"Tribalism."

[WARNING: This post is likely to be extremely long even by my very lax standards!]

So, recent events are looking ominous for Iraq.

There are reasons why, and I'm going to discuss what I believe is the primary one.

But first, back story!

See, I've been thinking about this post for a long, long, looooooooong time.

Since, like, 2005.

Why so long? Because when I have a topic this important, I like to give it some thought, and more evaluation.

And I think this particular subject is the real, true "culture war."

It's core to the events in our country, in Iraq, in the world at large, and our success in dealing with it will determine the future course of our society.

But first we have to talk about it, and understand what “it” is, and to do that, in a most circuitous way, I have to tell you a story.

Get a drink. Take a leak. Get comfy; this one is a bit of an investment.

Ready?

Awesome.

So, we invaded Iraq. Took down a dictator. In our fingerpointing culture, we love to argue about the fact that that dictator was originally our idea.

Fair; the point those folks always miss is that that then makes him specifically our moral responsibility to remove when he begins to use weapons of mass destruction.

People also love to try to dismiss the idea that Saddam Hussein had such weapons.

They conveniently forget that he actively used them against the Kurds, one of the groups we'll be talking about in passing. That is recorded, actual fact about which there's no argument or disagreement. There's no ACTUAL argument to support the idea that he had no WMDs; there are only people who choose not to accept that idea in favor of their chosen political agenda.

Not to worry, we'll eventually circle back to that point, when we bring the discussion to our own shores.

But we removed him. He was a douche; everyone pretty much agrees that Saddam was bad news.

So, now we set up a new government, which is “democracy” in that the citizens all get to vote on their new government, which then becomes... 

Well, whatever they voted for? Yay, self-determination!

And purple fingers.

Then, our heroic, expensive, tragedy-filled, imperfect but admirable efforts having been completed, we pack up to go home.

It's only a few months after that process finished, and the collapse is already well underway.

Why?

Why are the Iraqis simply walking off their posts, abandoning their obligations, and letting ISIS run crazy?

I mean, seriously, as much of a goof as he is, how can you let Archer kick your ass this bad?

(Whaddaya mean it's not that ISIS? Shut... Oh. Oh, my bad.)

So, apparently these guys just have a misfortunate naming choice, but they actually do have military weapons, sort of.

They have a lot more now, because although they started with AKs and IEDs, the materiel left behind when the Iraqi Army packed up and went home has proven quite useful.

Dammit. (My tax dollars!)

So why did that happen?

Tribalism is one of the major answers.

See, “tribalism” doesn't mean what we tend to think it does in the USA. Go 'Murica, and all, but when we're discussing tribalism, we're not talking about Native Americans.

Tribalism as a concept is the system of thought in which individuals hold loyalty primarily to smaller groups, and rely on those groups as their “society” and culture, instead of larger groups with more distributed impact.

What this means is that the Kurds tend to hang with other Kurds because they trust them – there's a certain level of societal trust and loyalty they can depend on with other members of their smaller group, which isn't present in their relationships with members of other groups, including larger groups like the Iraqi government.

Why?

Because of external threats, mostly. Iraqi culture over just the last hundred years has been a tapestry of battle, foreign intervention, invasion, and civil strife.

When you can't trust the guy from 200 miles away because the last five guys from 200 miles away have tried to steal your dinner and rape your daughter, you tend to trust the guy next door a lot more.

See, a smaller group is easier. In a smaller group, it's very easy to regulate the group to be aligned with the interests of its members, and it's much easier to enforce the group's standards against misbehavior internally. The bigger the group becomes, the more difficult that trick becomes.

The most “visible,” with finger quotes for “all of you people look alike to me” goodness, of these groups are racial ones. In a lot of places around the globe, this exact distinction has been used as an excuse to congregate, as an identifier, as a common interest, as a common means of identifying a foe...

Race is a thing, even if we're trying really really hard to move past it in the USA. Or we think we are, anyway.

This is another point we will come back to, I promise, because it's hugely relevant to us. Not so much to Iraqis, though, and since we're still talking about them...

So, we have this country which has political parties, religious groups, racial groups. All kinds of groups for the average citizen to belong to; and the average citizen tends to identify with the groups with the most overlap for them. The Ba'athists, for example, are a socialist political group founded by Shi'a Muslims, but mostly made up of relatively secular Sunni members now, due to a degree of Pan-Arabist thought not agreeable to most Shi'a.

So, your average Iraqi has several points of congruence to check there; Shi'a or Sunni? Primarily religious or primarily secular? Pan-Arabist, or independent Iraq? Socialist or corporatist or some other ist?

The ones who find themselves in agreement with a plurality of those points of identification, tend to align with the party. Just as in the United States, most citizens do the same with Democrat or Republican, identifying with one or the other (or one of the smaller parties,) based on congruence with their own internal identifiers.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, we tried to build a single, monolithic government for Iraq, and we gave it all the tools it needed to survive but one: we gave it weapons, an army, money, food, technology...

...But we couldn't make the citizens trust it.

They still trust their smaller groups. The Kurds still want an independent Kurdish state, which is extremely unlikely, considering they live in parts of three nations, one of which is much more stable than Iraq. The Sunnis want Sunni leadership; the Shi'a want Shi'ite leadership. And they distrust the eyebrows off anyone in one of the other groups – and seemingly work their tails off to earn that distrust, by screwing the other groups around as thoroughly as they can at every opportunity.

For a society as a whole to exist as a stable entity, it needs the trust of its members.

The Iraqis have had nothing for the last hundred years but demonstrations of why trusting an institution as large as a national Iraqi government is a fool's game.

Predictably, they have learned not to trust a national Iraqi government. Gee, it's funny how that works out, don't you think?

Well, except it's not, really, because when those Iraqi soldiers – those poor guys who tried to do the right thing for their country – got ordered to abandon a position in the face of the enemy, they assumed (having been trained in military thinking) that there was a real reason for that order, even if they didn't know what it was, so they followed it.

Except that reason was that their senior officers don't trust the government any more than they do, not realizing that that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the guards abandon their posts, the government cannot guard you.

YOU'RE THE GUARDS, YOU WORTHLESS FUCKS!

Over the last 72 hours, I've been reading news stories about Iraqi soldiers weeping openly when they realized that following the orders of their superiors has left the gates unguarded and open, and placed their families, their homes, in harm's way again.

AGAIN.

They paid a huge price to be able to guard their homes, and their act of trust in the society they were building, the very act of trust they were asked to present as the price of admission to a real society, has proved the downfall of that society.

AGAIN.

I...

Words fail me.

The magnitude of the betrayal those men have suffered at the hands of their leadership is so vast that they may never be able to grow past it.

With one stroke, the officers given charge of the Iraqi Army have not only destroyed their government, given their people to the jackals, and placed everyone in their charge at risk; they have done so much more, and worse, than that.

They have betrayed the concept of trust. Their soldiers may never again be able to extend that degree of trust. Each time society fails you, your ability to believe it erodes, just a little.

I would say that the kind of man who is willing to take up arms – against enemies whose brutality he knows from years of experience – in support of an idea, is the kind of man whose opinion matters at home.

The kind of man whose words are weighed.

The generals and politicians in charge of the Iraqi Army have just created a generation of men who will tirelessly advocate for tribalism.

Their acts in betrayal of the society the Iraqi Army was trying to build have not only destroyed that society, they salted the fucking earth to ensure that another government will never grow unless watered with blood.

Thanks, assholes.

What does this mean to us?

It means tragedy, despair, risk, danger, and hope.

You see, those same forces are at work in our society.

It's always easier to trust the guy standing next to you than the one a hundred miles away.

It's so much easier to identify yourself by a label. Even while we protest “being labeled,” we fall so easily for that trick over and over.

“You're not really a feminist because...”

“You're an Uncle Tom.”

“I don't trust foreigners.”

“The rich are out to get us.”

“My party is right about everything, and your party is made up of lying liars who lie. Also idiots. Your arguments are obviously insane and therefore shouldn't be allowed to pollute the discourse.”

"All cis-people are rapists."

Tribalism.

The general culture in the United States, as a whole, has a very high degree of societal trust. You may not know your neighbor personally, but you're reasonably sure that if he borrows your mower, he'll give it back – and if he doesn't, there are societal recourses. You can call the police, and be reasonably assured that your mower will be recovered.

You can rest in total certainty that, even if they can't recover your mower, the police won't come to your house, disapprove of your finances, burn your house down and rape your sister.

The United States used to be considered the great melting pot. Remember that phrase? It meant that immigrants could come here from any part of the world, and they would be welcomed into our culture.

Read that last sentence again.

That doesn't mean what it's been twisted into.

Immigrants, coming to this nation, used to be expected to become Americans.

But there's an insidious poison, which is the notion that that expectation is wrong.

See, expecting you to act like you are in the United States is the exact same requirement that every other country on planet Earth has to their immigrants. Move to Mexico, you're required by law to learn Spanish. Why? Because you have to fit in.

You have to become a part of Mexican culture.

Move to New Zealand? You have to be gainfully employed before you can move there at all, and the requirements for that are comically demanding. Why? Because you have to fit in.

Only in the United States have we been arrogant enough as a culture to assume that people coming here will collect their American self-identity through osmosis, without any kind of statutory requirement.

“Well, America is so much better than where they came from...”

I've said something similar, myself, in a slightly different context.

“Every year people cross 70 miles of shark-infested ocean in flimsy boats to get here from Cuba. Nobody goes the other direction.”

But that's because getting here is the whole goal, guys.

Because the immigrants coming to the United States now, don't believe their countries are a mess because of them. Suggesting such a thing is hugely offensive. Try it; tell someone that Africa is, by and large, fucked beyond repair because of the decisions and behavior of Africans.

That's quite a shiner you're sporting, there, chief.

What that means is that they agree completely that the United States is better, but that happened through sorcery. We're just luckier. Natural resources.

Better hair.

Whatever.

Either way, they flock here from all over the world, to escape their shitty situation back home, and when they get here, what's the first thing they do?

Find other people as similar to them as possible, form a group, and try really, really hard to make their little corner of this country as similar to their homeland as possible.

Because...

...wait for it...

...They don't trust us.

They don't trust us, they don't trust their local governments, they don't trust the federal government, they don't believe the police are there to help them, they don't believe the military is any more admirable or functional than the ones in the countries they came from because...

…Because that's what life, and their personal experiences, have taught them.

What evidence do they have? They came from someplace where their life wasn't that great.

They come here, and they get treated as a second-class citizen, because they can't speak English well, or they look different, or they dress funny, and before you know it, you have those tiny clusters giggling and looking over at you while carrying on an animated conversation in a language you've never heard before.

They're telling a joke, or making an observation, that they know perfectly well would offend you if you understood it. And they don't trust you, because you're not them, so they keep that observation to themselves. Fuck you. You're different.

And it gets worse, because quite a lot of people in this society, in this country, are working tirelessly to make everyone here easily divide into a conveniently labeled group.

Why?

Why would they want that?

Why would they want a reduction in the level of societal trust?

Because the smaller your group, the more secure you are within that group – but the less able to resist external control you become. Your group is more like you, but you're more outnumbered.

The more insular, and insulated, your tribe – regardless of the label used to identify that tribe – the weaker it is as a means of mutual defense.

Mutual defense is the most fundamental function of a society.

Why would someone want to reduce your ability to do that?

So they can control you.

So we bear labels.

Gay, Straight, Trans. White, Black, Atheist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim. Male, Female. “Feminist.” “Egalitarian.” Republican. Democrat.

And your degree of response to any of those depends on your degree of personal trust in the society as a whole, and your points of congruity with that societal sub-group.

When a trans-person goes on an anti-cisperson rant, the tribalists rejoice.

When a single, noisy nutbar tells people that an appreciative glance at an attractive member of the opposite gender is “stare rape,” the tribalists rejoice.

When religious groups draw hatred for their desire to adhere to their religion, the tribalists rejoice.

When you refuse to even listen to the arguments of another political party because they're not on your team, the tribalists rejoice.

They use victimhood as a weapon and a rallying cry. The more offended you can be by someone else, the more easily you can put that person on the defensive, when you have no right to do that.

But the tribalists are to be feared.

The ideology of tribalism is a threat. Why?

Ask the Iraqi Army.

And when you're done, when you've heard the stories of those men who have eaten the bitterest fruit of tribalism and been fooled into wanting more of it, ask yourself if you want that, here.

Ask yourself if your label is more important than being able to walk the streets unafraid, not free from the worry that someone will pester you, but sure-footed and certain in the knowledge that if that happens, someone will help you.

Ask yourself if your investment in your tribe is so vast it's worth more to you than the fruits of a unified culture. Because that culture is why people come here.

It's not sorcery. It's not luck. It's not natural resources.

It's not good hair.

It's trust.

Ask yourself if your label is worth more to you than trust, if your viewpoint is worth more than your society, if your pet issue is more important than the culture that made your viewpoint and pet issue safe enough to be relevant.

If you can answer that question "no," then congratulations; you're a real American, regardless of labels.

Because the only part of being an American that's "real," is the determination that that comes first; that as a society, we defend each other; protect each other; that we're all on one team, and THAT team, that label, is the one that really matters.

And if we forget that...

...Well, we can ask the Iraqi Army what comes after that, too.