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This is a complex topic but the article is dead-on. Scott Alexander wrote years ago that the US has created a divide that he calls Blue Tribe vs. Red Tribe that

This is a complex topic but the article is dead-on. Scott Alexander wrote years ago that the US has created a divide that he calls Blue Tribe vs. Red Tribe that is far deeper than Dem vs. Repub - it's cultural. Today it is extremely common for someone in the "blue tribe" to know no one who is in the "red tribe" - people who (to use a few stereotypes) are Christian, enjoy NASCAR, and unabashedly eat at chain restaurants. People in either tribe don't encounter each other daily and as a result both tribes have little understanding of each other's worlds or the number of people who are not in their tribe. Inequality is deeply problematic and there are no easy solutions. Liberalism recognizes this. The problem is that the tribal line now runs along an economic fault line. Red tribe hasn't been doing well - red states are full of disadvantaged people. Worse, because of identity politics they have been made "the other" and rendered relatively voiceless. Liberalism can champion the disadvantaged but it has to approach them with solutions. As technological displacement of workers continues it is hard to see what they will be. I am blue tribe but I flinch when I see my colleagues in the tech industry complain about things like the injustice of having to go to a whiteboard in an interview to get a job in a Crèche-like work environment with play-balls while people outside the industry are lucky to get jobs driving cars, cleaning tables, or lifting boxes without health insurance. We don't see our own sense of entitlement. It is transparent to others despite our liberal signaling. This isn't going to be a pretty ride.

ae_keji 11y ago
Unfortunately I believe the rise of the fourth economic stage, an information based economy, has turned the US into a uncomfortably divided state, just as you described. The red tribe not only doesn't know any blue tribe members, but also only reads red tribe books, and watches red tribe television, and vice versa. Simply because there is a big enough market for it to exist and be profitable, the American people are divided in thought (at least with the information they consume, which eventually does lead to thoughts).
bsder 11y ago
The problem is that the "red tribe" happily sold out the members of the "blue tribe" that were closest to them. When automation decimated manual labor in the early 1980's, the "red tribe" happily took up their pitchforks and stabbed the "blue tribe". Now, nobody left in the "blue tribe" has any really solid reason to give a damn about anybody in the "red tribe".
Grishnakh 11y ago
>Inequality is deeply problematic and there are no easy solutions. Liberalism recognizes this. No, it doesn't. The article points this out very eloquently. Bernie Sanders recognizes it, but he doesn't speak for most liberals, who are all excited to vote for Hillary and Goldman Sachs. (And before anyone downvotes me for directly bashing a political candidate, go read the article; I'm just repeating what the article says. Don't like it, downvote the whole article.) >We don't see our own sense of entitlement. It is transparent to others despite our liberal signaling. This isn't going to be a pretty ride. This is absolutely right. As the article says, this is exactly why Trump is so popular right now: he's playing directly to the working class that's lucky to get a job lifting boxes without health insurance. The mainline Democrats are not: they're telling everyone how wonderful the economy is, how unemployment is at record-low levels, how wonderful Obamacare is, etc. All those platitudes aren't helping actual working-class people at all, and they're not seeing any of these benefits.
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  I'm an outsider to this, but Obamacare seems like a tentative half-step towards a sane healthcare system like the rest of the developed world has. And as far as I can tell the only reason it's a half-step is because the red-tribe has been convinced for decades that it would help African Americans and so voted for people who worked against it. Trump could be seen as these red-tribe members realising they'd been duped, but it could also be seen as the Republicans losing control of the racism they cultivated to win those votes in the past.
  - kombucha2 11y ago
    To me it felt like a complete betrayal of what most people, who were for it, wanted. Most people I know regard it as a failure or at best a mess. I know I certainly had a very different system in mind. I will say that it seems to have benefited some however.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      It seems to have helped some lower-income people in some states get coverage they couldn't afford otherwise, with the downside that everyone else's insurance rates have skyrocketed and the insurance companies have had record profits. The whole thing was a stupid idea by a right-wing thinktank. It tries to help by establishing a cap on profits and spreading the costs around by requiring everyone to be insured, but it depended on states increasing their Medicaid eligibility, which red states did not. It did nothing to actually decrease the cost of care. I consider it a mess, not a complete failure. The problem is that we only have one candidate who's serious about fixing the situation, and it's unlikely he's going to get his party's nomination. His competitor thinks this system is wonderful and defends it. On the other side, one guy wants to repeal it altogether and just screw over anyone who can't afford insurance, and with the other guy no one really knows what he's going to do because he keeps changing his position, though he did say something in favor of universal healthcare a while back, but his current website has switched to some standard lame Republican ideas about letting insurance companies compete over state lines, so they'll all just move to the least-regulated state like Wyoming.

ae_keji 11y ago

Unfortunately I believe the rise of the fourth economic stage, an information based economy, has turned the US into a uncomfortably divided state, just as you described. The red tribe not only doesn't know any blue tribe members, but also only reads red tribe books, and watches red tribe television, and vice versa. Simply because there is a big enough market for it to exist and be profitable, the American people are divided in thought (at least with the information they consume, which eventually does lead to thoughts).

bsder 11y ago

The problem is that the "red tribe" happily sold out the members of the "blue tribe" that were closest to them. When automation decimated manual labor in the early 1980's, the "red tribe" happily took up their pitchforks and stabbed the "blue tribe". Now, nobody left in the "blue tribe" has any really solid reason to give a damn about anybody in the "red tribe".

Grishnakh 11y ago

>Inequality is deeply problematic and there are no easy solutions. Liberalism recognizes this. No, it doesn't. The article points this out very eloquently. Bernie Sanders recognizes it, but he doesn't speak for most liberals, who are all excited to vote for Hillary and Goldman Sachs. (And before anyone downvotes me for directly bashing a political candidate, go read the article; I'm just repeating what the article says. Don't like it, downvote the whole article.) >We don't see our own sense of entitlement. It is transparent to others despite our liberal signaling. This isn't going to be a pretty ride. This is absolutely right. As the article says, this is exactly why Trump is so popular right now: he's playing directly to the working class that's lucky to get a job lifting boxes without health insurance. The mainline Democrats are not: they're telling everyone how wonderful the economy is, how unemployment is at record-low levels, how wonderful Obamacare is, etc. All those platitudes aren't helping actual working-class people at all, and they're not seeing any of these benefits.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago
I'm an outsider to this, but Obamacare seems like a tentative half-step towards a sane healthcare system like the rest of the developed world has. And as far as I can tell the only reason it's a half-step is because the red-tribe has been convinced for decades that it would help African Americans and so voted for people who worked against it. Trump could be seen as these red-tribe members realising they'd been duped, but it could also be seen as the Republicans losing control of the racism they cultivated to win those votes in the past.
- kombucha2 11y ago
  To me it felt like a complete betrayal of what most people, who were for it, wanted. Most people I know regard it as a failure or at best a mess. I know I certainly had a very different system in mind. I will say that it seems to have benefited some however.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    It seems to have helped some lower-income people in some states get coverage they couldn't afford otherwise, with the downside that everyone else's insurance rates have skyrocketed and the insurance companies have had record profits. The whole thing was a stupid idea by a right-wing thinktank. It tries to help by establishing a cap on profits and spreading the costs around by requiring everyone to be insured, but it depended on states increasing their Medicaid eligibility, which red states did not. It did nothing to actually decrease the cost of care. I consider it a mess, not a complete failure. The problem is that we only have one candidate who's serious about fixing the situation, and it's unlikely he's going to get his party's nomination. His competitor thinks this system is wonderful and defends it. On the other side, one guy wants to repeal it altogether and just screw over anyone who can't afford insurance, and with the other guy no one really knows what he's going to do because he keeps changing his position, though he did say something in favor of universal healthcare a while back, but his current website has switched to some standard lame Republican ideas about letting insurance companies compete over state lines, so they'll all just move to the least-regulated state like Wyoming.