Alexandra Erin
@alexandraerin
I really hate the term "tribalism", for a variety of reasons. I'm not going to get into it in depth here and I'm going to block anyone who tries to explain why It's A Good Term, Actually.
The problem in US culture isn't tribes.
It's teams.
Here in the US, which is where I'm speaking about so I'm also going to block anyone who jumps in to explain to me that it's not just the US, we learn about the importance of teams early on. Our schools have them. Your school's team is the best team, because you go there.
We go to rallies for our teams. At some schools, they're mandatory. At some other schools, they're "voluntary" except not really. At my school, we were told (when we asked) that if we didn't want to go to a pep rally, we could choose instead to sit and write papers about why not.
We learn to identify with a team, to feel like their triumphs are ours and their losses are ours, to believe that everything they do is best and right and good, and that everything the other team does is cheap and nasty and underhanded.
We grow up and we get new teams. We buy jerseys and pennants and foam hands, and we cheer the way we learned to cheer and we identify with them the way we learned to identify with our first teams.
We basically become this:
local.theonion.com/you-will-suffer-humiliation-when-the-sports-team-from-m-1819583814/amp?__twitter_impression=true
And then, if we're not careful, we become that for everything.
We forget how to think that someone is in the right about one thing without taking their side generally, without buying their metaphorical jerseys and pennants.
When I see people sitting out a general election or worse because they're mad their guy in the primary was "robbed", this behavior doesn't strike me as "tribal".
It reminds me of team spectator sports.
When I see people who were at the very least sensibly skeptical of the FBI before now proclaiming that real Americans support our unimpeachable law enforcement protection buddies who only have our best interests at heart, I think of team spectator sports.
Can we just forget about teams? The FBI is in the right on this memo thing. We should be supporting them against the Trump regime's attempts to shutdown the investigation and turn them into a partisan political instrument.
We don't have to sit in the stands and lead cheers.
I'm not Team FBI. I don't stand with the FBI. I stand against Trump and I stand against corruption in our government and law enforcement. To whatever extent at the moment the FBI is standing in the same place as I am, we are standing together.
I'm not buying their jersey.
I'll say "vote for the Democrat" in a general election 99 cases out of 100, but that's not because rah rah rah go team, it's because on a pragmatic level that's the best move available. (And part of how we get to a world where we have better moves available.)
We don't need teams. We don't need to decide we're on someone's team to support them when it's right or make the mistake of thinking they're on our team because they are pushing in the same direction as us for a spell.
Imagine if we didn't have that defensive reaction when we find out someone on our "team" did something terrible.
Conversely, imagine if we could process that someone we pull together with did something disappointing and not have to cancel their membership.
I mean, the biggest piece of evidence that the FBI wasn't involved in a partisan push to stop Trump from winning the election is that they actively shielded him and helped torpedo his opponent.
So no, I don't stand with them.
I stand for what's right.