Midterms were a victory for tribalism

On Nov. 8, Democrats emerged victorious as the party of identity politics. Somehow they managed to unite suburban housewives, single Black mothers, "transgenders," post-graduate lesbians and lightly bearded males of all races. The GOP establishment looked on in impotent awe. Was it abortion (ranked third to fifth in polls)? Or was it the culmination of decades of media-driven hatred for conservative, Christian, masculine and traditional-family values that drove Americans to vote against the collective national interest?

Ignorance is strength.

Democrats and their RINO enablers now form a single political establishment. This has not created two Americas, but many Americas. Each group votes for its own self-interest, competes with others, yet slavishly unites in bitter hatred for the common enemy: founding American principles … and any “group” that exemplifies them. 

Freedom without order is chaos. As our society tribalizes, our yearning for order will destroy freedom. Our Political Establishment’s desire is to provide that heavy-handed order to a disunited ineffectual rabble.

Our world has been here before. Rome’s elites handed out privilege, rank and debt forgiveness to political tribes too. Then, Romans began electing dictators. We are 31 trillion in debt; the seat of an exploitive global (corporate) empire in a tri-polar nuclear world currently in a proxy war with another empire. And yet … we can’t unite. Will America be the first Great Power to reverse its own decline? Or will foreign tourists one day visit the old temples of the Democratic People’s Republic of D.C.? 

DEAN CANNON

Sandpoint