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Why The Ancient World Matters Today
Michael Anderson’s 2nd Excellent Book: Tribalism will
Divide and Conquer Us
June 29, 2020 8:50 PMViews: 7
Lionel
Royer, Vercingetorix Throws Down His Arms at the feet of Julius Caesar,
1899
P. F. Sommerfeldt –
Julius Caesar knew
that to destroy the fractured Gauls, his overarching task was to accentuate
their tribalism, not their national unity, in order to divide and conquer.
History repeats this time and again as Michael Anderson cogently writes on
tribalism, the bane of 21st century America. Anderson has done it again with a
great sequel book to his Progressive Gene, which identifies deep
emotional and even genetic tendencies and responses in behavioral psychology
that drives and divides humans into compassionate (progressive) or loyal
(conservative) camps, albeit along a broad spectrum. Tribalism is a long-held
tenacity to cling to limited regional “us versus them” clannishness or limited
nationalism over, for example, multiculturalism, global identity and seeing
humanity at large. Racism, for example, is a political construct of the most
superficial xenophobic tribalism.
Anderson’s new book is Tribalism:
The Curse of 21st Century America and it couldn’t be timelier as 2020
rages on. “Left versus Right” has become increasingly polarized, especially
when the current Trump divisiveness becomes ever more entrenched against
“libtard” Democrats like myself, such that honest Conservatives despair along
with honest liberals – each side with patriots who know national unity is
becoming ever more elusive across the abyss. Who could have imagined that
Republicans and Democrats could represent such horrible polarized “enemies” as
Americans have somehow seemed to become? Weren’t we told only a generation ago
that Soviet Communism was the enemy, not our own country’s political parties?
Is the dichotomy between Republicans and Democrats as “enemies” true or merely
propaganda? I believe the latter. Of course, the fault is on both sides, as
Anderson documents.
Nativism and anti-immigration
prejudices – nationalist xenophobias – are other aspects of the worst kind of
tribalism that can be exploited by internal and external forces. Media
preferences can all too easily reinforce tribalism, where charges of “fake
news” add fuel to the already irrational flames. Too few know that the meme of
“fake news” (part of dezinformatsiya) was a favorite device of
Stalin’s NKVD (becoming the KGB) to discredit and destroy opposition and
neutralize international media by sowing distrust, undermining what would be
perceived as “true’ in postmodernist relativist understanding; in this country
“fake news” didn’t really enter the common vocabulary until the political
campaign of 2015. The more lies anyone can tell and get away with, the more
bewildering the search for knowable truth becomes in the insidious aim to
deceive public opinion. To international intelligence analysts, it is clear
that certainly within the last decade or so Putin’s authoritarian apparatus
exploits the possibilities for disinformation to the max, using the wiliest
propaganda experts in pursuing much of this deliberate policy, knowing how to
use tribalism in the worst possible ways to divide and destroy other sovereign
nations. We should examine exactly how the media has become in Trump’s words,
“the enemy of the people” because this rhetoric sounds exactly like what you
would have heard and still hear coming out of Russia state-owned organs.
On the simplest level, most people who
follow sports have favorite teams – usually their local ones – and this is a
deeply-ingrained tribalism where individuals vicariously identify with a sports
team that likely doesn’t even know that individual’s existence. I knew rabid
fans who became so angry “their” team lost that they literally threw out the
television from an upper apartment window in blind rage. Absurd, for sure, but
an example of simple tribalism run awry.
Some of my favorite text sections in
the book have to do with extended analyses of how we got to this current
impasse through Enlightenment rationalism, to post-Enlightenment, Collectivism,
Socialism and Liberalism to Postmodernism. Anderson also says (p. 206) about
Trump: “He’s not even a Conservative. He’s a Populist and Populists are
politicians who don’t embrace a particular ideology but build a platform around
what they think the people want.” Great graphs like on p. 207 show how educated
people have gradually moved toward the Left – partly because of academic bias –
and many credible political surveys right now confirm educated people moving
toward Independent and Democrat affiliations and away from the Republican party
as it has polarized so far away from the center and embraced authoritarianism
in executive branch power. Elsewhere Anderson’s keen observations and possible
solutions include building bridges between divided ways of thought that are
exacerbated by inculcated academic and media philosophies to break down
animosities to find common ground (p. 282): “If Americans could see their
government functioning the way they believe it should, working for the benefit
of all of us, the tension level would abate within the tribes. Unfortunately,
this will not happen before the end of the Trump presidency. Successful or not,
Trump is too divisive to get the Left talking to the Right.” Anderson doesn’t
say it, but in my opinion, Trump is the ultimate Tribalist.
This book offers
insightful commentary and documentation, and is very clearly written with
historic depth. Anderson shows that he can reach me, a Jewish liberal, right
between the eyes and in the heart, not with deadly aim so to speak, but with
genuine passion and warnings for the immediate future. Anderson may be a prophet
in this regard. His glossary at the end is superb, and while he doesn’t mince
words, it’s almost impossible to see him taking sides in partisanship. I simply
cannot recommend this book enough for readers of modern political thought.
Anderson’s warnings are on the mark. The alternatives are frightening, and
civil war and dissolution of the U.S. could too easily ensue if we don’t
quickly fix the problems of tribalism. When I last stood in the old Athenian
Agora in 2016 and saw the ruins of the Bouleuterion, the Greek political voting
chambers where democracy began, tears came to my eyes as I pondered how fragile
democracy remains. This was even before Trump…
