Never give your loyalty to kings or supermarkets
Loyalty is a very strange thing when you think about it. Add the word “undying” in front and it becomes stranger still.
You are basically saying, “I will shut up and complain no more!”
Of course, plenty will say that you can be loyal and critical at the same time, and perhaps that is true. But possibly only true while that loyalty is an insubstantial thing, where it is no stronger than, “yeah, ok, I’ll give you the benefit of doubt, just for now.”
Sounds like you? Sounds like most people you know?
Then it suddenly makes the mass outpouring of grief and loyalty immediately following Elizabeth two’s death sound possibly a little insubstantial, transient; almost hypercritical, perhaps.
Loyalty is a currency
When you give your loyalty to a brand, that brand will spend your loyalty on making the brand bigger. Not necessarily better, though that will be claimed, but more far-reaching. They will earn loyalty from others which they can then spend on even more others.
For a supermarket brand, loyalty normally comes in the shape of a card, or an account, where reward for loyalty can only be realised at the company itself, and normally in very restricted, time-limited ways.
The company benefits because it hopes that having signed up to its loyalty system, you will then shop with them more than with anyone else.
(That probably worked better in the past. These days, people will sell their loyalty to several competing chains at once.)
This currency extends to other types of brands too, most notably in the clothing sector.
“Brand Loyalty” is something that brands, through their advertising agencies, are desperate to build. If you buy your underwear from M&S, M&S want to ensure that you ALWAYS buy from M&S.
Brands become paranoid about it. “We are losing brand loyalty! What do we do? Help!”
And if anything happens to shake that brand (for instance their selected Celeb says something dodgy), then the brand panics in case it leads to mass “brand DISloyalty.”
The answer to failing brand loyalty is normally to improve the brand, make it louder, and wave carrots around! And, of course, don’t actually change anything at all.
Because change costs money. Remember, loyalty is a currency, and you should only spend that.
You cheat, basically.
But what about loyalty to your country?
Unlike a retail brand which can only hope that you are 100% percent loyal to them and to no others, a country can make it illegal to be disloyal.
Many countries allow you to have loyalty cards to more than one country — passports. But some do not. Or even if they do, they insist that they get primacy — normally in the form or paying tax to them first ahead of anyone else (even if you don’t live there).
But they ensure loyalty in other ways too.
Shame is a good weapon. You can be shamed by politicians and other loyalty-card carriers for showing disloyalty.
Distrust is another tool that politicians flap around. If you say that you don’t really feel very loyal, they will publicly declare that you are untrustworthy, and that you should be treated with suspicion.
Of course, this would only happen in dictatorships or near-dictatorships.
Or not. It happens in every democracy too. It happens here in the UK, it happens in France, it happens in the USA, Canada, Australia, India…
Some countries will even insist that you give an oath so that if you show any hint of disloyalty, you can be branded an “oath-breaker” too.
How do countries spend your loyalty?
We are now coming to the heart of the problem. A brand will spend your loyalty by selling it to others.
“Look at all these people who are loyal to us — don’t you want to be loyal too? And you get 20% off (just in case you don’t buy the loyalty bit.)”
For a country, the value of that currency is different. It allows them to take you for granted, change the rules mid game, ensure you take up arms against a rival and throw your life away.
It is a much more valuable currency for the government than for the brand.
And it might be needed to prop up the dogma too.
Take Party Loyalty
This is spending your loyalty without looking at either the brand specs or even knowing what the brand is.
When you vote for a party, you are effectively saying, “I agree 100% with absolutely everything in your manifesto.”
What, you don’t agree with everything? Sorry, the party will assume the above and will not admit that agreeing with only a bit is even a passing possibility.
When you become a party member, or even a politician representing that party, you agree to support everything it does, even when you hate something.
“Oh, but I can bring change from within!”
Of course you can. But you risk being labelled as “disloyal” or as a traitor.
Look at what happened to party members in the Labour Party who stood up against antisemitism? (Which is something that has plagued both left and right for centuries, along with other forms of bigotry.)
Some of them got deluged with hate and accusations of treachery.
Three-line whips? Woe betides the MP who votes against the party! This is particularly odd because when a party allows a free vote, they often phrase it as, “allow MPs to vote with their conscience and not along party lines.”
Voting with your conscience, then, is neither usual nor the recommended course of action in political parties.
This loyalty is getting expensive!
And now we get to Patriotism: Loyalty to your chosen country
This is where the big loyalty money is earned.
“Fight for your country or be branded a coward.” In earlier days, you might have even been shot for cowardice.
But isn’t it, “My Country Right or Wrong?”
“My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”
Carl Schurz said that in a speech to a standing ovation. (He was a German revolutionary and American Statesman in the 19th Century).
It sounds wonderful! Except it is painfully utopian, and all the more useless for that.
Because declaring somewhere is “your country,” giving allegiance to it, your undying loyalty, means that the country can take you for granted, and there is no guarantee you can ever “set right.”
Because when you do start your campaign to “set right” the problems, you risk being called a traitor by those who would use your loyalty to shame you.
Liberal-minded people suffer from this most, simply because they are most likely to point out problems. Identifying problems absolutely everywhere is kind of the deal when being liberal minded.
They get labelled “woke” or “traitors” or “bloody commies” by those who are opposed to righting wrongs.
(Opposed simply because writing wrongs often seems far too much like hard work, I note.)
The “shame” heaped upon someone who might think their country is wrong, can be horrifying.
And the chances are, a lot of it will come from the state itself, whoever is in charge.
Is loyalty a bad thing, then?
Blind loyalty certainly is, but loyalty to anything where you have little or no control over whatever that is, is not recommended.
Patriotism is both blind loyalty and loyalty to something beyond your control.
A patriot puts flag before people, before their neighbours. They will argue themselves flush that patriotism is all about their neighbours, but they are deluded.
Patriotism is loyalty to the state and to whoever represents the state, like the king. It is the first part of Carl Schurz’s quote without the benefit of the second half.
“But without patriotism, we would be Nazis!”
Codswallop!
In the end, people will fight for what is most important to them, even if they pretend that they are fighting for a greater ideal.
They will fight for their own personal safety and that of their family, and perhaps their nearest neighbours. If you ask anything more of them, then you will probably have to force them to fight.
That is why few people complained about conscription during WW2, but the draft in the US for Vietnam was hugely criticised.
Ordinary people in the UK were directly threatened by Hitler’s war machine as the bombers flew overhead.
But the communists of North Vietnam weren’t really about to invade the US, and most people knew it, even while screaming the paranoid “reds under the beds.”
If your country is threatened, you don’t need Patiotism for people to fight; you don’t need people to swear allegiance to “King and Country.” People will fight for themselves, for what is most important to THEM!
But of course, the paranoia of companies, of brands, is no different to the paranoia of governments.
Unless you sign up to their loyalty card, swear allegiance to the party, the flag, the shopping bag, can they really trust you?
They might just have to spy on you to check…
Me in the Middle is also available as an occasional podcast on Spotify.
