Luke Ford

Ezra Klein told Mark Leibovitch in 2022:

And something about the back-and-forth of stepping out for Trump a bit, then getting this blowback, then stepping out a bit more and getting this blowback. And soon your friends are totally different, your enemies are totally different, who likes you is different. And I’ve watched this in politicians before as a psychological dynamic. And I’ve actually seen it in pundits too. As a psychological dynamic, this is often a pathway to a very different politics in three years. You can look at a Glenn Greenwald…

Aaron Renn writes Nov. 14, 2022:

Imagine David French back in 2019. He’s minding his own business, standing in line for his caffe latte at Starbucks. His phone beeps and it’s a Google Alert, or perhaps a friend texting him to say “check this out.” The subject is an article in First Things, the leading conservative religious journal in the country, called “Against David French-ism,” written by fellow conservative Sohrab Ahmari. Then thousands of people pile on saying how much they agree with Sohrab Ahmari about French and his approach being what’s wrong with the world.

Do you really think you’d respond any differently than he did? We’d probably all respond basically the same. Nothing is more natural than to want to defend your honor when attacked, especially if you are a man…

Add to this mix an additional ingredient, where a group of people start sending us messages and tweets of support, taking our side and saying what a great guy we were. Wouldn’t that incline us to want to align ourselves with the people who had our back? Undoubtedly it would, even if we hadn’t historically been that friendly with them.

This is especially the case for people who were “cancelled.” They often fall into more extreme or radical politics simply because those are the only people who will still accept them. So keep in mind that if we throw a friend under the cancel mob bus, we may not like the people who don’t abandon them.

Aaron Renn writes Oct. 22, 2024:

These disputes not only affect us psychologically, they also affect our intellectual positions, political positions, the tribes we associate with, etc. Seldom are the results for the better. As someone once told me of the David French-Sohrab Ahmari feud, “It turned both of them into worse versions of themselves.”…

Have you ever noticed that many alpha male types often, after a very public conflict with someone, get it settled and and move on? Sometimes they even strangely end up as friends. Republican megadonor Paul Singer was a Never Trumper in 2016. I sat at a gala and personally listened to him say that neither Trump nor Clinton were the right choice. But after Trump won, Singer went to Trump and made up with him. Why? Because he’s a smart, tough businessman who deals in reality. He didn’t let his pride marginalize him inside of a Trump administration. Similarly, we just watched Trump and Chuck Schumer getting along at the Al Smith Dinner in New York. That doesn’t mean Singer and Schumer are capitulating to everything Trump wants. They are going to keep fighting for what they want. But they see the value in not letting feuds compromise that.

The higher you go in society, the more likely people are to end feuds and work productively with – and even be somewhat friendly with – people on the other side.