Your Tribalism Is Dumb

NO, YOUR TRIBALISM IS DUMB!

- ANDREW HEATON

My father visited me once while I was working for Congress, and I took him to the D.C. Armory to see the marching bands perform. This was a brilliant stroke on my part as a son, as my father loves marching band music. He listens to John Philip Sousa every morning on his way to work, and he unwinds by playing Risk on his computer while listening to the kind of jaunty tunes you’d see in old war propaganda films as the aircraft carrier zips toward Japan. Dad might actually enjoy being invaded by a foreign army, so long as they did it while goose-stepping to a solid drumbeat. (I suspect he dislikes terrorists primarily for their lackluster showmanship.)

At one point, the Army bands split into two sections, then marched to opposite ends of the field. One band played some pithy march, like “We Could Wallop Denmark if We Had To.” Then paused, so the other band could blast out “The National Coast Guard’s Pickleball Fight Song.” When they alternated back, the stadium instinctively knew what to do: clap for their respective marching band, which had been created and assigned approximately six seconds ago.

When the first band finished its installment of “The Fightin’ 51st Airborne Squirt Gun Squadron,” the north half of the stadium roared with applause, while we in the southern section waited expectantly for our own response. Our band outdid the north section with an upbeat rendition of “Bury My Spleen at Fort Gibson,” and we applauded even louder. (We wanted the north section to know that our band was the superior band, and that we adored them and their brassy musical prowess more than those anemic northerners loved their own middling ensemble.)