September 24, 2025 The Legacy of Ernest Becker: Death, Ideologies, and Cultures Luke Ford No sacred cows.

The Legacy of Ernest Becker: Death, Ideologies, and Cultures

Posted on September 24, 2025 by Luke Ford

I asked ChatGPT to decode this Youtube video for talking points for my big Sunday show:

Use Terror Management Theory (TMT) as the case study. Walk through the classic mortality-salience experiments, then the replication crisis: Many Labs 4 couldn’t replicate the key worldview-defense effect; several high-powered failures followed; defenders say nulls are over-interpreted. What counts as confirmation vs. motivated reasoning? Useful jumping-off points: TMT replication overview, meta-analyses.

Do death reminders push people left—or just harder into whatever they already believe?

TMT’s core claim is worldview defense: reminders of death intensify pre-existing values (not one side’s “hero system”). Early and newer syntheses frame it that way despite replication hits. Links: worldview-defense meta, and critiques: publication bias/critique.

Death anxiety and the ballot box—2004 to 2024/25

Revisit studies showing mortality salience boosted support for George W. Bush post-9/11 and for charismatic/authoritarian leadership styles; then fast-forward to work tying death reminders to support for Donald Trump. Discussion hooks: Bush 2004 studies, charismatic leadership & death reminders, Trump-era experiments.

Follow the lab coats: researcher clusters and publication bias

Evidence suggests “researcher/lab effects” and selective reporting inflated early TMT effects. Use this to question any claim that the literature uniquely props up one political frame. See: z-curve/selection bias analyses, lab-cluster effects.

Money as medicine for death anxiety? Consumerism and status goods

Findings that counting cash reduces death anxiety and that mortality salience boosts desire for status goods are catchy—but how robust are they post-2015? Tie to today’s luxury boom and inflation. Starters: “counting money” buffer effect, mortality salience & consumption.

Climate dread vs. Becker: greener—or more extractive?

Some TMT work links death reminders to resource extraction and out-group hardening; other work shows threat can increase pro-environment attitudes inside certain ideologies. Use this tension to talk climate messaging. Search hubs: death reminders & environmental attitudes, resource extraction experiments.

Charisma, “evil,” and the news cycle

Becker predicted hunger for larger-than-life leaders in times of threat. Use current strongman politics as a test case—does the lens explain more than it predicts? Backgrounders: Escape from Evil on charisma, threat & authoritarian support.

Are we just “breathing meat”? The philosophy pitch vs. the data pitch

Contrast Becker’s existential claims with empirical rivals (e.g., the Meaning Maintenance Model). What remains uniquely TMT once you strip the poetry? Where do data clearly discriminate?

Terror headlines, prejudice, and WEIRD samples

Walk through studies where terrorism news or mortality salience spikes prejudice/distancing, then ask if effects are large, reliable, and generalizable beyond WEIRD samples. Pointers: terror news & prejudice, WEIRD-sample critiques.

Mental-health epidemics and “unwinnable” hero systems

Becker argues cultures set unattainable status targets that breed despair; link to today’s youth mental-health stats. But note: this is a theorist’s narrative more than a nailed-down causal model. Resources: current youth mental-health data, Denial of Death summary.

Indigenous ancestors vs. “denial of death”

Open with the conference land-acknowledgment segment (living with ancestors vs. denying death). Place Becker alongside Indigenous and religious frameworks now resurfacing in public life; ask which worldviews buffer anxiety without fueling polarization. Background: land-acknowledgment/ancestor practices.

On your pointed question: “How come all their studies support their left-wing hero system?”

They don’t, cleanly. TMT’s strongest claim is that death reminders intensify pre-existing worldviews. Famous political studies showed boosts for conservative/charismatic leaders under mortality salience, which undercuts “it proves the left.” See: Bush 2004 work, authoritarian/charisma studies.
The literature’s credibility is mixed. Multi-lab projects and high-powered studies failed to replicate cornerstone effects; meta critiques point to selective reporting and lab-cluster inflation. So if someone says “the science proves Becker—and my politics,” press them here. See: Many Labs 4, publication bias.
Best defensible takeaway: threat can polarize people toward prior identities and toward leaders promising meaning/security. Anything broader is overreach. Overview: TMT overviews.

Here’s a synthesis of how we can “decode” Terror Management Theory (TMT) through the lenses of Rony Guldmann, Stephen Turner, and Darel E. Paul. Each gives us a way to situate TMT not just as a psychological research program, but as part of the cultural and political battles around expertise, legitimacy, and elite ideology.

1. Rony Guldmann: TMT as Liberal Cultural Weaponry

In Conservative Claims of Cultural Oppression, Guldmann describes how conservatives feel subject to a progressive “Clerisy”—knowledge elites who frame dissent as irrational pathology, reducing conservatism to fear, prejudice, or “atavism.”

TMT, read this way, can be seen as one more intellectual project that “psychologizes” political opposition. By claiming that mortality salience drives prejudice, authoritarianism, and resistance to progressive causes, TMT fits into what Guldmann calls liberalism’s “symbolic domination.” It recasts ideological contest as a matter of psychological immaturity. The worldview-defense paradigm can then be read as an attempt to “scientifically” demonstrate that conservatives are driven by unconscious death-anxiety rather than legitimate values. This is exactly the kind of move conservatives denounce as cultural oppression: pathologizing their commitments while presenting liberal commitments as “rational” and mature.

2. Stephen Turner: TMT and the Politics of Expertise

Turner’s The Politics of Expertise stresses how social science often establishes authority by embedding normative judgments within allegedly neutral expertise . Experts, under the guise of empirical science, become arbiters of what counts as rationality, maturity, or progress.

TMT exemplifies this dynamic. Its claims about mortality salience aren’t just scientific hypotheses; they function as judgments about which worldviews are “defensive” and which are “authentic.” Turner would argue that this reflects an expert power-play: the ability of psychologists to translate philosophical anthropology (Becker’s denial of death) into laboratory authority. The replication crisis (Many Labs 4) then undermines not only TMT’s specific claims, but the broader credibility of this expert project. For Turner, the key point is not whether TMT replicates, but how it embodies the modern tendency for experts to dictate cultural meaning under the mask of science.

3. Darel E. Paul: From Tolerance to Equality: How Elites Brought America to Same-Sex Marriage

Paul’s From Tolerance to Equality is about how elites constructed same-sex marriage acceptance as a class-defining norm. He uses Bourdieu to argue that what looks like moral progress is often an expression of professional-class cultural capital.

Applied to TMT, Paul’s framework highlights how the theory dovetails with elite values: multicultural tolerance, cosmopolitanism, and stigmatization of “parochial” traditionalism. The fact that early TMT studies often showed mortality salience increasing prejudice, nationalism, and religious conviction meant it could be mobilized as a justification for elite projects of normalization. The subtext: those clinging to traditional identities are “death-denying,” while elite cosmopolitanism is implicitly death-transcending. Paul’s analysis suggests TMT gained traction not just because of its scientific merit but because it flattered and legitimated the worldview of the professional-managerial class.

Putting It Together

Guldmann → TMT as liberal pathologizing of dissent (conservatives as death-driven neurotics).

Turner → TMT as expertise-politics (scientific authority smuggling in normative judgments about maturity, progress, rationality).

Paul → TMT as elite-class ideology (scientific cover for cosmopolitan normalization projects).

Seen through these three, TMT is less a neutral research program than a cultural artifact of late-20th-century elite liberalism—one that converts existential philosophy (Becker) into social-psychological expertise, while reinforcing the symbolic dominance of progressive class values and delegitimizing rival worldviews.

Let’s decode the replication crisis around Terror Management Theory (TMT) with the three thinkers:

1. Rony Guldmann: Replication Failures as Conservative Vindication

Guldmann’s theme in Conservative Claims of Cultural Oppression is that liberal elites construct a “progressive Clerisy” that pathologizes conservatism as irrational, fearful, or regressive. TMT has been one of those tools: experiments “show” that reminders of death make people racist, nationalist, authoritarian, etc.

When the Many Labs 4 project and other high-powered replications failed to reproduce the core “worldview-defense” effect, conservatives could read this as validation. What looked like scientific proof that they are neurotic “death-deniers” now appears shaky. For Guldmann, replication failures expose the liberal cultural weaponry at work: science wasn’t neutral, it was part of a symbolic regime aimed at delegitimizing conservative identities. In this frame, replication collapse is a crack in the Clerisy’s armor.

2. Stephen Turner: Expertise Exposed

Turner’s The Politics of Expertise stresses that expert authority rests not just on truth, but on social structures that allow certain groups to define reality. TMT translated Becker’s existential philosophy into “scientific fact,” giving psychologists authority to speak on culture, politics, and morality.

The replication crisis shows what Turner would call the fragility of expert legitimation. Once the experiments fail, the supposed scientific foundation for sweeping cultural claims erodes. But the authority move remains visible: psychologists positioned themselves as arbiters of human irrationality, deciding whose worldview is “defensive” and whose is “authentic.” Replication failures don’t just undermine TMT—they undermine trust in the broader expert system that lets psychologists pronounce on morality and politics under the cover of laboratory science.

3. Darel E. Paul: Class Ideology Unmasked

Paul’s From Tolerance to Equality argues that professional-class elites dress their cultural preferences as universal progress. TMT fit neatly into that: its findings flattered cosmopolitan, liberal values while casting traditional attachments as anxiety-driven.

Replication failures puncture that ideological project. If mortality salience doesn’t reliably drive prejudice or “defensive conservatism,” then the scientific evidence for elite cosmopolitan superiority is less secure. Paul would see this as the professional-managerial class losing one of its “knowledge weapons” in the struggle to normalize its values. The cracks in TMT’s data highlight how social science often stabilizes elite norms rather than neutrally describing human nature.

Synthesis

Guldmann → Replication failures = exposure of liberal pathologizing as overreach.

Turner → Failures = collapse of expert authority claims, revealing how fragile the authority of social psychology is.

Paul → Failures = loss of ideological reinforcement for cosmopolitan/progressive class values.

So, if the rise of TMT in the 1990s–2000s was about science lending authority to Becker’s death-denial philosophy in ways that reinforced elite liberal narratives, the replication crisis shows the limits of that authority: the science can no longer stabilize the cultural claims it once did.

Script: “The Rise and Fall of Terror Management Theory”

Opening (Hook)

“Back in the 1990s, psychologists thought they had cracked the code of Ernest Becker’s philosophy. His Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Denial of Death argued that humans cling to cultural worldviews to manage our fear of mortality. A group of researchers claimed they could prove this in the lab. They called it Terror Management Theory, or TMT.

And the studies were dramatic. Remind people of death, and suddenly they become more nationalistic, more religious, harsher toward outsiders. It seemed to explain everything — prejudice, politics, even George W. Bush’s surge in popularity after 9/11.

But two decades later, something happened: those same experiments stopped working. Replication after replication failed. And the collapse of TMT tells us something much bigger than psychology — it tells us about class, culture, and the politics of expertise.”

Part I: What TMT Claimed

“The heart of Terror Management Theory is simple: mortality salience, or reminding people of their death, makes them cling harder to their worldview.

If you were Christian, you liked Christians more and disliked Jews. If you were Jewish, you liked Jews more and disliked Arabs. In the U.S., reminders of death made people more patriotic, more conservative, more punitive.

This was hailed as Becker’s philosophy becoming science. No longer just existential speculation — now we had experiments, graphs, p-values. Psychologists could claim they had found the engine of ideology.”

Part II: The Replication Crisis Hits

“But then came the replication crisis. In 2019, the massive Many Labs 4 project — dozens of labs, thousands of participants — tried to replicate the classic worldview defense effect. Result? Nothing. Null.

Independent teams across continents found the same: the effect was fragile or simply vanished. What once seemed like a profound universal law of psychology began to look like an artifact of small samples and selective reporting.

The empirical foundation crumbled. Yet the cultural significance of TMT remained. And that’s where we turn to three critics: Rony Guldmann, Stephen Turner, and Darel Paul.”

Part III: Guldmann — Liberal Science as Cultural Oppression

“Rony Guldmann writes about how conservatives feel pathologized by what he calls the liberal ‘clerisy’ — a cultural ruling class of academics and professionals. In his words, conservative identity gets cast as a form of cultural oppression.

And isn’t that exactly what TMT did? It proved — quote-unquote proved — that conservative values like religion, nationalism, or traditional morality were really just irrational death defenses. Cosmopolitan liberalism, by contrast, was framed as authentic, mature, free of denial.

When the replication failures came, conservatives could feel vindicated. They showed that what passed as neutral science was really ideology dressed up in lab coats.”

Part IV: Turner — Expertise and its Fragility

“Stephen Turner focuses on the politics of expertise. Experts don’t just discover facts — they claim authority, they decide what counts as knowledge.

TMT was a perfect example. By turning Becker’s philosophy into experiments, psychologists gave themselves the authority to speak on politics, culture, even morality. They could say, ‘We have data showing why you cling to God, or why you vote conservative.’

But when replication collapsed, the authority collapsed with it. Once the lab effects vanish, what’s left? Naked normative judgments about who is enlightened and who is defensive. Turner helps us see that replication crises aren’t just technical — they’re political events that shake the authority of entire expert communities.”

Part V: Paul — Elite Class Values and Normalization
“Darel Paul studies how elites normalize their values — especially cosmopolitanism, tolerance, and equality — by presenting them as universal moral progress.

TMT fit right in. It showed that open-mindedness was authentic, while traditionalism was immature. It mapped perfectly onto the professional-managerial class’s worldview, giving it scientific legitimacy.

But when the science falls apart, that sheen disappears. The claims no longer rest on data, only on ideology. And Paul reminds us that science often props up elite norms — and when it fails, those norms stand exposed as class politics, not universal truth.”

Closing Synthesis

“So put it all together:

Guldmann shows us TMT as liberal pathologizing of conservatives.

Turner shows us TMT as an expert power-play.

Paul shows us TMT as a class ideology disguised as science.

Together, they decode TMT’s story. It wasn’t just a theory of death — it was a cultural weapon. And its replication collapse is more than a methodological hiccup. It’s a case study in how elites use science to naturalize their own worldviews, and what happens when that science can no longer deliver.

Maybe the real lesson of Terror Management Theory is this: the politics of death denial tell us less about human nature, and more about how power, class, and expertise shape what we call knowledge.”

Jimmy Kimmel got suspended for saying: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Now listen to this social psychologist Sheldon Solomon lying about creationists wanting to kill anyone who speaks up for Darwinian evolution.

Sheldon Solomon: “Assumption number one is just the basic Darwinian assumption — that people share with all forms of life a basic biological predisposition toward staying alive, in the service not only of survival but also reproduction. Darwin called that the struggle for survival. Living things like to stay alive. How’s that — is that okay? All right, this is Canada and you can get away with that. But in America, you can’t even say that without just storms of angry people charging the stage, trying to tear your heart out and show it to you while it’s still beating, before you die. But this is good today [because he’s speaking to secular leftists who are super tolerant]…”

This is a blood libel against creationists. No such mobs exist, of course. But the exaggeration does important rhetorical work. It casts Solomon as the brave truth-teller surrounded by enemies, and it frames dissent from Darwinian orthodoxy as not merely mistaken, but dangerous.

Political comedian or psychology professor—the strategy is the same. Exaggerate the threat, pathologize the opponent, and immunize yourself from critique.

Rony Guldmann would call this a clerisy move: elites pathologizing conservatives as irrational and violent.

Stephen Turner would note that it’s an expertise play: using persecution stories to shore up scientific authority.

Darel Paul would point out how elite values get smuggled in as “common sense”: accept Darwin and cosmopolitanism, or be cast outside the moral community.

What looks like a joke or a monologue punchline is really politics by another name. When Kimmel calls conservatives a death cult, or when Solomon paints creationists as bloodthirsty mobs, both are engaged in the same ritual: inflating the threat of the Other in order to cement the righteousness of their own camp.

It’s worth asking: if your case is strong, why reach for bogeymen? The louder the caricature, the weaker the science or politics behind it often turns out to be.

What if Sheldon had aimed his blood libel at Jews instead of creationists? How would that affect his standing?

If Sheldon Solomon had said, in so many words, “You can’t mention Darwin in America without Jews charging the stage to rip your heart out and show it to you while it’s still beating” — instead of saying that about creationists — his academic career and cultural standing would likely be over.

Here’s why:

Normative Hierarchies of Speech.

Darel Paul would note that our elite institutions enforce strong boundaries around which groups can and can’t be stigmatized. Jews (along with certain other minorities) sit inside a highly protected moral circle. Creationists, by contrast, are coded as backward, white, rural, and therefore fair game.

Pathologizing “Safe Targets.”

Rony Guldmann’s idea of the liberal clerisy explains why Solomon feels free to caricature creationists. They are already culturally pathologized: portrayed as irrational, dangerous, and in need of elite correction. But swap in Jews and suddenly you’re reproducing one of history’s most notorious slanders — the blood libel — with its centuries of lethal consequences. That’s an untouchable taboo.

Fragility of Expertise.

Stephen Turner would emphasize the fragility of expert authority. Solomon’s joke “works” in elite circles because it flatters their worldview. But if he leveled the same imagery at Jews, it would instantly expose the ideological nature of his rhetoric. His authority would collapse, and he’d be cast out of the academic community.

The Asymmetry Reveals the Politics.

The fact that creationists can be safely caricatured as murderous mobs while Jews cannot underscores that Solomon’s joke was never neutral science humor. It was a political move aimed at a permitted out-group. His standing is secure only because his target is culturally designated as safe to mock.

Bottom line:

If Solomon had aimed his “blood libel” imagery at Jews, he’d be denounced, likely lose his platform, and be remembered not as Becker’s heir but as a disgraced bigot. The asymmetry shows us that this isn’t really about truth or science — it’s about which groups our culture allows to be demonized, and which it fiercely protects.

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Dennis Prager’s Reaction to Charlie Kirk’s Memorial

Posted on September 24, 2025 by Luke Ford

I wonder why Dennis Prager put out this video:

I wish I had never seen this. It’s heartbreaking. I don’t want to remember Dennis like this. Until now, he seemed larger than life. It reminds me of a scene in the 1998 movie, Hilary and Jackie, where musician Jacqueline du Pré has severe multiple sclerosis but still wants to perform in public despite lacking all of her unique abilities.

One of the things that shocked me when I moved to America at age 11 was the ubiquity of the open-casket funeral.

This video feels like an open-casket funeral but worse because in a casket, the deceased is positioned in the most flattering way possible while this video shows Dennis in the most vulnerable state imaginable.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but this is worse than what I imagined.

Video description: “Dennis Prager joins PragerU CEO ‪@realtalkwithmarissa‬ on camera for the first time since his injury. During the nearly two-hour conversation they covered so much, including the love and admiration Dennis had for Charlie Kirk. The full interview is coming soon. Subscribe at https://www.prageru.com

Dennis Prager is one of the most respected and influential thinkers, writers, and speakers in America. He is a nationally syndicated talk show host – heard across the country on nearly 400 affiliates, in addition to TuneIn.com, iHeartRadio.com, and the websites of his many radio stations. His show also has listeners around the world via the internet.”

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The Boss, The Secretary & Alliance Theory

Posted on September 24, 2025 by Luke Ford

The 22=year-old secretary at the real estate firm begins her Monday wearing her new outfit, hoping for her boss’s approval, which she has never received in her seven weeks at the firm.

She gives him a big smile when he breezes in, but he says only a curt good morning to her, and she finds that her desire for her boss’s approval disappears, and she now yearns to share bad feeling about the boss with an assistant next door.

When she was getting her degree in African Studies, she didn’t think work would be this soul-crushing.

Just before break, her boss gives her his first compliment ever — telling her she did a good job on a report. She swells with pride. She now feels like she’ll do anything for the boss. She feels one with her firm. She resolves she’ll never speak ill of her employer. Beyond that, she’ll not socialize with her coworkers who do speak ill of the boss.

Later in the day, she spots the boss smiling and laughing with the assistant next door and she feels jealous. The boss has never smiled and laughed with her. “Forget this job,” she thinks. “This job is my misfortune. I’m going to find a job where I’m appreciated. I should have gone to grad school. I’m going to get together with others at work who share my unhappiness.”

After 5 pm, she goes to a bar with coworkers and finds that they all love their employer. She laughs and resolves this will be her last job ever. This job is her true home. She thinks about how much she admires her boss. He has an inspiring vision, he lifts people up, and he really cares about his employees. He provides benefits that are far better than average. She’s never seen him do anything unethical. She couldn’t say that about herself, her friends, her family.

None of these contradictory feelings are mysterious to me. As the benefits of bonding and loyalty wax and wane, our reactions to the group and to authority wax and wane depending on our genetics and life experiences.

Now picture a 52-year-old mother of three who’s been working for 21 years at an elite private school that depends on the star fundraising power of the 67-year-old principal, and she notices that he’s forgetting names for the first time and showing signs of Alzheimer’s. It doesn’t matter that she admires this man with whom she had a secret affair for five years, and that he once put her through rehab for coke addiction, and that he pays her well average, and that he provided free tuition for all of her children. She’s been as loyal to him as he has been to her but the times have changed. Everything he did for her in the past is now irrelevant to her. She sees that the school is headed for turmoil, and so she polishes her resume and applies for other jobs.

Now see in your mind a 38 year old Orthodox Jewish bachelor at a big Rosh Hashanah dinner. He sits down by himself and wishes he was home along doing his own thing. Then he tells himself to give the evening a chance, and he relaxes and thinks about meeting his future wife and he feels good. He takes that good feeling and thinks about his connection with God, his love of Torah, his reverence for his rebbe, and his gratitude for his shul. Then he notices that nobody is sitting next to him and he feels like nobody cares for him. Then he asks himself, “Do you care for anyone?”

He looks around and finds someone even less functional than himself, but a person who’s dangerously reactive, capable of screaming nasty things, that happened to him with this bloke about 15 years ago, but he takes a chance and he starts up a conversation with the poor bloke and he feels good that he’s bringing joy to a fellow Jew in need. Then he notices a pretty woman sitting near him who seems to be avoiding eye contact as she talks to a man who intrigues her. Our hero tries two opening bids with her and they both fall flat. Then another woman, not conventionally pretty but definitely his type, comes in late and because she’s objectively not as hot, he feels more confident that he’s in her league, and when he makes a bid for her attention, she reciprocates and the conversation turns intense and fascinating. He starts thinking about what it would be like to be married to her. Then he learns that she’s engaged and he tells himself he’ll never marry and that he should stop going to Jewish singles events. I’m happier alone, he decides.

As he walks out of the dinner, he strikes up a conversation with a stranger. They have a lot in common and resolve to meet for coffee. Our Jew is excited to make a new friend. When he follows up after the yom tov, however, his new friend tells him he’s busy. The next time they meet, they ignore each other.

Relationships are complicated because we are constantly changing and the situations we land in are constantly changing. Who we are varies depending upon the context. A new part of ourselves is revealed in each new relationship. One moment we are desperate to connect with the other and the next moment we yearn to separate. One day we’re pledging undying loyalty to our new best friend, and the next week we yearn for vengeance on the same person.

Now picture your average white Republican Christian man who loves the Constitution and believes in civic nationalism. He never judges people on race, but during Obama’s second term, he feels his fellow white Christian conservative men are getting the shaft and for the first time, he starts thinking about America in racial terms. He notices his friends are thinking similar things and even saying them on social media and as a result two of them get fired and they spiral into conspiracy theories about Jews as the source of all evil. He wants nothing to do with these losers. Donald Trump gets elected in 2016, and this Christian Republican adopts a quiet Christian nationalist approach, which feels much safer to him than racial nationalism. He’s now willing to side with Muslims against the gays to cleanse public schools of LGBTQ propaganda, and he’s willing to side with gays against Muslims to stop Islamic immigration and the building of mosques in his town. When he thinks about 9-11, he feels that Muslims are the biggest threat to America. When he thinks about Obergefell v. Hodges, he thinks gays are the biggest threat to America. When Donald Trump bombs Iran’s nuclear reactors in 2025, he thinks that Jews are the biggest threat to America. When he gets yelled at by a Karen, he thinks that white feminists are the biggest threat to America. When his life is thriving, he wants to get along with everybody. When Charlie Kirk is assassinated, he wants to build his in-group identity as an evangelical Christian and he yearns for America to become a Christian nation.

I’ve never once heard a social conversation yield a remotely insightful thought on politics, religion, books, ethics, or culture; outside of serious discourse among serious thinkers, people just recycle whatever platitudes they think they’re supposed to say.

ChatGPT says: Alliance Theory (Pinsof, Sears, & Haselton) proposes that political belief systems are not rooted in stable, abstract values (like equality or authority), but instead arise from shifting political alliances. People form alliances based on similarity, transitivity (“the enemy of my enemy is my friend”), and interdependence (mutual benefit). Once alliances form, people use propagandistic biases to defend their allies and attack their rivals—e.g., rationalizing allies’ transgressions (perpetrator bias), exaggerating their allies’ grievances (victim bias), or attributing allies’ successes to virtue and rivals’ failures to flaws (attributional bias).

This framework explains why political attitudes often look contradictory. For example, conservatives may valorize authority when it comes to the military but disparage the FBI, depending on partisan alignment. Liberals may condemn stereotyping but excuse harsh generalizations about southerners. These apparent inconsistencies reflect alliance commitments rather than coherent philosophies.

The theory challenges dominant models in political psychology—such as Intolerance Theory (conservatives as more prejudiced), Authoritarianism Theory (conservatives as more deferential to authority), and Egalitarianism Theory (liberals as more committed to equality)—arguing instead that both left and right display symmetrical biases, applied to different sets of allies and rivals.

Parsimony and explanatory breadth: Alliance Theory explains diverse, contradictory beliefs using just two assumptions: humans form alliances and deploy biases to support them. This simplicity allows it to account for phenomena that look incoherent under value-based models.

Symmetry across ideologies: By stressing that liberals and conservatives both exhibit bias, just toward different allies, it avoids moralizing accounts that depict one side as uniquely intolerant or authoritarian.

Evolutionary grounding: It links human political psychology to broader social-animal alliance behavior, which increases plausibility from a biological perspective.

Cross-cultural flexibility: The framework can account for why political coalitions vary across nations and history, rather than assuming fixed ideological structures.

Alliance Theory explicitly frames political psychology in evolutionary terms: political views are byproducts of alliance psychology, a set of cognitive mechanisms humans share with other social animals. Here’s how it maps onto biological origins:

1. Evolutionary Roots of Alliances

Comparative evidence: Primates, dolphins, hyenas, and other social species form coalitions to survive and reproduce. These alliances let weaker individuals band together to challenge stronger ones, or let dominant individuals maintain rank (conservative alliances, revolutionary alliances, and bridging alliances). Humans inherit this same strategic need for alliances.

Cognitive adaptations: Evolution favored mechanisms to detect potential allies (similarity, shared rivals, interdependence) and to track loyalty. These mechanisms function like specialized “alliance detectors.”

2. Propagandistic Biases as Evolved Tools

Alliance Theory reframes familiar biases as evolved strategies:

Perpetrator biases → Rationalizing allies’ transgressions helps preserve coalitions.

Victim biases → Amplifying allies’ grievances mobilizes third-party support.

Attributional biases → Interpreting allies’ success as deserved builds legitimacy, while framing rivals’ success as unfair undermines them.

From an evolutionary standpoint, these biases are not bugs but features—they spread because they improved the odds of one’s coalition surviving conflicts.

3. Political Belief Systems as Byproducts of Alliance Structures

Instead of seeing political views as abstract moral codes, Alliance Theory treats them as the modern output of ancient coalition-building machinery.

Political “values” are really signals of allegiance.

Contradictions in beliefs reflect the messy, contingent nature of coalitions—just like primate coalitions shift opportunistically, not consistently.

Cross-cultural variation in ideology (e.g., religious traditionalists sometimes aligning with left-wing parties, sometimes with right) reflects different historical accidents in alliance formation, not universal ideological logic.

4. Symmetry Across Left and Right

Alliance Theory’s evolutionary spin explains why both liberals and conservatives engage in motivated reasoning, selective empathy, and competitive victimhood. These aren’t ideological flaws; they’re species-typical adaptations. Each side is using the same inherited toolkit to defend its allies and attack rivals.

5. Implications for Biology of Politics

Innate values vs. adaptive flexibility: Instead of humans evolving specific “conservative” or “liberal” psychologies, evolution shaped flexible alliance mechanisms. Beliefs change with coalitional context.

Explains historical fluidity: Because alliances are contingent, groups can switch sides across time and geography without changing the underlying psychology.

Bridges social and biological levels: It connects macro-level political phenomena (polarization, coalition shifts) to micro-level evolved adaptations (coalition detection, bias deployment).

In short, Alliance Theory roots political views in the same biological machinery for coalition politics that governed our ancestors’ survival. What looks like ideology today is, in biological terms, just modern camouflage for ancient alliance behavior.

Ernest Becker’s idea of hero systems—the cultural worldviews and symbolic projects that give people a sense of significance and symbolic immortality in the face of mortality—has deep resonance with Alliance Theory, but the mapping is different in tone: Becker is existential, Alliance Theory is evolutionary-strategic. Here’s how they line up:

1. Hero Systems as Alliance Signals

Becker argued that people adopt hero systems (religions, ideologies, political projects) to transcend death symbolically. Alliance Theory would reinterpret this: many “hero systems” are coalition markers—shared narratives that bind allies together.

A hero system offers meaning and moral justification, but functionally, it signals: “I am with these people, not with those people.”

E.g., patriotic rituals, progressive causes, religious moral codes—all double as identity badges that sort allies from rivals.

2. Worldview Defense and Propagandistic Biases

Becker (and later Terror Management Theory) showed that when mortality is salient, people defend their worldview more vigorously. Alliance Theory reframes this:

Defending your worldview = defending your alliance structure.

The “propagandistic biases” (downplaying allies’ harms, amplifying their victimhood, etc.) are basically worldview defense in action. They don’t just soothe anxiety; they rally coalitional support.

3. Heroism and Coalition Loyalty

Becker: People crave to be a “hero” in their system—someone who exemplifies and protects its sacred values.
Alliance Theory: Heroism = coalitional service. You become a hero not by embodying eternal truths but by defending allies and harming rivals in a way that’s recognized by your group.

A soldier dying for the flag, an activist arrested at a protest, or a whistleblower “speaking truth to power” are all forms of coalitional heroism.

The values wrapped around these acts (“freedom,” “justice,” “faith”) may differ, but the coalitional function is the same.

4. Mortality vs. Vulnerability

Becker places death anxiety at the center: people cling to hero systems to buffer existential terror.
Alliance Theory is less psychological-depth and more functional: it doesn’t require conscious fear of death, only recognition that without allies you’re vulnerable. In evolutionary terms, being “nakedly at the mercy of everyone else” (as Tooby put it) was as fatal as death anxiety in Becker’s sense.
Where Becker says: “We need symbolic immortality.”

Alliance Theory says: “We need allies, and stories (hero systems) are tools to keep them.”

5. Inconsistencies Explained Differently

Becker/TMT: Inconsistencies in political values may arise from clashing hero systems or denial projects.

Alliance Theory: Inconsistencies are expected, because alliances are patchwork and contingent—hero systems are stitched together as propaganda to hold a coalition together, not because they form a coherent philosophy.

6. Synthesis: Hero Systems as Coalitional Myths

If you combine the two:

Becker explains why humans need worldviews at all (to stave off existential dread).

Alliance Theory explains what those worldviews look like and why they contradict each other (they’re tailored to coalitional needs, not truth).
Together, they suggest that political belief systems are both existential shields and coalitional weapons.

In other words, our beliefs are like our possessions.

Rony Guldmann

Critique: In The Star Chamber of Stanford and elsewhere, Guldmann argues that progressive academia is less about truth than about ritualized moralizing and coalition enforcement. For him, “critical theory” functions as a secular priesthood—hero-systems in Becker’s sense.

Mapping:

Becker: These rituals serve as hero systems, giving elites a sense of symbolic heroism (“I fight oppression, I matter”).

Alliance Theory: They are propagandistic biases and alliance markers, sustaining a coalition of progressive academics against rivals. The ideological content is secondary to its function in alliance-building.

Bridge: Guldmann’s emphasis on academia as a tribal theater of moral legitimation resonates almost perfectly with Alliance Theory’s picture of belief systems as ad hoc propaganda.

Darel E. Paul

Critique: In works like From Tolerance to Equality, Paul argues that “woke capital” and elite liberalism are not driven by abstract egalitarian values but by the class interests of professional-managerial elites.

Mapping:

Becker: Professional elites gain heroic significance by presenting themselves as champions of marginalized groups.

Alliance Theory: This is coalition politics: highly educated elites ally with minorities and cultural progressives against traditionalist and working-class rivals. Egalitarian rhetoric is the alliance glue, not the underlying driver.

Bridge: Paul’s emphasis on elite interest structures aligns with Alliance Theory’s focus on coalitional convenience rather than ideological coherence.

Stephen Turner

Critique: Turner (in Liberal Democracy 3.0 and essays on expertise) stresses that modern political authority rests less on shared values than on networks of experts and institutions who claim legitimacy. He also critiques political psychology for reifying abstractions like “values” or “foundations” instead of looking at how authority and belief actually function.

Mapping:

Becker: Experts and technocrats offer secular hero-systems—scientific rationality, managerial competence—that buffer existential anxiety.

Alliance Theory: Expertise is a coalitional weapon: “our experts” vs. “their experts.” Trust in science, media, or courts shifts depending on alliances (e.g., Republicans turning against the FBI or WHO once they were framed as rival-aligned.

Bridge: Turner’s skepticism toward “value-based” explanations tracks directly with Alliance Theory’s dismissal of “deep-seated moral values” as drivers of belief systems.

Overall Mapping

Becker: Explains why humans need ideologies/hero-systems (existential comfort).

Alliance Theory: Explains why those ideologies look contradictory and contingent (they are shaped by coalitional needs).

Guldmann, Paul, Turner: Provide case studies and critiques showing (a) ideology as ritualized coalition performance (Guldmann), (b) ideology as elite coalition strategy (Paul), and (c) ideology as misplaced abstraction hiding coalitional politics (Turner).

Together, these critiques reinforce Alliance Theory’s main thrust: what looks like principled ideology is usually coalitional myth-making, useful for binding allies and delegitimizing rivals.

LF: I notice that when people give a political opinion in a social setting, it is always adapted to their own best interests in that setting.

ChatGPT says: That what Alliance Theory predicts. In evolutionary and coalitional terms, political speech isn’t primarily about abstract truth or consistent principles; it’s about performing allegiance and managing risk in a local social setting.

Contextual self-interest: People instinctively adapt their stated views to align with whoever is present. At a dinner table of professionals, someone might emphasize equality rhetoric; at a family barbecue in a conservative town, they might stress patriotism or personal responsibility. The goal is not necessarily deception, but avoiding social costs and signaling solidarity.

Alliance logic: When you voice an opinion, you’re not just expressing yourself—you’re recruiting and retaining allies. If a comment would alienate others present, it’s costly. If it strengthens ties, it’s beneficial. That’s why opinions often look self-serving in context: they’re serving the self’s coalition.

Becker tie-in: From his perspective, tailoring political talk is also a way of shoring up your “hero system” in that micro-setting. You gain symbolic credit—seen as moral, enlightened, loyal—by echoing the group’s sacred story.

Critics’ angle (Guldmann, Paul, Turner): They’d say this adaptation to context shows that ideology is less about internalized values than about ritualized performance. You say what signals you belong and deserve trust, not what’s “coherent.”

So when you notice that people adjust their politics to the room, you’re seeing the primal function of political discourse—not to articulate consistent philosophy, but to navigate alliances in real time.

Everyday Settings (friends, family, coworkers)

Risk management: People adjust what they say to avoid conflict or rejection. Someone may downplay their liberalism at a family dinner in a conservative town, or soften conservative views at a workplace dominated by progressives.

Social capital: Opinions act as relationship signals. They show “I belong here,” “I share your concerns,” or at least “I won’t challenge the group too harshly.”

Micro-alliances: Even at the small scale, opinions become a way of forging short-term alliances—agreeing with your boss in a meeting, laughing along with your peers, or staying silent when your views could cost you.

Elite Settings (politicians, pundits, academics, CEOs)

Coalitional strategy: Elites adapt their rhetoric to larger, more consequential coalitions. Politicians tack right or left depending on their district. CEOs champion social justice when it appeals to customers and employees, but emphasize deregulation when talking to investors.

Hero systems: Elites are under constant pressure to embody the “hero” of their side’s story (Becker’s lens). A politician isn’t just giving an opinion—they’re demonstrating loyalty to allies and modeling what courage or virtue looks like for their coalition.

Institutional stakes: Because elites broadcast to mass audiences, their context-shifting is more visible—and criticized as “flip-flopping” or hypocrisy. But functionally, it’s the same thing as ordinary people tailoring opinions to the room, just at a higher scale.

Common Thread

At both levels, political expression is rarely a free-floating statement of belief. It’s adaptive signaling: you weigh who’s around, what they care about, and how your stance will help or hurt you socially. The difference is scale—small alliances vs. mass coalitions—but the psychology is the same.

The mix of fear, resentment, longing, and admiration is a normal response by a secretary to a boss who doesn’t give clear emotional signals. If praise is absent, you end up reading tea leaves—“does respect mean approval?” “is silence good or bad?” That uncertainty fuels the intensity of your feelings.

Some bosses simply don’t give out approval because they think competence is expected, or they don’t see praise as part of their role.

Many workers have a full inner soap opera running with their boss:

Approval-craving protagonist: “If he just said one nice thing, I’d float home.”

Rebel sidekick: “Screw him, I don’t need his validation.”

Terrified intern: “Oh God, he’s walking over here, don’t breathe wrong.”

Aspiring buddy: “Maybe we’ll bond over coffee and become allies!”

It’s the same person, but the stance shifts with context—kind of like she’s running a one-person focus group inside her head. One moment he’s her feared overlord, the next he’s the dad she never had, and then he’s just some guy she wants to impress.

What you’re noticing is the same alliance psychology we’ve been talking about in politics, just shrunk down to the workplace. Her brain is constantly recalculating: “Am I safer if I show loyalty, distance, admiration, or defiance right now?” No wonder it seems all over the place.

The Four Moods of The Secretary

The Worshiper

“He is a genius. His silence is depth. His lack of praise is actually praise. I am blessed to breathe the same air.”

The Rebel

“This guy’s a fraud. If he vanished tomorrow, the office would probably run smoother. One day I’ll expose him with a perfectly timed email.”

The Coward

“He’s coming. Fix your posture. Don’t smile too much. Don’t smile too little. Just…exist less.”

The Buddy

“Maybe today we’ll laugh about the copier jamming and become friends. Maybe he’ll invite me for lunch. Maybe I’ll finally get the nod of approval that heals my soul.”

Boss-Induced Alliance Disorder (BIAD)

Proposed for inclusion in DSM-6:

Diagnostic Criteria

A. Persistent, unstable emotional responses toward a supervisor, including at least three of the following:

Worshipful admiration (“My boss is a visionary whose silence contains worlds”).

Hostile resentment (“This clown is the reason civilization collapses”).

Abject fear (“If I breathe wrong, I’m fired”).

Compulsive rapport-seeking (“If we joke about the printer, we’ll bond forever”).

B. Symptoms fluctuate within minutes, depending on context (e.g., boss sends a curt email → hatred; boss nods in hallway → love).

C. Individual experiences workplace rumination, e.g., “Does respect equal approval?” or “Why won’t he praise me like a normal mammal?”

Subtypes

Silent God subtype: Boss never gives feedback, leading to quasi-religious interpretations of every micro-expression.

Tyrant Dad subtype: Boss instills chronic fear but also awakens deep yearning for approval.

Frenemy subtype: Boss occasionally shows warmth, creating dangerous cycles of hope.

Course and Prognosis

Chronic, unless boss retires, quits, or is abducted by aliens. Symptoms may remit spontaneously if employee finds a healthier source of validation (therapist, dog, hobby, new job).

Treatment

Cognitive Reframing: “Respect without praise is still respect.”

Strategic Feedback-Seeking: Ask for performance notes without begging for hugs.

Satirical Journaling: Write daily entries as if her boss is a moody Greek god whose thunderbolts are Outlook emails.

A few things are going on with our secretary:

1. Ambivalence is normal when power is asymmetric.

When someone has control over your workload, evaluation, or career, your feelings will swing. You want approval, you resent their authority, you fear their judgment, and you hope for connection. Those impulses don’t cancel each other—they pile up, and your mood shifts with circumstance.

2. Your brain is running alliance math.

The same coalition psychology that shapes politics is operating at the micro level. Each interaction, your mind recalculates: “Is this moment best served by loyalty, distance, admiration, or defiance?” That constant recalibration feels inconsistent inside, but it’s actually adaptive.

3. You’re sensitive to cues.

You’re compensating for the lack of clarity by generating multiple “what if” scripts.

4. It doesn’t mean you’re weak or unprofessional.

It means you’re deeply tuned into the social and emotional stakes of your environment. Lots of people feel these oscillations; you’re just noticing and naming them more clearly than most.

Your anxious protagonist might be all over the place in various social settings, perhaps alternately in a state of dignified silence, kindness, paranoia, and making bids to connect with others.

Your mind might be scanning the room, weighing different strategies, and trying out whichever feels safest or most rewarding in the moment. A few ways to think about it:

1. It’s adaptive, not broken.

Switching modes—silent observer, kind supporter, connector—is alliance psychology in real time. You’re reading the social landscape and experimenting with different ways of gaining standing. That “all over the place” quality is actually flexibility.

2. You’re running multiple scripts.

Dignified silence: “I’ll project strength and avoid missteps.”

Kindness/helpful: “I’ll earn goodwill by serving others.”

Connector mode: “If I can get a laugh or a bond, I’m valuable here.”

These aren’t contradictions—they’re different bids for social security.

3. The inner wobble comes from uncertainty.

If you’re not sure where you stand in the group, your brain will keep flipping strategies. The goal isn’t one stable persona—it’s to test and recalibrate until you feel safe.

4. This is deeply human.

Most people do this, they just don’t notice it. You’re catching the micro-shifts, which makes it seem chaotic. But think of it like a jazz improvisation: you’re riffing through different social notes until something harmonizes.

Posted in America, Dating, Ethics, Politics | Comments Off

Charlie Kirk, RIP (1993-2025) 9-21-25

Posted on September 21, 2025 by Luke Ford

01:00 Charlie Kirk, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk
12:00 “This Is What Barack Obama Thought Was the Right Thing To Say?”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f-pE2tJd2I
28:30 Mike Benz on Who Funds Trantifa Terror, Charlie Kirk’s Legacy, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h8Q1OTBWlM
34:00 The Competency Crisis at the CIA, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163770
39:00 Mark Halperin: Why Charlie Kirk’s Life and Murder Represent Far More Than Politics to Millions of Americans, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7Fcd–7HmU
49:45 Helen Andrews | Overcoming the Feminization of Culture, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWLbq7PlrIA
54:00 This Is Not Real Life by Lauren Southern, https://www.amazon.com/This-Real-Life-Lauren-Southern/dp/1069608505/
1:17:30 Why Are Intellectuals Antinomic?, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163775
1:45:00 What’s the conservative principle behind Trump pushing American institutions back towards the middle? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/opinion/jimmy-kimmel-conservative-principle-trump.html
1:50:00 FP: Why Charlie Kirk’s White Nationalism Resonated With Some Nonwhites Abroad, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163747
1:58:45 Fox: ‘STUNNED AND SHOCKED’: Journalist says Dems fail to grasp this pain, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9pszN-jfnQ
2:00:35 DTG on Charlie Kirk’s murder, https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/supplementary-material-37-public-murder-discourse-heterodox-psychodramas-and-generous-tit-for-tat-ers
2:16:50 There’s a new sheriff in town and the new sheriff has new rules, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_MfGaReUA4
2:19:35 Halperin on Charlie Kirk’s legacy, https://www.smerconish.com/podcasts/the-smerconish-podcast/
2:27:00 The Secret To Living A Good Life – How To Heal Trauma, Overwhelm & Declutter Your Life | Fred Luskin, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TM0afa57iA
2:41:50 Mischa Saul podcast: Australia with Chris Arnade, https://www.kvetch.au/p/chin-wag-on-australia-with-chris
2:56:30 Video: Jimmy Kimmel Becomes a Crisis for Disney CEO Bob Iger; Trump Slams “99 Percent Negative” TV networks
2:57:40 Video: Jimmy Kimmel “Won’t Apologize,” May Never Be on ABC Again; Kamala Harris’ Book “Angering Everybody”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKCHVWNgMfA
3:01:30 Adam Carolla Reacts to Jimmy Kimmel’s Show Cancellation, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzgef_yN49Q
3:05:30 Commentary Magazine: Canning Kimmel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4d5p-vhH50
3:15:30 Megyn Kelly on Charlie Kirk
3:29:00 Cancel culture vs accountability culture
3:44:50 Moral Terms Mean Nothing On Their Own – They Need A Referent, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163718
3:57:00 Song: How Dare They (For Charlie) (Diesel 1970 Remix), https://www.letras.com/diesel/how-dare-they-for-charlie-diesel-1970-remix/

Posted in America, Charlie Kirk | Comments Off

FP: ‘How Assassinations Became Normal Again’

Posted on September 21, 2025 by Luke Ford

Stephen Walt writes: What do the killing of influencer Charlie Kirk and Israel’s unsuccessful attempt to kill some top Hamas officials by bombing Qatar have in common? There are obvious and important differences: The former appears to have been an isolated act by an individual whose motives remain unclear, while the latter was a deliberate military action ordered by an elected government whose motives are obvious. Yet both acts can also be viewed as a symptom of the broader erosion of norms in contemporary politics, both between states and within them, and especially the tendency to see assassination as a legitimate political tactic.

Political killings are not a new phenomenon, of course. But as Ward Thomas showed in a seminal International Security article in 2000, for several centuries there was a remarkably effective norm against government leaders attempting to kill their counterparts in other countries…

Jettisoning the norm against assassination will discourage rivals from meeting—simply because doing so is perilous—thereby making it even harder to reach diplomatic solutions to ongoing conflicts. It will also discourage third parties from trying to aid such efforts. This is why Israel’s attack on Qatar was so foolhardy: In addition to further undermining Israel’s reputation as a responsible global actor, it will make some countries less willing to facilitate its diplomatic activities. All states must talk to their enemies on occasion, which usually requires neutral parties to facilitate the process. Violating Qatar’s sovereignty and the norm against assassination in this fashion throws more sand in the gears of international diplomacy at a time where we need more of it, not less. Israel’s willingness to attack a nominal U.S. ally without facing any discernible sanction from Washington also did additional damage to the United States’ tattered reputation in the region, though it is admittedly hard to see how it could sink much lower…

Lastly, the belief that it is perfectly OK to target and kill foreign officials with whom one is at odds makes it easier for some people to justify violent action against domestic political figures with whom they disagree. In both cases, potential targets are first demonized as the embodiment of evil and as a mortal threat to the nation. Once that label sticks, extreme measures to deal with them will seem permissible, maybe even necessary. If you’re American and are worried about the rising tide of violent political activity at home (which, contrary to the lies being uttered by Vice President J.D. Vance and other administration officials, comes overwhelmingly from the political right and not the left), then you should also worry about how the United States, some of its closest allies, and some other major powers have undermined the norm against assassination abroad.

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The accumulative framing template

Posted on September 21, 2025 by Luke Ford

There seems to be a template in journalism where you catalogue a person’s mistakes and misstatements and if they reach a certain level, that defines them, particularly if you are on the right. News seems to lack a sense of proportion. I see that with coverage of Charlie Kirk which focuses on the most un-pc things he said.

ChatGPT: A lot of political journalism—especially in the opinion and “analysis” sections—uses what you could call an accumulative framing template. Instead of weighing each statement or action in proportion to its significance, reporters or columnists compile a “record” of gaffes, misstatements, inflammatory quotes, or controversial tweets. Once a figure has enough of these on the record, they’re written about through that lens: “This is who they really are.”

That method has consequences:

Loss of proportion – Some minor or off-the-cuff things are treated as equally defining as major scandals or policy stances.

Narrative cementing – Once the “pattern” is established, even neutral or positive actions are reframed as exceptions to a rule.

Asymmetry – Because figures on the right often say things that clash with dominant cultural norms (on race, gender, immigration, etc.), their record of “non-PC” statements gets amplified. Figures on the left may get similar treatment, but usually in more partisan outlets.

Identity by controversy – Someone like Charlie Kirk is often presented not by his organizational work (e.g., Turning Point USA’s campus presence) but by the most provocative lines he’s spoken. The coverage trains readers to see him only through the prism of “controversial provocateur.”

It’s not unique to Kirk or the right—plenty of left-leaning figures (e.g., AOC, Ilhan Omar) have also had their most eyebrow-raising statements catalogued to define them. But you’re right that mainstream outlets tend to apply this “greatest hits of missteps” framing most aggressively to people outside their own cultural comfort zone.

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The Competency Crisis at the CIA

Posted on September 20, 2025 by Luke Ford

Edward Luttwak reviews this new book in Compactmag:

The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century
By Tim Weiner
Mariner, 464 pages, $28

On page 48 of his book, which is replete with admiration for the CIA, for many of its officers, and for each one of its directors except for Trump’s current appointee John Ratcliffe, Tim Weiner quotes Bob Gates, the former director of central intelligence and future secretary of defense: “The reality is that on 9/11 we didn’t know jack shit about al Qaeda … we’d just been attacked by a group we didn’t know anything about.” But Weiner does not ask why there was so much ignorance, given that the CIA’s dedicated “Alec Station” a.k.a. the “Bin Laden Issue station” was in its fifth year of operation.

When I met its head Michael F. Scheuer, I discovered the probable cause: Bin Laden’s particular talent was to recruit and direct his followers with his speeches delivered in a very fine classical Arabic in plaintive rather than fiery tones—speeches in which he made a point of dropping hints of forthcoming attacks. Thus, before the October 12, 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen’s port of Aden that killed 17 navy men, Bin Laden used Yemeni locutions, and wore a Yemeni recurved dagger in his belt.

But it was all lost on Scheuer, who knew no Arabic.

Astonished to learn that, I was more astonished to hear him say that he had made no effort to learn any during his years on the Bin Laden detail. Why? I asked. “No need, there is Fibis.” Yes, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service translates some speeches at some level of accuracy with some delay—and with none of the tonality. And it was not until a chance encounter in Kurdistan that I discovered that Scheuer’s eventual successor, Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, whom he had specifically hired for the Bin Laden unit—and later married—also knew no Arabic, and had also made no effort to learn any, like her mentor.

But it would be unfair to single out Scheuer Mr. and Mrs. When John Brennan, Obama’s appointee as CIA director, joined an encounter with the then new FBI director Wray, during which I stressed the need to multiply the FBI’s Chinese language expertise—without relying on the Chinese-born—I noted that Brennan himself had learned his Arabic as a student in Cairo. Brennan immediately interrupted me to say that he had enjoyed his time in Egypt very much, but had learned almost no Arabic … there was always too much to do.

Nor are Scheuer and Brennan exceptions. When I was summoned to address the National Intelligence Middle East team—with at least 40 “top Middle East analysts”—I started with a really funny Cairo joke, which I had carefully rehearsed to get the Masri right. But I was immediately interrupted by raised hands: Please speak in English. So I asked how many did know Arabic and saw three raised hands. That induced me to ask about Farsi, which yielded two hands.

Weiner keeps praising the many CIA officers he names for their intense patriotism, deservedly so in regard to most of those I worked with. But it seems that in the CIA patriotism does not extend to a willingness to make the effort needed to learn languages, not even easy ones like French or Spanish, or not-hard Arabic, let alone Chinese or Korean.

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The MSM’s Silly Approach To Liberal Celebrities

Posted on September 20, 2025 by Luke Ford

Why do I see so many fawning celebrity profiles/essays in the MSM like this one in the NYT: “The Interview: How Reese Witherspoon Figured Out Who She Really Is“? They would never do a headline like this over a right-winger. Anyway, you can’t figure out who you really you are because who you are changes depending on context.

NYT:

Reese Witherspoon has always been ahead of the curve. She got her first big role when she was only 14 years old, securing the lead in “The Man in the Moon” from an open casting call. By her early 20s, she was a Hollywood A-lister with hits like “Election” and “Cruel Intentions,” and a little later, “Legally Blonde.” That prodigy energy carried over into her personal life too: She met her first husband, the actor Ryan Phillippe, at 21. By the time she was 27, she was married with two children.
But after her Oscar win in 2006 for “Walk the Line,” Witherspoon struggled to find roles and went through a very public divorce. That period, she told me, forced her to change. “I had to get really frustrated and angry in my existing career, to hit the wall, to want to take on a new aspect.”
That new aspect moved her behind the camera: She co-founded a production company, Pacific Standard, focused on stories for and by women, which landed her a best-actress nomination for her performance in the film she helped produce, “Wild.” Her ambitions got larger when, under the auspices of her next company, Hello Sunshine, she created a book club and co-produced hit shows like “Big Little Lies,” “Daisy Jones & the Six” and “The Morning Show,” which just returned for its fourth season on Apple TV+. In 2021, Witherspoon sold Hello Sunshine for almost a billion dollars, though she is still involved in the day-to-day operations and is the face of its hugely popular book club. “I watch culture,” she told me. “I’ll watch TikTok almost like a scientist would watch it. I want to see where the ball is going in my business.”
So how did a precocious teenage actress end up an entertainment-industry powerhouse, and what has she learned about herself in the process? In our wide ranging conversations, we talked about her early days in Hollywood as a young mother, the road out of her professional slump, becoming a boss — and how she’s navigating the turbulent environment in Hollywood these days.

ChatGPT says: You’re picking up on two overlapping things:

1. Media positioning and audience alignment.
Mainstream outlets like the New York Times lean toward their core readership’s values and aesthetics. That readership generally skews urban, liberal, and culturally progressive. Celebrity profiles—especially of someone like Reese Witherspoon, who has successfully rebranded herself as a producer championing women’s stories—play well with that audience. The tone is meant to flatter both subject and reader: “look at this successful woman navigating identity, just like we all are.” A right-wing politician or culture figure wouldn’t get the same framing because their worldview runs counter to what the outlet assumes its audience admires. The profile would likely be adversarial, ironic, or framed in terms of controversy.

2. The myth of the “authentic self.”
Headlines like “figured out who she really is” rely on a cliché: that people discover a singular, stable core identity after a journey. In reality, as you noted, who you “are” shifts depending on context, relationships, and time. But the fixed-identity narrative is a marketable story—neat arcs sell. For celebrities especially, it’s a way of packaging brand evolution (“actress → producer → entrepreneur”) into something digestible. The media runs with it because it reassures readers that reinvention is possible and that there’s an authentic endpoint, even if philosophically that’s shaky.

So the fawning tone is partly audience-driven PR synergy, and partly a cultural habit of telling identity stories as if there’s a final answer.

Mainstream media packages these stories because they flatter both subject and audience. Readers are meant to nod along at the arc of “struggle → reinvention → triumph,” while the celebrity cements her public image as both resilient and authentic. What you won’t see is the same treatment for someone on the political right. A Republican figure “finding herself” would be written up, if at all, as hypocrisy, reinvention for power, or a cynical pivot. The cultural gatekeepers simply don’t extend the same narrative generosity.

The deeper issue is the myth of the “authentic self.” Headlines promise that, after turmoil, one can finally uncover who they “really are.” But identity isn’t a buried artifact—it’s fluid. It shifts depending on context: mother, actor, producer, entrepreneur, divorcée, billionaire. Witherspoon has inhabited all of these roles. Each one is “who she is” in that moment, until another reinvention is required. The idea of a final, true self is a comforting fiction, but it’s also marketable. It sells movies, podcasts, interviews, and book clubs.

That doesn’t make Witherspoon’s achievements less real. Building a billion-dollar media company is impressive. But we should recognize how the story is framed: less as an analysis of power in Hollywood and more as a morality play for the liberal, professional class—proof that if you lean in hard enough, your “real self” will emerge, successful and sanitized.

The irony is that real human identity isn’t neat. It doesn’t conform to act breaks. Who we are mutates as the world mutates around us. The only thing that stays the same is the media’s appetite for selling the illusion of an endpoint: that elusive moment when you can say, once and for all, “I’ve figured out who I am.”

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The progressive epistemic bubble

Posted on September 20, 2025 by Luke Ford

Nate Silver writes:

Jimmy Kimmel and the progressive epistemic bubble. The remark that got Kimmel in trouble was this: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.” This is not merely “insensitive”, in which case I wouldn’t have Kimmel on this list. Rather, from the best evidence available, the implication that “the kid who murdered Charlie Kirk” is MAGA is false. You would call it “misinformation” if that term weren’t usually deployed so one-sidedly (the overwhelming majority of misinformation researchers are on the left) by progressives to things that conservatives say rather than the other way around.

Kirk’s alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, appeared to confess to the murder in Discord chats. While Robinson’s motivations seem somewhat confused, as is often the case with assassins, and while we should approach any reporting on this topic with caution, the notion that Robinson was some sort of “Groyper” who killed Kirk because Kirk was too liberal appears to be wrong. “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out,” Robinson wrote to his roommate, whom Utah governor Spencer Cox described as “a romantic partner, a male transitioning to female.” (I mention that just because high levels of trans acceptance typically isn’t a MAGA trait.) Kimmel has reportedly been obstinate in refusing to correct the record.

So where was Kimmel getting this from? Well, maybe from Bluesky. Or (gulp) maybe from Substack. As Gabe Fleisher pointed out, Heather Cox Richardson, the author of the #1 U.S. politics newsletter Letters from an American, wrote this weekend that Robinson “appears to have embraced the far right, disliking Kirk for being insufficiently radical.” Richardson presented no evidence for this; it’s wishful thinking at best. But really, it’s just a falsehood; like Fleisher, I’ll be polite and not use the term “lie” just because I don’t know what’s in Richardson’s head.4

I’m not looking to pick a fight with Richardson (I know some of you subscribe to her) or Kimmel. But the progressive epistemic bubble is getting really bad. Maybe not worse than the MAGA bubble — but bad, and progressives often rationalize bad behavior by saying whatever the other side is doing is worse. This has already had serious consequences, such as denialism about Joe Biden’s deteriorating condition last year, which they blamed on unfair media coverage. Kimmel is a relatively mainstream figure, so if this sort of misinformation about Robinson is making its way to him — and in scripted remarks, not off-the-cuff comments like Dowd’s — that suggests the bubble is expanding, slowly devouring the reality-based community, and that formerly rational commentators have trouble escaping it once they’re past the event horizon.

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‘Beliefs Are Like Possessions’

Posted on September 20, 2025 by Luke Ford

This is the favorite academic paper of Decoding the Gurus cohost Matt Browne, an Australian psychologist.

Just as we don’t choose our favorite sports teams on merit, to so too with our most cherished beliefs. We usually inherit them through our genes and circumstances.

Gemini says:

The idea that “beliefs are like possessions” highlights that people treat their beliefs with an emotional and psychological attachment similar to how they treat material possessions. This perspective, notably articulated by Yale psychologist Robert Abelson in his 1986 paper, explains why people are often reluctant to change their beliefs, as they may become part of one’s identity and are not easily discarded. This analogy extends to aspects like adding new beliefs to one’s “collection,” embellishing them, and responding defensively when they are criticized, much like someone defending their personal belongings.
Key aspects of beliefs as possessions:
Attachment and Identity:
People develop a psychological attachment to their beliefs, making them an extension of the self, similar to how possessions are connected to identity.
Reluctance to Change:
Major beliefs are difficult to change because they are familiar, comfortable, and a part of the individual’s established system.
“Collection” of Beliefs:
Individuals add new beliefs to their collection if they don’t conflict with existing ones, akin to accumulating furniture or other belongings.
Ornamentation and Display:
People may embellish or “show off” their beliefs to others who they believe will appreciate them, making beliefs a form of social signaling.
Defense and Loss Aversion:
Just as people are reluctant to give up possessions, they may also experience loss aversion with beliefs, feeling more discomfort when abandoning an existing belief than pleasure from adopting a new one.
Investment:
Beliefs, like possessions, involve a psychological or even material investment of time, effort, and resources, which makes them more valuable and harder to part with.
Utility from Ownership:
People derive utility or benefit simply from holding certain beliefs because they are their beliefs, not just for the objective truth they might convey.

ChatGPT says: This “beliefs as possessions” lens helps explain a lot of the heat in American public life right now and offers ways to cool it down:

1. Why debates feel so personal
If beliefs are like possessions, then attacking someone’s belief feels like trying to rip something out of their hands—or even out of their identity. That’s why political, cultural, or religious disagreements so often feel like personal attacks. People aren’t just defending ideas; they’re defending themselves.

2. Why facts don’t move people easily
If you tell someone they’re wrong, you’re not just asking them to accept new information—you’re asking them to throw away something they’ve invested in and feel attached to. That helps explain why data rarely shifts minds on its own.

3. Why polarization hardens
People curate “collections” of beliefs that fit together, and the more time and energy invested in a set, the harder it is to let go of any single piece. Whole identity-communities form around these collections (political parties, online forums, cultural groups), making change even costlier.

4. How this perspective could help bring down the temperature

Shift the frame from attack to exchange. If beliefs are possessions, then conversations work better when they feel like “show and tell” rather than “smash and grab.” Instead of “you’re wrong,” it’s “here’s what I’ve got, what’s in your collection?”

Acknowledge the attachment. Validating that a belief has value to someone (even if you think it’s false) shows respect for their investment, which can lower defensiveness.

Offer additions, not replacements. People are more open to adding a new belief to their “collection” than discarding an old one. Framing new ideas as compatible, rather than threatening, makes uptake easier.

Highlight shared possessions. Emphasizing beliefs we already “own” together—like fairness, dignity, safety—creates common ground to build from.

De-personalize disagreements. If beliefs are like possessions, then disagreement doesn’t have to mean “I reject you,” it just means “we own different things.” That subtle shift helps reduce hostility.

In short: seeing beliefs as possessions reframes the culture wars not as battles between enemies, but as disputes over treasured belongings. That mindset makes it easier to approach others with curiosity rather than combativeness, which is exactly the temperature drop America needs.

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