Think of this as Volume 17, Number 22 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.
The greatest danger to democracy comes
from tribalism.
In most of the world, democracy usually
fails as a direct result of tribalism. People divide up into tribes
based on ethnicity, or religion, and vote exclusively along tribal
lines.
The result is it doesn't matter what
the issues are, or who the candidates are. The result is
foreordained.
Tribalism allows enormous corruption to
exist, because there's nothing to stop the leaders of the largest
tribe from stealing. From the other tribe and from their fellow
tribesmen.
The only way designers of democracy
have found to deal with tribalism is to assure some measure of power
for each tribe, to pre-divide the spoils and hope that, with a share
guaranteed, those within each tribe will police themselves.
That's
what the American Constitution (left) was designed to do, to protect the
southern tribe's slavery from the north, and to protect the smallest
states from the larger.
This worked for decades in Lebanon,
until demographics got in the way. Muslims were reproducing faster
than Christians, yet Christians were guaranteed the presidency. The
result was civil war. British leaders tried the same trick with
Northern Ireland, and its failure began the period known as “the
troubles.” In our country, the Civil War rent the national fabric,
but the Constitution survived with only three amendments.
Whether we're talking Shiites in Iran,
or Xhosa in South Africa, northern Italians or Japanese nationalists,
tribalism covers up corruption and makes free institutions difficult
to sustain. Issues don't matter, the candidates don't matter, charges
of corruption don't matter. What matters is power, what matters is
tribe, and you follow along.
This is what killed the political
career of Barack Obama. Senior (right). He was a Luo, the majority tribe of
Kenya was Kikuyu, and thus he was denied the shot at power his mind
deserved and died an alcoholic. His American son has done somewhat
better.
The point of today's post is that
tribal politics have come to America in our time, and this is very,
very dangerous.
In this case it's the white tribe,
primarily a southern tribe. And this tribe has coalesced around the
Republican Party, taking it over root and branch.
IOKIYAR – It's OK If You're A
Republican. Democrats say this dismissively, but it's an important
point. No matter what a Republican does – steal, cheat on his wife,
whatever – it can be forgiven because he is, after all, of the
right tribe. Why, then, should any Republican follow any law? His
only fear is that other Republicans may kick him to the curb, and the
fear that some Democrat may take the seat is usually enough to
prevent that from happening.
If things get really bad – Michelle
Bachmann bad – the Republican can be paid off with promises and
clear the field for the next member of the tribe to take the seat,
take the power, keep it within the tribe.
What we've found in the last few years,
however, is that this tribalism doesn't just extend toward enabling
corruption, both personal and political. It also extends toward
enabling crazy, even insane political results.
Take guns (left). Guns are a key value to the
white Republican tribe. Guns are protection against the power of the
other tribe. The assumption is that if the other tribe – the
Democrats – goes “too far” (whatever that means) members of the
Republican tribe have the right to overthrow that government by
force, to establish a dictatorship, because, guns.
This is insanity, an insanity that was
born in the defense of slavery, nurtured in the fight against Civil
Rights, and sent deep into the tissues of every white, Republican
male by groups like the NRA.
Thus, even though 90% of NRA members
favored expanded background checks, and even though a hefty majority
of Republicans favored getting rid of assault weapons, nothing
happened. Because Republicans fear the tribal leaders of the NRA.
They know that, when push comes to shove, NRA members will follow
their tribal leaders rather than their own hearts. No matter what
they want, Republicans won't defy their tribe, and will toss away
anyone who does.
This is an extreme version of a
political style that infects every domestic issue (right). Republicans who
understand the reality of climate change won't vote for a Democrat.
Republicans who are poor won't vote for a Democrat, even if their
leaders take away the food stamps their babies need to survive.
Republican women won't vote for a Democrat, even when their bodies
are on the line. Republican businessmen dare not support public
education, because it goes against the interests of the tribe. They
would rather let the roads collapse than go against the interests of
their tribe.
In the wake of the Bush collapse, the
Republican tribe was taken over by forces who were well aware of all
this. A small number of billionaires, led by the Koch Brothers, call
the tune, and the whole machine dances. There is a Republican media
through which truth can not get through, led by a business press in
which only those who are members of the tribe in good standing have a
right to be heard. Thus we get crap like this, from an absolute asshat named Peter Ferrara claiming that the world isn't
warming, it's cooling. Guess who employs him? The Kochs' Heartland
Institute.
This sort of thing has been happening
ever since Nixon (left), and it's an extension of the Nixon Thesis. Once power was achieved, the only way to keep up the scare was to
define, remove, and then dehumanize apostates. When broad mandates
are achieved, whole groups are kicked out and the base narrowed so
that intensity can be maintained. There were once pro-choice
Republicans, and environmentalist Republicans, and Republicans who
believed in equal rights for blacks, for immigrants and for gay
people. All gone now. And in anything but a general election, the
tactics of Spiro Agnew still work – the knees still jerk.
America is a large country, a diverse
country, and not a tribal country. But the politics of tribe can
still be effective. They kept the South solidly Democratic for a
century, and keep it Republican today. The politics of tribe are, at
heart, a politics of fear. The idea is that we're all around this
campfire, anything outside it is dangerous, and you'll do anything,
say anything, to stay within that campfire. You'll go against your
own interest, against your family, to stay inside.
And if this sounds like certain
American religions (Mormons), it's not coincidental. Most of the
horrors perpetrated in this world over the last two centuries had
their beginnings somewhere in America, from Naziism born of our
creating “Lebensraum” in the West and exterminating the Indians,
while practicing Margaret Sanger's eugenics and aborting the idiots,
right down to the present day.
The Age of Obama stands as a rebuke to
all this. The politics of this President (right), the Obama Thesis, is that we rise above the interest of our tribes, whether that tribe
is religious, ethnic, or class, that we recognize something called
the “public interest,” a vision we all share, a vision expressed
by our Founders and by every one of our greatest leaders through the
centuries. From Senaca Falls to Selma to Stonewall.
The failure to rise above tribe
destroyed Barack Obama Sr., but the dreams of the son are an American
dream. A politics that rises above tribe, above religion, above
color, above who we love or how much we make is now the majority
view.
But the politics of tribe remains out
there, and only when all of us learn to rise above it will it be
defeated, not in the form of a permanent “Democratic Majority”
but in the form of two competing political parties defined by ideals
and dedicated to the same shared values.
Until then, we must fight tribalism.
It's the Third American Civil War. The first was fought with guns in
the 1860s, the second with defiant bodies in the 1960s, and now it's
fought within each of us, within our individual consciences, and the
desire among each of us to be unique despite our tribal allegiance.
