What you say, Mike, is what you and I and others of good will wish the world to be. Unfortunately nature has always had other ideas. Nature sat down one day and had this heart to heart talk with itself. Look, how about if I make it so that people of like kind are able to work especially well together for the common good. Will that not be a good thing? Yes, but? There is always a cost for everything — no exceptions.

That means if people of like kind work especially well together then the opposite must be true of how folks of a different kind get along. You just can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you push here it pops up there.

In the end the human ego always fights for opportunity and advantage, and to that end people of like kind band together. Seen from a certain perspective it’s called teamwork and competition, the foundation of capitalism.

The experiment in American democracy was in large part meant to try and overcome the negative offset of tribalism. It is not looking so good right now, either in America or the world.