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Notes -
What does this mean?
If you can accept that ethnicity is not always based on genetic difference, but also things like language or values, and something like Conservatives as Moral Mutants outlines that values between the two tribes have drifted substantially, then depending on how lenient you are in describing ethnicity, you might be able to claim that what we are seeing in the culture war is more like an inter-ethnic conflict.
In hindsight, that probably doesn't mean anything too different from just talking about tribes. I thought it was an interesting way of looking at it in a new light. But I don't actually know how groups like the Samoyedic tribes diversified to the extent that they did; splintering and reproducing, sure, but for what reasons? Anything like what we're seeing today? Is this culture war and possible fracturing of a nation new, or is it something that has repeated itself many times? Maybe something like the Balkans is a recent example of it?
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