Trump's maximal tribalism

There is a tribal element in all politics. The only question is whether we strive to transcend it or actively encourage it.

Maximal tribalism.
(Image credit: iStock)

American politics have become little more than extreme and reflexive tribalism.

We all sense it: the rise of hyper-partisanship; the denial that those who seek to position themselves above the political fray actually mean it; the claim or insinuation that the very act of such positioning expresses a concealed form of partisanship; the implication that there might not be any nonpartisan position or truth at all, with all efforts to speak for or act in the name of a genuinely common good or objective reality reduced to an underhanded or dishonest striving for power.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.