I spent 9 paragraphs ranting about the authoritarian tactic of accusing your enemies of financial crimes, prosecuted by a highly political machine, to discredit and remove them. I only touched on, in passing, the state sanctioned, extra-judicial murder of Renee Good the next day. My thoughts go out to her family. I find her murder especially troubling, and more indicative of a dark and ugly truth.

The first thing they did to the woman, when her body wasn’t even cold, was to paint her has a member of the other tribe. Don’t investigate the murderer, investigate who else is in her tribe. Those mentally stunted weirdos even asked (out loud) who paid her to be there. Find out who’s part of her tribe and let them know they’re next. The shooter wore the tribal uniform of the paramilitary, with at least one gun, as we’ve seen from Charlottesville through the January 6 insurrection, to today’s ICE enforcers. The tribe circled round him, likely not even seeing the murder as a bad thing, which is how video from the murderer’s perspective may have leaked. But they don’t see it as murder. Murder is only in your own tribe.

Will this be a one off? No. When I see how amped up and angry the ICE and CBP agents are, and how scared they look when people start to gather around them, I don’t think the shootings so far will be an aberration. I suspect they will become more confrontational, more aggressive, and even less restrained by the law and the constitution. And fear will encourage them to pull the trigger. And the tribal dynamics will interject them more and more into “blue” cities for exactly this type of confrontation.

The agents will realize their tribe provides two lines of protection. First is the FBI and DoJ which will excuse the shooting and prevent a local investigation. Second will be a pardon from the tribal chief. Take the shot, the tribe will protect you. And if people resist, the tribe will make sure the whole neighborhood or city is miserable from crackdowns and collective punishment. The tribe will hurt the other tribe. And when the Homeland Security director shows up with a “One of Ours, All of Yours” sign, I think they lack the historical or cultural understanding of what they’re doing, except that they are intentionally reinforcing tribal membership.

Or, maybe they do understand the historical implications of that sign. In which case so much of our country is infested with the worst kind of racists and authoritarians. That could very well be. Farmers were willing to vote for an immigration crack down that cost them their laborers, even risking their export markets. They may not recognize it in themselves, but that kind of behavior suggests they care more about racial identity than about their business. They just wanted to hurt the other tribe, not true Americans like themselves. Punish the blue state tribe and keep out the new tribes. And their boy knows the tribe, he’ll be good for a government handout like his last administration, should tariffs cause an issue.

It’s the same impulse behind my sense of schadenfreude when I hear yet another FAFO story. But in my defense, they voted for the racism, bigotry, and disregard of the law that’s biting them in the ass right now. I only wish to give them the dignity of their choice. I don’t really follow sports. I don’t see 11 strangers failing to convert on 4th and 1 as having failed my tribe. But a lot of people do. Maybe 4 out of 5 people have that kind of deep tribal instinct. The best part of mankind tries to get past this tribalism to form bonds between peoples. The kind of tribalism that the New Testament specifically tries to overcome. That’s the whole point of stories like the good Samaritan.

What reinforces tribal membership? Race is part of it. It’s almost impossible to hide your race. That’s why they feel so free to arrest anyone based on race. If “those people” don’t like getting arrested, they can go somewhere else. Next is accent and speech. You might be an American, but you don’t sound like their tribe. You’re part of the other tribe. Religion is part of it, especially outward demonstrations of faith. And the dozens of little cues like Mar-a-Lago face. Or hyper masculine characteristics, like the kind of physique that requires a possible course of HGH or anabolic steroids. A particular type of license plate or car. The music you to which you listen. Or the drink you order at a bar. All those things signal your tribe.

If you’re a good person, you temper your tribalism. You don’t relish in the misfortune and pain of others. Tactics like collective punishment should be abhorrent, if have a sense of justice or empathy. America works if the process is more important than tribal victory. Once tribal victory becomes the only thing that matters, the whole thing falls apart. Because those tribal feelings are not necessarily conscious thoughts, they can invade into the actions of people who are especially admonished to be non-tribal. Why do you think police officers target certain people, even if they’re the same race? Because they are not a member of their tribe.

The sign in front of Kristi Noem is a tribal sign. In fact, it’s particularly despicable. The dog-whistle comments help reinforce that sense of tribe. It sends a message of twisted unity. They need to promote the in group and create an “other” out group. Murder is only within the tribe. If you kill members of the other tribe, it’s justified to protect the tribe. That’s why they repeat the same accusations, over and over again, no matter how patently ridiculous they sound. To reinforce their enemy’s membership in the out group, the other tribe. The goal is to make the other tribe so distinct that you aren’t even killing another human being when you kill them. You are just eliminating a threat. If you kill one or two by mistake? Good, maybe their tribe will get the message.

We need to oppose this is because the same territory cannot be occupied by two tribes. I don’t know how the American right comes back from deep tribal thinking. There is tribalism on the left, but so far it mostly eats its own, and has not presented as an existential threat to others beyond social media Ethnic cleansing (the effective policy of ICE) and mass murder and genocide, are the means by which one tribe takes ownership of a territory. Like two battling groups of chimpanzees, with one group forcing the other out. When people operate at this basic level of social development, the end has been on full display for the last 10,000 years of human history. The goal of punishing “blue” cities is to convert them (great) or get rid of them. If they cause enough pain and enough disruption it will maybe make them dissolve? Or go away? We’re not operating at the intellectual level once we descend to tribalism, so it doesn’t have to make complete sense. But then the tribalism speaks, listen, and recognize it for what it is.