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Political Tribes

Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations

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Political Tribes

Written by: Amy Chua
Narrated by: Julia Whelan
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The bestselling author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Yale Law School Professor Amy Chua offers a bold new prescription for reversing our foreign policy failures and overcoming our destructive political tribalism at home

Humans are tribal. We need to belong to groups. In many parts of the world, the group identities that matter most – the ones that people will kill and die for – are ethnic, religious, sectarian, or clan-based. But because America tends to see the world in terms of nation-states engaged in great ideological battles – Capitalism vs. Communism, Democracy vs. Authoritarianism, the “Free World” vs. the “Axis of Evil” – we are often spectacularly blind to the power of tribal politics. Time and again this blindness has undermined American foreign policy.

In the Vietnam War, viewing the conflict through Cold War blinders, we never saw that most of Vietnam’s “capitalists” were members of the hated Chinese minority. Every pro-free-market move we made helped turn the Vietnamese people against us. In Iraq, we were stunningly dismissive of the hatred between that country’s Sunnis and Shias. If we want to get our foreign policy right – so as to not be perpetually caught off guard and fighting unwinnable wars – the United States has to come to grips with political tribalism abroad.

Just as Washington’s foreign policy establishment has been blind to the power of tribal politics outside the country, so too have American political elites been oblivious to the group identities that matter most to ordinary Americans – and that are tearing the United States apart. As the stunning rise of Donald Trump laid bare, identity politics have seized both the American left and right in an especially dangerous, racially inflected way. In America today, every group feels threatened: whites and blacks, Latinos and Asians, men and women, liberals and conservatives, and so on. There is a pervasive sense of collective persecution and discrimination. On the left, this has given rise to increasingly radical and exclusionary rhetoric of privilege and cultural appropriation. On the right, it has fueled a disturbing rise in xenophobia and white nationalism.

In characteristically persuasive style, Amy Chua argues that America must rediscover a national identity that transcends our political tribes. Enough false slogans of unity, which are just another form of divisiveness. It is time for a more difficult unity that acknowledges the reality of group differences and fights the deep inequities that divide us. 21st Century Ideologies & Doctrines International Relations Modern Political Science Politics & Government Authoritarianism Socialism Liberalism Capitalism Iran Africa Imperialism Refugee Latin America War Middle East Law Social justice American Foreign Policy China Political Nonfiction
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Amy provided a well researched and scholarly, philosophical view of the reality we are in at this stage of our shared lives, keeping in mind our shared pursuit towards the same dream in all human hearts- the America that perhaps never was but we want it to be. I can feel It is with the same love she wrote this book, the same love Julia read it, the same growing love I have listened to it. It’s the same love and respect we have for those great men who we honour as our founding fathers, and those brave service men we think as our brothers and sisters. It’s that same dream that hold us together in this country on this continent this earth. I am actually a Canadian but I feel deeply in my heart I can be just as an American in spirit. I can easily think of Amy as a sister (she just about shares the same birth date as my darling wife). I can also think of Alexander Hamilton and George Washington as our shared great great grandfathers. The book ending brings the perfect mind space we can linger in, the level of love and hope we cannot give up, because America will be, if only because we will live out our dream.

2021.9.1 Leo

America our dream

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Amy Chua is decidedly optimistic and proudly American. She also understands the gaping holes where America has fallen down or could potentially fall down in understanding what combination of fear and courage actually propels people to act a certain way. Tribalism is everywhere. It is not limited to a few groups. The political decisions that people make because of tribal identity cannot be overstated.
Because this was published a couple of years ago, I would like Amy Chua to add a few chapters with her take on the 2020 USA election, QAnon’s rise and the events of January 6, 2021.

Must read.

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