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.

The genius of the American experiment is that it allows for course correction — but only if we remember our role. Not as subjects, but as stewards.

Your role, good sir or wise gentle lady, is to continue doing what you’ve always done: managing your affairs with clear eyes and a steady hand, educating those who’ll carry the torch, and resisting the ever-present temptation to comply just for comfort’s sake.

Yes, the government will grow. Yes, the financial world may turn inside out before breakfast — possibly before your second cup of coffee. But you still have the right to think. To choose. To invest in your own way.

For now, the mixed economic data means stocks will likely trend higher, until there’s a crisis. And when there is a crisis, the Fed will finally make its move and aggressively cut rates.

And, for now, bond yields are still near their highest level in 15 years. Bond yields, even on U.S. Treasury bonds, are over the rate of inflation.

In short, it’s not a bad time to lock in bond yields now – which will go lower during a crisis, pushing bond prices higher. And in a crisis, today’s high-flying stocks, driven by retail investors with a fear of missing out – could easily get crushed.

Markets are humming, policy dazzles, but beneath the gloss — tech booms, liquidity surges, digital currencies — the very foundations of money, governance, and investor sentiment are cracking, realigning, even smoldering.

The post-World War II Pax Americana isn’t evolving; it’s being dismantled rather quickly.

What’s emerging is accompanied by a load of distraction and showmanship. So it’s important to focus on the actual events taking place right now that are going to affect your portfolio this year.

And, we can’t overstate this, the changes that are actually happening right now to your money.

Today, digital dollars masquerade as cash, tariffs are cloaked as protection, AI layoffs spun as productivity, private assets packaged as democratized. And yet, none of it matters if the final pillar — confidence — crumbles.

When belief falters, no trumpet of “seismic event” grants you shelter.

Private equity tends to perform better than the stock market, provided you do so over time.

Private credit, a newer asset class but a rapidly growing one, also shows strong returns, as well as relatively high current income.

And if you have a retirement account, chances are you’re willing to think long-term.

Win-win, right? Not necessarily.

First, these new funds would also come with an incentive structure similar to investing in a hedge fund. That includes a higher fee than a market index ETF – think 2% compared to 0.1% (or less).

Plus, many of these funds have a hurdle rate attached to them as well. Once they clear 5% returns – which, with private credit, can be easily cleared by making deals with cash returns over 5% – additional incentive fees may kick in.