The American Cybele
On August 2019, a certain political party was conducting its annual convention in anticipation of next year's general election cycle.
the speaker had talked passionately of the need to broaden the party's coalition for the purpose of achieving its overarching goal. Then she allowed some of the memebers of the audience to be heard.
One requested, after declaring his name and prefred pronouns (he wished to be addressed in the masculine) that "the chatter be kept to a minimum" due to his "anxiety" problems. As he completed his request in heavy party-jargon, the next comment came in a shout: "D..D..DON'T USE GENDERED LANGUAGE TO ADDRESS ANYONE!"
The recording of this event had circulated around the internet, to both the hilarity and dismay of the American Public.
It should suffice to say that the political party in question never came close to electng anyone to public office on its own, its members who had managed to make it to office did so under the umbrella of the Democratic Party.
In May 2016 a different party, who in 2020 boasted of the historic achievement of gaining a whole 1 percent of the popular vote, was having its own convention. One of the featured speakers finished his exhortation by stripping naked on stage. Another pronminent member was a man identifying himself as "Vermin Supreme" who is in the habit of wearing a boot on his head and promising "A free pony to every American" and stricter "toothbrushing laws". One of the candidate who will try later that year to seek the party's nomination for the presidency would be an accentric billionaire on the lam in Latin America from the Law.
A tempting explanation to the existence of such organzations is that this is all a game, a social club for the rejects of our political institutions, that does not fullfil or wish to fulfil a more serious role. This explanation is mistaken, ignores the presence of serious people in this parties (often at leadership positions) and reative success of politicians who wink and nod in their direction (the career of US Senator Rand Paul and hs fellow Kentuckyian Thomas Massie are instructive, as is the success of the party's media organ, Reason Magazine). This explantion fails to comprehend the true nature of the Pressure Valve in the healthy polity.
If we return to the cult of Cybele, it was not an ostracized group of social outcasts, the Roman State had maintained it in high style and reverence at great public expense (lion-drawn chariots and public festivals don't come cheap in a subsitnce-farming based economy). Eminent Roman citizens worshipped and sacrificed at her altar; her priests were not recruited among the lower classes.
The Valve exist to allow all citizens, not merely the outcasts and the eccentrics, to find a venue to their least acceptable desires and instincts. In the rigid and well-ordered morality of the Roman Republic, there was for a need for a safe haven in which ecstasy and passion could be celebrated. similiarly, many people of moderate and mild constitution and politics find themselves, from time to time, in need to indulge in a blunt (and therefore extreme-sounding) expression of a principle.
The priests of Cybele, the Guardians of the Pressure Valve Politic have two chief duties: The first is to keep the valve functioning, not allowing it to be moderated, tampered and subsumed into the wider coalition. The second one is to clearly mark the boundries of the Temple, so Cybele shall not usurp Jupiter, so those who come in to induge in the pure principle shall come out of it and apply that pure principle through practicle, detailed, impassionate action, which is the only fruiful form of politics. Wearing a boot on One's head or self-mutilation, its all the same at the end.
If they fail in their twin duties, if the number of worshippers at the altar of the Great Mother excites her priests so much they think they may with good prospect attempt to seize power for themselves, disaster follows.
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