The Reality Taboo

On April 2, 2025, Karmelo Anthony, 17, a Black teenager, stabbed Austin Metcalf, 17, a White teenager, through the heart at a track meet in Frisco, Texas. Anthony was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 35 years.

What followed was more revealing than the crime. Jeff Metcalf — Austin's father — spent 14 months performing public Christian forgiveness and racial universalism, insisting the killing was never about race, rejecting White grievance activists, and extending grace to the family of his son's killer. The other side raised $630,000 for Anthony's defense and called Metcalf a racist anyway.

Jeff Metcalf is a case study in a particular kind of White American — older, Christian, colorblind by conviction — who believes that if he just refuses to see race, race will return the favor. It won't. And it may take something as extreme as a son's murder to dislodge that belief.

Ness discusses how Steyer's defeat and the voracious energy appetite of AI spell the end of the green movement, how Henry Nowak's murder is a tragically perfect microcosm of what is happening to the West, Tucker Carlson's unpopularity, Helen of Troy in black face and how science is not subservient to truth

Thomas Massie just lost the most expensive House primary in American history — $32.6 million to take out one congressman. Jeff and Ness break down the Massie-Gallrein race: who bankrolled it, why Massie made himself a target for Trump, and what the demographics of Kentucky's 4th District tell you about the populist story being sold around this race. Plus: Tucker Carlson weighs in, and his reaction says as much about his faction as it does about the result.

Ness discusses MIGA's successful defenestration of Thomas Massie, Reform's successful approach in the UK, looks at what the media had to say about demographic replacement a generation ago, compares the book of Trump to the book of Exodus and contrasts the Jesus of Constantine the book of Revelation and even the Gospels to the Churchian Jesus of today

In late 2020, the world was told Pfizer's COVID vaccine was "95% effective." That number became the foundation for government mandates, employment requirements, and the social pressure placed on anyone who asked questions. But what did 95% actually mean?

Ness and Jeff break down what the trial data actually showed — an absolute risk reduction of less than one percent, a two-month follow-up window, and a control group dissolved before long-term safety comparisons were possible. Then they trace how politicians, doctors, and the media didn't just spin that data — they flatly misrepresented it.

Ness discusses the massive layoffs and downsizing at the Daily Wire and what it illustrates about the right's inability to maintain any kind of institutional power, how DOGE is even deader than DW, why Trump's failure to flip-flop on things that matter are why he is so viscerally hated and shares a clip of the head of NPR explaining a favorite observation of the show - that the truth is merely incidental

Tucker Carlson praises figures while distancing himself from their ideas, has been on every side of Trump depending on the moment, and has a documented history of saying one thing in private and the opposite in public. So is he a fraud? Or is he the most politically savvy coalition builder on the American right — a man who understands that the fringes, the dissidents, and the dispossessed need a tent, and who is building one? Jeff makes the case for fraud; Ness isn't so sure. Using Burnham's Machiavellians and Pareto's fox-lion distinction, Reality Taboo asks the Tucker question: charlatan or coalition builder?

Antidepressant use among American adults has quadrupled in a generation and a half, and Canada's dramatic expansion of assisted suicide may be part of the same story. Then Ness and Jeff turn to Burnham's The Machiavellians and apply it to the Brand scandal — the allegations, the timing, the 77th Brigade connection, and the Christianity pivot. Is this accountability, or elite competition by other means?

Ness discusses the higher rate of sexual abuse perpetrated against young boys by gay men compared to straight men, how even if birthright citizenship is overturned it won't matter and Tucker Carlson glowing over John Chrysostom

Ness discusses the inherent tension in the three philosophical pillars of Western liberal democracy, what Martin Luther thought about Jews, what Erick Erickson shows about modern conservatism, what Matt Walsh portends for its future, Christianity's relationship with hatred and war and more