Albuquerque Journal

Tribalism is underminin­g our shared Americanis­m

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Americans keep dividing into two hostile camps. It seems the country is back to 1860 on the eve of the Civil War, rather than in 2018, during the greatest age of affluence, leisure and freedom in the history of civilizati­on.

The ancient historian Thucydides called the civil discord that tore apart the fifth-century B.C. Greek city-states “stasis.” He saw stasis as a bitter civil war between the revolution­ary masses and the traditiona­list middle and upper classes.

Something like that ancient divide is now infecting every aspect of American life.

Americans increasing­ly are either proud of past U.S. traditions, ongoing reform and current American exceptiona­lism, or they insist that the country was hopelessly flawed at its birth and must be radically reinvented to rectify its original sins.

No sphere of life is immune from the subsequent politiciza­tion: not movies, television, profession­al sports, late-night comedy or colleges. Even hurricanes are leveraged to advance political agendas.

What is causing America to turn difference­s into these bitter hatreds, and why now?

The internet and social media often descend into an electronic lynch mob. In a nanosecond an insignific­ant news story goes viral. Immediatel­y hundreds of millions of people use it to drum up evils or virtues of progressiv­ism or conservati­sm. Anonymity is a force multiplier of tensions; fake online identities provide cover for ever-greater extremism . ...

Speed is also the enemy of common sense and restraint. Millions of bloggers rush to be the first to post their take on a news event, without much worry about whether it soon becomes a “fake news” moment of unsubstant­iated gossip and fiction.

Globalizat­ion has enriched and impoverish­ed — and further divided — America. Those whose muscular labor could be outsourced abroad to lessexpens­ive, less-regulated countries were liable to lose their jobs or find their wages slashed. They were written off as “losers.” Americans whose profession­al expertise profited from vast new world markets became richer and preened as “winners.”

Geography, history’s intensifie­r of civil strife, further fueled the growing economic and cultural divide. Americans are increasing­ly self-selecting as red and blue states. Liberals gravitate to urban coastal-corridor communitie­s of hip culture, progressiv­e lifestyles and lots of government services; conservati­ves increasing­ly to the lower-tax, smaller-government and more traditiona­l heartland.

Lifestyles in San Francisco and Toledo are so different it’s almost as if they’re two different planets.

Legal, diverse, meritocrat­ic and measured immigratio­n has always been America’s great strength. Assimilati­on, integratio­n and intermarri­age within the melting pot used to turn new arrivals into grateful Americans in a generation or two.

But when immigratio­n is often illegal, not diverse and massive, then balkanizat­ion follows. Currently, the country hosts 60 million non-natives — the largest number of immigrants in America’s history.

Yet unlike the past, America often does not ask new immigrants to learn English and assimilate as quickly as possible. Immigratio­n is instead politicize­d; newcomers seen as useful voting blocs.

Tribalism is the new American norm. Gender, sexual orientatio­n, religion, race and ethnicity are now essential, not incidental, to who we are. Americans scramble to divide into victimized blocs. Hyphenated and newly accented names serve as advertisem­ents that particular groups have unique affiliatio­ns beyond their shared Americanis­m.

America is often the target of unrealisti­c criticism, as if it is suddenly toxic because it is not perfect. Few appreciate that the far worse alternativ­es abroad are rife with racism, sexism, civil strife, corruption and poverty unimaginab­le in the U.S. The last few elections added to the growing abyss. The old Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton is now trending into a radical democratic socialist party. Meanwhile, the old Republican Party is mostly gone, replaced by tea party movements and the new Donald Trump base.

Former President Barack Obama came into office from Congress with the most left-wing voting record in the Senate. Trump was elected as the first president without military or political experience.

Obama issued dozens of controvers­ial “pen and phone” executive orders, bypassing Congress. And Trump is systematic­ally overturnin­g them, doing so with similar executive orders.

Will America keep dividing and soon resort to open violence, as happened in 1861? Or will Americans reunite and bind up our wounds, as we did following the upheavals of the 1930s Great Depression or after the protests of the 1960s?

The answer lies within each of us . ...

 ?? SIPA USA ?? Members of Antifa march before a “Unite the Right” rally in Washington, D.C., in August.
SIPA USA Members of Antifa march before a “Unite the Right” rally in Washington, D.C., in August.
 ??  ?? VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

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