My thought is that if someone aligns exactly with X political ideology, they aren’t really thinking for themselves and are just adopting whatever their tribal group believes about X subject. I see this all the time - collections of beliefs that otherwise have nothing to do with each other, but are adopted by the same people because “that’s what X group thinks about it.” This is very rarely a conscious thing.
This becomes even more obvious when you look at how these collections of beliefs have changed over time, which to me just shows how they aren’t based on any fundamental intrinsic personality traits but are trendy and groupthink-based. Ditto for geographic differences.
So I don’t think being a centrist implies one is not tribal, rather that the degree to which your beliefs on a variety of issues align with the “default” of a group implies how tribal you are.
In other words, a politically thoughtful and independent person probably has a basket of opinions that don’t fit into neat left or right, liberal or conservative, etc. categories.
This becomes even more obvious when you look at how these collections of beliefs have changed over time, which to me just shows how they aren’t based on any fundamental intrinsic personality traits but are trendy and groupthink-based. Ditto for geographic differences.
So I don’t think being a centrist implies one is not tribal, rather that the degree to which your beliefs on a variety of issues align with the “default” of a group implies how tribal you are.
In other words, a politically thoughtful and independent person probably has a basket of opinions that don’t fit into neat left or right, liberal or conservative, etc. categories.