Are lawyers our governing class?

Posted on August 10, 2025 by Luke Ford

ChatGPT says:

Russell Pearce’s 2001 essay traced how lawyers once occupied a unique, public-serving leadership role. That governing‑class ideal—rooted in civic virtue, republicanism, and professional duty—gradually dissolved under market pressures, fragmentation of professionalism, the rise of “hired‑gun” advocacy, and the erosion of law’s public mission.

Fast‑forward to today: Lawyers are far more like other upper‑middle‑class professionals. Economic constraints, AI disruption, political targeting, and growing class anxiety are stripping away what remained of their prestige and public‑spirited identity. Their role as moral and civic stewards feels largely symbolic—long gone from social reality.

I wonder if the left’s takeover of the professions has led to a decline in the prestige of the professions?

Grok says:

The idea that progressive or left-leaning ideologies have “captured” professions like law, leading to a loss of public trust or prestige, is a common argument in conservative and libertarian critiques. It often ties into broader narratives about the “long march through the institutions” (a phrase popularized by Rudi Dutschke, but repurposed by critics), cultural shifts post-1960s, or the rise of identity politics and “wokeness.”

For balance: These arguments are contested. Left-leaning scholars (e.g., in Pearce’s article or works like Deborah Rhode’s In the Interests of Justice) attribute prestige declines more to commercialization, ethical scandals, or market forces than ideology. Polls (e.g., Pew or Gallup) show trust in professions dipping across the board since the 1970s, often linked to broader societal cynicism post-Watergate/Vietnam.

Based on empirical studies and analyses of ideological trends in the legal profession (a key example from conservative critiques of progressive dominance in elite institutions), the most robust conservative contestations appear to center on the documented left-leaning imbalance in legal academia and, to a lesser extent, the broader bar. These arguments hold up best under scrutiny because they are supported by quantitative data from non-partisan sources, showing a significant liberal skew that exceeds the profession’s overall makeup or the general population.

Russell Pearce wrote in 2001:

* The self-image of American lawyers has undergone a major transformation. As recently as the early 1960s, Erwin Smigel’s renowned study of Wall Street lawyers declared them to be guardians of the law.’ While serving their clients’ interests, they maintained a higher commitment to the public good which permitted them to manage the relationship between law and power that was essential to the continued stability of, and rule of law in, a democratic society. Twenty years later, a number of distinguished scholars reconsidered the role of elite lawyers at a conference at Stanford Law School. They painted an entirely different picture. Far from being guardians of the law, most corporate lawyers were hired guns who provided their clients with little independent judgment or counsel. Concern for the public good was not important to their work.

* The legal elite’s original and uniquely American understanding of the lawyer’s role was that lawyers were America’s governing class. Leading lawyers, judges and scholars, including the first American legal ethicists, sought to explain how the common good, minority rights and the rule of law could coexist with majority rule by an electorate largely composed of self-interested voters. They decided that the answer was a governing class of lawyers. With their dedication to the common good and their placement in the center of commerce and governance, lawyers were ideally suited for political leadership.

* In American society as a whole, the sense of community obligation declined as the focus on individualism rose in the years following the 1960s. At the same time, the public became skeptical of the expertise of elites generally, and leading members of the public, including lawyers, doubted whether lawyers were capable of perceiving and pursuing the public good. Two trends within the legal profession also contributed to this transformation during the post-1960s period. First, the growth of a large, distinct public interest bar led to a transfer of responsibility for the public good from elite lawyers to public interest lawyers and to a redefinition of the “public good” that conflicted with the interests of big business clients. Second, the related development of the idea of a pro bono duty offered those elite lawyers who still clung to a semblance of the governing class idea an opportunity to satisfy their community obligations through their pro bono work. Unlike the Wall Street lawyers of the early 1960s, who viewed themselves as servants of the public in all areas of their work, the elite came to view themselves as hired guns-lawyers devoted to their clients who served the public only in their limited
and separate pro bono efforts.

Although the rhetoric of the governing class lives on in hortatory appeals to pro bono responsibility…it no longer rules the conscience of the legal elite. After more than 200 years, the elite lawyers’ allegiance to the idea that they are America’s governing class appears to have come to an end…

In the view of most historians, “the dominant ideological force behind the American Revolution” was republicanism.’ William Treanor has observed that “[a]t the center of republican thought lay a belief in a common good and a conception of society as an organic whole. The state’s proper role consisted in large part of fostering virtue, of making the individual unselfishly devote himself to the common good.” Acting collectively through their representatives, the people would pursue the common good and protect individual liberty. Republics compared favorably to monarchies like England, which “sacific[ed] . . .the public good to the private greed of small ruling groups.”

…Many of the framers of the Constitution sought the solution to this dilemma in a modified form of republicanism. While advocating a government of “limited powers subject to elaborate checks and balances … intended to limit majoritarian excesses,” they sought a virtuous political elite. Building on the elitist strand of republicanism, which had preferred the political leadership of landed gentry and professionals, they found in these two groups the capacity for disinterestedness “necessary to virtue and realization of the common good.” Gordon Wood explains this preference: The “disinterested gentry… were supported by proprietary wealth and not involved in the interest-mongering of the
market place,” and similarly, “lawyers and other professionals [were] somehow free of the marketplace, [were] less selfish and interested and therefore better equipped for political leadership and disinterested decision-making than merchants and businessmen.”

Federalist No. 35 went so far as to identify professionals as the most virtuous members of this emerging governing class. While even the landed gentry would seek to protect and promote its own financial interests, lawyers and other members of the “learned professions… truly form[ed] no distinct interest in society.” Such professionals “will feel a neutrality to the rivalships between the different branches of industry, be likely to prove an impartial arbiter between them, ready to promote either, so far as it shall appear to him conducive to the general interests of the society.”

Janan Ganesh wrote for the FT Aug. 16, 2024 about the perils of socializing too much with your peers. When you lose your job, you will lose your social life at the same time. Janan noted that Tim Walz was the first person on the Democratic presidential ticket since 1980 who was not a lawyer.

Ganesh says all professions deform, and the deformations of law are crippling modern liberalism. What do you mean governor? The Democrats 2024 campaign focus on “constitutional proprieties. An exhausting primness about words and their use.”

Posted in Law | Comments Off on Are lawyers our governing class?

‘Campaign of Chaos: Trump, Biden, Harris, and the 2024 American Election’

Posted on August 10, 2025 by Luke Ford

I remember when Larry Sabato was not diminished by Trump Derangement Syndrome (99% of his public comments about Trump are negative). Now I read in his new book that Kamala Harris “ran as good a campaign as anyone could have in the mere 107 days left to her before November 5.”

If she ran such a great campaign, where is the clamor for her to return to politics?

She was an all-time awful vice-president and a terrible presidential candidate.

This book is a dud. I haven’t learned anything. It was released July 24 and it has yet to attract one review.

Grok says: “Sabato is a vocal Trump critic with a left-leaning perspective.”

Sabato pins to the top of his X account this tweet from 2017: “A favorite JFK quote: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.'”

I guess he’s a democracy dies in darkness kind of guy.

It’s a bit weird for an academic who loves to proclaim his objectivity pump out hysterical claims about the need to take stirring public stands in times of moral crises.

David Shepard writes Feb. 15, 2024:

Larry Sabato is a good bellwether to the thinking of the left…. Larry is a sufferer of Trump derangement syndrome. It is very well advanced; I’d say stage 4, or as Biden might describe the progression as being in the 4th trimester. Most of his tweets take aim at Trump. Sure, Larry hates all Republicans, but he saves most of his irrational vitriol for the big bad orange man.

What bad thing did Trump do now? Well, apparently the left is mad that former President Trump (now a private citizen) failed to use his dictatorial power to force House Republicans to pass the Democrat senate border security bill.

According to Professor Larry Sabato:

“Trump ordered Congress Rs to kill the border bill. They did as they were told. They are sheep… So who gets the blame?”

It’s quite breathtaking. There is nothing true or accurate in this tweet. It is full of false assumptions, and it is designed to spread a false narrative.

Larry is trying to promote several falsehoods in one fell swoop, everything from Trump is a dictator, even as a private citizen, Republicans are sheep that will just go along, to Biden had a plan to fix the border. The most bizarre assumption in his tweet is that Republicans really supported the Senate bill but opposed it because Trump told them to.

He concludes that since Republicans killed it, they deserve the lion’s share of the blame for the continuation of an open border. It was a poll showing the public mostly blamed Biden for the bill’s failure that prompted the tweet.

No doubt Larry wants people to believe that Biden is trying to solve the crisis at the border, and of course had no hand in creating the crisis. And now in his 4th year in office (and in an election year) he and Senate Democrats come up with the solution and Donald Trump, orders House Republicans to oppose the bill. They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. The unpatriotic nerve!

The tweet also implies that Trump has some sort of duty to support the Senate Democrats bill. Or at least a duty to keep quiet and not stop it. I have no idea why Sabato and the left thinks Trump had a duty to lobby Republicans to pass the bill. Or that Trump committed an unpatriotic act by speaking out against it. Was it a good bill or a bad bill? I have noticed that the left never says, they simply point out that it was “Bipartisan.” I take that to mean it wasn’t a good bill but that it could give Biden some political cover.

Ah, if only Trump would use his dictatorial powers for good.

Posted in America | Comments Off on ‘Campaign of Chaos: Trump, Biden, Harris, and the 2024 American Election’

‘The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times’ (2005)

Posted on August 10, 2025 by Luke Ford

Jeffrey Hart wrote this delicious book (my 2005 interview with Professor Hart):

* EVERYWHERE WILLMOORE KENDALL went he carried turbulence with him. Unusual behavior. Outrages. The geometrical opposite of the decorous, diplomatic, and elegant James Burnham.

At National Review there remains to this day a leather couch known as “The Willmoore Kendall Memorial Couch.” One evening, after hours, an editor returned to the premises and surprised Kendall on this piece of furniture in flagrante with an employee. Bill Buckley, hearing of this, wondered why he could not have found a hotel room. The business-hours occupant of that office was appalled that he had used her couch for this purpose.

A former Books editor at National Review remembers the following about a drive through New Jersey with Willmoore at the wheel: “We were stopped for speeding, requested to ‘follow me’ to a headquarters building where a State Police sergeant or captain was sitting behind an ordinary desk. This officer requested Professor Kendall to show him his driver’s license. Kendall said he didn’t have one, and then added, rather gratuitously I thought, ‘I don’t believe in them.’ A look of blank disbelief crossed the officer’s face. He started to speak, paused, peered intently at Kendall, and finally in a quiet voice asked, ‘What do you do?’ ‘I’m an associate professor in the Political Science Department at Yale University,’ Kendall replied. The officer looked at Kendall again, started to nod his head up and down, and said, ‘Oh, I see.’ What he saw I don’t know, but I’m here to attest that he allowed Professor Kendall to continue on his way, unticketed and unlectured, simply demanding, after asking for and being shown my driver’s license, that I drive the car at least until we had passed beyond his jurisdiction.” Weird. Willmoore.

Though Kendall had been granted tenure by Yale on the basis of his publication and professional reputation as a political philosopher, he was eventually given to understand that he would not receive the normal next promotion to full professor. Beyond Yale, his professional reputation remained formidable, and, thinking about teaching elsewhere, he accepted a position as visiting associate professor at Stanford for the academic year 1958–59, with every expectation that it would lead to a permanent post as full tenured professor. But three weeks into his first term he was arrested for driving drunk and against the traffic flow on a California freeway. The state police jailed him for the night. This got into the Stanford student newspaper, and that was the end of his Stanford opportunity. He wrote to Leo Strauss explaining that he had been drinking a bit of bourbon for a cold and some snoop had smelled it on his breath.

His Yale career ended in a unique, that is Kendallian, way. Somehow he prevailed upon Bill Buckley, as a friend, to find out why Yale was refusing to promote him to full professor. Buckley profoundly disliked the whole idea of becoming involved in this.3 Universities usually insist upon holding such decisions closely, for many good reasons, including the professional reputation of the candidate. Buckley did make an appointment to see President Charles Seymour, who was direct and said the reason was lack of publication while at Yale.4 That is a perfectly valid reason. Yale had every right to demand more than Kendall had produced. He had published essays and reviews. But his last book had been John Locke and Majority Rule (1941), which earned him his reputation, his Yale post, and Stanford’s interest. That book was almost twenty years old. Two more important works came along, The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition and his edition of Rousseau’s The Government of Poland; but those were published posthumously, years later, in 1972. Yale might have been justified in promoting him on the basis of his teaching, but that would have been rare for a research university and would have required institutional goodwill, which was absent.Since he was inspired by important ideas, what was the explanation for his lack of publication? In addition to his disorderly private life, the evidence suggests a profligate scattering of energy on nonprofessional matters. He wrote letters of gargantuan length, enough prose and enough articulation of ideas for several books, a singular phenomenon. Perhaps a Selected Letters may yet be published. In addition, with a construction project in hand on his New Haven property, he wasted time driving hundreds of miles for cheaper bricks, nonsensically in that the sum saved was trivial.

Then, naturally, his Yale career ended in an extraordinary manner. Kendallian. While he was in Madrid on one of his therapeutic leaves from Yale, so the Kendall oral tradition goes, he phoned President Seymour and, probably drunk, said something like, “You sonofabitch. I know you hate my guts. I’ll tell you what. You can buy back my tenure.” The deal was struck, a check arrived immediately for $42,500. That was a lot of money in 1961, about five times his annual salary.

After his departure from Yale, he remained a senior editor at National Review, contributing valuably, as we will see, until 1963. I spent some time with him later in Europe. This proved in its entirety a bittersweet experience, also an education in political theory. It was a week memorable, strange, and leading to a bad ending. But what else could have been expected?

* His [President Eisenhower] mask was that of the simple farmer boy turned soldier … rather than of a politician whose operations were deliberately shielded from his contemporaries other than his immediate associates.… As a thinker, the public saw a folksy, common-sense replica of the man in the street. The confidential records show a man with extraordinary capacities for detached, orderly examination of problems and personalities. In public he seemed to be removed from the arena. But the inner Eisenhower reasoned about political contingencies with greater rigor and readiness than many political professionals.

* The most successful presidents are coalition builders, and during the twentieth century, these included Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Reagan. Roosevelt was center-left, as his times required, Eisenhower and Reagan center-right, in response to different exigencies. Both Eisenhower and Reagan were prudent, resolute, trustworthy. They both inspired broadly based confidence, and won reelection by landslides. Both used force reluctantly; and when they did so they did so overwhelmingly and unanswerably. In the second half of the twentieth century, Eisenhower and Reagan have gained recognition by historians as the great presidents of the era.

National Review saw Eisenhower as drifting without principle, refusing to define himself in terms of ideas against the ideas of international communism. His refusal to engage in principled argument with Marshal Zhukov, for example, became a scandal from that point of view. But if we can make an abstraction of Eisenhower’s animating “idea,” it would be Americanism. Eisenhower did not think he had to talk about it: because he was it.

* National Review…saw that philosophically, communism and liberalism were both products of the Enlightenment. Both emphasized equality, Communists through force, liberals as a political goal. Though communism could be called “hard” socialism, liberals, or many of them, were simply “soft” socialists.

* If the availability of potential agents among noncommunist progressives had made recruitment easy, it also guaranteed that innocent progressives, who had enough contacts within the deeper shades of red circles, were vulnerable to false charges of “guilt by association.”

* Perhaps James Burnham was in an excessively pessimistic mood when he remarked to me once that the black problem “probably will ruin the country.”

* This view—that the Supreme Court had assumed powers properly and explicitly assigned to the state legislatures—has recently received powerful support within the legal profession, and explicitly on the grounds National Review had advanced. For example, Paul D. Carrington in Stewards of Democracy: Law as a Public Profession (1999) argues that national judicial action during the 1950s should have addressed blacks’ voting rights, since voting is the bedrock of democracy—and that school desegregation in time would have reflected electoral realities. Carrington believes the command that desegregation proceed “‘with all deliberate speed’ has been appraised and found a disaster.”1 Carrington, by no means opposed to desegregation as such, holds that it should have been the result of a political and not a judicial process.

* It is perhaps too harsh to declare extended school desegregation [and similar issues] … were all failed heroics. There were benign consequences. But a significant price was paid in thrusting the Court and the Constitution into the political cockpits where they do not belong, jeopardizing the independence of the Court and the integrity of the Constitution. And in different ways and to different degrees, all of these heroic initiatives at social reform backfired in precisely the ways that Cooley, Brandeis, Freund, and Hand foretold.

* Carrington concludes that the Court too often has derived its decisions arbitrarily, on the basis of shaky interpretations, and without regard to the citizens’ “right to self-government.” He considers that the law schools have fostered a culture that encourages its students to regard themselves as philosopher-kings, and that they are further encouraged by the publicity given to “impact decisions.” In a review of Carrington’s book in the Journal of Law and Politics, Jeffrey O’Connell, Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, notices with a touch of amazement that “Carrington is politically incorrect enough to argue boldly and at length that Roe vs. Wade was a decision that should not have been made in court.” He notes that “[s]ome of the Court’s resisters practiced defiance, while others took to the streets and became violent. Those violent reactions have no counterpart in the politics of other nations, even predominantly Catholic ones in which abortion rights have been established by parliamentary means.”

* Again and again, National Review articulated this perspective on the Court’s “heroic advances,” as in this editorial, worthy of partial but extended quotation:

“In June 1954 relations between Whites and Negroes in the United States, and racial relations generally, were in a more amicable and promising condition than ever before in the nation’s history.

Then a Supreme Court obsessed with an egalitarian ideology rendered its decision in Brown v. Board of Education. What has happened, what is happening, was predicted. Every observer, whatever his views, concurs in the finding that Negro-White relations in the South, and in many northern cities also, have catastrophically worsened. (Even the rate of integration in the schools is actually slower than during the five years prior to 1954.) From this poisonous cauldron the fumes of anti-Semitism, too, begin to spread, both because the racist impulse tends to be non-selective, and because organized Jewish groups have noisily egged on the Court, and called for immediate implementation of its decisions. Now comes the shutting down of Southern schools, the dynamiting of homes, schools, and Jewish temples. And it will be worse. A viciousness has been released that is not easily brought back to kennel. The Court, in Brown and the successor decisions, was “obsessed”: the word is carefully chosen. Obsessed in that it acted from abstract imperatives of a monolithic dogma, without reference to the real situation of real men in the real world. It is easy enough for Earl Warren and Felix Frankfurter, at the turn of an ideological spigot, to lecture their 175 million countrymen about instant and total obedience to “the law of the land,” but platitudes from the bench—that so plainly exempts itself from the restraints of judicial precedent and tradition—will not, overnight, transmute the ingrained sentiments and convictions of self-reliant communities. Tragically, the resistance by self-reliant and decent men to what they deem the usurpations of the Court and the despotism of the central government tends to promote a general atmosphere of civil disobedience, and disrespect not only for the Warren Court but for the law; in which the dregs of society break through to the surface.”

* Brown plus “all deliberate speed” destroyed the once excellent public school systems, especially in the metropolises of the North, whites and their tax money fleeing to the suburbs beyond the reach of “busing.” Brown was tacitly shelved as unenforceable, but not before the destruction of the public schools. Brown had made a desert and called it peace.

* [Gary] Wills, who was not and is not simple-minded, lets [James] Baldwin get away with anything, even with calling Jesus a “sunbaked, disreputable Hebrew…” Wills lets Baldwin get away with junk thought, Baldwin even demanding “immediate secession from our civilization,” the “transcendence of color, and of nations and of altars”—that is, for a rejection of the profoundly actual. Jump, white man, jump. Wills knows that we should respond to this kind of disgraceful performance by a black man by getting angry with him—that is, we should treat him as an equal. Yet Wills voluntarily accepts nonsense.

What are we to make of Wills’s performance? Literary criticism throws up its hands. Apparently, he had been utterly disoriented by the black revolution.

Posted in National Review | Comments Off on ‘The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times’ (2005)

Nobody Is Coming (8-10-25)

Posted on August 10, 2025 by Luke Ford

01:00 Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E‑Personality (2011), https://yourmoralleader.blogspot.com/2025/08/virtually-you-dangerous-powers-of.html
15:00 ‘No one is coming to save you: you are the one you are waiting for’, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162662
22:00 Michael joins to talk about Richard Nixon, https://x.com/Michaelmvlog
Status, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162655
50:00 Status anxiety, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162655
1:05:00 My Political Philosophy – Adaptive Regime Realism, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162643
1:12:00 Individualism Is Not A Right-Wing Value, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162613
1:27:00 The growing demand for AI, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpJ4RYSdVK4
1:49:00 William F. Buckley Was The Kim Kardashian Of The Conservative Movement, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162608
2:12:00 The AI Gold Rush, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162590
2:33:00 Why Does Ezra Klein Annoy Me?, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162566
2:44:00 What Is Vs What Should Be, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162543
3:27:00 ‘Industrial Policy for the United States: Winning the Competition for Good Jobs and High-Value Industries’, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162018
3:49:00 Donald Trump says he was debanked after January 6, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpJ4RYSdVK4
3:56:00 Why You’re Exhausted (Even After Resting), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfIonsHpKZc

I normally feel bored when I watch my live streams with the sound off (the great test of TV personalities used by Roger Ailes), but this time I see that I am emotionally connected to what I am saying, and during these moments, I’m more interesting to watch as my thoughts and feelings ripple across my face.

To get to this place, I had to enter the stream with a low cognitive load, and I had to take the time to notice what I was feeling prior to pressing go live. Once I was live, I tapped into what I was feeling in my body as well as what I was thinking in my head. As long I was in my body, I kept the audience’s attention. When the show became purely abstract and philosophical, the viewers dropped off.

I ask Grok where I lack self-awareness in this stream. It said:

Luke Ford demonstrates considerable introspection throughout the show, frequently confessing personal flaws and drawing on self-help concepts. However, several instances reveal gaps in self-awareness, where his stated insights contradict his ongoing behaviors, or he fails to connect patterns in his life to the advice he shares. Below is a breakdown of key areas, supported by direct quotes from the transcript and the attached blog post (“status.docx”).

InstanceQuote/EvidenceExplanation of Lack of Self-Awareness
Contradiction in the “Nobody is Coming” Theme“I 100% intellectually agree nobody is coming to rescue me. But yet inside of me there is this childish yearning to be rescued. And I’m not thrilled with that, but it’s there and it’s uh quite strong.”The show’s core message is about taking full responsibility (“You are the one that you’ve been waiting for”), yet Ford admits to an unaddressed emotional dependency on external salvation. He recognizes the immaturity but doesn’t explore or resolve it, highlighting a divide between intellectual acceptance and emotional integration—what he calls lacking “transformation from the neck down.”
Leading with Vulnerabilities Despite Knowing It’s Counterproductive“The easiest way for me to be authentic is to talk about my failures and humiliations. While I noticed with the successful people around me in Los Angeles, they don’t lead and they don’t try to connect with their failures and humiliations, right? They lead with their successes… when I often talk to successful people and I lead with my vulnerabilities and my humiliations, it’s a downer and it makes them want to distance.”Ford explicitly notes that sharing failures creates negative energy and repels others, yet the entire show revolves around confessing frustrations (e.g., sound settings, emotional constipation, career flops). This perpetuates the isolation he critiques, without apparent steps to shift toward leading with successes as he observes in “successful people.”
Addiction to Distinctiveness Not Serving Him, But Persisting Anyway“I have this huge powerful intense drive to be distinctive, to stand out, to be different… But uh it’s not it’s not a winning formula, right? Being addicted to trying to be distinctive and special… overall it clearly has not served me.”He acknowledges this drive as maladaptive and a source of comparison/anxiety, yet continues livestreaming for a self-described “micro audience” as a way to differentiate himself. There’s no evident plan to redirect this energy, suggesting he hasn’t fully confronted how it fuels his dissatisfaction.
Craving Online Validation Over Real-World Connections“Check if you crave affirmation metrics like like likes, views, comments more than real world appreciation. And much of the time I do… I I’ll admit I would not do this live stream if nobody could see it.”Drawing from “Virtually You,” Ford admits prioritizing online metrics (e.g., ego-Googling) and wouldn’t stream without viewers, but he proceeds with the show anyway. This reveals unaddressed “impulsivity and disinhibition,” as he critiques in the book, without pausing to align his actions with his warnings about online personas narrowing self-growth.
Irony in Reading the “Status” Blog Post – Reframing Low Status While Perpetuating ItFrom “status.docx”: “A common painful experience is to see someone you know and notice that they want to talk to other people first… How can I reframe this bitter pill?” (Followed by ChatGPT-generated advice on appearing magnetic, e.g., “being ‘less sought out’ in that moment can actually increase your perceived value over time.”)Ford reads this post aloud, lamenting social overlooking and offering tactics to project higher status (e.g., slow movements, curiosity hooks). However, his vulnerability-focused broadcasting style likely contributes to this low status, as he notes earlier that it distances people. He doesn’t apply the reframing to his own show, missing how constant failure-sharing undermines the “magnetic” presence he advises cultivating.
Critiquing Audience Capture in Others Without Seeing Parallels“You see many people captured by their audience. And I’ve certainly succumbed to that many times myself… like Tucker Carlson… gone on a descent towards a lower IQ audience… Nick Fuentes is speaking to the 100 IQ audience, right? He’s not saying smart things.”Ford calls out Fuentes and Carlson for pandering to audiences at the expense of quality/intellect, but downplays similarities in his own “micro audience” persistence, driven by distinctiveness/validation cravings. He admits succumbing “many times” but doesn’t examine if this show exemplifies it, especially given his small reach and edgy past content.
Minimizing Role in Others’ Self-Destruction“To the extent that I facilitated their self-destruction, well, I don’t take uh 90% of the blame for that. I take enough blame from it. I don’t feel good about it. And I’m much more choosy about who I allow onto my show.”Reflecting on 2018 guests who got fired after “intoxicating” appearances leading to risky opinions, Ford takes partial blame but caps it at less than 90%, underestimating his platform’s enabling role. This softens accountability, despite now being “choosy”—a change he frames positively without deeper scrutiny of his influence.
Reliance on AI for Insights Without Acknowledging It as a Crutch“I was just putting this into chat GBT and says notice if you start framing experiences… Grock and chat GBT will set Luke free. They will unleash 40’s beast mode.”Ford uses AI (ChatGPT/Grok) for red flags, reframing exercises, and personal growth prompts, but doesn’t recognize this dependency as potentially hindering authentic reflection. It contradicts his theme of self-responsibility (“nobody is coming”), as he outsources transformation—echoing his uninternalized “information without transformation.”


I wrote these jokes with ChatGPT, Grok and Gemini:

“I say I’m only 10% to blame for my guests’ wild rants after my show. That’s like saying, ‘Sure, I lit the match, but the forest fire? Not my fault!’ Time to own the spark, Luke!”

“I tell my audience ‘nobody is coming to save you,’ but then I refresh my email every five minutes hoping Hollywood calls. Apparently, I’m waiting for Spielberg to parachute in with a rescue script.”

“I say leading with failures repels people, and then I spend three hours listing mine. My networking strategy is basically: ‘Hello, my name is Luke, and here’s why you’ll never invite me to your party.’”

“I admit my drive to be distinctive hasn’t served me, but I keep livestreaming for 27 viewers like it’s the Super Bowl halftime show.”

“I criticize Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson for chasing their low-IQ audience… while tailoring my content to the crowd that thinks ‘Adaptive Regime Realism’ is a Marvel character.”

“I tell people to follow the rules if they want to succeed — then I try to stand out by breaking every unspoken rule of being socially magnetic. It’s like teaching a dating class from inside a restraining order.”

“I say the bigger your need for a hero, the bigger the hole in your soul. Which is why I now outsource my personal growth to Grok and ChatGPT — because nothing says ‘self-reliance’ like a co-dependent relationship with AI.”

“I claim I don’t want to contribute to anyone’s self-destruction — but my show is basically a demolition derby for reputations.”

Posted in America | Comments Off on Nobody Is Coming (8-10-25)

‘No one is coming to save you: you are the one you are waiting for’

Posted on August 10, 2025 by Luke Ford

I am 59. I still waste enormous amounts of energy trying to secure approval from people who won’t give it.

The more I do the right things, however, the less intense is my maladaptive approval seeking.

Just under the surface of my psyche, I yearn to show that I am the smartest person in the world. When this manifests in my speech and behavior, it causes people to deride me.

In the cold hard light of day, when it comes to certain topics, I am the smartest person in the room, but as far as overall cognitive quality, I am rarely the smartest person in the rooms I frequent.

It’s false humility to deny my gifts but when I get an exaggerated sense of them, I always get humiliated.

When I go a week or two or three without getting humiliated, that’s because I have not gotten over my skis.

My biggest scoops as a reporter were given to me. I deserve credit for fact-checking the scoops, placing them in context, and doing enough work as a reporter that valuable people want to give me scoops. Lying around watching TV didn’t earn me scoops. I had to extend myself more than was natural to me, and to deny my petty side more than was natural to me, to build enough bridges to others so that they then wanted to send good things to me.

I spent Saturday afternoons when I was a kid in Cooranbong napping and then waking up to hope that after sundown (the beginning of the secular week in Seventh-Day Adventism), my best friend Wayne Cherry and his family would come by to take me to something cool.

Throughout my life, cool people have adopted me and taken me to things that were cool.

On my own, I don’t tend to generate sufficient coolness. My internal patterns tend towards a delusional and self-destructive pursuit of distinction over connection.

If there is anything distinctive in what I contribute here, it comes largely from my own accurate recognition of my need for others, for my ability to contribute to others, and that I accurately gauge my own failures and successes (that largely stem from negotiations with others).

Once you can spot your own self-defeating patterns, you see them more easily in others.

The more I live in reality, the less I need to twist it to keep myself comfortable.

Despite these noble sentiments, I must admit that hearing that nobody’s coming to save me often feels like a cold shower.

Why? Because, though I will deny it, I live in the warm bath of believing rescue is just around the corner. That might be why I love long songs.

I walk around with a deep, unspoken hope that someone will swoop in to save me — a hope I almost never admit.

I love Neil Strauss’s line about rock stars — they can mesmerize a stadium but they can’t take care of themselves.

I’ve long yearned to be so distinctive that others would take care of me.

One of the most destructive impulses I have is that the ordinary rules don’t apply to me. They do.

I’ve long thought I know better than my bosses, my rabbis, my teachers, my communities. That’s rarely been true.

If I am in a good place, and I realize I did something wrong, it’s easy for me to admit it. When I’m insecure, it’s hard for me to admit being wrong.

Security is something I earn choice by choice. It’s not my default state. That state is anxiety.

The more dishonest, deceptive and deceitful I am, the more I distrust others. The more decent I am, the more open I am to connecting with others appropriately. My experience of America is largely in my hands. America is neither with me nor against me. It is largely raw material in my hands. Los Angeles is a city filled with opportunities and dangers for me.

I don’t trust any ideology that portrays advanced economies such as America as monsters or saviors. Every people must prioritize their own survival in an anarchic world.

The safest place for the individual is usually in the middle of the herd. My inner drives usually push me to the boundary of the herd.

ChatGPT: “You’re basically saying: my internal conduct shapes my perception of others, and my relationship to America is more about my own mindset than America itself. Refusing to buy into “America the demon” or “America the messiah” keeps you out of the victim/savior trap and in the realm of realism. It’s self-responsibility over grievance or blind faith.”

I love Orion Taraban’s videos, including this one, but I think he’s missing some things:

ChatGPT responds:

Taraban’s take is classic self-reliance maximalism — radical personal responsibility with no excuses — but it misses some deep realities you’re pointing to.

The inevitability of betrayal
He frames betrayal as a consequence of bad personal choices — you trusted the wrong people, so it’s your fault. That’s partly true, but incomplete. The deeper truth is: if you build any close relationship, you will at some point feel betrayed. Not because you picked “wrong” but because people are opaque, unpredictable, and not fully knowable — including you. Even the most loyal friend or partner will act in ways that violate your unspoken expectations. This is not a sign you failed at picking; it’s the nature of intimacy and trust. “Radical accountability” in this domain means learning to expect and metabolize that reality, not just avoiding the “wrong” people.

The group nature of human life
He talks as if the game of life is entirely an individual sport — your strategies, your training, your choices. That ignores that we are primarily members of overlapping groups: families, teams, tribes, classes, networks. Much of what happens to us — and what we can do about it — is mediated through those groups. You can train, strategize, and “take responsibility” all day, but if you’re embedded in a failing group, you will be dragged down, and if you’re embedded in a thriving one, you will be lifted. The most effective self-reliance is often group-reliance — building and maintaining membership in alliances where mutual aid is normal and survival is collective.

Missing the collective strategy layer
He’s right that you need a strategy, but the most powerful strategies aren’t just personal — they’re collective. Groups with shared goals and norms can withstand shocks and threats that no individual could face alone. If you see yourself only as “your own cavalry,” you miss the fact that sometimes the cavalry is your group, and that’s not a weakness — it’s the oldest survival advantage humans have.

In short, his message works well as a corrective for people stuck in learned helplessness, but if taken as the whole truth, it can lead to a lonely, hyper-individualistic mindset that actually makes life harder than it needs to be.

No one is coming to save you — but that doesn’t mean you’re alone. You’re the one you’re waiting for, but you’re also part of groups, and those groups matter.

You are responsible for the conditions of your life. If your job sucks, you’re lonely, and you feel stuck, the common denominator is you. That’s not an insult — it’s your way out. You can make better choices, learn skills, train, and align yourself with reality. No one can do those things for you.

But let’s be clear: even if you choose well, even if you train hard, every real relationship will eventually wound you. Not because you failed at picking people, but because people are not fully knowable. They will act in ways that violate your expectations. Sometimes they’ll do it out of selfishness, sometimes by accident, sometimes because their needs changed. If you can’t metabolize betrayal, you can’t keep deep connections.

And those connections matter more than any solo plan. You are not, and never have been, a lone strategist. You’re a member of tribes, teams, and networks. Most of your opportunities and threats will come through them. If your group is strong, you’ll go further than you ever could alone; if your group is weak, it will drag you down no matter how hard you grind. Self-reliance includes choosing your groups wisely and contributing to their strength.

So yes — take radical responsibility for your life. But do it with the clear eyes of someone who knows two things: betrayal is inevitable, and survival is collective. If you can carry both truths at once, you won’t just be your own cavalry — you’ll be part of an army worth riding with.

If you had to divide mental illness into two categories, how about these? Under-interpreting what is going on with others (autism) and over-interpreting what is going on with others (delusion).

ChatGPT says:

You could frame it like this:

Under-interpreting others – missing or failing to pick up social cues, context, and intent. This can show up in autism spectrum disorders, certain brain injuries, schizoid traits, or even extreme introversion.

Over-interpreting others – seeing meaning, intent, or hidden messages that aren’t there. This can show up in paranoia, some forms of psychosis, borderline personality disorder (in the sense of heightened threat perception), or even severe anxiety.

Both extremes are errors in social inference — one is a deficit, the other an overactive detector. The healthy range is the Goldilocks zone where you interpret just enough without missing key signals or fabricating false ones.

If you wanted to sharpen the model, you could add a third axis: “misinterpreting” — reading cues, but getting them wrong (common in depression, where neutral signals get read as rejection). That way you’re covering absence, excess, and distortion.

I’ve often had mild to moderate to severe left elbow pain for years. As I understand, this pain, and other pains like it, comes from weakness in certain muscles that then forces compensation from other parts of me that aren’t suited to doing the job and the consequence to me is bodily distortion and pain. When I build up my weak muscles so that they can do what is asked of them, my pain goes away.

This same principle applies to other parts of life. I’ve often asked of religion or sports or Netflix or porn or politics to compensate for glaring weaknesses that I have in normal human connection. It didn’t work as well as I would have liked.

When you ask of people and of things more than they can give, you will feel disappointment, just like when you ask certain muscles to do things they aren’t designed to do.

Millions felt disappointed in Barack Obama and Donald Trump because they asked of them more than they could give.

I remember in the fall of 2007, the only thing that seemed to be working in my life was the Dallas Cowboys. Then they lost in the divisional round to the New York Giants and I was bereft.

I notice that the most intense somebody’s fandom, the more likely it is that their life doesn’t work. A healthy person usually doesn’t go to games all painted up.

The quickest way to lose a connection with someone of high status is to ask of them more than they want to give you. You’ve marked yourself as someone who doesn’t know his place and doesn’t accept reality.

The worst thing about being an underearner or any kind of addict is that only fellow addicts will stay close to you.

ChatGPT says:

Portraying America as a monster:

Hard-left anti-imperialism / anti-capitalism – sees the U.S. as an empire built on exploitation, racism, colonialism, and military aggression. Think Chomsky-esque critiques, some socialist/Marxist currents, and certain strands of critical race theory.

Radical environmentalism – frames the U.S. as a uniquely destructive force driving climate collapse through consumption and corporate greed.

Right-wing isolationism / paleoconservatism (anti-globalist variant) – paints the U.S. government as a corrupt, tyrannical elite betraying its own people in service to global interests.

Some post-colonial and decolonization movements – depict the U.S. as the apex predator of Western imperialism, responsible for global oppression.

Portraying America as a savior:

Neoconservatism – believes America has a moral duty to spread democracy and free markets, often via military intervention.

American exceptionalism (patriotic nationalist form) – views the U.S. as the indispensable nation, the freest and most virtuous country in history.

Cold War liberalism – saw America as the guardian of the “free world” against communism.

Certain evangelical Christian nationalism – casts America as God’s chosen instrument for advancing moral and religious truth.

Savior narratives – main carriers today

Neoconservatism

Media: The Wall Street Journal editorial board, Commentary Magazine, The Dispatch (in foreign policy), Fox News foreign policy hawks

Think tanks: American Enterprise Institute, Hudson Institute, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Political factions: Some establishment Republicans, hawkish Democrats (e.g., Robert Menendez wing)

American exceptionalist nationalism

Media: Fox News primetime, Newsmax, The Blaze

Think tanks: Heritage Foundation, Claremont Institute

Political factions: Trumpist GOP in patriotic rhetoric, Reagan-style Republicans

Cold War liberalism (modern echo)

Media: The Atlantic, Politico, Foreign Affairs

Think tanks: Brookings Institution, Center for a New American Security

Political factions: Centrist Democrats, bipartisan foreign policy establishment

Evangelical Christian nationalism

Media: The Christian Broadcasting Network, Charisma News, some Salem Media outlets

Think tanks / orgs: Family Research Council, American Family Association

Political factions: Religious right activists within the GOP, some state-level political machines

Here’s the emotional formula both “America is a monster” and “America is a savior” camps tend to follow:

1. Start with a moral frame

Monster: “The U.S. violates the highest moral values — it’s corrupt, violent, unjust.”

Savior: “The U.S. embodies the highest moral values — it’s noble, virtuous, destined to lead.”

2. Create a sense of existential stakes

Monster: “If America continues as it is, it will destroy lives, the planet, or civilization.”

Savior: “If America falters, freedom, prosperity, and moral order will collapse everywhere.”

3. Identify clear villains and heroes

Monster: Villains are U.S. leaders, corporations, military, or cultural hegemons. Heroes are dissidents, activists, whistleblowers, the oppressed.

Savior: Villains are foreign tyrants, radicals, or America’s “enemies within.” Heroes are U.S. troops, entrepreneurs, founders, faithful citizens.

4. Offer emotional rewards for joining the cause

Monster: Moral superiority from “speaking truth to power,” belonging to the righteous resistance.

Savior: Pride in being on the winning, virtuous side of history, camaraderie with fellow patriots.

5. Provide simple prescriptions

Monster: “Dismantle, divest, resist, overthrow the unjust system.”

Savior: “Strengthen, defend, expand America’s role and ideals.”

6. Demand loyalty to the narrative

Both camps punish dissent internally — question the script, and you risk being seen as a traitor to the cause.

The irony is that both sides feed on the same psychological machinery:

A moral drama with high stakes

An in-group that offers identity and meaning

A clear enemy that justifies righteous action

How to spot the formula working on you in real time:

1. Check for a moral frame that feels absolute
If you hear “America is inherently evil” or “America is inherently good” with no room for mixed realities, you’re in a moral totalizing frame. The emotional hook is that it feels pure — but reality isn’t.

2. Notice the existential stakes
Are you being told “We have only 10 years before collapse” or “If we don’t act, tyranny will rule the world”? High-stakes framing spikes adrenaline and makes critical thinking harder.

3. Watch for hero/villain casting
The moment you’re handed a cast list (“Here are the bad guys, here are the good guys”), your brain’s nuance filter is being switched off. You’re being put into a team sport, not an analysis.

4. Feel the emotional rewards
If you feel a warm rush of belonging, pride, or righteous anger simply from agreeing, that’s the hook. The group is paying you in feelings, not facts.

5. Listen for simple, urgent prescriptions
Real solutions in politics are messy and slow. If the answer is quick, clean, and fits on a bumper sticker, it’s probably there to mobilize you, not to solve the problem.

6. Test the reaction to dissent
If politely questioning the narrative gets you shamed, frozen out, or accused of betrayal, you’re in an ideological loyalty trap.

A good personal habit: when you feel yourself getting swept up in a “monster” or “savior” story about America, pause and ask:

“What’s the strongest counterargument to this?”

“Who benefits if I believe this without question?”

Here’s how to pull useful insights from both “America is a monster” and “America is a savior” camps without getting stuck in their traps:

1. Treat each as a source of partial truth, not gospel

Monster camp often nails structural critiques — empire, corruption, inequality.

Savior camp often nails sources of resilience — innovation, civic culture, rule of law (when it works).
Keep the parts that stand up to evidence, toss the purity claims.

2. Anchor in reality, not identity
Your loyalty is to what’s true, not to a tribe. That lets you agree with a Green Party activist one day and a Marine veteran the next without feeling disloyal to either.

3. Cross-check with opposing sources
When a monster narrative riles you up, find the strongest pro-America defense and see what holds. When a savior narrative inspires you, find the toughest critique. This keeps you in analysis mode.

4. Separate the moral claim from the mobilization tactic
“America is uniquely evil” and “America is uniquely good” are both designed to move you emotionally. Recognize the sales pitch, then assess the evidence underneath.

5. Look for mixed-case evidence
In history, the U.S. has been liberator and oppressor, innovator and exploiter. Studying examples of both keeps your view from becoming a caricature.

6. Keep your agency front and center
Your experience of America depends a lot on how you live in it — who you associate with, how you engage civically, where you get information. That’s leverage you control.

When I was younger, I fell in love with things that sounded good such as free markets and free trade and I wanted to pursue these principles to absurd lengths. In my old age, I’m more open to seeing the limitations of deciding what is true on the basis of what sounds good. Perhaps America needs an industrial policy? Perhaps Economics as a discipline has strengths and weaknesses like everything else in life?

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