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"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff) LATEST POSTS:
- Tanner Greer
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- Richard Reeves: A Life in Institutions
- Jake Adelstein: The Reporter Who Became His Story
- Jim Goad (1961-2026)
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- Robert Oscar Lopez: The Inconvenient Witness
- Two Ledgers: Decoding the Gurus and the Price of Talk
- The Pervert’s Progress: Costin Vlad Alamariu and the Making of Bronze Age Pervert
- Curtis Yarvin: A Life Against Democracy
- Mark Helprin: Against the Current
- Mark Brandt: The Man Who Asked Who Else Is Prejudiced
- John T. Jost: The Psychologist of Acquiescence
- Strange Bedfellows in the Academy: Alliance Theory and the Straussian Schism
- Tournier on Desmond Ford
- The Fence and the Blessing: How Jews Have Thought About Gentiles
- Tournier on Luke Ford
- Tournier on The Nostradamus Kid
- An Alliance Theory of Antisemitism
- Tournier on Cinema Paradiso and Desmond Ford
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
Category Archives: Elites
Decoding Stephen Walt
Stephen Walt occupies a particular niche inside the foreign policy discourse. Using David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory, the key question is not whether Walt is right or wrong about specific policies but which coalition he serves, how his rhetoric recruits allies, … Continue reading
Decoding Foreign Affairs Magazine
If you run Foreign Affairs through David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory, it stops being “a magazine about ideas” and becomes something clearer: a coordination hub for the American foreign policy establishment. Start with coalition. It sits inside the orbit of the … Continue reading
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Decoding Chatham House & The Iran War
The institutional competition between Chatham House, Brookings, and CSIS reveals how elite authority is being reshaped in real-time by the Iran war. While the initial “shock and awe” phase of the conflict favored the operational clarity of groups like CSIS, … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory, Elites, Iran
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Calm Comes From Insulation, Not Wisdom
Tiers are situational. A corporate executive may react as high tier on foreign policy but low tier on cultural change if their social world feels exposed. A tenured professor may be high tier on climate but mid tier on AI … Continue reading
Posted in Elites, Iran, Journalism
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Who Can Narrate?
David Pinsof, along with David O. Sears and Martie G. Haselton, introduced the Alliance Theory of Political Belief Systems in their 2023 paper “Strange Bedfellows” (Psychological Inquiry). The core argument is that political belief systems are not primarily coherent philosophies … Continue reading
Posted in Elites, Expertise, Journalism, Narrative
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The High Status See Hypocrisy As An Acceptable Tradeoff
Those with mid status see strain as confusion. Those low in status see contradiction as injustice. High status actors think in precedent and reputation. Their clock runs long. Mid status actors think in compliance and consequence. Their clock runs medium. … Continue reading
Posted in Elites, Journalism, Status
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Daniel Oppenheimer: ‘The Failure to Be Interesting: How High Status People Misunderstand What’s Interesting About Them When They Go Public’
Daniel Oppenheimer writes: Many of us enter into our professional lives with a kind of double consciousness. There’s what we say, to survive and advance within professional structures, and then there’s the internal critical commentary that accompanies it, the voice … Continue reading
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Amusing Ourselves To Death
I do not begrudge selfishness. Everybody self-interested, and that is not a scandal. I do not expect strangers to care deeply about me, and I rarely care deeply about them either. There is a kind of honesty in admitting that … Continue reading
The Ruling Elite’s Ten Favorite Narratives About Economics
ChatGPT says: Inequality is a technical problem, not a power problem. Distributional outcomes are framed as data artifacts solvable by expert tuning rather than by conflicts between winners and losers. Growth cures all social pathologies. As long as GDP rises, … Continue reading
The Ruling Elite’s Ten Favorite Narratives
ChatGPT says: Structural injustice explains most unequal outcomes. This narrative shifts causation from individual action and institutional performance to diffuse systems. It protects elite managers by making failure impersonal and permanent while justifying endless oversight roles. Expertise must override popular … Continue reading
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