Cathy reads books: Tribalism is Dumb

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate. Happy day off work to those who don’t. Sorry you have to work for everyone who has to work.

Need a last-minute gift you can deliver electronically? Buy my friend’s book on Kindle or Audible!

I’ve never felt cooler, at least in recent memory, than when my friend, fellow CNL Steering Committee member, and certified Cool Girl said “You’re friends with Andrew Heaton?” when we were all in Chicago for the DNC. I love how, in a scenario I’m only recounting for bragging purposes, I’m still the least cool of the three people involved.

“Hell ya,” I said. “I am a person who has cool friends who my other cool friends fangirl over.”

Anyway, that brag is merely a prelude to this brag: Heaton might have me on his podcast.

All that is a prelude to my review of his latest book, Tribalism Is Dumb: Where It Came From, How It Got So Bad, and What to Do About It.

Both it and his podcast aim to lower the temperature on political tribalism.

I find the podcast a little enraging, tbh. He’s way too nice to his conservative guests. (Perhaps that means that I should listen more often?) Imagine a leftist complaining about Ezra Klein or Derek Thompson, but Heaton has a wider topical purview. Also, he’s a comedian and from Kansas (helps explain the nice).

The book is free with Kindle Unlimited. Since I don’t read, I’m enjoying the Audible. On the plus side, he reads it. On the negative side, the Audible version is not free.

I don’t usually listen to books whose titles are statements I’ve already thought a lot about and agree with. You’re not going to find “Sexism is bad: Where It Came From, How It Got So Bad, and What to Do About It” in my library. (I should probably write that book.) However, as I took great pains to say, Andrew is my friend. At the same time, not to brag (this time) but a decent number of my friends have written books and I’m not going to read, much less review, them on that alone.

The most important thing I have to say about this book is that I genuinely think if everyone read and thought about what’s inside it the world would be a better place.

I keep talking about “bottom-half men” because the top and bottom half keep pulling apart. So are the (more committed) members of the GOP and “Democrat Party” (as Fox News and Heaton like to call it).

It’s still not true that either party (fully) represents the top-half. Income still poorly predicts partisanship.

But, the Democratic Party does represent cities, where all the best jobs, patents, and most profitable companies are born. It’s the party of the top-half in terms of education. It’s the party of media and academia. It’s the party of women and femininity, which are growing in status relative to men and masculinity.

If trends continue, I don’t see a reality in which case the Democratic Party does not come to represent the top-half. For some reason, which I cannot begin to articulate except to say it just doesn’t seem very feasible, I don’t actually expect that to happen. I expect some new trend to happen. The GOP will probably pull something out of their asses to avoid this fate. I also give it a coin flip on whether Democrats can keep the cities. They demonstrably suck ass at running them in ways that voters tend to notice and dislike.

So, yeah. This is a newsletter about gender and politics. It’s going to seem weird that I keep harping on bottom-half men if you don’t see how men and women and the top- and bottom-half are increasingly pulling away from each other physically, intellectually, and emotionally.

I have my quibbles with the book. I don’t think we need to be citing Sapiens anymore. I think Heaton goes way too easy on organized religion. Yes, it has a few advantages over partisanship as a way to find meaning and connection. At the same time, party bosses don’t usually threaten me with eternal damnation. Just two or four years of it, depending on the race. It also has a better track record on burning heretics at the stake.

The book is also a little too “both sides” for my taste. On the one hand, you generally won’t find me preaching to the choir about how “we” are right and “they” are wrong either – much to my bank account’s chagrin.

On the other hand, there’s a reason I am “not progressive” but “very, absolutely not conservative.” Maybe I’m missing something big, but if you’re a liberal, which I think he and I both are, there’s really no equivalence between the GOP and the Democrats right now.

It also left me wondering, from page one, who exactly Heaton had in mind when he was writing. I’m trying to imagine a person who knows what the word “valance” means and is genuinely interested in what evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists have to say about our evolved need to think and behave groupishly (me) but isn’t already convinced that tribalism is dumb and the Big Sort is real and bad (not me).

Whoever he wrote it for, I think Heaton’s point is a good and important one. Humans evolved to identify with and promote our “tribe.” In terms of things to bond over, party politics is pretty bad, for the reasons Heaton outlined, along with *gestures broadly*.

The book is also very timely.

Caring about men, boys, and masculinity is increasingly right- and Republican-coded. Increasingly, everything right- and Republican-coded is not just a bad idea, but evil incarnate. This is bad, on-net, for boys and men. And what is bad, I’m sorry to report, for boys and men is also bad for everyone else. At least it is until we collectively evolve past heterosexuality and meatspace wombs.