Tribes

There are no issues in the 2016 Presidential race.

Maybe there were issues when Bernie Sanders was running. Sanders made an issue of honesty, of whether or not any of the political rhetoric you hear coming from the mouths of the politicians had any relation to what the politicians were going to do. And then Sanders endorsed Clinton, and, lo and behold, it didn't, again. And the issue disappeared.

Politics for the masses is about tribes. Either you belong to the (D) tribe, or the (R) tribe, or maybe you are stuck in the middle trying to decide which tribe merits your vote, and that's what determines your place in the political demographics of any particular election. Political arguments, then, are all about one, and only one, thing: "my tribe is better than your tribe."

Oh, sure, you may believe in political stuff. But your belief in political stuff is part of a realm called the "social imaginary." The social imaginary is that part of social reality which has to be imagined, and re-imagined, all the time. Social reality cannot just be buildings and roads and social organizations; it must also exist in the heads of its participants. In law, for instance, the social imaginary is jurisprudence, in science it's the "scientific method," in politics it's your "political positions," and so on.

Reality and fantasy are not entirely separate realms, because human belief in fantasy must seem real if reality is to take a particular shape. Thus for instance the collective fantasy about what money will buy is real, and the evidence of this is that we all act as if money were real.

However, because the collective fantasy is real, there is no physical need for it to "be real." People believe in all sorts of things without demonstrable physical existence (God, for instance), yet nonetheless the beliefs are themselves real things existing in real heads. This is what "political positions" are about. People might, for instance, believe that Hillary Clinton is a "progressive," and in so doing, such people place Hillary Clinton under no compulsion whatsoever to behave like a progressive in any physically-recognizable sense.

We can make fun of the political collective fantasy all we want. But the political collective fantasy, like all the other collective fantasies, is necessary, because without collective fantasies (and thus without the social imaginary) there would be no society at all.

*****

The social imaginary, then, is composed of beliefs which are real as beliefs, without necessarily being beliefs about real things. The most real thing about the social imaginary, however, is the tribe. The tribe is the agglomeration of social imaginaries which bring together each tribe's cultural expressions, each tribe's founding myth of social existence, and each tribe's ideas about foreign relations (i.e. what to do about other people who don't belong to the tribe).

If you want to read about the foreign-relations part of it in interesting detail, check out Kees van der Pijl's book The Foreign Encounter in Myth and Religion. Van der Pijl goes through world history to identify some important tribes, their myths and religions, and their foreign relations. What every tribe has in common, for van der Pijl, is ethnogenesis -- the process of coming together as a people. Ethnogenesis is what we need; thus my insistence that we have a political party and that this party be a party of the masses rather than a party which brings "nice people" to the table so that the masses can be deprived of any say-so about policy. In the world of the social imaginary, what we can do is to insist upon a better collective fantasy, and a better political fantasy. And if we are stuck endorsing people who (on the physical plane) don't believe anything of what we believe, then we need a better tribe, and thus a better party.

In the physical world, what the politicians do is completely beyond our control. They all cater to a single tribe, the elites, with a general orientation to policy which is mostly about preserving their elite status. The elites are (D) or (R) only insofar as they must play particular roles in the drama performed daily to captivate the masses. And the drama is believed by at least some of the masses, otherwise why would it be performed? Thus we can observe the ridiculous specter of people who claim that they are going to "hold politicians accountable" after having pledged their votes to specific politicians.

The physical world, however, is what is at stake with the collective fantasy. So we can go on with the pretense that the current social formations, with their current tribes, will somehow magically produce an improvement in the physical world, or we can try to change the collective fantasy, begin a new project of ethnogenesis, and create a new tribe. Ideally this would be a tribe to unite the masses, with foreign relations being what to do about the elites. But we shall see.

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We can evolve beyond tribes and realize there is only one tribe, the human tribe. I don't see that happening either.

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Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?

WaveyDavey's picture

A person has their favorite sports team. When that team plays well they hoot and holler. Even when that team plays badly (even sometimes very very badly) they still stay loyal.

As long as politics is treated like a sport it will be this way. We use phrases like 'win the election', 'still in the race' or 'tossing their hat into the ring' which subliminally enforce the 'politics as a sport' idea.

As long as the majority of us view politics as a sport we will be left in the position of spectator with a vested interest in the outcome, but no real influence upon the result.

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The people, united, will never be defeated.

Hillbilly Dem's picture

Back in the day, pro athletes used to stay with one team for most of their career. Now they move from team to team at the drop of a hat. The pro teams change so many players from year-to-year that you can't recognize the team anymore. We're cheering for whoever wears the jersey. In essence, we're rooting for laundry.

Charlie Crist? He used to be a bad guy, but he's a good guy now. Arlen Specter? He used to be a Rethug, 'til he wised up and joined the right team! Sometimes I think it's actually more like "professional" wrassslin'. They cut it up in the locker room before the match. "Is it your turn to win tonight, Crusher, or is it mine?" "It really doesn't matter, Bruiser Bob....just as long as we put on a good show for the chumps."

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"Just call me Hillbilly Dem(exit)."
-H/T to Wavey Davey

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

view it as sports, because what else could you sensibly frame it as? But you're right, pro wrestling is the best analogy, really.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

views politics like that at all. I think the majority of us views politics as a giant screw-job being practiced on us by rich and powerful people making decisions we can't know. Politics is the lying, smiling cover-up for the screw-job.

That's why so many people hate BOTH Hillary and Trump, distrust BOTH the DNC and the RNC.

But those people have "nowhere to go" which is what Hillary et al have been relying on from the beginning. And we've been unwilling, or unable to build a new vehicle or destination for them for the past 25 years.

Only the people still committed to the process view it as sports.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Phoebe Loosinhouse's picture

It's why news and cable news in particular has devolved into discussing only the horse race and polling aspects of politics - how's your horse doing? Leaving out entirely the huge part of the audience who, particularly this year, don't have a horse in the race now that Bernie's out of it.

This year was different in that the Democrats let the mask slip and lost tons of voters who no longer view them as the home team or the guys in the white hats. This year we learned once and for all that there is no Easter Bunny or Santa.

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" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Disaster capitalism is weird; the moment of winning looks a lot like the moment of ultimate destruction. This seems to hold true for a lot of institutions existing in a disaster capitalist system. For example, the Democratic party, which has basically ceased to be a political party and no longer has any credible reason for being other than that generated by the most extreme of its enemies (without a Trump, they're sunk). It's in an incredibly precarious state, in that most people under 50 think it's garbage, and it's essentially burned all its moral and political capital--its credibility. They literally no longer have anyone to send out to talk to us that I can think of, except maybe Barbara Lee. They have no more stories to tell--they're desperately buying up all the stories they can from various civil rights movements, in an effort to inject the appearance of principle or purpose into an organization which has none--well, none that bears looking at.

To the extent that they have a purpose, it's to prevent political action, not to provide a vehicle for it; to dismantle civilization, rather than to run it.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Hawkfish's picture

This is a fine question.

I think the problem is that humans need shortcuts to think. We create symbols (like tribes and races) because we have to in order to manage the complexity of the world. The old "racial group X all look alike" trope is really easy to understand if you have ever built a software classifier: If you only know one black person, then you only need one simple question to identify them. But if you suddenly get placed in a situation where everyone is black, you start to panic because you can't make sense of your environment.

Eventually you can figure it out, but too many people don't get past the initial panic, or are never in that situation. We have a natural tendency to self-segregate, possibly to reduce stress. It takes a lot of mental effort to get past that, but nothing else will work.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

shaharazade's picture

but the current red, blue partisan tribal stance that people take is false. I have a neighbor a Democrat who's an environmental biologist and he fly's the American flag in front of his house on weird days. I asked him why he does this and he said 'I do it to show the Republican's that they do not own the flag.' First off this street and neighborhood is 85% Democratic and liberal. So what's the point?

This week a gay couple on the street who fly a rainbow flag on their porch had it ripped down and stolen. The kids on the block all drew rainbows on the sidewalk with words of Love under them. So here you have two tribes albeit mostly white of LGBT people and liberal straight families who have managed to live together and love each other.

The culture war is a tribal war that is stirred by both sides. The great war on terra is another tribal war the powers that own the place stir up. One time in NYC got off the subway at the wrong stop and found myself in Harlem somewhere. I had no money and decided to walk to 114th and Amsterdam where I lived. There was no other white person anywhere in site. I did not panic as people were really helpful and friendly. They gave me directions for getting home. The people I encountered were much more human then in any white upscale neighborhood in NYC you likely to get told to go fuck yourself if you ask for directions.

Divide and conquer along with carefully taught fear and hate of other is working well.

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Once, dismissing or at least just qualifying the open-hearted specialness of your street; the second time in an outright negative comparison.

It's fine. It's a free country. You can distinguish yourself from other whites as often and as passionately as you like. I'm not arguing. I'm not saying you're not right.

I'm just saying: Don't expect to build a populist movement that way. It's not gonna happen. In countless examples of speech much harsher than yours, the left and the Democrats have taken great pains to make clear they do not belong to the dirty, ignorant, fat, uneducated, beer-swilling, wife-beating, misogynistic, racist, Walmart-shopping white working class. And then cluck incredulously when this class doesn't vote for them.

If the left wants to reengineer our tribes, it needs to start at home. The economic struggle Bernie talks about is going to require a real rainbow to win, and not only the parts the left traditionally cares about. Multiple battles can be fought, and sometimes you build alliances that you will later have to break once the great war is one. This is something liberals and the left need to do.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

remark. Well, not strange but I so rarely hear anyone make that point.

I know I've remarked that I don't have money so I have to fess up at doing a LOT of my shopping at Family Dollar or The Dollar Store. Last time I was in there for kitty litter I heard some guy argue with a woman about the election and I don't remember what started it or the exact words but the guy said something like "why do you care what I think when all white people, especially men, are all privileged racists according to you Democrats"?

Two things struck me right away. The first one is that I can certainly be an asshole because just looking at the guy I didn't give him credit for being that politically astute or that he actually had the ability to be that intelligent and well spoken. (I can be a real hypocrite at times because here I was buying cat litter in crappy old clothes at the Dollar Store. I had NO right to judge, especially the way I grew up, but I automatically did.) I learned a big lesson that day.

Second, it's true. We accuse and lecture and refuse to understand why calling a whole class of people racist might just be shooting ourselves in the foot. Nothing will ever convince Mr. Dirty Harley Shirt that we have his best interests at heart.

I grew up in the North Omaha 'Pleasantview' (ha!) Housing Projects and I have a whole different outlook on the situation than a lot of people do.

EDIT: Left off or deleted half a sentence

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Liberals refuse to believe it, because they have their narrative and they're sticking to it. Trump supporters are just violent bigots (never mind that some measure of the violence at his rallies came from the protestors), people who are not worth talking to. But if you do talk to them, you really get a sense of the vast harm PC has done. All that ridiculous shit that went down at colleges this year, especially the ones where nothing really happened--the fake vandalism, the Ivy League children of CEOs crying about their suffering, proclaiming sushi "cultural appropriation"--it wasn't just the kids acting out. It wasn't simply, bad behavior but "they have a point." No. People were listening. The anti-white racist language had a real effect. A bad effect. It insulted a whole lot of people. Now there's a piper to be paid, and he will be paid; if not in this election, then in a later one, and at a much, much higher price.

Another thing: Trump talks like a working-class person. Working-class people don't use language the same way as a Whole Foods soccer mom. Expressing solidarity is a much bigger part of conversation; there have been studies saying this, and my own upbringing confirms it for me. "I hear ya! Don't I know it!" And Trump's words are simple, strong, direct. Lots of superlatives and exaggerations and extremes, too. That's blue collar. Hillary's words are parsing, lawyerly, obfuscating--not sometimes but every time she opens her mouth. It's not just that she's a pathological liar, she's also speaking like a member of her parasitical class. It's how professionals talk. Next time someone attacks Trump, notice what they make fun of. Not just his ideas, some of which are absolutely batshit. But the way he speaks. The pundits love to attack him for talking like a working-class American. How well do we think that will go over?

Bernie was excellent at saying: Look, we disagree on this. But don't we agree on that? It's a critical skill.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

mean by seeing the the whole thing play out in real life by the cleaning products and laundry detergent. Mr. Dirty Harley Shirt was right, the left doesn't really care what he 'thinks'.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

The cultural stuff you're pointing out--which is important--only has this effect when put in the context of profound economic and political pain.

Even when people are in that much pain, if they have a chance to support something other than Trump, they often will. That's why Bernie was more popular than Trump. If you give people a chance to support a populist movement that will fight for them WITHOUT creating a race war in the process, they often will. If you want people to support a racist, destroy every non-racist populist movement around.

When there's no movement speaking for white working people except one that runs on racist scapegoating, some people will drop out of the process altogether, and the rest will rally around the racist.

So really, it's not PC liberals who created Donald Trump. It's the Clintons (whom you oddly identify with liberals, I guess because Hillary's flavor du jour is to make nice with Black people and talk PC. Eight years ago, she was playing for the other team, saying things like "Hard-working people, white people, won't vote for Barack Obama." When you've got somebody with that level of sociopathy, she doesn't really belong to any team except Team Power.)

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

It's a weapon. It's designed to inflict pain. That's the only reason why it exists. This isn't some organic movement like the revival of Hush Puppies. It was manufactured, promoted, enforced.

Reason--it's a cudgel for beating the white working class, and a tribal signal to separate friends from enemies. It's the blue version of abortion, guns and gays. Cultural values that mobilize the little people to fight for their own side's donor class.

It's not an accident that PC first arose in the 90s, in the run-up to NAFTA. It faded during Clinton's presidency because the donors were getting everything they wanted.

I'm not arguing against the fact that the working class is angry because it's in pain. Of course it is. And there is no question that much of the angry white working class would've rallied around Bernie instead of Trump, for multiple reasons. But people are constantly dismissing PC as "no big deal." It's a huge, huge deal.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

into thinking that a real political fight is going on in DC. It is a tribal signal, but the fact is that the tribes themselves are just a joke on the people who really believe in them. The leaders of the packs, if you will, are all cozy together and laughing like hell at the people who fall for this divide-and-conquer tactic.

god guns gays on the right
racism sexism homophobia on the left

The point isn't that the liberals need to be sorry for their PC, anymore than the right wing needs to be sorry for its racism. Sorry and a quarter will buy me a phone call (maybe). Racism is deadly serious, but making people sorry does jack and shit to stop it. The point is that neither the right- or left-wing group has a say in what happens in our country anymore, because the rich and powerful have taken it all. There seems to be some feeling among Black pundits and politicians that this is their great moment to rise in importance ("Nobody can secure the Democratic nomination without us!") but the truth is that they are going to get shafted by the Clintons and their rich donors just as much as the white people are.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

I want to see somebody try a summit between former Ds and former Rs--roughly, Bernie and Trump supporters, though that's a bit inaccurate--and come up with a common platform.It wouldn't include a lot of policy ideas that you or I might favor. But it would go to the heart of the power structure. I think it would knock people's socks off.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Having talked to a lot of right-wingers on Twitter and elsewhere, yeah, I think there's a lot of stuff we have in common; anti-corruption stuff, Bill of Rights stuff, Social Security and Medicare, even. The three places we can't seem to meet are 1)a lot of them don't have a problem with massive pollution wrecking our world, 2)there's a lot of racism amongst them, and that is a problem, apart from the PC issue; if you honestly believe that black and brown workers are the ones screwing up your life, that's a severe miscalculation that lets the wealthy off the hook and hurts people who didn't do a damn thing to hurt you, 3)a lot of them seem quite able to see the corruption and tyranny of the government w/out being able to see the corruption and tyranny of the private sector, which is like saying you want those nasty hookers off the street at the same time you pretend there are no johns and no pimps in the world (doesn't work). How you can blame politicians for taking bribes without noticing that there's a rich guy in the private sector doing the bribing is beyond me.

Those are the road blocks I see. The first one, well, I can just not work on climate and water pollution with them--or only work with the RW farmers and ranchers who DO get it. The other two are more difficult. But Bernie didn't have a big problem getting a bunch of WV folks to cheer for the end of racism!

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

or however you spell it.

I'm used to people spouting talking points so predictable they don't even need to finish speaking. I already know exactly what they're going to say. That sub is a bit different, though. There are the usual assholes but also a number of young Donald supporters who see the Democrats as...drumroll..a party of hypocritical corporate hacks. Just imagine. I've been saying for a while, RW beliefs may be crazy but their criticisms of Democrats have been increasingly spot on. Hypocrisy. Virtue signaling. All that.

I think somebody should really try this. Avoid using any of the traditional language or talking points. Focus the message on taking the economic and political ring of power away. See who responds.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

This is ongoing for me, but perhaps I need a more systematic approach (b/c the way I'm doing it now, the connections don't last. Twitter is very ephemeral.)

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

First, by the Republicans in the early 80s, who attacked all liberals as "PC;" then, by the Clintons in the 90s, in the manner you describe.

The idea here was to create the divide you're describing. I believe both sides (Democrat and Republican) were working to create that divide, from '86 on. Basically using the Southern Strategy (which isn't just southern anymore) they propelled both parties to greater success by booking a fake war between them, making the Democrats into the "We like POC!" party and the Republicans into the "We hate POC!" party. It's like taking the race war in America and making a wrestling angle out of it. Hillary v Trump is the high-water mark of this politics.

Here's the thing: there is a real race war, and black people are getting treated like shit; there is a real class war, and white people AND black people are getting treated like shit; white people fairly often blame black people for the fact that they are getting treated like shit by rich white people, and that's a real useful thing for the rich white people to exploit. All this is real. But that doesn't mean the wrestling angle we're being sold is real.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

identity politics, is the tactic, or one of them.
Anything to keep wage earners from reaching and maintaining solidarity vs the 1% will be used.

Immigration is another tactic. In the UK we saw in 2015 over 300,000 immigrants into that country, mainly legal, mainly looking for jobs. The average Pole makes 1/3 of the average UK worker and the average Portuguese makes 50% of the UK worker. This depresses wages. These facts are enough to explain BREXIT and if you look at a map at where BREXIT polled strongest, it was in the north of England which is their rust belt - cities left to decay as manufacturing left and mining shut down.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

is truly a marvel to behold.

Racism against Latinos, etc.=bad. Concern about unrestricted flooding of the labor markets=legitimate. A simple equation that Democrats like to pretend they can't understand.

A workplace I know just replaced a $60-80K project manager with an Indian on an H1B visa. Probably costing $20-30K. He works in software development. The job is not in software development. It's a completely new area for him, one that has nothing to do with what he got the visa for. He's just cheap. Several people complained. They were threatened with HR for their "racism."

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you.

Global capital has become all-dominant mostly through exploiting the wage differences between the global north and south. In the part 25 years manufacturing in the global south has risen to 80+% of world output. As the USA's foreign policy, at the behest of the monopoly capitalists, displaces people and disrupts traditional society(and overthrows governments) people leave heading for a stable country to work and live in safety. That they depress already low wages - wage earners now capture virtually none of their increase in productivity - is a fact and is resented. Who speaks for those who've lost a middle income niche? Trump says a few things to indicate he realizes the pain - the fact he quickly contradicts himself is often overlooked - and Clinton does not. Obama and his wife declare things are peachy and the USA is the greatest country on the planet.

The fake trade deals are as much protectionism as they are lowering of tariffs. The misuse of visas in the Tech industries is well documented. The freezing out of foreign doctors and lawyers is not as well known but the freezeout protects these overpaid domestic professionals.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Mass migration is all part of the plan--depress wages everywhere. It's taking a flood of millions to depress Germany's wages, but it will work there, too.

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manufacture items not easily replicated outside of Germany. Although German unions are strong, it seems to many that they are working closely with the domestic capitalists to both preserve jobs and to get small raises. You can't argue against that too much until, and unless, they are agreeing to tiered contracts with the young workers losing some benefits.

I am glad we are in agreement - thanks for the reply.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

perceived or real, if they've got a good job and their family is secure and they think they have a say in their country's affairs and that the law will be applied equally (or nearly so) to high and low. In other words, if they think they're going to get a fair shake economically, politically, and legally.

Putting it all off onto "PC," without the context of the fall of the old economy--and the old politics--is a mistake.

The idea of the elitist professional class who condescends to you and makes your life hell, while hobnobbing with POC and promoting them above the white working class, is a very old idea, and is usually used by the right wing to explain the white working class' suffering. It works real well as propaganda, and both Hillary and Trump are using that idea to fuel their engines.

But none of it works without a class war that's destroying people's lives. None of it works without the pain dial being turned up.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

and those who want to be wage earners, and struggles to build solidarity on an international scale, which is the scale monopoly capital operates on. If your life is precarious and you are on the edge, talking about tribes isn't going to cut it.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

They're the ones Cass is talking about when he discusses the Red and Blue Tribes.

Most people in this country think those tribes are a load of shit, and so are their stories and their little contests, for the very reason you point out: the real fight is between the .01% and everyone else. But they don't have any idea how to get them out of control of our politics and economy.

I don't have a problem w/Cass writing about those tribes; they're still relevant, mainly because the rest of us haven't figured out a political vehicle that can express our will.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

employed or those underemployed or those unemployed.

Richard Trumpka while he was still with the UMW tried to form a Labor Party and, in spite of some significant resources, got nowhere. A younger Bernie, a Bernie who didn't throw in the towel, would still be travelling the country, still getting his $27 donations and still be polling in at least the 30s%. It would be something positive and something for those now in control of the political economy to try and deal with.

Not now, but I hope soon

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Shahryar's picture

you probably should have asked for clarification before you went lecture-y....or perhaps I'm misunderstanding you!

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shaharazade's picture

pejoratively in either case you stated. As far as the 'open-heartness' of my street, my point was that it is a so called 'progressive' mainly white upper middle class tribe. I'm not bad mouthing the people here but due to gentrification the people who live here these days are pretty much caught up in the us vs. them mentality. The 'dirty, ignorant, fat, uneducated, beer-swilling, wife-beating, misogynistic, racist, Walmart-shopping white working class' is who they focus on as the enemy. Open-hearted this street is not. Their hearts are open to each other, tribes within a tribe.

As for my NYC reference it was not putting down 'white' New York'ers. I lived there for 6 mos. back in the seventies as a poor struggling artist young 'un. I lived near Colombia University not far from Spanish Harlem. i worked in a Greek restaurant called the Campus Cafe where all 'tribes' ate cheap burgers and mingled. As I'm from Oregon I asked my room mates to take me to Harlem and the East Village but no one would. It's too dangerous and scary they said.

New York is just plain scary on a humanistic level unless your insulated by being rich. Maybe if I had used a 'white' NYC so called scary neighborhood your lecture would make more sense. I found that Harlem was more open to my white ass than the rest of NYC. Besides which i was reacting to the comment above me that said people panic in crowds that are out of their particular tribe. They might but if they didn't they just might find 'you get what you need''. People are people sand most of them are not assholes, they are decent. They are part of the biggest tribe on earth humanity.

Now for my lecture to you. I don't give a rats ass about the Democratic party or Bernie's so called Our Revolution. I don't think for a minute that it cares about anything other then getting more better Democrat's elected. I'm not a Democrat I want them gone daddy gone. A real rainbow of suckers? Wow just wow and later on we can break these alliances? That's not a political revolution that's a con.Thank god most people are hip to there jive. tell this crap to the people who live 80 blocks outside my so called liberal my neighborhood. These are the forgotten ones the people of all colors who are poor not middle class and have enough sense to know that neither he Demparty or Bernie is going to do a damn thing to stop this shit.

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boriscleto's picture

Feathered tribesman dancing around a god carved out of a tree trunk.

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

TheOtherMaven's picture

Building effigies of the desired messengers, hoping that will bring the actual messengers to rain down maerial goods and happiness from the skies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult - it's a start....

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

+4

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

I've struggled since the end of the Democratic primary for exactly this reason, I think. I used to think of myself as part of the "left". I haven't been a registered Democrat for a number of years, though did re-register with them so I could vote for Bernie. Still, I thought of myself as a Democrat who occasionally voted for the Greens or socialists. This year the illusion that I was a part of the big tent of Democrats has disappeared and I've felt adrift. As someone who studied political science in college, election years have typically been my Superbowl. This year, I have lost all passion for the "game" and I'm struggling to find something to fill the void. I lost Daily Kos, I lost my sense of being part of unified left, I've felt actively spurned by former allies, and I've been painted as an enemy for questioning positions that I had thought my tribe was mostly on the same page for.

Tribalism can have benefits. As a gay man, identifying with the LGBT community provided protection, community, and made it easier to find companionship. As with anything, there can be a dark side and extreme loss when the sense of inclusion and safety is lost.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

We are in a post-policy age, unless one wants to address the one issue that rules them all.

Occupy's one demand was to end corporate capitalism's control over the federal government. What we've got here is a government--if we can call it that--whose sole purpose is to maintain the concentration of wealth and power into the same few hands, regardless of consequences. When that is the starting point, how much policy debate can there be?

The only time "issues" are going to come up are when 1)the wealthy and powerful are in disagreement on an issue, as with immigration, and 2)the wealthy and powerful don't actually give a shit what happens on an issue, because it has no impact on their power and money, as with LGBT rights.

That's why the focus is so relentlessly on personality, style, and, to some extent, scandal.
Strong preference is given to scandals that are less substantive, however; what someone said, whether there are dirty pictures somewhere, etc., rather than whether someone actually did something horrible. That's why Donald Trump saying women should be punished for abortions is more important than Hillary saying she's willing to compromise with the Republicans on abortion as long as the life of the mother was protected. The one is a horrible blowhard statement that likely wouldn't amount to much; the other represents a complete collapse of the pro-choice movement, as its chosen standard-bearer adopts the standard Republican position on abortion before she even gets to DC. It's also why Donald Trump talking about a ban on Muslims visiting the US is more important than Hillary actually killing lots and lots of Muslims in Libya and Syria, and wanting to kill still more in Iran.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cassiodorus's picture

There are no real issues because regardless of what they say (and yes to a large extent they manufacture "issues" because how else are the two tribes to be fooled into thinking the charade is in their interests?) the "starting point" (as you call it) will always be in the same place.

This is why a new tribe is necessary -- because the two tribes (D) and (R) have been co-opted into acquiescence in the rituals of "personality, style, and scandal." The new tribe can be put together with ingredients from old coalitions -- Bernie Sanders for President, for instance, or the Green Party, or the folks who support Kshama Sawant in Seattle, or the critical educators.

Speaking of old coalitions, has anyone here tried to reach out to the eight people who quit "Our Revolution" when Jeff Weaver was brought in? Sanders tried to get them to reconsider, and they declined, which says something interesting.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

I'd like to hear what they have to say. Perhaps they could be persuaded to post here.

Some people seem to think that those folks are anti-Bernie folks, so there might be some heat as well as light. I'm getting this more from Twitter than from C99, though (I had an argument on Twitter this morning with someone who was incensed at the "weak revolutionaries" and "fake supporters" that suggested that Bernie would take dark money. It seems difficult for some people to understand that I still care about Bernie, and I'm not mad at him, and I don't think he's a terrible person or a traitor--but that doesn't mean he won't do bad things, now that he's been made part of the Clinton machine. And I do think he was made part of it, involuntarily.)

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver