The Lucas Bean Show

Before the age of 11, the human brain cannot think abstractly.

It processes the world the only way it knows how. In concrete terms.

One cause. One villain. One answer. That is not a limitation of intelligence. It is a stage of cognitive development. The brain has not yet built the wiring to hold two competing ideas at the same time, evaluate both, and sit with the discomfort of not knowing which one is right.

Most people grow out of this stage.

But most people aren’t MAGA.

Psychologists call it construal level theory. It describes how the brain shifts between two modes of thinking. Abstract and concrete. Abstract thinking means seeing systems. It means understanding that a problem might have more than one cause, more than one solution, and that the answer might be complicated enough to make you uncomfortable. Concrete thinking is the opposite. One input. One output. One enemy to blame.

In 2012, psychologist Jamie Luguri at Yale University applied construal level theory to political attitudes. He wanted to know what happens to political beliefs when you force someone to shift from concrete thinking to abstract thinking.

What he found should end the debate about MAGA forever.

When conservatives were thinking concretely, which is their default, they were significantly more intolerant than liberals. More tribal. More hostile to anyone outside their group. Specifically toward gay men, lesbians, Muslims, and atheists. Anyone who deviated from their worldview was a target.

But when researchers shifted those same conservatives into abstract thinking, the intolerance disappeared. Political orientation stopped predicting prejudice.

Read that again.

The bigotry was not a value. It was not a deeply held moral conviction. It was not something they inherited from their faith or their family or their flag. It was a cognitive setting. And it only existed when their brain was processing the world the way a child does.

That finding alone should reframe every political argument you have ever had with a Trump supporter. You were not arguing against a belief system. You were arguing against a brain that had not shifted out of first gear.

And here is the part nobody wants to say out loud.

They do not shift on their own.

In the study, the only reason conservatives started thinking abstractly is because researchers forced them into it. Without that external push, they stayed in concrete mode. Not because they were incapable. The study proved they were fully capable. They stayed because concrete thinking is easier. It is faster. It is more comfortable. And nobody in their life is asking them to do anything different.

They are lazy thinkers.

That is not an insult. It is a description of a measurable cognitive default. They have access to abstract thinking and they do not use it. They default to the simplest processing mode the brain has available and they stay there. Permanently.

Now look at what that means for propaganda.

“The immigrants are destroying this country.” That is a concrete sentence. One cause. One villain. No complexity. No context. No competing variables. A 10 year old could process it. That is the point.

“Immigration is a policy issue shaped by economics, labor markets, foreign policy, and humanitarian law.” That is an abstract sentence. It requires holding multiple inputs. It requires tolerating the discomfort of not having a simple answer. A concrete thinker does not engage with that sentence. A concrete thinker runs from it.

Trump speaks exclusively in concrete. Every sentence. Every rally. Every Truth Social post. One enemy. One solution. One leader. He is speaking to adults the way you speak to children. And they love him for it. Because he is the first political figure who makes the world as simple as their brain needs it to be.

He is not persuading them. He is matching their cognitive level. And that is far more dangerous than persuasion. Because persuasion can be countered with better arguments. But you cannot argue someone out of a developmental default they refuse to leave.

This is what makes MAGA different from every other political movement. It is not a party. It is not an ideology. It is a cognitive mode. And everyone trapped inside it has the ability to get out.

They would rather be told what to think than do the work of thinking for themselves. That is not a political party. That is a cognitive disability.

Sources

Luguri, J. B., Napier, J. L., & Dovidio, J. F. (2012). Reconstruing intolerance: Abstract thinking reduces conservatives’ prejudice against nonnormative groups. Psychological Science, 23(7), 756-763.

Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2010). Construal-level theory of psychological distance. Psychological Review, 117(2), 440-463.

Piaget, J. (1952). The Origins of Intelligence in Children. International Universities Press.

Why MAGA has a very hard time shifting from Concrete thinking to Abstract thinking. 

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If you watched the video, you already know what the scapegoat mechanism is and why it explains the Trump administration’s obsession with Anthony Fauci better than any political explanation ever will. This Substack goes deeper into the research, the timeline, and why a man who advised six presidents on infectious disease became the most hated person in the Republican Party for doing his job.

The Diary

On July 27, 2026, Senator Rand Paul released over a thousand pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s personal diary entries from December 2019 through December 2022. Paul framed the release as evidence that Fauci’s private views contradicted his public statements. He posted the entries on X under the heading “Tony’s Diary” and made them available through his committee reading room as part of his ongoing investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

The diary revealed a scientist wrestling with a crisis in real time. Fauci wrote about disagreements with Trump over hydroxychloroquine. He wrote about his frustration with the administration’s tendency to minimize the threat. He wrote about his own sudden celebrity and the strange experience of becoming the most recognized public health official in American history.

What the diary did not reveal is any evidence that Fauci covered up the origins of COVID-19, lied to the public about gain-of-function research, or conspired to suppress information about a lab leak. STAT News reported that the documents “offer no proof that the pandemic originated from a lab or that Fauci or any other officials worked to cover it up.” NPR confirmed the same. Virologist Robert Garry at Tulane University stated that there is “no actual evidence” for a connection between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the start of the pandemic.

None of this matters to the people who want Fauci destroyed. And there is a psychological reason for that.

The Scapegoat Mechanism

René Girard was a French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science who spent most of his career at Stanford University. In 1972, he published “Violence and the Sacred,” a work that introduced his theory of the scapegoat mechanism to the academic world and fundamentally changed the study of collective violence.

Girard’s central insight is that human communities resolve internal conflict through a specific, recurring pattern. When a group is in crisis, when tensions are rising and the group is at risk of tearing itself apart, the group unconsciously converges on a single individual or minority group to blame. All of the group’s anxiety, guilt, shame, and aggression is projected onto this target. The target is then punished, expelled, or destroyed. And the act of collective punishment temporarily restores order and unity to the group.

The critical feature of the scapegoat mechanism is that the target does not need to be guilty. The target is not chosen because of evidence. The target is chosen because the group needs someone to carry what it cannot carry itself. The scapegoat absorbs the sins of the community so the community never has to examine its own.

Girard found that the scapegoat mechanism operates most powerfully when the group is unable or unwilling to confront the real source of the crisis. If the real source is too powerful, too diffuse, or too implicating of the group itself, the group will find a substitute. Someone close enough to the crisis to be plausible but vulnerable enough to be punished without consequence.

Anthony Fauci is that substitute.

The Real Source of the Crisis

Over one million Americans died from COVID-19. That is the crisis. And the real source of that crisis is not difficult to identify.

In 2018, the Trump administration disbanded the National Security Council’s global health security team, a unit specifically created to prepare for pandemics. John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, eliminated the directorate as part of a broader reorganization. Beth Cameron, who had led the unit under Obama, warned publicly that the move left the country vulnerable.

In January 2020, as reports of a novel coronavirus emerged from China, Trump was briefed multiple times on the threat. He publicly downplayed it. On January 22, he told CNBC, “We have it totally under control.” On February 26, he said, “Within a couple of days, it is going to be down to close to zero.” On February 28, he called it a “hoax” at a rally. On March 10, he told reporters, “Just stay calm. It will go away.”

It did not go away. By mid-March, the country was in crisis. And Trump’s response to that crisis became a catalogue of public health failures.

He promoted hydroxychloroquine as a “game changer” despite no evidence that it was effective against COVID-19. His own scientists told him this. Fauci told him directly in a White House meeting. Fauci wrote in his diary: “I took a deep breath and said that this was wrong and should not be done.” Trump promoted it anyway, including tweeting to 84 million followers that it could be “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.”

He suggested that injecting disinfectant might kill the virus. On April 23, 2020, during a nationally televised briefing, Trump asked whether there was a way to bring “light inside the body” or inject “disinfectant” to clean the lungs. Poison control centers across the country reported spikes in calls.

He turned masks into a partisan statement. When the CDC recommended mask-wearing, Trump refused to wear one publicly for months. His supporters followed. Masks became a symbol of political identity rather than a public health measure.

He held rallies during the pandemic. Large indoor gatherings with no social distancing and no mask requirements, directly contradicting the guidance of his own public health officials.

He pressured states to reopen before their case counts had declined. He publicly attacked governors who maintained restrictions. He tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” and “LIBERATE MINNESOTA” in April 2020, encouraging protests against lockdown measures.

The result was catastrophic. The United States, with roughly four percent of the world’s population, suffered approximately twenty percent of the world’s COVID deaths during the first year of the pandemic.

That is the real source of the crisis. And the Trump administration cannot face it. So they found a scapegoat.

Why Fauci

Girard wrote that the scapegoat must have a specific relationship to the crisis. The target must be close enough to the events to be plausible but vulnerable enough to be punished. The target must also be different from the group in some identifiable way. Girard called these “marks of the victim” and found that scapegoats throughout history share common characteristics: they are outsiders, intellectuals, minorities, or individuals who hold positions that make them visible but not powerful enough to fight back.

Fauci fits every criterion.

He was the most visible scientist in the country during the pandemic. His face was on television every night. He became the public embodiment of the COVID response, even though he had no authority to set policy, close businesses, or mandate anything. He was an adviser. He gave recommendations. The decisions were made by elected officials.

He was an intellectual in an anti-intellectual movement. He spoke in the language of science: data, evidence, clinical trials, peer review. That language was incomprehensible and threatening to a political base that had been told for years that experts are the enemy.

He disagreed with Trump. Publicly. Repeatedly. On hydroxychloroquine. On the timeline for the virus disappearing. On masks. On reopening. In an interview, Fauci later said: “I couldn’t stand there and be complicit in saying hydroxychloroquine works when it doesn’t, bleach works when it doesn’t, the virus is going to go away like magic when it’s not.” He acknowledged that his public disagreements created “a growing enmity” from Trump and his allies. He did not back down. “In order to maintain my own scientific and personal integrity, and most importantly, fulfill my responsibility to the American public, I had to do that.”

For a narcissist who cannot tolerate being contradicted, that was the unforgivable sin. Fauci told the truth when Trump was lying. And the truth made Trump look incompetent. So Fauci had to be destroyed.

The Punishment

The punishment has been relentless and escalating.

During the pandemic, Fauci and his family received constant death threats. His three daughters, living in three separate cities, were harassed at their jobs and at home. Fauci was forced to hire a security detail for his family. Someone sent him a letter filled with an unknown powder. He described the moment: “I just looked at it all over me and said, ‘What do I do?’ The security detail was there and they said, ‘Don’t move, stay in the room.’ And they got the hazmat people.” The powder turned out to be harmless. But Fauci acknowledged the fear: “It was frightening.”

In 2022, a West Virginia man was sentenced to three years in federal prison for sending threatening messages to Fauci, including one telling the scientist he would be “hunted, captured, tortured and killed.”

Fauci said the death threats spike every time a Republican lawmaker or conservative media personality attacks him. He specifically cited Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene saying on the House floor that he should be “prosecuted for crimes against humanity.” Fauci told CNN: “When you have performances like that, those are the kinds of things that drive up the death threats because there are a segment of the population out there that believe that kind of nonsense.”

In 2025, Trump pulled Fauci’s government-funded security detail, leaving a man who had received death threats for five years without the protection that the federal government had determined he needed.

In September 2025, Rand Paul issued a formal letter to Fauci accusing him of directing NIH employees to destroy federal records and claiming the evidence contradicted his previous congressional testimony. Paul invited Fauci to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

In July 2026, Paul released Fauci’s diary. The diary contained nothing that supported Paul’s claims. Fauci is scheduled to testify on July 30, 2026.

The investigation has produced no evidence of wrongdoing. The diary has produced no evidence of a cover-up. Virologists have confirmed there is no proven link between NIH-funded research and the origin of the pandemic. And the investigation continues.

Because the investigation was never about evidence. It was about the scapegoat.

The Function

Girard found that scapegoating serves a specific psychological and social function. It allows the group to experience catharsis without self-examination. The group’s failures are transferred to the scapegoat. The scapegoat is punished. And the group walks away feeling that justice has been done, without ever confronting its own role in the crisis.

Dr. Fauci said get vaccinated. Republicans said no.

Dr. Fauci said wear masks. Republicans said no.

Dr. Fauci said socially distance. Republicans said no.

A million Americans died. Republicans said prosecute Fauci.

That is the scapegoat mechanism operating at national scale. The people who rejected every public health measure, who turned masks into a culture war, who protested lockdowns, who spread misinformation about vaccines, who held rallies during a pandemic, who elected a president who told them to inject bleach, are now prosecuting the scientist who tried to save their lives.

They are not doing this because the evidence supports it. They are doing it because a million people died and the people responsible cannot look in the mirror.

Fauci is not being investigated because he did something wrong. He is being investigated because he did something unforgivable in the eyes of a narcissist and the cult that worships him.

He told the truth.

Sources

Girard, R. (1972). “Violence and the Sacred.” Johns Hopkins University Press.

Girard, R. (1986). “The Scapegoat.” Johns Hopkins University Press.

STAT News (2026). “Anthony Fauci Senate Testimony: New Peril on Old Covid Questions.” July 28, 2026.

NPR (2026). “Rand Paul Releases Anthony Fauci’s Pandemic-Era Diary Notes. Here’s What They Tell Us.” July 27, 2026.

Washington Post (2026). “Fauci’s Diary Released, Revealing His Thoughts on Fame and ‘Rambling’ Trump.” July 28, 2026.

Newsweek (2026). “Fauci to Testify About COVID Pandemic: What His Diaries Reveal.” July 28, 2026.

Forbes (2021). “’It Wasn’t Just Hydroxychloroquine’: Fauci Says Trump’s Covid Response Was Based on Anecdotal Evidence.” January 26, 2021.

ABC News (2020). “Tracking Trump and Fauci’s Tense Relationship.” July 16, 2020.

ABC News (2020). “Timeline: Tracking Trump Alongside Scientific Developments on Hydroxychloroquine.” August 9, 2020.

NPR (2020). “Fauci Reveals He Has Received Death Threats and His Daughters Have Been Harassed.” August 5, 2020.

NBC News/Today (2021). “Dr. Fauci Describes Death Threats and Opening ‘Disturbing’ Letter Filled with Powder.” January 25, 2021.

CNN (2020). “Dr. Fauci Says His Daughters Need Security as Family Continues to Get Death Threats.” August 5, 2020.

Yahoo News (2025). “Trump Pulls Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Security Detail.”

Paul, R. (2025). Letter to Dr. Anthony Fauci, September 9, 2025, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Cameron, B. (2020). “I Ran the White House Pandemic Office. Trump Closed It.” Washington Post, March 13, 2020.

Trump is obsessed with Dr. Fauci because a million Americans died and the people responsible need someone else to blame.

Philosopher René Girard called this the scapegoat mechanism. When a group cannot face its own failure it finds one person to carry all the blame. Fauci said get vaccinated, wear masks, socially distance. Republicans said no to all of it. A million people died. Now they want to prosecute the one person who tried to save them. The diary proved nothing. No investigation has produced evidence of wrongdoing. It does not matter. The scapegoat is never chosen because of evidence. The scapegoat is chosen because the group needs someone to carry what they cannot carry themselves.

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During World War II, the United States government did something that most Americans have never heard of. They did not just fight Hitler. They studied him. They wanted to understand exactly how his propaganda worked so they could beat it.

In 1943, the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime intelligence agency that would later become the CIA, commissioned psychoanalyst Walter Langer to build a psychological profile of Adolf Hitler. The report was classified for decades. When it was finally declassified, what it contained was not just a profile of one man. It was a playbook. Eight rules Hitler used to control an entire country through propaganda.

Every single one of those rules is backed by decades of modern psychological research. And every single one of them is being used right now.

Rule One: Never Allow the Public to Cool Off

Trump has created a new crisis every single week since he took office. Immigration. Tariffs. Greenland. Panama. Canada. There has not been a single week where Americans could sit down and process what just happened before the next explosion hit. This is not chaos. This is strategy.

Neuroscientist Geraint Rees at University College London scanned the brains of people with different political beliefs and found that conservatives have a larger, more reactive amygdala. The amygdala is the fear center of the brain. It processes fear, anxiety, and rage.

When the amygdala is activated, the prefrontal cortex shuts down. That is the part of the brain responsible for critical thinking, reasoning, and long-term decision making. The brain cannot do both at the same time. It cannot be afraid and think clearly at the same time.

If you keep the crises coming, you keep the amygdala firing. If you keep the amygdala firing, critical thinking never turns back on. A calm population is a thinking population. A thinking population is dangerous to a leader who cannot survive scrutiny. So the leader never lets them calm down.

Rule Two: Never Admit a Fault or Being Wrong

Trump has never apologized for anything in his entire political career. Not for mocking a disabled reporter. Not for calling veterans losers. Not for the Access Hollywood tape. Not for January 6th. Not once. Not ever.

This is not stubbornness. This is a psychological weapon.

Researcher Brené Brown at the University of Houston spent over two decades studying shame. She found that people with low shame resilience cannot separate a mistake from their identity. For these people, admitting they did something wrong does not feel like correcting an error. It feels like being exposed as worthless.

Trump’s followers have fused their identity with his. His wins are their wins. His losses are their losses. If Trump admits fault, his followers have to process what it means that they followed a man who was wrong. For people with low shame resilience, that does not feel like learning. It feels like dying. So Trump never admits fault. Not to protect himself. To protect the psychological structure his followers built around him. One apology and the entire thing cracks.

Rule Three: Never Concede That There May Be Some Good in Your Enemy

Every Democrat is evil. Every journalist is the enemy of the people. Every critic is human scum. Every Republican who breaks ranks is a traitor. There is no middle ground. There is no nuance. There is no acknowledgment that the other side might have a point about anything.

Psychologist Jacques-Philippe Leyens at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium studied what happens when one group stops seeing another group as fully human. He developed his theory after watching the Belgian public react to the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The press and the public showed far more concern for ten Belgian soldiers killed in the conflict than for 800,000 Rwandans who were slaughtered.

Leyens called this infrahumanization. The unconscious belief that your group experiences the full range of human emotions but the other group does not. They feel pain, but not the way we feel pain. They suffer, but not the way we suffer. They are human, but not as human as we are.

Once that switch flips, empathy becomes impossible. You cannot feel compassion for someone you do not see as fully human. And if you cannot feel compassion for them, you can justify anything you do to them. Trump does not just disagree with Democrats. He strips them of humanity. Vermin. Scum. Enemies from within. That language is not careless. That language is the prerequisite for everything that comes next.

Rule Four: Never Leave Room for Alternatives

There is only one man who can fix it. He said it himself. I alone can fix it. Not the party. Not the platform. Not the institutions. Him.

Psychologist Arie Kruglanski at the University of Maryland spent decades studying the need for cognitive closure. He found that some people have a powerful psychological need for definitive answers. They cannot tolerate ambiguity. They cannot sit with uncertainty. They need the story to be simple and the answer to be final.

Alternatives create ambiguity. If there are other leaders, other solutions, other approaches, then the follower has to evaluate, compare, and choose. That requires critical thinking. That requires tolerating uncertainty while they figure it out. A leader who eliminates all alternatives eliminates the need to think. There is one answer. There is one leader. There is one truth. For people with a high need for closure, that does not feel like authoritarianism. It feels like relief.

That is why every Republican alternative to Trump was destroyed. Not because they were wrong. Because their existence created ambiguity. And ambiguity is intolerable to people who need certainty to function.

Rule Five: Never Accept Blame

Everything that goes wrong is someone else’s fault. The Democrats. The deep state. Obama. Biden. China. The media. The judges. The prosecutors. Never him. Not once. Not ever.

Psychologist Ziva Kunda at the University of Waterloo studied how people process information that threatens their beliefs. She found that the brain does not evaluate evidence objectively. It evaluates evidence based on what conclusion the brain wants to reach.

She called this motivated reasoning.

If a person is motivated to believe Trump is right, their brain will process every piece of evidence through that filter. Good news is proof he is right. Bad news is proof someone is sabotaging him. Contradictory evidence is proof the conspiracy is bigger than they thought. If Trump never accepts blame, his followers never have to process blame. The mental model stays intact. The leader is perfect. The enemies are the problem. And the follower never has to face the terrifying possibility that they gave their loyalty to someone who did not deserve it.

Rule Six: Focus on One Enemy at a Time and Blame Them for Everything

Immigrants. That is the current enemy. Your job is gone because of immigrants. Your rent is too high because of immigrants. Your neighborhood is dangerous because of immigrants. Your kids’ schools are failing because of immigrants. One enemy. Every problem.

Psychologist Arie Kruglanski at the University of Maryland studied why ordinary people join extremist movements. He found that the primary driver is not ideology. It is the need to feel like your life matters. He called this significance quest theory.

When people feel invisible, unimportant, and irrelevant, they will grab onto anything that gives their suffering a cause and their life a mission. A single enemy does both. It explains why your life is hard and gives you someone to fight. Yesterday you were a guy with a dead-end job and no direction. Today you are a patriot defending your country from an invasion. You did not get a raise. You did not accomplish anything anyone noticed. But you are standing between America and the enemy at the gate. And that feels like purpose.

A scattered set of complex problems is impossible to fight. A single enemy is simple. Simple is satisfying. And satisfying is addictive.

Rule Seven: People Will Believe a Big Lie Sooner Than a Little One

The election was stolen. Not a small exaggeration. Not a spin on the numbers. A massive, total, complete fabrication that every court rejected, every audit disproved, and every election official including Republicans confirmed was false.

And tens of millions of people believe it anyway.

Psychologist Lee Ross at Stanford University studied what happens when a person forms a belief based on information that is later completely discredited. He found something terrifying. The belief survives. Even after the person is told the original information was false. Even after they are shown proof. Even after they accept intellectually that the information was made up.

Ross called this belief perseverance. The brain does not store beliefs like files that can be deleted. It builds a web of connections around each belief. Explanations. Justifications. Memories. Identities. By the time the original information is discredited, the web is already built. And the web does not collapse just because the foundation is removed.

A big lie works better than a small one because a big lie generates a bigger web. A small lie is a single claim that can be checked and dismissed. A big lie becomes a worldview. It reorganizes everything. It becomes the lens through which every piece of new information is filtered. The election was stolen is not a claim. It is an operating system. And you cannot uninstall an operating system by showing someone a fact.

Rule Eight: Repeat the Lie Often Enough and People Will Eventually Believe It

Trump said fake news over 2000 times in his first term alone. He said the election was stolen hundreds of times. Fox News repeated it. Newsmax repeated it. Right-wing podcasts repeated it. Truth Social repeated it. Every day. From every source his followers trust.

Psychiatrist Robert Lifton studied survivors of Chinese Communist brainwashing in 1961 and documented how cult leaders control whether their followers think at all. He called it thought stopping.

The human brain is always scanning for information that might threaten what it believes. Cult leaders pre-load a response inside the follower’s head. The second a threatening thought appears, a phrase fires automatically. And the brain shuts off before the thought can fully form.

Fake news. Witch hunt. Deep state. TDS.

These are not arguments. These are programmed responses. They were installed through repetition. Thousands of repetitions over years. Attached to fear and anger. Repeated until the brain does it automatically.

You spend hours building an argument. Gathering sources. Collecting evidence. Making your case. And a Trump supporter kills it in two words. Fake news. Before the thought even registers. It works because the follower has no idea it is happening to them. A Trump supporter genuinely believes they are thinking.

The Playbook Is Running

The United States government wrote this playbook down in 1943. Eight rules. Every single one backed by decades of modern psychological research. They wrote it so Americans would recognize it if it ever happened again.

It is happening again. And Stephen Miller is running it from inside the same government that wrote the warning.

The OSS profiled Hitler so America could defeat fascism. 80 years later, a fascist is using the same playbook from inside the White House. And half the country is too programmed to see it.

Sources

Walter C. Langer, “A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend,” Office of Strategic Services, 1943

Geraint Rees, Ryota Kanai, Tom Feilden, Colin Firth, “Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults,” Current Biology, Volume 21, Issue 8, April 2011, University College London

Brené Brown, “Shame Resilience Theory: A Grounded Theory Study on Women and Shame,” Families in Society, Volume 87, Number 1, 2006, University of Houston

Jacques-Philippe Leyens, “Retrospective and Prospective Thoughts About Infrahumanization,” Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 2009, Université Catholique de Louvain

Arie W. Kruglanski, “The Psychology of Closed Mindedness,” Psychology Press, 2004, University of Maryland

Ziva Kunda, “The Case for Motivated Reasoning,” Psychological Bulletin, Volume 108, Number 3, 1990, University of Waterloo

Arie W. Kruglanski, Jocelyn J. Bélanger, Michele Gelfand, Rohan Gunaratna, Malkanthi Hettiarachchi, Fernando Reinares, Edward Orehek, Jo Sasota, Keren Sharvit, “Terrorism: A (Self) Love Story,” American Psychologist, Volume 68, Number 7, 2013, University of Maryland

Lee Ross, Mark R. Lepper, Michael Hubbard, “Perseverance in Self-Perception and Social Perception,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 32, Number 5, 1975, Stanford University

Robert Jay Lifton, “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China,” W.W. Norton, 1961

You need to listen to this one.

It's definitely a National Emergency and we need to make sure we all vote. 

Please don't take this lightly. 

In 1943, the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS), The precursor to CIA, commissioned a psychological profile of Adolf Hitler. What they documented was a propaganda playbook.

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The MAGA movement is just one giant conspiracy theory.

There is a psychological reason for that.

Fake news. Witch hunt. Deep state. Stolen election. These are not political positions. These are conspiracy theories. Every single one of them. And MAGA supporters believe all of them at the same time.

Trump supporters also believe in at least one other insane conspiracy theory outside of MAGA. Anti-vax. QAnon. False flags. Flat earth. It is never just one. Because the kind of brain that accepts one conspiracy theory without evidence will swallow them all.

Something happened to these people. They were traumatized by something that shook them to their core. They lost their house. They lost their job. They lost their marriage. Whatever stability they thought they had got ripped away from them. And it broke them.

Normal people would ask for help, try to rebuild, and try to figure out what went wrong. These people couldn’t. Their egos would not let them take the blame for what happened in their own lives. So they went looking for something else to blame. Something that would tell them it was not their fault.

Conspiracy theories do exactly that. Conspiracy theories handed these broken people a complete story. A simple story with clear villains, clear heroes, and a reason for everything. No loose ends. No uncertainty. No thinking required. Just a finished narrative that explains every bad thing that ever happened to them and none of it is their fault.

MAGA is the biggest conspiracy theory ever built that is currently running.

Psychologist Arie Kruglanski at the University of Maryland studied why certain people are drawn to simple answers even when those answers are dead wrong. He found that people who have been through major personal destruction have zero tolerance for uncertainty. They will grab onto any complete story that kills the pain no matter how insane it sounds. And once they lock it in, they stop thinking entirely.

Kruglanski called this the need for cognitive closure.

Why did you lose your house? Because of immigrants. Why did you lose your job? The Democrats. Why is your life a mess? The deep state. Why does every expert on earth disagree with you? They are all in on it.

Every failure has a scapegoat. Every bad decision has an excuse. And none of it is ever their fault.

These people did not lose their homes because of immigrants. They lost their homes because they made garbage decisions with money they did not have. But admitting that means sitting alone in a room with the truth. And these people are too broken to do that. So they found a cult that hands them a complete story every single day that says the problem is everyone else.

Trump is not their president. Trump is their cope cult leader. And he is just like them. He cannot accept responsibility for anything either. He is the reason they never have to take responsibility for a single thing that went wrong in their pathetic lives. And they will defend him forever because without him they have nothing.

No excuse. No scapegoat. No story. Just a mirror and a life they ruined all by themselves.

And they would rather go off the cliff with Trump and the MAGA movement than ever take accountability for their own actions.

Sources

Kruglanski, A. W. (2004). The Psychology of Closed Mindedness. Psychology Press.

Kruglanski, A. W. & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated Closing of the Mind: “Seizing” and “Freezing.” Psychological Review, 103(2), 263-283.

There is a psychological reason for that. And it has almost nothing to do with intelligence.

So I decided to do some research on conspiracy belief to understand what is actually going on here.

Conspiracy theories do not spread because the evidence is strong. They spread because conspiracy theories satisfy psychological needs that facts were never designed to satisfy.

Here are the six psychological needs that make conspiracy theories impossible to kill.

One. The Need to Feel Special

You have seen someone share a conspiracy theory and the first thing they say is “you have no idea what is really going on.” They do not lead with evidence. They lead with superiority.

In 2017 psychologist Roland Imhoff at Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany published a paper called “Too Special to Be Duped.” He studied why people who need to feel unique are drawn to conspiracy theories. His finding was specific. People with a high need for uniqueness were significantly more likely to believe in conspiracies. And when a conspiracy theory was presented as a minority belief, held by only a small number of people, those people believed it even more.

Imhoff called this the need for uniqueness. The drive to feel different from everyone else by believing things most people do not believe.

A conspiracy theory does not just tell you that you are right. A conspiracy theory tells you that you are one of the few people on the planet smart enough to see the truth. Everyone else is a sheep. Everyone else is asleep. But you figured it out.

That is not a belief. That is an identity. And once a conspiracy theory becomes your identity you will defend it the same way you defend your name.

The person sharing conspiracy theories at Thanksgiving dinner is not trying to inform you. That person is trying to show you they are smarter than you. They figured out what you could not. And the more you push back the more special they feel because your resistance proves the truth is too dangerous for ordinary people to handle.

Two. The Need for Significance

You ever notice how the people who believe the most conspiracy theories are the people whose lives are going the least well.

In 2014 psychologist Arie Kruglanski at the University of Maryland published research on what drives people to extreme beliefs and radical action. He found that when people feel their lives do not matter, when they feel invisible, unimportant, and irrelevant, they will grab onto anything that makes them feel significant again.

Kruglanski called this significance quest theory.

Conspiracy theories are the cheapest significance available. Yesterday you were nobody. Today you are a truth seeker fighting the greatest battle in human history. You did not get a raise or a promotion. You did not accomplish anything anyone noticed. But you know the government is hiding aliens at Area 51 and that makes you important.

Kruglanski found that the need for significance intensifies after personal failure, humiliation, or loss of status. The person who just lost a job is more vulnerable than the person who just got promoted. The person going through a divorce is more vulnerable than the person in a stable relationship.

MAGA is full of people whose lives are not going the way they expected. They were supposed to be successful. They were supposed to matter. They do not. And then Trump showed up and told them the reason their lives are failing is not because of anything they did. It is because of a secret conspiracy run by elites who are deliberately keeping them down.

That is not politics. That is significance on demand.

Three. The Need for Control

Every time something terrible happens the conspiracy theories show up within hours. A mass shooting. A pandemic. A plane crash. Before anyone has the facts someone already has the theory.

In 2009 psychologist Aaron Kay at the University of Waterloo published research on what happens when people feel they have lost control over their environment. He found that when personal control is threatened, people compensate by perceiving patterns in random events, defending powerful institutions, or believing someone is in control of everything. Even if that someone is evil.

Kay called this compensatory control theory.

Random events are psychologically unbearable. The idea that bad things happen for no reason, that the world is chaotic and unpredictable, produces so much anxiety that the brain will accept any explanation that restores a sense of order.

A conspiracy theory gives you order. A conspiracy theory tells you nothing is random. Everything is connected. Everything is planned. There is a group of powerful people pulling strings behind the scenes. And the reason your life is difficult is not chaos. It is a plan.

That feels better than the truth. The truth is that the world is messy, complicated, and mostly random. Nobody is in charge. Systems fail because systems are imperfect. Bad things happen to good people for no reason.

That truth is terrifying. A conspiracy theory is comforting. Even if the conspiracy says powerful evil people control everything, at least someone is in control. And if someone is in control then maybe the system can be beaten. Maybe you can fight it. Maybe you can win.

Random chaos cannot be fought. A conspiracy can.

Four. The Need for Certainty

Ask a scientist a question and they will say it depends. Ask a conspiracy theorist the same question and they will give you a complete answer in ten seconds.

In 2004 psychologist Arie Kruglanski published research on why some people are psychologically addicted to the need for answers. He found that some people have a powerful psychological need for definitive answers. They cannot tolerate ambiguity. They cannot sit with uncertainty. They need the story to be complete.

Kruglanski called this the need for cognitive closure.

Science says we do not know yet. Conspiracy theories never say that. Conspiracy theories always have a complete story. Every question has an answer. Every event has a cause. Every villain has a motive. Nothing is left unexplained.

That is psychologically irresistible to people with a high need for closure and answers. Science is slow. Science qualifies everything. Science changes its mind when new evidence appears. When scientists speak, they give a careful and measured response. They say things like “the data suggests” or “based on current evidence.” Conspiracy theorists hear that and think if it is not 100 percent certain then it is not a fact.

To someone who needs certainty that feels like weakness. That feels like lying. That feels like they are hiding something.

A conspiracy theory gives you the whole answer on day one. No ambiguity. No uncertainty. No waiting. Just a clean story with clear villains and a simple explanation for everything that confuses you.

COVID came from a lab. The election was rigged. The deep state runs everything. Climate change is a hoax. Each one is a complete story. Each one eliminates uncertainty entirely. And each one feels better than the truth, which is that the world is complicated and some of the time we do not know exactly what is happening.

Simple answers to complex problems did not help us get to the moon or learn to fly or achieve any other scientific marvel. Sometimes it is okay not to know something. But for people who absolutely need simple answers to complex problems, conspiracy theories are perfect for them. And useless to science and human progress.

Five. Identity Protection

You have tried to show someone evidence that their conspiracy theory is wrong and they did not just disagree with you. They got angry. They attacked you. It felt personal because it was.

In 2017 psychologist Dan Kahan at Yale Law School published research on what happens when evidence threatens a person’s core identity. He found that people reject evidence that conflicts with who they believe they are. Not because the evidence is weak. Because accepting the evidence would mean they were wrong. And being wrong does not just feel like a mistake. It feels like losing yourself.

Kahan called this identity-protective cognition.

Once a conspiracy becomes part of your identity, evidence against that conspiracy becomes a personal attack. You are not a person who believes the election was stolen. You are an election truther. You are not a person who distrusts vaccines. You are a medical freedom warrior. The belief is no longer something you think. It is something you are.

Changing your mind no longer feels like learning. It feels like dying. Because the conspiracy is not just an idea you hold. The conspiracy is the thing that makes you special, significant, in control, and certain. Take it away and you are just a regular person with a regular life who was wrong about something embarrassing.

That is why evidence does not work. You are not arguing with a belief. You are arguing with an identity. And nobody gives up their identity because you showed them a fact.

Six. Status

You have seen someone in a conspiracy group post a new theory and within minutes they are getting praised, shared, and called a hero. You have also seen someone in that same group ask a question and get destroyed for it.

In 2002 political scientist Russell Hardin at New York University published research on how extremist communities become sealed information systems. He found that extremists are not necessarily stupid or uneducated. The real problem is that their information comes from a sharply limited set of sources, all of which reinforce their existing beliefs. The only information that gets in is information that confirms what the group already believes.

Hardin called this a crippled epistemology.

Conspiracy communities are not just belief systems. They are social hierarchies. Every community has a status structure. In most communities you gain status through accomplishment. Through education. Through expertise. Through contribution. In conspiracy communities you gain status through certainty. The more certain you are the higher you rank. The more theories you endorse the more respected you become. The more you distrust experts the more credible you are to the group.

Every new discovery increases your status. Every new connection you draw between unrelated events makes you more important. Every link you share, every video you post, every argument you win against a non-believer raises your standing.

And every time you question the theory your status drops. Doubt is punished. Nuance is weakness. Saying “I am not sure about this” is the fastest way to lose everything you built inside the group.

That is why people double down instead of backing off. They are not defending a belief. They are defending their position in the only community that ever made them feel like they mattered.

Walk away from the conspiracy and you do not just lose the belief. You lose the only community that ever made you feel like you mattered. And the truth you gain in return does not feel like a reward. It feels like exile.

Conspiracy theories do not survive because the evidence is strong. They survive because they satisfy needs that facts were never designed to satisfy. Significance. Certainty. Control. Identity. Status. And the feeling that you are one of the few people smart enough to see what everyone else is missing.

For some people that feeling is more powerful than reality itself. And no amount of evidence will ever compete with it.

That is why you cannot argue someone out of a conspiracy theory. You are not fighting a belief. You are fighting the only thing that makes them feel like they matter.

Sources

Imhoff, R. & Lamberty, P. (2017). Too Special to Be Duped: Need for Uniqueness Motivates Conspiracy Beliefs. European Journal of Social Psychology, 47(6), 724-734.

Kruglanski, A. W., Gelfand, M. J., Belanger, J. J., Sheveland, A., Hetiarachchi, M., & Gunaratna, R. (2014). The Psychology of Radicalization and Deradicalization: How Significance Quest Impacts Violent Extremism. Political Psychology, 35, 69-93.

Kay, A. C., Whitson, J. A., Gaucher, D., & Galinsky, A. D. (2009). Compensatory Control: Achieving Order Through the Mind, Our Institutions, and the Heavens. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(5), 264-268.

Kruglanski, A. W. (2004). The Psychology of Closed Mindedness. Psychology Press.

Kahan, D. M. (2017). Misconceptions, Misinformation, and the Logic of Identity-Protective Cognition. Cultural Cognition Project Working Paper Series No. 164, Yale Law School.

Hardin, R. (2002). The Crippled Epistemology of Extremism. In A. Breton, G. Galeotti, P. Salmon, & R. Wintrobe (Eds.), Political Extremism and Rationality. Cambridge University Press.

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If you watched the video, you already know what the Dark Tetrad is and why churches attract the most dangerous personalities in human psychology. This Substack goes deeper into the research, the real-world pattern, and why the structure of organized religion is a perfect operating system for predators.

The Dark Tetrad

Delroy Paulhus is a Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia. In 2002, Paulhus and Kevin Williams published a landmark paper introducing the Dark Triad, a cluster of three personality traits that consistently appear together: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Each trait is distinct, but they share a common core: the willingness to exploit other people without remorse.

Narcissism is an inflated sense of self-importance combined with a desperate need for admiration. Narcissists believe they are special, entitled, and superior. They require constant validation and become hostile when they do not receive it. Underneath the grandiosity is a fragile ego that cannot tolerate criticism, failure, or being outperformed.

Machiavellianism is the strategic manipulation of others for personal gain. Named after Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote “The Prince” in 1513, this trait describes people who view relationships as transactions, who lie without guilt, and who treat other people as tools to be used and discarded.

Psychopathy is a lack of empathy combined with impulsive, antisocial behavior. Psychopaths do not feel guilt, remorse, or emotional connection to the people they harm. They can mimic appropriate emotions to blend in, but the performance is entirely strategic.

In 2013, Paulhus and his colleagues proposed expanding the model to include a fourth trait: everyday sadism. This became the Dark Tetrad. Sadism is the enjoyment of causing pain. Not just indifference to suffering, but active pleasure in inflicting it. Paulhus found that sadism is distinct from psychopathy because sadists are not merely unfeeling. They are entertained by cruelty. They seek it out.

Each of these four traits describes a specific type of danger. Narcissism seeks admiration. Machiavellianism seeks control. Psychopathy disregards consequences. Sadism enjoys the damage. A person with all four is not simply difficult or unpleasant. They are a predator.

Two Types of Religious People

In 1967, Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport published research that divided religious commitment into two categories: intrinsic and extrinsic.

Intrinsic religiosity describes people who have internalized their faith. Religion is the organizing principle of their lives. They pray privately. They follow moral teachings because they believe in them, not because anyone is watching. Their faith is personal, genuine, and self-directed. Allport described these individuals as people who live their religion.

Extrinsic religiosity describes people who use religion for what it gives them. Social status. Community standing. Business connections. Moral credibility. Access to other people’s trust. They go to church not because they believe but because church membership is useful. Religion is a tool, not a calling.

Allport found that extrinsic religiosity was strongly correlated with prejudice, anxiety, guilt, and social manipulation. Intrinsic religiosity was correlated with lower anxiety, less depression, and genuine prosocial behavior.

This distinction is the foundation for understanding why the church attracts Dark Tetrad personalities. An intrinsic believer goes to church to serve God. An extrinsic believer goes to church to be served.

For a narcissist, church offers instant admiration from a captive audience. For a Machiavellian, church offers access to people whose default setting is trust. For a psychopath, church offers moral cover for behavior that would be questioned anywhere else. For a sadist, church offers authority over vulnerable people who have been taught that submission is virtue.

The Structure Is the Problem

The danger is not that bad people sometimes end up in churches. Bad people end up everywhere. The danger is that the structure of organized religion is designed in a way that gives predators exactly what they need.

No other institution in American life hands out moral authority with fewer qualifications. A megachurch can make someone an Elder, a Deacon, a Youth Pastor, or a ministry leader with no background check, no psychological evaluation, no professional certification, and no accountability structure beyond the senior pastor. In many churches, the senior pastor himself has no oversight. He answers to a board he appointed, or to no one at all.

The result is a system where authority is granted on the basis of performed faith. Not earned competence. Not demonstrated character. Not verified credentials. Just the ability to appear devout convincingly enough to be trusted.

For a Dark Tetrad personality, this is not a bug. It is the entire appeal.

Researchers at Oxford documented what they call “soft patriarchalism” in megachurches: a power structure in which the charismatic male pastor holds near-absolute authority over a congregation that has been socialized to view questioning leadership as questioning God. This creates a closed system in which the leader can act with impunity because dissent itself is framed as sin.

A narcissist in a corporate job has to produce results. A narcissist in a courtroom has to follow rules. A narcissist behind a pulpit just has to say “God told me” and the conversation is over.

The Pattern

The pattern is consistent enough to be predictable.

Ravi Zacharias was one of the most famous Christian apologists in the world. He defended the faith in packed arenas and published bestselling books. An independent investigation by the law firm Miller and Martin uncovered decades of sexual abuse. Zacharias groomed massage therapists at spas he co-owned, solicited explicit photos from women, maintained secret phones with hundreds of images, used ministry funds to silence victims, and told at least one victim she was “a reward” for his service to God. He warned her that if she spoke out, she would be responsible for “millions of souls” whose salvation would be lost.

That is Machiavellianism. That is psychopathy. That is sadism. And the church structure made all of it possible for decades.

Robert Morris founded Gateway Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, one of the largest megachurches in America. In 2024, it was revealed that when Morris was a minister in his twenties, he had a sexual relationship with a twelve-year-old girl. The church’s initial response was to frame the abuse as a past indiscretion that had been dealt with between the pastor and God.

Mark Driscoll built Mars Hill Church in Seattle into one of the most influential megachurches in America. An investigation revealed that he ruled through fear, publicly shamed dissenters, manipulated financial records, and created a culture where questioning him was equated with rebellion against God. When former elders accused him of abusive leadership, the church dissolved. Driscoll moved to Arizona and started a new church where former members say similar patterns have emerged.

NBC News uncovered a fifty-year pattern of sexual abuse, silence, and cover-up within the Assemblies of God, the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination. Dozens of pending lawsuits accuse churches of shielding predators, silencing victims, and allowing abuse to continue unchecked. In one case, a children’s pastor was caught filming girls in a church bathroom. Elders suspended him for a few weeks. He went on to sexually assault two children.

In every case the structure is identical. A charismatic leader is given unchecked authority. The congregation is taught that questioning leadership is sinful. Victims are silenced through spiritual manipulation. And when the abuse is finally exposed, the institution protects itself, not the people it was supposed to serve.

The Hunting Ground

Łowicki and Zajenkowski published research in 2017 titled “No Empathy for People nor for God,” examining the relationship between the Dark Triad and religiosity. Their finding added nuance to the picture. Dark Triad personalities are not necessarily less religious. They are differently religious. They approach religion instrumentally, not devotionally. They use the language and the rituals for what those things provide: access, trust, authority, and cover.

A separate study found that religious belief actually predicts reduced psychopathy but increased sadism. People who attend church regularly score lower on psychopathy scales but higher on sadism. This suggests that the communal experience of religion may curb some antisocial impulses while simultaneously providing a structured outlet for others.

For a Dark Tetrad personality, a church congregation is not a community. It is a resource. The trust is a resource. The obedience is a resource. The titles are a resource. The moral authority is a resource. And the theological framework that discourages questioning is the most valuable resource of all.

A congregation taught that questioning leadership is the same as questioning God will not investigate their pastor. A congregation taught that forgiveness is mandatory will not hold their pastor accountable. A congregation taught that doubt is sin will not trust their own instincts when something feels wrong.

That is not a church. That is a hunting ground.

Why This Keeps Happening

The reason Dark Tetrad personalities keep finding their way into churches is not because churches are uniquely corrupt. It is because churches are uniquely unprotected.

Every other institution that grants authority over other people has built safeguards. Lawyers must pass a bar exam and are subject to disbarment. Doctors must be licensed and are subject to malpractice review. Teachers must be certified and are subject to background checks. Police officers, with all their documented failures of accountability, still operate under internal affairs investigations and civilian oversight boards.

Pastors in most independent evangelical and charismatic churches are subject to none of these. There is no licensing board. There is no external oversight. There is no mandatory reporting structure. There is no professional standard of conduct enforceable by any authority outside the church itself.

The people who are drawn to power they did not earn, who enjoy authority they are not qualified for, and who view other people as objects to be used are going to go where the barriers to entry are lowest and the protections for victims are weakest.

Right now, in America, that place is church.

Dark Tetrad personalities did not find God. They found a room full of people religiously obligated to trust them. And they cannot wait to start preying on them.

Sources

Paulhus, D. L., and Williams, K. M. (2002). “The Dark Triad of Personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy.” Journal of Research in Personality, 36(6), 556-563.

Paulhus, D. L., Buckels, E. E., Trapnell, P. D., and Jones, D. N. (2021). “Screening for Dark Personalities: The Short Dark Tetrad (SD4).” European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 37(3), 208-222.

Allport, G. W., and Ross, J. M. (1967). “Personal Religious Orientation and Prejudice.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5(4), 432-443.

Łowicki, P., and Zajenkowski, M. (2017). “No Empathy for People nor for God: The Relationship Between the Dark Triad, Religiosity and Empathy.” Personality and Individual Differences, 115, 169-173.

Wellman, J. K., Corcoran, K. E., and Stockly-Meyerdirk, K. (2019). “High on God: How Megachurches Won the Heart of America.” Oxford University Press.

Miller and Martin, PLLC (2021). Independent investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by Ravi Zacharias.

NBC News (2025). “Pastors and Prey: How Assemblies of God Churches Shielded Accused Predators.” Investigative series.

The Baltimore Banner (2025). “Greater Grace Megachurch Expels Pastors Accused of Sexual Abuse and Misconduct.”

Buckels, E. E., Jones, D. N., and Paulhus, D. L. (2013). “Behavioral Confirmation of Everyday Sadism.” Psychological Science, 24(11), 2201-2209.