Are You Part of My Tribe?

 

David Mamet: Are you part of my tribe or not? Because if you’re part of my tribe, we’re fine, but if you’re not part of my tribe, we can no longer talk to each other anymore.”

When playwright David Mamet said these words on Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson back in 2013, he may as well has been speaking of Post-Election of 2016.

These hostilities have been played across Social Media where unfriending is rampant as well as the new phenomenon of Thanksgiving Uninviting.  Even the left is offering counsel to their Tribe in dealing with the other Tribe (the family member who voted for Trump).

If this is what now counts as Tribal Warfare, just wait until we start using spears.

Transcript here.

Published in Politics
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  1. michael johnson Inactive
    michael johnson
    @michaeljohnson

    thanks for the link…I have seen a few Mamet interviews; he mentioned a book, Masks in the Pageant, which is about turn of the century politics from Grover Cleveland to Wilson, which my local college library just happened to have and which I have read twice since.  He’s a smart guy and pretty fearless….though by now so established that he has no one to really fear….Probably the number of people’s opinion he cares about would not fill ten fingers….I did see that movie with Kevin Spacey and Jack Lemmon and what’s his name….Baldwin…..at the time I did not know Mamet wrote the screenplay.  anyway, thanks again.

    • #1
  2. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Mr. Mamet is the leading conservatives playwright-movie maker in America, whose only real competition is Mr. Whit Stillman. Let me recommend my brief essays on his movies–I hope more people on Ricochet watch his movies! One day, conservatives might encourage him to make more movies, preferably while he’s alive.

    • #2
  3. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    In the 1970s in Chicago, I had a subscription to our little neighborhood theater group, the St. Nicholas Theater. A young playwright named David Mamet was one of the founders, and William H. Macy was another one. There, I saw Mamet’s plays, and some of the performers, yet unknown, were Patti LuPone and Laurie Metcalf, both in their 20s at the time. His road from liberalism to conservatism is similar to my own.

    • #3
  4. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    RightAngles:In the 1970s in Chicago, I had a subscription to our little neighborhood theater group, the St. Nicholas Theater. A young playwright named David Mamet was one of the founders, and William H. Macy was another one. There, I saw Mamet’s plays, and some of the performers, yet unknown, were Patti LuPone and Laurie Metcalf, both in their 20s at the time. His road from liberalism to conservatism is similar to my own.

    Is there something like this, but for a woman? Because I feel you deserve at least a song, if not an album!

     

    • #4
  5. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    Titus Techera:

    RightAngles:In the 1970s in Chicago, I had a subscription to our little neighborhood theater group, the St. Nicholas Theater. A young playwright named David Mamet was one of the founders, and William H. Macy was another one. There, I saw Mamet’s plays, and some of the performers, yet unknown, were Patti LuPone and Laurie Metcalf, both in their 20s at the time. His road from liberalism to conservatism is similar to my own.

    Is there something like this, but for a woman? Because I feel you deserve at least a song, if not an album!

    Haha! This one works just fine for me, except when a woman says “I’ve been everywhere” it can sound kinda slutty I guess.

    • #5
  6. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Well, there’s probably a better way to put it, then… I get around is probably not a good one, either, but it’s a fine song.

    • #6
  7. Ray Kujawa Coolidge
    Ray Kujawa
    @RayKujawa

    This tribal behavior has manifested itself quite vividly during the recent election cycle on Ricochet. Many people in and out of Ricochet contended that they could not commit to a candidate they could not identify with, an aspect of tribalism wrt this post. I feel many people on the right have permitted themselves to become affected by identity politics, which we used to primarily associate with the left. One question I feel like I want to throw out on this subject is whether this is more prevalent in the blue and red states — i.e., the states that didn’t change from 2012, those states where there is a decided majority, and you are either in the minority (blue state) or majority (red state)? I feel in the battleground states that did change from 2012 or 2008, that people of all political persuasions were more willing to be open to vote for someone who ‘wasn’t of their tribe’ because they were aware that their votes would actually make a difference in the outcome of the election.

    • #7
  8. Umbra Fractus Inactive
    Umbra Fractus
    @UmbraFractus

    Ray Kujawa: Many people in and out of Ricochet contended that they could not commit to a candidate they could not identify with, an aspect of tribalism wrt this post. I feel many people on the right have permitted themselves to become affected by identity politics,

    You do realize that one of the reasons so many could not commit to said candidate was because they were trying to stop identity politics from infecting the right.

    • #8
  9. Ray Kujawa Coolidge
    Ray Kujawa
    @RayKujawa

    Umbra Fractus:

    Ray Kujawa: Many people in and out of Ricochet contended that they could not commit to a candidate they could not identify with, an aspect of tribalism wrt this post. I feel many people on the right have permitted themselves to become affected by identity politics,

    You do realize that one of the reasons so many could not commit to said candidate was because they were trying to stop identity politics from infecting the right.

    You mean as in Democrat vs. Republican? Can’t have those kinds of identifications on a center right site, no. Sorry, you lost me.

    • #9
  10. Umbra Fractus Inactive
    Umbra Fractus
    @UmbraFractus

    Ray Kujawa:

    Umbra Fractus:

    Ray Kujawa: Many people in and out of Ricochet contended that they could not commit to a candidate they could not identify with, an aspect of tribalism wrt this post. I feel many people on the right have permitted themselves to become affected by identity politics,

    You do realize that one of the reasons so many could not commit to said candidate was because they were trying to stop identity politics from infecting the right.

    You mean as in Democrat vs. Republican? Can’t have those kinds of identifications on a center right site, no. Sorry, you lost me.

    1. Yes, conflating Republican with Conservative is a problem. Yes, most conservatives tend to vote Republican, but the two are not interchangeable. Donald Trump may be a Republican, but I’ve seen very little to indicate that he is a conservative.
    2. One of the most common criticisms of Donald Trump is that he represents not the repudiation of identity politics we so badly need, but that he was catering to a group underserved by identity politics, working class white men.
    • #10
  11. Ray Kujawa Coolidge
    Ray Kujawa
    @RayKujawa

    Umbra Fractus:

    • Yes, conflating Republican with Conservative is a problem. Yes, most conservatives tend to vote Republican, but the two are not interchangeable. Donald Trump may be a Republican, but I’ve seen very little to indicate that he is a conservative.
    • One of the most common criticisms of Donald Trump is that he represents not the repudiation of identity politics we so badly need, but that he was catering to a group underserved by identity politics, working class white men.
    1. Aren’t you engaging in identity politics by insisting it’s not good enough for Trump to be a Republican, you still hold it against him that there isn’t much to indicate he’s conservative? (I consider myself conservative, but I’m ready to pull the lever for a Republican nominee despite them not being conservative, which is often the case.)
    2. This seems like reading identity politics where none of the members of the group are either aware of it or even think that way (i.e., conscious of themselves as being both white and as working class, as well as being men rather than women), which is seeing tribalism where it doesn’t exist. (How exactly does identity politics serve a group anyway?)  What these people have in common is a desire for self-respect that comes from working in an industry that produces something. I don’t see that as making it primarily white, as opposed to mixed race, in those areas of the country that flipped to Republican. The industries (manufacturing, agricultural) actually make things instead of providing services or selling something.

    Would I be wrong to deduce from your arguments that you are seeking to emphasize consciousness of identity politics among Republicans and/or tribalism? Haven’t we learned by now this is a good way to lose?

    Many people have held it against Donald Trump that he doesn’t have much in the way of conservative positions, but I think they’re just not trying to think these things through. The very thoughtful Dr. Larry Arnn in The Doctor is In podcast laid out several issues of where Trump’s positions could be viewed not only as conservative, but for the betterment of the country’s direction. And we heard more points from the Doctor in person (on our cruise this summer).

    • #11
  12. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    I am a member of Mamet’s Tribe, three ways.  Jewish.  Hillsdale College supporter (he was speaker at a National Leadership Seminar we attended).  Conservative.

    • #12
  13. Douglas Inactive
    Douglas
    @Douglas

    I’m good with tribalism. I didn’t used to be. But my enemies used tribalism against me and mine, and now we’ll organize the same way. And as the Democrats just found out, there are more of me and mine than there are of their tribes, at least where it counts. They started the tribalism. Now we’ll embrace it and hang it around their neck like a millstone.

    • #13
  14. dukenaltum Inactive
    dukenaltum
    @dukenaltum

    With this election I identify with Squanto who upon his return from being enslaved, educated, converted to Catholicism and freed discovered his Tribe extinct and a bunch of disagreeable theocratic Communists arriving on the shore.

    Happy Thanksgiving.

    • #14
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