Comment by jmyeet

Just in the last election cycle, we saw tribal Democratic voters try and silence those protesting the Biden administration and then immediately go "we have always been at war with Eurasia" and do the exact same thing for Kamala.

And MAGA goes beyond being tribal: by any objective measure, it's a cult.

Plus you see an awful lot of people who will criticize one side for doing one thing while supporting the other side for doing the exact same thing. Obama, for example, was the Deporter-in-Chief (~3 million deported), Biden continued the Trump policy of using Title 42 to deny asylum claims and Kamala proposed building the very same border wall that all Democrats protested when Trump proposed it in 2020.

I'm a leftist and any leftist will have seen so many liberals who love progressive aesthetics but turn into a jack-booted fascist the second you want to address any of the underlying economic issues. For example, tell people "house prices need to come down" to solve any number of issues such as homelessness and see how they react.

> The implication instead seems to be that unless you are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum you must be "tribal". That feels dismissive.

On this, I 100% agree. There are several reasons why:

1. Intellectual laziness. People think they're "above the fray" by bothsidesing everything;

2. Ignorance. This is particularly an issue for Democratic voters in the US. Both Democrats and Republicans are neoliberals. US foreign policy is bipartisan. Full-throated support for capitalism is bipartisan. But a large segment of Democrats tell themselves they're good people for wearing a pride pin while at the same time thinking homeless people should die in the stree; or

3. Deception. This is particularly the case for Republicans who will try and center their positions by appealing to "common sense" and label Democrats, who are a center-right party, as "the far Left" or "the radical Left".

So, yes, people do use "tribalism" as an epithet to silence legitimate criticisim but there is also tribalism.