Andrew Sullivan offers a booklet-length article in New York
Magazine Sept. 19, 2017, “America Wasn’t Built for Humans” with the byline “Tribalism
was an urge our Founding Fathers assumed we would overcome; And so it has
become out greatest vulnerability”.
The article roughly equates American tribalism with hyper
partisanship, but it also promotes intellectual reduction, especially the over
broad ideas of what comprises a “hate crime” or “white supremacy”. It seems intellectually lazy but also
reflects on what my own mother used to call “real life”. He points out how Chadwick Moore was
ostracized merely for giving Milo Yiannopoulos credibility in an otherwise
reasonably funny and critical piece in “Out”.
I certainly experienced the same sort of tribalism in many
episodes of my own life, as leftist leadership in much of the gay community demanded
loyalty to its own imposition of identity politics
Sullivan sees our historical denial of our “tribal nature”
as a flaw in the way the nation was set up after the Constitution was adopted.
Then later, this little snarky, timocratic gem: “One of the great attractions
of tribalism is that you actually don’t have to think very much.” You can watch your whole life’s output grow
less bad.
Sullivan refers to Sebastian Junger’s “Tribe” (WP review)
and Wades’s “A Troublesome Inheritance” (review), where civilization tried to gnaw away
at tribalism.
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