5 Feet of Fury

Derb: ‘We are eternally re-fighting the Civil War’

John Derbyshire:

What it’s about, what most of our politics is about, is the seething hatred between our two white tribes, with such issues as gun control, gay rights, and posture towards blacks as tribal markers. (Posture is all it is; as the late Joe Sobran observed, liberals in their mating and migratory habits are indistinguishable from members of the Klan.)

Michael Bloomberg has an armed security detail; Barack Obama’s daughters attend a school with armed guards in addition to the girls’ Secret Service detail. These inconsistencies don’t matter.

The Bloombergs and Obamas know what tribe they are, and the tribal identifiers are mainly just verbal and content-free, like war chants—like their expressions of concern for the urban poor, whom they strive mightily to keep at a distance. It’s really paleolithic stuff: shouting insults and banging spears on shields across a jungle clearing.