Love, Sex and Politics: politicians love of exhibitionism and sexual power

Love, Sex and Politics
Politicians Love of Exhibitionism and Sexual Power

We may doubt the politicians love to public good. But we shouldn’t doubt their love of power, with all it presupposes: exhibitionism, attempting to escape from our condition as humble and insignificant beings, and… as evolutionary biologists and historians state, sexual power.

What does that last feature mean, exactly?

Some facts may help us to understand it: Solomon, the great ancient sage, had a harem of a thousand concubines (and one consort); Mao-Zedong, the socialist Chinese leader, opposing everything he was ideologically proclaiming, surrounded himself by a harem of some dozen concubines…

And these are not isolated cases. Whenever they could, the powerful men of the past always gathered large harems… Sexual power has been a powerful motivation to many politicians.

Naturally, we may say that democracy and new ethical values have destroyed the harems. And that’s true. But have democracy and the new values destroyed the old searching for sexual power by politicians?

If we analyse the American political scene, it seems much so. President Clinton met with political disaster after his case with Monica Lewinsky, and the same happened before him to Harry Hart. As Matt Ridley says:

Yet we shouldn’t exaggerate. Sex and politics keep mixing themselves, yet in a more moderate and hidden way. Clinton, Gary Hart or John Kennedy aren’t exactly exceptions of what goes on in political meanders. There are at least a good half a dozen American presidents with known extra-marital cases. And many thousands of unknown cases, levered by political positions, at an inferior political level.

That’s a good reason to say, as Kissinger: «Power is a great aphrodisiac».

Powerful men and Women

If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning
Aristotle Onassis, in Matt Riddley The Red Queen

Throughout history, powerful men have usually had more than one mate each, even if they had only one legitimate wife.
Matt Riddley, English scientist and essayist, The red Queen

In almost every case, power predicts the size of a man’s harem.
Laura Betzig, about the kings and political chiefs in medieval societies, in Matt Ridley Red Queen

As an elderly man, Augustus is said to have still harboured a passion for deflowering girls, who where collected for him by his wife.

Suetonious, 69-125, Roman historian, Twelve Caesars

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