The rise of the Meh Tribe?
By Heather Wilhelm
National Review
Fury and finger-pointing are all the rage on social media. Plenty of Americans just shrug.
‘By now we all understand that America is in the grip of political tribalism,” Yale professor Amy Chua wrote in the February 22 New York Times. “We lament and condemn this phenomenon even as we voraciously engage in it.”
It’s a familiar refrain, is it not? Chua’s widely discussed new book on the topic, Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, has been praised as “timely,” “spot-on,” “brilliant,” and “insightful.” (The author’s earlier launch to fame was a bit more divisive: In 2011’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, she detailed her unorthodox method of perfectionist parenting, including the crazed and principled rejection of a crookedly folded, happy-face-strewn birthday card made by her four-year-old daughter.)
