`Leaders
Although bonding usually refers to the larger group, the cause is often personified in terms of a specific leader, a specific individual, to be followed and admired, someone to inspire the group.

For example, "Big Brother" is the dictator of Oceania in George Orwell's 1984, still one of the best, most relevant political satire ever written: "Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful.... His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear an reverence, emotions which are more easily felt toward an individual than toward an organization.

Conversely, the leader of the "Other" group is seen as Evil personified, someone to be hated. Again, as 1984 opens, Orwell writes about Oceania's perpetual state of war and its daily Two Minutes Hate:

"As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed onto the screen.... The program of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other, he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters; perhaps even -- so it was occasionally rumored -- in some hiding place in Oceania itself."

When Orwell's novel was first published in 1949, everyone read it in terms of the USSR and Communism. Now, in our era declared to be in a perpetual war against Terrorism (the abstraction), some readers think that this mysterious hidden enemy suggests an unfound Osama bin Laden or an unfound Saddam Hussein.

In the past century, the "cult of the leader" was seen in Adolph Hitler (Germany), Chairman Mao (China), Joseph Stalin (USSR), Saddam Hussein (Iraq) -- all of whose ubiquitous posters and heroic-size statutes were destroyed when the next administration took over.

But, this development was not recent, witness the ruins and relics of ancient Rome, Greece, and Egypt.
(" My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!")

Was Hitler an inspiring leader? In his group, in his time, he was. Today, in retrospect, knowing about the horrible catastrophes he caused -- World War 2 and the Holocaust -- we are apt to forget the power of his personality in bonding the German people during the 1930s. Anyone who has seen Leni Reifensthal's film ("The Triumph of the Will") glorifying Hitler during his rise to power, recognizes the mesmerizing charisma of this man who embodied the hopes and dreams of the German people in that post- WW1 era. In that film's final scene, after Hitler has delivered an impassioned speech stirring up a cheering audience at the famous 1934 Nuremberg rally, an admiring aide (Rudolph Hess) takes the microphone, and pointing to Hitler, specifically identifies the man with the nation, personifies the nation with the man: "Adolph Hitler is Germany and Germany is Adolph Hitler. He who takes an oath to Hitler takes an oath to Germany!"

American Presidents have often, during wartime, sought to identify themselves, their policies, and their Administration with the national interest. During the Viet Nam war, both Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat) and Richard Nixon (Republican) claimed such identification. At that time, internal dissenters and anti-war protesters("Hey, Hey, LBJ, How Many kids did you kill today?) were denounced as being unpatriotic and disloyal ("Love it or Leave it.") In retrospect, today, after the emotions have cooled down, and long after 50,000 Americans and over a million Vietnamese were killed in that war, many people see that war as a mistake.

During the Iraq (2003- ) war, President George W. Bush identified himself, his policies, and his Administration with the national interest. Again, internal dissenters and anti-war protesters have been denounced as being unpatriotic and disloyal ("Love it or Leave it.") or for "not supporting the troops."

While dissenters fear that Bush's "cowboy rhetoric, tough talk, and macho blustering" and his policies are harmful to America's long term international leadership, the President's supporters see him as "bold, forceful, and determined," a wartime leader akin to Winston Churchill.

In other cultures, for example, many people in the Islamic world admire Osama bin Laden someone who represents or symbolizes their free-floating anger and resentment, an anti-Americanism with both religious and secular roots.

All of these cases emphasize the importance of the leader as the personification of the group and of the cause. For more about groups seeking a strong leader, see "The Man on the Horse" entry in William Safire's New Political Dictionary: The Definite Guide to the New Language of Politics.

Close associates to the leader of a group also get attention.

Positively, from within the group, they can be admired as the team, the administration, the trusted aides (e.g. Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and the Neo-Con advocates of the Iraq War).

Negatively, from outside the group, such close associates can be described as the henchmen, the cronies, the hatchetmen, the goon squads, the lackeys.

For example, during the 2003 Iraq war, the United States issued a "54 Most Wanted" Deck of Cards to apprehend the close associates of Saddam Hussein..
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