Non-tribalism

Karen Tamerius writes,

Through tribalism, Trump has created a self-reinforcing system. The more he lashes out at others, the more they strike back at him and his followers. And the more people strike back at Trump and his followers, the more he and they feel persecuted. The escalating sense of persecution binds his followers to him ever more tightly.

Her advice to progressives for handling Trump supporters:

1. Don’t attack
2. Keep personal relationships alive
3. Hear them out
4. Agree where appropriate
5. Gently nudge them toward progressivism
6. Invite them into the fold

I found this essay quite refreshing. It goes against 99 percent of the essays that progressives write. Conservatives and libertarians would be advised to follow these six maxims, also (substituting their own ideology in #5).

23 thoughts on “Non-tribalism

  1. In order to pretend that Trump has caused this “self-reinforcing system” we must either forget about the Left’s identical reaction to Bush, or more likely pretend it never existed.

    • Yes… Political tribalism has been pretty blatant for decades. It’s rather absurd to blame that long standing phenomenon on the current office holder.

      • I would even go so far as to say “It’s rather absurd to blame that long standing phenomenon on the current OFFENDER.” It’s foolish to pretend that Trump doesn’t play this game.

        Just like Obama did.

        • Of course. I definitely wasn’t suggesting that Trump is blameless.

          But the quote says that “Through tribalism, Trump has created a self-reinforcing system.” That’s saying Trump started it. For a post that Kling is celebrating as refreshingly non-tribal, that’s a nakedly partisan and tribal accusation.

      • He is a bit of an innovator (in the American context) of how to manipulate political polarization/factionalism into personal political advantage.

    • I agree. I think any “offers” that begin with “Trump started it, but we need not follow it”, will not going to be taken as a sign of goodwill by non-Progressives, but as (yet more) virtue signaling. This is especially so, when the offer comes from marginal players in the Progressive movement (whose “offer” will be perceived as “too little”).

  2. Tribalism AKA Identity Politics or Inter-sectionalism is NOT one of Orange Man many many faults

  3. Agree here as most political writing is preaching to choir stuff that is probably the stuff that pays the bills. Most progressive writer don’t make money stating many in the Rust Belt feel forgotten or they find the ‘white privilege’ stuff not fair to their lives. (It is more of a born in class here.)

    Listen to Rush Limbaugh for one hour during the Obama and you see something similar.

    • Rush Limbaugh’s listenership didn’t riot or bend institutions to cancel speakers.
      There character of Republican and Democrat “resistance” isn’t comparable.

  4. Sounds reasonable. But.

    A sizeable segment of Conservatives would say that decades of following Tamerius’ advice got them (1) George W. Bush, (large government and deficits, the Iraq War and WMD fiasco, financial crisis, bank bailout) (2) subsequently, Barack Obama, and (3) the brink of a quiet surrender to the Clinton dynasty.

    A smaller segment see Conservatives as a few steps closer to doom as a result of playing the Trump card. (Casually interventionist Executive Branch, debt, ephemeral rollback of regulations. And still Obamacare!)

    From both points of view, it would have been better to have obstructed earlier.

  5. I’ll go along with the first two points — Don’t attack and Keep personal relationships alive — but the rest can be discarded. Face it. There are some issues on which conservatives and liberals might find agreement, for better or worse (“County Road 2 needs resurfacing before the first major snowfall.” “No high rises should be allowed in La Canada-Flintridge!”) And there are a lot of issues on which partisans from the two sides are diametrically opposed — Hispanic immigration, Medicaid expansion, global warming, late term abortion, for example. Compromise isn’t possible or necessarily desirable, so resolution can come only through civil war or social evolution solidified by politics and legislation.

  6. The very first sentence of this ode to “non-tribalism” is blaming and vilifying the rival tribe. That “non-tribalism” sounds like tribalism is good for me but not for thee.

  7. Leftist privilege.

    Most conservatives have enough self preservation instinct to know that if they come out of the closet they will be persecuted.

    Already Democrat congressmen have used FEC campaign donation data to tweet the identity of conservative donors and sickest angry mobs on their businesses. City officials routinely turn a blind eye to physical attacks by a toga on conservative rally goers. Elderly people are blocked from even crossing streets by terroristic thugs. And even churches have have received violent threats attempting to intimidate them from showing a Jordan Peterson documentary.

    Coming out as conservative is a great way to get canceled or fired.

    No. These attempts to identify conservatives now will undoubtedly be followed by retribution in the years to come.

    The safest approach for conservatives is to maintain anonymity and not engage with the privileged.

    The notion that the 2020 election will be anything other than fixed is laughable. The days of the USA as a free country and democracy are behind us.

  8. Aside from #5, the list is essentially the agenda for the communications best practices training I had to sit through here at work a few weeks back.

  9. Isn’t that how everyone (with common sense) operates in the real world when they talk about politics with people?

    Part of the fun about talking about politics on the internet is that you can actually disagree and argue with people because you don’t have a relationship with them.

  10. Our system only supports about four or five tribes at any given moment. Tribal affiliation has costs to be minimized. One could speculate that the number is relatively fixed for the USA, politics is not accurate enough for finer granularity.

    The cost is borne in the burden of talking points, each tribe wanting fewer talking point but slanted to their positions. The major tribes thus ending up with an optimum split of talking points, each set affordable in and of themselves, but none of them compatible. All the tribes being comfortably out of power most of the time we get a stable but dynamic system.

  11. The main problem with the piece is that the writer completely misunderstands what is at the core of contemporary progressivism. She regards herself as a progressive but apparently does not understand why progressive activists are so incredibly conformist in their views or how much their politics is a prestige-and-dominance game where seeing their fellow citizens as moral barbarians to be repressed is central to their politics.

  12. It ain’t the make believe 50’s anymore. Kumbaya is a total waste of time.

    I agree on 1 and 3, right up until the point they actually enrage me. Then that throws 2 and 4 out the door. There is no middle ground anymore, did you people miss the last decade?

    5 is not even a remote possibility, and I’d rather have hot nails driven into my eyes before I attempted 6.

    It is what it is. Inequality is running rampant, and the GOP keeps increasing it as fast as they can, Pollution is making a strong comeback, and industry is in charge of the EPA. Our ignoring of climate change is going to spell disaster for the world’s population, and a lot of it to ours.

    And someone wants me to sit around the fire and sing “kumbaya”?

    “Expletive deleted that”.

    • “This fits right in. All you hear from these deplorables is(when they can form a real sentence) “drain the swamp”. Right in front of them is the biggest swamp in the history of the federal government, but they will never believe that.

      At the halfway mark of President Donald Trump’s first term, his administration has hired a lobbyist for every 14 political appointments made, welcoming a total of 281 lobbyists on board, a ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Investigations analysis shows.

      With a combination of weakened rules and loose enforcement easing the transition to government and back to K Street, Trump’s swamp is anything but drained. The number of lobbyists who have served in government jobs is four times more than the Obama administration had six years into office. And former lobbyists serving Trump are often involved in regulating the industries they worked for.

      Even government watchdogs who’ve long monitored the revolving door say that its current scale is a major shift from previous administrations. It’s a “staggering figure,” according to Virginia Canter, ethics chief counsel for the D.C.-based legal nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It suggests that lobbyists see themselves as more effective in furthering their clients’ special interests from inside the government rather than from outside.”

      We tracked the lobbyists as part of an update to Trump Town, our database of political appointees. We’ve added the names of 639 new staffers with the administration and the financial disclosures of 351 political appointees who have filled different positions over the past year, and we tracked the careers of 338 who departed government during the same period.”

      https://www.propublica.org/article/we-found-a-staggering-281-lobbyists-whove-worked-in-the-trump-administration

      And you want me to talk with these people?

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