The current political tribalism -

[who dare wins?]

As the title state says, this is More or less what kiwis think about the concurrent political tribalism that is currently been happening over the years

The Importance of Civil Society (Part 1)

In Part 1 of the 5-Part saga on The Importance of Civil Society, we introduce the subject of Civil Society and then proceed to track and explain the causes o...

m.youtube.com

This video (around the end part) sparked the idea for the thread and I wonder what you think of it as well. (Sorry if OP is shit I'm typing on my phone rn)

 

[L50LasPak]

Political tribalism occurs in times of fear. You are less likely to reach out to others and more likely to retreat in times of deep fear. In moments of depression, you retreat completely into yourself and nobody else.

We live in an era of fear. Whether it be real fears (need I list them?) or manufactured fears (need I list those either?). But we are living in an era of fear.

 

[???]

Tribalism is normal, healthy human behavior. It's unavoidable and inevitable. We shouldn't punish people for wanting to be near those similar to and away from those different from themselves. However that is not what we have today; instead everyone is allowed to be tribalistic except for right-leaning, straight, cis, white people and especially white men.

This asymmetric expectation is what fuels fear, resentment, anger, and hatred among the people described above, against those who have an asymmetrical and hypothetical expectation of them.

Those who are forcing these unfair expectations on us would be wise to de-escalate, and seek a political compromise where we are each left to our own devices and neither side faces an existential struggle for dominance of the other in order to survive.

 

[Ningen]

Tribalism is normal, healthy human behavior

I deeply disagree.

We shouldn't punish people for wanting to be near those similar to and away from those different from themselves.

This isn't what people mean by "tribalism", what people mean by tribalism is a biased worldview based only in your own first hand experiences and prejuices, "for the hammer every problem is a nail", this has nothing to do with nationalism the fuck are you talking about

Those who are forcing these unfair expectations

Oh the irony, tribalism is all about unfair expectations.
I really don't follow your rant, your argument is a fucking non-sequitur, the fuck has it do with what OP posted?

 

[Marco Fucko]

So I don't know what specific part you wanted us to watch on the video OP but the guy concludes part 1 with a basic overview of the concept of negative liberty, as appreciated by the founders. He doesn't name it, but the first source basically describes it. Negative liberty is essentially when people are left to their own devices. You are free from X because it is leaving you alone. The opposite concept is positive liberty, wherein you are actively freed from something, such as poverty or slavery.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because negative vs positive liberty is a pretty core differentiating factor in people's politics and one of the many divides that informs the whole conservative vs liberal scene. Liberals' entire thought process is positive, i.e. people must be actively freed from things like underemployment, discrimination, etc etc.

This ties back into political tribalism. Liberals, or the American left, make moves where they perceive to be faults in the system, and conservatives don't like that because their preference is to be left alone. That sounds like a gross oversimplification, partially because it is, but I think you can find this energy rings true among the rank and file that buy into the surface level beliefs of these two main thought processes. This obviously isn't a hard line organizational thing, I'm sure plenty of moderate liberals want things like abortion and gay marriage to be left alone and not undone by activist conservatives whom they see as regressive, likewise one of my earliest political exposure was the gun community, and they've not only been fighting against bans but for things like easier personal carry all this time.

Basically this is a regular, if not rough, pattern of behavior. There are people who want things to be changed and there are people who are fine without going through that effort. The reason why this is flaring up, I would venture, is due to the internet and ease of exposure to radical politics. It is all too easy to run into a communist or fascist online these days, and for them to organize. That's why we're getting street brawls in places like Portland. All of this has made them more noticeable, meaning it is easier for them to reach into the mainstream and get the 'normies' discussing things and eventually drawing lines and taking sides. I think another reason is that those who would stand up for minorities are finding smaller and smaller niches to work with, which leads to microscopic communities like transexuals also being thrust into the mainstream. It begs the question from those with more conservative energy: how much do I have to accommodate for such a small population?

I kind of feel like this entire post is incoherent, maybe I should head to bed.

 

[NotArat]

When people find out the truth and learn they have been lied to, they tend to get angry.

Alex Jones said it best:

 

[BingBong]

Reject the false dichotomy. Embrace a third position tbh.

 

[Webby's Boyfriend]

I doubt that tribalism is that strong in politics, because if it were, then political movements wouldn't eat their own all the time.

 

[who dare wins?]

So I don't know what specific part you wanted us to watch on the video OP but the guy concludes part 1 with a basic overview of the concept of negative liberty, as appreciated by the founders. He doesn't name it, but the first source basically describes it. Negative liberty is essentially when people are left to their own devices. You are free from X because it is leaving you alone. The opposite concept is positive liberty, wherein you are actively freed from something, such as poverty or slavery.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because negative vs positive liberty is a pretty core differentiating factor in people's politics and one of the many divides that informs the whole conservative vs liberal scene. Liberals' entire thought process is positive, i.e. people must be actively freed from things like underemployment, discrimination, etc etc.

This ties back into political tribalism. Liberals, or the American left, make moves where they perceive to be faults in the system, and conservatives don't like that because their preference is to be left alone. That sounds like a gross oversimplification, partially because it is, but I think you can find this energy rings true among the rank and file that buy into the surface level beliefs of these two main thought processes. This obviously isn't a hard line organizational thing, I'm sure plenty of moderate liberals want things like abortion and gay marriage to be left alone and not undone by activist conservatives whom they see as regressive, likewise one of my earliest political exposure was the gun community, and they've not only been fighting against bans but for things like easier personal carry all this time.

Basically this is a regular, if not rough, pattern of behavior. There are people who want things to be changed and there are people who are fine without going through that effort. The reason why this is flaring up, I would venture, is due to the internet and ease of exposure to radical politics. It is all too easy to run into a communist or fascist online these days, and for them to organize. That's why we're getting street brawls in places like Portland. All of this has made them more noticeable, meaning it is easier for them to reach into the mainstream and get the 'normies' discussing things and eventually drawing lines and taking sides. I think another reason is that those who would stand up for minorities are finding smaller and smaller niches to work with, which leads to microscopic communities like transexuals also being thrust into the mainstream. It begs the question from those with more conservative energy: how much do I have to accommodate for such a small population?

I kind of feel like this entire post is incoherent, maybe I should head to bed.

In the comment section of the video he made a small comment showing the time stamps of the different parts. The one I was talking about is about 1 hour 20 or something like that. But you are right about social media playing a big part since he talks about that quite a bit in a part just before the part after that talking about political tribalism. TL;DR to it is how the internet has vastly changed our way of thinking and promotes political tribalism.

 

[Bum Driller]

In my opinion what we're seeing right now is just the death throes of the political schools of thought that have dominated our society for the last hundred years or so. Essentially, the political realities of "right" and "left" have mutated so far at this point that they bear very little resemblance to what they meant at the start of modern era, and as a result the political concepts of "right" and "left" as we have understood them are becoming meaningless, as they no longer align with their respective realities. Just like hundred years ago we saw tribalism of this kind at the birth bangs of modern era, now we see such as the adherents of these dying creeds flock beneath their respective banners, desperately grasping at some meaning in a world that is spiralling beyond their ability to control or to quantify. In other words, it's nothing new, just a pattern that keeps on repeating itself as the ages march onward.

 

[???]

I deeply disagree.

This isn't what people mean by "tribalism", what people mean by tribalism is a biased worldview based only in your own first hand experiences and prejuices, "for the hammer every problem is a nail", this has nothing to do with nationalism the fuck are you talking about

Oh the irony, tribalism is all about unfair expectations.

I really don't follow your rant, your argument is a fucking non-sequitur, the fuck has it do with what OP posted?

What do you propose instead of decentralization of political authority?

I assume the worst about human nature and advocate for policies which at worst limit the damage people can do, and at best turn our flawed natures towards productive ends. Trying to fix humanity and seeking utopia always fails.

Anyways, you have some very strong words for my beliefs; why don't you put yours out there if you are so confident they are superior to mine?

 

[Ivan Shatov]

In my opinion what we're seeing right now is just the death throes of the political schools of thought that have dominated our society for the last hundred years or so. Essentially, the political realities of "right" and "left" have mutated so far at this point that they bear very little resemblance to what they meant at the start of modern era, and as a result the political concepts of "right" and "left" as we have understood them are becoming meaningless, as they no longer align with their respective realities. Just like hundred years ago we saw tribalism of this kind at the birth bangs of modern era, now we see such as the adherents of these dying creeds flock beneath their respective banners, desperately grasping at some meaning in a world that is spiralling beyond their ability to control or to quantify. In other words, it's nothing new, just a pattern that keeps on repeating itself as the ages march onward.

Disagree we're seeing polarization. There's too many poles, we're fragmented, and the groups trying to bring everything together have very bad intentions.

Robert Reich said something I agree with, circa 2001. He was talking about insurance companies, saying their cost of labor scales according to the size of the location where they wish to sell policies. The Internet cuts those costs, to the point where you don't need as many salesmen, and politics kind of works that way as well.

He was arguing for a future where political parties are small, regional concerns that nominate their own candidates, like the Conservative Party of New York. I liked that model, mostly as a way of re-envisioning a politics for the future. We've kind of seen that with all the MoveOns, DFAs, BLMs, etc of the world, but they organize around a different axiom: race and wealth equality. There's no geographic component, these groups come together in transitory groups that are organized around their own ethics and norms. Their relationship to America is secondary to their identity.

There are forces that seek to remake America according to equity, which seeks to elevate the "poor" to fight some great existential threat (i.e. the Green New Deal.)

There are other forces that seek to turn back globalism, who see the threat posed by running our economy through places like China.

Between them, somehere, is the new politics of the 21st Century. It won't look much like the old politics, either it will be dominated by leftist authoritarians or given the space and opportunity to compete by right-leaning libertarians. But it won't operate according to the old models of Capitalism and Socialism, we outgrew those around 2008 and we're trying to figure out what's worth preserving.

When you think about it, in a Capitalist society, there's capital and there's labor. Each needs a party to represent it's interests. Since Clinton, we've had a party that represents big business and a party that represents bigger business. A lot of issues people care about fall through the cracks and there needs to be a realignment for society to function well.

At the same time, government is not limited by geography and central authorities the way it once was. Like it or not, we're interconnected with the rest of the world, and there's going to be a struggle between internal, domestic policy and obligations to the world at large. So far, neither the Democrats or the Republicans have shown much aptitude for navigating these waters, other than for Trump (who I admire in a sick way.) Standing up to China is important, it's pretty significant that a US President is drawing lines in the sand about what we will and will not accept. It's going to define the struggle of the next 50 - 100 years as we move towards something a lot more interesting than what we have now.

It's a little sad to think I won't see what this new world is all about. But I kind of see the tracks for how to get there, and wonder if anyone is truly going to appreciate the struggles we're going through right now. Feels like this is a blip in the history books, which will focus on what happens after sides start to polarize and we start acting like Americans again.

 

[Lemmingwise]

Political juice channel from the OP is either a fed or really really dumb for some of his early vids that I saw. The former seemed more likely at the time, the latter seems more likely for still being around.

I best remember he did a video on pizzagate that was very wishy washy. On the one hand he seemed familiar with some of the more headraising facts and on the other he took a position that it probably was nothing to see. That's how I remember it now, years later.

My comments on the subject of pizzagate have so far been well received on the farms, but that may have a result of the specific threads I discussed it in.

Edit:looking now that video has been deleted, either by him or by youtube. It was like his 6th or 7th video.

Edit 2: it looks like he currently has again only 7 videos in his backlog (though more views on his videos, and some from a year ago). So it looks like he actively removes prior videos. This again seems more like a paid influencer, as it allows one to contradict prior positions easier.

 

[Dom Cruise]

I don't know, I find it bizarre that people don't want to simply think of themselves as individuals first and foremost and wear their politics so on their sleeves.

Even when I was at my most liberal I didn't eat, sleep, breath and shit politics like so many assholes do today.

where we are each left to our own devices and neither side faces an existential struggle for dominance of the other in order to survive.

What's sad is it wasn't that long ago that America basically was just that, things had reached a sort of "equilibrium" in the 2000s between the races and gender to where people were more or less free to just live their lives and carve out their own little corners of happiness.

It wasn't until the 2010s did all of a sudden the idea that American culture is one great big game of King of Hill where there's only one winner and everyone else is a loser spring up, look at the whole thing with feminists and video games, it never once occurred to the feminists that maybe they weren't entitled to being able to dictate how every game should be made and maybe gamers deserved to be left the fuck alone.

All I want is my own happiness, I'm not trying to take anyone else's happiness away from them, but if they won't allow mine, we got a problem.

 

[Never Scored]

I think a lot of it has to do with internet useage spreading to the general masses with the rise of social media. Before social media your average person had access to a limited pool of people to communicate with, maybe their neighbours, cousins, coworkers, classmates, whatever. Because you had access to a limited pool of people to socialize with, you were more willing to overlook disagreements. Let's say you're an athiest and you think people who go to church are real pieces of shit. If the only other atheist at your workplace disagrees with you on gun control, well at least you're not going to have to listen to him ramble about church on Monday morning. Maybe he has a friend you meet through him that he met at the gun club who goes to church but is able to shut the fuck up about it and likes the same hockey team as you, so you become friends with that guy too. Now you have two friends that you disagree with on key issues, but there is enough overlap in your beliefs or interests that you tolerate your differences in order to fufill your social needs.

Now you have access to a virtually unlimited number of other people to interact with, increasing the likelyhood of finding someone who's athiest and also agrees with you on gun control and likes the same hockey team as you. Why would you bother to interact with someone who disagrees with you on gun control after finding this other person? Why would you grit your teeth through rants about the second amendment, in order to hang out with another athiest, when you have this other guy online who doesn't do that? Now instead of having this interconnected web of people whose friendships were based on geographic proximity and having a "good enough" overlap in beliefs and interests, you have these seperate groups that get more and more mutually exclusive as you connect with people whose interests and beliefs increasingly overlap with your own.

Think of it this way, if only one in a hundred thousand people are furry athiests who likes the Montreal Canadiens and play Nintendo Switch and you're in a city with 100,000 people chances are you're the only furry athiest who likes the Montreal Canadiens and plays Nintendo Switch in your town. If you're on a social network with a billion people like Twitter, all of a sudden you have another 100,000 athiest furries who like the Montreal Canadiens and play Nintendo Switch to talk to. You have a whole online community of people exactly like you the size of the entire city you physically live in. Would you rather interact with the 99,999 people around you who aren't atheist furries who like the Montreal Canadiens and play Ninteno Switch or the 99,999 people online who are? Now, that city of 100,000 people you live in isn't your community anymore, the network of 100,000 atheist furries who like the Montreal Canadiens and play Ninteno Switch on Twitter is.

 

[Give Her The D]

I doubt that tribalism is that strong in politics, because if it were, then political movements wouldn't eat their own all the time.

The tribalism is mostly with boomer Republicans and progressive Democrats. The rest, like me, don't give a shit.

What do you propose instead of decentralization of political authority?

I assume the worst about human nature and advocate for policies which at worst limit the damage people can do, and at best turn our flawed natures towards productive ends. Trying to fix humanity and seeking utopia always fails.

Anyways, you have some very strong words for my beliefs; why don't you put yours out there if you are so confident they are superior to mine?

Politics aren't 100% about race. It's about running government agencies, it's about regulating what's good for the world, and civil rights.

Quit letting BLM and race-based orgs make you think politics is all about race relations.

 

[Webby's Boyfriend]

The tribalism is mostly with boomer Republicans and progressive Democrats. The rest, like me, don't give a shit.

Especially the Left loves eating its own.

 

[???]

Politics aren't 100% about race. It's about running government agencies, it's about regulating what's good for the world, and civil rights.

Quit letting BLM and race-based orgs make you think politics is all about race relations.

For all of human history up to about the 1970s it was about race, ethnicity, religion, denomination, and language. What's happening now isn't an aberration but a return to normal.

You're awfully naive if you think you can undo millions of years of evolution with cheerful platitudes and maybe a John Lennon song. Do you seriously think you know better than nature? That's not a very scientific attitude.

Besides that, none of the three things you mentioned existed until the treaty of Westphalia, hundreds of years ago. For most of human history we were either mobile bandits (herders or hunter-gatherers) or farmers and fishermen ruled by stationary bandits (warlords). There weren't gay men and childless middle aged women in the FBI deciding what was best for the Kulaks, as it is today.

What I propose is we return to the simplest system possible, that of a agrarian democracy of confederated states, as the founders of the USA wanted, and as practiced by the Swiss. They have almost no central government and leave locals to their own devices, good or bad.

You're welcome to have your own little mini-USA, ruled over by queers and losers, intent on saving other peoples from themselves (translation: bomb them and then import them), and helping backwards savages learn the mystery and wonder of man-on-man fisting and anal sex - which is the apparent purpose of the modern state - but I want no part of that. I will however watch your endeavour from afar, with a bowl of popcorn at the ready. Whatever you do though, you shouldn't be allowed to flee and shit up my state when it reaches its inevitable conclusion.

 

[MaoBigDong]

I think we need to take a step back here and address whether this conversation should be about political tribalism or about identity tribalism. Identity tribalism can encompass the idea of political tribalism, but can also include race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. while political tribalism would be exclusively that - left v right, lib v auth, etc. Although one can argue that political tribalism might be influenced by identity tribalism, this could potentially devolve into a discussion about identity politics and I feel like that's not what OP intended (correct me if I'm wrong).

That being said, I think the modern day idea of left vs right is largely perpetuated by the political party system, and if we want to reach any modern solutions we would have to have some sort of voting system in place where there is no need for that. If there were a way to have all candidates for any office run on an independent platform we could talk more about the ideas instead of lumping every idea into one category. The political compass meme, while accurate for its metrics, is slightly outdated IMO because there are many people who are indecisive or apathetic about some issues, but heavily involved with others.

On top of that I've heard it from both the left and the right that political parties are more like sports teams nowadays, and that voters are more like rabid fans. Sure, there are some more moderate and rational people out there, but the shouting about how "we gotta beat em!" is going to drown out any rational arguments towards one party or another. Until we decide as a collective that this is drawing everyone further apart the tribalism will continue and get worse. This is why we're seeing young voters who are VASTLY polarized on opinions, especially on the internet, where young voters mostly reside and where you can pick your own echo-chamber. I hate to use horseshoe theory at all, but the commies and the fascists are predominantly the same when it comes to picking where they reside on the internet. While recruiting is certainly a thing for both ideas, they seem to mostly operate on their own sides of the internet, clashing spectacularly when they run into each other anywhere else. This isn't good for anybody, as it stifles the discussion of different ideology and devolves to petty insults most of the time. We're living in an era where nobody, left or right, wants to be wrong or get their feelings hurt. Hot centrist take, I know, but civil discussion is how we tackle the modern problems in the world, not shouting at each other like cavemen on the internet.

God, y'all have been making such good threads in here lately I might as well write a book with the walls of text I've written. Keep it up f.aggots.

 

[NotArat]

Reject the false dichotomy. Embrace a third position tbh.

I'm a nationalist because I love my nation. I'm a socialist because I love my people.