Paul Dunlop – The Democrat Party has been taken over by people who want power, the Left. Our system makes it hard to accumulate power. Democrats must destroy our system. Tribalism is a great weapon for doing that.
The leftist Democrat leaders of today only care about getting and keeping power. They don’t care about Blacks or gays or trans or environmentalists. These groups are just weapons of convenience with which to pound the American public into permanent submission. Stoking preexisting tensions in our society, or creating tensions where none exist has been an effective tactic.
The Democrats are trying to tribalize America by destroying our current broad-based American culture and replacing it with a tribal culture. In their new tribalism we would get our identity from our differences, slicing and dicing our culture along racial, gender, and environmentalist lines. In primitive cultures someone trying to do this would probably be cast out or punished by the tribe or its leaders for threatening the established order that helps it survive.
There will always be radicals and bigots in our society hovering around the fringe, waiting for the chance spread their poison of division and hatred. As a nation we have welcomed them back when we see genuine repentance and strived to keep them marginalized when their hatred persists. But now they have taken over the Democrat Party, our government and large swaths of our culture.
Tribalism’s power is that it creates division. Division can be very helpful when trying to conquer a nation. In today’s world there seem to be few nations governed as a group of tribes that are stable and secure. They might be able to survive perpetual internal conflict, but they cannot survive in a world of external intrigue and national threats if they cannot make decisions and act with dispatch as a unified people.
The American Founders understood this. American society has had tribal issues too. Early on the colonies and later the states were our tribes. But the thing that made our society better than other tribal societies was that we shared a common identity and ideal that were more important to us than arbitrary external differences.
In the Left’s tribal America every tribe has to tiptoe through the minefield of every other tribe’s delicate sensibilities, while living in fear of having your reputation, your livelihood or your life destroyed.
The reason the Founders didn’t want a regional tribal culture of independent states and the reason the Democrats do want it is the same. Tribal regions are easily conquered and frequently in perpetual chaos. They cannot marshal their collective resources to meet any major crisis.
America is stronger when we are all Americans, but weaker when we are Black, White, Hispanic, gay, trans, or gender fluid. A shared sense of identity is critical to the health and resilience of a society and a nation. The idea of being one people. The story we tell ourselves about who we are as a people.
Some nations share racial or ethnic unity; some a common history; some a sense that the land in which they live ties them together. The American sense of unity has always been based on principles and ideals about the inherent value, dignity and freedoms bestowed upon us by our Creator. Our society, our government and our nation were designed and constructed to enshrine this.
Our American experiment is envied by peoples all over the world. Not because they hate their land or their traditions or their people, but because their aspirations for a good life have been oppressed or corrupted by people who value only power. People who have turned their nation’s daily life into a dangerous and crushing grind.
America’s very existence threatens those who strive for power. It is also a constant reminder to oppressed people that there is hope for a better life. And that idea is the single greatest threat to despots the world over. The American ideal is an inclusive one provided your goal is not the destruction of civilization itself. In a speech he gave on January 27, 1838 before he became president, Abraham Lincoln said:
“…At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Lincoln clearly understood that America’s greatest threats come from within. Ideas like tribalism don’t do well when exposed to the light of day. We need to remember what we learned in civics classes in decades past. And we need to keep talking to each other, debating, arguing, whatever it takes.
When given the facts, ordinary Americans of any political party, will recognize danger when they see it. If rank and file Democrat voters ever break through the myriad layers of deception and get a clear view of how they have been manipulated, there will be a fierce cultural and political reckoning.
As Americans we must be vigilant in reminding ourselves and each other of who we are and why our identity and way of life needs constant protection.
SF Source American Thinker Jan 2024