Tribalism in US Politics
I've really been enjoying the spectacle of thousands of American conservative cranks descending onto our nation's capital to vent their hatred of Barack Obama. Now, if you take the protestors at their word you may come away convinced that they were a united band of citizens concerned about runaway public spending. But this isn't true. After all, how many of the assembled people voiced these concerns under the last president, under whose guidance US debt skyrocketed? I thought so.
What it boils down to, essentially, is that the people who marched on DC simply don't like the president. Some of them dislike Obama because he supports (some) abortion rights. Some of them don't like him because he wants to extend health insurance to all Americans. Some of them don't like him because they think he's going to take away people's guns. Some of them, and let's be honest here, don't like him because he's dark-skinned.
(I think there's certainly a legitimate criticism to be made about Obama's performance, which as far as I am concerned has been somewhere between lackluster and mediocre. In my opinion, he hasn't gone far enough to repudiate Bush-era policies regarding torture and civil liberties. I also think Afghanistan is a quagmire and that we should probably get the hell out. With health care, he has been too timid in asserting his control over the issue and has instead delegated too much of the policy work to the idiots on Capitol Hill. But I digress.)
If you consider the particular policies that define contemporary conservatism- or liberalism- precious little philosophical consistency exists. In my lifetime conservatives have stood for a reduction in government spending, yet almost universally have supported a belligerent, assertive foreign policy. Conservatives are opposed to abortion yet support capital punishment. They favor de-regulation of business and industry yet want restrictions on cultural products that disagree with their point of view.
I'm sure one could write a similar list about liberals, which drives at my point. These internal contradictions don't matter so much as a shared sense of identity politics brings.
I consider myself to be fairly open-minded, but my first instinct upon learning that one is conservative is to recoil, almost as if a small voice in my head says that he is one of them. Consider some of the public figures, like blog-goddess Arianna Huffington, who undergo a major transformation mid-career. I haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure she's gone from being an across-the-board conservative to an across-the-board liberal.
Likewise, back in the halcyon days of the Bush administration quite a few liberals voted for Bush due to their support for the Iraq War and neo-conservative foreign policy in general. Despite their protestations, these so-called 'security Democrats' have pretty much just become run-of-the-mill Republicans in the years since. Once one sympathizes with the opposition on one issue, it becomes easier to sympathize on every issue, no matter how unrelated they may be from each other.
All of this goes against what we think of ourselves; we imagine that we rationally develop opinions on each matter of public policy and vote according to how we prioritize these opinions. To a certain extent, this is true.
Then again, in the case of American politics, in which there are only two parties of influence who don't share power in any meaningful way, I think people develop their opinions from an a priori basis. In other words, when you like a politician you'll probably just like what he likes, no matter what.
September 15th, 2009 - 23:15
Good points. Yes there are a lot of different things that motivate people to oppose Obama but the extremist behaviour of the opposition is firmly rooted in racism. I rarely go along with Maureen Dowd these days but her op ed piece in the Times last Sunday hits the nail on the head.
September 16th, 2009 - 08:57
I agree with your assessment of tribalism in American politics. It is a gang war€”not between Bloods and Cripps, but between Reds and Blues. And there are so many contradictions within each party that they effectively render the two-party system invalid; they have become one and the same, different only in name.
In my pre-China life, I worked as a medical assistant in a rural health center in western Pennsylvania€”a region Obama once described as a place where people “cling to guns and religion.”
One of my patients, concerned about the future of health care and insurance in the U.S., told me she thought, “Obama is an evil man.” How do you have a rational conversation with a person who describes somebody as evil?
This came from a middle-aged woman who is already on several different medications for her chronic illnesses. Her medical history is typical among the aging: As you get older your lifestyle catches up with you and only way to keep death at bay is by becoming a dependent of pharmaceutical industry. You have to dip into savings, sell off your life insurance policy, etc. to afford to live as member of the walking dead, kept alive solely with expensive drug cocktails that require frequent visits to your doctor. In a way you become shackled to your pharmacy and doctor’s office. This becomes your new normal. So when Obama comes around hoping to change this, to overhaul health care, make it affordable, and help patients help themselves via preventive medicine, he is seen as being “evil” by the very people who need him most.
September 16th, 2009 - 09:26
I’ll get one thing out of the way first: some of Obama’s opposition is rooted in racism, but let’s be honest about it — this was the card a subset of Obama’s supporters were always going to play: “You don’t like Obamacare because Obama is black.”
(If Hillary had been elected there would be calls of: “You don’t like Hillarycare Part II because Hillary is a woman.”)
This is not so say there’s no prejudice on the right. Racism — and anti-Muslim prejudice — I believe, is what drives many of the birthers and “Obama is a secret Muslim” fanatics, though they’re more fringe than liberals care to admit.
For the most part, the angry sticky blob of people deposited on DC for 9/12 was unified by anti-government feeling, but that feeling itself came in many varieties, from traditional conservatism, to rational libertarianism, to frothy paranoia: aside from disliking “big government,” it would be hard to get these people to agree on anything.
Now, the tribalist thesis is probably a good framework to begin to understand American politics, but we could also look back to the Federalist and see the same idea in the concept of faction. What we see in the current opposition to Obama is not a singular entity but a coalition of factions that have a grievance against his administration, a coalition that has， post-election, accreted exponentially like the ball in Katamari Damacy, in part because being against Obama is a far more energetic activity than being for John McCain.
While conservatives like me are guilty of overemphasizing Reagan, the problem with the anti-Obama movement, like the anti-Clinton movement before it, is that it lacks a philosophy of how to govern that the Reaganites developed in their wilderness years. What we’re seeing instead is a right-wing version of Ortega y Gasset’s mass man phenomenon: a human tide rising up against “elitism.” which itself is very vulnerable to exploitation by a corrupt and demagogic elite (i.e. talk show hosts, Congressional Republicans), which goes back to your statement about our default position of liking what a politician we like likes because he’s “one of ours.”
Democrats are not invulnerable to the mass phenomenon, either — see the ABB crowd and St. Cindy Sheehan in 2004 — but right now it’s the Republicans who have the energy flowing in their direction, and what I’m afraid of is that they may defeat Obama in a way that leaves the country ungovernable for the foreseeable future.
P.S. Do liberals who knew Ariana Huffington when she was giving Newt Gingrich journalistic fellatio really trust her today, or do they see her as being just as opportunistic as when she married a closeted gay millionaire? (Can you tell I’m not a fan?)
September 17th, 2009 - 08:32
Matthew,
I largely agree with what you’re saying and I think there is a resemblence between the teabag parties and the anti-war rallies in that the grievances of reasonable people are overshadowed by the more vocal fringe elements- the crackpot ‘birther’ crowd on the right and the Cindy Sheehan folks on the left.
But on the other hand what I found ludicrous was that the proposals that Obama has made in regards to health care are so incremental in nature that to react as if he’s imposing a Stalinist dictatorship and junking the Constitution is simply delusional.
That Obama is pursuing health care reform shouldn’t have taken anyone by surprise- this is the main issue which defines one as a Democrat and has essentially been a part of the party’s governing platform for years.
There was a lot of Bushhitler-esque exaggeration during the Iraq War protest days but I do think the gravity of leading a country into a war that was fraudently sold and completely counterproductive merited a proportionally large protest movement. I just don’t see the anti-Obama movement having the same sort of credibility at all.
But that’s why I’m a leftie I suppose. Anyway, thanks for your long, interesting, and thoughtful riposte.
September 17th, 2009 - 08:34
Re: Arianna. Her sincerity is questionable, but I gotta say that I thought her site would go over like a led balloon, particularly the blog which seemed to have as many contributors than readers. That it’s become this successful shows that the woman is endowed with brains if not consistency.