One of tribalism's most pernicious effects is it comes to dictate what our convictions are to be. It determines for us when we ought to care about something and when we ought to suspend interest in that. And the factor it uses to make this determination is political allegiance.
This is backward: our moral beliefs should determine our political ones. Instead, too often, it's our political alliances that signal to us whether this is an occasion to Care About This Issue or an occasion to #whatabout our way out of it.
Why does this matter? For as long as Americans have been obsessed with politics — longer, even—politicians have been known for their questionable personal ethics. Morality is a fixture of politics. So if our tribal commitments are renegotiating our internal hierarchies—placing political allegiance above moral conviction, for example—we need to address this. With every action, with every interaction, we are building our political culture. No political culture can survive the destruction of its most important norms.
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