Tribalism is not the problem

As a diagnosis for what's ailing American politics, it is badly misleading and more than a little offensive

Emojis.

The latest meme from the Davos elite set is that America is afflicted with "tribalism." We're splitting up into two irreconcilable tribes, so the argument goes, and politics is becoming more and more an all-out war to the death. People like Yale Law professor Amy Chua, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Brookings Institution fellow Shadi Hamid, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and many others have sounded the tribalism alarm.

The suggestion is that tribes are groups with a zealous, irrational attachment to their own group, and thus forever fight other groups for no reason. "When politics becomes a perpetual tribal war, ends justify almost any means and individuals are absolved from the constraints of normal decency," writes George Packer in The New Yorker.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.