Ambiguous referent, sorry. This is the part I think everyone does:

> "blindly support everything one of their own does".

And of course the same in the opposite direction, blindly opposing everything the other tribe does.

Speak for yourself please dang

Of course nobody is 100% above it, it happens, to be blindly partisan for someone or something and not quite honest to oneself.

As Orwell described it https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

But doing it all the time? No. It's something to overcome. None of us may be perfectly non-partisan and intellectually honest all the time, of course, but there are still two general directions: giving in to that, and wading out of it.

To be super mean about it, because that's how I feel about it in my heart of hearts: insofar people were just an extension with a tribe they identify with, they could be replaced by another member of that tribe. And if every member in that tribe had no content and only a reference to the tribe, the whole thing could get garbage collected.

There's a real mechanism where we don't even feel the need to examine, much less justify, things we claim or support just because we feel we're with the in-group. As in, I don't know what I'm talking about or what it means, I just need to know that it's approved by those with the biggest stick, or that "history will judge me correct" or anything like that. But IF I can argue the point on my own, what do I care that others agree? And if I can't, what does it help me?

Calling that out isn't necessarily "getting mad at it" tho, it's just calling it out. Anyone who makes a podcast or gets behind any other type of podium, even this comment, is up for scrutiny. But I'd agree that we shouldn't get self-righteous about it. As in, I criticize this for being partisan because being partisan is thoughtless, but not because I never do it, and also because I want "my own" to criticize me in the same way, where applicable.

And yes, it's much easier to see how crude it is, how gross to cloak something in supposed wisdom, nuance or other good things when it's really just partisan hackery (when the rationalization came after the decision to be loyal no matter what), when others do it with something we disagree with. We overlook it constantly when people do it in service of what we think is good, and the blind spots when we ourselves do it are giant. But that just means more work cut out for us :P

Yes, Orwell is one of the few who seemed to have a kind of immunity to this! At least in part.