It’s really common in a comment thread for someone to respond to a criticism of one group with a comment along the lines of, “The other group does it too.” So, for instance, if someone says, “Trump supporters are motivated by tribalism,” I’ll count comments till I get to the, “Liberals are tribalists too” or “Both sides engage in tribalism.” The unintentional irony of that response brings me a wicked pleasure.
It’s entertaining because it’s a response that only makes sense if you think of all political discourse as being about which of the two possible groups is better. In other words, it’s a response that assumes rabid factionalism.
Here’s what I mean: why is the person making that comment?
Imagine this exchange:
C: I’m going to vote for Clinton because Trump supporters are motivated only by rabid factionalism.
H: Clinton supporters are tribalist too.
That’s a discussion in which the “just as bad” response is relevant, because it’s showing that the major premise of C’s argument is inconsistent with his own actions—he’s claiming that his vote is motivated by a rejection of factionalism, so that he’s thinking of voting for someone who promotes factionalism is relevant. (I’m not saying the response is true, but it’s relevant to argue about whether they are just as bad.)
Imagine this one:
C: To win over Trump supporters, we need to show them how harmful his policies are to them.
E: That won’t work because Trump supporters are motivated only by rabid factionalism.
H: Clinton supporters are tribalist too.
H’s comment is completely irrelevant to the question of how to persuade Trump supporters. And it’s irrelevant twice over: 1) Clinton supporters could be carry pitchforks and torches and the most rabid factional supporters the world has ever known and it has no relevance for whether Trump supporters are too factional to be persuaded by argument, and 2) the world isn’t divided into Clinton supporters and Trump supporters.
For that comment to make sense, every single issue would be reducible to the relative goodness of the only two groups that constitute the American political realm. That’s how H sees it. H thinks he’s being “fair” and “objective” because he thinks he’s condemning both groups equally. He isn’t. He’s stuck within a limited and politically damaging ideology about purity and motives.
That is the attitude about politics–that all political disagreements can and should be about which of the two possible groups is better (and it’s a zero-sum relationship)—that fuels rabid factionalism.
Political discourse should be policy discourse. Displacing policy discourse with arguments about relative goodness doesn’t help.