I’ve been asking myself this since Trump’s first term. Trump’s best policy is going to be a tax cut, the reason why I say that is because it that it let people keep more of their money for those few years (Maybe I’ll treat this sentence as a filter for reactionaries). Every other policy trump has done has been harmful or agnostic to his base (bombing an Iranian general isn’t going to make Americans lives better). For the past decade they just blindly defended trump and stayed loyal for seemingly no reason.
I’ve been loyal to people just to have the relationship end because one or both of us just moved on in physical and emotional sense. I feel like I shouldn’t have been loyal just excited to see them.
Seems that loyalty is more of a detriment, it can make your ignore faults in people and do reflexive and reactionary things. Like a tenous alliance seems more practical than loyalty.
I’m seeing if someone can advocate for loyalty in and of itself or if the merits loyalty is context based.
Seems you’re asking a philosophical question, which wasn’t immediately obvious and others may have missed.
Loyalty is valuable as an unwritten, intrinsic agreement between parties. If both parties are loyal to each other, it builds trust. Trust then facilitates many things, especially cooperation; there’s less “verification of work” or suspicion, making processes more efficient. Mistakes and slights can be forgiven more easily. You get access to more resources and responsibilities, and become closer to the other party.
If only one party is loyal, we call that betrayal, which destroys trust and relationships. So there’s both risks and benefits involved with loyalty. You can do things like carefully choose who to be loyal to, but you can never guarantee they will reciprocate. The betrayed party often suffers severe consequences, which leads to interesting conundrums like the prisoner’s dilemma.
Loyalty is also expected in many social situations, but it’s difficult to tell if someone is being truthful or pretending. Practically, in modern society, there’s very little benefit to be loyal to large groups of people such as corporations or political parties. It’s fundamentally a unilateral relationship, and gives you no benefit other than membership, with an almost guaranteed betrayal as you never actually accumulated any real trust or relationship with the larger entity. In these cases it’s best to assume both parties are feigning loyalty for social politeness reasons and not accidentally become truly loyal.
In contrast, it’s a different story at the smaller, more human levels; such as clubs, romantic partners, family, etc. You’re much more likely to receive benefits of trust, and less likely to be betrayed (in comparison). Of course it still happens a lot, but that’s just life.