Saturday Night Live and the Dangers of Tribalism

Saturday Night Live has had mixed success over the last couple seasons. Their biggest splash of the last couple years has been Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of Donald Trump as a mean, hapless, dim-witted autocrat. But I think the writers finally figured out that they weren’t really adding anything to the conversation the way they did with Kate McKinnon’s Clinton, Will Ferrell’s Bush or Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin. Those interpretations all took a character and put a spin on them, whereas Baldwin seems to be going for a hyperrealism that isn’t funny so much as it is wallowing in how dark reality has become.

But I thought the recent sketch, “What Even Matters Anymore?” from January 20^th with host Jessica Chastain actually dug into two aspects of our social politics that were a lot smarter than the show tends to attempt. The gist of the sketch is that Chastain helms a game show where she lists off the various horrifying, insulting, offensive things President Trump has said lately and asks “does it even matter anymore?” The contestants naively respond yes, of course it matters, and are met with a buzzer and explanation that they are wrong, there’s always an excuse for why this behavior has become both normal and perfectly fine. Chastain unravels over the course of the sketch, eventually breaking character to be comforted by the other cast members who try to talk her out of her disillusioned state.

Without naming it, the sketch speaks to two major issues afflicting our social politics. The first is the current state of tribalism in American politics. Talking about the polarization of America has become as de rigueur as weather reports in nightly newscasts. Studies and polls back up the nightly pundits; America is as polarized today as at any point since the Civil War. But I think there is a dark, worrisome streak in the step from polarization to tribalism. America has always had a deeply divergent ideological schism. It’s ebbed and flowed over time, but there has never been a time, perhaps other than World War II, when the country has been on the same side of most major issues at the same time. So while polarization (and The Big Sort) certainly appear worse now than ever before, American democracy has always had a failsafe of customs and norms both in its general population and its political class that has protected our basic fundamental democracy from serious damage. We might disagree, we might even bring the country to a screeching halt, but we’d almost always stop short of actually breaking things, because the American tribe was always stronger than the political or factional tribe.

But I fear, and SNL’s sketch hints toward, political tribalism breaking that American democratic failsafe. It’s no surprise, of course, that a person’s political affiliation makes them much more willing to forgive the sins of their representatives, which might seem counterintuitive in a society that would seemingly want to demand excellence from their best and brightest. The central complaint of Chastain’s game show host is that nothing matters because there’s no crime the President could commit, no breaking of faith, no sin, no ideological about-face, that would cause Republicans to turn on him and openly defy him other than some mealy-mouthed scolding here and there; loyalty to the political tribe is now paramount.

The corollary to this phenomenon is a breakdown in Americans’ basic courage of their convictions, and in the benefit of the doubt we give each other. I think this is happening on the Left and the Right, but at the moment it’s certainly much louder on the Right. Family morals groups in conjunction with Evangelicals have ruled American political Christianity since at least the 90s, and for those of us on the Left, while we might not have agreed on their particular take on how faith should intersect with running a country, I for my part never doubted that they firmly believed in, and acted in accordance with the beliefs they espoused. It’s what gave at least some moral weight to castigating a moderately liberal Bill Clinton for his infidelities and indiscretions as president. How then am I to take them at face value when they elect a president who has admitted to, but not apologized for, multiple affairs? And how am I to take them at face value when they overwhelmingly vote for someone like alleged child abuser Roy Moore in Alabama? I think this speaks to the power of tribalism, where people are so wedded to their political affiliation that they hold it dearer than their deeply held religious beliefs. And I think it speaks to the moment we’re in that people are so tribal, and so afraid of breaking with their tribe, that in fact it seems as if nothing does matter if it gets in the way of that tribal code.

The second issue the SNL sketch speaks to is a word you’ve probably heard a lot of in the last year: normal. As in, “this isn’t normal” or “this has been normalized.” Many Americans have simply reached outrage fatigue levels they didn’t realize were possible before. President Trump has essentially weaponized the furious pace that life moves at, especially in the social political world. If he can say and do enough objectionable things, we won’t be able to handle them all, won’t be able to give each one it’s due without something slipping through or without simply becoming too tired to care about them all. The danger there is that Americans caring and worrying about these things is as essential a bulwark to protecting American democracy as any other.

But here is the part that truly makes me worry: People have realized that it can get this bad and that things are still kind of okay. The economy, the government, and all the things we live our day to day lives on continue to function even as the outer edges of society show signs of wear. There has been a great fear for a century that there are certain lines that cannot be crossed, for that way lies destruction. Trump, aided and abetted by Congressional Republicans, has crossed many of these lines, and while we’ve all held our breath, life has gone on. Forgetting for a moment that millions still live in poverty, under or unemployed, their wages stagnant, with a host of serious issues plaguing the country, not much has gotten much worse since he became president than it would have under any Republican president. Things haven’t collapsed; they just keep on moving along.

And so, the central thesis of SNL’s sketch becomes the diagnosis for our current political malady, is there anything the President can do that will cause our politicians to choose country over party? And will it even matter? It’s not even just about President Trump, it’s also about the man or woman who comes after him, and how we’re able to repair the damage done during his term in office. Owing to its bountiful resources, vast wealth, and its lucky place in history, America can deal with levels of dysfunction almost no other nation on earth could survive. But nothing is eternal. And I fear, like the proverbial frog in the beaker of water, America will normalize every increase in the temperature right up until the moment it begins to boil.