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Was Chief Tonowari a Republican? [1]

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Date: 2023-01-17  

I finally caught Avatar: the Way of Water at a theater, and at one point the chief of the water tribe Metkayina stated that the new arrivals would want to avoid “the shame of being useless.” My inner snark immediately wondered whether he might be a Republican, but upon actually thinking about it later on, I concluded that it’s the other way around: modern Republicans tend to think like Chief Tonowari. But that’s not actually a knock on the chief, because peoples in primitive, non-technological/industrial societies think that way for a very good reason. Every person in the tribe has to carry their own weight, and to be “useless” would undoubtedly be a source of shame. If the useless person was merely lazy, the tribe would probably be ashamed of that person. If the person was unable to work because of, say, injury, that person might very well feel shame at being a burden upon others.

This sense of shame fits very well with conservative sensibilities, since they tend to idealize “the former times” (even though the Bible itself says, “Do not say, ‘Why is it that the former days were better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this.” [Ecclesiastes 7:10]) But conservatives prefer to fixate on “the good ol’ days” and fantasize about returning America to those days when things were so much better. And they prefer to quote, “if any would not work, neither should he eat.” [2 Thessalonians 3:10] Let the lazy man starve to death, and let the disabled beg. (And don’t let the government get involved with feeding beggars; let individuals help beggars if they want to do so, but don’t force anybody to help beggars if they don’t want to.)

What modern conservatives don’t see—because it doesn’t fit their fantasy—is that within primitive societies everybody must contribute, but also nobody’s contribution is unnecessary. There is no such thing as unemployment. (And also, just as a side thought, in those wonderful days before the Civil War there were no rules whatsoever to prevent anybody who wanted to from coming to America.)

So, yeah, my snarky side wondered whether Chief Tonowari was a Republican, but my realistic side concluded that had he ruled a tribe of several million people who had the blessings of technology, he surely would have continued to view his people as a family rather than a business, and would have not only allowed, but demanded that all of his people have access to the best health care available, that all of them have access to decent employment at reasonable pay, and that any able-bodied member of the tribe who for reasons beyond their control could not find employment would have access to a “safety net” sufficient to provide for all of life’s basic necessities, not just some, or most, of them.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/17/2147663/-Was-Chief-Tonowari-a-Republican

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