I’ve been hammering on the point recently that most politics
today is tribalist nonsense. I say this because I see people voting for their
team, more than they actually vote for the causes that they apparently stand
for. This irks non-denominational
political actors like myself, who try to base their decisions on a law’s merit
rather than who proposed it. I’ve used the Patriot Act as an example (that was
considered a conservative thing to do?
Really?). There are many
others.
The fact is, we humans are struggling mightily to overcome
our baser instincts, and in a lot of cases, we are not very successful in doing
so. Our proclivity to fall into “us vs.
them” tribalist arguments is one of those cases. I’ve tried mightily to point out to people
that they are taking sides in the Giant Douche vs. Turd Sandwich debate based
on which political party Douche and Turd are a part of, when what they should
be doing is demanding an alternative because neither option is very good. And yet you have guys that are nominally
anti-douche in every way, vehemently defending the Douche because he is from
the right political party. 20 years ago,
Mitt Romney would have been considered to the left of most mainstream
democrats, and yet the nominally conservative republican base was rooting for
him as if he was their own personal savior come election time, just because of
the “R” after his name.
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And yea, then He said "there will be no alcohol or caffiene,"
and He saw that it was good... |
To prove my point, here are my five most favorite examples
of non-political tribalist nonsense in the present day. Focus on the point that I’m trying to make as
you read this, which is to say that when you stand apart from these tribalist
arguments, and you really don’t care which side is right and instead are
focused on the real answer to the issue, the people involved in them look like
drooling morons. You draw the moral.
Brand
loyalty arguments.
There are a lot of examples of these: Harley Davidson vs. Every Other Brand of
Motorcycle; Coke vs. Pepsi; Starbucks vs. coffee that is actually good...
I could go on for a while, but I won’t, because the only one that I need to mention in order for you to understand the
magnitude of the stupidity here is this one:
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| FULL SIZE PICKUPS! FUCK YEAH!!! |
Yup. Brand wars as
regards the three most popular brands of full sized pickup truck in the United
States. Ford vs. General Motors vs.
Dodge (now Ram, I guess?). You can see the bumper stickers
as you drive to work every morning.
Young boys urinating on the competing brand’s logo; “I’d rather push my
Chevy than drive a Ford!”; FORD = Found On Road Dead. Do I need to go on, because they just get more
vulgar from here on out?
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It's clever because the Dodge Diesel is made by Cummins,
and the Ford diesel is branded "Powerstroke" so the sticker is
making a commentary about how the owner... fuck it, never mind... |
In no other category does the vitriol get any worse than
with diesel pickups. One would assume
that since diesel trucks are the biggest, most powerful, most capable trucks
available right now that they are the pinnacle of that manufacturer’s truck
manufacturing ability, and so it is in those categories that the largest amount
of hate gets spewed.
If you listen to a Chevy guy, your Chevy will function
flawlessly for 500,000 miles, without even having to put fuel in it. You’d be
lucky to make it out of the parking lot with your Dodge before the piece of
shit managed to fall apart, however. A
Dodge guy will tell you that their engine (the 5.9 Cummins diesel) has been in
American industrial applications since the 1950s, is proven, powerful, and much
more reliable than that Japanese-sourced pile of crap with the “beer can
aluminum” heads in the Chevy. The Ford
guy will brag because his truck has the most GCVWR capability, and will put any
two Dodge or Chevys to shame in brute hauling manliness.
But if you take a second to look at the specifications for
all of these trucks, something is going to jump out at you, and that something
will be how absolutely, remarkably similar all these trucks are.
I chose the picture at the head of this section for a reason - those pictures are amalgamations of all three brands, overlayed over each other. Notice how they fit together perfectly? Notice how the trucks are almost identical in every way?
They all sport mid-300’s horsepower, turbo
diesel engines. They all have 6 speed
automatic transmissions. Yes, Ford’s
GCVWR is a bit higher (something like 1,500 pounds more) but then you look
further down the page and you’ll see that their truck’s curb weight is almost
exactly that much higher than that of the Dodge and Chevy offerings, meaning
it’s actual hauling capability is exactly
the same.
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| But the number is BIGGER! IT'S BIGGER!!!!! |
Each has its pluses and minuses which fit the preferences of
each individual owner, but we’re not talking about the major, vast gulf of
difference that you would be forced to assume exist if you were listening is as
an unsavvy outsider. And once you are
aware of that, you become more aware of how fucking moronic these people sound
when they literally get angry, and sometimes even violently so, in their
discussions about who’s truck can out-whatever who’s.
Best example I can think of:
This is a video of a test that some fucking genius came up
with to determine once and for all which truck is best. They took a Ford Expedition and a Chevy
Suburban, tied the back ends together with a tow strap, put them in 4-wheel
drive on a dry asphalt parking lot, and played tug-of-war with their $50,000
trucks. The Ford easily dragged the
Chevy backwards across the parking lot, so to the Ford guys, this is proof
positive that their truck is the biggest, baddest truck out there, and that
anyone who drives a truck with a “bowtie” is a light-loafered nancy-boy.
I did feel a bit like I shit in their punchbowl when I
pointed out to them that the only thing that this proved was that the Ford
Expedition was heavier than the Suburban, and nothing more.
2.
Racism
I am trying really hard to write something funny here, but
seriously, how does one make jokes about racism? It isn’t really that funny. I think the biggest thing that I always like
to point out here that the tribalists miss is that “different” is not the same
thing as “not equal.” You can have
discussions about differences, including discussing whether a certain
difference is a plus or minus to a particular group, but to use differences as
a bludgeon to “prove” that the other group is somehow inferior to your group is
just fucking stupid.
I could point out
that the same thing happens in the gender wars.
Women and men on both sides get absolutely twitter-pated about the fact
that men and women are not the same, talking from their bubble and their
viewpoint about how those differences make the other less than them, without
even considering that they are speaking from a bubble of their own perspective,
proclivities, and experiences.
3.
Religious Denominations
I’m not talking about different religions here, because in a
perverse sort of way, the historical fights between Christianity and Islam, for
instance, sort of makes sense in a rudimentary and moronic way. No, I’m talking about in-fighting within the
same religion, between different denominations.
Sunni vs. Shiite vs. Shia;
Catholic vs. Lutheran vs. Protestant.
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| Scientology vs. Sanity |
What you have here are people who all believe in the same
message of faith, hope, redemption, love, and eternal life, and yet get into
heated, many times insanely violent arguments about trivial points of dogma,
which were often times not even mentioned by the founder of the religion.
In an example that I hope won’t draw too much ire, the
tribalist mentality in humans is proven to be even stronger than our desire to
have a system of morality, by Christians fighting with each other over who is
properly worshipping the peaceful, pacifist originator of their religion.
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| "So, yeah, you're all doing it wrong, just so you know," |
At some point in time, someone decided that
Jesus Christ, a man who preached love and peace to the point to where he
wouldn’t even defend himself against the men who ended up brutally killing him,
would want them to start fighting with other people because they weren’t
kneeling in just the right way when they worshipped him, or picking the correct
day as the Sabbath. The tribalist
mentality has become so ingrained in us that we will do violence against people
in the name of a pacifist God, all over trivial points of dogma that Jesus
never even talked about, while at the same time not realizing how absolutely
ball-crushingly stupid that all sounds.
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| "Ahh, duuurrrrr..." |
The Sunnis and Shiites are bombing the shit out of each
other on an almost daily basis, all because they each think that the other is
wrong. If this isn’t bad enough, the
things over which they disagree are so trivial in the grand scheme of their
belief system that it boggles the mind that they would ever even consider
hurting one another over them.
Best example I can think of:
I was going to say the inter-Islamic violence that is going
on right now, or the Catholic/Protestant
wars in Ireland, but they aren’t contemporary enough to my readers. So I chose the Phelps clan. If there is a better example of people more
interested in their tribe being right than they are with making the rational
choice, I can’t think of one.
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At one point in time, this woman presumably asked herself: "WWJD?"
This is what she came up with. |
Biker Gangs
If you took a group of like-minded men, with similar
interests, similar goals, similar styles, and the same hobby, would you expect
them to get along okay with a few exceptions, or would you expect them to
partition up into groups based on a logo on their jacket, and start to maim and
kill each other because the other guy had the wrong logo?
If you chose the first option, you’ve never considered how
ludicrous rival biker gangs are.
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| Or ape-hanger handlebars. Just sayin' |
I’m not talking about the weekend Harley owners with some
black leathers, but the serious, beaten-in, ride-for-the-club bike gangs that
you see on TV and read about in the news.
They hate each other. They kill
each other. They do damage to each
other’s property, and fight each other whenever one group invades another’s
turf. They commit unprovoked acts of
aggression against each other as a hobby.
And why?
These are men that aren’t just similar. They are almost exactly the same. By most rational standards, they should be
friends with each other, and yet they’ve chosen to be enemies over the logo
that they wear on their leather jackets.
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"The devil on your black leather jacketwith silver buckles is a
different shade of red than the devil on MY leather jacket with silver buckles!
I've decided that I hate you!" |
Best example that I can think of:
The Devil’s Ride.
Every episode. Don’t waste your
time watching it. Just take my word for
it. It is mind-boggling.
