TRUMPISM EQUALS TRIBALISM

By Edwin Cooney

The culture war through which we’ve been passing since the era of President Carter’s abandonment by Neo-Democrats in the late 1970s has advanced to a degree that most of us, me included, have yet to fully grasp.

Traditionally, issues have been fought out between conservatives and liberals, each insisting that they haven’t really changed their principles, the other guy has changed his or the other woman has changed hers. Ronald Reagan used to give the split between FDR and Al Smith as an example. Al Smith, the “wet” “Catholic” 1928 Democratic Party presidential candidate who lost to Herbert Hoover, split with Franklin Roosevelt over his New Deal government plan. Mr. Reagan always asserted that the split between them was a principled or ideological split. “…Al Smith didn’t leave his party, the party left him,” Mr. Reagan often insisted. The truth is that it was a very personal split which began when Governor-elect Roosevelt refused to hire Al Smith’s secretary Belle Moskowitz. Tragically, Al Smith lost not only the presidency, but was the victim of bitter prejudice on the part of an anti-Catholic public. Understandably angered and bitter about his loss of office and its accompanying prestige, Smith felt that FDR was ungrateful for his assistance in transforming his invalid friend from obscurity into the Governorship of New York. The point of this story is that all politics is ultimately personal and thus we must cope today with both Tribalism and Trumpism.

Tribalism is a very, very ingrained aspect of who Americans are. What it all comes down to is that we’re all, in one way or another, fans. We’re sports fans, rock-in-roll fans, movie actor and actress fans, talk show host fans, Red Sox Nation fans, Savage (talk show host Michael Savage) Nation fans, etc. Fandom is the personalization of fanatic or fanaticism but its significance depends on how and for what purpose our individual sense of fandom is interpreted and ultimately exercised. A fan may not always agree with the decisions made by the object of its affection, but a fan seldom, if ever, objects publicly to that object’s actions. Even more, it ignores a leader’s inconsistencies no matter how blatant.

Sports and entertainment fandom is, for the most part, pretty harmless, but political fandom is rapidly, as I see it, breaking down into tribalism which too often creates a subculture with its own often extreme values and mores.

The election and inauguration of President Trump is a case in point. Donald Trump isn’t and never has been a conservative. Conservatism for President Trump is merely a convenient instrument, much as is the Republican party, for election to high public office. One of my favorite people, a man I’ll call Michigan Chris, used to assure me that no conservative would ever do what Bill Clinton did because conservatives, unlike liberals, possess a strong sense of Christian morality. Yet here in 2018, we find fundamentalist Christian preachers insisting that they didn’t support Donald Trump because he was or is a saint, but because he’s dedicated to return America to the values and mores of the Eisenhower era.

There are a number of very prominent conservatives who are absolutely baffled and bewildered by President Trump’s personalization of conservative doctrine. Their hero is still President Ronald Reagan who used his eloquent persuasiveness rather than the tactics of the worst type of ward politician to get his way. Ronald Reagan was, I believe, aloof, self-serving, and self-righteous, but he ultimately was a gentleman.

Tribalism is a social division much as nationhood. Nationhood or tribalism is the master of any political ideology. Its mainspring is loyalty rather than practicality or principle. Its doctrines, religious beliefs and practices are legitimized or delegitimized by the chief or the senior council. Tribalism as a political activity isn’t new in this country, but tribalism as a movement is what I believe we’re facing in 2018.

There have always been subdivisions of liberalism and conservatism. As the late great Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr once observed in a book about the cycles in American politics, traditionally, there are two main elements of conservatism. They are economic and social conservatism and they each have different “fish to fry.” Conservatism has a set of heroes with different agendas. Senator Robert A. Taft was primarily an international isolationist. Barry Goldwater was generally a strict constitutionalist. Bill Buckley was mostly a libertarian and Ronald Reagan was primarily a social conservative.

Likewise the history of liberalism has its own set of heroes. FDR, Truman, and Hubert Humphrey were labor union liberals. Adlai Stevenson, George Kennan, JFK and LBJ were primarily cold war activists.

President Trump has no set ideological pattern. He embraces tax cuts, business and climate deregulation, and good old “Know Nothing Party nativism.” At the same time, he’s anti NATO, and seemingly pro-dictator. Perhaps most powerful of all, he’s anti-politician even as he sits atop the greasy pole of American politics.

The primary responsibility of any tribe is self-protection. Modern 21st Century tribalism is absent of doctrine or dogmatism, but it’s loaded with self-righteous ambition and, under the guise of good old American conservatism, its goal is the socio/political defamation and destruction of all who oppose it.

Trump tribalism may well pass into history when the president’s term ends. But tribalism may well succeed as a political practice if Chief Trump wins re-election.

Next week I’ll tell you about an incredibly disturbing speech from a man named Dan.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY