Societal Change: The Rise of Tribalism in the U.S.

As per its title, this blog is focused on fiction, but with one or two exceptions, what I have had to say on that topic has attracted little interest.

This, one could argue, opens the door to other subjects, such as where we are in the wake of Donald Trump's election as President of the United States.

An important factor seems to be that as America's traditional white majority shrinks in size and various categories of non-whites demand seats at the country's various tables of power -- political, social and cultural -- tribalism is on the increase.

This Sunday, the New York Times magazine tackled the topic in its "First Words" column.

For most of the post-war period, and particularly in the wake of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that led to Southern conservatives switching from Democrat to Republican, the country has been pretty evenly divided between the two parties. And until recent years -- according to regular American National Election Studies surveys -- most people were not strikingly dissatisfied with the opposition party.  As a result, disputes were mainly based on policies and compromise was often possible.

More recently -- and particularly since Barack Obama was elected president -- there has been an important change: the percentage of survey respondents expressing extremely negative views of the opposition party has risen dramatically.

"In the post-war era, the coalitions that made up the Democratic and Republican Parties were haphazard and incongruous, bearing little resemblance to the tribes of today," the NYT article says.

More than any other politician -- and perhaps because he wasn't previously a seasoned politician conditioned by what went on  before -- Donald Trump has tapped into this apparent new reality. Among other things, he has clearly determined that his tribe -- very largely white -- wants everything associated with former president Obama overturned or erased. That's not so much because Obama's policies were too far left -- they weren't -- but because Obama's very ascension to the top elected office in the U.S. represented a major real or symbolic shift away from those who traditionally sat at American tables of power. Or at least that seems to be the way in which many who voted for Trump perceived it.

It is tough for partisans to say that in a straight-forward manner.  "Racist" remains a very uncomfortable label. But many can quite comfortably vent their feelings or frustrations by being opposed to immigration, particularly since unlike the past, the vast majority of those seeking to enter the U.S. now do not look like them. With something like 20 million people living illegally in the U.S. already and the possibility of terrorism ever present, many can feel comfortable backing strict border controls and in so doing hopefully slow the country's increasing racial and cultural diversity.

That seems to be where U.S. socio/political realities stand at present.