Tribalizing

Politically, and if you will, in terms of world historical development, the present situation in this country strikes me as extremely volatile and dangerous. With the rising tide of violence in some quarters, it may be that civil war looms. We must hope not.

At all events, in order to arrive at some semblance of understanding it is important to move beyond personalities: the oafishness of Trump, the callowness of Rubio, the seeming untrustworthiness of HRC. It seems to me that process (in Whitehead's sense) is more important than personalities.

The main development that has been occurring over the last few decades is the growing institutionalization of multiculturalism - a gorgeous mosaic according to the optimistists, a growing source of divisiveness according to the pessimists and (forgive my Latin) the laudatores temporis acti (the party of nostalgia).

Increasingly, we see appeals to form judgments according to one's ethnicity, and not one's individual judgment. It borders on treason to do otherwise. I find this herding into ethnic enclaves depressing - it is a form of retribalization.

Yet the process may be inevitable. If so, the roster of tribes will not be restricted to African Americans, Hispanics, and the other ethnics (including willy-nilly my own tribe of LGBT people). It will include a white-people's faction. This is the diabolical truth that Trump has seized upon. But, horresco referens, may not Bernie Sanders represent another segment of this identarian grouping?