It actually makes SENSE that you type this from abroad, outside from America and outside from where you were raised.
If you come from an open, liberal hodge-podge and then live long-term inside a TRIBE, then the special mix you came from comes into sharper and sharper focus.
I think for those who never leave, then the many ways that an open culture that does live in accordance with written law never becomes nearly as clear.
That’s also why some of the most shrill warning about America’s foreboding direction frequently also come from immigrants from the former East-Block:
“I see what is happening because THIS is exactly what I ran away from.”
gaijin, you have hit the nail on the head. Everyone should take a course in Anthropology and realize that humans somehow evolve back to the tribe. We are tribal creatures by nature. Hard to “get away” from it. Even when infrequent manage to rise above or “leave behind” the tribal fires, still they splinter into “conservative/liberal” “anti-abortion/pro-abort”, “black yellow red/white”, Catholic/Jewish/Islamist,etc., on and on and on. I guess it’s called life, but sometimes it stinks.