Tribalism, The Karpman Drama Triangle, and Drama Queens

I’m in a tribe and so are you. We have no choice. Everyone is now assigned to a tribe depending upon how the Left views you. By “you”, they mean your ideology and your usefulness to them or your threat to them. The Left works out of a three-tribe system. That system comes intellectually from as far back as Hegel and Marx, and socially probably as far back as humans existed and had relationships. It is a system of dysfunction brought about by a need for power through drama.

Today’s tribalism exists in both the strictures of the Left, and the obvious group capitulation of the political Right to the Left’s march off the cliff of sanity. The Left has assumed control of the political tribe, the education tribe, the law and judicial tribe, and the media tribe, and forms into a great tribal nation.

Everyone else is divided into the Victimhood Tribe, containing minorities which accept the mantle of Victim for leverage of compensation of various types, and the Oppressor Class, which contains everyone not in the Leftist messiah class and Victimhood Class.

There is a psychological analysis of this phenomenon called the “Karpman Drama Triangle”. Each of the major tribes is graphically characterized by a triangle with each of the three tribes located at one apex of the triangle. According to theory, each apex has transactions with each of the other two. Those transactions can be analyzed.

This is said to be a model for conflict that defines the plots of many novels, and the drama in many families and social situations. It devolves to be a game, with roles. And in large groups, tribalism is assigned, regardless of whether the individual wants to participate. For example, in politics the pundits and media play a part in assigning victimhood and oppressor identities. By referring constantly to a demographic in terms that make it appear monolithic, say, “flyovers”, or “Asians”, or “Hispanics”, the demographic can seem to attach to the single attribute which the media assigns it. Thus “flyovers” becomes a de facto tribe of ignorant bitter clingers, in Obama’s sociological judgment.

The game gets complex when one tribe member assumes membership in one of the other tribes. One example is when feminists who are victims also become messiahs. And they can also be oppressors when defending their tribe(s), as they do with transgender women who have recently been given universal victimhood, but are roundly rejected in feminist quarters because they are not “really women”. Interestingly this opinion is similar to that of the overarching Oppressor Class, too.

But it is still a game, that of creating drama to be used to strengthen your tribe’s bonds and bounderies, and to further its mission, which is to “progress” away from stability in order to demand more control.

” Games in transactional analysis refers to a series of transactions that is complementary (reciprocal), ulterior, and proceeds towards a predictable outcome. In this context, the Karpman Drama Triangle is a "game".

Games are often characterized by a switch in roles of players towards the end. The number of players may vary. Games in this sense are devices used (often unconsciously) by a person to create a circumstance where they can justifiably feel certain resulting feelings (such as anger or superiority) or justifiably take or avoid taking certain actions where their own inner wishes differ from societal expectations. They are always a substitute for a more genuine and full adult emotion and response which would be more appropriate. Three quantitative variables are often useful to consider for games:

Flexibility: "The ability of the players to change the currency of the game (that is, the tools they use to play it). 'Some games...can be played properly with only one kind of currency, while others, such as exhibitionistic games, are more flexible",[11] so that players may shift from words, to money, to parts of the body.

Tenacity: "Some people give up their games easily, others are more persistent", referring to the way people stick to their games and their resistance to breaking with them.

Intensity: "Some people play their games in a relaxed way, others are more tense and aggressive. Games so played are known as easy and hard games, respectively",[11] the latter being played in a tense and aggressive way.[11]

The consequences of games may vary from small paybacks to paybacks built up over a long period to a major level. Based on the degree of acceptability and potential harm, games are classified into three categories, representing first degree games, second degree games, and third degree games:

socially acceptable,

undesirable but not irreversibly damaging

may result in drastic harm.”[note 1]

The massively overheated reaction to the population’s selection of Trump can be seen as reaction to a threat to the domination of the Leftist Messiah/Victimhood coalition in national politics. That includes much of the Republican establishment political machinery as well as the Democrats. In this case the messiahs have risen in the degree of their consequence payback to include defamation of Trump as a person (from the very beginning of the presidential race), to cadres devoted to violence and destruction which have been loosed on Trump while the media places the blame on him, rather than the thugs attacking him.

The game became complex over the past years, as the Oppressor Class, containing whites, males, constitutionalists, flyovers, workers, and others unfairly termed “oppressors” came to see themselves as being victimized by an unfair and illegitimate tribal war which was initiated by the Leftist messiah class. Being a de facto Victimhood class in a drama game they didn’t want, the masses looked for their own messiah. Trump filled that bill, by refusing to be cowed by either the politics or the media in their Leftist attacks. Being the only completely independent candidate helped, and his fighting stance led to his adoption as the sole messiah for the masses. The original drama triangle has spawned a reaction triangle of an oppositional nature.

Obama recently added the new victimhood group, transgenders, to his unlegislated law for America. This is seen as a spike in drama intended as a diversionary ploy to divert attention from both his poor performance which created real crises, and the increasingly frequent news of Hillary’s crimes. This made public restrooms into headline news and enraged the flyovers, thus accomplishing Obama’s objective, at least temporarily.

When viewed from the vantage point of class war and tribalism, pretty much everything the Left does and says is accounted for. Apparently drama queens, dysfunction and the mentally disordered appeal to a significant portion of the population.

Notes:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle