Thread by @ggreeneva

Not to get all high and mighty, but “the job of [a] brother, sister, mother, father, daughter, [or] son” is to hold immediate kin accountable when they do harm — preferably before that harm has public, never mind legal, consequences.

There’s a difference between love and blind loyalty. When it works right, familial love requires an effort to save our relatives from screwing up — and to guard others from the consequences of said screw-ups.

Pulling out all the stops to shield family from consequences for ongoing wrongs isn’t “love,” it’s tribalism. It’s a pure state-of-nature vision of “love,” in which the banishment of moral concern for the welfare of becomes a familial virtue — “the job,” so to speak.

We talk about tribalism a lot in politics now—about the polarization of the two parties along lines of religion, education, ethnicity, etc.

Well, Dems aren’t immune from tribal impulses. But we should try to stave them off—or at least avoid dressing them up as virtue.