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Pointed but fair, even the heated rhetoric at the end. I’ll clarify that blue/red tribalism changes the perception of the cooperative value lost in each defection, inflating the out-group’s tats and deflating the in-group’s tits.
If the average red-tribe American (citizens since their grandfathers’ time at least) have the perception that they’re being prevented as a class from getting jobs by blue-tribe HR choosing naturalized immigrants, H1B workers, or unnaturalized migrants, tit-for-tat looks like mass deportations. The blue-triber sees this as a massive escalation of defection against their in-group or favored far-group.
If the average red-triber sees their wages stagnant vs inflation since 2008, yet the lowest rung of blue-tribe government worker can buy a suburban house and pay “our” taxes for their kids’ soccer practice, tit-for-tat looks like mass firings of government regulators. The blue-triber sees this as a massive escalation of defection against the people keeping them safe from capitalist overreach.
And so on, and so on. Sure it’ll make the Whigs (the blue-tribe and grey-tribe Republicans who disproportionately make up the GOP’s donor class and elected representatives) take pause, but the red tribe can finally smile at the perception of having shaken off, or at least told off, their oppressors.
This is also what it looks like when the red tribe no longer sees the blue tribe as a far group but its outgroup.
This is a good point. I'd extend it even further. I think a lot of heat arises from the fact that news media brings political conflict right to our faces, but doesn't give an outlet that viscerally feels like retaliating.
I think this is a major cause of the phenomena of "progressive woman screams at her phone camera" videos. It's why people spiral deeper and deeper into violent ideation. If they redistrict us and then we redistrict them back, it just doesn't feel like a proper retaliation to an ape brain that expects retaliation to feel like knuckles violently impacting something. The endocrine response is just frustrated.
So we do a 2X tat, but it feels like a 0.1X tat, so we demand a 20X tat.
Multiple by emotional incontinence, mental illness, and arrested development.
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