Strange bedfellows: the Alliance Theory of political belief systems

Posted on September 25, 2025 by Luke Ford

By David Pinsof, David O. Sears, and Martie G. Haselton from the Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles:

What explains the contents of political belief systems? A widespread view is that they derive from abstract values, like equality, tolerance, and authority. Here, we challenge this view, arguing instead that belief systems derive from political alliance structures that vary across nations and time periods. When partisans mobilize support for their political allies, they generate patchwork narratives that appeal to ad-hoc, and often incompatible, moral principles. In the first part of the paper, we explain how people choose their allies, and how they support their allies using propagandistic tactics. In the second part, we show how these choices and tactics give rise to political alliance structures, with their strange bedfellows, and the idiosyncratic contents of belief systems. If Alliance Theory is correct, then we need a radically different approach to political psychology—one in which belief systems arise not from deep-seated moral values, but from ever-shifting alliances and rivalries.

Political belief systems in the United States can be confusing. According to public opinion polls, conservatives believe that we ought to have more respect for authority (but business owners should disobey regulations they believe are unfair), that people should be allowed to express their political opinions freely in the workplace (but athletes should not be allowed to kneel during the national anthem), that nobody deserves a free handout from the government (but the government should do more to help small, working class towns in America’s heartland), and that we ought to be more suspicious of foreigners (but we should trust Vladimir Putin when he said that he did not interfere in the 2016 election; Pulse of the Nation, 2018a, 2017a, 2018b, 2017b). On the other hand, liberals believe that it’s unfair for CEOs to make millions of dollars a year (but it’s fair for Hollywood movie stars to make millions of dollars a year), that we should stand in solidarity with labor unions (but not police unions), that we should not blame all Muslims for Islamist terrorist attacks (but we should blame all Trump voters for the 2017 killing in Charlottesville), and that it’s wrong to endorse negative stereotypes about a group of people based on their place of birth (but people from the south are racist; Pulse of the Nation, 2018c, 2017c, 2018d; Gallup, 2020).

What is the moral thread that ties all these beliefs together? We suggest a novel answer: there is none. Each moral standard in the above paragraph, together with its apparent violation, serves a strategic function, namely mobilizing support for a specific political ally, or mobilizing opposition to a specific political rival. The more heterogeneous one’s allies and rivals, the more heterogeneous one’s political beliefs will be. Whenever such a wide variety of groups and individuals form alliances, such inconsistencies are bound to arise (for additional inconsistencies, see table 1). These inconsistencies are some of the key predictions of our approach, which we call Alliance Theory.

Alliance Theory leverages decades of research in political science showing that, with the exception of political elites, most Americans lack consistent ideological beliefs (Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1980; Achen & Bartels, 2016; Kinder & Kalmoe, 2017). However, we depart from these approaches by stressing that political elites are in many ways just as inconsistent as the masses; they are merely better attuned to (or more loyal to) the historically contingent alliances that arose in their society. These alliances are no more conducive to intellectual consistency than any other set of alliances, historical or contemporary (and there are many; Gunther & Diamond, 2003; Deegan-Krause, 2007; Karol, 2009). It is therefore misleading to characterize elite opinion as more “coherent,” “sophisticated,” “organized,” “deep,” or “thoughtful” than mass opinion (Kinder & Kalmoe, 2019, pp. 2-17). After all, the combination of libertarianism with Christian fundamentalism did not emerge from philosophical analysis. The only reason these philosophies go together in the United States is because of the strategic alliance between pro-life evangelicals and wealthy Republicans in the 1970s—an alliance that is uncommon in other countries (Karol, 2009, chapter 3; Malka, Lelkes, & Soto, 2017; Chen & Lind, 2007; see also Lewis & Lewis, 2022).

Indeed, we argue that political belief systems are not so much “philosophies” as collections of ad hoc justifications, rationalizations, moralizations, embellishments, and rhetorical tactics designed to advance the interests of complex political alliances in competition with their rivals. Moral principles are not so principled. Core values are not so core. Ideological worldviews are not designed to literally view the world but to serve strategic functions like signaling allegiance or mobilizing support (Williams, 2021)…

Rather than using the terms “ingroup” and “outgroup,” we refer to “allies” and “rivals.” We use these terms to emphasize that forming an alliance with a group does not require being in that group. For example, one can feel allegiance to African Americans or police officers without being an African American or a police officer. Likewise, one can feel resentment toward white people or “poor people,” despite being a white person or a relatively poor person (Kuziemko, Buell, Reich, & Norton, 2014). These phenomena are easier to understand in terms of alliances and rivalries—which can occur both within and between groups—than in terms of identities…

People do not simply cheer for ideologies or parties as monolithic entities: they advocate for, and rally opposition to, a variety of distinct ethnic, religious, economic, occupational, and cultural groups (in addition to specific individuals) situated in unique conflicts. It is these conflicts that explain political belief systems, defining—and continually redefining—what it means to be a liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat…

Alliance Theory makes two assumptions: 1) humans possess cognitive mechanisms for forming and detecting alliances, and 2) humans use propagandistic tactics to support their allies and oppose their rivals in conflicts…

Alliances are a crucial feature of social life among a variety of social species including chimpanzees, baboons, macaques, dolphins, and hyenas (Harcourt & De Waal, 1992). Why has evolution selected for alliances in so many different species? The answer is that there is strength in numbers: two individuals are stronger than one, three are stronger than two, and so forth, leaving individuals without allies “nakedly at the mercy of everyone else” (Tooby, 2017). Alliances can occur between high-ranking individuals to maintain their rank (called conservative alliances), between low-ranking individuals to advance their rank (called revolutionary alliances), and between high and low-ranking individuals to achieve both of these ends (called bridging alliances; Chapais, 1995). These decisions give rise to an alliance structure, defined as the network of supportive or antagonistic relationships between members of a society (DeScioli & Kimbrough, 2019). Given the adaptive advantages of forming alliances, the crucial decision is not whether to form an alliance, but whom to choose as one’s allies (Tooby, 2017; DeScioli & Kurzban, 2009; Chapais, 1995).

All else equal, more similar individuals make better allies. Sharing the same beliefs, preferences, and expectations allows for more efficient and fluid coordination (Efferson, Lalive, & Fehr, 2008; McElreath, Boyd, & Richerson, 2003). People use “tags,” “markers,” or “identities” to assort with likeminded individuals (McElreath et al., 2003; Smaldino, 2019), and they alter their appearance to signal commitment to a particular group over alternative groups (Sosis, Kress, & Boster, 2007; Fessler & Quintelier, 2013; Kuran, 1998). Observable markers of similarity are also useful as coordination devices or “focal points,” creating common knowledge of existing alliances (Schelling, 1980, chapter 3). As a result, when people are split apart based on arbitrary labels, it creates a self-fulfilling expectation that possessors of each label will favor each other as allies, known as a “minimal groups” effect (Balliet, Wu, & De Dreu, 2014).

Transitivity

Individuals who exhibit transitivity—i.e. who share the same allies and rivals—make better allies as well. Transitivity mitigates two risks: 1) infighting, where one’s allies enter conflicts against one another, and 2) betrayal, where one’s allies side with one’s rivals (Nakamura, Tita, & Krackhardt, 2011; Hiler, 2017; Pietraszewski, 2016). Individuals therefore benefit from favoring transitive allies, and by adopting their allies’ social preferences—as in the saying “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” or “any friend of yours is a friend of mine” (Tooby & Cosmides, 2010, pp. 208-209; Pietraszewksi, 2016). Mathematical models have shown that transitivity gives rise to clusters of individuals with shared loyalty toward one another and shared rivalry toward other clusters—a natural definition of what “groups” are (Hiler, 2017; Pietraszewski, 2016; Gray et al., 2014). Alliances can also occur between groups, called “super-alliances,” and can vary in terms of their transitivity with other groups (Connor, Heithaus, & Barre, 2001; MacFarlan, Walker, Flinn, & Chagnon, 2014). Research indicates that transitivity plays an important role in both individual and intergroup alliances, including in adolescent friendships, gang rivalries, religious conflicts, and international relations…

Interdependence

Individuals who are interdependent—i.e. who reliably provide benefits to one another—make better allies as well. For example, individuals might reliably share knowledge (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001), offer protection from aggressors (Snyder et al., 2001), or provide help in times of need (Tooby & Cosmides, 1996). Consistent with evolutionary theories of interdependence (Aktipis et al., 2018), people feel allegiance to people who are instrumental to their goals (Orehek & Forest, 2016), and they feel enmity toward those who threaten their goals (Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005). People also support political parties that advance their personal and group interests (Weeden & Kurzban, 2014), creating interdependence with co-partisans who share the same interests…

Well-off people also use propaganda to defend their interests. They assume their social and material advantages derive from internal dispositions (talent, hard work) rather than external causes (luck, circumstances). Worse-off people exhibit the opposite bias: they assume their disadvantages derive from external causes (misfortune, mistreatment) rather than internal dispositions (incompetence, low effort). This general pattern of results, observed within the same individuals, is known as the “self-serving attributional bias” (Bradley, 1978). People also apply this attributional bias to their allies, attributing their allies’ advantages to internal causes and their disadvantages to external causes…

Humans, like other social animals, possess an alliance psychology. This psychology includes mechanisms for choosing allies (based on similarity, transitivity, and interdependence) and supporting allies in conflicts (by using victim, perpetrator, and attributional biases). We expect these mechanisms to be symmetrical across political lines—indeed across all humans—as they are part of our species’ basic cognitive toolkit…

The military is not always “conservative”: many radical left-wing movements in Latin America—e.g., Chavismo in Venezuela, Peronism in Argentina—were led by former military leaders and championed a kind of militaristic socialism (Corrales, 2014; Marchesi, 2017). College professors are not always “liberal”: during the early 20th century, many progressive scholars supported eugenics and opposed the migration of “inferior” races into the country (Leonard, 2017). Christian fundamentalists are not always “conservative”: in many European and Latin American countries with state religions, religious traditionalism (e.g., opposition to abortion) is associated with economic leftism (Chen & Lind, 2007; Huber & Stanig, 2011; Malka et al., 2017). Feminists and ethnic minorities are not always allies: during the women’s suffrage movement, many feminists excluded African Americans and did not consider their voting rights analogous to theirs (Staples, 2018). Environmentalists are not always “liberal”: during the 1980s and 1990s, Green Parties in Central and Eastern Europe arose in opposition to Soviet industrial policy, forming alliances with anticommunists and right-wing nationalists (Auers, 2012; Kwiotkowska, 2019). The dominant ethnic group is not always “conservative”: many political parties have fused economic leftism with ethnic nationalism, including Australia’s Labor Party (prior to the 1970s; James, Markey, & Markey, 2006, pp. 31-12), Slovakia’s Direction – Social Democracy (Mihálik & Jankoľa, 2016, p. 10), and Italy’s Five Star Movement (Emanuele, Maggini, & Paparo, 2020, p. 9). Given the diversity and dynamism of alliance structures across time and space, it is misleading to think of any particular alliance structure (including our own) as the “consistent” one…

Whenever countries are culturally and economically similar, they tend to converge on similar alliance structures. For example, nations with similar levels of exposure to globalization have exhibited similar political backlashes among the “losers of globalization” (Teney et al., 2014). Nations with similar declines in religiosity have exhibited similar conflicts between secularists and religionists over changing sexual mores (Weeden & Kurzban, 2013). If the losers of globalization tend to be more religious, then anti-globalists and anti-secularists will tend to fall within the same political coalitions across nations. Ethnic minorities, insofar as they are less wealthy and more in need of social safety nets, will tend to favor economically left-wing parties (Teney, Jacobs, Rea, & Delwit, 2010, pp. 278-279), assuming they trust political elites to support them (Holland, 2018). Lower class members of the ethnic majority, however, are more likely to feel resentful of ethnic minorities (and their political allies), viewing them as competitors for status and resources. An alliance of lower class, religious, and anti-globalist members of the ethnic majority may therefore be more likely than alternative alliances…

But the latter half of the 20th century brought four major political realignments. First, the Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, drawing racially conservative southerners into the Republican Party and accelerating the movement of African Americans into the Democratic Party (Abramowitz, 2018, Chapters 2-4; Karol, 2009, chapter 4). Second, the Republican Party took ownership of the pro-life, evangelical movement, causing Christian traditionalists to move into the Republican Party and secular feminists to move into the Democratic Party (Abramowitz, 2018, Chapter 3; Karol, 2009, chapter 3). Third, influxes of immigrants from Latin America—coupled with urbanization and the decline of manufacturing work—gave rise to a rural, white underclass who attributed their declining status to immigration and globalization (Abrajano & Hajnal, 2015; Teney et al., 2014). At the same time, expanding college enrollment produced a new upper class of highly educated “knowledge workers” (e.g., journalists, academics; Brint, 1984), while large corporations commanded an increasingly greater share of wealth and political power (Piketty, 2020). These trends resulted in competition and resentment between intellectual elites (e.g., highly educated professionals) and business elites (e.g., wealthy corporate executives; Brint, 1984; Turchin, 2012; pp. 3-5; Weeden & Kurzban, 2014, pp. 146-150; Bonica, 2014, figure 7; Bartels, 2016, tables 2 and 9; Magni-Berton & Rios, 2018; Piketty, 2020, chapter 15). In other words, the lower class split apart based on ethnic rivalries, while the upper class split apart based on status rivalries, thereby weakening the historical link between partisanship and class.

We propose that other groups—e.g., Muslims, police officers, the military—got ensnared in this alliance structure through perceptions of similarity and transitivity. Conflicts between African Americans and law enforcement may have caused the two parties to split apart in their allegiance to police officers. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may have had a similar effect: that is, the rivals of Muslim extremists (i.e. Christian extremists) may have taken the side of the American military, while the rivals of Christian extremists (i.e. secular liberals) may have eventually, with the exception of the so-called “new atheists,” taken the side of Muslims (i.e. the enemy of their enemy is their friend). Partisanship, and cues from party leaders in support of particular wars, may have also played a role in shaping military attitudes (Zaller, 1992, chapter 6; Karol, 2009, chapter 5; Berinsky, 2007). Regardless of how the American alliance structure changed throughout the decades, we can see that it did change, with political elites rationalizing the changes every step of the way (Lewis & Lewis, 2022)…

Republicans appear to feel greater allegiance toward white people than they do toward African Americans (see figures 1 and 2). Thus, Republicans are predicted to display perpetrator biases toward white people, which might include downplaying white people’s transgressions against African Americans, including those that have occurred throughout American history. Indeed, polling data reveal that Republicans, together with white people in general, are far less likely to believe that that discrimination against African Americans is currently a problem, that the legacy of slavery contributes to racial disparities in wealth, and that African Americans are entitled to reparations (Moore, 2014). An alternative interpretation of these results is that Republicans are more likely to downplay intergroup oppression in general. However, the same poll revealed bipartisan support of reparations for Holocaust survivors in Germany (Moore, 2014), suggesting that perpetrator biases are specific to one’s local political allies.
Conservatives appear to feel allegiance toward members of the American military (see figures 1 and 2); thus, Alliance Theory predicts that conservatives will be inclined to rationalize military transgressions. Indeed, research indicates that conservatives are less likely to hold the military responsible for unintended civilian casualties, but they are not less likely to hold Iraqis responsible for unintended civilian casualties (Uhlmann, Pizarro, Tannenbaum, & Ditto, 2009; Ditto, Pizarro, & Tannenbaum, 2009; Tannenbaum, Pizarro, & Ditto, 2007). Other data indicate that conservatives are more likely to condone torture perpetrated by the American military; however, they are not more likely to condone torture perpetrated by Iraqis (Norris, Larsen, & Stastny, 2010; see also Crawford, 2012)…

When liberals evaluate harms inflicted upon their political rivals (e.g., pro-life supporters, Christian fundamentalists), they are more likely to agree that defacing these groups’ property is “justified,” and that any harassment they suffer is “deserved” (Wetherell, Brandt, & Reyna, 2013). Many strongly identified Democrats justify “mistreatment” of their political opponents, “breaking a few rules” to oppose them, and even using violence as a political tactic (Kalmoe & Mason, 2019). In hypothetical “trolley dilemmas,” liberals are more likely to offer ad hoc moral justifications for killing a white person to save a group of African Americans, but not for killing an African American to save a group of white people (Uhlmann et al., 2009). Liberals (and Democrats) appear to judge a variety of corrupt or dishonest behaviors as less morally wrong when they are committed by Democratic politicians, compared to similar transgressions committed by Republican politicians or corporate CEOs (Coleman, 2013; Solomon, Hackathorn, & Crittendon, 2019; Eriksson, Simpson, & Strimling, 2019; Jasinenko, Christandl, & Meynhardt, 2020). Perpetrator biases are also consistent with examples of liberal intellectuals downplaying, overlooking, or justifying atrocities committed by socialist and communist regimes…

Liberals appear to feel allegiance toward a variety of disadvantaged groups (e.g., African Americans, women, gay people, Hispanics; see figures 1 and 2). Thus, Alliance Theory predicts that liberals will apply victim biases to these groups. This idea is consistent with the gradual “concept creep” that has occurred for the definition of “prejudice,” which has expanded to encompass increasingly subtle, indirect, and unintentional behaviors, and has coincided with increasing political polarization…

Victim biases may occur among conservatives as well, albeit toward different groups. Since conservatives appear to feel greater allegiance to men, working class white people, Christians, and police officers (see figures 1 and 2), Alliance Theory predicts that conservatives will apply victim biases to these groups, perhaps even engaging in competitive victimhood with liberals. Consistent with this prediction, conservatives are far more likely to believe that discrimination against Christians is a serious societal problem (Jones, Cox, Dionne, Galston, Lienesch, 2016, pp. 16-17), that sexism against men is more prevalent than sexism against women (Bosson, Vandello, Michniewicz, & Lenes, 2012), that most black people are racist against white people (Rasmussen Reports, 2013), and that politicians’ criticism of police officers threatens their safety (Rasmussen Reports, 2015a). Other polling data indicate that 65% of Republicans agree that “people are too easily offended,” despite also agreeing that Black Lives Matter is offensive (Pulse of the Nation, 2017d)…

Conservatives are more likely to attribute wealth and poverty to internal dispositions (i.e. hard work, lack of effort) than external factors (i.e. circumstances beyond one’s control; Pew Research Center, 2014; Weiner, Osborne, & Rudolph, 2011; Chambers, Swan, & Heesacker, 2015). Echoing these findings, poor people are more likely to attribute their financial problems to external circumstances, while wealthy people are more likely to attribute their financial success to internal dispositions (Pew Research Center, 2014), suggestive of a self-serving attributional bias.

One alternative interpretation of these results is that liberals are generally less likely to make internal attributions to a target. However, a large body of research refutes this hypothesis, showing instead that liberals strategically alter their attributions depending on their allegiance to the target. For example, liberals are more likely than conservatives to make internal attributions to a group of marines who inadvertently killed Iraqi civilians in response to an attack, as well as a police officer who shot an escaped cougar from the zoo (Morgan, Mullen, & Skitka, 2010). Similarly, Democrats are more likely to make internal attributions to a Republican politician (but not a Democratic politician) who committed bribery, as well as a Democratic politician (but not a Republican politician) who made a large donation to charity (Coleman, 2013; see also Malhotra & Kuo, 2008; Sirin & Villalobos, 2011). Democrats are also more likely to blame their Republican president, but not their Democratic governor, for unemployment increases in their state (Brown, 2010). Many liberal Democrats even report that climate change deniers “get what they deserve” when natural disasters strike their homes, suggesting an internal attribution for their misfortune (Webster & Motta, 2019). Crucially, when individuals make attributions about the behavior of politically neutral individuals—i.e. those not widely associated with either political party—researchers find no ideological differences in their attributions (Morgan et al., 2010).

There is also suggestive evidence that external attributions are made by working class white people, who have recently become an important voting bloc within the Republican Party (Pew Research Center, 2016a). That is, rather than attributing their low status to internal causes (e.g., lack of effort or skill), they attribute it to external causes (e.g., immigration, globalization, reverse discrimination). Consistent with this idea, working class white people are more likely to believe that international trade hurts their family’s finances (Pew Research Center, 2016b), that immigrants take jobs away from Americans (Rasmussen Reports, 2015b; Jones et al., 2016), and that white people are disadvantaged by reverse discrimination (Jones et al., 2016, pp. 15-17). These beliefs are also more likely to be endorsed by Republicans more broadly…

Conservatives appear to believe that poor people should take personal responsibility for their financial problems (but that working class white people should blame immigration, globalization, and affirmative action), that the infliction of torture and collateral damage is morally permissible (but that Iraqi’s infliction of torture and collateral damage is reprehensible), that we ought to respect the authority of the military (but not the FBI or the WHO), and that people should stop being so easily offended (except Christians, white people, men, and police officers). Liberals appear to believe that poor people are not personally responsible for their financial problems (but that climate change deniers are personally responsible for natural disasters that strike their home), that it is unacceptable to kill Iraqi civilians to save American lives (but that it is acceptable to kill a white person to save African American lives), that Democratic politicians’ corruption is overblown (but that corporate CEOs corruption is reprehensible), and that we ought to protect minority college students (but not police officers in dangerous communities) from feeling unsafe.

What can explain this bewildering variety of beliefs? Alliance Theory suggests a parsimonious answer: liberals and conservatives have different allies and rivals. When they use propagandistic biases to support their allies and oppose their rivals, they generate conflicting narratives that form the contents of political belief systems. In the following section, we compare Alliance Theory to alternative approaches, focusing on where they make diverging predictions. In particular, we compare Alliance Theory to approaches that 1) entail an asymmetry between liberals and conservatives in their moral values, and 2) use this asymmetry to directly explain the contents of political belief systems…

Liberals exhibit equal levels of dislike, discrimination, and support for violence against conservatives as the other way around (Chambers et al., 2013; Wetherell et al., 2013; Brandt, 2017; Kalmoe & Mason, 2019; though see Ganzach & Schul, 2021). Likewise, Democrats are just as negatively biased against Republicans (both implicitly and explicitly) as the other way around, and both groups are equally likely to discriminate against one another in hypothetical job applications…

The tendency to view one’s rivals as aggressive, hateful, and unreasonable (i.e. intolerant), and one’s allies as peaceful, friendly, and reasonable (i.e. tolerant), is a common feature of social conflicts across cultures…

Republicans, compared to Democrats, have more negative attitudes toward Hispanics but more positive attitudes toward Asian Americans… Other research indicates that negative attitudes toward immigrants crucially depends on the characteristics of the immigrants in question—not on foreignness per se. When immigrants are described as Christian, European, Asian, law-abiding, or highly skilled, a majority of Republicans support immigration, with little or no partisan differences. It is only when immigrants are described as Muslim or Central American that clear partisan differences emerge, with Muslim immigrants eliciting the largest partisan divide…

Liberals and conservatives are equally hostile to their political rivals, and they are equally hostile to the allies of their political rivals. Conservatives are not generally threatened by foreigners, but in fact hold favorable attitudes toward a wide variety of foreigners, including Asian immigrants, European immigrants, Christian immigrants, Russia, Israel, and even Vladimir Putin. Conservatives do not appear to be particularly nationalistic, patriotic, ethnocentric, or prejudiced based on immutable traits. They simply have different allies and rivals than their liberal counterparts…

Research in comparative politics indicates that, across nations, preference for authoritarian vs. democratic governance does not consistently align with either left-wing or right-wing identification…

Both left-wing and right-wing authoritarians want their allies at the top, and their rivals at the bottom, of the social hierarchy. Neither are opposed to hierarchy itself.

When people voice their support for equality, they may not be promoting an abstract ideal so much as attempting to advance the interests of their political allies in specific conflicts. Egalitarian rhetoric is most often employed in political discourse to mobilize support for African Americans, feminists, gay people, liberals, and Democrats. Use of this rhetoric may therefore reflect allegiance to that particular set of groups, as opposed to an impartial moral preference that cuts across group identities…

Liberals mainly oppose discrimination against their allies and trust their allies, whereas conservatives mainly oppose discrimination against their allies and trust their allies… People engage in competitive victimhood to mobilize support their allies (Noor et al., 2012), while denying or downplaying mistreatment of their rivals…

Group allegiances determine apparent moral values more than the other way around (Goren, 2005), ethical philosophies are often confabulated to justify support for one’s allies (Uhlmann et al., 2009), and moral “principles” change flexibly depending on whether they benefit one’s allies or rivals…

Partisans on both sides of the political spectrum claim to be motivated by moral virtues like altruism, impartiality, honesty, and love, while claiming that their political opponents are motivated by selfishness, intolerance, dishonesty, and hatred…

From the perspective of Alliance Theory, politics and morality are different domains, with the former often masquerading as the latter for strategic purposes. We do not deny that humans are fundamentally moral beings (Hamlin, 2013); rather, we claim that the widespread conflation of politics with morality hinders our understanding of both. Politics is about conflict and loyalty, whereas morality is about cooperation and impartiality (Baumard et al., 2013; DeScioli & Kurzban, 2013). Attending to these distinctions yields novel predictions, while ignoring them sows needless confusion. For instance, we predict that loyal partisans, compared to weaker or more moderate partisans, will be more willing to condone actions committed by their political allies that they would otherwise view as immoral (e.g., Solomon et al., 2019). Loyal partisans might also be relatively more likely to exhibit moral hypocrisy—that is, they may be more likely to flout their apparent moral principles when it serves the interests of their political allies (see table 1). However, these predictions make little sense if politics and morality are the same thing. Why would the most morally motivated individuals (i.e. loyal partisans) be the least morally principled? The predictions only make sense if we assume that politics is different from, and sometimes at odds with, morality.

The distinction between politics and morality also suggests that abstract, moral disagreement between partisans may be overstated. Rather than disagreeing about the general moral importance of tolerance, authority, or equality, partisans may merely disagree about who should be tolerated, whose authority is legitimate, and whose advantages are unfair. Rather than disagreeing about justice in the abstract, partisans may merely disagree about who deserves status (and how much), who deserves condemnation (and how much), and who deserves sympathy (and how much). Indeed, much of political discourse plays out against a backdrop of tacit moral agreement. Disputants compete to frame their opponents as immoral—e.g., unfair, selfish, disrespectful—while relying on shared assumptions of what counts as moral.

Many of us are familiar with the “politics” of everyday life—office politics, academic politics, etc. Yet the politics of everyday life may be no different from the politics of a democratic citizenry. Political alliances may be analogous to friendships; political parties may be analogous to cliques; and ideological belief systems may be analogous to the ‘two sides of a story’ the emerge from interpersonal disputes. If you do not trust your friends’ side of the story, they may not consider you a true friend; likewise, if you do not trust your fellow partisans’ side of the story, they may not consider you a true ally. When seen in this light, motivated reasoning is not so much of a cognitive shortcoming as it is an honest signal of loyalty. If Alliance Theory is correct, then ideological beliefs may be as fundamental to the human condition as friends, rivals, and social life itself.

Posted in Politics | Comments Off on Strange bedfellows: the Alliance Theory of political belief systems

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.

    Posted in Psychology | Comments Off on The Legacy of Ernest Becker: Death, Ideologies, and Cultures

    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.”

    Posted in Dennis Prager | Comments Off on Dennis Prager’s Reaction to Charlie Kirk’s Memorial

    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 on The Boss, The Secretary & Alliance Theory

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

    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.

    Posted in Assassination | Comments Off on FP: ‘How Assassinations Became Normal Again’

    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.

    Posted in Journalism | Comments Off on The accumulative framing template

    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.

    Posted in CIA | Comments Off on The Competency Crisis at the CIA

    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.”

    Posted in Journalism | Comments Off on The MSM’s Silly Approach To Liberal Celebrities

    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.

    Posted in America | Comments Off on The progressive epistemic bubble