Tribalism Alert
What men will believe if it supports the rhetorical interests of their tribe. What they will overlook if it undercuts their self-identifying faith in their tribe. And how often the tribesmen will employ the former with the greatest force of absurdity as a psychological bulwark against having to confront themselves with the most disturbing evidence of the latter.
Glenn Beck recently hosted a guest from Charlie Kirk’s Christian crusaders organization — can’t quite remember the group’s name, so I consciously choose not to try — in a discussion of the “rapid collapse” of South Korea into communism under new president Lee Jae Myung. During this discussion, the Christian crusader casually commented that Korea is letting Chinese people enter the country in waves, “And they — they — if they’re there, I think it’s four months, they have the ability to vote.”
Really? Did you bother to verify that with anyone, Christian crusader? To vote after four months? Any random Chinese traveller? Well, some social media rumor mills might be reporting that, but ten seconds of rational reflection with one’s MAGA hat removed and placed delicately on the gold-painted table might lead one to wonder how that would be possible. Doesn’t Korea have a constitution and a system of government with well-established laws? Is it plausible to think that thousands of Chinese people without any Korean citizenship status can just cross the border and attain the right to vote in Korean elections within months?
Here is a hint of reality for the MAGA kooks. The Korean government recently instituted a trial program, with a specific deadline, allowing certain Chinese tourists to travel within Korea visa-free for up to fifteen days, as a means of encouraging economic activity in a nation suffering through the effects of U.S. tariffs. Some people object to this policy, and consequently claims have spread on the internet to the effect that Chinese people are being allowed to “invade” Korea without passports or any way of tracking them inside the country, which is inherently ridiculous, since no one in the world, including Korean citizens, can enter South Korea without a passport. (The tinges of race-based paranoia in this anti-Chinese hyperbole within Korea is sad, but will of course easily be overlooked, if not applauded, by those, such as Beck and his guest, who are fully on board with the immigration “policies” currently being employed in the U.S. under the stewardship of Stephen Miller et al.) And as for voting rights, there was, for many years, a standard practice of allowing non-citizens who had achieved permanent (lifetime) resident visas in Korea, through investment or other means, to vote in local elections, and only local elections. The previous “conservative” government, just before their president prematurely ended his own term in turmoil by declaring marshal law, was attempting to end that voting policy out of concerns about the fact that the great majority of foreign permanent resident visas are held by Chinese citizens (which is true, for obvious geographical and economic reasons).
I have no doubt that Glenn Beck and his Christian crusader guest have taken pains to ensure that they were getting their facts straight — straight from the QAnon website, that is. But as a person who has lived as a foreign resident in South Korea for eighteen years, and knows more than a little about Korean visa types and their associated voting privileges, I can report with a high degree of confidence that…well, that MAGA shills alleging lawlessness and subversion of the institutions of civil government against anyone else, while their own hero and his henchmen are actively tearing America’s institutions and the rule of law limb from limb with glee, is an all too rich demonstration of the mechanisms of self-protective tribal doublethink outlined at the outset of this observation.
To repeat:
What men will believe if it supports the rhetorical interests of their tribe. What they will overlook if it undercuts their self-identifying faith in their tribe. And how often the tribesmen will employ the former with the greatest force of absurdity as a psychological bulwark against having to confront themselves with the most disturbing evidence of the latter.
