Tribalism poisons everything...

...but the problem is that we are hardwired for tribalism.

Todd Kelley ponders the recurring fact that we have a tendency to take sides even when taking sides means that we line up with those who hurt what we love:

Clearly, this kind of tribalism is destructive. It keeps us from getting to the best solutions for our children, our country and ourselves. Worse, it forces us to become champions of the very things we most despise, things such as child abuse, sexual harassment and crony capitalism. So what, then, is the answer?


There is no easy answer, of course – or if there is I have no idea what it might be. The best I can manage is two very small pieces of advice to people of all political, religious and alma mater stripes.

The first is to always be willing to take a step back and audit your beliefs. When someone you are supporting is being “unfairly crucified” by FOX or the lame stream media, take a step back and ask yourself: If this was happening to the other tribe’s team, how would I be reacting right now? If the honest answer is anything other than “the same,” it might be wise to go back through all of the facts you had previously dismissed to see if perhaps you’ve let yourself miss something. More important, though, is this:

Be an advocate for what your tribe stands for, not an advocate for your tribe.

I simply don’t believe that there aren’t a ton of Republicans out there that are very disturbed by what has transpired with Herman Cain this week. Similarly, I am sure there are more than a few (maybe a large majority?) of Penn State students and alum that know that people have to be held accountable for their school’s horrible scandal. And since it is my understanding that a lot of Rick Perry’s own GOP brethren actually can’t stand the guy, I am very certain that there are a lot of Republicans that pay close attention to his cronyism.

These people need to speak up; not to the world at large, but to the members of their tribe. I’m not a Republican, so I can point to the myriad of things that don’t add up about Cain’s denials all day long and it’s going to fall on deaf ears. The same way, not incidentally, that Democrats shrugged off all evidence of Clinton’s pattern of sexual harassment fifteen years ago. People don’t listen to those outside their tribe when their self-identity is on the line. But they might be open to peeking at reality when it’s being presented by one of their own.

These two bits of advice aren’t much, I’ll be the first to admit. But they’re a start.

It's a good essay.  Read the whole thing.

Hey, I thought that the new rule of politics was that things like whether a candidate was a rapist or embezzled money to support a "love child" while cheating on his dying wife weren't important!

I'm torn.  If Herman Cain did what he is accused of doing, he committed sexual assault, and we as Americans are not so hard up for talent that we need to elect someone who has committed sexual assault to the Presidency.

On the other hand, the accuser's story smells.  She has hired Gloria Alred.  She is obviously a woman who has used her sexuality with men to advance her career, witness the fact that she thought it was completely hunky-dory to purportedly go out for dinner and drinks with someone who could get her a job, rather than doing what her competitors did, file an application and rely on her resume.  Statistically, in light of the 40% rate of false, malicious rape accusations, it is probably even-money that she's lying.

Appropos of the rule that we should be wary of jumping to conclusions when sex is involved, there is this story about the accuser flirting with Cain last month:

They hugged each other backstage in a full embrace like old friends.


She grabbed his arm and whispered in his left ear.

She kept talking as he bent to listen, and he kept saying “Uh, huh. Uh, huh.”

And:

◆The encounter: “It looked sort of flirtatious,” said Jacobson. “I mean they were hugging. But she could have been giving him the kiss of death for all I know. I had no idea what they were talking about, but she was inches from his ear.”


◆The introduction: “It all began when I took a convention break and joined my pals at the hotel bar. Sharon was drinking Mimosas with them. She said she was a Republican, a Tea Party member, had once dated [White Sox sports announcer’ Steve Stone] and had worked at WGN radio.”

◆The rendezvous: Sharon also said she was anxious to meet Cain again and had once gone to an afterparty with him and her boyfriend years ago. But she never mentioned he had sexually harassed her.”

◆The upshot: Bialek has since applied for employment in sales at WIND radio and is scheduled for a second interview Thursday.

Might we conclude that Ms. Bialek is an opportunist with a history of using her sexuality for self-promotion?  Probably yes.  Can we conclude that she was not assaulted from that fact alone?  No. 
 
But I'm more disgusted with the media that turns on and off its umbrage depending on whether the target is a Republican or a Democrat.  I think that the double-standard has probably benefitted Republicans and conservatives by teaching them to mind their manners at all times, a lesson the left has never had to learn, witness the silly, imbecilic behavior of the Occupiers compared to the maturity shown by the Tea Party.

But it's still an outrageous double standard.  So, when Dr. Helen writes...

Bullshit. What Klavan is advocating is political suicide. He might as well have taken his playbook from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals where Alinsky’s fourth rule is “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this…”


Mr. Klavan, telling the right that they have to live up to some impossible standard while excusing the left is laughable. All it will get you is defeated. Do you remember the Fresh Prince of Bel Air episode where Will Smith’s Uncle Phil was running for political office? His opponent, the guy who played George Jefferson in The Jeffersons bad-mouthed Uncle Phil all over the media. The family told Uncle Phil that he needed to fight back but Uncle Phil stated that he was “not going to sink to that level.” He lost the election by a landslide. He did eventually get appointed to the office when his opponent died by the governor but that’s not the point.

The point is, we must not let the left use our morality to hold us hostage. You may never catch the devil hanging on the cross, but your double standard will leave the right hanging in defeat, just like Uncle Phil, but without the safety net of his opponent dying. Life isn’t a nostalgic TV show or fiction book. The good guy doesn’t always win just because you want him to. And though you can feel noble about being the honorable one, honor is no substitute for the loss of freedom, increased government regulation, and economic woes that our country will suffer if the left wins on election day.

there is a part of me that says, "right on!"  Particularly after I read this account of Bill Clinton's rape of Juanity Broadrick.

There is a part of me that simply wants to say, I will start caring about Herman Cain when the media starts caring about Bill Clinton.

But that's wrong, because two wrongs don't make a right.

On the other hand, charity is a Christian virtue, and calumny and detraction - which includes making private things public for the purpose of damaging another's reputation - are sins.  Apparently, Cain's behavior was considered a private matter by Bialek until she decided that she could profit from her accusations, and I will give her past judgment due respect, and I will give Cain the benefit of the doubt until the evidence against him becomes at least as strong as that which the media ignored when it involved Clinton and Edwards.

Of course this story doesn't involve using money raised from donors to pay for a child conceived while cheating on a wife dying of cancer...

...so obviously it's too important to leave to the National Enquirer.

And besides this is a minority conservative Republican and not a Democrat, so that makes all the difference in the world.

Roger Simon observes:

It took the mainstream media nearly a year to catch up with the John Edwards Affair, but only weeks into Herman Cain’s narrow frontrunner status for the GOP nomination, the goodfellas at Politico are letting the uppity black conservative have it.


They begin their “Exclusive: Two women accused Herman Cain of inappropriate behavior” this way:

During Herman Cain’s tenure as the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, at least two female employees complained to colleagues and senior association officials about inappropriate behavior by Cain, ultimately leaving their jobs at the trade group, multiple sources confirm to POLITICO.

The women complained of sexually suggestive behavior by Cain that made them angry and uncomfortable, the sources said, and they signed agreements with the restaurant group that gave them financial payouts to leave the association. The agreements also included language that bars the women from talking about their departures.

It goes on with a fair amount of unsourced innuendo. Is there any way we can ever know the truth of this? Probably not since the parties are said to have agreed to remain silent for a five-figure payment, a paltry amount in this day and age. One thing is certain, whatever Cain did (if anything), it certainly isn’t in the ballpark of using campaign funds to support a mistress and love child while your wife is dying of cancer or even inserting a cigar in the pudenda of an unpaid intern in the corridors of the Oval Office. Those are certainly more than five-figure infractions — more like eight-figure.

Nevertheless, Cain’s campaign is taking a body blow. We’ll see what emerges. But I would like to mention one thing. Back in 1991, during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, I believed Anita Hill. Years later, my life had changed, and I came to meet Thomas himself at a social gathering. He turned out to be a delightful, unassuming person — it was hard to believe a Supreme Court justice could be so down to Earth and decent to be with on a social level.

I liked him a lot and am now skeptical that I was right about Hill. Maybe it had been just a high-tech lynching. Of course, I don’t know for sure — how can you in these things? But that’s the point, isn’t it? We all live on the knife edge of accusation. I’m the CEO of a media company and I am frequently concerned that I will be sued for sexual harassment. I’m not that kind of person at all, but given the way things are now, you can’t be too careful. I dare not compliment a woman on her hairdo in the workplace for fear I am open to suit.

Glen Reynolds asks:

Meanwhile, a question: Would Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman, Anna Palmer and Kenneth Vogel have put their names on a similar piece, with no named sources, aimed at Barack Obama? Would Politico have run it?

Every time I think the mainstream media can disgrace itself no further, it goes and prove me wrong.

Can you say "Projection"?...

...I knew you could.

Janeane Garafolo says that Republicans support Herman Cain because they want to be able to say that they aren't racist:

"Herman Cain is probably well liked by some of the Republicans because it hides the racist elements of the Republican party. Conservative movement and tea party movement, one in the same. "People like Karl Rove liked to keep the racism very covert. And so Herman Cain provides this great opportunity say you can say 'Look, this is not a racist, anti-immigrant, anti-female, anti-gay movement. Look we have a black man.'"

So, those Republicans support Herman Cain not because he is a succesful businessman who has endorsed the key principles of limited government, but because he's black. 

Unlike Democrats who supported a community organizer, state senator, college instructor and first term senator with absolutely no executive experience because he was, in the words of Joe Biden, “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” A sentiment endorsed by Harry Reid, who opined that Obama could become the country’s first black president because he was “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

It all goes to prove the Undeniable Rules of Life, Rule Number 7 - "when someone is accusing you of something you ain't doing, you can bet the farm that they are doing it."