In tonight’s Substack Live, I explored the psychological foundations of our post-truth moment—why intelligent people systematically abandon rational analysis when their tribal identity is threatened. Using the example of my former colleague who could look at Trump’s incoherent UN speech and America’s documented diplomatic collapse and conclude the opposite of what the evidence shows, we examined how tribal belonging provides psychological needs that truth-seeking cannot fulfill: immediate validation, cognitive efficiency, and social insurance against the risks of independent judgment.
The most unsettling insight was recognizing that many Republicans privately acknowledge Trump’s obvious cognitive decline but publicly perform loyalty because breaking tribal commitment threatens relationships that provide identity and meaning. This isn’t stupidity but systematic reality inversion—people choose community over accuracy because community serves deeper psychological needs than rational argument can address.
We ended by discussing why purely rational approaches to political persuasion fail and why democratic culture requires building alternative communities organized around truth-seeking rather than tribal loyalty. The challenge isn’t just preserving institutions but preserving the cognitive and social infrastructure that makes democratic reasoning possible when tribal manipulation becomes the dominant form of political organization.
