This is a fantastic book. Clearly and cleanly written, well-sourced, full of both sense and sensibility. The thesis: lack of understanding of the tribal instinct will inevitably lead to disaster both abroad and at home. I appreciated the logical construction of this book: it moves from external to internal. First, the author spends much time detailing how American interventions - portrayed in a number of examples (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela) - have started from a place of complete misunderstanding, an arrogant misreading of how American intercessions will impact the countries in question, a refusal to recognize let alone analyze the tribal demarcations within countries where we have forcibly placed ourselves. That lack of understanding and analysis has led to catastrophe; most frustrating of all, these are catastrophes that could have been avoided, if willful arrogance disguised as idealism was not such a foundational attribute of American foreign policy.
After reviewing what went wrong abroad through the lens of how tribalism dictates the power structures within many (most? all?) countries, Prof. Chua turns her assessment inward, towards the U.S. itself. The last two chapters of the book are where extremists on both the right and the left may find horseshoe unity in disregarding or rejecting the author's illustration of how the U.S. itself is a tribalist nation - to its ongoing harm. Her vaccines against this virus are holistic ones, and fairly simple and straightforward: recognize the tribalism that exists across the political spectrum; deploy genuine empathy; and do not revert to binary thinking, no matter how tempting, no matter how good it feels to be a part of a wave of righteous group-think. Every tribe and every individual has their reasons, their rationales, their contexts. These should be understood, not demonized. Us versus Them solves nothing in the long run and is not sustainable; a body in constant opposition to itself is a body that will inevitably fray and then decay.
Pontification ahead
I often consider tribalism to be a kind of toxin: a harmful substance produced within a living organism. Specifically, a harmful outlook. One that damages the bodies that come in contact with that toxin and one that damages the body where the toxin itself is generated. The tribalistic perspective can be promoted by the individual, by the group, by the nation. The final and key chapters of Political Tribes portrays the harmful impact that tribalism continues to generate within the American body.
And that said, despite the toxin & virus metaphors... I don't want to necessarily demonize tribalism in its entirety either. Who am I to condescend to those whose tribalist way of thinking is their way of life - their community's way of life, for generations? I want to be able to recognize tribalism and then disengage myself from a tribalist mode of thinking when I see it coming from within. Not a joiner over here. But one of the great points of this book is that if change is to be promoted outside of the U.S., it must come from a place of understanding and respecting those whose ways of thinking and whose experiences are radically different from our own. Tribalism can't be ignored or dismissed. It is a natural part of the human condition. Chua's point is that tribalism - as dangerous and regressive as it may often be, and as much as it should be seen as something to be overcome - cannot simply be handwaved aside as a minor issue. But that is exactly what we have done in many a nation.
This book is important to me on an intellectual and political level because not only did it collate information both known and unknown (to me) about American misadventures abroad, it establishes a roadmap to avoiding those mistakes in the future. Well, we'll see if those lessons ever land with the powers that be.
More importantly to me, on a personal level, Political Tribes helped clarify my own thoughts about the toxicity that has been raging in this country of mine, and has helped me to stay on the track I've set for myself. I'm an old school progressive, and to me that means we must always progress, as individuals and as groups and as a nation. Binary, tribalist group-think is an inhibitor to actual progress in the United States and should be a relic of the past, despite how strongly we may cling to that and other relics. This country is a collection of cultural identities and each cultural identity is married to an overall American identity; neither identity needs to be subsumed by the other. The ability of each of us to hold multiple identities simultaneously, to recognize that we can be a person of many tribes and no single tribe, and to not be ashamed of any of those different identities, is exactly how we can check our own reductive, tribalist instincts. I do not equal one thing nor does the person whose perspective that is diametrically opposed to my own way of thinking equal one thing. As the saying goes: we are large, we contain multitudes.
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