This article by David Roberts, “Donald Trump and the rise of
tribal epistemology” (2017), is one of the better analyses I've seen about how
tribalized minds work and how this is affecting American politics and journalism.
In various regards, it’s a biased article — but it’s also an article that provides
many insightful valid points about the nature and severity of the tribalism growing
in our country.
Roberts opens with a rant by Rush Limbaugh that sets the stage
for Roberts to propose his key concept: tribal epistemology:
“He [Limbaugh] and his listeners,
he said, live in a world apart:
“We live in two universes. One
universe is a lie. One universe is an entire lie. Everything run, dominated,
and controlled by the left here and around the world is a lie. The other
universe is where we are, and that’s where reality reigns supreme and we deal
with it. And seldom do these two universes ever overlap.”
Roberts’ concern is primarily with tribalism on the Right,
not the Left. And he associates it with views on the Right that America’s
institutions have become “irredeemably corrupted”, mostly by the Left, such
that the Right’s only recourse now is “zero-sum competition between tribes, the
left and right”:
“This is not just run-of-the-mill
ranting. It expresses something profound about the worldview of conservative
media and its audience, something the mainstream media has ignored, denied, or
waved away for many years.
“In Limbaugh’s view, the core
institutions and norms of American democracy have been irredeemably corrupted
by an alien enemy. Their claims to transpartisan authority — authority that
applies equally to all political factions and parties — are fraudulent. There
are no transpartisan authorities; there is only zero-sum competition between
tribes, the left and right. Two universes.
“One obvious implication of this
view is that only one’s own tribe can be trusted. (Who wants to trust a
“universe of lies”?)
Roberts then fields his concept of “tribal epistemology” —
he also refers later to “epistemic tribalism” resulting in “epistemic closure”.
Far as I can tell these scholarly-sounding wordings simply mean the tribal
mindset or mentality, the tribalized way of thinking. And Roberts warns that it
has now “has found its way to the White House”:
“Over time, this leads to what you
might call tribal epistemology: Information is evaluated based not on
conformity to common standards of evidence or correspondence to a common
understanding of the world, but on whether it supports the tribe’s values and
goals and is vouchsafed by tribal leaders. “Good for our side” and “true” begin
to blur into one.
“Now tribal epistemology has found
its way to the White House.”
I hoped for a fuller definition and elaboration of his
concept. But Roberts focuses mostly on criticizing how “The US political media
underestimated Trump’s potential”. He locates his explanation in the media’s “longstanding
refusal to grapple with the deepening asymmetry in American politics — the
rejection, by a large swath of the right, of the core institutions and norms
that shape US public life.”
A key factor behind all this is “the big sort” prompted by
global as well as national trends: Accordingly, “It is well known that
Americans have been sorting themselves into like-minded communities by race,
class, and ideology, creating more in-group homogeneity and cultural “bubbles.””
Indeed, Roberts accepts the views that “globalization has effectively split the
US into two countries”, and that “Sorting has been both a driver and a
consequence of the extraordinary polarization of US public life over the past
several decades.”
In keeping with his emphasis on the Right, he finds that “From
Reagan forward, the US has become much more politically polarized, but the
polarization has not been symmetrical — the right has become far more extreme
than the left.” This difference in degree has arisen partly because “Over time,
the right’s base — unlike the left’s fractious and heterogeneous coalition of
interest groups — has become increasingly homogeneous (mostly white, non-urban,
and Christian) and like-minded (traditionalist, zero-sum values).” Moreover, anxious
believers on the Right have been subjected to “a steady diet of radicalizing
media and tribal epistemology,” such that “their traditionalism has hardened
into tribalism.”
Returning to his opening theme, Roberts emphasizes that “the
source of this information polarization is the American conservative movement’s
decades-long battle against institutions that it has deemed irredeemably
liberal.” Indeed, the Right has become so untrusting and hostile toward
conventional politics that “the right sees the game itself, its institutions
and norms, as the enemy.” The Right has worked (the Left too) so that “The
information available to lawmakers was tribalized.” It wants lawmakers to have
only “tribal information, and it wants “a base that only trusts tribal news
from tribal sources.”
In the end, Roberts offers little hope for alleviating these
trends toward tribalism that are so damaging to journalism’s health. In his
view, “training media consumers to be more discerning” — fixing media’s demand
side — won’t work. What’s needed must come from the supply side: assuring “the
values and integrity of individual journalists and outlets”, and upholding
America’s “norms and institutions”. Otherwise, “The alternative is further
epistemic tribalism and attendant illiberalism”, even “epistemic chaos”. Trumps
behavior as “America’s aspiring autocrat” compounds Roberts’ worries that “In
the end, if tribal epistemology wins, journalism loses.”
To read Roberts’ article for yourself,
go here:
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/22/14762030/donald-trump-tribal-epistemology
[I posted an earlier write-up of this reading on my Facebook
page, on March 23.]
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