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When elites speak of tribalism, we tend to think were somehow above it.
We value unique individuals over the amorphous group.
Its the unthinking masses who do that.
Unlike them, we are aware of the dangers of this temptation, alert to its irrationality.
Except, quite often, we dont.
Professor Lilliana Mason has a new book that deals with this,Uncivil Agreement.
She emailed Edsall: The more highly educated also tend to be more strongly identified along political lines.
It has become rather an elaborate and sophisticated version of Which side are you on?
But even this doesnt capture the emotional intensity of it all, or the way it compounds over time.
Remember how you felt the day after Trump was elected?
Instead of a willingness to disagree and tolerate, there is an impulse to loathe and expel.
And this is especially true with people we associate with our own side.
Its why when RedState decided it needed to fire some staffers, only the anti-Trump oneswere canned.
The dynamic here is deeply tribal.
Hence the somewhat hysterical reaction, for example, to Kanye Wests recent rhetorical antics.
Im not here to defend West.
He had it coming.
You could almost say he asked for it.
It wasnt easy being the first openly gay editor of anything in Washington when I was in my 20s.
In that intimidating atmosphere, Im with the dissenter, the loner, and the outlier.
Im with the undocumented, the dude who has had his group credentials taken away.
Leave aside its emotional authenticity and rhetorical dazzle.
Notice rather that the surrender of the individual to theweis absolute.
And its at that point that Id want to draw the line.
Because its an important line, and without it, a liberal society is close to impossible.
I understand that much better for having read so much of Ta-Nehisi Coatess work.
But that my own freedom was harder to achieve doesnt make it any less precious, or sacrosanct.
And I am never going to concede it to straightness, the way Coates does to whiteness.
As an individual, I seek my own freedom, period.
Being gay is integral to who I am, but it doesnt define who I am.
A free artist owes nothing to anyone, especially his own tribe.
You are devouring the individual in favor of the mob.
You are reducing a kaleidoscope to black and white.
Because there is no category of simply human freedom possible in America, now or ever.
There is only tribe.
And the struggle against the other tribe.
And this will never end.
That makes political tribalism even less resolvable and even more combustible.
It makes a liberal politics that rests on a common good close to impossible.
Empowered and turbocharged by the mob dynamics of social media, we have all become enmeshed in it.
Gays are less visible a target and freer of the pull of history.
His atheism makes hope so much harder and the wheel of history so much less forgiving.
But then I remember a different time and it wasnt so long ago.
We clearly disagreed, deeply.
We both come from extremely different places, countries, life experiences, loyalties.
The riptide of tribalism can capture us all in the end, until we drown in it.
But as I watched the proceedings, I could almost feel that opportunity slipping away.
The old euphemisms enhanced interrogation techniques were hauled out, as if they werent now absurd on their face.
But she wouldnt and couldnt.
She gave them not an inch.
If there is no bright line here, there are no lines anywhere.
I listened and watched her impassive expression closely as she went through the motions of minimal accountability.
I only wish Hannah Arendt were around to describe it.
What happens if we find out it was Trump?
Stormy Danielss lawyer, Michael Avenatti, was the first person to insinuate this possibility on cable television.
But the full case for this scenario is laid outin these pagesin pellucid and rigorous detail by Paul Campos.
Broidys past and his behavior when confronted with this scandal do indeed seem somewhat bizarre.
I think of it as a litmus test for their tribalism.
And then I snap out of it.
Theyd weigh one abortion against the millions of others sustained by theRoeregime, and give Trump yet another Mulligan.
There is, in many ways, no going back now.
It is simply a matter of how great the moral cost of the entire, grisly transaction will be.
See you next Friday.
