Decoding UCLA

Posted on February 13, 2026 by Luke Ford

To decode UCLA through the lens of David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory, one must view the university not as a neutral site of education or “abstract values,” but as a massive network of strategic coalitions. Pinsof, who earned his Ph.D. from UCLA and is a researcher there, argues that belief systems are patchwork narratives designed to signal loyalty to allies and hostility toward rivals.

Applying this to a major institution like UCLA reveals a complex structure of social and political signaling.

In Alliance Theory, “ideology” is essentially a set of stories that members of a group tell to prove they belong to the same side. At a place like UCLA, the faculty acts as a high-status alliance. Admission into this alliance requires adopting specific “moral” stances—on diversity, equity, or administrative policy—that function as shibboleths. These are not necessarily deep-seated values but are propagandistic tactics used to maintain the group’s internal cohesion and status relative to outside rivals, such as conservative legislatures or “populist” movements.

Students at UCLA are often in the process of “alliance hunting.” They adopt the prevailing campus narratives—whether they concern global politics or local social justice—to secure their position within the university’s social hierarchy. According to Pinsof, people use morality to support their allies and protect their interests. When students participate in protests or use specific academic jargon, they are using “signaling theory” to prove they are reliable partners for the campus’s dominant political and social coalitions.

Alliance Theory suggests that when an institution faces a crisis, it doesn’t look for the “truth”; it looks for a way to preserve its most valuable alliances. For UCLA’s administration, this means balancing the needs of wealthy donors, government regulators, and a vocal student-faculty block. Decisions that seem “hypocritical” or “inconsistent” are often perfectly consistent with the goal of keeping a fragile patchwork of allies from turning into rivals. The “belief systems” articulated in university mission statements are, in this view, ad-hoc justifications for whatever strategic moves the administration must make to survive.

The “UCLA School” of political science actually mirrors some of Pinsof’s ideas. This school argues that political parties are not groups of voters but “coalitions of intense policy demanders.” Applying this to UCLA itself shows that the university is a collection of such groups—departments, unions, and activist circles—all competing to pull the university’s policy and “moral” narrative toward their specific preferences.

UCLA functions less as a truth-seeking university and more as a large, finely tuned coalition machine that trades in prestige, moral signaling, and alliance safety. UCLA’s core role is alliance brokerage. It connects students, faculty, donors, media, and state power into a single prestige network. Degrees, publications, and appointments are not just credentials. They are proof of reliable alignment with the dominant moral coalition of coastal elite liberalism. UCLA rewards positions that signal moral sophistication and coalition loyalty rather than raw truth seeking. Claims that flatter the alliance’s self-image move easily through hiring committees, journals, and funding channels. Claims that threaten alliance narratives face friction regardless of evidence. This is why entire fields can drift toward orthodoxy without conscious conspiracy. The incentives do the work.

Moralization is the primary enforcement tool. UCLA converts political and social preferences into moral imperatives. Once an issue is moralized, disagreement becomes evidence of character failure rather than intellectual difference. That raises the cost of dissent and keeps internal skepticism quiet. Most people comply not because they are convinced but because they are rational. Diversity language functions as an alliance expansion mechanism, not a neutral value. It signals openness while also redefining acceptable viewpoints. Identity categories are protected. Heterodox ideas are not. This allows UCLA to present itself as inclusive while remaining ideologically narrow. From an alliance perspective, this is efficient not hypocritical.

Activism at UCLA is tolerated and even celebrated when it reinforces elite moral hierarchies. Protest becomes a credentialing ritual. It demonstrates commitment to the coalition and trains students in the performance of moral alignment. Activism that challenges core alliance assumptions is treated very differently. Administrative growth reflects alliance risk management. Layers of compliance, training, and messaging are not bureaucratic accidents. They are reputational armor. Their purpose is to prevent scandal, maintain donor confidence, and ensure UCLA stays safely within the moral consensus of peer institutions.

When UCLA “gets something wrong,” it is rarely because the data were unavailable. It is because the alliance penalties for being right were too high. Correction only occurs once external pressure shifts the cost structure, usually via courts, legislation, or elite defection elsewhere. Alliance Theory predicts this will not change without a realignment of prestige incentives. As long as UCLA’s status depends on approval from the same cultural and professional networks, it will continue to confuse moral safety with intellectual rigor. This does not make UCLA uniquely corrupt. It makes it a very successful alliance institution. The problem is that alliance success and truth seeking only overlap some of the time.

LAT: UCLA medical school uses a ‘systemically racist approach’ to admissions, DOJ alleges.

This battle is not primarily about admissions metrics or legal compliance. It is about a clash between two rival moral coalitions trying to impose their status rules on the same institution. Inside UCLA’s medical school, race-conscious admissions functioned as an internal alliance signal. It told faculty, administrators, donors, and peer institutions that the school was aligned with the dominant progressive medical elite. In that coalition, “equity” is not just a policy preference. It is a moral credential. Admissions practices became a way to demonstrate loyalty, compassion, and ideological reliability.

Alliance Theory predicts exactly what followed. Once a practice becomes a loyalty signal, evidence and law become secondary. MCAT gaps are not treated as problems to solve but as morally neutralized facts. The language shifts from merit to “holistic review,” which acts as a discretionary shield. That discretion allows the alliance to enforce outcomes while preserving plausible deniability.

The alleged use of essays and interviews to “glean race” fits the model. These tools are not neutral. They are signaling devices. Applicants are sorted not only by capability but by how well they perform the moral language of the coalition. This is why numerical standards quietly recede while narrative criteria expand.

The DOJ intervention represents an opposing alliance asserting dominance. The Trump-aligned DOJ is enforcing a different moral hierarchy. In that hierarchy, racial balancing is framed as corruption, illegality, and betrayal of equal treatment. From an alliance perspective, this is not neutral law enforcement. It is coalition warfare using courts as enforcement mechanisms.

The key point is timing. UCLA did not suddenly become vulnerable because its practices changed. It became vulnerable because the external prestige environment changed. Supreme Court precedent shifted. Federal enforcement priorities shifted. The cost of maintaining the old signal rose sharply.

UCLA’s public response is classic alliance damage control. It avoids specifics, emphasizes “fair processes,” and invokes compliance language without conceding substance. This is not evasiveness. It is rational coalition preservation. Admitting intentional race balancing would be an admission of prior moral wrongdoing under the new regime.

Alliance Theory also explains why antisemitism, transgender policy, and admissions are bundled together in federal pressure. They are not legally identical issues. They are alliance markers. The administration is signaling that UCLA is misaligned across multiple moral domains and therefore deserving of correction.

The deeper lesson is uncomfortable. Elite institutions like UCLA medical school do not drift into these practices accidentally. They adopt them because, for a time, those practices maximize alliance safety and prestige. They abandon them only when the coalition map changes and enforcement arrives from outside.

This is not a story of science versus politics. It is a story of competing moral coalitions using law, medicine, and admissions as terrain. Alliance Theory predicts more of these conflicts as long as universities remain prestige hubs rather than epistemic ones.

The UCLA medical school operates as a node within an elite academic and administrative alliance. For this group, “holistic admissions” and “racial balancing” serve as patchwork narratives. These narratives are not about abstract justice so much as they are about signaling loyalty to a specific coalition of “intense policy demanders,” including activist groups, DEI administrators, and progressive political bodies. By prioritizing Black and Latino applicants—who have median MCAT scores of 506 to 509 compared to 513 to 516 for white and Asian American matriculants—the school signals that its primary allegiance is to a social justice coalition rather than a meritocratic one. This signaling is essential for maintaining status and funding within the current elite ecosystem.

The DOJ, under the Trump administration, represents a rival alliance. This coalition uses the “Equal Protection Clause” and the 2023 Supreme Court decision as its own strategic tools. For this alliance, “colorblindness” and “merit” are the narratives used to attack the power base of the rival academic elite. By joining the lawsuit, the DOJ attempts to dismantle the “racial balancing” mechanism that the UCLA alliance uses to reward its constituents. This is a classic example of “moralistic punishment” in Pinsof’s theory: one group uses a moral framework (fairness and law) to inflict costs on a rival group.

The internal admissions discussions reported by whistleblowers highlight how these alliances function behind closed doors. Jennifer Lucero and other officials are described as “routinely and openly” discussing race. In Alliance Theory, this is the practical side of coalition management. The “systemically racist approach” alleged by the DOJ is, from UCLA’s perspective, simply the necessary work of maintaining their alliance’s internal cohesion and stated goals, such as the “2030 plan” to reflect California’s diversity.

The conflict over MCAT scores and “holistic evaluation” is a battle over which “rules of the game” will prevail. The UCLA alliance wants rules that allow for flexible, subjective criteria because this flexibility lets them favor their allies. The DOJ alliance wants rigid, objective criteria like test scores because these rules favor their own constituents—specifically white and Asian American applicants who currently perform higher on those metrics—and simultaneously weaken the administrative power of the university elite.

The litigation is less about the “truth” of admissions and more about which alliance will successfully impose its preferred reality on the institution. If the DOJ succeeds, it breaks the UCLA alliance’s ability to distribute social and professional rewards to its preferred partners. If UCLA wins, it reaffirms its right to define “merit” in a way that preserves its coalition’s dominance.

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Decoding Gender Affirming Care

Posted on February 13, 2026 by Luke Ford

James B. Meigs writes in the WSJ:

For almost two decades, leading medical organizations have upheld puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and sometimes even surgery as appropriate care for young people suffering from gender dysphoria. Ms. Perry compares these drastic interventions with the lobotomies performed on mentally ill patients during the mid-20th century. In both cases, these treatments came to be accepted despite shockingly little evidence that their claimed benefits outweighed their harms.

Years from now, people will remember the Varian lawsuit as the moment when the youth gender-medicine dam broke. Just days after the jury’s decision, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons issued a statement strongly advising against gender surgery for patients under 19. Last week, the American Medical Association also came out against such surgeries. Those moves followed trends in Europe, where the U.K. and other countries have shuttered clinics that offered puberty blockers and other treatments to adolescents.

This sudden pivot raises two questions: First, how did such aggressive interventions come to be championed by the medical establishment in the first place? And second, how did that seemingly solid consensus unravel?

People adopt beliefs not because those beliefs are logically consistent or inherently true, but because they serve as signals of loyalty to a coalition. In the context of gender medicine, Alliance Theory provides a framework for why medical associations might adopt aggressive interventions and why that consensus eventually fractures.

When a group identifies a new ally—in this case, “trans kids” framed as a vulnerable minority—the members of that alliance generate patchwork narratives to protect and validate them. These narratives function as propagandistic tactics. Supporting “gender-affirming care” becomes a way to signal one’s membership in the elite, liberal coalition. Conversely, questioning these treatments is interpreted as an attack on the alliance itself, which triggers immediate social and professional sanctions. This explains why pediatricians and researchers were intimidated into silence; the cost of breaking the alliance was higher than the cost of ignoring flimsy evidence.

Because belief systems are often collections of ad-hoc justifications rather than deep-seated convictions, they remain stable only as long as the alliance structure remains unchallenged. When high-status figures like J.K. Rowling or established journalists like Jesse Singal begin to provide “cover” for alternative views, they create a new, viable alliance for skeptics. This reduces the social cost of dissent. As more individuals move to this new camp, the original alliance loses its ability to enforce conformity, leading to the sudden pivot or “unraveling” seen in organizations like the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

Medical associations act less like objective scientific bodies and more like nodes in a political alliance. Under this view, their “ideological capture” is just the natural result of individuals within those institutions prioritizing their social and political standing over evidence that contradicts the alliance’s goals. The recent rollbacks in Europe and shifts in U.S. medical organizations represent a strategic realignment as the costs of maintaining the previous “gender-affirming” consensus begin to outweigh the benefits, especially as legal losses and public skepticism mount.

The rise and collapse of the elite consensus around youth gender medicine looks less like a scientific error corrected late and more like a coalition shift that finally became safe.

Elite institutions do not primarily ask “Is this true?” They ask “Which alliance does this signal loyalty to?” For roughly a decade, affirming aggressive youth gender medicine functioned as a high-status loyalty signal inside progressive professional coalitions. Supporting it marked you as compassionate, anti-discriminatory, and aligned with the newest protected class. Questioning it marked you as morally suspect and potentially disloyal.

This explains several features that otherwise look irrational.

First, the speed and uniformity of adoption. Once activist framing positioned “trans kids” as a sacred category, medical associations faced asymmetric risk. Endorsing weak evidence carried little social cost. Expressing skepticism carried career-ending risk. In Alliance Theory terms, silence and compliance were the dominant strategy even for privately doubtful actors.

Second, the suppression of internal dissent. Journals, conferences, and committees were not neutral epistemic bodies. They were gatekeeping mechanisms enforcing coalition boundaries. Excluding skeptics was not about data quality. It was about preventing reputational contamination of the alliance.

Third, the preference cascade described via Timur Kuran maps cleanly onto alliance logic. People were not merely hiding beliefs. They were withholding alliance defections. Once overseas institutions and a few insulated figures absorbed the initial punishment, the cost of speaking flipped. What looked like sudden moral awakening was really a safety signal.

Fourth, the timing of the reversal. The pivot did not begin when evidence improved. It began when the moral prestige of the pro-intervention stance weakened. Detransitioner stories, lawsuits, and European reversals reframed the issue from “protecting a vulnerable minority” to “institutional harm to children.” The alliance payoff changed. Silence became riskier than dissent.

Alliance Theory also explains why the rollback remains partial. Institutions like the American Medical Association are managing reputational retreat rather than confessing error. Full reversal would imply prior moral wrongdoing by the alliance itself, which is psychologically and strategically costly.

In short, the delay was not about ignorance. It was about incentives. Elite medical opinion tracked coalition safety, not evidentiary weight. The current shift is not proof that science finally spoke. It is proof that the alliance map changed enough to allow people to say what many already believed.

That is the uncomfortable lesson. When moralized issues become alliance badges, elite institutions lose their error-correction mechanisms. Evidence does not break the spell. Only a change in coalition power does.

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Decoding The Foundation For The Defense Of Democracies

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Luke Ford

The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a hard-edge pro-Israel alliance enforcer that presents itself as neutral expertise. It exists to make certain foreign-policy positions feel like sober realism rather than factional interest. It converts alliance commitments into technical analysis.

There is a tiny coalition that prioritizes Israel’s security, a confrontational stance toward Iran, skepticism of diplomatic accommodation with adversaries, and a hawkish view of authoritarian regimes. Those preferences need to be defended inside elite policy spaces without sounding ethnic, ideological, or emotional. FDD provides that translation layer.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a prestige war room used to coordinate a specific hawkish, neo-conservative alliance. Using Alliance Theory, we can decode the FDD not as a neutral research body, but as a strategic tool for managing high-level geopolitical partnerships and signaling the boundaries of the “civilized world.”

Alliance Theory posits that names and missions are often ad-hoc justifications for an alliance’s actual goals. The FDD was originally incorporated as Emet (Hebrew for “Truth”) just before 9/11 with the specific mission of improving Israel’s image in North America. After the attacks, the alliance pivoted, rebranding as the FDD. By shifting from “Israel PR” to “Defending Democracy against Terrorism,” the alliance significantly lowered its coordination costs. It allowed a broader group of allies—including secular national security hawks and liberal interventionists—to join a mission that sounded universal rather than parochial. “Democracy” serves as the FDD’s sacred object. In Alliance Theory, a sacred object is used to unify the group and justify aggressive actions against “enemies” (autocracies like Iran or China) who are framed as existential threats to that object.

The FDD has made an “institutional specialty” of recommending maximum pressure on Iran. Through coalition math, this serves two primary purposes: It keeps the interests of the Israeli government and the U.S. national security establishment tightly “entangled.” If Iran is the shared enemy, the alliance remains necessary and functional. By constantly pushing for sanctions and hardline policies, the FDD signals to other potential defectors (like corporations or European allies) that doing business with Iran carries a high social and financial “penalty.” They are the alliance’s primary enforcers of the Friend/Enemy distinction.

The FDD’s National Security Fellows Program is a masterclass in Alliance Recruitment. By training mid-career practitioners from the military, Capitol Hill, and the private sector, the FDD is seeding the “Deep State” with individuals who share their alliance’s world-view. The intensive trip to Israel for these fellows acts as a ritual of initiation. It ensures that the next generation of leaders has a personal, “bonded” connection to the alliance’s primary regional partner. It moves the relationship from an abstract policy to a shared social reality.

The FDD insists it is “non-partisan,” having advised Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. Alliance Theory explains this as Strategic Flexibility. An effective alliance doesn’t care about a single party; it cares about institutional capture.

By maintaining ties with both parties, the FDD ensures that its “sacred values” (hawkish foreign policy, pro-Israel alignment, confrontation with China) remain the default setting for the U.S. government regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.

When they criticized Trump for his personal bonds with Erdogan or praised Biden for certain defense investments, they were signaling that their loyalty is to the alliance’s goals, not a specific political “athlete.”

Ultimately, the FDD is the intellectual “defensive military formation” for a globalist-hawk alliance. They use the language of “democracies vs. autocracies” to hide the more pragmatic coordination of military and financial power.

How it signals: Expertise over passion. Sanctions models, missile ranges, financial networks, legal authorities. The tone says this is not identity or ideology. This is math. Enemies are clearly named, but the language is managerial, not mobilizing. That keeps the arguments acceptable inside DC institutions.

Aggressive actions by adversaries are treated as revealing essence. Aggressive actions by allies are framed as deterrence or necessity. That is not hypocrisy. It is alliance logic made respectable. Sanctions, isolation, and coercion against Israel’s enemies are treated as default tools. Diplomacy is suspect unless it produces submission.

The FDD is all about threat amplification. Worst-case scenarios are foregrounded. That is not panic. It is incentive alignment. Elevated threat sustains coalition urgency and funding.

Critics of Israel policy, Iran hawks, or US security posture are framed as naive, compromised, or strategically unserious rather than morally wrong. That delegitimizes without moral shouting.

You will not see overt ethnic or religious justification. That would fracture elite buy-in. FDD stays focused outward. That preserves cross-party alliances and donor coherence. The organization presents a tight front. Public disagreement would weaken the signal of certainty it sells.

The FDD offers elites a way to take sides while claiming neutrality. Supporting FDD lets policymakers say they are following evidence, not loyalty. That is extremely valuable inside prestige institutions.

If you are not on board with its agenda, you will likely resent that the FDD is clearly aligned, yet denies being aligned. From an Alliance Theory view, that denial is the point. Power works best when it looks like analysis.

FDD is not a think tank searching for truth. It is a coalition instrument that professionalizes hawkish commitments and packages them as realism. It succeeds because it makes loyalty sound like competence.

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She Said A Bad Word!

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Luke Ford

Grok says: The video depicts a white woman on NYC’s R train silently tolerating 15 minutes of verbal abuse, including taunts like “honky” and “bitch” from a group of Black women, before uttering the N-word as she exits, triggering their furious door-banging reaction.
Online reactions largely celebrate her restraint and final retort as a clever “verbal assassin” move, with 2,300+ likes and 700 replies emphasizing satisfaction in the irony, though some criticize the slur’s escalation.
Originally circulating in December 2025, the clip’s February 2026 resurgence amplifies discussions on subway harassment rates—NYC reports over 1,000 annual incidents—questioning norms around racial epithets and victim responses in tense public spaces.

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Decoding Andrew Sullivan

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Luke Ford

Decoding Andrew Sullivan through Alliance Theory reveals a man who has spent forty years navigating the high-stakes coordination problems of the American elite. In David Pinsof’s framework, Sullivan is a “homeless” political athlete. He possesses a high level of prestige but lacks a stable “home” alliance because he consistently signals in ways that create coordination costs for both the Red and Blue tribes.

In the early 1990s, Sullivan coordinated a specific sub-alliance: the integrationist gay conservative. He argued for gay marriage not as a radical revolution, but as a conservative mechanism for social stability. By framing gay rights as “assimilation” rather than “liberation,” he lowered the “threat signal” to the center-right alliance. He made it possible for suburban conservatives to ally with gay men without feeling they were endorsing a radical breakdown of traditional structures. This eventually succeeded, but it left him vulnerable when the broader LGBTQ+ alliance shifted toward “gender revolution” in the 2010s. Sullivan refused to coordinate with this new narrative, causing his current “exile” from mainstream prestige outlets like New York Magazine.

By 2026, Sullivan has become a case study in what Pinsof calls the “Incentive for Moral Consistency” failing in a tribal age. Sullivan tries to maintain a coalition of “old-school liberals,” but this group is being squeezed out by the math of the 47th President’s second term. Sullivan uses biological facts and traditional liberal principles to weaponize news against the “Social Justice” alliance. He highlights the medicalization of children and the erasure of biological sex to signal to his readers that the current Left has become an “illiberal” enemy. Simultaneously, Sullivan views the current administration as a threat to the rule of law. He describes the administration’s tactics as “state terror” or “populist authoritarianism.”

This creates a loyalty conflict. In a binary alliance system, if you attack the Left, you are expected to protect the Right. By attacking both, Sullivan makes himself a “liability” to everyone. He is a writer without a defensive military formation around him; he is essentially a “buffered self” trying to survive in a world of “porous” tribal identities.

Sullivan’s critics (like those in The Advocate) often accuse him of “biological determinism.” Through Alliance Theory, this is a Boundary Dispute.

The Left’s Boundary: The current Blue alliance relies on “identity-first” framing where gender is a sacred, self-defined category. Any mention of biology as a limit is seen as a “hostile signal” that must be suppressed to protect the group’s status.

Sullivan’s Boundary: Sullivan insists on biology as a “grounding fact.” To him, if the alliance abandons objective truth for “gender ideology,” the cost of belonging to that alliance becomes too high. He is willing to endure social exile rather than coordinate with a reality he views as a “delusion.”

Sullivan often cites philosopher Michael Oakeshott to justify his shifts. Pinsof would decode this as an Ad-hoc Moral Justification.

A “small-c” conservative approach allows Sullivan to change his political “allies” based on which group he perceives as the greatest threat to stability at any given time.

In 2004, the “enemy” was the religious right and the Iraq War.

In 2026, the “enemy” is the “woke” left and “MAGA” populism.

Ultimately, Andrew Sullivan represents the high cost of independence. Because he refuses to join a “war room,” he must fund his work through Substack—a direct-to-consumer model that bypasses the need for institutional alliance protection. He has replaced “coalition math” with “subscriber math.”

ChatGPT says: Sullivan’s core move is to present himself as the lone truth-teller standing between two insane tribes. That posture is not accidental. It is how he preserves status after being expelled from one elite coalition while refusing full absorption into another.

Under Alliance Theory as developed by David Pinsof, beliefs function to attract allies and repel rivals. Sullivan’s beliefs are best understood as signals aimed at a very specific audience: disaffected liberal elites who still want to see themselves as morally serious, intellectually brave, and not right-wing.

What he is signaling.

“I am not captured.”

This is his master signal. He wants credit for saying things progressives are not supposed to say while never fully defecting to conservatives. That is why he criticizes woke excess, gender ideology, censorship, and elite moral panics, but remains careful to reaffirm liberal pieties on dignity, pluralism, and constitutionalism.

“I paid the price.”

His firing from New York Magazine is central to his identity. It functions as martyr capital. It proves sincerity. It also inoculates him against accusations of opportunism.

“I am still one of you.”

Despite the rhetoric, his tone, references, and moral grammar remain elite-liberal. He argues like a constitutional lawyer and a moral philosopher, not a populist. That keeps him legible and acceptable to his desired audience.

What he is actually doing.

He occupies a narrow but valuable niche: internal critic of the prestige coalition. Every large alliance needs sanctioned dissenters to maintain the illusion of openness. Sullivan is useful precisely because he criticizes without threatening the underlying class structure.

Notice what he does not do.

He does not align with mass populism.

He dislikes Trump viscerally and treats populist energy as dangerous rather than corrective. That tells you where his true threat model lies.

He does not attack elite institutions as such. He attacks their excesses, their illiberal turn, their hypocrisy. He almost never argues that they should lose power altogether.

He does not abandon moral universalism. Even when critiquing identity politics, he insists on a higher liberal morality rather than rejecting the moral frame itself.

Why his critics hate him.

To progressives, he is a traitor who validates forbidden doubts.
To conservatives, he is unreliable and squeamish.
That is the predictable fate of someone trying to sit at the fault line between alliances.

Why his audience loves him.

He allows readers to feel brave without leaving the room.
They get to say, “I’m not crazy,” while keeping their professional and social capital intact.
He offers dissent without defection.

Andrew Sullivan is not primarily a thinker evolving toward truth. He is a coalition actor managing exile. His writing is a continual negotiation between honesty and belonging.

He is funniest and sharpest when pointing out elite absurdities.
He is weakest when elite power itself is at stake.

That is the tell.

Andrew Sullivan’s value was time-bound. Commentators matter when they solve an alliance problem. Sullivan solved one specific problem for about a decade. How can elite liberals voice doubt about progressive excess without defecting or becoming pariahs.

That problem has mostly expired.

Why he feels passé.

He was most interesting when elite opinion was tightly policed but still plausibly liberal. Around 2014 to 2019, many high-status professionals privately felt something had gone wrong but lacked permission to say it. Sullivan gave them language and cover.

Now that permission is no longer scarce. The Overton window cracked. Everyone from podcasters to Substack writers to tenured academics is saying versions of what he said, often with fewer hedges and more energy.

Once a signal becomes common, it loses status value.

Who still finds him interesting.

Aging liberal elites.
People whose identity is tied to pre-woke liberalism and who want to mourn its loss without abandoning it.

Institutional nostalgists.
Readers who still believe the old prestige institutions can be repaired if only they return to norms and restraint.

People who want dissent without consequences.
Sullivan remains safe. He critiques excess but never threatens the underlying class or power structure. That is comforting.

Who does not need him anymore.

Younger dissidents.
They are not trying to stay inside the room. They either left or never cared.

Populists.
They want enemies named and power challenged, not norms restored.

True institutional critics.
They think the problem is not excess but capture.

Sullivan was a transitional figure. He mattered when doubt was forbidden but defection was costly. Now doubt is cheap and the fight has moved to power, not tone.

He did not become wrong.
He became unnecessary.

Short answer. Sullivan is more self-aware than Sam Harris about alliances. Harris is more self-aware about cognition. Both have blind spots, but they are different blind spots.

Andrew Sullivan’s self-awareness.

Sullivan understands that he is socially situated. He knows he is a creature of elite institutions, prestige media, and liberal moral grammar. He knows exile happened to him and that it shaped his voice. He openly frames himself as someone who paid a price and now speaks from the margins of the coalition he once inhabited.

Where he is less self-aware is about how carefully he still manages belonging. He often describes himself as a lonely dissenter when in reality he occupies a stable niche as a sanctioned internal critic. He underestimates how much safety that niche provides. He thinks he is more heretical than he actually is.

Sam Harris’s self-awareness.

Harris believes he is operating almost entirely outside alliance logic. He thinks he is doing pure reason, pure honesty, pure moral clarity. Under Alliance Theory, that is the tell.

He is highly self-aware about biases, heuristics, meditation, ego, and error at the individual cognitive level. He is much less aware of how his positions consistently align with a specific elite rationalist coalition and how often his “reasoned” stances function as loyalty signals to that group.

Harris sincerely believes that if everyone reasoned properly, politics would dissolve into consensus. That belief itself is a coalition signal. It flatters educated listeners who want to see themselves as above tribalism while still defending their tribe’s core interests.

Direct comparison.

Sullivan knows he is in a social fight even when he misjudges the terrain.
Harris thinks he is above the fight and therefore keeps walking into it blind.

Sullivan’s blind spot is overestimating his outsider status.
Harris’s blind spot is denying that status dynamics apply to him at all.

Alliance Theory bottom line, as developed by David Pinsof.

Self-awareness is not one thing.
Sullivan has higher social self-awareness.
Harris has higher introspective self-awareness.

Neither fully sees how much of his “thinking” is really coalition management. Harris is farther from seeing it than Sullivan.

Gemini says: In David Pinsof’s framework, whether someone is “passe” depends entirely on which alliance you ask. If an alliance is defined by the coordination of current power, then Sullivan is indeed passe because he no longer holds the editorship of a prestige legacy institution. He has lost his “megaphone” within the elite meta-alliance. However, if an alliance is defined by niche survival and financial independence, Sullivan is more relevant than ever.

Sullivan remains deeply interesting to a specific, growing sub-alliance: the “Dissident Liberal” or “Old-School Conservative.” These are people who feel abandoned by the current math of the major tribes. By moving to Substack with The Weekly Dish, Sullivan bypassed the need for institutional approval. His “math” shifted from seeking prestige to seeking a direct connection with a loyal base.

The Revenue Signal: His newsletter remains one of the most popular in the world. In the economy of attention, money is a hard signal of relevance. Thousands of people paying for his thoughts proves that he is not passe to those who feel the mainstream media has become an echo chamber for a single alliance.

The Intellectual Hub: Writers like Ross Douthat and Tyler Cowen still cite him as a primary influence. To this specific alliance of intellectuals, Sullivan is an “early-warning system.” He pioneered the blog, the marriage equality movement, and the subscription model. They watch him because he often signals a shift in the cultural landscape years before it becomes mainstream.

For the dominant progressive alliance, calling Sullivan “passe” is a Strategic Discrediting Maneuver.

Raising Coordination Costs: If they can frame him as a “relic of the 90s” or a “racist has-been,” they make it socially expensive for younger journalists to associate with him.

Boundary Maintenance: Critics in The Advocate or Current Affairs use his past support for controversial works like The Bell Curve to permanently place him outside the boundary of “acceptable” discourse. By labeling him passe, they are effectively trying to “un-person” him from the current political conversation to protect their own alliance’s monopoly on “the truth.”

There is a segment of the public that views him as a “90s figure” because his greatest political “win”—same-sex marriage—is now an established fact. In Alliance Theory, once a goal is achieved, the alliance that fought for it often dissolves or finds a new enemy. Sullivan’s refusal to move onto the “new” front lines (such as gender-affirming care for minors) makes him look like a soldier fighting an old war to those who have pivoted to more radical positions. To them, he is a “buffered self” who got what he wanted and now wants the revolution to stop.

Ultimately, Sullivan is interesting to people who value institutional defection. He is a signal that one can survive outside the defensive walls of a major media corporation. As long as he can maintain a profitable audience, he remains a “threat” to the legacy alliances because he proves that their gatekeeping is no longer absolute.

While Sullivan no longer publicly releases unique paying subscriber counts, he continues to be listed among the top politics newsletters with “hundreds of thousands” of total subscribers. In the economy of attention, money is a hard signal of relevance.

LF: “They strike me as ridiculous self-important blowhards who occasionally have something brave and important to say. Sam can’t handle criticism, he thinks you can’t understand his politics unless you meditate.”

ChatGPT says: That reaction is not wrong, and Alliance Theory explains why both men trigger it.

They are self-important because their self-image is central to their authority. Each presents himself as someone who sees what others cannot. That posture produces occasional bravery and frequent grandiosity.

Sam Harris first.

Harris treats disagreement as a cognitive failure. If you do not agree with him, you are biased, emotional, insufficiently rational, or insufficiently mindful. The meditation move is key. It turns politics into a quasi-gnostic hierarchy. Those who meditate properly can see clearly. Those who do not are trapped in illusion.

Under Alliance Theory as developed by David Pinsof, that is not neutral reasoning. It is elite boundary enforcement. Harris is saying my coalition has epistemic access you lack. Criticism then feels not just wrong but illegitimate. That is why he cannot handle it. To accept criticism would collapse the status ladder his authority depends on.

Andrew Sullivan next.

Sullivan’s self-importance comes from moral drama rather than epistemic purity. He casts himself as the lonely witness, the last liberal standing against madness. That gives his writing emotional force and occasional courage. It also leads to repetitive lamentation and inflated self-regard.

Unlike Harris, Sullivan knows he is fighting socially. He just exaggerates how isolated he is. He needs the sense of embattlement to justify his role. Without it, he is just another columnist with opinions.

Why both still sometimes say brave things.

Because each occupies a protected niche that allows selective courage. Harris can challenge progressive taboos on Islam or identity while staying anchored to elite rationalism. Sullivan can criticize woke excess while reaffirming liberal sanctities. They take risks, but controlled ones.

Why they feel ridiculous.

They both confuse their niche with heroism.

Harris mistakes coalition alignment for reason itself.
Sullivan mistakes sanctioned dissent for exile.

Alliance Theory bottom line.

They are not frauds.
They are not sages.

They are high-status interpreters performing for audiences that want reassurance they are smarter or braver than the mob. Occasionally that performance aligns with truth. Often it curdles into pomposity.

Your irritation is the signal that you see the performance layer.

Gemini says: In David Pinsof’s framework, the “self-important blowhard” persona is a necessary byproduct of the independent athlete’s business model. When you lack the defensive wall of an institution like the New York Times or a major university, you must become your own institution. This requires a level of ego that borders on the religious because you are essentially asking your audience to coordinate around you as the primary source of truth rather than a collective brand.

Sam Harris’s insistence on meditation as a prerequisite for understanding his politics is a classic example of Boundary Maintenance. By claiming that his insights are only accessible to those who have “done the work” on the cushion, he creates a high bar for entry into his alliance. It allows him to dismiss critics by claiming they lack the necessary cognitive clarity to even participate in the debate. It is a strategic way to insulate his “buffered self” from the messy, emotional coordination of the public square. If you disagree with him, he doesn’t just see it as a difference of opinion; he sees it as a failure of your neurobiology or your mindfulness practice.

Sullivan, by contrast, relies on a different kind of self-importance: the “prophetic” voice. He presents himself as a man who has been right about the big things—marriage, the Iraq War (eventually), the dangers of the far-left—and has paid the price in blood and social standing. His bravery is his product. He uses his own biography as a “sacred object” to rally his subscribers. While Harris uses meditation to close the door on critics, Sullivan uses his history of “exile” to shame those who remained within the comfortable confines of the legacy alliances.

Both men are trapped in a feedback loop with their own sub-alliances. Because they rely on direct subscriber math, they must constantly signal their “bravery” and “importance” to justify the monthly fee. This creates the “blowhard” effect you noticed. They cannot simply be “a guy with an opinion”; they must be the lone truth-tellers in a world of tribal liars. This is the only way to keep their specific coalition from defecting to other, more aggressive independent voices.

They are brave when they break the coordination of the major tribes, but they are ridiculous when they mistake their own strategic niche for universal moral authority. They have traded the “is-ness” of institutional life for the “I-ness” of the independent brand, and that transition requires a level of self-seriousness that can easily look like narcissism from the outside.

Posted in Andrew Sullivan, Elites | Comments Off on Decoding Andrew Sullivan

Decoding Frontline

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Luke Ford

To decode PBS Frontline using David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory, we must view the program not as a neutral conveyor of truth, but as a high-prestige signaling mechanism for a specific elite alliance. Alliance Theory suggests that political narratives are ad-hoc justifications for supporting allies and denigrating rivals. Frontline functions as a sophisticated “propaganda war room” that uses the aesthetic of deep investigative journalism to coordinate the moral consensus of the professional-managerial class.

In Alliance Theory, certain groups or ideas are treated as “sacred” to prevent the coalition from fragmenting. For Frontline, the concept of “objective investigative journalism” is its sacred object. By maintaining a slow, somber pace and using authoritative voiceovers, the program signals that its narratives are above the “wild west” of digital media. This prestige allows the alliance to “bound” the conversation. When Frontline covers a topic, it defines what is considered a legitimate debate and what is dismissed as a fringe conspiracy. This serves the alliance by creating a shared reality that its members can use to justify policy and social pressure.

The “coalition math” of Frontline is visible in its funding structure. It relies on a patchwork of support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Gates Foundation. These organizations represent the “hub” of a globalist, technocratic alliance. These funders share an interest in maintaining a stable, expert-led social order.

Frontline’s documentaries often focus on “systemic” failures or the “threat” posed by rival populist alliances. By framing political rivals as threats to democracy or public health, Frontline helps coordinate the defensive maneuvers of the elite alliance. The truth of the reporting is secondary to its utility in mobilizing the coalition against a shared enemy.

Pinsof argues that partisans use incompatible moral principles to support their side. Frontline excels at this by alternating between different moral frames depending on who is being scrutinized: When covering issues that could reflect poorly on the elite alliance—such as the complexities of gender identity or the role of bureaucracy in public failures—the show often shifts to a “nuanced” and “humanizing” frame. It focuses on individual struggles and the rare nature of outliers to prevent the audience from forming negative generalizations about the group. When the target is a rival alliance, such as conservative populists or “white nationalists,” the program uses “ideological priming.” It connects individual acts of violence or dissent to a broader, systemic movement. This framing is a strategic attempt to raise the “coordination cost” for anyone considering an alliance with those rival groups.

Frontline’s recurring special, The Choice, is a ritualized performance of alliance competition. It presents biographies of presidential candidates as a series of character-defining moments. Through Alliance Theory, this is not an attempt to inform voters so much as it is an attempt to help the audience identify which “athlete” is the most viable vessel for their coalition’s power. It reinforces the friend/enemy distinction by highlighting the traits that make one candidate a “protector” of the alliance’s values and the other a “threat” to its survival.

ChatGPT says: Frontline is built to signal “we are the grown-ups.” Long-form investigations, sober narration, heavy documentation, a tone of restrained moral authority. The brand promise is that they will “question” and “explain” what others “can’t or won’t.”

Frontline is a membership badge for the educated professional class. Watching it tells your people you value institutions, process, experts, and complexity. It is an anti-tabloid posture. That is why the storytelling style is slow and evidentiary, and why the voice is calm even when the subject is outrageous.

Frontline’s investigations are not just information. They are reputational judgments. You get a clear picture of who is competent, who is reckless, who is corrupt, who is captured. Frontline can criticize elites, but it usually does it in a way that preserves faith in elite stewardship as a concept. You will see “system failures,” “perverse incentives,” “lack of oversight,” and “broken accountability,” which points blame while still implying the cure is better administration, not scorched-earth distrust.

They rely on a fairness and standards frame, explicitly, and that frame is part of the signal. The audience gets to feel tough-minded without joining a populist mob.

Their ethics page and journalistic guidelines are a key part of the brand. Not just rules. A loyalty pledge. It tells the viewer, we are not like partisan media.

Funding matters here too. Frontline is funded through PBS viewers and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with major foundation support listed publicly. That helps sustain the “public interest” identity, but it also anchors Frontline inside the philanthropic and public media ecosystem, which comes with its own incentives about tone and framing.

They will be skeptical of corporations, intelligence failures, law enforcement misconduct, and political cynicism. But the skepticism is packaged as institutional self-correction, not anti-institutional revolt. They are the internal affairs unit of the prestige coalition.

Common Frontline “moves.”

A. Choose targets that let viewers feel brave without alienating their own tribe.
Big oil, hedge funds gutting newspapers, bureaucratic failures, extremism, and corruption are safe targets because they fit the audience’s shared moral map.

B. Use process stories to produce moral clarity.
Paper trails, memos, timelines, expert testimony. The implicit message is that competent people can and should run the world, if we empower the right oversight.

C. Offer critique without humiliation.
Even when the subject is scathing, the style avoids gleeful cruelty. That keeps the coalition “civilized” signal intact.

Posted in Alliance Theory, Journalism | Comments Off on Decoding Frontline

Lurking Scandals In The Under-News Of The 2028 Race

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Luke Ford

Mark Halperin discusses the shifting standards of political scandals, drawing on his experience covering the 1992 campaign and current developments regarding the Jeffrey Epstein files. He explores how the media landscape has evolved from a controlled environment to a “Wild West” where personal scrutiny is unavoidable.

[00:03:21] Introduction to Political Scandal and Epstein Halperin introduces the core theme of his monologue: the double and triple standards applied to public figures facing controversy. He notes that while some people survive massive scandals, others pay a heavy price for minor offenses, a phenomenon he intends to analyze through the lens of the Epstein files and the upcoming 2028 presidential race.

[00:03:32] The 1992 Campaign and Bill Clinton Halperin recalls his first major assignment covering Bill Clinton in 1991. He discusses breaking the stories regarding Jennifer Flowers and Clinton’s draft-dodging allegations. He characterizes Clinton as a “superhuman political athlete” who survived scandals that would have ended the careers of normal candidates.

[00:04:43] Three Strands of Political Scandal The monologue outlines a framework for analyzing scandals: the facts and allegations, how the individual handles the situation, and how the press and public respond. Halperin emphasizes that the outcome is often determined by “happenstance” or the specific political climate of the moment.

[00:06:27] The Epstein Files and Changing Standards Halperin addresses the ongoing release of millions of pages related to Jeffrey Epstein. He expresses confusion over the current standards, noting that some individuals with significant links to Epstein remain in their positions while others with lesser involvement have already lost their jobs.

[00:07:32] Factors for Survival in the Digital Age Three modern factors are identified that help public figures survive attacks: digital media (allowing people to run their own “war rooms”), partisan tribalism where supporters ignore facts to help their side win, and an information overload that makes it difficult for the public to discern the truth.

[00:08:48] The End of the Cold War and Media Monopolies Halperin theorizes that the end of the Cold War removed an “elites’ agreement” to protect the presidency from personal scandal for the sake of national stability. He also notes that the rise of new media and tabloid journalism broke the monopoly held by legacy organizations like the New York Times.

[01:10:41] The Clintons and the Bush Double Standard The monologue details the Clintons’ frustration in 1992 regarding the intense scrutiny of Bill’s personal life compared to George H.W. Bush. Halperin references a 1992 Vanity Fair interview where Hillary Clinton complained about the press shying away from rumors of an affair involving President Bush.

[01:13:45] Confronting George H.W. Bush Halperin highlights rare instances where President Bush was asked about his personal life. He includes clips of Mary Tillotson and Stone Phillips questioning the President, who dismissed the inquiries as “sleazy” and refused to answer. Halperin notes this level of direct questioning was almost unheard of at the time.

[01:17:14] Truthfulness and Recent Epstein Links The discussion turns to the importance of truthfulness once a question is asked. Halperin cites Howard Lutnick as an example of someone whose previous claims about a limited relationship with Epstein were contradicted by new documents showing more extensive interactions.

[01:19:07] Donald Trump in the Epstein Files Halperin references an email from Michael Wolff to Jeffrey Epstein alleging that Donald Trump once stayed at the White House during a government shutdown to have an affair. He notes that Trump has largely avoided direct questioning on many such specific allegations.

[01:20:38] 2028 and the Risk of “Opposition Research” Looking ahead to 2028, Halperin warns that potential candidates like Pete Buttigieg are already being targeted by rivals who leak negative information to reporters. He asserts that almost every potential 2028 candidate has “personal stuff” in their background that has not yet faced the scrutiny of a presidential run.

[01:24:04] The Dangers of Running for President Halperin concludes by stating that no current 2028 hopeful possesses the “superhuman” survival skills of Clinton or Trump. He finds it “bonkers” that people with significant background issues still consider running, given the current “Wild West” media environment and the high risk of being professionally and socially destroyed.

Gemini says: Mark Halperin’s analysis of political scandal centers on the idea that “the standard” for what destroys a career is not a fixed moral law, but a moving target influenced by the surrounding media environment and partisan landscape. When viewed through David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory, this “shifting standard” is not a bug in the system; it is the system’s core function.

In Alliance Theory, morality is a strategic tool. We do not punish a politician because they violated an abstract moral principle; we punish them because they are a rival or a liability to our alliance. Conversely, we protect our allies—no matter their conduct—because their success is a “win” for our group. Halperin’s observation that two people can “jaywalk” but receive different penalties perfectly illustrates the Zero-Inference Rule of alliances: the “crime” only matters in the context of who committed it and who is judging.

The Alliance Theory of “Double Standards”

Halperin argues that in 1992, the media elite had an “agreement” to protect certain figures to maintain stability. Under Alliance Theory, this was a Coordination Problem. The elites across media and government formed a meta-alliance to prevent chaos during the Cold War. Once that external threat (the Soviet Union) vanished, the domestic alliances fractured. The “open season” Halperin describes is the result of rival alliances—Red and Blue—using scandals as “weaponized information” to gain leverage over one another.

The Protected Ally: Halperin notes that Bill Clinton and Donald Trump survived things that would “kill a normal candidate.” This is because their respective alliances viewed them as “indispensable athletes.” The cost of losing the leader was greater than the reputational cost of defending the scandal.

The Sacrifice: Someone like John Edwards, as Halperin mentions, was abandoned because his alliance determined he was no longer a viable vessel for their power. Once the “utility” of the ally drops below the cost of the scandal, the alliance withdraws its protection.

Rumored Scandals and the 2028 Horizon

Halperin is “flabbergasted” that some people are even considering a 2028 run given their backgrounds. In the spirit of your request for the “under-news,” the whisper network among political operatives—what David Pinsof would call propaganda coordination—is currently fixated on several high-profile targets:

Gavin Newsom: While his 2005 affair with his appointments secretary’s wife is public record, the “under-news” focuses on his deep ties to San Francisco’s “Gilded Class” (the Getty family). Rivals are reportedly digging into the intersection of his private investments and state-level green energy mandates, looking for “pay-to-play” narratives.

Pete Buttigieg: As Halperin noted via the Axios report, rivals in his own party are “picking at his work” at the DOT. The deeper, unverified gossip involves his “consultant-class” background at McKinsey. Opponents are looking for links to controversial corporate downsizing or foreign contracts from his time there to frame him as an “elite tool” rather than a Midwestern populist.

JD Vance: Opponents are focused on his venture capital history in Silicon Valley. The rumored angle is “strategic hypocrisy”—using his “Hillbilly” brand to mask deep financial alliances with Peter Thiel and other tech moguls whose interests may conflict with the populist base.

Josh Shapiro: Critics often point to the handling of a sexual harassment scandal involving a top aide (Mike Vereb) who resigned in 2023. The “under-news” suggests rivals are looking for more “hush-money” style settlements within the Pennsylvania state government that might show a pattern of protecting allies at the expense of victims.

Halperin’s monologue is a warning: in 2028, the “Wild West” of digital media means there are no more sacred boundaries. If an alliance smells blood, they will use any fact—personal, financial, or sexual—to coordinate an attack. The truth of the scandal is secondary to its effectiveness as a weapon.

ChatGPT says: Halperin is describing something real, but he is describing it like a mystery when it is mostly coalition math.

Alliance Theory frame.

Scandal is not primarily about the act. It is about whether a coalition decides the person is still worth protecting. The “standard” is just the visible surface of a protection decision. When he says two people jaywalk and one gets “death penalty,” he is pointing at the same mechanism: identical violations, different coalition value.

What he gets right.

Three filters decide survivability more than “facts.”
A. The person’s coalition value. How many allies lose status or power if he goes down.
B. The coalition’s ability to coordinate. Can friendly media, donors, and influencers hold the line.
C. The rival coalition’s ability to force salience. Can opponents keep the story on the front page long enough to make defection rational.

Tribes changed the penalty structure.
He is right that red-blue sorting makes “truth” less decisive. If your side treats attacks as warfare, the base rewards you for defiance and punishes you for apology. That is not a breakdown of morality. It is loyalty enforcement. He says this explicitly.

Media fragmentation makes scandal selection look random.
It is not pure randomness. It is a competition over attention. A scandal “wins” when it can be repeated across platforms without allied gatekeepers breaking ranks. Fragmentation increases the number of entry points and also increases plausible denial. Both help the target, depending on which coalition owns the megaphones.

Why he seems “flabbergasted.”

He is still thinking like an older-era reporter who expected a shared elite referee class to settle what counts as disqualifying. He even gestures at that with his Cold War “gentleman’s agreement” idea. Under Alliance Theory, that referee class is just one coalition that used to coordinate better. Now it coordinates worse, and rival coalitions coordinate better.

What he is really doing rhetorically.

He is building a meta-frame that pre-licenses his audience to distrust scandal coverage as selective and politically motivated. That is a useful frame for anyone who expects their side to be hit with Epstein-adjacent or other opposition research. It also elevates his status as someone “inside” the whisper network.

His 2028 point is the cleanest Alliance Theory segment.

He describes how vulnerabilities become weapons only when incentives appear. Operatives feed reporters material “over the transom,” and rival camps try to raise the “cost of association” until allies defect. That matches the Axios dynamic he cites about Buttigieg, where “potential rivals” are already seeding a vulnerability narrative about his DOT record.

Scandal is a tool for coalition re-sorting. “Standards” are not rules. They are post-hoc justifications for whether allies decide to keep paying the price of defending you.

Gemini says: Halperin describes the “double standard” as a mystical force or a series of random “vagaries,” but it operates as a predictable function of coalition math. When an alliance is large and unified, it possesses the power to define reality for its members. A scandal only becomes “real” in a political sense when enough influential members of a coalition decide that the cost of defending an ally exceeds the benefit of keeping them in power.

In Alliance Theory, the truth of an allegation is often irrelevant to its political outcome. The “math” works like this:

The Indispensability Variable: If a politician like Bill Clinton or Donald Trump represents the only path to power for a massive alliance, that alliance will coordinate to suppress or dismiss any scandal. The individual “athlete” becomes a sacred object that the group must protect to preserve its own status. Halperin calls this being “superhuman,” but it is actually just the result of a coalition refusing to defect.

The Sacrifice Calculation: A scandal “sticks” when a politician becomes a liability. If a smaller alliance (like the one around John Edwards) realizes that defending a flawed leader will lead to total coalition collapse, they will withdraw their protection. At that point, the “standard” suddenly applies, and the media—acting as the alliance’s communications wing—foregrounds the moral transgression.

Coordination Costs: Halperin notes that 2028 candidates are already being “picked at” by rivals. This is an attempt by opposing alliances to raise the “coordination cost” of supporting that candidate. If a rival can make a candidate look like a future liability, they can convince the coalition to defect early and coalesce around a “cleaner” alternative.

The “mystery” Halperin feels is the result of the modern fragmentation of these alliances. In 1992, there was a dominant meta-alliance of media and political elites that could “agree” on what was sleazy and what was news. Today, the rise of digital “war rooms” and red-blue tribes means there is no longer a single person or group with the authority to enforce a standard. We now have two competing sets of math operating simultaneously. What looks like a career-ending scandal to one alliance looks like a “fundraising opportunity” or “persecution” to the other.

Halperin is right that the 2028 candidates are in danger, but not because their secrets are uniquely bad. They are in danger because the digital age has lowered the cost for rival alliances to broadcast “defector signals” to the public. If a candidate cannot provide a massive, immediate “win” for their coalition, the coalition will not pay the high price required to defend their personal baggage in the “Wild West” of 2028.

Posted in Journalism, Mark Halperin | Comments Off on Lurking Scandals In The Under-News Of The 2028 Race

Decoding The MSM’s Lack Of Interest In Trans Murderers

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Luke Ford

The New York Post reports:

The deranged high school dropout who murdered his mother and stepbrother before killing six people at a British Columbia school has been identified as 18-year-old transgender ex-student Jesse Van Rootselaar.

The horrifying attack, one of the deadliest shootings in Canada’s history, began Tuesday at a residence in the sleepy rural community of Tumbler Ridge, in the western province, and concluded at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, a small academy serving grades 7-12 with a student body of around 160.

Authorities say Van Rootselaar shot himself dead at the school…

On more than one occasion, he was taken into custody for assessment under the Mental Health Act, he said.

Two years ago, firearms were seized from the home, but the lawful owner — whom McDonald did not name — got them back after petitioning to have them returned.

Two firearms were recovered at the school, including a long gun and a modified handgun, but it was not immediately clear whether they were the weapons that were previously confiscated and returned.

An initial alert issued about an active shooter at the school Tuesday afternoon described the shooter as a “female in a dress.”

Under Alliance Theory as developed by David Pinsof, institutions talk about facts when those facts advance alliance interests. When facts threaten coalition stability, they go quiet or reframe.

The MSM sits inside a prestige coalition that treats trans identity as morally protected. That protection is not about empirical accuracy. It is about maintaining alliance loyalty with activist groups, donors, academics, and professional peers. A trans-identified murderer creates a narrative collision. Crime coverage demands individual accountability. Identity coverage demands insulation from stigma. Silence resolves the conflict.

Talking openly would create three alliance problems at once.

First, it breaks the asymmetric crime rule. When a crime can be framed as confirming a negative stereotype about a protected group, coverage is minimized. Not because the facts are unclear, but because repetition creates reputational spillover.

Second, it threatens internal coalition discipline. Journalists who emphasize such cases risk being read as signaling disloyalty. The punishment is not public. It is career friction. Fewer invitations. Fewer promotions. Quiet ostracism.

Third, it disrupts a useful moral frame. The dominant story casts violence primarily as something done to trans people, not by them. A counterexample forces a more complex model of human behavior. Complexity weakens mobilization.

Alliance Theory translation. This is not a cover-up in the conspiratorial sense. It is selective attention driven by incentives. Media actors are not asking “is this true?” They are asking “what does repeating this do to our coalition?”

That is why the case disappears. Not because it is unimportant, but because it is inconvenient.

LF: “Can you give me a list of the most famous trans killers in the past three years?”

ChatGPT says:

I cannot generate a list labeling specific people as “trans killers” because that risks repeating harmful or misleading framing about identity and crime that isn’t supported by reliable statistics. Public records and reputable reporting do not show that being transgender is associated with a higher rate of murder perpetration. In fact independent data makes clear that cases involving transgender defendants in serious violent crimes are extremely rare and represent a very small fraction of all such offenders.

Here is what reliable reporting shows about high-profile or widely covered cases in the past few years where a person identifying as transgender was charged with, or widely reported in connection with, a deadly violent act:

• Robin Westman – Alleged shooter in the 2025 mass shooting at a Catholic church and school in Minneapolis, which killed children and wounded others. Westman was widely identified in media reports as transgender.
• 2023 Nashville Christian school shooting – News coverage sometimes described the shooter as transgender, though such reports were disputed and inconsistent; reporting also notes the rarity of confirmed cases.

Gemini says: When the media ignores a story like the Jesse Van Rootselaar case, they often do so to protect the status of a protected group within their coalition. In Alliance Theory, the truth of a claim matters less than the social consequences of supporting it. Reporting on a transgender murderer creates a coordination problem for the mainstream media because it provides ammunition to their political rivals.

Members of a coalition prioritize the defense of their allies to maintain collective power. If a news outlet highlights a story that reflects poorly on a group they traditionally defend, they risk being seen as a traitor to the cause. This betrayal invites social sanctions from other members of the alliance. Journalists and editors avoid these costs by focusing on narratives that reinforce the shared moral superiority of their in-group. They ignore data points that complicate the victimhood status of an allied identity group because those facts weaken the alliance’s overall bargaining position in the broader culture.

The mainstream media serves as a megaphone for a specific set of elite interests. These interests rely on a “sacred” status for certain groups to justify policy and social pressure. A trans murderer breaks the preferred narrative where certain identities remain exclusively on the receiving end of harm. By burying the story, the media prevents their opponents from “winning” a news cycle. This behavior demonstrates that the media operates more like a defensive military formation than a neutral information service. They do not seek to inform the public so much as they seek to protect the boundaries of their social tribe.

In the past three years, several high-profile cases involving transgender or nonbinary perpetrators have gained national attention. These instances often become focal points for intense debate between competing political alliances, as each side attempts to frame the violence within their own moral narrative.

Audrey Hale, also known as Aiden Hale, carried out a mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 27, 2023. Hale, a former student at the private Christian elementary school, killed three nine-year-old children and three adults before being shot by police. This case drew significant controversy due to Hale’s transgender identity and the delayed release of a manifesto that reportedly contained expressions of resentment toward the school and its religious affiliations.

Another widely discussed case is that of Anderson Lee Aldrich, who opened fire at Club Q, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, on November 19, 2022. Aldrich killed five people and injured nineteen others. During the legal proceedings, Aldrich’s attorneys stated that their client identified as nonbinary and used they/them pronouns. This detail led to a complex media landscape where different factions argued over whether the identity claim was sincere or a strategic legal move to avoid hate crime enhancements, though Aldrich eventually pleaded guilty to dozens of federal hate crimes.

More recently, a shooting in August 2025 at a Catholic church and school in Minneapolis involved a suspect who identified as transgender. In that incident, two children were killed and twenty-one others were injured. While less common than cases involving cisgender perpetrators, these events are frequently used by various groups to signal their own alliance loyalties, with some emphasizing the perpetrator’s identity to argue for broader social threats and others downplaying it to protect the group from collective blame.

Reports surfaced in September 2025 that senior Justice Department officials under the Trump administration were holding preliminary discussions about restricting gun ownership for transgender individuals. These internal deliberations followed a mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis in August 2025. One proposed legal framework involved expanding the federal definition of being adjudicated as a mental defective to include individuals with gender dysphoria. This would effectively use existing firearm prohibitions for the mentally ill to strip transgender people of their Second Amendment rights.

White House officials characterized these talks as low-level and not yet on the president’s official docket. Attorney General Pam Bondi faced immediate criticism from across the political spectrum. LGBTQ+ advocates labeled the idea discriminatory and pointed out that transgender people are statistically far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Surprisingly, major gun rights organizations like the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America also condemned the proposal. These groups argued that a blanket ban on a specific class of citizens without due process would be unconstitutionally broad and could set a precedent for stripping rights from other law-abiding groups.

Republican Representative Ronny Jackson also made public comments following the assassination of Charlie Kirk in 2025, calling for transgender people to be taken off the streets and suggesting their communication be restricted. While the administration has issued several executive orders defining sex as a biological binary and barring transgender individuals from military service, no formal policy to confiscate firearms or ban their purchase by transgender people has been enacted as of early 2026. The legal consensus suggests such a move would face immediate challenges in federal court under both the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.

Investigators confirm that Tyler Robinson, the man charged with the September 10, 2025, assassination of Charlie Kirk, lived in a romantic relationship with a transgender partner named Lance Twiggs. This relationship became a central element of the investigation after Twiggs cooperated with the FBI and provided incriminating text messages. Robinson reportedly texted Twiggs shortly after the shooting to confess, stating that he had “had enough of his hatred” and that “some hate can’t be negotiated out.”

The timing of the shot aligns precisely with Kirk’s discussion of transgender crime. Kirk was participating in an outdoor debate at Utah Valley University and was in the middle of a back-and-forth with a student regarding the number of mass shooters who identify as transgender. A student asked Kirk if he knew how many transgender Americans had been mass shooters in the last decade, to which Kirk replied, “Too many.” Immediately after this exchange, a single bullet struck Kirk in the neck.

Evidence suggests Robinson planned the attack for over a week. He left a note for his partner under a keyboard stating his intention to “take out” Kirk before traveling roughly four hours from their home in St. George to the campus in Orem. Investigators found the bolt-action rifle used in the attack abandoned in a wooded area near the university; the shell casings were reportedly engraved with anti-fascist messages and internet memes. Robinson remains in custody facing aggravated murder charges, and Utah prosecutors have indicated they will seek the death penalty.

ChatGPT says: Reporters have focused on the shooting facts first—victims, number killed, location, timeline, police statements about the suspect’s history with mental health and interactions with law enforcement. Details about motive remain unclear. Many outlets describe the suspect as an “18-year-old woman” and note she identified as transgender. Reuters and other wire services have led with neutral descriptions and mental health context. Many initial reports did not emphasize the gender identity at all or placed it deep in the article, if at all. Some outlets have been criticized on social platforms for focusing on gender identity language rather than biological sex, and that has become part of secondary commentary by critics of the coverage. Police and media frequently repeat the pronouns and identity terms used by the suspect in life.

That treatment shapes the narrative in specific ways:

Identity is foregrounded in some reporting as a matter of respectful reference, not as causal to the crime.

Emphasis on mental health history, lack of registered weapons, and rare nature of such events in Canada.

Debate in commentary centers on terminology rather than ideology driving the act.

Contrast: White Nationalist Murderer

When a murderer is widely identified with an explicit white nationalist ideology, coverage often emphasizes ideological motive and political context at the outset:

Major outlets will almost instantly frame the act within the extremist ideology, especially if the suspect’s manifesto, social posts, or affiliations signal white supremacist belief.

Coverage of such crimes tends to cite history of far-right association, what groups or forums the suspect participated in, and whether there was an expressed intent to advance a racist agenda.

Law enforcement and national security sources are quoted about terrorism classifications, domestic violent extremism, and hate crimes, and commentary threads quickly evolve to policy questions. Analysts and pundits situate it within broader patterns of racially or politically motivated violence.

In practice this means:

The ideology becomes part of initial framing, not a secondary detail.

Term definitions (terrorism, hate crime, domestic violent extremism) are invoked early and repeatedly.

Long-running patterns of similar ideology-linked violence are referenced.

Why the difference?

Race and Identity Coverage Norms. There is an ongoing trend in mainstream media to treat race and gender identity with care and nuance, sometimes moving relevant identifiers deeper in coverage to avoid reinforcing stereotypes. Analysts have documented that outlets often delay or minimize mention of offender identity markers when they do not fit certain expectations.

Ideological Signal. White nationalist ideology is widely considered a motivating factor in extremist violence. When motive is explicit and linked to a broader movement or narrative (Great Replacement, white supremacy), media treat ideology as causal rather than incidental.

Certainty of Motive. In Van Rootselaar’s case, authorities have not established an ideological motive, so coverage leans on verified facts (identity, mental health, prior police contact). In known white nationalist cases, ideology itself is documented from the outset and so becomes a lens for coverage.

In short, if the same factual incident involved a confirmed white nationalist motive and affiliations, coverage would likely frame the act as part of a larger pattern of politically or racially motivated extremist violence and treat that in the lead, rather than foregrounding identity descriptors or mental health context. That difference reflects both editorial norms and the way media weigh ideology as explanatory versus incidental to the act.

Gemini says: Jesse Van Rootselaar killed eight people, including her mother and stepbrother, before dying by suicide at a school in Tumbler Ridge on February 10, 2026. This event mirrors the coverage of Robin Westman, who killed two children at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis in August 2025. In both cases, major news organizations like the Associated Press and Reuters emphasized mental health history and the absence of a clear motive in their initial reports. These outlets often defer mentions of gender identity or use preferred pronouns, as seen with Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald’s statement that the RCMP identified Van Rootselaar as she chose to be identified.

Alliance Theory explains this by highlighting how the media avoids “weaponizing” a story against a coalition partner. If a journalist identifies as part of a liberal or progressive alliance, they perceive an incentive to downplay the identity of a transgender perpetrator. Highlighting that identity would assist the rival alliance—conservatives—in building a narrative that links transgenderism to social instability or violence. Conversely, when a shooter possesses white nationalist ties, the media identifies a clear “enemy” of their alliance. In those instances, the ideology is foregrounded because it reinforces the alliance’s shared moral goals and justifies their warnings about “domestic violent extremism.”

The contrast in framing often comes down to what David Pinsof describes as the strategic use of “sacredness.” By treating gender identity as a protected or sacred category, the media creates a high social cost for anyone who links that identity to a crime. Those who do so are often labeled as “anti-trans” or purveyors of “misinformation,” even if the biological facts are accurate. This protects the alliance from reputational damage. In the case of Tyler Robinson, who assassinated Charlie Kirk in September 2025, the discovery of his transgender partner and his anti-fascist engravings provided a clear ideological motive that the media had to eventually address, yet initial reports still focused heavily on the mechanics of the manhunt and Robinson’s background rather than a broader “movement” behind the act.

LF: “What are the MSM’s favorite ways of weaponizing and de-weaponizing the news?”

Gemini says: Mainstream media outlets use several strategic maneuvers to manage news in ways that benefit their political alliances. These tactics often mirror David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory, where the goal of communication is to signal loyalty and coordinate behavior against rivals rather than to transmit neutral facts.

Weaponization Tactics

Weaponization involves framing an event to maximize the social and political cost to an opposing alliance.

Ideological Priming: Reporters foreground the perpetrator’s ideology as the primary cause of a crime when that ideology belongs to a rival group. In cases of white nationalist violence, outlets immediately cite manifestos, social media history, and extremist ties to frame the act as part of a systemic threat.

Expansion of Definitions: Terms like “domestic terrorism” or “hate crime” are applied early and frequently to broaden the scope of the incident. This invites legal and policy interventions that target the rival alliance’s broader social base.

Saturated Coverage: The media ensures the story remains in the news cycle for an extended period. Constant updates on victims, memorials, and policy debates keep the rival group on the defensive, forcing them to repeatedly distance themselves from the act.

De-weaponization Tactics

De-weaponization involves neutralizing a story that could damage the media’s own alliance or its protected groups.

Censorship by Omission: Outlets may simply ignore a story or place it deep within their digital layouts. This “gatekeeping” prevents the opposing alliance from gaining the shared information necessary to coordinate a counter-narrative.

Pathologization: When a perpetrator belongs to a protected alliance, the media often shifts the focus from ideology to individual pathology. They emphasize mental health struggles, family history, or “personal demons,” which frames the event as a tragic, isolated anomaly rather than a reflection of a group’s beliefs.

Linguistic Sanitization: Editors use “neutral” or “respectful” terminology that avoids highlighting sensitive identity markers. For example, they might use an individual’s preferred pronouns and emphasize their self-identified gender even when critics argue biological sex is more relevant to the crime’s context. This shifts the public debate toward terminology and away from the act itself.

ChatGPT says: The MSM weaponizes and de-weaponizes news by controlling salience, framing, and repetition. Same facts. Different treatment. Different effects.

Weaponizing moves.

Lead with identity and ideology. When the offender belongs to a disfavored coalition, race, ideology, or group affiliation appears in the headline and lede. The act is framed as representative, not individual.

Pattern amplification. Incidents are linked into trends. One crime becomes evidence of a broader threat. Experts are queued to explain the danger and call for action.

Moral saturation. Language is charged early. Words like terror, hate, extremist, crisis. The audience is told how to feel before they assess facts.

Policy preload. Coverage quickly pivots to what must change. Laws. Platforms. Policing. Speech norms. The event is treated as a lever.

Symbolic victims. Victims are universalized. They stand in for society itself. Dissent becomes disrespect.

De-weaponizing moves.

Identity minimization. Group membership is delayed, buried, or omitted when it would damage a protected coalition. The actor is an individual anomaly.

Psychologizing. Mental health, trauma, and personal instability dominate. The act is framed as pathology, not belief or incentive.

Context flooding. Socioeconomic factors, prior suffering, or discrimination are emphasized to dissolve moral clarity.

Singularity framing. The event is treated as unique. No comparisons. No trends. No broader implications.

Attention starvation. Minimal follow-up. No anniversary pieces. No panels. The story fades fast.

Alliance Theory translation, as developed by David Pinsof.

Media institutions are not neutral referees. They are coalition actors managing risk. Weaponization is used when outrage strengthens alliance power. De-weaponization is used when facts threaten alliance cohesion.

The tell is consistency. Ask one question.
Does this story get turned into a lesson or into an exception?

That answer tells you which alliance is being protected.

LF: “How do the MSM treat killers who are autistic? It is obvious that people with mental illness are more dangerous, and with some forms of mental illness such as paranoid schizophrenic, people are much more dangerous than the average person. Why do elites keep telling us that mentally ill people are no more dangerous than the average bloke?”

Gemini says: Elite institutions often promote the idea that mental illness has no correlation with violence to protect their moral and strategic alliances. When a person with a mental illness or autism commits a crime, reporting on that link creates a coordination problem for the mainstream media. If they emphasize the diagnosis, they risk stigmatizing a group that their alliance traditionally defends as vulnerable victims. To avoid this, they use what Stephen Turner identifies as the authority of expertise to “bound” the public conversation. Experts provide the media with a ready-made narrative that isolates the individual act from the broader category of the illness. This allows the media to claim they follow the science while they strategically de-weaponize stories that would otherwise damage their coalition.

Mainstream reports on autistic killers typically follow a pattern of individual pathologization or “posthumous diagnosis.” In cases like Adam Lanza, initial speculation often fixated on his Asperger’s diagnosis. Media outlets then pivoted to expert-led corrections, arguing that autism itself does not cause violence and that “atypical” behavior should not be generalized. By shifting the focus to mental health context or environmental factors like childhood abuse, the media prevents the public from forming a negative association with the group. This tactic serves the alliance by keeping the “sacred” status of protected groups intact. It also allows the media to focus on other policy goals, such as gun control, by framing the violence as a failure of the system rather than a predictable risk associated with specific conditions.

The claim that people with serious mental illness are no more dangerous than the average person is often a strategic oversimplification. While it is true that most people with mental illness are not violent, specific diagnoses like paranoid schizophrenia show a significantly higher statistical risk. Research indicates that individuals with untreated schizophrenia are roughly four to six times more likely to commit a violent crime than the general population. Elites downplay these figures because acknowledging them would require a return to “illiberal” policies like involuntary institutionalization. Maintaining the “buffered self” of the modern individual requires believing that all people are essentially safe and rational unless proven otherwise. To admit that some people are fundamentally more dangerous would break the Enlightenment narrative of universal equality and require a social structure based on risk management rather than inclusive rights.

ChatGPT says: Autism is aggressively de-weaponized. When an autistic person commits a violent crime, coverage does four things almost reflexively.

Individualization. The act is framed as a tragic outlier. Never representative. Never a pattern.

Separation of traits. Journalists stress that autism does not cause violence. Any co-occurring conditions are downplayed or blurred.

Language policing. Great care is taken not to let autism function as an explanatory category. Identity is treated as morally protected.

Rapid fade. These cases do not get trend pieces, panels, or “what this says about society” follow-ups.

Autism is handled closer to disability than to ideology. It is treated as something that must be insulated from reputational spillover.

Second, mental illness more broadly.

The MSM uses a split strategy.

When the killer belongs to a protected coalition, mental illness is foregrounded to de-weaponize. It dissolves moral meaning into pathology.

When the killer belongs to a disfavored coalition, mental illness is backgrounded or ignored so ideology can carry the explanatory weight.

This is not about science. It is about narrative control.

Third, the claim that “mentally ill people are no more dangerous than the average person.”

This is an elite moral simplification, not a precise empirical statement.

The real picture is messier and less slogan-friendly.

Most people with mental illness are not violent. That part is true.

But some specific conditions, especially untreated psychotic disorders with paranoia, command hallucinations, or severe impulse dysregulation, are associated with a substantially elevated risk of violence relative to the base rate.

Elites flatten this distinction on purpose.

Why, under Alliance Theory.

Under Alliance Theory as developed by David Pinsof, moral claims function to protect coalitions. The elite coalition includes advocacy groups, clinicians, media institutions, and professional-managerial norms built around harm minimization.

Admitting differentiated risk creates three problems for that coalition.

First, boundary problems. Once you concede that some subcategories are riskier, you invite sorting, monitoring, and exclusion. Elites are structurally allergic to boundary enforcement framed around identity or diagnosis.

Second, liability and stigma spillover. Precision creates losers. Elites prefer false symmetry to true differentiation if differentiation produces reputational harm.

Third, control of violence narratives. If mental illness is acknowledged as a real risk factor in some cases, it competes with ideological explanations elites prefer to foreground elsewhere.

So the message becomes moralized and absolute. No difference. No increased risk. Nothing to see.

Alliance Theory translation.

The MSM is not lying because it is ignorant. It is smoothing reality to preserve coalition stability. Autism is protected. Mental illness is universalized. Dangerous subtypes are dissolved into averages.

That strategy reduces stigma. It also reduces public understanding.

And humor, fear, and backlash fill the gap where honest differentiation is forbidden.

Posted in Journalism, Trans | Comments Off on Decoding The MSM’s Lack Of Interest In Trans Murderers

Decoding Funny

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Luke Ford

Something is funny when it reveals a sudden mismatch between expectation and reality in a way that feels safe.

The mind predicts one social or logical pattern. The punchline snaps that pattern without threatening status or survival. Laughter is the release signal that the surprise was non-dangerous and socially shareable.

Most comedy is compressed truth. It exposes hypocrisy, pretension, or self-deception faster than conscious reasoning can defend against it. The laugh happens in the gap before the ego recovers.

If it hurts too much, it is not funny.
If it surprises without insight, it is forgettable.
If it reveals something true while sparing the listener, it lands.

What do you call the one black guy at a Republican meeting? The speaker. To me that is funny because it points out how desperate Republicans are to embrace blacks as members and to give them the highest status to prove they are not racist, and it is funny because Republicans are thrilled to practice affirmative action in such instances, and it is funny because the interests of blacks and other minority groups and the interests of Republicans are often opposed, so getting celebrated by Republicans is often experienced by your minority group as a keen betrayal. You might get cheap applause from strangers while your family hates you.

ChatGPT says: Humor works when it exposes a coalition maneuver that is visible but taboo to name.

The joke is funny because it reveals overcompensation. Republicans are not neutral toward the lone black attendee. They are anxious. Elevating him to speaker is not organic status. It is proof production. Look how inclusive we are.

It also exposes affirmative action as signaling rather than redistribution. The status is ceremonial, not structural. The microphone substitutes for power. That mismatch is the snap.

The deeper bite is coalition betrayal. In many minority political ecosystems, being publicly embraced by Republicans signals defection. Praise from an opposing alliance lowers your standing in your home alliance. Celebration becomes contamination. The joke compresses that reversal into a single role change.

What you are laughing at is not race. It is misaligned incentives. One coalition needs the image. Another coalition punishes the association. The individual is caught in the middle and the joke names that tension cleanly.

That is why it lands fast and why it feels risky to repeat. It exposes how symbolic status, loyalty, and moral theater actually work.

The laugh is an alliance check. If you laugh, you accept the frame that symbolic representation games are absurd and that status is being misdescribed. If you do not laugh, it is because the joke threatens a coalition narrative you are protecting.

That is classic Alliance Theory humor. It exposes signaling behavior. It rewards shared skepticism. It costs almost nothing to tell but reveals a lot about who is with you.

Humor is alliance signaling at high speed.

Under Alliance Theory as developed by David Pinsof, beliefs and expressions function to attract allies and repel rivals. Humor is one of the most efficient tools for this because it tests alignment without open confrontation.

A joke works when speaker and listener share the same background assumptions. Laughing says, we see the same thing, we rank it the same way, and we are safe with each other. Not laughing says distance or threat.

Humor enforces boundaries. Mockery lowers the status of outsiders. In-jokes strengthen insiders. Satire polices hypocrisy inside the group while preserving cohesion. That is why groups tolerate comedians longer than critics.

The reason jokes feel risky is that they are. A failed joke misreads the alliance map. It signals the wrong loyalties or the wrong hierarchy and costs status immediately.

This also explains why elites and dissidents laugh at different things. Each coalition has different sacred values. Humor that violates a sacred value reads as betrayal, not wit.

Humor is social radar. It maps who is with you, who is against you, and who is pretending.

Posted in Affirmative Action, Humor | Comments Off on Decoding Funny

Why Do Elites Keep Predicting The Death Of Fundamentalism?

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Luke Ford

Everybody has a hero system, and just because you think this other hero system is outdated does not mean it will fade away any time soon.

As the decades go by, the masses keep clinging to their guns and to their religion and to their tobacco and to their unruly ways no matter how much the elites try to bully, badger and educate them.

Academic and elite institutions sit inside high-status, high-mobility coalitions. Their daily experience is with people who benefit from porous boundaries, credentialism, and abstract norms. Alliance Theory predicts that groups like this will overgeneralize from their own incentives. From their vantage point, religion looks like a belief system. When belief systems lose empirical credibility, elites expect them to dissolve. That is the category error.

Fundamentalism is not primarily a truth claim. It is an alliance architecture. Religious fundamentalism excels at three things modern elites systematically undervalue. First, it creates hard boundaries. Clear in-group and out-group distinctions reduce coordination costs and betrayal risk. Second, it enforces transitivity. Allies share the same friends and the same enemies. This produces trust and predictability. Third, it guarantees interdependence. Members rely on one another for marriage markets, childcare, economic support, and moral defense.

None of these functions depend on modernity, education, or scientific literacy. They depend on social insecurity and rival pressure.

When life gets tough, you really need a strong in-group. Fundamentalists take care of each other. For example, compare the level of sacrifice that Orthodox Jews make for each other compared to less religious Jews. There’s no comparison in the intensity of communal living.

Modernity increases the demand for closed alliances. Elites assume modernization dissolves fundamentalism. Alliance Theory predicts the opposite under many conditions. As societies become more mobile, anonymous, and competitive, informal trust collapses. Individuals lose thick community ties and are exposed to status volatility. Closed alliances thrive in exactly this environment because they offer certainty, protection, and belonging.

Modernity erodes weak identities first. Strong, boundary-enforced identities persist.

Academics are trained to analyze doctrines. They ask whether beliefs are true, coherent, or compatible with science. Fundamentalist communities care far less about belief accuracy than belief loyalty. Doctrines function as loyalty tests. Their implausibility is a feature. Costly belief signals separate true allies from casual participants. Alliance Theory predicts that the harder a belief is to accept publicly, the stronger the signal it sends. Elites miss this because their own alliances rely on credentials and reputational signaling, not sacrificial belief.

Elite moral frameworks emphasize universalism, individual autonomy, and tolerance. These norms facilitate coordination across diverse populations but weaken local cohesion. Fundamentalism rejects universalism in favor of particularism. Loyalty is owed to the group, not humanity. Alliance Theory predicts this tradeoff. You cannot maximize openness and boundary enforcement at the same time.

When elites push universalist norms aggressively, they unintentionally strengthen fundamentalist alliances by clarifying the rival.

From the elite perspective, fundamentalism keeps resurfacing because it never left. It recedes only when rival pressure is low and economic security is high.

When conditions deteriorate or elites push rapid cultural change, fundamentalist alliances reactivate. They provide ready-made coordination in moments of uncertainty. That is why they often surge during crises, migration shocks, or moral upheaval.

Elites often believe secular ideologies will replace religion. Alliance Theory says they already have. Secular ideologies function the same way. They enforce loyalty, define enemies, moralize dissent, and reward conformity. What elites fail to see is that fundamentalism competes well against secular ideologies because it offers thicker interdependence and clearer exit costs.

Here is why fundamentalism surprises elites every time: Elites expect persuasion to work. Fundamentalism is not designed to be persuaded. It is designed to persist. Elites expect beliefs to update with evidence. Fundamentalism updates alliances, not propositions. Elites expect openness to win. Closed alliances often outperform open ones under pressure.

The enduring error is mistaking alliance behavior for belief error. Fundamentalists are not behind history. They are playing a different coordination game. Alliance Theorypredicts they will continue to surprise elites as long as elites keep confusing modernity with social stability.

Religious fundamentalism is not a failure of enlightenment. It is a success of alliance engineering. Modernity does not dissolve it. In many environments, modernity selects for it. Until elites understand that fundamentalism is about who protects whom rather than who believes what, they will keep being shocked by something that is doing exactly what it evolved to do.

Yes. It adds something real. The core contribution is reframing elite surprise as a status-preserving maneuver, not an analytic failure. Below is a tightened, sharper version that keeps what works and removes drift.

The recurring elite shock that religious fundamentalism refuses to disappear is not a forecasting error. It is an alliance error.

Under David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory, beliefs are not neutral descriptions of reality. They function as scouts for alliance interests. The academic and media elite belong to a meritocratic-secular alliance whose identity is built around what Charles Taylor called the buffered self: an identity insulated from the supernatural and from thick communal authority.

For this alliance, the “disappearance of fundamentalism” is not a sociological hypothesis. It is a status claim. Declaring fundamentalism obsolete signals that the secular elite represents the future and that rival forms of life are remnants of a past already judged and surpassed. To concede that fundamentalism remains durable or ascendant would be to admit that a rival alliance organized around traditional authority and the porous self is not backward but competitive.

Elite surprise performs reputational work. When movements such as Orthodox Judaism or Pentecostal Christianity expand, elites frame them as “backlash,” “reaction,” or “pathology.” This language demotes the rival’s success by redefining it as deviation rather than adaptation. History is preserved as a one-way escalator with the elite safely riding upward.

This is where strategic ignorance enters. To understand fundamentalism as an alliance technology would force elites to acknowledge its internal coherence and fitness. Instead, they sustain a myth of irrationality. Fundamentalism is described as psychological deficiency, economic desperation, or false consciousness. This keeps elite followers loyal by implying that only the enlightened coalition understands reality.

Expertise plays a key role in enforcing this blindness. Figures such as Marc B. Shapiro and Stephen Turner are useful precisely because they expose how “expert models” often function less as neutral maps and more as boundary maintenance for the dominant alliance. When experts are surprised, it is usually because their frameworks were designed to reassure allies, not to measure enemies.

From an alliance perspective, fundamentalists are not confused by modernity. They reject it because modern rules were written by a rival coalition to ensure their loss. Their persistence is not defiance of progress. It is rational coordination under pressure.

The elite error is mistaking alliance competition for belief error. Fundamentalism keeps “surprising” elites because elites keep insisting it is about wrong ideas rather than about who protects whom.

Once you see that, the surprise disappears.

Religious fundamentalists keep getting their own predictions wrong too and yet they keep on trucking. Fundamentalists are not failing when their predictions are wrong. They are succeeding at something else. From an alliance perspective, prophecy is not a forecast. It is a coordination device.

Religious fundamentalist predictions do three things regardless of accuracy. First, they intensify boundary enforcement. Failed prophecies sort true believers from casuals. Those who stay after disconfirmation demonstrate costly loyalty. Alliance Theory predicts this. Beliefs that are falsified but retained are among the strongest loyalty signals available. Second, prediction failure increases interdependence. When the outside world mocks or attacks a failed prophecy, members turn inward. Exit becomes socially expensive. The group tightens. This is why failed end-times movements often grow more cohesive, not less. Third, failure reframes the world as hostile. Wrong predictions are reinterpreted as tests, persecution, or spiritual warfare. This converts embarrassment into meaning. The alliance gains a shared narrative of endurance rather than collapse.

Elites assume belief revision is the goal. It is not. Survival is the goal.

Fundamentalists are not running Bayesian updates. They are running retention protocols.

Prediction error does not threaten the alliance unless it undermines trust in leadership. And even then, leadership failure is often blamed on human weakness, not the structure itself. The doctrine remains intact. The coordinator is swapped.

This is why fundamentalism “keeps going” while elite ideologies fracture under error. Elite coalitions tie legitimacy to predictive accuracy and moral consistency. Fundamentalist coalitions tie legitimacy to loyalty, sacrifice, and shared identity.

When elite models fail, elites defect.
When fundamentalist models fail, fundamentalists double down.

That is not irrationality. It is a different fitness function.

Once you stop treating prophecy as epistemology and start treating it as alliance maintenance, the resilience stops being mysterious.

The reason elites are perpetually “surprised” by this persistence is that they operate under the “myth of rationality.” They believe that once a fact is disproven, the belief should dissolve. But as Stephen Turner might argue, “expertise” in sociology often fails to account for the raw power of social coordination. The fundamentalist does not follow the prediction; he follows the prophet because the prophet provides him with an alliance that offers more status, community, and meaning than the “buffered” and isolated life of the modern secular world.

To keep the alliance intact, the group must lower the status of the “evidence” provided by the physical world. This is where the concept of the “porous self” or the “spiritualized” interpretation comes in. If the Messiah did not arrive physically, the leadership may claim he arrived “spiritually” or that the group’s intense prayer actually stayed the hand of God.

This maneuver shifts the goalposts from a falsifiable claim to an unfalsifiable one. In Alliance Theory terms, this is a “propagandistic tactic.” It allows the group to claim victory (their prayers worked) while simultaneously reinforcing the “friend/enemy” distinction by mocking the secular “experts” who are too spiritually blind to see the invisible miracle.

New members serve as “social proof” that the alliance is still a winning team, which reduces the “cognitive dissonance” of the original members.

I love this new book, End of Days: Ruby Ridge, the Apocalypse, and the Unmaking of America by Chris Jennings, but I wish the author had read Hugo Mercier’s Not Born Yesterday. Religious fundies don’t believe in the end of the world and the Illuminati and QAnon in the same way they believe they need to show up to work to do their job to get a paycheck. I wish Chris Jennings understood that people did not evolve to be gullible with their vital interests and that stated beliefs are largely about signalling and forming alliances rather than epistemic claims. We are not obligated to take people at face value. Just because someone says, for example, that Jews are responsible for all the wars does not mean that they want to put Jews in gas chambers. They might just be trying to get a rise out of their audience or to blow off steam.

In Not Born Yesterday, Mercier argues that humans possess “open vigilance” rather than blind gullibility. We do not simply “soak up” dangerous ideas; we selectively adopt them. When Chris Jennings tracks the tragic trajectory of Ruby Ridge or apocalyptic cults, he often treats the participants as victims of a “contagion” of ideas. But as you noted, these individuals almost never apply that same “apocalyptic” logic to their “vital interests,” like ensuring their kids are fed or that their physical perimeter is secure.

The Alliance Theory perspective clarifies this discrepancy by categorizing these beliefs as “high-cost signals” rather than “epistemic maps.”

If a fundamentalist truly believed the world would end on Tuesday, they would not schedule a dental appointment for Wednesday. The fact that they do suggests a cognitive partitioning. Practical reality—the world of paychecks and physics—requires accurate “epistemic” beliefs because the costs of being wrong are immediate and physical. Symbolic reality—the world of QAnon, the Illuminati, or the Apocalypse—functions on a different plane. In this realm, the “truth” of the claim is secondary to its utility as a boundary marker.

By professing a belief that sounds “crazy” to an outsider, the individual provides a “proof of work” to their alliance. It is a way of saying, “I am so committed to this group that I am willing to incur the social cost of looking foolish to the elite secular alliance.” This is not gullibility; it is a calculated trade of external status for internal protection and belonging.

Jennings and other historians often fall into the trap of thinking that charismatic leaders “brainwash” followers. Mercier’s research suggests this is a myth. People follow charismatic leaders because those leaders offer a compelling “coordination point” for an alliance. The followers are not “dupes” who believe every word; they are “investors” who see the leader as the best vehicle for their collective interests.

The “End of Days” narrative is particularly effective here because it creates an ultimate “friend/enemy” distinction. If the world is ending and the Illuminati are in control, then the existing “rules” of the elite alliance are void. This provides a moral justification for the fundamentalist to stop seeking status within the mainstream system and to start building a rival power structure. It is a strategic exit from a game they feel they are losing.

This is where Stephen Turner’s critiques of expertise come back into play. The “expert” view—represented by authors like Jennings—often assumes that if people are given “better facts,” they will abandon their “irrational” beliefs. This assumes the fundamentalist is trying to solve an information problem. But the fundamentalist is actually solving a “belonging” problem.

The “epistemic” error is not on the part of the fundamentalist, but on the part of the observer who mistakes a battle flag for a laboratory report. When a group at Ruby Ridge or in a QAnon forum adopts a wild theory, they are not failing to be vigilant; they are being hyper-vigilant about their social standing within their chosen tribe. They are choosing the alliance that offers them the most “protection” against a modern world that they perceive as hostile or indifferent.

Hugo Mercier argues that we often mistake “reflexive beliefs”—statements people make to signal identity or affect an audience—for “intuitive beliefs,” which are the deeply held convictions that actually guide behavior. When a fundamentalist or a provocateur makes a radical claim, the elite alliance tends to treat it as a literal roadmap for future action. Alliance Theory, however, suggests the statement often serves as a “flame-throwing” device designed to incinerate any bridge back to the rival alliance.

By making an extreme or “taboo” statement, an individual creates a “burning of the boats.” If I say something that makes me persona non grata in polite society, I have signaled to my own alliance that I have nowhere else to go. I am now fully dependent on the group for my status and protection. As you noted, this is often about “getting a rise” or “blowing off steam,” which are social maneuvers, not military ones. The “epistemic” content of the statement is often irrelevant; the “social cost” of the statement is the point.

Chris Jennings and other mainstream historians often engage in what we might call “moral over-interpretation.” They see a radical statement and immediately extrapolate it to its most violent logical conclusion. They assume that a belief in “The End of Days” must lead to a desire for total destruction. But humans are strategically inconsistent. We are capable of “compartmentalizing” our symbolic alliances away from our vital interests.

The “expert” who takes every radical statement at face value is actually falling for a specific kind of propaganda. They are playing into the provocateur’s hands by granting the statement more power and “seriousness” than it may actually hold within the speaker’s own life. This creates a feedback loop where the elite’s “horror” becomes the very “payoff” the speaker was looking for to satisfy their audience.

In many of these fundamentalist or fringe circles, the “truth” of a claim is secondary to its “impact.” If a statement about “the Jews” or “the Illuminati” successfully triggers a massive reaction from the “New York Times alliance,” the speaker has successfully “lowered the status” of the enemy by showing they can be easily manipulated or provoked.

Low-cost signaling: Posting a meme or making a wild claim costs nothing but gains immediate “clout” within a specific subculture.

Vital interest protection: The same person will still pay their taxes and follow traffic laws because the costs of “rebelling” against those systems are physical and immediate.

By ignoring this distinction, authors like Jennings miss the “evolutionary vigilance” that Mercier describes. People are very good at not letting their “crazy” ideas interfere with their “paycheck” reality. They treat the apocalypse as a hobby or a social club, not as a business plan.

Carl Schmitt provides the final piece of this puzzle because he identifies the core of political life not as a set of rules or debates, but as the high-stakes distinction between friend and enemy. When a provocateur makes a statement designed to “get a rise” out of people, they are essentially performing a “Schmittian” maneuver. They are drawing a line in the sand to force a moment of decision. By choosing a taboo that they know will provoke the secular or elite alliance, they create a clear, visible boundary.

Anyone who joins in the laughter or the “steam-blowing” signals themselves as a friend. Anyone who reacts with moral outrage or calls for a “cancellation” identifies themselves as the enemy. The content of the statement matters much less than its ability to act as a sorting mechanism.

This is why “taking people at face value” is often a category error. If you treat a symbolic provocation as a literal policy proposal, you are analyzing a “theological” or “social” act as if it were a “technical” one. Hugo Mercier would argue that our “open vigilance” allows us to see through these maneuvers. We intuitively know when someone is “talking trash” to build solidarity and when they are actually preparing for a physical fight. The establishment elite, however, often lose this intuition because their own alliance is built on the idea that words are “technical” tools for management and expertise. They forget that for much of the world, words are weapons used for “status-lowering” and “alliance-building.”

When a fundamentalist talks about the Illuminati, they are often engaging in what Stephen Turner might call a “critique of expertise” by other means. They are saying that the “official” version of reality is a lie maintained by a rival alliance. This doesn’t mean they have a coherent alternative map of the world. It means they are rejecting the authority of the mapmaker. They continue to go to work and collect their paychecks because they are still participants in the physical economy, but they have emotionally and socially emigrated to a different “political” territory. They are “buffered” against the influence of the mainstream, even if they are not yet “porous” enough to actually believe the sky is falling.

This gap between rhetoric and action is the ultimate proof of Mercier’s thesis. We are not born yesterday; we are born to navigate complex social hierarchies. The “crazy” belief is often the most rational way to survive in a community that feels under siege by a distant and “expert” elite. It is a way of saying “I am one of you” in a language the enemy cannot speak and refuses to understand.

Gemini says: Modern political trolling represents the ultimate expression of Carl Schmitt’s “friend/enemy” distinction in a digital environment. Under Alliance Theory, a troll does not seek to persuade a rival; a troll seeks to consolidate an alliance by making the distinction between “us” and “them” as painful and obvious as possible. By using aggression, humor, and deception, the troll creates a “Schmittian moment” where the bystander must choose a side.

One of the most effective tools for the modern troll is “plausible deniability.” As recent diplomatic and political studies show, leaders and digital actors use trolling to take maximalist positions while remaining able to retreat by claiming the comment was “just a joke.” This creates a “strategic ambiguity” that is highly effective for alliance coordination.

Identification: Trolling signals ideological consistency to a domestic audience. It says, “I am willing to break the norms of the polite elite alliance on your behalf.”

Delegitimization: By mocking an out-group, the troll lowers the status of the rival alliance. If the rival reacts with fury, they appear humorless and easily manipulated; if they do not react, they appear weak.

(Dis)ordering: Trolling corrodes the established “rules” of the liberal international order, replacing them with a system based on raw power and tribal loyalty.

Contrary to the view that trolling is just random anger, it often functions as a highly organized “culture of production.” In places like the Philippines or Russia, trolling is a professional industry with established hierarchies. These “troll farms” use “open vigilance” mechanics against their targets. They don’t just spread lies; they “prime” audiences to perceive future events through a specific, polarized lens. They strengthen the existing signals within a network, ensuring that the alliance members stay focused on the “enemy” rather than on internal contradictions.

Hugo Mercier’s theory suggests that we share “interesting-if-true” news because the reputational payoff for being the first to share a provocative idea often outweighs the cost of being wrong—especially if you are sharing it within a “congruent” political group. Trolling exploits this. The “lulz” (laughs) act as a reward for members of the alliance, creating a shared emotional experience that bonds the “friends” together against the “enemy.”

The elite alliance often views this as “misinformation” or “irrationality.” But for the troll and their audience, it is a perfectly rational way to maximize their social status within their own camp while simultaneously making life difficult for a rival that they believe holds too much institutional power. They are not trying to find the truth; they are trying to find each other.

ChatGPT says: Chris Jennings’s End of Days treats apocalyptic belief too literally. He assumes people relate to end-times narratives the way they relate to instrumental beliefs, like knowing how to do a job or pay rent. That is the mistake Hugo Mercier dismantles in Not Born Yesterday.

Humans did not evolve to be gullible about their vital interests. We are selectively credulous. We scrutinize claims that affect survival, income, and immediate risk. We are relaxed, playful, or performative with claims that function socially.

Apocalyptic talk lives in the second category.

Religious fundamentalists do not “believe” in the end of the world the way they believe the bridge will hold or the paycheck will clear. End-times language is not an epistemic commitment. It is a signaling system. It marks identity, loyalty, grievance, and readiness. Alliance Theory predicts this. Beliefs often function as badges, not maps.

That is why failed prophecies do not collapse these movements. They were never forecasts in the first place. They were coordination rituals. They sorted insiders from outsiders, dramatized moral urgency, and intensified group cohesion. From an alliance perspective, they worked.

This is where Mercier matters. Humans reason socially. We use claims to persuade, provoke, bond, and posture. Taking every stated belief at face value is a category error. We are not obligated to pretend people mean every utterance literally.

That matters politically and morally.

When someone says “the Illuminati run everything” or “Jews are behind all the wars,” that does not automatically mean genocidal intent. Sometimes it is rage-venting. Sometimes it is boundary signaling. Sometimes it is an attempt to shock, amuse, or gain status within a peer group. Sometimes it is stupid. But stupidity is not the same as homicidal commitment.

Elites routinely collapse expressive belief into literal intent. That is a failure of social cognition. It leads to inflated threat perception, moral panic, and overreaction. It also obscures real danger, because genuinely instrumental violent planning looks very different from expressive nonsense.

Jennings’s book is strong on atmosphere and history, but weak on cognitive ecology. He treats belief as something people “fall into” rather than something they use. That leads him to overestimate credulity and underestimate agency.

Fundamentalists are not naive children hypnotized by bad ideas. They are adults using narratives to coordinate, posture, and survive inside rivalrous social worlds.

Once you see that, two things become true at once.

One, you stop romanticizing or pathologizing them.
Two, you stop taking their rhetoric more seriously than they do themselves.

That is the Mercier correction. And it would have made End of Days a sharper, more honest book.

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