Why is America stuck in a Tribal state?

The cause of America’s tribalism is simple, if you think about it. Groups of Americans have become uncomfortable with the direction of our society, and have reverted to a tribal mentality. Tribes offer safety because they are smaller groups of like minded people.

The details explaining our tribalism are complicated and need some discussion to help understand them.

Tribalism is possible because the political morality of the Right and Left are different. People on the Left concern themselves with groups and their status. They see capitalism as unfair because it leads to poverty and inequality. Their efforts in the political seek to expand the welfare state with programs that will solve the major problems of society. People on the Right are concerned with liberty. They see man’s opportunity to succeed in the world as dependent a government that focuses on individualism and reward for hard work. To the Right, big government and welfare state programs destroy liberty through asset transfers. Expansion of the welfare state requires increased taxation, so the monetary assets of the public are transferred to government. That transfer might be legitimized if the results showed that the funded programs were effective. More often than not, they show them to be ineffective.

The personality of the Left is driven by the desire for change; a restless discomfort with the status quo and a feeling that change is normal and will make things better. The personality of the Right is driven by resistance to change and an attraction to traditions. The Right believes that traditions are the foundations for the advancement of society and dictate how much change is reasonable.

There are four major factors that push us into tribalism: changes in society, grievances of identity groups, postmodern communications, and a corrupted media.

1. The last forty years has seen enormous change to the American cultural landscape. The family has changed in character and definition, people have become less religious, and are now too busy to socialize. This is discomforting to the Right because its too much change too fast and represents a tearing down of important traditions that act to the benefit of mankind.

2. Our society has become divided by identity and lost the ability to come together as Americans. Identity groups, who have grievances, work to correct them but, even when progress is made, remain separated from the whole.

3. During the last two decades, technology has overwhelmed us. Instant communication has made us all feel that the world is moving faster. We feel pressure to live in the instant. That pressure is unsettling.

4. The traditional media has to compete with the internet for audience share, and has corrupted itself in the process. Because the internet has no filter, the most awful ideas are presented and hyped there. Every idiot has a platform. The traditional media could take the high road and provide a rational alternative, but instead chose to participate in the same game. The presentation and discussion of extreme political positions creates a misleading picture of reality to the public, while ignoring the good stories and the fundamental fairness of the American people. The artificial world presented is depressing.

The political parties are polarized because the American people are polarized. The moderate senators and Congressmen who used to populate the Congress are gone, so all that remains are the extremes. Moreover, each of the parties is fractured by ideological arguments. Democrats fight themselves over how far to the Left they should be; liberal or socialist? The Right fights itself over fiscal responsibility and the politicization of traditional values. The divide between them will not be fixed unless the American people tell the Congress to get their house in order.

How will American tribalism resolve itself? The short answer is that it will abate when the opposing tribes realize their lack of communication is not healthy and stands in the way of progress; when progress and unity start to mean more than stagnation and enmity.

Conservatives will continue to advocate for traditions and their will always be conservatives to do that. The Left, which contains many who believe in the American ideal, needs to separate itself from the radical Left and show its willingness to communicate with the Right. The identity groups need to see themselves as Americans rather than merely human beings with a set of personal characteristics.

We all need to slow down. The idea that human life must be lived through a cell phone is an absurdity that belittles the capacity we all have to make the world a better place.

What is Populism?

Populism is a word that is commonly used today to describe political trends across the globe. It is not a new concept and has existed throughout the history of human society. Populism appears under specific circumstances and acts as a warning sign of problems in a political system.

Historian Michael Kazin defines populism as “a language whose speakers conceive of ordinary people as a noble assemblage not bounded narrowly by class; view their elite opponents as self-serving and undemocratic; and seek to mobilize the former against the latter”.

In other words, when government fails to meet the needs of a group or groups, within the society, a reaction will appear that opposes the government. Populism on the Left is different than populism on the Right. Left-wing populists take the side of the people against an elite group or the establishment. Their energy comes from the common man opposing the elites. Right-wing populists take the side of the common man against elites they accuse of favoring a third group.

In the last decade and a half, a populist movement emerged in America when white men became frustrated by the federal government’s lack of interest in addressing their concerns. The media commonly report that the movement is driven by blue collar workers but the constituency is actually much broader than that. The group also includes evangelical men, men over 50, men earning at least $ 50,000 per year, and non-college educated men.

White men in America feel that all of the other identity groups are ahead of them in line: women, African-Americans, Hispanic, Gays, immigrants, etc. They see the other groups receiving attention and benefits from the government they have no access to. In addition, the radical Left’s attack on “white man’s privilege” ignores the important role white men have played in building our country.

In recent decades, post-industrial societies have embraced a neoliberal agenda of free movement of capital and labor to achieve prosperity. This view supports increased immigration as a way to adapt to changes in labor requirements. In the United States, both parties supported free trade deals. These policies impacted white men, especially after the Great Recession, when the housing bust destroyed Americans most important asset – the equity in their homes. The loss of asset value and the risk of job loss due to the immigrant pool and increased automation has caused the reaction against the government.

Donald Trump is the first populist candidate, in American history, to be elected president. He sailed through the nomination process by beating back a large group of establishment candidates who didn’t understand the populist wave. He won the election by holding the Republican base and using populist rhetoric to convince white men to vote for him. His slogan of “make America great again” suggested the renewal of a time before identity politics and political correctness began to dominate the American cultural narrative.

Populist movements are temporary, exhibiting an emotional response from the electorate that eventually burns out. These movements may or may not achieve their objectives, depending on whether the practical demands of implementing programs that fix the problem are achievable. Often, populist demands are co-opted by the major parties as attempts to entice the constituencies to join their ideology. As we saw in 2016, adding the populist constituency to the votes of one of the major parties can win an election.

Oddly, with less than a year to go before the 2020 election, the Democrats don’t seem to be addressing their problem with white men. Is it possible that the most radical elements of the Left are opposed to that effort because it would compromise their narrative?

Income inequality as a political issue

Income inequality is a highly publicized and much debated topic. How do we reconcile the arguments over this issue with reality, given the battle lines between one side and the other?

The origin of the inequality as political issue begins with Marxist theory.

Karl Marx originally proposed an economic theory that suggested how and why capitalism should be replaced. In Marx' view, capitalism, as expressed in the industrial revolution, cruelly exploited workers and turned them into valueless machines. Moreover, there was great inequality between the managers of the corporations and the workers who worked for them. Marx predicted that, at some point, workers would revolt against this exploitation, and create a transitional government that would eventually become a communist society. The new society would be egalitarian (all people would be equal) and not have an economic hierarchy.

Marx' theory developed into mature Socialist movement in Europe during the latter part of the 19th Century. Socialist leaders attempted to organize workers to prepare for the inevitable revolts, but they never happened. Meanwhile, Russia became a Communist state, during World War I, when it was taken over by a revolutionary gang. The same process took place in China under Mao. Neither followed the roadmap Marx had constructed.

In the period between the two world wars, socialist intellectuals began to think about why workers had not revolted. Was there something wrong with Marx' theory? The Frankfurt School was founded in Germany, in 1923, with the express purpose of correcting flaws in Marx' approach, using a tool called "Critical Theory." Critical theory attempted to look at Marxism from the outside in order to analyze it objectively. One conclusion they drew was Marx had not included psychology in his analysis of worker class behavior.

Using Freud's theories, the Frankfurt School concluded that workers did not revolt because they had been psychologically seduced by capitalism and were under its control. Working in a capitalist society forced the worker to earn the money that would allow him to achieve the lifestyle enjoyed by his neighbors. He was stuck on a treadmill and couldn't get off. They concluded it was a mistake to concentrate on the worker class as a constituency because it was too narrow and could not generate a revolution by itself. Instead, they would focus on all of society.

To that end, the German Social Democratic Party (SDP) published a document in 1959 called the Godesberg program. This program changed socialism's focus from exploitation of the worker to economic inequality across the whole culture. The party believed that if they could not defeat capitalism as an economic theory, they would have better luck attacking it for creating inequality. From the early 1960s to today, socialists have been attacking capitalism as the cause of inequality in the West. Their solution is to utilize government to alleviate inequality as a step toward transition to a socialist state. This tactic remains a core component of the Left’s playbook today.

To test the socialist’s idea, we examine historical income levels by economic class in the United States.

Here we see the income distribution in the United States at three different time periods: 1774, 1860, and 2011. What's notable here is that there is very little difference between income levels for each class over the two-hundred-and-forty-year span. The top tier has produced about 50% of the income, the middle tier about 35%, and the bottom tier about 10%.

These results are surprising given the state of American society when they were measured. In 1774, the United States did not exist and income was based on the colonial economy. In 1860, the industrial revolution was underway and the Civil War would soon begin. In 2011, eight years ago, the United States was operating in a mature post-industrial globalist society. Could these periods have been any different?

The most likely conclusion, to be drawn from the chart, is that a capitalist society operates by a set of poorly understood mechanisms that determine income distribution. Income is related to human capabilities and motivation. The results are similar for any time period and there is no manmade way to change the result. This means that throwing money and government programs at inequality will accomplish nothing.

How do Americans really feel about income inequality? The answer is surprising. For all the press about CEOs making 2000 times the salary of the average worker, Americans don't care about that metric. Study after study has shown that people care about their income as it relates to their peers, not some CEO. In other words, if I'm an attorney, I want to know that my income is similar to what other attorneys make. If I am below that standard, I will be unhappy.

If there is no way to make inequality go away, why waste time and money trying to do so? Focus on education and job training to help people get better jobs. And focus on keeping the economy strong so jobs are available.

Socialists understand that inequality cannot be eliminated from a capitalist system, so they advocate replacing capitalism with socialism. The only problem with that idea is that socialism has failed every time it has been tried. Socialists continue to use inequality as a hammer against capitalism to tear it down, even though they have no practical alternative.