Can We Predict The End Of Tribalism?

I published my second book, Tribalism: The Curse of 21^st Century America, in 2019. Since then, the problem has gotten much worse. Everything has become political, tied to either liberal or conservative ideology. There is no agreement between the parties on how to work together, and most Americans have separated themselves from the other tribe.

Tribalism is an American phenomenon that has only recently emerged in Western Europe. Most Western European nations have more than two parties, so there is no binary choice, as we have here. Their traditional left-right ideologies, split among multiple parties, have been replaced by the “open” and “closed” camps.

The open camp supports pro-EU integration, pro-immigration/multicultural initiatives, an urban, educated, and globalized society, and Green, liberal social values. The closed camp prioritizes national sovereignty, restricts immigration, and embraces rural/small-town, culturally rooted, traditional, law-and-order values.

The Syrian refugee wave in 2015 is widely seen as the moment European tribalism accelerated. The triggers were reached when trust in mainstream parties dropped, identity politics intensified, immigration became the emotional center of politics, and voters decided that elites were ignoring their concerns.

European tribalism has a supranational government (the EU), which becomes a loyalty test: are you pro-EU = progressive, modern, cooperative, or are you Eurosceptic = nationalist, traditionalist, and skeptical of globalization? With regard to voting, capitals and large cities vote overwhelmingly for progressive candidates, while smaller towns and the countryside tend to vote for nationalist/populist candidates. Like in the U.S., alternative media ecosystems have grown, distrust of legacy media is high among populist voters, and online networks amplify grievance and identity narratives. Europe also has strong state broadcasters, which some see as mouthpieces of the establishment.

In summary, we can see that Europe’s tribalism is multi-party (not binary), more about identity and sovereignty than race, less about religion, more about immigration and national culture, and expressed through new parties rather than taking over old ones.

When you look at the American system, you can see that the progressives are the EU-like party, driven by the Silicon Valley globalists and the well-educated white urban crowd. They are the open camp faction, and they have suppressed the opinions of traditional Democrats. Thirty-five percent of Democrats do not support open borders.

Why are the people on the left globalists? The prospect of a utopian world where equality reigns is near and dear to the hearts of the left. They don’t really care that the result of that journey is a totalitarian system, because they are the smart people who will be running it.

So what is the future of tribalism in America?

In the last chapter of my book, I speculated about factors that could end tribalism, and there were 3: apathy, a threat to America as a whole, and the building of a consensus.

Apathy could take hold if the warring parties realize how stupid the whole exercise is. The idea that the success of our political system depends on the winner of a fight over ideology is absurd, because practical politics should always outrank ideology in the minds of Americans. Which makes more sense to fight for, the cost of healthcare or the climate?

Fixing the idiocy depends more on the left’s behavior because they are the aggressors. If they stopped working for radical change, the right would abandon their resistance. These are the two political points of view in America, roughly equally divided among the populace. The country must be governed by consensus, based on a combination of the opinions of the right and the left, not on either alone. Both groups need to realize that as long as the ideological fight continues, the elites can put their feet up, have a cocktail, and relax, because there is no organized resistance against their excesses.

The threat to America alternative would come about after a 9/11-like event occurred. That one day galvanized the American people to a special purpose and forced partisan rancor to the sidelines. I, for one, thought COVID would serve the same purpose. Unfortunately, it ushered in the era of open and closed camps due to a fundamental disagreement over how to handle the pandemic.

The third possibility is building a consensus for change. It would take a significant percentage of the American people to accomplish that task. With the country divided, how could that be possible? Perhaps the recent polling documenting the level of dissatisfaction the American people feel about their government.

Both parties, regardless of ideology, are fumbling the ball. They’re playing a game to see how much they can get away with before the American people blow a fuse. Since both parties are puppets of the elites, the wealthy would have to say, “Enough is enough,” before we make progress. The problem is that millions more Americans are happy to express their displeasure with the government than are willing to go to the polls and do something about it.

What we need is the rule of neither party. Trump is close to that model because he’s anti-establishment, but he also relies on conservatives for support, which makes him biased against the left. Trump won’t display any tolerance for the left because he feels the Lawfare attacks were a vendetta. He can be friendly with the elites and try to work with them, as seen by his work with Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.

Where will a Trump-lite come from? Where can we find an individual with charisma who will be dedicated to anti-establishment policy-making? Only time will tell.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.