The Triumph of Tribalism?

Michael Gerson

Op-ed contributor Michael Gerson's column in today's Washington Post is a must-read. The headline says "Tribalism triumphs in America." The thrust is that in our country today, politically and culturally, we are ever at daggers drawn. We divide into two tribes (or "phyles"), "reds" and "blues," and each phyle makes perpetual war on the other.

Andrew Sullivan

Gerson's comments extend those of essayist Andrew Sullivan in a recent New York magazine. In "America Wasn’t Built for Humans," Sullivan asks how our democracy can survive the tribalism that has infected us during the last couple of decades. (Actually, I think tribalism of the sort Sullivan describes has been our bête noire since at least the late 1960s, when the country was nearly torn apart by race riots and by civil unrest incited by anti-Vietnam War protesters.)

Never have I read such insightful commentary. I agree with just about everything Gerson and Sullivan say.

My own focus on such matters is not quite as broad, presently, as that of these two gentlemen — who, frankly, are capable of greater intellectual breadth and depth than am I these days. I'm more about race than I am about all the other matters that the "reds" and the "blues" are at daggers drawn about. I don't think we can patch up our differences about all these other matters if we can't get back to patching up our differences about race in America.