[Sone7]

It does seem a little bit irrational to state that immigration is being used by corps to distract us, while ignoring the positive aspects of it.

Also, saying that people are naturally tribalistic, because of evolution, fails to take into account that we're not slaves to our impulses, and that evolution blatantly favours cooperation over competition.

[DarkKomunalec]

Tribalism is as much about cooperation as about competition - help the virtuous Us to drive out the villainous Them.

It makes it no less easy to abuse however, e.g. "Look at those no-good black welfare queens with their 12 kids paid for by good honest white people! Cut social spending!"

[candiodari]

Some credit should be given to the war cry of the current (still pretty much current) regime : let's help the favored classes (I would say the weak, but lots of weak classes find themselves excluded) and everything will get better for everyone !

And then, for about 16 years, since the crisis of 2000 ... it didn't get better for everyone. Real income has been dropping since the 1980s, but it was almost steady until 1999. And then healthcare, fuel/energy and education really exploded. Of course this is the result of the crisis in 2008, which was of course not caused in 2008, but before then.

Obama got elected on the same platform as Trump, really. He was going to change things. Hope and change. The famous blue and red posters, his own characteristic style, all very memorable and well executed. An abundance of hope, but I must say the change was found somewhat lacking. Despite a nobel peace prize, Guantanamo was not closed, and there was a massive 2008 crisis, rather than a recovery (yes Obama promised an economic recovery from the situation BEFORE the 2008 crisis, remember ? The Bush tax cuts were the big bogeyman at the time).

Then the experience of the crisis came. Even if you weren't one of the people who kept the debt but lost their home, very few people did well during the crisis. Then there was the initial pullback, but aside from the 1% with lots of stocks nobody was really made whole.

Then the FED "fixed" this. They came up with what's commonly known as the "PCE deflator" because of oil. You see, because of the huge fuel/energy price rise people were using much less energy, and as a result it shouldn't be counted in inflation (or else inflation would have been close to 10%). Likewise, people use less housing, same reasoning.

That's great, but ... people still had less fuel/energy as a result, the banks just refused to count that as inflation. There's a famous Y Combinator article titled "There's a remarkable correlation between the quality of life and energy use". Likewise people have enjoyed less housing, all of which is not counted ...

Despite this massive adjustment to favor economic indicators under Obama, his policies have not improved the situation of the average American. All together I would say that, on a large average, and without counting inflation, Americans have gotten back about half of what they lost in the 2008 crisis. Counting CPI inflation sadly I'd say it's more like 20%.

And now they elect the other party.

The response "They must be evil racists !" (because let's be honest, "tribalism" is no more than a euphemism) seems like it might be missing the point a bit, aside from being entirely unhelpful.

[AstralStorm]

Pity US has just one party in two colours. The party for rich. Both sides take in a lot of support and allow lobbying.

[candiodari]

In Europe the situation is very different. We simply have political parties that are job plans for their administrators. Doing what the rich want means they also get to divide up jobs on corporate boards and that makes all of them ... also parties for the rich.