I'm sure many of you have witnessed a sporting event, where people are excitedly rooting and cheering for the home team. What enables this is the human instinct of tribalism. In this instance, as long as it doesn't lead to violence,it is harmless. In politics, it can be dangerous, because instead of objectively looking at both the problems facing our society and the remedies for fixing them, Tribalism makes us tend to look first at who we want to blame.
What I see in a lot of the Republican base is tribalism. This is constantly stoked by entities such as Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and others. The followers are constantly being coaxed to fear and hate the people who are different from them, or are not part of their group. This constant vitriol that is needed to hook the people can lead to violence. The fact that many people have become hooked on this, has proven beneficial to the corporatists who are using them.
Because this is a human instinct, I have come to believe that some people are genetically vulnerable to it. If we can make the general public aware of tribalism in politics, then maybe we can minimize it's affect, but the media pays no attention to it.