchies and dictatorships we all despise.
Somehow,
even though I had no reason to be sad, I was horribly saddened by what I did
not see. I could not believe she did not show up – it was wrong, and nothing will
ever make that right. You know why I say it was so wrong? Because what she
actually did was to effectively place her followers smack dab in the middle of
a nationwide degradation ceremony with all the conditions in place to make it successful.
You
know the conditions for successful degradation ceremonies by now, right? The
denouncer is ritually set apart, in their own space, away from the denounced.
The denounced have clearly been shown to have deviated from the normative
order, the body of values that most people in society have declared must
represent what we value most. The denounced are occupying their own space that
is set apart from society. Once having endured the degradation ceremony they
will be officially set apart from the rest of society and they will have to
endure their state of humiliation until they can find a way to get back on
track with those who are in alignment with the normative order.
The
next day, Hillary gave a 20-minute concession speech for which she was practically
apotheosized by the liberal media. In a world of 2-minute concession speeches, Hillary
actually made her supporters listen to her say the words ‘enshrined’ ‘cherished’
and ‘respected’ in the same sentence as the words ‘Donald Trump is going to be
our President’ and then she went on and on for 20 minutes. But, the truth is that none of those supporters she abandoned the
previous night were there. Actually, if she had abandoned them it would have
been kinder, but instead she actually presided over their degradation ceremony.
And for all intents and purposes, the concession speech was like pouring salt
on the wounds of her supporters. It was so kind and respectful that no one
could actually believe it even happened. But, the execution of her followers’
successful degradation ceremony, followed by the obsequious respect she showed
for President-elect Trump were only the dead giveaway of the two sides of her
duplicitous nature that have always been there. One side of Hillary is emotionally
predisposed to sadism. She is cold-blooded, psychopathic, and unfeeling in a
sincere and human way – this is a person who enjoys the sheer power exercised
by being able to grind down on the subjects and hearing their cries and screams
of pain, which she enjoys every bit as much as their weepy overtures of crowd-funded
adoration. The other side of Hillary is intellectually committed to getting
away with all the shenanigans, and she will do and say anything imaginable to
avoid being prosecuted by the next administration.
The
scariest part for her? Despite the certainty that Obama will pardon Hillary,
the fact is she has done nothing wrong,
and you cannot get pardoned if you have not even been indicted in the first
place.
~The End - New post Monday~
References
Garfinkel, H. (1956). Conditions of successful
degradation ceremonies. American
journal of sociology, 420-424. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2773484
