The primeval tribalism of American politics | Hacker News Reader

The primeval tribalism of American politics

economist.com

33 pointstosh49 comments

I think one problem that the Economist is unable to face because they are very much part of the problem is that the depoliticisation of politics is coming to an end.

Just like diplomacy is war by other means, politics was supposed to genuinely reflect the conflict between different interest groups. What the Economist calls primaeval was the original function of political action, namely genuine confrontation.

We are slowly coming to the end of a period of centre-technocratic governance where moderation is the mother of all virtues and we are all supposed to be best served by ignoring political conflict altogether, while slick corporate executives and managerial administrators solve all our problems, smooth like clockwork.

It would be nice if you were right. I think we are instead seeing is that politics is being turned into something that's more similar to rooting for a sports team or reality TV. I say that because we have very little discussion about what policies would be good and why but instead are talking about this like it's a us vs them battle. most political events aren't targeted anymore to convince people who believe differently but to people who are already on the same page. It's a tragedy.

If we were to reform the terrible two party system this would be much less of an issue. Currently, moderate parties aren't able to capture enough voters to become relevant, so the two dominant parties are pushed further and further apart.

It seems that countries with more parties don't hold this sort of animosity towards each other because party issues overlap more than in the polarizing two party system.

>If we were to reform the terrible two party system this would be much less of an issue.

I'm struggling to understand why people think this is true, especially given what's going on in Europe right now where fringe elements are becoming quite mainstream across the continent. Wouldn't adding more political parties to an already fragile system cause more tribalism, not less?

Having more parties allowed you to voice your opinion by voting in a much more differentiated way. In the US you have no meaningful way to choose true libertarian politics for example. With more than two parties it had to become more about content than affiliation and identity.

You are right that Europe is also seeing a rise in right wing parties. However, the US is the only Western country that had actually elected one of those clowns.

AfD has 94 seats in the Bundestag. Five Star and League saw significant success in Italy. I guess I’m not sure what your point is.

Edit: https://www.politico.eu/article/italys-premier-designate-ste...

You can't do much with 94 seats in the Bundestag if nobody will work with you. It's a big signal for larger parties that shows what they might try to gain some votes though. Only in the US though is the actual government now controlled by a right wing, populist.

> In the US you have no meaningful way to choose true libertarian politics for example

Sure you do; political expression isn't limited to general election voting.

> With more than two parties it had to become more about content than affiliation and identity.

The US has many more than two parties. A stable state of two competitive parties is the effect of limited meaningful choice presented by the system used for general elections, not the source of a lack of choice.

The problem is that the two parties capture huge swaths of people based on issues that are important to that person, not to the party. There is no real unified platform from either of the two major parties, just look at this (rough, off the cuff) list of things they care about enough to capture:

guns OR god OR small government OR military expansion OR anti-abortion OR anti-immigration

anti-guns OR (a)religious tolerance OR social service OR globalism via economy OR pro-choice OR pro-immigration

Both of those 'platforms' are internally inconsistent (i.e. how can you have a small government that also has a giant military and regulates trivial stuff like what happens in your bedroom) and are simply designed to cleave off people that give huge amounts of fucks about a single issue. What if you're pro-gun and pro-social services? Well, pick which one you care about more and vote for that party...

The platforms aren't internally inconsistent, one person could genuinely hold all the views of either with logical consistency, based on core principles[1]. You're right they are meant to pick off single issue voters.

I don't know how we'll move back to the center, but as the article mentions I fear it will just be another war.

[1] For instance I prefer smaller government in general, but strongly support single payer healthcare (a compromise of govt size against equal opportunity).

They literally are inconsistent though. How do you have a small government that militarily intervenes across the world?

I don't disagree that it's a balancing act, but the platforms are utterly built around single issue zingers. Pro this, anti that, that's it.

By arguing what the role of government should be. If the role of government is to protect property rights, it needs to be able to defend the country from foreign invasion. Typically people in favor of "small government" mean small in scope. It is only meant for (and efficient at) solving a narrow scope of problems. So while it may be good as a means of upholding property rights, it isn't great at manufacturing cars, for instance.

A couple of those are a bit off.

Aside from party crashing outsiders like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, both parties support globalism. Both the Bushes and the Clintons are 100% globalist, along with Romney and Obama and McCain and Gore.

True religious tolerance would allow people to opt out of some things they find deeply offensive. It goes beyond just the right to wear a head covering or stop the production line for prayers. It includes the right to say "no" for pharmacists (birth control), bakers (LGBT wedding cake), gynecological residents (abortion), and business owners (insurance coverage for birth control). What we see isn't actually religious tolerance. It's more like "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

Right, I said it was off the cuff and rough. Point still stands, even if it's just within and order of magnitude of the actual idiotic half-assed platforms.

Who are these moderate parties you’re referring to?

We don't have a two party system. We have a First Past the Post system that inevitably leads to two parties. And having two parties is not necessarily a bad thing, most governments wind up with two defacto parties, they're just called the majority and minority coalitions and happen after election, instead of prior to.

A coalition and a party are a little different, though. In particular, even if the coalition lines are clear even before the election, voters are able to allocate their vote to a specific party within the coalition and apply some guidance that way.

Yes, this makes a huge difference. When I still voted in Germany I for example would vote for the FDP. I knew they go into a coalition with the CDU, but I didn't want any of the Christian BS. In the US I wouldn't have any party to vote for if I want my vote to matter.

The voters are out of luck if they want their executive and their legislature to come from different parties.

I think we should stop letting parties influence ballots. Maybe let them endorse a candidate, but otherwise anyone that wants to be on the ballot in a given election follows some process where the opinion of a private organization isn't a factor.

That is already the case though; anyone can get on a ballot if they follow the process (generally it requires gathering a certain number of signatures)

Right, the idea is to strip the parties of their special role.

I don't believe the 2 party system is the problem. Looking at political polarization in a country like France and it's just as bad.

One thing that people ignore is how corrupt machine politics and the ability to dole out jobs for supporters had the benefit of tying people to a party that was divorced from their politics - not that I'd advocate going back.

I'm not sure that I buy that geographic identities were less dangerous than current party identities. The only thing that worries me is when people's multiple identities (race, religion, party, ideology, geography) start overlap more than they have in the past. Or if the extent people were to ever STOP identifying as Americans before party or citizens of their state (looking at you, Texas!).

Speaking just from personal experience — a lot of young progressives look fairly negatively upon the label of American and American identity in general, but identify strongly with the Democratic Party. So, maybe you should be a little worried.

I think there's something to that first half.

On the second half, young people I've heard from seem more open-minded to third parties than older generations. But that's also just personal experience.

Geography was better because it ended up being more democratic. Even Tammany Hall paid attention to their voters.

Now you get bullshit memes that activate supporters longitudinally across the country. Obama was “Hope” and “Change”, Trump is MAGA. Institutional candidates like Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney can’t fight populist bullshit.

It’s dangerous because it disenfranchises. If you were a Republican in New York, things were tough, but they are plain grim now, as you need to be a right winger or you lose these “activated” crazy people.

By "better" all I really mean is stable.

> It’s dangerous because it disenfranchises.

Yeah, but there were also downsides. This isn't my example, but if you wanted to vote for civil rights candidates before that legislation got voted into law, what party would you vote for? There really wasn't a party for you. Even if you voted for a pro-Civil Rights northern democrat, you were still voting for a party leadership that at the time didn't believe in equal rights and for a majority that was fighting against equality.

That’s definitely a problem, but the same thing is happening now.

If you are a otherwise progressive/liberal who has a moral objection to abortion, what do you do?

Yeah I actually think that anti-corruption reforms have done a lot of damage to the American political system.

It used to be that a politician got rewarded for bringing home the bacon but now that they can no longer get earmarks, it’s all about culture wars instead. Without horse trading, Congress is all about paying off big donors and yelling about abortion instead of getting things done.

"Alternatively—and more likely—Americans must wait for another of the political realignments that ended previous spells of intense partisanship, including the antebellum rivalry that stirred Abraham Lincoln’s appeal to “the better angels of our nature”. The civil war, which led to one such rearrangement, started the following month."

Is it just me or has war fever begun to seep its tendrils into our more reputable and even-headed publications? It doesn't seem to be a thing that people are willing to talk about directly. Not that I blame them, war is scary.

Is it fair to say that both sides see the primary issue as demographic change? (Right: illegal immigration. Left: transition to majority-minority society.)

If that analysis is correct, then tensions can't be resolved unless demographics resolve. While I can imagine the US becoming a more closed society, it's hard to imagine ethnic cleansing of the citizenry.

This is a hard topic to discuss within the constraints of the HN guidelines.

> it's hard to imagine ethnic cleansing of the citizenry.

The truth is, no matter what the country or political climate, it's always difficult to imagine ethnic cleansing would happen in your country. The other day an excerpt from a German Jewish newspaper was posted (either to hacker news or my twitter feed -- I do not remember which), it was dated the day before Hitler put into action "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question". In it, the Jewish editor is talking about the rumors and talk of the extermination being put into practice, and they dismiss it off-hand as just being political clout. That it was put forward to advance the party's image among right-wing circles, nothing more.

No matter what the subject matter, whether it be forced deportation, concentration camps, or out-right genocide, it is always difficult to believe that it is being done if it is in your country.

> Is it fair to say that both sides see the primary issue as demographic change? (Right: illegal immigration. Left: transition to majority-minority society.)

What is a "majority-minority society", and what makes it the primary issue for the left?

"Majority-minority" means a population where no one group is more than 50%. Alternately, a population where two minorities combine to form more than 50% (which is a mathematically equivalent formulation).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_minority

The progressive narrative holds that inevitable demographic change in the wider US will eventually yield electoral and policy victory, similar to what has happened in California.

They are not mathematically equivalent. Counterexample: 10 groups, each with 10% of the population, qualifies under your first definition but not under your second definition.

You're right, I was imprecise. Here's the Wikipedia definition:

a jurisdiction where one or more racial and/or ethnic minorities (relative to the whole country's population) make up a majority of the local population

I'd say both sides are engaging in identity politics, buoyed by technology, centered around the far left and far right. These groups attribute malice to any opposition, and attack their own more moderate adherents. Demographics won't change this, the institutions and groups themselves will shift in focus in a bid to retain their own power.

Take immigration for instance. I'd like to improve border security and reduce illegal immigration. However, also provide amnesty and citizenship for the existing undocumented workers and their children. If they have been paying taxes, they should get a fast pass to citizenship. I'd like to also drastically expand legal immigration by uncapping all skilled immigration quotas, relax chain migration restrictions, and dropping arbitrary country restrictions.

Accordingly, vocal subgroups would call me racist or that I hate America for that position. It doesn't fit cleanly in either left or right camps.

I wasn't speaking of ethnic cleansing... The U.S. Civil War was fought over many things, but the desire to wipe out an ethnic group wasn't one of them. Yes, there were obvious ethnic issues at play, but I'm not sure where you're getting ethnic cleansing from.

That mainstream Dems would speak well of GWB, tells me the divide is not so much Dem vs Repub, but along other axes like Globalist vs Nationalist. Roger Moore speaks to that, the anti-WTO of the post NAFTA agreement and Trump’s eventual election point to that as well. Elites and globe trotters like Globalization, Unions, the rust belt and “uneducated” distrust globalization.

I think Dems speak well of GWB both because (1) he was objectively preferable to liberals who care about good government, and (2) it's useful as a partisan to use GWB against Republicans. Obviously 1 is a valid reason and 2 isn't, but I think both are at play.

  That mainstream Dems would speak well of GWB

I don't understand this at all. Did you mean GHWB (#41) rather than GWB (#43)?

No, #43. I see him as the fist “bro” president, too quick to war, but ultimately a globalist. Obama took the warring and globalism and ran with it and many Dems lament that today’s republicans aren’t more like 43, because other than some minor differences, they are cut from the same cloth. Rightly or wrongly, I was for mr Gore, despite his bad rep, i.e. PMRC, etc.

I would argue (only somewhat tongue in cheek) that our best hope for averting civil war is the obesity crisis - we are too out of shape and too unwilling to risk hunger, to turn our very real animosity for each other into armed conflict.

Non paywalled for those who need it: http://archive.is/6N6gU

Another article that purports to passively observe a phenomenon while, in my opinion, actually playing a role itself.

> A RUDE but incoherent comment by President Donald Trump last week revealed the damage partisanship has done to America’s body politic.

Everything Trump says is carefully stripped of context and misunderstood in every possible way before it's taken to press to maximize its partisan impact. That's not to say that what Trump said in this case was "right." However, many publications have since printed retractions on this. [0] Clarifying that "animals" referred specifically to MS-13 gang members. But, of course, the retraction never travels as far as the thing it's retracting. Look at the original tweet:

> Trump referred to those crossing the US border illegally as "animals" and slammed California state laws as "deadly."

Only 2 words are actual quotes.

> Republicans heard Mr Trump’s comment as tough talk on a bunch of killers, while Democrats heard it as a dehumanising slur against migrant parents and their children.

Of course they did, they read/watched/heard two very different stories from two very different media constructed realities. This article is also from one of those two realities. (I sincerely hope you know which.)

> The problem is structural: the root of tribalism is human nature, and the current state of American democracy is distinctly primeval.

Tribalism is natural, in a competitive context. American Democracy is that context though. So that's really the root of the tribalism. But again, the press claims to be passively observing something it's stoking. This article is basically a call to arms. Look at the closing sentences:

> Americans must wait for another of the political realignments that ended previous spells of intense partisanship, including the antebellum rivalry that stirred Abraham Lincoln’s appeal to “the better angels of our nature”. The civil war, which led to one such rearrangement, started the following month.

[0] https://twitter.com/AP/status/997138543817449472

> Of course they did, they read/watched/heard two very different stories from two very different media constructed realities.

The reason I heard the FULL remarks differently than you is because I'm operating under a different set of assumptions about the type of person that Donald Trump is. This isn't to say I'm right and you're wrong. It's to say that everyone uses assumptions in every single interaction in their lives - they can be useful - and based on mine I interpret a fuzzy statement about immigrants differently than you do.

The media has nothing to do with it.

If you listened to the full remarks I certainly don't fault you for applying any assumptions you have in interpreting them. Assumptions are absolutely necessary. I'm just saying don't let the media's assumptions be your assumptions. Try to get to the source, which, it seems like in this case you did.

> Another article that purports to passively observe a phenomenon while actually doing everything to perpetuate it.

And this is the major problem with the mass media today. They absolutely refuse to acknowledge their own effect on the political landscape we face today.

The routine use of click/outrage bait headlines and context-free quotes is one of many common practices that warrant criticism of the media, to say nothing of biased editorializing (what articles to run, what quotes to print, where in the article to print dissenting opinions etc.) and the pile-on of seemingly verbatim headlines, stories, and opinions distributed among major outlets whenever any political "event" of note happens. Yet the push-back against it is sometimes surreal. Hyperbolic accusations of "attacking the free press" or "destroying trust in the media" (as if trust should just be guaranteed) are often lobbed. Issuing the occasional retraction does not absolve them (a common lawyers trick, saying something in court that they know will rightfully be objected to, and the jurors commanded to disregard, as if people can just be told to forget things).

This same media is quick to criticize alternative outlets and ideological opponents (eg Fox News and vice versa). At least with "new media", they generally don't righteously hold themselves up as unbiased arbiters of truth.

An institution which criticizes anything and everything is completely unable to take any criticism of its own. That is the very definition of thin skinned.

Now, the media benefits from being _big_, ie they run a lot of stories and have a lot of different contributors. So it won't be all bad all the time, and there will always be articles to point to that are decent examples of journalistic integrity (and this point is often used in their defense, while being ignored when criticizing their opponents). But the trends, especially in political content, are undeniable.

An acknowledgement that they often use and profit from biased and misleading clickbait headlines, that they have an overall editorial slant etc. would be a start. But that is as likely to happen as employees of some SV startup publicly admitting that the "game-changing" product they are selling is actually a cobbled together pile of shit that probably does not exist.

Or they could just admit that, regardless of all else, they are not just innocent flies on the wall, their reporting has a real effect on what they are reporting on. Take a lesson from what we've learned in Quantum Physics over the past 100 years; there's no such thing as passive observation, there's just interaction.

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