The Tribal Election

“Political tribalism really does break people’s brains” – Elon Musk

“A feeling I’ve been keeping mostly to myself: this doesn’t seem like an election year to me. I just don’t see 2024 as a presidential election. I really don’t know what this is, and lack the language to describe it. Anyone else feeling like you don’t know what we’re watching?” – Eric Weinstein

America’s 2024 election is the first presidential election dominated by networked tribes.

People aren’t choosing candidates; they’re selecting a tribe.
People aren’t voting for their tribe; they are voting against the other tribe (both candidates/parties/tribes have higher negatives than positives).
People aren’t debating competing policies and programs; they’re talking past each other about the threat posed by the opposing tribe.

There’s a lot at work here. Let’s dig into it, one step at a time.

Networked Politics

As a refresher, networks haven’t just changed how we communicate (see the GG Report; Packetized Media for more detail);

Exposure to networks has rewired our brains. We process information differently now. Specifically, we scan torrential information flows instead of reading or watching long-form books and broadcasts to uncover new, novel, or interesting information.
We use pattern matching to make sense of the packets of information we find through scanning. We can do this independently (few people) or rely on popular podcasters, X accounts, or YouTube personalities to pattern match for us (many people).
Overwhelmingly, people have opted to join large (tribal) networks engaged in collaborative pattern matching since it simplifies processing torrents of online information. Due to this adoption, collaborative networks are now in the process of rewiring our politics and our society.

Networked Tribalism

Inevitably, the most successful collaborative pattern-matching networks to emerge over the last eight years (when I started writing about this shift) organize tribally.

Traditionally, tribal organizations use stories (why we came together, what we have successfully endured, why we are better together) and rituals to create a fictive kinship that can bind people together as if they were blood relations.
Network tribalism uses the opposite approach. It binds people together in their opposition to a common threat. Tribal networks use collaborative pattern matching to create patterns of behavior that can indicate a person or an organization is a threat.
Networked tribes go to war by mobilizing their tribe to defeat the threat they manufacture. They win when the enemy is defeated, and the entire network, at both the human and system levels (from algorithms to AIs), is aligned with their pattern to suppress the enemy completely.

Turn Your Images On
Tribal Elections

Open Source Dynamics

Tribal networks don’t have organizational hierarchies. They are open-source networks where anybody can join and contribute. Let’s explore this;

Leadership is conditional. It’s earned by damaging, defeating, and vanquishing tribal enemies. If a leader begins to delve into the policies, agendas, platforms, and narratives of traditional politics, they will quickly find they are not leaders anymore.
Open source networks are also multi-cephalic (with many potential heads), meaning that any participating individual, group, or organization can become a leader (head) if they move the tribe forward. As a result, if a currently successful leader is removed (assassinated, banned, or jailed), another person will quickly take their place.
They are innovative. They are constantly finding new ways to damage the enemy, and network connectivity amplifies and accelerates their ability to share those methods, targets, and support.

Opposing Tribal Orientations

The two great tribal networks at war in the US, the tribes that have completely consumed the US political system, are based on competing national decision-making orientations (see the GG Report; “What went wrong with America?” for more details on these decision-making orientations).

NOTE: Orientation sets the direction for decision-making at the individual and national levels. It sets you on the decision-making path towards the goals you want to achieve. If your orientation is wrong, every decision you make advances you toward disaster, defeat, and crisis.

Anti-Globalist Tribe: This tribe is at war with the post-Cold War globalist orientation. Since opposition to this ruling orientation was structurally repressed (marginalized by bureaucratic institutions, traditional media, and the dominant political class), the anti-globalist tribe emerged as a network insurgency in 2016 (which explains why the efforts to defeat and oppose it became so frantic).
Anti-Nationalist Tribe: The dominant orientation within the institutional, media (broadcast), and government establishments. It became aggressively anti-nationalist once it took back power in 2020.
Anti-orientation. These tribes aren’t proponents of an orientation they support; they are opponents of an orientation they despise. They know what they hate and will see no fault in any policy, program, or leadership that isn’t connected to the enemy tribe’s orientation. This stance makes reform, productive discussion/debate, and holding anyone connected to the tribe in power responsible for failure nearly impossible.

Note the attitudinal shift between this Saturday Night Live skit featuring Trump in November 2015 and the tribal hatred that emerged a year later when it became evident he had adopted a nationalist orientation. ~~ John Robb, Global Guerrillas

The Tribal Election

John Robb, Global Guerrillas

“Political tribalism really does break people’s brains” – Elon Musk

“A feeling I’ve been keeping mostly to myself: this doesn’t seem like an election year to me. I just don’t see 2024 as a presidential election. I really don’t know what this is, and lack the language to describe it. Anyone else feeling like you don’t know what we’re watching?” – Eric Weinstein

America’s 2024 election is the first presidential election dominated by networked tribes.

People aren’t choosing candidates; they’re selecting a tribe.
People aren’t voting for their tribe; they are voting against the other tribe (both candidates/parties/tribes have higher negatives than positives).
People aren’t debating competing policies and programs; they’re talking past each other about the threat posed by the opposing tribe.

There’s a lot at work here. Let’s dig into it, one step at a time.

Networked Politics

As a refresher, networks haven’t just changed how we communicate (see the GG Report; Packetized Media for more detail);

Exposure to networks has rewired our brains. We process information differently now. Specifically, we scan torrential information flows instead of reading or watching long-form books and broadcasts to uncover new, novel, or interesting information.
We use pattern matching to make sense of the packets of information we find through scanning. We can do this independently (few people) or rely on popular podcasters, X accounts, or YouTube personalities to pattern match for us (many people).
Overwhelmingly, people have opted to join large (tribal) networks engaged in collaborative pattern matching since it simplifies processing torrents of online information. Due to this adoption, collaborative networks are now in the process of rewiring our politics and our society.

Networked Tribalism

Inevitably, the most successful collaborative pattern-matching networks to emerge over the last eight years (when I started writing about this shift) organize tribally.

Traditionally, tribal organizations use stories (why we came together, what we have successfully endured, why we are better together) and rituals to create a fictive kinship that can bind people together as if they were blood relations.
Network tribalism uses the opposite approach. It binds people together in their opposition to a common threat. Tribal networks use collaborative pattern matching to create patterns of behavior that can indicate a person or an organization is a threat.
Networked tribes go to war by mobilizing their tribe to defeat the threat they manufacture. They win when the enemy is defeated, and the entire network, at both the human and system levels (from algorithms to AIs), is aligned with their pattern to suppress the enemy completely.

Turn Your Images On
Tribal Elections

Open Source Dynamics

Tribal networks don’t have organizational hierarchies. They are open-source networks where anybody can join and contribute. Let’s explore this;

Leadership is conditional. It’s earned by damaging, defeating, and vanquishing tribal enemies. If a leader begins to delve into the policies, agendas, platforms, and narratives of traditional politics, they will quickly find they are not leaders anymore.
Open source networks are also multi-cephalic (with many potential heads), meaning that any participating individual, group, or organization can become a leader (head) if they move the tribe forward. As a result, if a currently successful leader is removed (assassinated, banned, or jailed), another person will quickly take their place.
They are innovative. They are constantly finding new ways to damage the enemy, and network connectivity amplifies and accelerates their ability to share those methods, targets, and support.

Opposing Tribal Orientations

Anti-Globalist Tribe: This tribe is at war with the post-Cold War globalist orientation. Since opposition to this ruling orientation was structurally repressed (marginalized by bureaucratic institutions, traditional media, and the dominant political class), the anti-globalist tribe emerged as a network insurgency in 2016 (which explains why the efforts to defeat and oppose it became so frantic).
Anti-Nationalist Tribe: The dominant orientation within the institutional, media (broadcast), and government establishments. It became aggressively anti-nationalist once it took back power in 2020.
Anti-orientation. These tribes aren’t proponents of an orientation they support; they are opponents of an orientation they despise. They know what they hate and will see no fault in any policy, program, or leadership that isn’t connected to the enemy tribe’s orientation. This stance makes reform, productive discussion/debate, and holding anyone connected to the tribe in power responsible for failure nearly impossible.

America has consistently reinvented itself in times of crisis. The founders survived monarchy. Lincoln survived disunion. We’ve survived bank panics, oil shocks, stagflation, and disco. We’ll survive deplatforming, too.

The Second American Revolution won’t be fought with muskets or manifestos. It won’t be fought with petty violence and street demonstrations. It will be written into code. And available to those who wish to take advantage of it.

Russell Kirk called the first American Revolution “a revolution not made, but prevented.” The second will be the same. We’re not tearing down the house — we’re going to rewire it in code.

The result may not be utopia. But it will be freedom you can bank on.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has called stablecoins, including USDC, “a pillar of dollar strength,” estimating a $2 trillion market within five years. U.S. Treasuries back every coin.

Bessent’s formula even suggests that a broader, more efficient market for US dollars will help retain its best use case as the reserve currency of global finance… and, perhaps, help the current administration address the nation’s $37 trillion mountain of debt.

In trying to cancel a man, the establishment accidentally reinforced the dollar, and may add decades to its life as a useful currency.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States, it’s worth recalling that our first Revolution wasn’t waged to destroy an order — it was fought to preserve one.

Political philosopher Russell Kirk called it “a revolution not made but prevented.” The colonists sought not chaos but continuity — the defense of their “chartered rights as Englishmen,” not the birth of an entirely new world. Kirk wrote:

“The American Revolution was a preventive movement, intended to preserve an old constitutional structure. The French Revolution meant the destruction of the fabric of society.”

The difference, Kirk argued, was moral. The American Revolution was rooted in ordered liberty; the French in ideological frenzy. The first produced a Constitution; the second, a guillotine.

Two and a half centuries later, the argument continues — only now, the battlefield is financial. Who controls access to money? Who defines legitimacy? Can a citizen’s ability to transact depend on their politics?

Trump and Powell are no buddies. They’ve been fighting over rate cuts all year—Trump demanding more, Powell holding back. Even after cutting twice, Trump called him “grossly incompetent” and said he’d “love to fire” him. The tension has been building for months.

And Trump now seems ready to install someone who shares his appetite for lower rates and easier money.

Trump has been dropping hints for weeks—saying on November 18, “I think I already know my choice,” and then doubling down last Sunday aboard Air Force One with, “I know who I am going to pick… we’ll be announcing it.”

He was referring to one Kevin Hassett, who—according to a recent Bloomberg report—has emerged as the overwhelming favorite to become the next Fed chair.