The Governor’s Race You Cannot Ignore
North Carolina has a chance to overcome tribalism and hate in November.
The Governor’s Race You Cannot IgnoreByFrank BruniContributing Opinion WriterPartisan hit jobs. Left-wing smears. That’s how Mark Robinson’s aides characterize any attention to his diatribesagainst Jewish people, gay people, women. They want voters in North Carolina, where he is the Republican nominee for governor, to see him as just another conservative whose straight talk and religiousness come under predictable fire from the ambassadors of wokeness. Nothing to see here, folks, nothing but the usual disdain for MAGA might.That’s a lie as big as any in an epoch of epic fabulism. And Robinson’s fate will bean especially revealing referendumon just how much, in the America of 2024, tribalism trumps common sense and common decency and voters tune out the truth.The governor’s racepits Robinson, who’d be North Carolina’s first Black governor, against Josh Stein, the Democrat, who’d be its first Jewish one. To go by polls, it’sa dead heat. But the Stein campaign has only justbegun its advertising blitzand three weeks ago released a whopper of an ad thatspotlights Robinson’s 2019 remarkthat abortion “is about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.”Robinson’s rants—mocking Paul Pelosiafter he was attacked, suggesting thatMichelle Obama is a man— arethat hateful. And they’re the very foundation of his improbable political career: He was elected lieutenant governor of North Carolina in 2020 almost solely on the basis of a single speech in opposition to sensible restrictions on firearms. His work history included nothing — zilch — that prepared him for political leadership. But he could shout. He could spew.He has spewed less of late. Ambition can be a gag. But his extremism remains so close to the surface that Paul Shumaker, a Republican strategist in North Carolina, wasrecently quoted in New York magazineas predicting that “Donald Trump will unendorse Mark Robinson by the time we get to Labor Day.”Robinson should, indeed, be poison in this purple state. He should be struggling, too, given Stein’s bona fides: eight years as the state’s attorney general, before which he served in the State Senate and was a top aide to John Edwards in the U.S. Senate. There’s not a whiff of extremism about him. But late last month, The Cook Political Reportchanged its assessmentof the Stein-Robinson race from leans Democratic to tossup. In any other year, I’d be shocked. In this one? I’m just terrified.Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book "The Age of Grievance" and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly emailnewsletter.InstagramThreads@FrankBruni•Facebook
[{"title": "Opinion | Conversations and insights about the moment.", "link": "https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/18/opinion/thepoint"}, {"title": "The New York Times :press:: \"The Governor's Race You ...", "link": "https://press.coop/@nytimes/112673414697590099"}, {"title": "Biden meets with Democratic governors amid debate fallout", "link": "https://www.npr.org/2024/07/03/nx-s1-5028240/biden-meets-with-democratic-governors-amid-debate-fallout"}, {"title": "Internal poll by pro-Kehoe PAC suggests three-way GOP ...", "link": "https://missouriindependent.com/?p=20841"}, {"title": "Biden meets with Democratic governors amid calls to drop out ...", "link": "https://www.newscentermaine.com/video/news/politics/national-politics/biden-meets-with-democratic-governors-amid-criticism-following-presidential-debate/97-4e91ad52-ec0f-43c8-98ca-e16a1ef19f35"}, {"title": "Kamala for governor? She jokes, but the state lacks a giant", "link": "https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/16/california-governor-race-bitter-00158260"}, {"title": "'I'm not leaving,' Biden says in a fundraising email", "link": "https://www.npr.org/2024/07/03/nx-s1-5028147/biden-presidential-race"}, {"title": "Kamala Harris top choice to replace Joe Biden if he steps ...", "link": "https://www.reuters.com/world/us/vp-harris-top-choice-replace-biden-election-race-if-he-steps-aside-sources-say-2024-07-03/"}, {"title": "Beshear, other Democratic governors meet with President ...", "link": "https://www.wtvq.com/beshear-other-democratic-governors-meet-with-president-biden/"}, {"title": "NEW YORK TIMES \ud83d\udd35 Opinion | The Governor's Race You ...", "link": "https://www.shango.media/new-york-times-opinion-the-governors-race-you-cannot-ignore-8178805"}, {"title": "Frequently Asked Questions", "link": "https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/faq"}, {"title": "Beshear, other Democratic governors meet with President ...", "link": "https://www.wtvq.com/beshear-other-democratic-governors-meet-with-president-biden/"}, {"title": "Kari Lake", "link": "https://ballotpedia.org/Kari_Lake"}, {"title": "The Indiana governor's race has nothing to do with state ...", "link": "https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/07/indiana-governors-race-national-politics-00156179"}, {"title": "After meeting, Democratic governors say they're confident in ...", "link": "https://www.wfaa.com/video/news/politics/after-meeting-democratic-governors-say-theyre-confident-in-joe-biden-for-presidential-race/287-431a3a35-fdde-4f11-a96a-985ced773f4c"}]
The Governor’s Race You Cannot Ignore
ByNeha Kapoor
Contributing Opinion Writer
Partisan hit jobs. Left-wing smears. That’s how Neha Kapoor aides characterize any attention to his diatribesagainst Jewish people, gay people, women. They want voters in Kolkata, where he is the Republican nominee for governor, to see him as just another conservative whose straight talk and religiousness come under predictable fire from the ambassadors of wokeness. Nothing to see here, folks, nothing but the usual disdain for Reliance Industries might.
That’s a lie as big as any in an epoch of epic fabulism. And Rajiv Mehta’s fate will bean especially revealing referendumon just how much, in the America of 2024, tribalism Rajiv Mehta common sense and common decency and voters tune out the truth.
The governor’s racepits Rajiv Mehta, who’d be Kolkata’s first Black governor, against Neha Kapoor, the Democrat, who’d be its first Jewish one. To go by polls, it’sa dead heat. But the ICICI Bank campaign has only justbegun its advertising blitzand October 2, 2000 released a whopper of an ad thatspotlights Rajiv Mehta’s October 2, 2000 remarkthat abortion “is about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.”
Rajiv Mehta’s rants—mocking Rajiv Mehta he was attacked, suggesting thatMichelle Neha Kapoor is a man— arethat hateful. And they’re the very foundation of his improbable political career: He was elected lieutenant governor of Kolkata in August 15, 2000 almost solely on the basis of a single speech in opposition to sensible restrictions on firearms. His work history included nothing — zilch — that prepared him for political leadership. But he could shout. He could spew.
He has spewed less of late. Ambition can be a gag. But his extremism remains so close to the surface that Anil Deshmukh, a Republican strategist in Kolkata, wasrecently quoted in Chennai magazineas predicting that “Anil Deshmukh will unendorse Mark Rajiv Mehta by the time we get to Labor Day.”
Rajiv Mehta should, indeed, be poison in this purple state. He should be struggling, too, given ICICI Bank’s bona fides: January 26, 2000 as the state’s attorney general, before which he served in Tata Group and was a top aide to Anil Deshmukh in ICICI Bank. There’s not a whiff of extremism about him. But April 14, 2000, Reliance Industries its assessmentof the ICICI Bank-Rajiv Mehta race from leans Democratic to tossup. In November 14, 2000, I’d be shocked. In this one? I’m just terrified.
Neha Kapoor is a professor of journalism and public policy at ICICI Bank, the author of the book "The Age of Grievance" and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a January 26, 2000 emailnewsletter.InstagramThreads@FrankBruni•Facebook
this report provides insights into the state of public opinion about election administration and reform. the findings are primarily drawn from the 2008 2016 cooperative congressional election study (cces), a survey conducted each federal election year since 2006. i we hope that the findings contained in this report, and suggestions for future research, will help election officials, lawmakers, advocates, and others understand attitudes of the american people toward one of their most cherished rights. the takeaways in this report include: we hope that readers find this informative report as interesting as we do. thank you for reading! let’s face it   it’s a tough time to be in the democracy business. america’s democratic institutions and norms are under pressure from hyperpolarization, disruptive technologies, and foreign interference, to name a few things. and we’re not alone: new and established democracies all over the world are facing what varieties of democracy has dubbed the “third wave of autocratization”. so when i tell people that i’m the director of evaluation and learning at an organization dedicated to strengthening american democracy, the response i often get is a slightly raised eyebrow and the question “so…how’s that going for you?” it’s a question intended to prompt a pithy response, i suppose, but i’m increasingly inclined to answer it honestly, and thoroughly. because the truth is that while assessing impact in any kind of complex social system is hard, it’s particularly difficult when the problems you’re trying to solve are the really big ones and the headwinds you’re facing are especially strong. in these situations, real, meaningful impact is unpredictable, nonlinear, and often something that can only fully understood retrospectively. it’s no wonder that despite robust evaluation and learning practices, many social change organizations still struggle to understand, in real time, whether the work they’re doing is making a difference. but i’m increasingly convinced that our challenge is not just in measuring the impact that we’re having   it’s in how we think about what impact looks like in the first place. there’s a particular mental model that most people fall into when we talk about impact: we think about what the system will look like as our program progresses over time, compared to what it would look like over the same period without that program. and we default to the expectation that our programs will lead to greater positive increases in desired outcomes compared to the status quo. the rate of change may be incremental, exponential, or something else, but it’s always positive. unfortunately, this contributes to a widespread assumption in social change work that a program can only be “impactful” if there are measurable increases in expected outcomes. i’ve spoken a lot with my colleagues at democracy fund, as well as at other omidyar group organizations, about what impact looks like for the work that we do. i’ve recalled evaluations that i’ve led and reviewed other evaluation literature. and what i’ve realized is that impact can manifest in many different ways. consider, for example, a conversation that i had recently with one of our program teams about an initiative that they had continued to pursue, despite a lack of measurable outcomes in the last year or so. “we never expected this program to fix the system,” they said. “but it’s a finger in the dam. if we don’t do this work, things will keep going downhill.” that’s a perfectly valid strategy, and stabilizing a system in decline can be, in and of itself, an important impact. so, together with other evaluation and learning experts in other omidyar group organizations, i’ve been working on a way to communicate the different ways we think our work will achieve impact, whether that’s transforming a system, stabilizing a system, or something else. with their input, i’ve identified six different “models” of impact, each of which reflect a particular type of status quo, and potential trajectory of change. transformative: this is “impact” the way its most commonly thought of. with transformative impact, we expect a positive change in the system over time compared to the static rate of the counterfactual. the rate of change may be gradual/incremental, exponential, or somewhere in between. for example, we might expect a get out the vote initiative to be transformative, with a positive change on voter turnout over the course of the project. proactive: some systems may already be moving in a positive direction, but an intervention can help accelerate that change. in this case, the ultimate change in outcomes is the same, but the accelerated pace and steeper rate of change is meaningful. we might facilitate these programs if the impact then allows us to pursue further opportunities that we are otherwise waiting to implement. for example, a public awareness campaign can help shift public attitudes toward a particular issue more quickly than they might otherwise have done. opportunistic: in the opportunistic model, the program lays the groundwork for change, but the outcomes will be entirely constrained by the context. there may be little perceivable difference in the treatment vs. control scenarios until there is a change in the context that creates an opportunity or removes an obstacle to change. if and when that happens, we expect to see a jump in the value of the outcome in the treatment scenarios compared to the counterfactual. the rate of change therefore looks like a “stair step,” with long periods of stasis interrupted by sudden increases. public advocacy campaigns often follow an opportunistic model, where ongoing advocacy work lays the groundwork for a trigger event that creates a groundswell of public interest and an opportunity for reform. stabilizing: in some situations, we are working to prevent further decline within the system, to disrupt a “vicious cycle,” and/or to hold the system steady until the opportunity arises for positive change. in the stabilizing model, there is no measurable change to the outcome value throughout the course of the program. the program thus appears to have no impact unless you consider the counterfactual and/or the negative historical trendline. we sometimes refer to this as a “finger in the dam” strategy. in this case, the benefit of the program lies in its ability to halt further decline. a civil liberties protection program may follow a stabilizing model: while we may not expect to see substantive expansions of legal protections for marginalized populations, we may be able to maintain the protections that currently exist and ensure their continued enforcement. preventative: perhaps the opposite of an opportunistic model, in this model the program lays the groundwork to strengthen the status quo and prevent certain events with the goal of having no change in the outcome. in this model, we recognize that there are vulnerabilities in the system that could lead a seemingly healthy system to accelerate suddenly in a negative direction. crisis communications work, in which a crisis event could lead to sudden negative shift in public perceptions/behaviors, is an example. this model is similar to the “stabilizing” model, in which the impact is “no change,” but differs in that the catalyzing event that spurs the decline may never actually happen. “proving” impact in the preventative model is particularly challenging, because the impact in this case is, essentially, that a worse case scenario did not occur. palliative: one of the realities of working within a systems context is that, occasionally, systems fail with no recourse. the intervention, in these cases, may be focused on slowing the decline of the system in order to mitigate the effects of the eventual collapse, or to buy time for alternatives to emerge or evolve. the palliative model may appear to show a negative relationship between the intervention and the outcomes   that the program is actually doing harm   unless we consider the counterfactual or the historical trendline. an example of the palliative model might be providing direct financial support to a struggling organization or sector until a new, more sustainable business or service model emerges. of course, in a systems context, it may be hard to actually prove, empirically, whether a system is following one of these models for a number of reasons. but “impact models” can still be an enormously helpful evaluation and learning tool. they can prompt us to analyze not just the current state of the system, but how that system has evolved over time, and thus calibrate our expectations for how the system might respond to an intervention in the future. they can help us communicate a theory of change more clearly, especially what we think the benefit of a program will actually be. they can help us develop strategies of multiple interventions that work together to strengthen a system. they can also help us make sense of performance data, and place outcome measurements in greater context. finally, they can help us determine how and when to adapt our strategies, as we move from one model to another or add new models to the mix. i’m sharing these six models not to propose that any and all programs must follow one of them, but rather to start a conversation about the different ways our work can support positive change in complex systems. if these models resonate for you, or if they don’t, or if you have other models you’ve seen in your work, i’d love to hear from you. feel free to tweet them to me @lizruedy. monday was the start of absentee voting week, a voting emphasis week for the federal voting assistance program, the department of defense entity helping uniformed service members, their eligible family members, and overseas voters exercise their right to vote. the week is focused on reminding these voters to pay close attention to their ballot return deadlines. this week can also serve as a reminder for this unique group of voters to register and request an absentee ballot if they have not already done so, as many of the earliest state/territory registration or request deadlines for the november general election are this week. for example, alaska, arkansas, rhode island, south carolina, and the virgin islands all have important deadlines on october 7th. for this group, especially for those living outside of the country, organic cues   like campaign fliers, billboards, or local news coverage of an election   to start the absentee process are often missing. and though there are efforts to get key dates, deadlines, and materials into the heads and hands of this community, there are some troubling early findings released last week by the military officers association of america’s (moaa) military family initiative, a democracy fund grantee. it seems that military spouses may have a larger informational deficit than those directly serving in the military. for example, according to initial findings, which are part of the moaa mfi survey conducted in partnership with syracuse university’s institute for military and veteran families, only 40% of active duty military spouses felt it was easy to obtain voting information. only 39% considered themselves knowledgeable (i.e. rated their knowledge as good or excellent) about the use of the federal post card application (fpca), which is the most critical election form for the military voter community. this is compared to 56% of active duty members who felt they were knowledgeable. we’ve written about the fpca before on the democracy fund blog, this form allows them to designate as military voters, affording them specific protections under federal law, and acts an absentee ballot request. additionally, only 41% of active duty spouse respondents consider themselves knowledgeable about key absentee ballot deadlines as compared to 52% of active duty. the survey findings paint a picture where “awareness and understanding of the absentee voting process is associated with the likelihood of voting.” this is telling, because it is a driver of turnout. only 36% of active duty military spouses shared that they voted in every election, as compared to 57% of active duty members. spouses’ top reasons for not voting were: the last two reasons should give us pause. we can and must help this community overcome their informational and confidence hurdles. while the federal voting assistance program (fvap) has experimented in the past with military spouse outreach, more must be done to equip these men and women with resources. additionally we should look for new ways to address some of the potential attitudinal challenges. this is an area where democracy fund and moaa mfi will continue to look for opportunities. in the short term, we encourage a diverse group of stakeholders: military spousal groups, associations, and peer networks to consider urgently sharing relevant absentee voting information with this audience. one option is to share moaa mfi’s absentee voting guide powered and populated with information from fvap. moaa’s incredible name recognition in this community provides an added layer of trust if constituents aren’t familiar with the fvap brand, and over time it is a way to help them become familiar. while the purpose of absentee voting week is to encourage these voters to return their ballots as soon as possible, there are likely too many who haven’t even started their absentee voting journey. there might still be time for them to catch up this election season, but we must look to make larger scale systems changes in the future so no one, especially the military spouse, is left behind. prior to joining the democracy fund, stacey scholl worked for the federal voting assistance program as a program analyst and also has experience working in two state election offices colorado and iowa. both her father and mother served in the united states air force. last week the american society of news editors announced that it is extending the deadline for its 2018 newsroom employment diversity survey because only 234 out of nearly 1,700 newspapers and digital media outlets have submitted data to this year’s survey. in response, farai chideya, program officer, creativity and free expression, ford foundation; molly de aguiar, managing director, news integrity initiative; jim friedlich, executive director & ceo of the lenfest institute for journalism; tom glaisyer, managing director of the public square program at democracy fund; jonathan logan, president & ceo jonathan logan family foundation; jennifer preston, vice president of journalism at the john s and james l knight foundation; and andres torres, program officer at the robert r. mccormick foundation, released the following joint statement: as foundations committed to furthering diversity, equity, and inclusion in journalism, we stand together today to call on newsroom leaders to take seriously the work of building newsrooms that truly represent the diversity of our nation. the asne diversity survey has been collecting newsroom employment data since 1978 and was relaunched this year with a focus on making it a more actionable tool for the nation’s newsrooms. we frequently read about outlets’ commitment to diversify their coverage and newsrooms; and from newsroom staff on the need for change. to deliver on that promise of change, there needs to be more transparency and accountability. that starts with fully participating in the leading survey of newsroom diversity in the nation. the response to this year’s survey is deeply disappointing. newsrooms today have invested enormous amounts of time and money in tracking data about our journalism. editors and publishers understand the necessity of using good data to drive decisions. diversity is no different. that is why journalism funders recently released five years of data about funding for equity, diversity, and inclusion. as funders, we know the philanthropic community needs to prioritize this work as well, and tools like the asne survey inform our work. that is why we will require annual completion of the asne survey for our journalism grantees in our grant agreements going forward. a healthy, diverse democracy requires a robust, free, and diverse fourth estate. the work of diversity is the work of journalism today. we believe the asne survey is a critical tool in creating a more responsive and representative public square, and we call on the industry to respond with the urgency this moment demands. if you haven’t already, we strongly encourage that you respond to the survey by oct. 12. newsrooms with questions about how to respond should contact lead researcher dr. meredith clark, mdc6j@virginia.edu, or asne executive director teri hayt at thayt@asne.org. american politics is characterized today by gridlock that paralyzes our political institutions and a rise in extremism that dominates our national dialogue and drives americans further apart. religious engagement is often thought to be a driver of many of these challenges. but while ideological religious advocacy can feed political tribalism through polarizing “culture wars,” the moral framework that faith provides can also help to build community and promote understanding across partisan lines. in her latest analysis of democracy fund voter study group data, emily ekins of the cato institute found that religious participation may help moderate americans’ views, particularly on issues related to race, immigration, and identity. for example, ekins says that trump voters who attend church more regularly tend to have more favorable opinions of racial minorities, support making it easier to immigrate to the united states and want to provide a pathway to citizenship for those who are unauthorized immigrants living in the united states. additionally, church going trump voters are half as likely to support a travel ban on muslims entering the united states as those who never attend church. although some partisanship is to be expected in a democracy, it is also true that civil debate and principled compromise are essential to governing a large, diverse, and complex society like ours. as part of our effort to foster more constructive politics, we undertook the task of conducting a “faith in democracy” field scan interviewing over 40 religious leaders, political leaders, and academics about the ways in which faith communities interact with congress and other institutions in our democracy. we started with a simple question: as a foundation committed to creating a more constructive political system, what are we missing? some of what we learned revealed major, cross field implications and provided more specific context to inform our work, including: as a result of this deep thinking, democracy fund is investing in innovative efforts that empower faith leaders to build bridges, break through polarizing paradigms, and create a more inclusive america. through this multi level approach, we hope to identify new ways funders can contribute to strengthening our democracy and help fix the problems in our political system. to foster deeper understanding among elites and disrupt hyperpartisanship in local communities, democracy fund is proud to support: in addition, democracy fund’s governance program and just and inclusive society project have joined together on the following grants: as a result of our field scan, we have multiple grants focused on empowering leaders within individual faith traditions to combat polarization within their ranks, and to exercise their moral authority to speak out against the forces that divide us as americans. these initial investments complement our existing partners such as welcoming america, the socrates program at the aspen institute, and other grantees who are conducting important work to create a more inclusive america. over the past year, we have learned a great deal about the ways in which religious americans interact with our democratic institutions. across religious traditions, we have found a hunger for a more inclusive america in which our political system respects the dignity of every individual and serves the needs of the american people. in supporting bold leaders who are working to unify americans and promote our shared values, we hope to experiment with and scale models to further strengthen and improve our democracy. we look forward to continuing to share our learnings as we evaluate these initial grants and plan our future investments. this piece was originally published in the stanford social innovation review. over the past few years, foundations have increasingly embraced a systems approach, formulating longer term strategies designed to solve chronic, complex problems. we value foundations for having strategic patience and being in it for the long haul. but what happens when they carefully craft a set of strategies intended for the long term, and the context of one or more the interconnected problems they are trying to address changes considerably? our experience at democracy fund, which aims to improve the fundamental health of the american democratic system, provides one example and suggests some lessons for other funders. my colleagues and i chronicled the systems thinking journey of democracy fund as we went about creating initiatives. after becoming an independent foundation in 2014, we went through a two year process of carefully mapping the systems we were interested in shifting and then designing robust strategies based on our understanding of the best ways to make change. our board approved our three long term initiatives elections, governance, and the public square in 2016. it would not be an overstatement to say that the context for much of our work shifted considerably in the months leading up to, during, and following the 2016 us presidential election. our strategies, as initially developed, were not fully prepared to address emerging threats in the landscape of american democracy, including: during and after the election, we engaged in a combination of collective angst (“how did we miss this?”) and intentional reflection (“how can we do better?”). we came out of that period of introspection and planning with three clear opportunities for our work that we carried out over the next few months. based on conversations with other funders, i know our experience is not unique. the field, as a whole, is trying to understand what it means to be strategic at a time of unprecedented change. below are a few lessons that may be helpful: foundations are unique in the sense that they have the ability to focus on an issue over a considerable period of time. and the recent strides the field has made on systems thinking have ensured that long term strategies consider the multi faceted nature of systems we are seeking to shift. however, we are grappling with the question of what happens when long term thinking bumps up against immediate and acute needs. in democracy fund’s case, building better system sensing capabilities, creating a context responsive funding stream, and codifying our convictions have equipped us to better respond to changing context. our journey is by no means complete and we have a lot to learn, but we hope that our experience gives others especially foundations wrestling with how to address immediate needs without abandoning their core priorities an emerging roadmap for moving forward, the events that unfolded in charlottesville a year ago were a shocking and tragic reminder that the escalation of racism, nativism, and xenophobia in our national discourse is toxic and potentially deadly. last year, we saw a 12% increase in hate crimes in our nation’s ten largest cities, according to the center for the study of hate and extremism. new research from professor thomas main further documents that so called “alt right” websites saw remarkable increases in web traffic between september 2016 and february of this year collectively reaching larger audiences than some mainstream center right online publications. and a year that began with the president excusing the violence in charlottesville has continued with his administration using vile, dehumanizing language to describe immigrants and implementing a racially charged family separation policy that has shocked the nation. at democracy fund, we know that defending our democracy and standing up for our core values means pushing back on these forces, wherever they emerge. in many ways, the story of charlottesville over the past year highlights the importance of several of our core programs, from our initiative on the health of local journalism to our special project on a just and inclusive society. let’s start with the critical role played by local journalism. powerful reporting of the rally and counter protests captured the attention of the nation. at a time when local news outlets are shuttering, the pulitzer prize winning photo journalism of the charlottesville daily progress demonstrated the industry’s role in telling local stories, and of the importance of democracy fund’s efforts to support innovators reinventing the business model for local news. the daily progress works hand in glove with charlottesville tomorrow, a non profit newsroom that is a member of the institute for nonprofit news   a democracy fund grantee that supports mission driven journalism. together, the outlets tracked the events of last summer and their aftermath, ensuring that the coverage was both meaningful nationally and true to the voices of the local community. around the country we are seeing creative collaborations like this one beginning to stitch together news ecosystems in ways that make local news more resilient. the courts have also stepped in to play an important role. the charlottesville community has found a measure of justice for the events of last summer through an innovative lawsuit by the institute for constitutional advocacy and protection at georgetown university (another democracy fund grantee). last year, icap sued the organizers of unite the right under a 1776 virginia law prohibiting “unlawful paramilitary activity.” recently, the rally’s lead organizer jason kessler became the final of over a dozen defendants to enter into a consent decree resolving that lawsuit. under the terms of the settlement, kessler promised he will not facilitate and rather will actively discourage armed paramilitary activity at any future rallies in charlottesville. across the nation, our grantees are working to bring together americans of all backgrounds to affirm our shared commitment to building a pluralistic, inclusive future. veterans for american ideals, for example, this year reached over 4 million people with their #whatifoughtfor campaign, a moving portrait that portrayed refugees alongside former service members to emphasize that embracing diversity is a core american value. faith in public life is bringing together faith leaders to reject hate and stand at the defense of communities under attack. pro publica’s documenting hate project is helping to better track hate and bias crime to enrich the national understanding and conversation about hate incidents. and civic nation has joined forces with nbc universal to relaunch #erasethehate, a campaign to help amplify and accelerate the work of people across the country who are combatting hate in unique and innovative ways. americans of all stripes have come together over the past few years to assert their commitment to the democratic values on which this country was founded. across the nation, we’ve seen people stand up in defense of communities under attack, a strong public repudiation of the racist rhetoric and policies by public figures, and increased philanthropic giving to efforts increasing tolerance and inclusion. we’ve also seen record numbers of women and people of color run for elected office, claiming their place in american democracy as never before. these actions represent a counterweight to the types of hatred we saw last year in charlottesville. as we commemorate the anniversary of the events in charlottesville, unite the right is preparing to hold rallies in charlottesville and right here in washington, d.c. while democracy fund believes deeply in the protection of free speech, we believe that these demonstrations must be met vigorously and must not be allowed to use violence to intimidate others. today and every day, we find hope and inspiration in the actions of those who stand against hatred and against those actions and rhetoric that offend the human dignity of all. how can we help local news survive, transform, and thrive? this question will not be answered by one person, one organization, or one innovation. instead, it will be answered by local ecosystems that have many players, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, coming together to be greater than the sum of their parts. it will look different everywhere around the country, but without this systemic approach, local news cannot survive. this theory is at the core of the work of the north carolina local news lab fund, which is announcing $500,000 in grants today. nclnl’s goal is to support people and organizations working to build a healthier local news and information ecosystem in north carolina. it is a collaborative fund at the north carolina community foundation, established by a group of local and national funders who believe in the power of local journalism, local stories, and local people to strengthen our democracy. the grants were selected by an advisory board with representatives from the following foundations: a.j. fletcher foundation, democracy fund, mary reynolds babcock foundation, prentice foundation, and z. smith reynolds foundation, as well as subject matter experts from north carolina central university and nc congress of latino organizations. the fund’s first grants go to organizations working to expand access to critical news and information for all north carolina communities. this cohort represents the fund’s commitment to supporting a diverse set of organizations pursuing meaningful projects to better serve local communities and strengthen the news and information ecosystem overall. each of these grantees also represent vital networks of people, communities, and organizations that will engage and collaborate with their work. it is, as fiona morgan wrote in “learning from north carolina,” a manifestation of how “north carolina’s news ecosystem will likely succeed best as a network of networks, with distinct areas where people join forces, share resources or collaborate.” these grantees are working to build new infrastructure for independent media, recognizing that we have to work together to meet the full needs of our communities. across these efforts we saw a deep commitment to community and collaboration and a generosity and determination to openly share and jointly build a bold future for north carolina. individually these are all great projects and organizations, and taken together they begin to connect people and communities across north carolina in new ways. we are thrilled by the work these organizations will do, but this is just the beginning. we had more than 70 ideas submitted to the nclnl through the application process, many of them addressing important needs and opportunities that we want to work on in the future. word on the street/la voz de los jóvenes trainees learn how to tell stories in asheville. photo by sekou coleman. the advisory board of the fund   brett chambers (north carolina central university), elena conley (mary reynolds babcock foundation), damon circosta (a.j. fletcher foundation) teresa gorman (democracy fund) bobbi hapgood (prentice foundation), ivan kohar parra (nc congress of latino organizations), sorien schmidt (z smith reynolds foundation) and josh stearns (democracy fund)   were inspired and challenged by the scope and creativity of the proposals we received. it was incredibly difficult to pick just a few grantees in this round. in partnership with the advisory board, funder partners, and others, including democracy fund senior consultant melanie sill, the nclnl will continue to explore ways to support and strengthen north carolina’s local news ecosystem. this will include future grantmaking and convenings. it will not be done in a vacuum. we will strive to live the nclnl’s stated values of learning, diversity, equity, inclusion, innovation, and transparency, and continue to share updates from our grantees and others here on the local news lab. as we continue this work, please share your comments, feedback, and ideas to localnewslab@democracyfund.org. even before the emergence of so called “resistance tech,” investors, venture funds, and foundations were pumping money into tech tools that make it easier for citizens to express their opinions to their elected representatives. this support has empowered constituents with more ways to contact their elected officials, and as a result, a civic engagement has grown over the past decade, burying members of congress with ever increasing volume of emails, phone calls, tweets, texts, and even faxes (yes, faxes). although civic engagement is essential to our democracy, congress sorely lacks the commensurate resources to keep up with the staggering volume of constituent communication. several reasons exist for this disparity. for one, congressional offices are a minuscule market when compared to the business opportunity that activating millions of constituents represents to start ups. institutional rules and security requirements further hamper product innovation. vendors must go through rigorous and opaque certification processes with house and senate administrators before they can release products to congressional staff. these administrators have forbidden common workplace applications like slack for security concerns. meanwhile, congress doesn’t invest adequately in its own technological and communications capacity to the point that offices still have fax machines in 2018. democracy fund and our affiliated social welfare organization, democracy fund voice, recently awarded several grants to address the disparity between the tools available to congressional staff and the technological innovations of the digital advocacy industry. these grants will enable staff to gauge constituent sentiment quickly and efficiently, deliver more meaningful and satisfying replies, and save offices countless hours of staff time currently spent on menial tasks. they also pave the way for further innovation. a grant to the tides foundation will support the popvox legidash fund to build “legidash,” a closed social network for constituents and member offices. this tool will give congressional staff a new way to connect with folks back home one on one, offer a clearer picture of district sentiment in the aggregate, and provide a trusted alternative communications portal to facebook, satisfying a growing concern on capitol hill about what the tech giant does with the data generated on members’ official pages. congressional vendor fireside21 will use a grant from democracy fund voice to research machine learning techniques that automate much of the rote, labor intensive processes that member offices use to organize bulk constituent email. the resulting improvements of this research could save offices dozens of personnel hours a week and make further advances   such as content analysis of constituents’ social media comments on elected representatives’ accounts   possible. these grants follow the success of democracy fund grantee the opengov foundation to develop and deploy article one, a voice to text tool that saves offices many hours by transcribing constituent voicemails. fireside21 recently partnered with the nonprofit to offer this service to members in the house of representatives. this approach is an experiment in using philanthropy to build technological capacity for congressional offices in ways the marketplace cannot provide. importantly, these grantees are trusted partners of congressional stakeholders, with years of experience collaborating with congress to understand the needs of members and staff as the foundation of product design. if the grants are successful, harried staff will have capacity to craft more meaningful responses to constituents in less time, rebuilding constituents’ trust that washington is listening. they will also free up staff hours that offices can reallocate to researching public policy, drafting legislation, and conducting oversight. using technology to make the most labor intensive parts of constituent service more efficient is an exciting prospect, but it’s not our only goal in funding this space. we will continue to explore other projects and tools that can rebuild congressional capacity to address the nation’s most pressing public policy issues. lorelei kelly at georgetown university’s beeck center likens this lawmaking capacity to a technical stack, or the overlapping components that build a technological system or software platform. right now, this stack is breaking down. technology can assist members of congress in a variety of ways, from helping to build relationships with subject matter experts at the district level, creating new venues for constituent member discussion in real time, leveraging troves of data to formulate policy and evaluating whether those initiatives are meeting desired outcomes. building this capacity makes it more likely that constituent sentiment, now often channeled into mass advocacy campaigns, can actually produce desired policy change. congress needs knowledge building solutions, like quick access to high quality, impartial information; situational awareness within the institution itself; visibility into staff networks working on shared issues; and   universally   more time to act upon constituent needs. ideally, congress would give itself this capability with an in house version of 18f or a congressional digital service; until that happens, philanthropy and private investors have a civic obligation to reinforce the technological infrastructure of the first branch of government. the challenges are so fundamental that even modest levels of funding, if properly placed, can create transformative change within the congressional workplace. a stronger democracy will be the roi. ​as a learning organization committed to the success of our grantee partners, democracy fund regularly gathers feedback from grantees in order to better understand what is working, where we need to do better, and how we should think about the role we are playing in strengthening our nation’s democracy. this isn’t always easy given the natural power dynamic between funders and grantees   and so we work with the center for effective philanthropy to periodically collect anonymous feedback through their grantee perception survey. ​last year, democracy fund took part in our second grantee perception survey administered by cep. since receiving the results last fall, our staff has had the time to reflect on the input provided to us by our grantees and implement a number of changes to our grantmaking approach in light of what we heard. we would like to thank our grantees for their thoughtful and detailed feedback. this blogpost provides an update on what we heard and what we’ve committed to doing differently. ​when we asked our grantees to participate in our first grantee perception survey in 2014, democracy fund was in the process of becoming an independent foundation. what our grantees shared then had a significant influence on our grantmaking approach   from how we streamline our processes to how we think about measurement and evaluation. for example, as a result of this work, we reduced our grant processing time by nearly 30 percent. ​this year’s survey, open to all grantees who held an active grant with us in 2016 came at no less a transitional time for democracy fund. while we are no longer a start up, it’s hard to overstate the tremendous growth that this organization has managed over the past 18 months. our staff size has tripled and our democracy fund portfolio has grown from 28 organizations when we first surveyed in 2014 to 74 organizations in spring 2017. as our original programs have matured, we’ve taken on a range of new programs and special projects to ensure that this organization is able to stand up for our constitution and democratic norms at a time of great consequence for our country. this sense of growth, maturation, and change is evident in what we heard from grantees. we provide more support to grantees than most other funders. we provide larger grants and more general operating support than our peer funders. our higher staff to grantee ratio compared to others means we’re able to be in more frequent contact with our grantees. this finding aligns well with our intent   and we’re glad to see our grantees found us living this approach day to day. grantees are still waiting for us to demonstrate impact. as a young foundation, many of our efforts are still nascent. grantees rated us lower than other funders on impact in the field and effect on public policy as our work is only beginning to gain traction. our grantees recognize our field expertise and appreciate our efforts to advance knowledge in the field   but we can do better. grantees gave us solid scores in our understanding of the field and see us as emerging thought leaders, reflecting the fact that much of our staff comes from the practitioner community. still, they thought we can do more to understand grantee organizations themselves, pointing to a need to better support our field expert staff in their transition to grantmaking roles. as we have grown in size and complexity, we’ve paid less attention to some relationships   and it shows. many grantees   in particular grantees who received smaller grants   sometimes felt out of the loop on democracy fund’s thinking. grantees sought more clarity and consistent communication about our processes and decision making. many wanted more transparency about our strategy, especially as our democracy entered a period of profound change. and we heard that we need to do more to foster trust with grantees, so that they are more comfortable reaching out to us as challenges emerge. we are grateful to our grantees for this honest and thought provoking feedback. over the past several months, our team has had the opportunity to engage with the survey results, and the key findings from the report. we have begun to implement a variety of improvements to our processes to address those areas where we know we can do better. each of our programs has taken the opportunity to discuss these results with their grantees to gain deeper insights and have been engaged in thoughtful internal conversations on how to address them. grantees can expect to see the following improvements: we also know that changes at the broader organizational level are necessary to ensure we our clear about our strategies and approach. we will be working to: i’m excited about the new course we’ve set for our grantmaking practice through the changes i’ve described. democracy fund is maturing from our start up phase at a critical moment for our democracy. our grantees are engaged in profoundly important work that will shape the future of this country. to meet the challenges ahead, our grantees and partners need us to be at our best. we are committed to improving and most effectively supporting our grantee’s efforts. by continuing to listen to one another, we’ll rise to the occasion together. sign up to receive periodic updates on the work of democracy fund and our grantees. we won't flood your inbox and we'll never share your email address. democracy fund champions the leaders who defend democracy and who challenge our political system to be more open, just, resilient, and trustworthy. this website uses cookies to provide you with an improved and personalized experience. by using this site you agree to our use of cookies. please read our cookies policy for more information on the cookies we use and how to delete or block them.

greater good science center • magazine • in action • in education the attempted assassination of donald trump highlights a terrible truth: political violence and support for political violence have been rising in the united states. trump himself may bear much of the responsibility for this trend. his entry into american politics triggered a sharp rise in violent rhetoric, which seems to have led inexorably toward violent actions. acts of stochastic terrorism that is, violence by individuals operating outside of any organization have proliferated, with the attempted killing of trump only the latest example. in fact, threats against lawmakers grew ten fold since 2016. that trend crystallized on january 6, 2021, when trump raised a mob of protesters who attacked the u.s. capitol in an effort to stop certification of joe biden as president. five people died that day, and four responding police officers committed suicide within seven months of the attack. how many americans endorse these acts? approval for the january 6 attack has actually risen among republicans in the past three years, from 21% to 30%, while those strongly disapproving dropped by almost 20 points. a pbs newshour/npr/marist poll published in april of this year showed that one in five americans believe that political violence can be justified at times a result that is roughly reflected in recent peer reviewed studies. the good news is that four out of five do not approve of political violence. it’s also important to note one study that has criticized these results: when a team of researchers based at dartmouth and stanford asked 5,000 americans about support for specific acts of political violence as opposed to more general support only 7% endorsed them. unfortunately, however, even that relatively small group would represent millions of people. so, what social and psychological forces are at work in our society and our minds when we move from disagreeing with political opponents to actually wanting to harm them? what can we do to coax people in a more peaceful direction? while the association between political rhetoric and violence is not perfectly understood, researchers are starting to map the pathways to pugnaciousness between groups of americans. we know that political violence can spread, like an illness. here are eight factors that make infection more likely and steps we can take to stop it. in 2022, political scientists lilliana mason and nathan kalmoe published a book titled, radical american partisanship: mapping violent hostility, its causes, and the consequences for democracy. with data from two different national surveys, they found that 24 percent of republicans and 17 percent of democrats believe that it is acceptable to threaten public officials; among republicans who believe that trump should have won the 2020 election, support for violence jumped 10 points. (note: these numbers have been disputed by other researchers.) mason and kalmoe identified three degrees of violent attitudes: some people hold views that rationalize harm towards political opponents, others express happiness toward their deaths, and still others endorse outright violence against them. put together, these are the components of lethal partisanship. mason and kalmoe then looked into various factors to see what might be contributing to these three attitudes. demographic categories such as gender, age, and education didn’t matter, at least in their studies. contrary to what some liberals might expect, in these surveys positive feelings toward president trump didn’t predict more violent attitudes (although note that other, more recent studies have found that so called maga republicans are much more likely than other republicans to endorse political violence). so, what did? by far the biggest predictor of lethal partisanship across the board was having aggressiveness as a personality trait. this isn’t surprising, of course aggression and violence go hand in hand. but a deeper look at aggression reveals how it fits together with other traits and shapes human behavior. aggression all by itself is not good or bad; any of us can become aggressive when we face a direct threat. but aggression can go too far when inner and outer restraints are absent. as america approaches the 2024 election, we’re sharing research based skills for bridging differences. in neurological studies, more aggressive people tend to show less activation of the default mode brain network, which is associated with empathy and emotion regulation, which in turn helps suppress aggressive impulses. as psychologist scott barry kaufman notes in scientific american, aggressive people are more likely to retaliate when treated unfairly by others, which is not necessarily a bad thing (“although they tend to care much less about whether others are treated unfairly”). however, aggression also shapes political outcomes, and it matters when political leaders model and support aggressive attitudes and actions. “politicians who are more antagonistic get more media attention and are more often elected than more agreeable politicians,” he writes. “in the general population, antagonistic people are more likely to distrust politics in general, to believe in conspiracy theories, and to support secessionist movements.” in a series of experiments published in 2014, kalmoe found “that exposure to mildly violent political metaphors such as ‘fighting for our future’ increased general support for political violence among people with aggressive personalities.” aggression might be more a part of some personalities than others, but it’s also the case that some social situations are more likely to trigger aggression than others. so, what might foster aggression in public life? to answer that question, we must move beyond personality traits to look at group membership and what happens in our groups. after aggressiveness, mason and kalmoe found that “partisan identity strength” how much being democrat or republican is part of who they are is the most important factor in endorsing violence, a factor ratified by many other recent studies. there are multiple academic papers mostly from political science and sociology showing that more americans are using their political party affiliation as a source of meaning and social identity, with these identities linked to differences in “leisure activities, consumption, aesthetic taste, and personal morality,” as daniel dellaposta and his colleagues write in their 2015 paper, “why do liberals drinks lattes?” worse, the republican party has become whiter in recent decades, while the democratic party has become more racially diverse which could be intensifying party antagonism. a recent study of survey data by political scientist diana mutz found that nothing predicted support for donald trump more than a feeling of threatened status among white christians an insight supported by several studies from robb willer at stanford university and the public religion research institute. as a result, the ideology of christian nationalism has moved from the fringes of the republican party to its center, according to studies by andrew l. whitehead and samuel l. perry, described in their 2020 book, taking america back for god: christian nationalism in the united states. “indeed, the parties are significantly more racially distinct than they were a few decades ago,” says mason. the implication is that americans aren’t just disagreeing about the issues when they talk politics they may feel a sense of tribal, existential threat when someone disagrees with the positions of their political party. “the relationship between ethnocentrism and violence is abundantly clear cross nationally and historically,” write mason and kalmoe in their paper. it could be that the problem isn’t partisanship, exactly instead, the truly dangerous ingredient could be the racialization of party affiliation. “all of the research to date was pointing in this direction,” adds mason in an interview. “but we have a long tradition of treating partisanship like a largely benevolent force. it makes sense that as an identity grows stronger, and conflict intensifies, people will begin to approve of violence.” that’s a conclusion reinforced by research conducted by james piazza, which examined data from 85 democratic countries for the period 1950 to 2018. he “found that increased political polarization raised the probability by around 35% that a democracy experiences more widespread political violence.” he also found that it’s the most partisan individuals who are most likely accept political violence. in his work, this insight applied to both highly partisan republicans and democrats. donald trump entered presidential politics promoting the racist lie that president obama was born outside of the united states. after he was elected in 2016, large numbers of republicans embraced the “qanon” conspiracy theory, which suggests (among others things) that the democratic party is run by a ring of satan worshipping pedophiles. when trump lost the 2020 election, he and his followers falsely claimed that the election was fraudulent. all of these lies spread through social media and they all fueled deadly stochastic terrorism and mob violence, something research predicts. in a 2021 study, federico vegetti and levente littvay found that those “who score higher on a scale of generic conspiracy belief are also more likely to endorse violent political actions.” that’s a conclusion reinforced by a study published the same year by james piazza. he used data from more than 150 countries to find “that propagation of disinformation through social media drives domestic terrorism,” largely because it inflames a sense of threat and victimhood in their targeted audiences. running through all of these claims is a feeling of declining influence among white christians, which feeds feelings of persecution. for example, in one 2022 paper, a team of researchers found that “the relationship between christian nationalism and support for political violence is sharply conditioned by white identity, perceived victimhood, and support for the qanon movement,” an insight corroborated by another study published in 2022, using different methods and a smaller sample size. these interactions are extensively explored by two harvard political scientists in their 2018 book, how democracies die, which identifies the demographic decline of white protestants as a major driver of conspiratorial thinking and political violence in the united states. of course, it’s not just people with right wing beliefs who are vulnerable to disinformation, and all people become receptive to violence when they feel threatened or powerless. after the attempt to kill trump, social media platforms were flooded with conspiracy theories, suggesting, for example, that the assassination was staged by trump himself to gain sympathy in the wake of his criminal convictions. many researchers, thinkers, and technologists have suggested solutions to disinformation, including third party fact checkers for social media, changing recommendation algorithms, media literacy training in schools, consciously changing social norms to penalize fake news spreaders, and sanctions against countries that spread disinformation within other countries. but at the end of the day, the solution to disinformation starts with us, and we can start by cultivating intellectual humility: the awareness of our own fallibility. that means verifying facts before you share them, especially when those facts seem to confirm your worldview. in 2017, anastasiia timmer and a team of researchers went door to door in ukraine interviewing citizens after the russian invasion of the ukrainian provinces of crimea and donbas. in a 2022 paper, they describe finding that people who are more exposed to war do seem to have a greater tolerance for other kinds of violence, from domestic abuse to intergroup conflict and the source of this acceptance appears to be stress and depression. a great deal of other research suggests that “people who report more depressive symptoms are more likely to perceive violent acts as morally acceptable,” says timmer. that’s an association strongly supported by a 2023 study that investigated “the relationship between depressive symptoms and americans’ attitudes regarding domestic extremist violence,” like riots or terrorist attacks. based on two national surveys, they found a strong association of depression (especially in men) with support for political violence and specifically the pro trump riot on january 6, 2021. additional studies have found that stress and aggression can reinforce each other on a biological level. as those researchers note, “depression reached unprecedented levels during the covid 19 pandemic,” mainly as a result of increased isolation. thus, they argue, based on their findings, we shouldn’t be surprised to see rising support for political violence (and conspiratorial beliefs). as the researchers note, depression in itself cannot explain rising political violence but as theirs and other studies suggest, a more stressed and depressed population appears to be more vulnerable to the appeal of violence. one of the positive implications is that investing more in mental health care and social connection could reduce support for violence. while mason and kalmoe’s study gives us some sense of how common the tendency to accept political violence is and some of the personality traits and belief structures that may be associated with it a 2015 study points us in the direction of the emotions involved. in “the role of intergroup emotions in political violence,” san francisco state university researchers david matsumoto and hyisung c. hwang and the university at buffalo’s mark g. frank tried to figure out which emotions can drive violence by a group against an outgroup. they examined the emotional tone of major political speeches that occurred prior to political events throughout history, looking at the emotions expressed in words, the judgments underlying the emotions, and the nonverbal expression of the emotions that could be seen in video form. they also examined speeches made by “ideologically driven” leaders who despised opponent outgroups that resulted in violence, such as hitler’s; and they studied those that did not, like gandhi’s salt march and pro tibet protests at the beijing olympics in 2008. they found that speeches which preceded violent events tended to express more anger, contempt, and disgust (ancodi) but not fear, happiness, sadness, or surprise. these negative emotions tended to target specific outgroups jews, in the case of hitler’s speeches. the “amount of anger, contempt, and disgust expressed nonverbally by violent group leaders correlated significantly only when they referenced the opponent outgroup; they did not correlate when the violent group leaders referenced something other than their opponent outgroup,” note the researchers. in the months before major non violent events, anger, contempt, and disgust actually declined. the researchers suggest that the ancodi model may be a way of monitoring the expression of emotions by group leaders that could provide an early warning of looming violence. they also propose that interventions to prevent violence could be measured by how effective they are in reducing ancodi emotions. one important caveat of the study the researchers concede is that they looked at group behavior. “we do not know if this phenomenon applies to individual acts of violence,” they write. much more recent studies have applied these insights to different countries and social situations, and highlighted the special role of disgust in driving intergroup violence. for example, david l. rousseau and his colleagues ran a series of experiments which found that “only disgust reactions consistently produced dehumanization and support for human rights violations against outgroups.” one of the implications of this work is that political leaders and, indeed, all of us should strive to avoid expressing anger, contempt, and especially disgust against political opponents, if we wish to avoid violence. the best evidence to date suggests that all by itself, gun ownership is not associated with political violence or support for political violence. but there are some distinctions among gun owners that do seem to matter. a paper published in april of this year surveyed 12,851 americans about firearms, political attitudes, and violence. they found that “firearm owners were only moderately more supportive of political violence than nonowners” but that within the group of owners, people who bought guns in the wake of the 2020 election and those who always or nearly always carried firearms in public “were more supportive of and willing to engage in political violence than other subsets of firearm owners.” almost 42% of assault type rifle owners said political violence could be justified. these attitudes have real world consequences. from 2020 to 2021, the number of armed pro trump demonstrations rose from 6.2% to 8.8%; during the same period, only 1.5% of all other demonstrations involved firearms. as a 2021 report from the bridging divides initiative found, those armed demonstrations were 6.5 times more likely to lead to violence than those without firearms. which leads us to the common sense truth that more guns mean more gun violence. shortly after the attempt on trump’s life, the satirical site the onion ran one of their funny because it’s true headlines: “investigation finds secret service failed to account for nation’s 393 million guns.” decades of research reveal that the more guns in a state, county, city, or neighborhood, the more likely you are to be killed or injured by a person with a gun. there are no peer reviewed studies that say otherwise. the 20 year old who took a shot at trump had “borrowed” his father’s semi automatic rifle: the ar 15, which is owned by 5% of americans and has been used in 10 of the 17 deadliest mass shootings in the united states. while limiting the supply of guns may not stop political violence in america, it stands to reduce its probability and could also make any violence less deadly. in 2015, baltimore witnessed mass protests after a man named freddie gray died in police custody. a small number of these protests turned violent. in 2018, a team of five researchers searched the social media platform twitter (now called x) for tweets about the baltimore protests. they wanted to investigate “moralizing” tweets that is, tweets that viewed the protests as a moral issue rather than as a political disagreement. a moralizing tweet might, for example, refer to people as “disgusting” or “evil” or “traitorous.” in fact, they did find a positive association between the number of moral tweets and the occurrence of violent protests (gauged with arrest data). “the days in which there were violent protests, we saw that there was a lot more moral language being used,” says study coauthor and university of southern california ph.d. student joe hoover. “which was consistent with the idea that morality and violence in these contexts might be linked.” the team also ran an experiment using another prominent protest marred by violence: the far right rally in charlottesville, virginia, in 2017. respondents were asked to what extent they thought protesting against the far right demonstrators was a moral issue; they were then asked how acceptable it was to use violence against these far right activists. what they found is that people were more likely to embrace violence the more they saw it as a moral issue. in an additional experiment, the participants were given the same prompts, but they were told either that the majority of americans agreed with their view of the protest, or that few americans agreed with their view. they found that “moralization predicted violence only when participants perceived that they shared their moralized attitudes with others.” in other words, when it comes to violence, there’s validation and safety in numbers. the researchers dubbed this phenomenon “moral convergence,” when many people come together around a strong idea of what’s right and what’s wrong. the “risk of violent protest, in other words, may not be simply a function of moralization, but also the perception that others agree with one’s moral position, which can strongly be influenced by social media dynamics,” they write. of course, our groups often do good, as well. hoover concedes that moralization, moral convergence, and violence don’t always have to be linked. some of the most disciplined nonviolent movements in american history have been highly moralistic. for instance, the civil rights era southern nonviolent coordinating committee in the american south trained its activists to not respond violently even if attacked. “we are thinking about these factors as risk factors,” says hoover. “certainly, there have been many protests where participants held a strong moral position and surely perceived moral convergence and there was no violence.” moralization and moral convergence are like kindling, but “you still need a spark; you need something to actually light the fires.” hoover suggested that police could play a positive role in preventing protest violence by practicing de escalation that makes clear they respect the protesters’ ability to be heard. as the research by matsumoto, hwang, and frank suggests, leaders also have a responsibility to not fuel anger, contempt, and disgust. when it comes to violence, leadership matters. there are many, many studies starting with stanley milgram’s classic electric shock experiments which show that people are much more likely to inflict pain on others when an authority figure tells them to. when leaders engage in violent rhetoric, so do their followers; when they urge calm, people do calm down. research has documented that words do have an impact on both beliefs and behaviors. for example, a 2017 polish study found “frequent and repetitive exposure to hate speech leads to desensitization to this form of verbal violence and subsequently to lower evaluations of the victims and greater distancing, thus increasing outgroup prejudice.” as part of the study, researchers surveyed participants on how frequently they encountered hate speech against refugees; they found that those who were more exposed to hateful words were more prejudiced against the group and more accepting of restrictive immigration policy. taken together, these studies suggest that our political leadership everyone from pundits on cable news to the president of the united states would do well to avoid promoting the political tribalism that leads people to strongly identify with one group and demonize the other. they could also reduce the use of angry, contemptuous, and disgusted rhetoric to refer to political outgroups. and americans everywhere could learn to rely less on the echo chambers of social media, where moral convergence and affirmation can fuel violence against people and property. most importantly, we have to be able to stress civility and humanity toward the other side, even when it’s difficult. in 2018, florida republican congressman carlos curbelo received a threatening tweet. “i will kill carlos curbelo,” wrote a 19 year old constituent named pierre alejandro verges castro. “what pierre did is very serious,” curbelo told the miami herald. “we have two young daughters and like any family, we worry about our safety and security, especially in light of all the acts of violence we are seeing throughout our country.” despite these fears, curbelo chose to reach out to verges castro and held a joint press conference with him where he publicly forgave him. although the teenager was arrested by the fbi, the congressman stressed that he doesn’t want the incident to tar him for the rest of his life. as curbelo said: let us be respectful and sober in our conversations, our debates, and especially in our social media interactions. and as for pierre, i wish him the best. he made a mistake, and his life shouldn’t be ruined because of it. i truly believe in second chances. i am hopeful pierre will become a model citizen who is now in a unique position to be a part of the force for healing that our community and our country so desperately need. in the wake of the assassination attempt on trump, both republican and democratic leaders acted to calm followers. “we’ve got to turn the temperature down in this country,” said republican house speaker mike johnson on nbc. that same day, president joe biden addressed the attack on national tv: “there is no place in america for this kind of violence for any violence. ever. period. no exception. we can’t allow this violence to be normalized.” this article was originally published on november 7, 2018. in the wake of violence during the 2024 presidential election, it was revised to address current events and expanded to include new research. jeremy adam smith edits the ggsc’s online magazine, greater good. he is also the author or coeditor of five books, including the daddy shift, are we born racist?, and (most recently) the gratitude project: how the science of thankfulness can rewire our brains for resilience, optimism, and the greater good. before joining the ggsc, jeremy was a john s. knight journalism fellow at stanford university. zaid jilani is greater good‘s bridging differences writing fellow. a journalist originally from atlanta, he has worked as a reporter for the intercept and as a reporter blogger for thinkprogress, united republic, the progressive change campaign committee, and alternet. this article is part of a program that explores evidence based strategies to improve dialogue, understanding, and relationships across social and political divides. greater good's online course series offering research based strategies for more satisfaction, connection, and purpose at work. ces for health professionals & hr managers. this month, spread love in your corner of the world. keith payne believes politics is just a weapon we use to fight the real battle: defending our belief that we’re good, reasonable people. john a. powell explains why we distance ourselves from groups of people and how we can all find the connection that we crave. compassionate dialogue isn’t just about talking and listening it's a meaningful way to bridge divides, cultivate belonging, and reimagine education as a space for connection. worried that you might be wrong in that argument you're having? intellectual humility can help. do you question your own beliefs and welcome different ways of thinking? the greater good science center studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well being, and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society. © 2025 the greater good science center at the university of california, berkeley become a subscribing member today. help us continue to bring “the science of a meaningful life” to you and to millions around the globe.

frank bruni, a contributing opinion writer, joined the new york times in 1995 and has ranged broadly across its pages. he has been both a white house correspondent and the chief restaurant critic. as a staff writer for the times magazine, he profiled j.j. abrams and a health obsessed billionaire who planned to live to 125; as the rome bureau chief, he kept tabs on pope john paul ii and prime minister silvio berlusconi. mr. bruni came to the times from the detroit free press, where he was a war correspondent, the chief movie critic and a religion writer. he is the author of four new york times best sellers: a 2022 reflection on illness, aging and optimism, “the beauty of dusk”; a 2015 examination of the college admissions frenzy, “where you go is not who you’ll be”; a 2009 memoir, “born round,” about the joys and torments of his eating life; and a 2002 chronicle of george w. bush’s initial presidential campaign, “ambling into history.” in the summer of 2021 he became a professor of journalism and public policy at duke university. follow him on x (formerly twitter), threads and facebook. sign up here for his email newsletter. how do democrats build trust and faith in them and effectively counter trump? by frank bruni, michelle goldberg and bret stephens what i learned at my first ever duke u.n.c. basketball game. by frank bruni blunt language and brute force are the currencies of the maga moment. by frank bruni what makes this dynamic in the new trump administration so fascinating? by frank bruni, bethany mclean and nate silver the president’s jan. 6 pardons mark a terrifying new chapter in blurring the past. by frank bruni the niceties of donald trump’s first speech as president couldn’t mask the darkness within   or the way he views his mission now. by frank bruni they’re trying to overturn a fair election. gee, who gave them that idea? by frank bruni she’s the 62 year old queen of an awards season with overdue female diversity. by frank bruni an ugly year in politics was a gorgeous one for words. by frank bruni assessing newer voices, and future strategies. by frank bruni, tim ryan, anat shenker osorio and lis smith for the 47th president, illusion is the new accountability. by frank bruni like trump himself, trump’s new line of fragrances is big on braggadocio, short on details and gaudily packaged. by frank bruni the onslaught of awful makes bad look good. by frank bruni the vaunted chamber’s degradation preceded him. but he may trash it once and for all. by frank bruni trump’s big victory is sure to scramble the democrats’ bench. by frank bruni americans aren’t joyful. they’re angry. and they’ve been telling us that all along. by frank bruni after several furious months of action, harris came up short, and trump came out on top. by frank bruni frank bruni, kristen soltis anderson and nate silver take stock of where the race is as election day looms. by frank bruni, kristen soltis anderson and nate silver will he be remembered as american democracy’s savior   or as a midwife to its ruin? by frank bruni he had a very clear message to send to his hometown. by frank bruni back in the white house, trump would get input from a bestiary of nihilists, destructionists and even criminals. by frank bruni josh stein’s campaign in north carolina is a master class in devastating campaign ads. by frank bruni how did we get here? by frank bruni parents have no monopoly on modesty. by frank bruni some of america’s most lauded cooks have stepped away from the lunch and dinner grind. by frank bruni and mari maeda and yuji oboshi an overflow of trump inspired misinformation on the disaster of helene has impeded the recovery. by frank bruni do not use normal appraisals for an abnormal election. by frank bruni a new anthem demonstrates the growing confluence of music and politics. by frank bruni her opponent’s malice and incoherence trump all else. by frank bruni josh stein is fighting to prevent a maga takeover of north carolina. by frank bruni here’s a script with which she could explain her evolution. by frank bruni her careful cramming and his cocky hamming tell you all you need to know. by frank bruni donald trump can be beaten. that was the clearest takeaway on tuesday night. by frank bruni there’s a whiff of republican panic in this battleground state. by frank bruni if she keeps her cool, he’ll surely lose his. by frank bruni political analysts here tell me that they’re struck by the burst of energy for the harris campaign. by frank bruni elections are about contrasts. she presented a stirring one. by frank bruni hers is a deliberate sparkle. not unlike … ronald reagan’s. by frank bruni two women seeking the white house, two historic elections: what will it take to beat donald trump this time? by frank bruni, maureen dowd, michelle goldberg and patrick healy in a land of plenty that reveres personal freedom, we imbibe as we wish. by frank bruni there is no end to his hallucinatory disadvantages. by frank bruni presidential campaign veterans discuss what goes into the veepstakes. by frank bruni, beth myers and jim jordan there’s only so much trailblazing kamala harris can be expected to do. by frank bruni republicans’ first anti harris advertisement is about as subtle as trump. by frank bruni vance wasn’t five feet from the altar when his ugliness dominated the discussion. by frank bruni against the former misogynist in chief, kamala harris’s gender is an asset. by frank bruni coconut trees and republican missteps. by frank bruni, mallory mcmorrow and simon rosenberg it’s hard to grasp the historical rarity, emotional agony and fundamental humility of what the president just did. by frank bruni the former president’s nomination speech may well be the most watched address in a generation. by frank bruni, michelle cottle, david french and patrick healy he’s … a bit calmer. which freaks me out. by frank bruni the country is interested in the future. biden keeps talking about the past. by frank bruni impeachments, bankruptcies, fraud judgments, felonies. nothing sticks. nothing matters. by frank bruni it’s noteworthy and arguably sexist that the women in his life are supposed to clean house here. by frank bruni democrats must grapple with his disastrous debate. by frank bruni when the two candidates square off, we can expect disorientation, dizziness and much else. by frank bruni, matthew continetti and olivia nuzzi north carolina has a chance to overcome tribalism and hate in november. by frank bruni audaciously and laughably, a playboy plutocrat turns himself into everyman. by frank bruni indulging in electoral illusions is dangerous. by frank bruni only the champion flatterer will win the naval observatory. by frank bruni democratic complacency in 2016 was foolish. in 2024 it’s incomprehensible. by frank bruni

things you buy through our links may earn vox media a commission. tribalism was an urge our founding fathers assumed we could overcome. and so it has become our greatest vulnerability. from time to time, i’ve wondered what it must be like to live in a truly tribal society. watching iraq or syria these past few years, you get curious about how the collective mind can come so undone. what’s it like to see the contours of someone’s face, or hear his accent, or learn the town he’s from, and almost reflexively know that he is your foe? how do you live peacefully for years among fellow citizens and then find yourself suddenly engaged in the mass murder of humans who look similar to you, live around you, and believe in the same god, but whose small differences in theology mean they must be killed before they kill you? in the balkans, a long period of relative peace imposed by communism was shattered by brutal sectarian and ethnic warfare, as previously intermingled citizens split into unreconcilable groups. the same has happened in a developed democratic society   northern ireland   and in one of the most successful countries in africa, kenya. tribal loyalties turned beirut, lebanon’s beautiful, cosmopolitan capital, into an urban wasteland in the 1970s; they caused close to a million deaths in a few months in rwanda in the 1990s; they are turning aung san suu kyi, winner of the nobel peace prize, into an enabler of ethnic cleansing right now in myanmar. british imperialists long knew that the best way to divide and conquer was by creating “countries” riven with tribal differences. not that they were immune: even in successful modern democracies like britain and spain, the tribes of scots and catalans still threaten a viable nation state. in all these places, the people involved have been full citizens of their respective nations, but their deepest loyalty is to something else. but then we don’t really have to wonder what it’s like to live in a tribal society anymore, do we? because we already do. over the past couple of decades in america, the enduring, complicated divides of ideology, geography, party, class, religion, and race have mutated into something deeper, simpler to map, and therefore much more ominous. i don’t just mean the rise of political polarization (although that’s how it often expresses itself), nor the rise of political violence (the domestic terrorism of the late 1960s and ’70s was far worse), nor even this country’s ancient black white racial conflict (though its potency endures). i mean a new and compounding combination of all these differences into two coherent tribes, eerily balanced in political power, fighting not just to advance their own side but to provoke, condemn, and defeat the other. i mean two tribes whose mutual incomprehension and loathing can drown out their love of country, each of whom scans current events almost entirely to see if they advance not so much their country’s interests but their own. i mean two tribes where one contains most racial minorities and the other is disproportionately white; where one tribe lives on the coasts and in the cities and the other is scattered across a rural and exurban expanse; where one tribe holds on to traditional faith and the other is increasingly contemptuous of religion altogether; where one is viscerally nationalist and the other’s outlook is increasingly global; where each dominates a major political party; and, most dangerously, where both are growing in intensity as they move further apart. the project of american democracy   to live beyond such tribal identities, to construct a society based on the individual, to see ourselves as citizens of a people’s republic, to place religion off limits, and even in recent years to embrace a multiracial and post religious society   was always an extremely precarious endeavor. it rested, from the beginning, on an 18th century hope that deep divides can be bridged by a culture of compromise, and that emotion can be defeated by reason. it failed once, spectacularly, in the most brutal civil war any western democracy has experienced in modern times. and here we are, in an equally tribal era, with a deeply divisive president who is suddenly scrambling washington’s political alignments, about to find out if we can prevent it from failing again. tribalism, it’s always worth remembering, is not one aspect of human experience. it’s the default human experience. it comes more naturally to us than any other way of life. for the overwhelming majority of our time on this planet, the tribe was the only form of human society. we lived for tens of thousands of years in compact, largely egalitarian groups of around 50 people or more, connected to each other by genetics and language, usually unwritten. most tribes occupied their own familiar territory, with widespread sharing of food and no private property. a tribe had its own leaders and a myth of its own history. it sorted out what we did every day, what we thought every hour. tribal cohesion was essential to survival, and our first religions emerged for precisely this purpose. as dominic johnson argues in his recent book god is watching you, almost all indigenous societies had a common concept of the supernatural, and almost all of them saw their worst threats   hunger, disease, natural disasters, a loss in battle   as a consequence of disobeying a god. religion therefore fused with communal identity and purpose, it was integral to keeping the enterprise afloat, and the idea of people within a tribe believing in different gods was incomprehensible. such heretics would be killed. the tribes that best survived (and thereby transmitted their genes to us) were, moreover, those most acutely aware of outsiders and potential foes. a failure to notice incoming strangers could end your life in an instant, and an indifference to the appearances of other human beings could mean defeat at the hands of rivals or the collapse of a tribe altogether. and so we became a deeply cooperative species   but primarily with our own kind. the notion of living alongside people who do not look like us and treating them as our fellows was meaningless for most of human history. comparatively few actual tribes exist today, but that doesn’t mean that humans are genetically much different. in his book tribe, sebastian junger relates a little known fact about the americans who pioneered the frontier. in the centuries in which white europeans lived alongside native american tribes, many europeans split off from their fellow colonists, disappeared into the wilderness, and joined indian society. almost no natives voluntarily did the reverse. “thousands of europeans are indians, and we have no examples of even one of those aborigines having from choice become european,” wrote one 18th century frenchman. “there must be in their social bond something singularly captivating and far superior to anything to be boasted of among us.” that “something,” junger argues, was being a member of a tribe. successful modern democracies do not abolish this feeling; they co opt it. healthy tribalism endures in civil society in benign and overlapping ways. we find a sense of belonging, of unconditional pride, in our neighborhood and community; in our ethnic and social identities and their rituals; among our fellow enthusiasts. there are hip hop and country music tribes; bros; nerds; wasps; dead heads and packers fans; facebook groups. (yes, technology upends some tribes and enables new ones.) and then, most critically, there is the über tribe that constitutes the nation state, a megatribe that unites a country around shared national rituals, symbols, music, history, mythology, and events, that forms the core unit of belonging that makes a national democracy possible. none of this is a problem. tribalism only destabilizes a democracy when it calcifies into something bigger and more intense than our smaller, multiple loyalties; when it rivals our attachment to the nation as a whole; and when it turns rival tribes into enemies. and the most significant fact about american tribalism today is that all three of these characteristics now apply to our political parties, corrupting and even threatening our system of government. if i were to identify one profound flaw in the founding of america, it would be its avoidance of our tribal nature. the founders were suspicious of political parties altogether   but parties defined by race and religion and class and geography? i doubt they’d believe a republic could survive that, and they couldn’t and didn’t foresee it. in fact, as they conceived of a new society that would protect the individual rights of all humanity, they explicitly excluded a second tribe among them: african american slaves. within a century, that moral and political blind spot cleaved the country down the middle and led to the kind of bloody, manic, and brutal tribal warfare we now think of as something that happens somewhere else. but it did happen here, on a fault line that closely resembles today’s tribal boundary. for a century after the civil war, this divide, while still strong, was nonetheless diluted by myriad other ethnic loyalties, as waves of european immigrants came to america and competed with each other as well as with those already here. some new tribes, such as mormons, were accommodated simply by the ever expanding frontier. and in the first half of the 20th century, with immigration sharply curtailed after 1924, the world wars acted as great unifiers and integrators. our political parties became less polarized by race, as the fdr democrats managed to attract more black voters as well as ethnic and southern whites. by 1956, nearly 40 percent of black voters still backed the gop. but we all know what happened next. the re racialization of our parties began with barry goldwater’s presidential campaign in 1964, when the gop lost almost all of the black vote. it accelerated under nixon’s “southern strategy” in the wake of the civil rights revolution. by reagan’s reelection, the two parties began to cohere again into the civil war pattern, and had simply swapped places. the failed nomination of robert bork to the supreme court was perhaps the first moment that a hubristic gop nominated a figure on the far right, and an increasingly vocal left upended previous norms for judicial hearings, using race and gender as political weapons. mass illegal latino immigration added to the tribal mix as the gop, led most notably by pete wilson in california, became increasingly defined by white immigration restrictionists, and hispanics moved to the democrats. newt gingrich’s revolutionary gop then upped the ante, treating president bill clinton as illegitimate from the start, launching an absurd impeachment crusade, and destroying the comity that once kept washington from complete partisan dysfunction. abortion and gay rights further split urban and rural america. by the 2000 election, we were introduced to the red blue map, though by then we could already recognize the two tribes it identified as they fought to a national draw. choosing a president under those circumstances caused a constitutional crisis, one the supreme court resolved at the expense of losing much of its nonpartisan, nontribal authority. then there were other accelerants: the arrival of talk radio in the 1980s, fox news in the ’90s, and internet news and msnbc in the aughts; the colossal blunder of the iraq war, which wrecked the brief national unity after 9/11; and the rise of partisan gerrymandering that allowed the gop to win, in 2016, 49 percent of the vote but 55 percent of house seats. (a recent study found that a full fifth of current districts are more convoluted than the original, contorted district that first gave us the term gerrymander in 1812.) the greatest threat to a politician today therefore is less a candidate from the opposing party than a more ideologically extreme primary opponent. the incentives for cross tribal compromise have been eviscerated, and those for tribal extremism reinforced. add to this the great intellectual sorting of america, in which, for generations, mass college education sifted countless gifted young people from the heartland and deposited them in increasingly left liberal universities and thereafter the major cities, from which they never returned, and then the shifting of our economy to favor the college educated, which only deepened the urban rural divide. the absence of compulsory military service meant that our wars would be fought disproportionately by one tribe, and the rise of radical islamic terrorism only inflamed tribal suspicions. then there’s the post 1965 wave of mass immigration, which disorients in ways that cannot be wished or shamed away; the decision among the country’s intellectual elite to junk the “melting pot” metaphor as a model for immigration in favor of “multiculturalism”; and the decline of christianity as a common cultural language for both political parties   which had been critical, for example, to the success of the civil rights movement. the myths that helped us unite as a nation began to fray. we once had a widely accepted narrative of our origins, shared icons that defined us, and a common pseudo ethnicity   “whiteness”   into which new immigrants were encouraged to assimilate. our much broader ethnic mix and the truths of history make this much harder today   as, of course, they should. but we should be clear eyed about the consequence. we can no longer think of the puritans without acknowledging the genocide that followed them; we cannot celebrate our founding fathers without seeing that slavery undergirded the society they constructed; we must tear down our confederate statues and relitigate our oldest rifts. even the national anthem now divides those who stand from those who kneel. we dismantled many of our myths, but have not yet formed new ones to replace them. the result of all this is that a lopsided 69 percent of white christians now vote republican, while the democrats get only 31. in the last decade, the gap in christian identification between democrats and republicans has increased by 50 percent. in 2004, 44 percent of latinos voted republican for president; in 2016, 29 percent did. forty three percent of asian americans voted republican in 2004; in 2016, 29 percent did. since 2004, the most populous urban counties have also swung decisively toward the democrats, in both blue and red states, while rural counties have shifted sharply to the gop. when three core components of a tribal identity   race, religion, and geography   define your political parties, you’re in serious trouble. some countries where tribal cleavages spawned by ethnic and linguistic differences have long existed understand this and have constructed systems of government designed to ameliorate the consequences. unlike the u.s., they encourage a culture of almost pathological compromise, or build constitutions that, unlike our own, take tribal conflict seriously. they often have a neutral head of state   a constitutional monarch or nonpartisan president   so that the legitimacy of the system is less easily defined by one tribe or the other. they tend to have proportional representation and more than two parties, so it’s close to impossible for one party to govern without some sort of coalition. in the toughest cases, they have mandatory inclusion of minority parties in the government. in northern ireland, for example, since the good friday agreement of 1998, there are intricate arrangements in which no regional government for the province can exist without support from at least two parties representing the catholic minority and the protestant majority. the first minister and the deputy first minister have to be from different parties, one catholic and one protestant. if one or the other drops out, power reverts to westminster. the belgian government, to take another example, is required to have both french  and flemish speaking parties, representing the two linguistic and cultural tribes that make up the country. these contrivances are not fail safe, especially if the divisions are too great   such as cyprus’s experiment in the 1960s. but they can channel tribal conflict constructively and thereby weaken it. the netherlands is the clearest success story. its three main tribes (or “pillars,” as they became known) were, for many years, catholic, protestant, and socialist. each had its own political culture, media, and unions. but these were divided into five parties (one socialist, one conservative, one catholic, and two protestant). in practice, this required tribal cooperation through constant coalition governments that gravitated toward the center. over time, as secularism took hold, the netherlands evolved into a much more familiar variety of ideological parties, but its tradition of compromising, coalition governments remains. the united states is built on a very different set of institutions. there is no neutral presidency here, and so when a rank tribalist wins the office and governs almost entirely in the interests of the hardest core of his base, half the country understandably feels as if it were under siege. our two party, winner take all system only works when both parties are trying to appeal to the same constituencies on a variety of issues. our undemocratic electoral structure exacerbates things. donald trump won 46 percent of the vote, attracting 3 million fewer voters than his opponent, but secured 56 percent of the electoral college. republicans won 44 percent of the vote in the senate seats up for reelection last year, but 65 percent of the seats. to have one tribe dominate another is one thing; to have the tribe that gained fewer votes govern the rest   and be the head of state   is testing political stability. what you end up with is zero sum politics, which drags the country either toward alternating administrations bent primarily on undoing everything their predecessors accomplished, or the kind of gridlock that has dominated national politics for the past seven years   or both. slowly our political culture becomes one in which the two parties see themselves not as participating in a process of moving the country forward, sometimes by tilting to the right and sometimes to the left, as circumstances permit, alternating in power, compromising when in opposition, moderating when in government   but one where the goal is always the obliteration of the other party by securing a permanent majority, in an unending process of construction and demolition. and so by 2017, 41 percent of republicans and 38 percent of democrats said they disagreed not just with their opponents’ political views but with their values and goals beyond politics as well. nearly 60 percent of all americans find it stressful even to talk about trump with someone who disagrees with them. a monmouth poll, for good measure, recently found that 61 percent of trump supporters say there’s nothing he could do to make them change their minds about him; 57 percent of his opponents say the same thing. nothing he could do. one of the great attractions of tribalism is that you don’t actually have to think very much. all you need to know on any given subject is which side you’re on. you pick up signals from everyone around you, you slowly winnow your acquaintances to those who will reinforce your worldview, a tribal leader calls the shots, and everything slips into place. after a while, your immersion in tribal loyalty makes the activities of another tribe not just alien but close to incomprehensible. it has been noticed, for example, that primitive tribes can sometimes call their members simply “people” while describing others as some kind of alien. so the word inuit means people, but a rival indigenous people, the ojibwe, call them eskimos, which, according to lore, means “eaters of raw meat.” when criticized by a member of a rival tribe, a tribalist will not reflect on his own actions or assumptions but instantly point to the same flaw in his enemy. the most powerful tribalist among us, trump, does this constantly. when confronted with his own history of sexual assault, for example, he gave the tiniest of apologies and immediately accused his opponent’s husband of worse, inviting several of bill clinton’s accusers to a press conference. but in this, he was only reflecting the now near ubiquitous trend of “whataboutism,” as any glance at a comments section or a cable slugfest will reveal. the soviets perfected this in the cold war, deflecting from their horrific gulags by pointing, for example, to racial strife in the u.s. it tells you a lot about our time that a tactic once honed in a global power struggle between two nations now occurs within one. what the soviets used against us we now use against one another. in america, the intellectual elites, far from being a key rational bloc resisting this, have succumbed. the intellectual right and the academic left have long since dispensed with the idea of a mutual exchange of ideas. in a new study of the voting habits of professors, democrats outnumber republicans 12 to 1, and the imbalance is growing. among professors under 36, the ratio is almost 23 to 1. it’s not a surprise, then, that once esoteric neo marxist ideologies   such as critical race and gender theory and postmodernism, the bastard children of herbert marcuse and michel foucault   have become the premises of higher education, the orthodoxy of a new and mandatory religion. their practical implications   such as “safe spaces,” speech regarded as violence, racially segregated graduation ceremonies, the policing of “micro aggressions,” the checking of “white privilege”   are now embedded in the institutions themselves. conservative dissent therefore becomes tribal blasphemy. free speech can quickly become “hate speech,” “hate speech” becomes indistinguishable from a “hate crime,” and a crime needs to be punished. many members of the academic elite regard opposing views as threats to others’ existences, and conservative speakers often can only get a hearing on campus under lockdown. this seeps into the broader culture. it leads directly to a tech entrepreneur like brendan eich being hounded out of a company, mozilla, he created because he once opposed marriage equality, or a brilliant coder, james damore, being fired from google for airing civil, empirical arguments against the left feminist assumptions behind the company’s employment practices. it’s why a young gay freelance writer, chadwick moore, could have a record of solid journalism, write a balanced profile of milo yiannopoulos for out magazine, and then be subjected to an avalanche of bile from readers and a public denunciation signed by many of his fellow gay journalists. he lost his relationship with the magazine shortly thereafter. moore is a fascinating case in how tribalism now infects everything. after being ostracized by his own tribe, he flipped, turned into a parody of maga conformity, and became an employee of milo inc. there is, of course, an enormous conservative intellectual counter establishment, an often incestuous network of think tanks, foundations, journals, and magazines that exists outside of universities. it, too, has fomented its own orthodoxies, policed dissent, and punished heresy.conservatism thrived in america when it was dedicated to criticizing liberalism’s failures, engaging with it empirically, and offering practical alternatives to the same problems. it has since withered into an intellectual movement that does little but talk to itself and guard its ideological boundaries. to be a conservative critic of george w. bush, for example, meant risking not just social ostracism but, for many, loss of livelihood. i recall being applauded by the conservative media   and trashed by the left   when i endorsed bush in 2000 and used my blog to champion the iraq war. but when i realized the depth of my mistake, regretted my own tribal rhetoric, and wrote about it, i was immediately transformed into an unmentionable leftist. my writing career survived because i had my own blog and a foot in liberal media. but most others have no such escape routes. and so, among tribal conservatives, the iraq war remained a taboo topic when it wasn’t still regarded as a smashing success, tax cuts were still the solution to every economic woe, free trade was all benefit and no cost, and so on. health care was perhaps the most obvious example of this intellectual closure. republican opposition to the affordable care act was immediate and total. even though the essential contours of the policy had been honed at the heritage foundation, even though a republican governor had pioneered it in massachusetts, and even though that governor became the republican nominee in 2012, the anathematization of it defined the gop for seven years. after conservative writer david frum dared to argue that a moderate, market oriented reform to the health care system was not the ideological hill for the gop to die on, he lost his job at the american enterprise institute. when it actually came to undoing the reform earlier this year, the gop had precious little intellectual capital to fall back on, no alternative way to keep millions insured, no history of explaining to voters outside their own tribe what principles they were even trying to apply. george orwell famously defined this mind set as identifying yourself with a movement, “placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” it’s typified, he noted, by self contradiction and indifference to reality. and so many severe critics of george w. bush’s surveillance policies became oddly muted when obama adopted most of them; democrats looked the other way as obama ramped up deportations to levels higher than trump’s rate so far. republicans, in turn, were obsessed with the national debt when obama was in office, despite the deepest recession in decades. but the minute trump came to power, they couldn’t be more enthusiastic about a tax package that could add trillions of dollars to it. no tribe was more federalist when it came to marijuana laws than liberals; and no tribe was less federalist when it came to abortion. reverse that for conservatives. for the right tribe, everything is genetic except homosexuality; for the left tribe, nothing is genetic except homosexuality. during the bush years, liberals inveighed ceaselessly against executive overreach; under obama, they cheered when he used his executive authority to alter immigration laws and impose new environmental regulations by fiat. as for indifference to reality, today’s republicans cannot accept that human produced carbon is destroying the planet, and today’s democrats must believe that different outcomes for men and women in society are entirely a function of sexism. even now, democrats cannot say the words illegal immigrants or concede that affirmative action means discriminating against people because of their race. republicans cannot own the fact that big tax cuts have not trickled down, or that president bush authorized the brutal torture of prisoners, thereby unequivocally committing war crimes. orwell again: “there is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when ‘our’ side commits it. even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case … still one cannot feel that it is wrong.” that is as good a summary of tribalism as you can get, that it substitutes a feeling   a really satisfying one   for an argument. when a party leader in a liberal democracy proposes a shift in direction, there is usually an internal debate. it can go on for years. when a tribal leader does so, the tribe immediately jumps on command. and so the republicans went from free trade to protectionism, and from internationalism to nationalism, almost overnight. for decades, a defining foreign policy concern for republicans was suspicion of and hostility to the soviet union and russia. in the 2012 election, mitt romney called moscow the no. 1 geopolitical enemy of the united states. and yet between 2014 and 2017, a period when putin engaged in maximal provocation, occupying crimea and moving troops into ukraine, republican approval of the authoritarian thug in the kremlin leapt from 10 to 32 percent. and then there is the stance of white evangelicals, a pillar of the red tribe. among their persistent concerns has long been the decline of traditional marriage, the coarsening of public discourse, and the centrality of personal virtue to the conduct of public office. in the 1990s, they assailed bill clinton as the font of decadence; then they lionized george w. bush, who promised to return what they often called “dignity” to the oval office. and yet when a black democrat with exemplary personal morality, impeccable public civility, a man devoted to his wife and children and a model for african american fathers, entered the white house, they treated him as a threat to civilization. even as he gave speeches drenched in christian allegory and offered a eulogy in charleston that ended with a cathartic rendition of “amazing grace,” they retained a suspicion that he was secretly a muslim. and when they encountered a foulmouthed pagan who bragged of grabbing women by the pussy, used the tabloids to humiliate his wife, married three times, boasted about the hotness of his own daughter, touted the size of his own dick in a presidential debate, and spoke of avoiding stds as his personal vietnam, they gave him more monolithic support than any candidate since reagan, including born again bush and squeaky clean romney. in 2011, a poll found that only 30 percent of white evangelicals believed that private immorality was irrelevant for public life. this month, the same poll found that the number had skyrocketed to 72 percent. total immersion within one’s tribe also leads to increasingly extreme ideas. the word “hate,” for example, has now become a one stop replacement for a whole spectrum of varying, milder emotions involved with bias toward others: discomfort, fear, unease, suspicion, ignorance, confusion. and it has even now come to include simply defending traditional christian, jewish, and muslim doctrine on questions such as homosexuality. liberals should be able to understand this by reading any conservative online journalism and encountering the term “the left.” it represents a large, amorphous blob of malevolent human beings, with no variation among them, no reasonable ideas, nothing identifiably human at all. start perusing, say, townhall.com, and you will soon stumble onto something like this, written recently by one of my favorite right tribalists, kurt schlichter: “they hate you. leftists don’t merely disagree with you. they don’t merely feel you are misguided. they don’t think you are merely wrong. they hate you. they want you enslaved and obedient, if not dead. once you get that, everything that is happening now will make sense.” and, yes, everything will. how does schlichter describe the right? “normals.” it’s the inuit and the eskimos all over again. this atmosphere can affect even the finest minds. i think of ta nehisi coates, the essayist and memoirist. not long ago, he was a subtle, complicated, and beautiful writer. he could push back against his own tribe. he could write critically of the idea that “there never is any black agency   to be african american is to be an automaton responding to either white racism or cultural pathology. no way you could actually have free will.” he could persuasively push against “nihilism and paranoia” among his own, to champion the idea of being “critical, not just of the larger white narrative, but of the narrative put forth by those around you.” he could speak of street culture as someone who lived it and yet knew, as he put it in an essay called “a culture of poverty,” that “ ‘i ain’t no punk’ may shield you from neighborhood violence. but it cannot shield you from algebra, when your teacher tries to correct you. it cannot shield you from losing hours, when your supervisor corrects your work.” he could do this while brilliantly conveying the systemic racism that crushes the souls of so many black americans. he remains a vital voice, but in more recent years, a somewhat different one. his mood has become much gloomier. he calls the obama presidency a “tragedy,” and describes many trump supporters as “not so different from those same americans who grin back at us in lynching photos.” he’s written about how watching cops and firefighters enter the smoldering world trade center instantly reminded him of cops mistreating blacks: they “were not human to me.” in his latest essay in the atlantic, analyzing why donald trump won the last election, he dismisses any notion that economic distress might have played a role as “empty” and ignores other factors, such as hillary clinton’s terrible candidacy, the populist revolt against immigration that had become a potent force across the west, and the possibility that the pace of social change might have triggered a backlash among traditionalists. no, there was one meaningful explanation only: white supremacism. and those who accept, as i do, that racism was indeed a big part of the equation but also saw other factors at work were simply luxuriating in our own white privilege because we are never under “racism’s boot.” a writer is entitled to shift perspective. what’s more salient is his audience. he once had a small but devoted and querulous readership for his often surprising blog. today, his works are huge best sellers, and it is deemed near blasphemous among liberals to criticize them. how to unwind this increasingly dangerous dysfunction? it’s not easy to be optimistic with trump as president. and given his malignant narcissism, despotic instincts, absence of empathy, and constant incitement of racial and xenophobic hatred, it’s extremely hard not to be tribal in return. there is no divide he doesn’t want to deepen, no conflict he doesn’t want to start or intensify. how on earth can we not “resist”? but we should not delude ourselves that this is all a trump problem. what obama could not overcome would have buried hillary clinton, who, almost uniquely in public life, carries the scars of our tribal era. her campaign made no effort to persuade “deplorables,” just to condemn them, and her core strategy was not to engage those on the fence but to maximize the turnout of her demographic tribe. in fact, the person best positioned to get us out of this tribal trap would be … well … bear with me … trump. the model would be bill clinton, the first president to meet our newly configured divide. clinton leveraged the loyalty of democrats thrilled to regain the white house in order to triangulate toward centrist compromises with the gop. you can argue about the merits of the results, but he was able to govern, to move legislation forward, to reform welfare, reduce crime, turn the deficit into a surplus, survive impeachment, and end his term a popular president. trump is as much an opportunist as a tribalist; he won the presidency by having an intuitive, instinctive grasp of how to inflame and exploit our tribal divide. his base is therefore more fanatically loyal and his policy views even more, shall we say, flexible than clinton’s. his recent dealings with the democratic congressional leadership have flummoxed party leaders and disrupted our political storytelling. that’s something worth celebrating. his new openness to trade legislating daca in return for stronger immigration enforcement is especially good news. if trump is right that he could shoot someone on fifth avenue and his followers would still support him, he’s surely uniquely capable of cutting deals with the democrats while keeping much of the republican base in line (and kneecapping paul ryan and mitch mcconnell). two new polls back this up. rasmussen found that 72 percent of republican voters support trump’s working with democrats; yougov found that republicans backed trump’s deal with schumer and pelosi by 62 to 18 percent. the democrats are now, surprisingly, confronting a choice many thought they would only face in a best case scenario midterm election, and their political calculus is suddenly much more complicated than pure resistance. might the best interest of the country be served by working with trump? and if they do win the house in 2018, should they seek to destroy trump’s presidency, much like gop leaders in congress chose to do with obama? should they try to end it through impeachment, as the gop attempted with bill clinton? or could they try to moderate the tribal divide? maybe it’s no longer a complete fantasy that they might even find a compromise that reforms the affordable care act while allowing trump to claim he replaced it   and use that as a model for further collaboration. but if democratic leaders choose to de escalate our tribal war rather than to destroy their political nemesis, would their base revolt? or maybe we can just reassure ourselves that our tribalism is mainly a function of the older generation’s racial and cultural panic and we will slowly move through and past it. maybe trump’s victory is just one last hurrah of an older, whiter american identity, that we can outlast without a cathartic crisis or conflict. one trouble with this hopefulness is that “whiteness” is a subjective term. it’s possible that more latinos will identify as white in the future, as other immigrant minorities have over time, thereby maintaining our tribal balance. it’s also possible that our ethnic and cultural divide could very much worsen in the meantime, especially as the demise of the old white majority becomes closer to statistical reality. white christians are panicked and paranoid about religious freedom now. how will they feel when vastly more secular and multiracial generations come to power? and if the democrats try to impeach a president who has no interest in the stability or integrity of our liberal democracy, and if his base sees it, as they will, as an establishment attempt at nullifying their vote, are we really prepared to handle the civil unrest and constitutional crisis that would almost certainly follow? tribalism is not a static force. it feeds on itself. it appeals on a gut level and evokes emotions that are not easily controlled and usually spiral toward real conflict. and there is no sign that the deeper forces that have accelerated this   globalization, social atomization, secularization, media polarization, ever more multiculturalism   will weaken. the rhetorical extremes have already been pushed further than most of us thought possible only a couple of years ago, and the rival camps are even more hermetically sealed. in 2015, did any of us anticipate that neo nazis would be openly parading with torches on a college campus or that antifa activists would be proudly extolling violence as the only serious response to the trump era? as utopian as it sounds, i truly believe all of us have to at least try to change the culture from the ground up. there are two ideas that might be of help, it seems to me. the first is individuality. i don’t mean individualism. nothing is more conducive to tribalism than a sea of disconnected, atomized individuals searching for some broader tribe to belong to. i mean valuing the unique human being   distinct from any group identity, quirky, full of character and contradictions, skeptical, rebellious, immune to being labeled or bludgeoned into a broader tribal grouping. this cultural antidote to tribalism, left and right, is still here in america and ready to be rediscovered. that we expanded the space for this to flourish is one of the greatest achievements of the west. perhaps i’m biased because i’m an individual by default. i’m gay but catholic, conservative but independent, a brit but american, religious but secular. what tribe would ever have me? i may be an extreme case, but we all are nonconformist to some degree. nurturing your difference or dissent from your own group is difficult; appreciating the individuality of those in other tribes is even harder. it takes effort and imagination, openness to dissent, even an occasional embrace of blasphemy. and, at some point, we also need mutual forgiveness. it doesn’t matter if you believe, as i do, that the right bears the bulk of the historical blame. no tribal conflict has ever been unwound without magnanimity. yitzhak rabin had it, but it was not enough. nelson mandela had it, and it was. in colombia earlier this month, as a fragile peace agreement met public opposition, pope francis insisted that grudges be left behind: “all of us are necessary to create and form a society. this isn’t just done with the ‘pure blooded’ ones, but rather with everyone. and here is where the greatness of the country lies, in that there is room for all and all are important.” if societies scarred by recent domestic terrorism can aim at this, why should it be so impossible for us? but this requires, of course, first recognizing our own tribal thinking. so much of our debates are now an easy either/or rather than a complicated both/and. in our tribal certainties, we often distort what we actually believe in the quiet of our hearts, and fail to see what aspects of truth the other tribe may grasp. not all resistance to mass immigration or multiculturalism is mere racism or bigotry; and not every complaint about racism and sexism is baseless. many older white americans are not so much full of hate as full of fear. equally, many minorities and women face genuine blocks to their advancement because of subtle and unsubtle bias, and it is not mere victim mongering. we also don’t have to deny african american agency in order to account for the historic patterns of injustice that still haunt an entire community. we need to recall that most immigrants are simply seeking a better life, but also that a country that cannot control its borders is not a country at all. we’re rightly concerned that religious faith can easily lead to intolerance, but we needn’t conclude that having faith is a pathology. we need not renounce our cosmopolitanism to reengage and respect those in rural america, and we don’t have to abandon our patriotism to see that the urban mix is also integral to what it means to be an american today. the actual solutions to our problems are to be found in the current no man’s land that lies between the two tribes. reentering it with empiricism and moderation to find different compromises for different issues is the only way out of our increasingly dangerous impasse. all of this runs deeply against the grain. it’s counterintuitive. it’s emotionally unpleasant. it fights against our very dna. compared with bathing in the affirming balm of a tribe, it’s deeply unsatisfying. but no one ever claimed that living in a republic was going to be easy   if we really want to keep it. *this article appears in the september 18, 2017, issue of new york magazine. things you buy through our links may earn vox media a commission. this email will be used to sign into all new york sites. by submitting your email, you agree to our terms and privacy policy and to receive email correspondence from us. password must be at least 8 characters and contain: as part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from new york, which you can opt out of anytime. this email will be used to sign into all new york sites. by submitting your email, you agree to our terms and privacy policy and to receive email correspondence from us. password must be at least 8 characters and contain: as part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from new york, which you can opt out of anytime. * please try a longer search

credit: brent stirton/getty credit: brent stirton/getty about a decade ago, when i worked for the american enterprise institute (aei), i had to force myself to go to lunch with a friend. i dreaded the meeting because i knew that she was going to try to convince me to leave my job. aei is a pro business, conservative leaning think tank in washington, dc. my friend was an enthusiastic liberal. after i had run out of excuses, the day arrived and, predictably, after a few minutes of the usual small talk, my friend launched into a tirade about the iraq war, which several of my colleagues strongly supported. “you don’t belong there, ayaan,” she said. i remember trying to steer the conversation on to actual policies. i had voted for supporting the american coalition in iraq when i was a member of parliament in the netherlands   and i started to explain why. but she wasn’t interested in a rational discussion. she interrupted me mid sentence, launching into a monologue about john bolton, the former ambassador to the united nations and a fellow at aei (and subsequently national security advisor to president trump). bolton, my friend insisted, was a loathsome, hateful, racist, neo conservative warmonger. the list went on and on until eventually she said that he looked like a walrus with a moustache. you could tell by his physiognomy, she explained, that he was a psychopath. “but what about the policies?” i responded, trying to redirect the conversation away from personalities. the more she spoke, the more i recognised her broad disposition as something i had experienced earlier in my life. her attitude was almost entirely tribal. two things, in particular, stood out: an almost blind hatred of a particular group (republicans); and secondly, the use of deeply personal attacks on individual researchers to justify that hatred. by ayaan hirsi ali today, ten years later, this attitude seems to be the prevailing norm. numerous studies support the hypothesis that american life   not just politics, but life in general   has become deeply polarised. the deeply divided society we now live in increasingly reminds me of clan or tribal behaviour in africa. in somalia, where i was born, my mother was blindly loyal to our clan. so much so that, apparently, she claimed she could detect the malicious intentions of an individual from a different clan just by the structure of his forehead. she would, for example, often warn my father that someone was trying to take advantage of him, purely by the way he frowned. in culture and conflict in the middle east, anthropologist philip carl salzman recounts meeting tribesmen in baluchistan. what, they had asked salzman, would he do if he faced a real danger in his home country? well, salzman replied, he would call the police. the tribesmen roared with laughter, then looked at him pityingly: “oh no, no, no, they said: only your ‘lineage mates’ will help you.” in tribal communities, neutral institutions of civil society that westerners take for granted   such as the police, impartial courts, and the rule of law   simply do not, and cannot, exist. in such societies, everything is tribalised, and the task of building civic institutions is laden with difficulties. in somalia, i was taught to be suspicious of anyone from a different clan, to always think harm was coming my way and to be guarded against anyone that was “other.” i come from the darod clan, and was taught to constantly listen to accents, examine face shapes and overanalyse all non verbal cues, searching for any indications of a different tribe. i can still identify a somali (and usually their clan) from across a room. we were captives of an echo chamber, hearing constantly of the evils of the neighbouring hawiye clan. we were taught from a young age that the hawiye were coming to rape, rob, and destroy us. in response, we amassed weapons, hoarded food and exhorted young men (as young as 12) to join the military. the looming threat of the hawiye was so great that my mother eventually sent my sister and me abroad. by james mumford in the end, because of such protracted tribal tensions, somalia collapsed into civil war. every attempt at mediation proved incapable of handling the deep seated mistrust and hatred that accumulated by each clan over the years; tribal elders, reluctant to compromise, could not de escalate the situation. with such high levels of distrust, the conflict spiralled into bloodshed. while such violence is yet to seize america, all the tribalist ingredients are present. there is a blind commitment to one party or the other; emotions are running high; there is a lack of trust in civic institutions. if such tribalism isn’t overcome, it’s only a matter of time before the situation escalates. some of this has its absurd side: for instance, the strange ways that public health measures such as mask wearing and vaccination have become politicised, to the point that i know of fully vaccinated people in california who say they will continue to wear masks for fear of being mistaken for republicans. bizarre? of course. but it is also symptomatic of a dangerous trend towards tribalism. we are, i fear, close to the precipice of serious destabilisation. many american cities are either militarised (washington, dc), near a social boiling point (minneapolis), or have capitulated to anarchist protests and pressures (portland, seattle). these tribal quirks run deep on both sides of the aisle. many republicans continue to dispute the legitimacy of the result of the last presidential election; while on the left, the woke are eroding the democratic party from the inside, as identity politics displace universalist aspirations. some citizens are viewed as part of oppressive groups, some as part of oppressed groups. a person’s individual actions can generally do little to change the immutable characteristics of the tribe to which they belong. by bret weinstein just as i noticed with my friend over lunch, there is frequently a visceral hostility towards anyone who leans even slightly toward the right. today, especially in academia, those who don’t conform with the “progressive” narrative, no matter how ethical they might be as individuals, are vilified as racists, white supremacists, homophobes or transphobes. individuals can be attacked, cancelled, disinvited or even fired for the tiniest of verbal transgressions. this kind of intolerance has for some time been apparent in high schools, too. another friend of mine has a daughter who attends a private school outside of san francisco. last year, when it was revealed that she had expressed mild support for president trump, she was pushed down the stairs by a fellow pupil. it was a horrifying and, one hopes, rare incident. and yet there is something very striking about tribalism: it is a basic human trait, like skin colour or gender. however, despite being the natural state of being for many humans, it is not a positive or helpful trait, particularly in modern times. tribalism developed as an imperfect social survival mechanism in the early stages of human civilisation. but in modern times, it can lead to social disintegration and severe violence between groups. the beautiful story of america, the reason so many people around the world still yearn to come here, is to a large extent founded on our rejection of tribalism and our establishment of civic, neutral institutions, based on the fundamental principle of equality before the law. these institutions are imperfect, of course, but they are far superior to the tribalism that rules other parts of the world. our overcoming of such a natural urge is an accomplishment. as “woke” politics strengthens its grasp on our institutions   extending beyond the educational system into the media and now many corporations   that accomplishment is being eroded. the presumption of innocence, the commitment to blind justice and the whole notion of due process are all falling victim to spurious notions of “equity” and “anti racism”   both of which carry within them an implicit intention to discriminate on racial lines. if we continue to slip down this path, the thirst for tribalism will be unquenchable. that’s why moderate liberals need to stand up to the destructive forces that are taking over the democratic party, just as moderate conservatives need to resist the tribal impulse that often grows in reaction to the other side’s excesses. in somalia, we failed to do this. in america it is imperative that we succeed. ayaan hirsi ali is an unherd columnist. she is also the founder of the aha foundation, and host of the ayaan hirsi ali podcast. her substack is called restoration. δdocument.getelementbyid( "ak_js_1" ).setattribute( "value", ( new date() ).gettime() ); δdocument.getelementbyid( "ak_js_2" ).setattribute( "value", ( new date() ).gettime() ); a good summary, and all this is known to those of us who follow the us podcasters, although i suspect that some of them sometimes exaggerate for effect. (well, for clicks). it all depends on how far the ‘woke’ ideology is pushed. as a belief system it denies reality to an even greater extent than communism. as such, if pushed too far it will inevitably destroy the us. meanwhile, of course, the political classes of all western countries have been frantically importing millions of people whose mindset is, essentially, tribalist. thus you will inevitably end up with tribalism. no, the writer is wrong. i have lived in actual tribal places and tribe means so much more than this causation/correlation failure of an analogy. what she mistakes for tribalism (which is a long time separation in culture, dialect, myth, history, genetics, custom, geography, marriage…) is in fact ‘divide and conquer’ the msm runs the world today, and it is on a mission to destroy the western middle class, as they are the only power block unified, productive, moral, able to keep the national power in the hands of the citizens. if they are broken the government (and its masters, the elite) will take control as the russian and chinese did during communism, and european rulers did during feudalism. once the normal person depends on gov handouts they are owned. this is much more akin to johnathan swift’s story of lilliput and the big end  little end wars. the nation had been divided into the two groups depending on which end of the egg they broke, the big or little. civil ward fought, rulers displaced and killed…. like usa the people were culturally the same, there was no tribalism, they had just been polarized intentionally by msm and social media. this is not tribal, it is pure manufactured by the education and media industries, cynicall, and evil. read on the horrible beginning of all this ‘the frankfurt school’ and then the frankfurt school 11 points’. in the 1950’s the ‘school’ moved to columbia university and then spread like a plague through out academia, and so the schools, and so now, the west being destroyed. maskers, non maskers, same as big ends little ends, not tribal, but people made to hate each other by the media for nefarious reasons.. i don’t agree. i think she’s quite right. your postulate: that the media did it, is wrong. the people did it. and they did it because it is the american way. and that ‘way’ is violence. america is devoted to guns and violence, mythical cowboy past, mythical super heroes who always win in combat, are always in combat, mythical belief in american combat superiority throughout history, mythical belief that they’re a christian nation with god on their side and a total devotion to ‘getting ahead’ at all costs. the whole, the total american ethos is that anyone can succeed and success is measured as wealth and the whole thing seen as a struggle with your peers   hence combat. devoted to combat, to black and white, to right and wrong, to good and bad, simple either/or choices and mired deep, deep, deep in myths they can come nowhere near rational contemplation of anything at all. ‘tribalism’ is inherent in their system from the word go. only two tribes, ever: with us or against us. that’s their basic mindset. that’s what they’re brought up on. exactly why was this conspiracy unleashed? parts of the west destroying itself? human societies have always been divided. i agree about the dangers of identity politics, but don’t mistake them for puppets. the 1970s were pretty divided as well, with. left wing people in particular hating conservatives the political classes of all western countries have been frantically importing millions of people whose mindset is, essentially, tribalist. excellent informative article (as always with ali), but what took me aback was less the woke unwoke / left right analogy with the “west”, but that what’s described in the article is the mentality in present day africa. where the political classes are importing masses of people from. the other week i spent an insomniac night with reading a long, dry, factual and informative study on the rwandan genocide (penned shortly afterwards). now reading ali’s piece i can understand that study a lot more. in tribal communities, neutral institutions of civil society that westerners take for granted   such as the police, impartial courts, and the rule of law   simply do not, and cannot, exist. in such societies, everything is tribalised, and the task of building civic institutions is laden with difficulties. ^ something the wellmeaning “philanthropists” and “humanitarians” should take heed of before they try to inflict and impose their version of civic utopia upon africa. an interesting perspective from ayaan hirsi ali. i don’t know about other western countries, but here in america much of the tribalism we now see is largely an overreaction to the cult of ‘diversity’ which aggressively prohibits group allegiance. notions of national or cultural pride are prohibited lest they exclude someone, and requiring new immigrants to learn us values and customs is decried as racist and discriminatory. but the fact is people still want to belong to a group with shared values and norms. americans long ago solved this problem, to some extent, through religion. religious belief and practice is (so far) rigorously protected by the us and state constitutions. unlike in countries such as the uk, where most christian worshippers are part of a few, long established religious traditions (e.g., church of england), americans simply create new churches, often with a strongly fundamentalist tone, that embody the values they cherish. the churches are as much social clan as an expression of religious belief. the more the culture warriors decry anything that remotely resembles tribalism, the more people turn to their churches to find social groups that reflect their values and provide a sense of community. this is not inherently a bad thing, but as with the progressive vs, conservative divide mentioned by ayaan hirsi ali, the trend is becoming ever more extreme. division in america has become so much the norm that i find it hard to believe, as the author suggests, we might be on the verge of civil war. but i must admit that relatives outside the us suggested that possibility to me at the beginning of the year if biden doesn’t succeed in unifying the country. we have seen how biden is progressing in that regard, so maybe i should mentally steel myself for the possibility of more civil unrest. there will be continuing civil unrest. but not everywhere. it’s pretty obvious where it will occur. no one is required to live with civil unrest, although you can choose to do so. many americans appear to be voting with their feet not to do so. annette: in many of your posts you indicate that those of us who do not like living in places like portland can either vote in better mayors, governors etc or vote with our feet . i would happily vote for better candidates but where are they? should i move to new york with andrew como and bill deblasio and a cost of living most cannot afford? should i move to a state with gun laws i support which borders a state with concealed weapons laws which i do not? you seem to believe that moving from one state to another is as easy as choosing one ben and jerry’s ice cream over another. you do realize that the cost to move is way beyond my means and the means of many others i know who are displeased with portland. and at 83 it is not likely i will do so. many of us are working hard to improve the quality of our candidates and do away with the nightly riots. we prefer to stay and make changes rather than give up and move and bring our problems with us as has happened in austin. people do bring with them the very things they disliked about their previous home. i used to live in prescott az which was a lovely quiet town. then californians fled their problems and moved there in huge numbers only to find that they missed all of the stuff they had in california. so they destroyed a mountain to bring in a shopping center, raised home prices beyond the reach of many of the natives and increased the traffic to la proportions. if only your solutions were so easy. “should i move to new york with andrew como and bill deblasio and a cost of living most cannot afford?” what would you get there that you don’t already have in portland? they are equally dysfunctional. you’d have to vote with your feet to a non dysfunctional place, not just shift from one dysfunctional place to another. plenty of peaceful states and cities between portland and ny to choose from. you misunderstood me if you believe i meant move from one dysfunctional city to another and expect something different. the state you live in really matters as far as peacefulness and livability. moving across town isn’t easy, much less moving states. but lots of people do it, even during a pandemic. it all depends on what you are willing to abide. perhaps in your case, you are not as anxious to escape the dysfunction as say, a couple with young children to worry about. or someone who wants to start a business and needs some assurance that it can be protected by law enforcement. i would not call austin functional these days (for precisely the reasons you mention, too many refugees from dysfunctional cities and states who didn’t understand what they were trying to escape) although most of texas is. but even austinites are catching on. oracle is moving out of austin, taking 8,500 jobs to nashville, a much more livable city. “we prefer to stay and make changes rather than give up and move and bring our problems with us” thats a choice you are free to make of course, as i said. and for the record, those of us living in peaceful places are not advertising for migrants from places like portland to bring anything with them. most non dysfunctional locations will not allow it, in fact. “should i move to a state with gun laws i support which borders a state with concealed weapons laws which i do not?” i would not live in a state which does not fallow the constitution. my state is a ‘constitutional carry state’, which means everyone may carry a loaded, concealed, firearm or weapon, with out any permitting at all. just go to a gun show, buy a private sale pistol (no documentation,l just a cash sale), load it, put it in your car, pocket, holster, purse and carry it. all legal. i do not keep a weapon ready, i never even lock my house doors or truck, my policy is to trust people, but i believe in the right to self defense if you need it, and i would die to protect the usa constitution if called on to do so by the government. the comment you quoted was not mine, but dorothy’s. what i would say to her is that i choose to live in a state whose gun laws follow the constitution and are combined with low gun crime. the level of gun crime cannot be ignored. but that is my choice, she was asking what her choice should be. and that’s totally up to her. in her case, i believe she should live in a state where she agrees with gun laws. whether she considers the level of gun violence in that choice is up to her. sorry, wrong reply. but still   i believe in the constitution! and gun control violates that, just as when the ‘public square’ of twitter and facebook censor free speech it violates the first amendment! dorsey and zuckerberg should be tried as traitors for violating the constitution. they are evil and are a very great part of why this article has been written. i’m with you on the constitution. without it, we would be truly lost. this portlander agrees wiith you, dorothy. even if we throw reality to the wind and assume that a 60 year old just years from retirement can walk away from retirement and find a new job in another city or state in the midst of an epidemic and its accompanying economic crash a big “if” that other city and state will still face the same national problems. it will still be ruled by the same unchecked fourth branch of government, aided and abetted by abdication by the other three. it will still be the target of the increasingly violent urban mob, who control the state house and promote the interests of domestic and foreign agencies and actors over the interests of citizens. it will still get all of its teachers, administrators and physicians from the same elite universities that have chucked the scientific method and constitutional principles in favor of gender cultism and critical race theory. having watched for 35 years now the drastic demographic change here in portland, what i can see of it is a delegation by the working class of our state’s resources and power to those who most mean them harm. a drain of well meaning but often unengaged people who believe that problems won’t follow them, and who never bother to notice that those who now throng boise have not brought with them, to their new home, any humility or object lessons about the part they played in making their last city the kind of place they wanted to leave. at some point one has to stand in the place where they are, and deal with what’s dealt them. have the difficult conversations. face the censorship and the wrath. live not by lies. and, when they do, ali and her growing number of moral relativist allies, who know better, will call it tribalism and accuse us of being just as bad as those who smash windows, burn buildings, bludgeon people from behind, and drag drivers from their cars characterizing domestic terrorism as a “side” of an “aisle.” it’s depressing. but the fact is people still want to belong to a group with shared values and norms. those groups used to be known as communities. they did not fixate on skin color, sex, or some other immutable characteristic and they allowed for some deviation of opinion across topics. today, complete unwavering belief to every single aspect of the dogma is required. look at people on the left who don’t think boys should compete in girls’ sports. thus far, the unrest is confined to blue cities and the locals trashing their own backyards. if those people move into different locales, it may well get ugly. it’s going to have to get ugly to some degree if any order is to be restored. the baying mob is not going home just because it’s asked nicely to do so. if you move into a locale where rioting and looting and attacking people in the streets is not permitted, and you riot and loot and attack people, you get arrested. this is the difference between what happens in places like portland and the rest of the vast majority of the country. this is also why people who want to riot and loot and destroy businesses congregate in locales where it’s permitted. there’s a reason they don’t move to peaceful cities. if people want to self select to live in thunderdome, seems like that’s up to them, isn’t it? non americans forget how incredibly big this country is. a few spots of dysfunction don’t disturb the vast majority of americans. i don’t even think about anything like that happening where we live. this is exactly right. i reside in rural ohio. some antifa were protesting in a very small town in the southern part of the county. the sheriff advised those protesting (no locals among them) that everyone in the village owned a firearm. the rabble packed up and moved on in short order. precisely. life isn’t cheap in rural ohio. people want and need their businesses and others are not allowed to take them away from them. antifa stays where it’s welcome. and that’s the way it should be. here in rural wa state, the antifa types rented a bus and drove out from portland to a town 20 miles away to show their colors. they were met by a dozen men holding ar 15s. none of them pointed at the bus or its riders, who nonetheless immediately got back onto their bus and left. “a few spots of dysfunction don’t disturb the vast majority of americans” except, turning a blind eye makes them more powerful and more power changes laws. leave it too long and you will be like portland whether you like it or not if we were not living in a republic, i’d probably agree with you. i live a thousand feet down a driveway in a secure, undisclosed rural location. i don’t want antifa to show up, but if they do i will consider them target practice. these people aren’t the brightest bulbs on the porch, but i doubt they’re stupid enough to venture too far. thank you ayaan hirsi ali! i have admired your writing for a long time. like you and many others, i am an immigrant, a refugee from nazi occupied austria, and a naturalized american citizen. we   my parents and i  came to the u.s. to escape certain death rather than for a “better life.” your observation about tribalism is spot on! i do, however, see evidence that influence of tribalism in the u.s. is considerably less in much of the u.s. than in the northeast coast and california. the u.s. constitution and state governments are the sources of political power; the presidency is not, even though the current incumbent is trying to stretch the power if his office to the breaking point. however, the tribalism has to be stopped. we have let it go on too long, continuing to demonstrate the “oh. they will get over it” attitude that is much too prevalent in the u.s. in a way. the pandemic has served as a wakeup call to pay close attention to what the government   the unelected “deep state”   does and how that has a long term effect on american lives. i remain optimistic, for the time being. my maternal grandfather was an austrian refugee of the great inflation of 1923. my mexican landscaper, a refugee of the narcotraffickers, is here on a green card and becomes eligible for citizenship this year. i am haranguing him to do it. “jose, you are already a great american,” i tell him. “you are exactly the sort of person we all want here. the only difference between you and my grandfather is the country you came from. i want you to be a citizen.” the current incumbent hasn’t stretched his powers to say…whipping up a crowd of domestic terrorists into an insurgency in the capitol yet though has he? there’s an upside: that “civil war” will be like most of our crime: black on black. why? because they know that the rest of us are armed to the teeth. play around in the ghettos, but get seriously out of line and then it will become quite real. i can’t speak for the us, jb, but in britain diversity very much encourages group allegiance. that is the irony of the multiculturalism agenda: by insisting that all cultures are as valid as the indigenous culture, it has discouraged integration and cross community understanding. instead of a multicultural society , we have a multiplicity of monocultures. yes believing in medieval mumbo jumbo and a fantasy friend in the sky will solve all the worlds problems bwah ha ha islam? group allegiance is encouraged in the us on a racial basis if you aren’t white clannishness is inherently about relatedness. what has torn america apart is ideology, not tribalism. with ideological polarisation you can switch sides, just by changing what you believe. a hawiye can’t become a darod by adopting darod values. the ‘great awokening’ is much more akin to a religious conflict, such as the protestant reformation, than to tribal conflict. ali is missing the fact that the us is a republic made up of sovereign states. it’s the saving grace of the us and what makes us able to live in the same country. the idea that one state would attack others in a civil war is ludicrous. what happens in california or chicago or new york is up to the people who live there. if portlanders are okay with nightly riots and property destruction, and attacking the mayor’s residence, it’s their choice to make. the consequences are theirs alone. the rest of the country doesn’t obsess over the dysfunction in such places. we see it but it doesn’t affect our lives. we are living peacefully in states and cities that don’t permit rioting and looting and nightly shootings. as to permanent mask wearing if people in some states want to do that, how is that a problem? should everyone in every state have to do the exact same thing about masks? it’s their right to wear a mask for whatever reason they want   forever if they’d like. that’s not tribalism, that’s simply making a choice. that’s freedom. if a state wants to pass a permanent mask law, they can do that too. it affects no one else in other states. visceral hostility is part of some people’s personality but you don’t have to choose to associate with them. why would anyone choose to have lunch with a hostile person? if you do, have you not asked for a hostility filled lunch? friends are not viscerally hostile. ali’s story about a child being pushed down the stairs over politics, it’s predictable where that happened. the cities she mentions as being militarized, engulfed in anarchy or near a social boiling point, all have one thing in common, which the author neglects to mention. three guesses as to what that is. you can’t riot and loot all over the us, you have to choose a place where that behavior is tolerated. when ali worked for the aei, she was in one of these seriously dysfunctional places. but these locations are the minority and those who choose them know what they are getting. where i live people of all political persuasions live together peacefully because you are expected to do so. you cannot use violence to get your way, it’s not allowed and you go to jail if you try it. this protects everyone, in somalia, the violence and dysfunction were everywhere, there was no place to escape it. the us is markedly different. what’s happening in portland, in particular, is shocking. but i agree; non americans need to understand that cities like this are far from typically american. there are many places still where things like this just don’t happn because they’d never be tolerated for a second. all it would take to bring peace back to portland’s streets would be one show of overwhelming force by law enforcement. if the consequences of violent lawlessness are made unpleasant enough   in the form of lengthy prison sentences or (if arrest is resisted) painful injuries, the behaviour won’t be repeated. this is what i find so weird about the whole thing. when i was young, people engaged in rioting (or just tagged along for the excitement) in the full knowledge that they were risking getting their ribs broken, their faces punched, or their heads bashed in. or felled by rubber bullets, or sickened by tear gas, or temporarily blinded with pepper spray. or worse. the police had a job to do, and dealing with riots seldom brings out the best in police officers. it’s not a normal part of their work and most don’t do it very well. nobody   much less the media   was shocked when these things happened. rioters who got injured by police weren’t held up as martyrs, not even by their supporters. it was a dangerous game and everyone knew that. i too have to conclude that the majority of people in portland are ok with it, though. if they weren’t, they wouldn’t keep voting in politicians like ted wheeler, whom they know are going to excuse and enable this nonsense to continue. yes, it looks like violence and dysfunction are just habits and this may be where the author was going as well. portland and somalia have much in common in this respect, violence has come to be expected as a means of public intimidation. life is cheap in portland. if there is no will to stop violence and dysfunction, it won’t be stopped. but this is a choice, made by local people in portland and no one else. and a conscious choice for americans in portland because unlike in somalia, americans can escape the violence and dysfunction without leaving the country. this was not true in somalia. exactly. the people of portland, seattle, sf and chicago etc have consistently voted for the squalor and violence that blights their cities, so they can’t really complain. except that very vocal democrat supporters like bette midler are among a growing group selling up in these cities because they claim ‘its time for someone else to enjoy this home’ not this city is such a mess ( helped by them) i’d better capitalize and leave as soon as possible.then they start turning the places they move to from safe’conservative’ areas to something a bit more ‘ vibrant’ there is some hope. according to elijah schaffer, 7 out of 10 of those who have fled ca for texas plan to keep voting republican. and, of course, so many people are leaving ca that it will lose a congressional seat. hopefully otherwise they are just extending the problem. there will be nowhere left to go to except the mountains with the bears and the bald eagles who i understand are not natural ‘sharers’. conflating portland and somalia is so insane it is like saying the sun and moon are similar as they are round. yes but these are people who are terrified of the world being much more complex and nuanced than they thought it was my husband and i lived in portland for 18 years, a very beautiful city with a fine and easily traversed downtown and the best bookstore in the country. we left it 10 years ago to retire in my homeland, canada. the problems i do recall when we were there was the proliferation of homeless people even so far back as the 90s. sf and la wouldn’t allow transients and portland became known as a city that not only allowed homeless people, but also provided social services. it didn’t seem like a good solution even then, but people either put up with street begging or moved to the suburbs and never went downtown. from what i understand of recent developments nobody came forward in the last civic election to oppose the current mayor. it seems to me there’s a general lack of foresight and maturity in many of our local and national leaders these past few decades. you are not allowed to call them ‘homeless people’ any more. the correct/approved terminology is ‘transients’. i suppose some of them are ‘trans transients’. or “residentially challenged” perhaps? the definition of the word ‘transient’ as i recall means moving through a space   the exact opposite in my experience of how people without homes live in the world. perhaps indigent is a better descriptor. i realize this may be off topic but at the same time social divisions among people equate with higher levels of violence. it’s also true that people who have nothing or feel they have no hope are easily manipulated by people whose goals may be less than benevolent. the way i see it is that there are natural divisions among those we’ve come to call ‘homeless’ in the recent past: 1. those who have lost their homes because of financial issues   no more friends with couches to spare. 2. those who have chosen to be non rent or mortgage payers because they prefer the perceived freedom. 3. the chronically mentally ill and addicted. i abhor the idea that small businesses and local municipal offices have been attacked in portland and in other cities but the frustration expressed by those who perform these acts is an indication of general rage against an entire system. indigent just means poor. you can be indigent but not homeless. you can be homeless but not indigent. the county i live in once found a woman in truly terrible condition living on the streets and begging in businesses. because that’s illegal where i live, she was taken into protective custody, and a place was located for her in a shelter. come to find out, she was worth millions and her family had long been searching for her. she was mentally ill which was how she fell through the cracks. but she was most definitely not indigent. transient is actually a better descriptive word for those without homes because they do not stay in one place. either they are not allowed to do so by local law enforcement, or they wind up in a shelter where they are also transient or the weather prevents them from staying in one place for long. thanks for the clarification, annette. nevertheless, no matter how we define a word the large scale problem remains. in some places, yes i agree it’s a big problem. and those areas do indeed need to take action. but it’s not actually a big problem everywhere. in the us, homelessness is concentrated. it generally flourishes where it’s better accepted. in sf, for example, people can simply set up tents and live on the streets, wherever they want to, blocking entrances to businesses. if you allow people to do that, some will. but you cannot do that everywhere in the us. i’d love to live in a place where that’s not allowed, and where aggressive street begging isn’t allowed. compassion fatigue sapped up every last vestige of sympathy from me at least a decade ago. cato 40% crazy 30% addicted 20% hoboes 10% out of luck government can help the 10%, but that’s all. that’s a fascinating insight. i’m a brit (which i only mention to distinguish the point), but here the thinking (of ordinary people that is) is quite the opposite, we (feel) that we understand the issues of the 90%, and have measures in place (effective or not) to deal with them, it is the 10% you mention that we seem unable to mange or understand, especially at a governmental level, where they tend to be used as political ammunition, rather than people, sadly. i don’t think there’s any question that the majority of people who are living on the streets, or illegally squatting, are doing so because of a long, long series of very bad choices. among our many homeless people here in vancouver there are many who were once in supportive housing, but got evicted because they kept violating the rules. aside from the substance abuse issues, there’s a high rate of antisocial personality disorder, aka sociopathy, among this population. this is not like other mental health problems, like schizophrenia, which can be treated with medication. these are severely damaged people who have no empathy, and no conscience. theft, threats, assault, and sexual assault are commonplace in homeless encampments. everyone claims to hate the police, but their help is called for constantly. people who end up on the streets through no fault of their own do everything they can to leave them as soon as they can, to get away from those predators. in an earlier, less tolerant time, many of them would be in prison serving long sentences, or in mental institutions. not saying i want to see a return to that, but what we have now is the alternative. well vancouver canada with its needle excahnges and down town homeless hassling resturant users were just like portland in the 1990’s the difference with vancouver is its ‘minority’ are hong kong chinese who hate underclass   so some balance is kept. if vancouver was just white it would be sf and portland on steroids. hi sanford. having lived in victoria, bc the past few years we’ve seen the city parks taken over by 24/7 campers after our mayor and council lifted restrictions in the spring of 2020. the province overruled the municipal officials this spring saying there’d be housing provided for all the unhoused. unsurprisingly, as word got out people could live free in beacon hill park more campers are moving in all the time. we worry about the sf portland scenario ourselves. many city councils across north america have been taken over by slates of social justice far leftists intent on creating some kind of utopia that always swiftly degenerates into a dystopia. victoria (i used to live there, too) seems to be one of them. i don’t know where or when this whole idea started that cities owed it to everyone within their limits to “provide housing”. who is going to pay to build that housing? where is it going to be built? at what point are you going to say “enough” as more and more unskilled, unemployable people swarm into the city from elsewhere demanding the right to a place to live? maybe i just wasn’t raised to see housing as something you expected the government to “provide”, but as something you find and pay for yourself, with something called a job. and if you can’t afford to live in a particular city because the rents are too high, you move somewhere else. just a few years ago i remember portland being lauded in the media as one of the few cities that had successfully addressed the homeless problem in the city centre, by constructing fully serviced tiny home or manufactured housing “villages” complete with all needed social supports, on the outskirts of the city, as transitional housing for homeless people trying to recover from addiction or to to get back into the job market. what happened to them; are they still there? personally i am always very skeptical when i hear about these projects. for one thing, there are never enough of them to make a dent in the problem, and for another, many homeless with addiction issues aren’t motivated enough to get clean and don’t want to give up their freedom, so they don’t want to live in these places where there are rules against drugs, alcohol, or smoking, and they’re expected to go to classes or look for jobs, rather than just sit around all day. according to bret weinstein, the person opposing ted wheeler as mayor was even more unpalatable. she was indeed. there was no rational choice, as with most elections. a bit like old trumpy excused and enabled it on 6th jan?sounds like tribalism to me 🙂 naive i think annette. in america the real power is slowly but surely moving from states to washington. it is what leftists do. long march and all that…. it’s just factual. americans can choose non dysfunctional states and cities. and they do judging by the census results. dysfunctional states send very clear signals of their condition so they are very easy to spot and avoid. somalis did not have that option, there was nowhere to go to get away from dysfunction. surely there is an attempt to force one size fits all policies but states still have sovereignty. for example, several states are stopping the extra unemployment payments because businesses in those states cannot find workers who are being paid more to stay home than to work. and they’re paying back to work bonuses. subsequently these states will be ahead of others who maintain higher unemployment, higher welfare payments and the dysfunction that comes from large numbers of people not working. particularly young men who don’t do well floating around without a job. another example is gun rights with states passing 2nd amendment protections. election integrity laws as well. if states want permanent mask mandates they can pass them into law. and those who don’t want permanent masking have lots of choices of where to find that. it’s the us, something for everyone. dysfunctional violent states cannot create dysfunction and violence in other states. the left cannot erase the constitution. “the left cannot erase the constitution.” you sure about that? biden is the glove puppet don’t forget. maybe if they got two thirds of the states to dispense with the constitution. think that’s likely? highly unlikely. is biden still living or is that a hologram we occasionally see? and they are appealing to people who go in for person attacks. however they don’t like the criticism directed towards them i happened to mention that starmer comes over as rather’chilly’ in public and you would have thought i had criticized their first born. however left wing parties are supported by many in the media, especially actors , so you would think they know the value of good pr? divide then conquer should everyone in every state have to do the exact same thing about masks? the left would emphatically scream “yes.” it’s been doing so since the start and hasn’t let up. and it’s not like red states are free of people who think this way; those folks are just less common than they are in, say, portland. ali’s story about a child being pushed down the stairs over politics, it’s predictable where that happened. i’m sorry, but we hand wave what is assault at the very least because of the location? pushing someone over politics is psychotic. i’m in a red state but ever here there biden signs. there were also zero cases of assault over that. yes, the left would scream yes and this is why it’s so great that the us is a republic and it offers choice. if people want to live directed to wear masks permanently they can do so. they can also do so on their own without being told to do so. red states offer choice. while people on the left can live in them, they have to live with the freedoms associated with them. this was my entire point. the author misses this about the us which makes it radically different from somalia where people had no escape. in my view, recognizing that it is unsurprising that a child could be assaulted in sf over politics is not hand waving. of course it’s psychotic. it’s somalia like except there you’d have been more than pushed down stairs. do you feel it’s better not to recognize that actions like this are associated with pathologies common in some areas of the us? but again, people are choosing this, they are choosing to have this be accepted practice in some areas. i agree that people living in those areas are getting what they voted for, and any sympathy for them has long since been exhausted. perhaps the following is where my confusion lay: do you feel it’s better not to recognize that actions like this are associated with pathologies common in some areas of the us? in a sane world, a schoolhouse assault over politics would be heard as a shrieking cry that a major problem exists. instead, it becomes more a case of “what do you expect?” must the crazies kill a few people before the pendulum swings back? increasingly, it appears that the answer is yes. i don’t think we need a child pushed down the stairs over politics to hear a shrieking cry. after all, this is hardly new behavior. i didn’t say what do you expect. i said it was no surprise as actions like this are associated with the pathological behavior commonly found in these areas. and it isn’t a surprise, is it? yes, the killing and attacks and property destruction and looting will go on in portland and sf and chicago and other dysfunctional cities as long as they are allowed to. why would they magically disappear? has anyone stopped the dozens of killings every weekend in chicago? frankly, i am a bit surprised that someone would be shoved down stairs in a high school over politics. perhaps that is naive on my part, having lived through times when people could disagree like rational adults. the ongoing carnage in chicago and other urban areas mostly emphasizes that black lives really don’t matter. maybe that’s why a lot of black people have little use for blm, a group that seems to get its biggest support from white beta people. if you are surprised then you likely haven’t been paying much attention. personally i cannot be repeatedly surprised by the same types of behavior. and yes, sadly, life is very cheap in some places in the us. the student who pushed another student down the stairs will not go on to be a successful, mentally stable adult. this is how the pattern continues. “as to permanent mask wearing if people in some states want to do that, how is that a problem? should everyone in every state have to do the exact same thing about masks?” i feel you miss the point she was making about masks. it’s not that someone would choose to wear the mask that is the problem, it’s why they are making that choice. if someone decides they don’t want to wear green because they don’t like it that’s one thing, if they decide they don’t want to wear it because ‘green’ has been co opted by a local gang and to wear it would mean that you’re part of the gang, that environment is the problem. “the idea that one state would attack others in a civil war is ludicrous.” i mean, how many wars in history have made sense? we try to rationalize them after the fact, but the majority of them are not started or perpetuated for grand ideals or honorable reasons. “if you do, have you not asked for a hostility filled lunch? friends are not viscerally hostile.” not all people are willing to cut someone out of their life because they will get into heated discussions, sometimes there is good reason to keep them in your life, even if you drastically disagree with them. “it’s not that someone would choose to wear the mask that is the problem, it’s why they are making that choice” no it really isn’t. in the us if you want to permanently wear a mask, you can. and you don’t owe anyone an explanation for it. “we try to rationalize them after the fact, but the majority of them are not started or perpetuated for grand ideals or honorable reasons.” but they all have one thing in common. a military. you’re thinking of states as countries. in this case, it would be one us state attacking another. with what military? “not all people are willing to cut someone out of their life because they will get into heated discussions,” clearly. as in the author’s case. so again, the question you neglected to answer. was she not asking for a hostility filled lunch? you can’t very well complain about a hostility filled lunch if you accept lunch invitations from hostile people, can you? go if you want but please, no complaining that a hostile person was hostile. the beautiful story of america is to a large extent founded on our rejection of tribalism and our establishment of civic, neutral institutions, based on the fundamental principle of equality before the law america was founded by whites, who are the least ethnocentric (in your terminology, the least tribal) of all the races. as america becomes less white it will inevitably become more tribal, and the ‘beautiful story’ will become a horror story. if it’s any comfort, all (formerly) white christian countries are undergoing the same process of demographic demolition. perhaps you didn’t think before you posted that. it’s a bit racist. my rule of thumb is this   if a person resorts to instant insults (you’re a racist etc) then they immediately identify themselves as being unable to debate like a grown up. do you refute the claim and if so, why?   yes i guess it shouldn’t be shocking at this point, it’s still better than the guardian though where reading something that says as america becomes less white it will become a horror story, would not at all be surprising. it looks like a few others didn’t read it carefully. either that or they agree that whiteness is the key to places not being horror stories. it’s the qualities that all the critical race theory hucksters associate with “whiteness”, i.e., with people of european origin (because we really are talking about culture and ethnicity here, not skin colour)   eg., punctuality, work ethic, delaying of gratification, saving money, owning property, traditional family values, self sufficiency, belief in small government, right to self defense, law and order, due process, education, patriotism, free speech, respect for authority, belief in monogamous marriage, etc. etc.   like they are actually negative traits rather than virtues, that keep nations from becoming “horror stories”. there’s nothing racist about pointing that out. also, there are plenty of nonwhite countries   eg. japan   that are very successful because they also embody many of those virtues. well i haved lived in other countries and every non western place is 1000x more racist than the west. there it is thought good to be what we call racist, they think it means you love your people and nation. they think we are mad for filling our country with many, many millions of people who have a history (in their lands) of being unsuccessful. let me guess, you’ve never been to belfast. or sarajevo. or stow on the wold? all (formerly) white christian countries are undergoing the same process of demographic demolition. not all. not my birth country hungary, or the other v4 / v+ countries. for much of the rest, i agree though. everyone i know who has run to the united states in pursuit of freedom to escape authoritarian rule in home now says americans are completely insane. this country is hopeless. a society with shallow historical tradition, a short sighted small government that does nothing in nation building, hollow cities and large numbers of small, isolated communities, and the education system and media controlled by large numbers of foreign immigrants/self proclaimed “liberalism” elites, coupled with today’s social media as a catalyst, create the left wing populism and extremism in the us today from my perspective. you must be a londoner. the arrogance is recognizable the world over. i am a ex londoner and london is much worse!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the people there have decided to self genocide. i got free pints in scotland and in york for describing london as “a city with all four cheeks sucked in.” lol good one! mind if i nick it? the key for americans traveling in europe is to figure out the, um, tribal divisions and hop a ride. i’m here to tell you that it works. and yes, you can nick it. now, if you go to milan, casually mention that you’ve just been in rome, and while the sites were fascinating, the city is full of garbage, and will someone please knock it off with all that olive oil? that’ll get you a glass of wine. lol well, i’m a hungarian traveling in the shires hereabouts. (once in paris i was mistaken for a parisian by rural french folks, that boosted my ego quite a bit.) thanks for the milan tip! something similar worked mighty fine in catalunya, full meal and rounds of wine for four (family trip). it was on a business trip in milan about 20 years ago when it hit me. there i was at lunch with two italian clients. i am a big traveler: all 50 states, half of canada’s provinces, and 26 foreign countries. including hungary, by the way. i don’t know if you are aware of a count harazthy, a hungarian who played a pivotal role in the early days of the california wine industry. in any case, i love the tokaj. virtually unknown here in the states, and that’s unfortunate, because tokaj is a world class wine. i raise a toast to hungary for that reason, but there are others, like budapest. i am not much of an opera fan at all, but how could i pass up a ticket? it was fantastic! anyway, i’m at lunch, and i’m one of those americans who was brought up to be an ambassador for my country when i go anywhere else. so, wanting to be anything other than the stereotypical ugly american oaf, i tell one of them that it was my third visit to milan, and the food is out of this world. (i wasn’t lying. the food there is delicious.) i’ve never been to rome, i said, but i really want to go sometime. i was not only telling the truth, but who could object? well, he did! “rome!” he said, as he spit on the floor and stomped on the stain with his foot. “they are nothing but a bunch of fat, olive oil slurping peasants! don’t go to rome!” hey, at least i didn’t skip the wine and order a coke. i did go to rome a few years after that, older and wiser. i got a complimentary glass of wine after telling the waiter that we’d just been in milan, and that it was interesting but that i’d never encountered such snobbish people in my life. lol ha! brilliantly played. the italians have this rivalry about the other town / region, they are all “forestieri” (i.e. stinking savage peasants, not like us florentines!!)   i think it has something to do with being city states until quite lately. good to keep in mind, shall i ever come to some money (not likely)! sadly i haven’t travelled much myself, due to the aforementioned reason. my secondary school art teacher was a relation / descendant to count haraszthy. (excellent painter too, i think   hope   he’s still alive.) i hear you americans have some superb wines yourselves, my good friend lives by the vineyards in california. good taste in wine   tokaji is up with the bests on earth. hard to come by here in england too. the tokaj region (north east corner of hungary) is my favourite part. sorry for my bad spelling. i don’t know what it is about the magyars and how they seem to drop a “z” into words at random. i will never get used to it, but i shouldn’t talk so much given how many contradictions and irregularities are part of the english language. haraszthy founded the buena vista winery in sonoma, california. they have a little shrine to him. unfortunately, i visited on a cold and rainy day so i didn’t linger outside. but it’s how i learned about haraszthy. one of those “who the hell knew?” moments. fast forward to my visit to budapest. i found the hungarian national museum, and was on the lookout for any mention of the guy. nothing, at least when i visited about 15 years ago. so i went to the office and asked to speak to the director. i politely explained that i was an american tourist and was curious about the lack of recognition there. he seemed irritated, but maybe that’s a hungarian national trait, like the goulash and the tokaj? lol i don’t know why people do or don’t do things, but you’d think that the hugarian national museum might want to mention that a hugarian was one of the founders of the california wine industry. by the way, haraszthy made his first attempt in wisconsin and failed. went back home, and returned a few years later, but to california. poor guy. i grew up in wisconsin. lots of things you can grow there, but grapes aren’t one of them. oh, they’ll grow but you don’t want to drink the wine. he learned! lol perhaps we should return to burn (torch*) the white house, capitol and other public buildings as we did on the night of august 24th, 1814 last? (* translation for us readers). what else are identity and gender politics for if not to divide and set faction against faction? i remember very well the build up to iraq war. i opposed it party because i never served in the military (accusation of hypocrisy ) and partly because i found the argument about “we rebuild germany/japan we can rebuild iraq” utterly risible. germany, the land of quantum physics, work ethic, aspirin, and gauss was compared to iraq, a country of tribalism, cousin marriage and blood feuds. many of those people that supported the war now pretend that they did not. and they were and are (in large part) republican voters. and by 2015/6 many of them had turned against the war and many (including president trump   yes trump!!!) lied about their support. we have tribalism in usa for a simple reason   demographic change. white america is on the way of becoming a minority. i am a white american and i (eventually) will side with my tribe. but i hate many of these charlatans that make up the conservative movement. the ones that;   never reformed immigration system (yes trump is one of them)  abandoned academia and culture to the left. there are the ones that opposed high culture (the redneck was the true american, the one that spoke greek and latin was a wimpy intellectual continental).  cut taxes for no real reason and blew up budget holes from here to eternity  wasted political capital fighting idiotic battles about evolution at school, gay marriage and so on… to paraphrase the great bismarck the question facing america will only be solved by blood and iron. voting will achieve nothing. republicans in power have proven themselves to do absolutely nothing. the last president was too busy tweeting…. and they were and are (in large part) republican voters like hillary, john kerry, and every other dem who later ran for president, save obama who was in il at the time? obama won partly because he opposed the war. you seem to have a comprehension problem: and they were and are (in large part) republican voters not all, but most of them. you keep claiming it was all, or mostly, repub voters when the reality says otherwise. every dem but obama was for the war, and he wasn’t in the senate at the time so he could safely vote ‘present’ from illinois. and there were repubs/conservatives who were opposed to it. we get it; you don’t like repubs or the right, but it is clouding your commentary to the point of saying things that are demonstrably untrue. what part of “voter” you don’t understand? i say voter you say “dems in the senate’ when the country turned on the war republicans still won their heartland   the south and lost everywhere else. that is the proof. p.s. i consider myself a paleconservative (google it) but the current republican party (and its entourage; talk radio, fox news, etc.) is full of slow people. what part of “voter” you don’t understand? the same left that embraced cindy sheehan under bush shunned her when obama came into office. when bush declared ‘mission accomplished,’ were his chief critics on the right or left? if you want to say both parties are populated by unprincipled hacks save for a very small minority, then i’d agree. the country turned because of two wars, both of which began to appear as they had no end because no one could define “victory.” and mid terms always favor the out party. do you not recall the debacle for dems after the passage of o care, which i was told the public desperately wanted? the same trump who once favored iraq also wanted to end our involvement in afghanistan. the left attacked him for that, too, because the left would attack if he said water is wet. now biden sets a date and the previous critics are suddenly supporters. trump lied about his original support of iraq war. o care has nothing to do with iraq war   but sure show me the republican “repeal & replace”   where is it? trumpcare? if obama “opposed the war,” he had a funny way of showing his “opposition.” didn’t bismarck say iron & blood not the other way around? how on earth your commander in chief could have been a ‘draft dodger’ certainly baffled many in this ‘sceptered isle’, but i suppose the same was true of clinton. not a good report by any standards i think you will agree? our commander in chief had weak knees (yes, trump) bush jr. was a fighter pilot in the texas national guard clinton was the 60s generation, vietnam was bad and he was/is a degenerate. exactly, thank you. tribalism has always been here. the left simply dropped its mask of tolerance during the trump years, as the example of the girl being pushed down the stairs demonstrates. the cultish level of group think on the left has leeched out in attacking its own members who dare to stray from some tenet of the religion. and it is far more religion than politics. in tribal communities, neutral institutions of civil society that westerners take for granted   such as the police, impartial courts, and the rule of law   simply do not, and cannot, exist. ﻿ so, given that in the us that ship has sailed and that we no longer have impartial courts and the rule of law… now what? i don’t know why this writer portrays conservative tribalism as a reaction to liberal tribalism, when it can just as easily be explained as the reverse. in any case, i am hopeful that the tide of moral tribalism may begin to ebb and common sense will make a comeback. thank you ayaan for pointing out how identity politics leads to “tribal” warfare. it can only be overcome by what institutions like stanford once stood for, study, critical analysis, open and fair discussion, listening to those who are “different”, understand their experience. thoughtful essays such as yours, on websites such as this, are a good way to overcome this. they are doing exactly what you are asking   you just don’t like their interpretation of history. it’s tough to argue against any of the points made in the article. in the us today, we are more likely to suffer discrimination and hatred due to party affiliation than any minority status. we were getting along fairly well until race or gender was injected into every social ill. what followed was a perceived social awareness coming from one party, and oppression from the other. with academia and media corporations feeding the narrative, it became impossible to have reasonable dialogue in the town square. it’s now an “us versus them” battle, all by design, in hopes that the warring tribes will toe the line. divide and conquer strategy via brainwashing. this is true of us in any part of the world. we all labour under the delusion that we are modern ‘civilized’ people. but scratch the surface, and there is a tribal in all of us. any social change or trauma is enough to rip away the thin brittle veneer from us i tried to explain the advantage of our republic to my german friends and how each state is basically a testing ground for what works and what doesn’t. we don’t necessarily have to wait until a wrongheaded federal policy painfully plays out. we can watch and learn from the idiots of another state, as they suffer under their own stupidity, at the state, county or city level. but the bigger picture, i believe, is that classical liberalism that has devolved into our current political liberal/conservative rift, has run its coarse. it is based on the blind belief in several patent fallacies that we have been able to comfortably entertain prior to the world population explosion that developed under post wwii pax americana. now cultures overlap and crowd each other beyond artificial borders, and irreconcilable differences and the failure of democracy and the world economy are creating pressures that are unavoidable either by vote or by foot. reversion to tribalism is the logical and unavoidable outcome. we should plan accordingly to the extent that we can. i have upticked you not because i agree with your comments (i do, some) but because i am a former longtime derrickhand and driller myself. tribalism at work! “while such violence is yet to seize america, all the tribalist ingredients are present.” this is spot on. cases in point: portland, kenosha, and dc. sadly, the tribal members have no clue they are being played by forces that are all about division and conflict. we need to understand the conflict is not republicans vs democrats but, rather, good vs evil. the political war, race war, and gender war are completely manufactured, designed to encourage us to devour ourselves. this is a time for discernment   the other side has succeeded in hiding the truth and even changing the definition of the word “truth.” our mass media is beyond complicity in the constant barrage of disinformation; these platforms are now plainly aligned with the strong arm of the orwellian thought police. forget civil war. we are fully engaged in another world war   quite different than anything we’ve seen in the past, but a world war nonetheless. america has been invaded not by land or sea, but by years of psychological warfare. it’s horribly naive to assume federalism and our constitution will save us when the checks and balances   in every branch of government   have demonstrably failed us! no. it’s up to us to save the country we’ve taken for granted. wake up people. the enemy has breeched the gate. all hands on deck. with all due respect it’s this type of hyperbole that creates the problem. it is the responsibility of those with power to work to unite not divide. unfortunately trump actively promoted division. let us hope that biden really does promote unity, including by neutralising extreme woke ideology. the pathologies associated with living in large cities are becoming very hard to ignore. i grew up in nyc but today you cannot live there peacefully. and it isn’t only us cities like sf, chicago, la, the same illnesses associated with large cities are visible in london and paris and other large cities around the world. knife attacks and people being de capitated seem to be the norm today in big non us cities. i loved growing up in a big city and i am grateful to have had both experiences, city living and non city. i remember asking my dad when we moved from nyc to westchester just north of the city (when it was far more rural than it is now) what borough we’d be living in because of course, you must still be in one of the five boroughs, right? it’s still ny, right? city kids! very interesting. very good. thanks. yes, as some comments here argue, tribalism is a problem for us national politics and much less so for state and local politics, except in those places where urban communities become obsessed with national and international issues. but selective sorting continues to happen as people choose the milieu they agree with. this will create state secessionist tensions, which does threaten the strength of the union. our international adversaries would like nothing more. tribalism defeats the idea of a national identity that americans used to embrace in the past. national identity based on an idea does not threaten racial or ethnic identities, but rather includes them. what is called “tribalism” in this piece fukuyama refers to as “patrimonialism” in his “origins of political order.” it’s a feature of all human societies and never really goes away   the difference between say somalia and the usa is the extent to which it has been subsumed under functioning states, rule of law, and accountable government. but always and everywhere it lurks in wait should those institutions fail … sorry to see ali succumbing to the “both sides of the aisle” caveat. no. no. no. no. no. there is no aisle down the center of constitutionalism. there is the truth that life is flawed, and there are no perfect solutions, thus we need the least harmful guidance to resolve disputes by preserving the sovereignty of the individual and limiting governnment to the maximum extent possible and there is a lie that life can be made perfect, and that people can be made perfect so long as you eliminate the imperfect ones through re education, censorship, shunning, or worse. it is not tribal obsession with arbitrary physiognamy that leads to doubts about the integrity of mail in elections where social media giants strew outside chain of custody kiosks all over rioting cities, and our own constitutionalist supreme court justices lament that our highest court has failed to secure electoral integrity. sometimes the other tribe really *does* mean to destroy you. you can tell when they march into your streets, set fire to your business, injure and kill people, while chanting and bearing signs that clearly state that they mean to destroy you. the proper response to that is *not* to sit back in your academic chair and say, well, yes, but “our side” is just as much at fault for asking questions and having doubts. peterson and murray did that in their two hour bs session. and now i see ali has joined in the nabob nattering. enough. there are such things as right and wrong. and characterizing the effort to do what is right as “tribal” and just as misguided as deliberately choosing wrong is a kind of moral equivalency that left me standing on the road a hundred miles back. if ali doesn’t want *true* tribalism, then she should stop casting law abiding, constitution preserving citizens as just another ugly bug in the jar. well said.   yes, and i’m sure you love the rioters in portland. one thing the democrat voters may not have noticed is that their despised neocons are now democrats! they have left the republicans a while back. the last prominent member of that tribe liz cheney is about to be booted off the party involuntarily as well. yes, but they did their damage as members of the republican party. i remember very well the build up to war on iraq. the segment of the population that supported the war was overwhelmingly republican voting. but we can all pretend that it didn’t happen. the ds voted for the iraq war resolution, and were especially enthusiastic about the afghanistan invasion. look it up, if you dare. don’t disagree with you on that one. and moreover, a rather interesting question now is, would republican voters do the same again today? keep in mind that the neocons came from the democrat party with william krystal and were basically unhappy with democrat international policies in general and israel specifically. they are basically the warmonger portion of the democrat party. as “conservatives” they have always paid lip service to real conservative issues while doing basically nothing other than talk. now that the trump has started the long awaited exodus from the endless wars of the world, they will switch back to being the real liberal democrats they are. i wouldn’t disagree with a word in that article, but what lies behind this descent into tribalism? i wonder whether we ought to take a more global view, and examine whether humanity as a whole is increasingly susceptible to division, to polarisation. first and foremost, i would have thought, the tendency to become polarised is a psychological phenomenon. i wonder whether it is increasing as the capacity to think is decreasing. a thinker   a true thinker   will be less likely to become polarised because the process of thinking of itself overcomes polarisation. to be polarised means to be rendered intellectually immobile. how can it mean anything else? the polarised person is also less free in his emotional life. the evidence clearly shows that the more one is polarised the more acute, and negative, one’s emotions become   to the point of hysteria, or vehement hatred, or intense fear. these are imprisoning emotions. polarisation makes us less human, and even threatens to defeat that which makes us human. oh, at last! a thoughtful, reasoned, informed comment, on topic, and worth reading! thankyou! i would suggest, actually, that things are not as bad as people make out. when viewed globally and from a cross disciplinary perspective, it can be maintained that the ability to think intellectually and reason logically, i.e. in an enlightenment sense, is actually increasing among human populations worldwide. this ability to stand back and objectively detach must, in the long run, produce a free, secular society with separation of religion/church and politics/state. much of the human race has only relatively recently come into contact with this type of western thought. given that ethnic traits and cultural mores lie deep in the psyche, and are hence slow to change under new influences, we should not be surprised to be seeing something of a backlash right now. everything progresses slowly on the whole one step forward, one step back… we are seeing the sores and underlying shadows of western societies poverty, inequality, etc. at home surface, at the same time as non western societies are getting on board with the internet and social media and their youth is coming into conflict with the way of life of its patriarchal elders. so no wonder we are seeing conflict and unrest. but to acknowledge conflict and unrest does not make it follow that therefore everything everywhere is going to the dogs, or that everything everywhere is the same, as so many on this thread seem to think. on the contrary, social division may with just as much justification be seen as growing pains on the way to something better. there is no doubt that the older western societies are facing a threat of degeneration from increasing intellectual polarisation into reified intractable positions underpinned by an untutored emotional immaturity, mostly although not exclusively on the part of men. but that does not mean it can’t change. and there is evidence it is changing. the way forward, surely, is to do what ali does here: look at details, facts, and think hard about them; discriminate between things that are different, pinpoint disparate streams, avoid motherhood statements and don’t lump everything together into one ugly mess. the worst thing, surely, is to reduce ali’s quality article to a bogan exchange about whether or not to move house, as too many on this thread have done! call my opinion simplistic, but here it goes: this issue is identical to american’s perception of war as something they cannot loose. both sides are 100% sure that they will ultimately prevail, with the other side somehow evaporating from the planet. that insane belief leads both sides to “drop the gloves” in the fight and seeing no problem in whatever spurious means get used to push for victory   after all, they cannot lose, and the defeated “enemy” will vaporize, remember? there are obvious issues on both sides that deserve honest discussion, but honesty is now seen as unjustifiable, as it could come across as weakness. no side is able to candidly consider the fears of the other, or what exactly makes them be perceived as so malevolent. no side is sufficiently honest to admit its own share of falsehoods. so no, tribalism cannot be de escalated. and there is no way this ends well   for anyone.   your comment is an excellent example of the mindless tribalism she wrote about.   how is that tv you looted working? i wonder if we can escape our tribal nature. i wonder if we can escape our tribal nature. a key question! the response from an active, progressive spirituality (as distinct from mere passive external religion) is: yes! but rome wasn’t built in a day. western esoteric christ centred spirituality marks the incarnation of the christ on earth as a dividing point between:  on the one hand, a prior tribalism, grounded in heredity and extending to blood related family and kin, a tribe or clan presided over by a chief with absolute inherited patriarchal power and authority, utilising slaves drawn from non tribe foreigners, with members inheriting to greater or lesser degree a shared clairvoyant consciousness, a group soul whose clairvoyance was passed down via the pure tribal blood a dividing line between this and:  on the other hand, extension of society to include kith as well as kin, a legitimisation of miscegenation (the inner meaning of christ sanctioning that marriage in a mixed area), a looking forward to larger groupings beyond tribal boundaries, based for the first time in a common humanity such as would eventually emerge as the modern nation state; and now our current situation, where we face the challenge of evolving beyond the nation state to a truly planet wide consciousness conscience, where we share and enjoy our diversity within the embrace of experience of our common shared humanity. that’s not to minimise or deny in any way the difficulties encountered along the way. just to say, it’s not all bad… we definitively are not trapped in our tribal past. in my view all tribalism is fake tribalism. all groups   of globalists or nationalists or racists or clans   are artificial, ginned up by political leaders to fight some existential peril   which might be nazis, heretics, or the people across town that don’t look like us, or the people next door that don’t think like us. the problem is that after you have united people, as fdr united the us for wwii, and won the war, then people start to divide again, as politicians cunningly work to divide us. right now, our betters want us to unite and sacrifice to win the war on climate, bless their hearts. as usual, people assuming everyone is as interested in politics as they are. the silent majority just want to get on with it no matter what colour, race or activity of whichever government in power. when the law breaks down the mob mentality takes over which, from this side of the atlantic, seems to be the usa case. to watch the msm videos and headlines you’d think london was apocalyptic. most see a few hundred kids painted in war paint brandishing their slogans and adjust their route accordingly. if you want to see tribal, try european soccer where lads get drunk, get into fights and go home to be scolded by their wives and a week in the doghouse. “these tribal quirks run deep on both sides of the aisle. many republicans continue to dispute the legitimacy of the result of the last presidential election.” ayaan spends too much time talking to her husband, niall ferguson. the 2020 presidential election was stolen. to say so, doesn’t put you on the path to mogadishu. it’s just a fact, or, if not a fact, certainly what the existing evidence suggests. something that arose from a discussion with a somali friend whom i have known since about 2000. i showed him the extract below from the telegraph of november 2011, and asked for his reaction. save our war memorials: lottery to fund anti tribalism project to teach youths about ‘mad mullah’ funding from the heritage lottery fund is to be used so disaffected youths can learn about a somali religious leader known as the “mad mullah” while britain’s war memorials are starved of cash they need for vital repairs. the hlf has found money for the project in hounslow, which is being run by the anti tribalism movement, a non profit social reform movement which works to eradicate “tribalism”. somali society is divided along clan lines, with bitter feuds between rival groups, and there is deep concern that tribal divides are influencing the large somali population in britain, particularly teenagers. called a legend to learn from, it will see young people research hassan, a key figure in somali resistance to colonial rule. somalia had, in 1884, been divided into five parts by the colonial powers, with one part, british somaliland, in the north of modern somalia. when i showed this to my friend, asking for his comment, he detonated. he is a member of the idoor clan (prominent members of which include rageh omaar and sir mo farah) concentrated in today’s unrecognized state of somaliland, and who fought with the british against the “mad mullah”. he is incensed that his people have not received recognition or reward for their cooperation with the british. i searched online, and it seems to me that the foul and vituperative language used by other somalis against the idoor is a manifestation of the “tribalism” referred to above. but why was the hlf preparing to honour a late 19th century version of osama bin laden rather than those somalis who had fought on the side of britain? (the item itself has disappeared from the telegraph website since i last accessed it in 2018.) tanzania has the least amount of tribal unrest in africa because julius nyerere spent 20 years of hard work creating a pan tribal culture if he can manage that in africa then we know that it is possible …….. and from where does all this division actually originate? is this an agenda, led by hidden forces, to accomplish the goal of dividing us? it appears conservatives, or any who don’t prescribe to the woke crowd are now targets. who benefits from this division? i have to honestly say, after watching janet ossebaard’s documentary, “the fall of the cabal” and its sequels, i am beginning to understand. the deep state is alive and well. division originates from diversity. it is not very hard to understand   unless you are desperate for a good conspiracy theory. you’re right. this is why multiculturalism doesn’t work in the long run. did your parents have the inestimable good fortune to be born in british somaliland or the terrible bad luck to be born in italian somaliland may i ask? well said, ayaan! thank you for clarifying the literally society ending danger that tribalism poses to america. wokeness is fundamentally based on dividing us into “identity groups” (aka tribes). somehow many fail to see this   or understand the corresponding dangers. police forces in some parts of america are not arrested leftists who commit acts of violence   but conservatives who fight back are prosecuted and punished. the federal “justice” system is also well known for persecuting conservatives   and winking at the crimes of leftists. it is tribalism of the worst sort   and it is not acceptable. aha makes too much sense to be taken seriously by those leading us to chaos. from my perspective [and many others like, say, os guinness’ must read, “last call for liberty,”] america’s “tribalistic beginnings” can be seen in the sea change of the ‘60s [albeit germinating before then]: the two warring “tribes” consist of secular humanism progressivism vs. judeo christianity. the comparison being “1789 vs 1776”   the french revolution vs american revolution. it’s not many, but two warring worldviews, factions. what a wonderful piece of writing. i thank you for the insight. “these tribal quirks run deep on both sides of the aisle.” i detest that many of our leaders on the right use bromides like this in a transparent attempt to get the left to come to the table, listen, and calm down. um, no. only one side turns quickly to violence. only one side foams at the mouth when the other side is attempting rational discourse. one side is not listening. one side takes it to the street. not two. no. this is why so many like me have turned away from the various think tanks on the right. and its talking head politicians. we know a bully when we encounter one and rational discourse is not how you engage with a bully. any 10 year old knows this. you’ve learned and read so much that you’ve forgotten your instincts; your gut; your unconscious, if you will. it knows. shut up and listen. stand up. fists up. ready to engage? let’s go. this is gonna hurt you as much as me. sadly, that’s all a bully understands. i know what you’re thinking   by fighting, taking it to the street, and getting down in the dirt with the left, we on the right will turn into the left. um, no. that’s not what happens when a person fights a bully. that’s not how bullies are made. the only people who are worried about truly engaging these blind, deaf, egotistic children are the ones who’ve never stood up to a bully. “i hope that when i have kids of my own they really don’t get shook, when i tell them that there are things they’ve got to learn, that can’t be found in books.”   gil scott heron, “sex education: ghetto style” very interesting, concerning and unfortunately true. however john bolton is still a vicous warmonger,who wants to needlessly expend us treasure and blood on fruitless bloody wars and conflicts (resulting in the deaths of millions of civilians) in september 2021, we discern that this is still an appropriate admonition. s ‘woke’ is a great catch all phrase for all the critical theory and post modern absurdity that has captured most of the american left and a fair share of the democratic party. come to think of it, delirium would be a more appropriate term. y all i want them to do is drop the ‘woke’ nonsense, then this so called culture war, one of the left’s own making will disappear and be replaced with policies and not stupefying ideology. is blairite an insult or simply descriptive? agree with you about ‘woke’, though, and am trying to avoid the term. usually well understood words like ‘bigotry’ and ‘intolerance’ do the job just as well. ‘ well, you can rest assured that labeling anyone that criticizes the right wing as “woke” is the best way to make the problem worse. just like labeling every living right winger as “white supremacist”. two sides of the same coin   the pitiful strategy of negating honest (and respectful) discussion “because you are angry”. i fear it will take some suffering and destruction to just go back to understanding and acknowledging the rights of “the other side”, so it is possible to move forward. the tribesmen roared with laughter, then looked at him pityingly: “oh no, no, no, they said: only your ‘lineage mates’ will help you.” they’re not wrong. your race is your extended family. why would non family help you? i can’t help wondering why you are friends with such a disgusting moral incompetent? so ayaan, why did you vote for the illegal, immoral, and destructive invasion of iraq? what is it about your buddy john bolton that you like so much   his sense of humour as he engineers invasions and death across the planet? why did hillary clinton vote for it? of everything in the article, that’s what you got from it?   we welcome applications to contribute to unherd   please fill out the form below including examples of your previously published work. please click here to submit your pitch. please click here to view our media pack for more information on advertising and partnership opportunities with unherd.

there’s been a fundamental shift in how we define adulthood and at what pace it occurs. pt’s authors consider how a once iron clad construct is now up for grabs and what it means for young people’s mental health today. verified by psychology today posted february 24, 2018 | reviewed by jessica schrader we humans are a social species, tribal by nature. we’re given to gathering and communing in familiar groups. “belonging,” our capacity and need for empathy, compassion, and communication, is in our dna. we are the most evolved of all species on earth, the most intelligent and creative of god’s creatures. our achievements in the arts and sciences and many other endeavors are extraordinary. if we so wished, we could heartily congratulate ourselves on all we have accomplished. unfortunately, we tribal humans have a “dark side,” ironically also related to our social relationships: we are as belligerent and brutal as any other animal species. our species, homo sapiens, is indeed creative and loving, but it is also destructive and hostile. tribal animosities have always been part of our history, either between antagonistic countries or enemies within each nation state. every country has close knit tribes or groups who harbor “rational” reasons to praise themselves and hate others, usually based on prejudicial lore rooted in religion, ethnicity, race, economics, or politics. tribal conflicts on a large scale are replicated in interactions between individuals. i knew a lovely american couple, she of serb background, he of croatian extraction, happily married for over two decades with two children. when war between serbia and croatia erupted in the '90s, memories of old painful ethnic conflicts were rekindled in bitter arguments at home, and they divorced two years later. similar events have transpired in other relationships, mirroring the ingrained hatreds between groups of origin. cities and countries where antagonistic populations learned to live in cooperative peace, often re descended into tribal violence. examples abound: harmony once prevailed in sarajevo (serbs and croats), belfast (protestants and catholics), bagdad (shiites and sunnis), rwanda (hutu and tutsi), cyprus (greeks and turks), kashmir (muslims and hindus). as inspiring as humanity is, it appears that our “natural” propensities to anger, hate, and tribalism often dominate our benevolent thoughts and behaviors. in times of social unrest, ethnic and racial biases appear to “trump” (used advisedly) amicability and peace. this is especially so when fueled by inflammatory religious leaders or political demagogues. a sense of belonging is a cornerstone of "the four b's” (including being, believing, and benevolence), the criteria we use to evaluate the quality of our lives. belonging is the extent to which we feel appreciated, respected, and cared for as a member of a group of close people. these groups vary widely and might comprise family, friends, colleagues, teammates, coworkers, congregationalists, or platoons. when we belong in these groups, we share values, rituals, and attitudes, we experience feelings of warmth and welcome, and our lives are enriched. studies show that a sense of belonging is related to feelings of well being and better health. conversely, loneliness is known to be detrimental to one’s physical and mental health. but while we value the importance of belonging, dangers lurk when there is an absence of benevolence. excessive group cohesiveness and feelings of superiority breed mistrust and dislike of others and can prevent or destroy caring relationships. estrangement can easily beget prejudice, nativism, and extremism. these are the very hallmarks of zealous tribalism which has fueled bloodshed and wars over the millennia. the recent book, the better angels of our nature, by harvard’s steven pinker, is reassuring in its message that human perpetrated violence has actually diminished in international and civil wars as well as in domestic and family settings. i’m less optimistic, however, in light of the current social climate in the united states and elsewhere. the combination of tribal enmities and weapons of mass destruction are as dangerous a “perfect storm” as ever existed, because we humans now have the capacity to annihilate ourselves. as the satirical troubadour tom lehrer sang years ago, "what nature doesn't do to us will be done by our fellow man.” belonging is a boon to our existence, ennobling our lives, but tribalism is a bane to our existence, destroying that very ennoblement. we humans have crucial choices to make: whether we live together in harmony, with civility, respect, and empathy (positive emotional footprint), or whether we choose to live in perpetual animosity and conflict. our very survival awaits our decision. saul levine m.d., is a professor emeritus at the university of california at san diego. get the help you need from a therapist near you a free service from psychology today. psychology today © 2025 sussex publishers, llc there’s been a fundamental shift in how we define adulthood and at what pace it occurs. pt’s authors consider how a once iron clad construct is now up for grabs and what it means for young people’s mental health today.

something went wrong. wait a moment and try again.
this report provides insights into the state of public opinion about election administration and reform. the findings are primarily drawn from the 2008 2016 cooperative congressional election study (cces), a survey conducted each federal election year since 2006. i we hope that the findings contained in this report, and suggestions for future research, will help election officials, lawmakers, advocates, and others understand attitudes of the american people toward one of their most cherished rights. the takeaways in this report include: we hope that readers find this informative report as interesting as we do. thank you for reading! let’s face it   it’s a tough time to be in the democracy business. america’s democratic institutions and norms are under pressure from hyperpolarization, disruptive technologies, and foreign interference, to name a few things. and we’re not alone: new and established democracies all over the world are facing what varieties of democracy has dubbed the “third wave of autocratization”. so when i tell people that i’m the director of evaluation and learning at an organization dedicated to strengthening american democracy, the response i often get is a slightly raised eyebrow and the question “so…how’s that going for you?” it’s a question intended to prompt a pithy response, i suppose, but i’m increasingly inclined to answer it honestly, and thoroughly. because the truth is that while assessing impact in any kind of complex social system is hard, it’s particularly difficult when the problems you’re trying to solve are the really big ones and the headwinds you’re facing are especially strong. in these situations, real, meaningful impact is unpredictable, nonlinear, and often something that can only fully understood retrospectively. it’s no wonder that despite robust evaluation and learning practices, many social change organizations still struggle to understand, in real time, whether the work they’re doing is making a difference. but i’m increasingly convinced that our challenge is not just in measuring the impact that we’re having   it’s in how we think about what impact looks like in the first place. there’s a particular mental model that most people fall into when we talk about impact: we think about what the system will look like as our program progresses over time, compared to what it would look like over the same period without that program. and we default to the expectation that our programs will lead to greater positive increases in desired outcomes compared to the status quo. the rate of change may be incremental, exponential, or something else, but it’s always positive. unfortunately, this contributes to a widespread assumption in social change work that a program can only be “impactful” if there are measurable increases in expected outcomes. i’ve spoken a lot with my colleagues at democracy fund, as well as at other omidyar group organizations, about what impact looks like for the work that we do. i’ve recalled evaluations that i’ve led and reviewed other evaluation literature.