Thursday, October 29, 2026

WILL TANNER: What happened to the WASPs? Once pre-eminent as an American ruling class second only to the Virginia gentry, they've faded near-entirely from that commanding position So, what happened? Inflation, insouciance, and spiritual decline.

REBEL NEWS: The forgotten history of Ireland: Muslim slave traders emptied an Irish village in a night in 1631 🇮🇪 More than 100 villagers were captured during the Sack of Baltimore and sold into North African slave markets as part of a wider era of Muslim raids across Europe’s coasts that have been ongoing throughout history.

This book was referenced, The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates, Des Ekin, 2008.


 

SCOTT MECHKOWSKI: . . . I would suggest you re-evaluate what you think you know. “Crimmigration” is real.

MJ MURPHY: So when an idea becomes attached to a desirable identity, many people stop evaluating whether it's true. They start asking what do people like me believe?

All right, breaking the spell: identity hijacking.  So one of the most powerful persuasion techniques isn't changing your argument, it's changing your identity because once your identity changes you're thinking often follows.  I call this identity hijacking.  

Here's how it works.  

Instead of asking, "Is this idea true?" the conversation quietly shifts to "What kind of person believes this?"  

Notice the difference. Notice a difference.  We are no longer debating evidence, we're debating identity.  

Suddenly you're told "a good person believes this."  

"A compassionate person says this."

"An educated person knows this."  

"Only hateful people question this."  

Do you see what happened?  The argument disappeared.  Now your reputation is on trial.  This is incredibly powerful because human beings don't just want to be right, we want to be good.  We want to be good.  We want to belong.  We want other people to think well of us.  So when an idea becomes attached to a desirable identity, many people stop evaluating whether it's true.  They start asking what do people like me believe?  This happens everywhere.  Politics, religion, marketing, corporate culture, families, social media, even friendships.  Companies don't just sell shoes, they sell identity. Political movements don't just sell policies, they sell belonging.  Activists don't simply argue ideas, many also invite you into a moral community where agreement becomes part of who you are.  Once that happens, disagreeing doesn't just feel like changing your mind, it feels like betraying yourself.  That's identity hijacking.  Instead of asking people to examine an idea, you teach them to become the kind of person who would never question it.  And once identity is attached, evidence becomes much less persuasive because facts threaten conclusions. Identity threatens belonging.  That's why identity is often the strongest force.  

The antidote is surprisingly simple.  Separate the person from the proposition.  

Ask yourself, "If someone I admired believed the opposite, would I at least examine their evidence?"  

Or, "if this idea came from someone outside my tribe, would I evaluate it differently?"  

Those questions break the spell because your identity should never become a prison.  You are not your political party.  You are not your ideology.  You are not your hashtags.  You are not your social media bio.  You are a person that is capable of changing your mind when the evidence changes, and that's a strength not a weakness.  And that's exactly why I wrote Breaking the Spell.  It's about recognizing the psychological patterns that quietly shape how we think before we even realize they're happening. 

DR. BRYTE: Dave Foley was ordered to pay his ex-wife $17,700 a month in child support. That was five times what he actually earned. If he set foot in Canada, he would be arrested at the border.


Dave Foley was ordered to pay his ex-wife $17,700 a month in child support. That was five times what he actually earned. If he set foot in Canada, he would be arrested at the border. When he asked the judge how he’d feed his daughter from his second marriage, he says the court’s answer was simple: “They can rot in hell.” In 1997, Foley was starring on NBC’s NewsRadio and making about $1 million a year. That year, he separated from his first wife, Tabatha Southey. An Ontario judge set his payments at $17,700 a month, or $212,400 a year after taxes, based on his sitcom salary. Two years later, NBC canceled the show. His income dropped by nearly 80%. He went back to court to lower the payments. The judge said no. The court ruled he had made $1 million once, so he should keep paying like he still did. His ex-wife lived in a $2.5 million house on a park in Toronto. Foley rented a small loft in downtown LA. By 2011, he owed more than $500,000 in back payments. Ontario threatened to pull his passport and issued a warrant for his arrest if he came home. In the video below, Foley explains the math: “I’m paying about five times my income every month in child support, based on a show that hasn’t been on for 12 years.” He couldn’t work in Canada again until he landed a new sitcom in 2014 and had his paychecks garnished at the source. The case for the court: a parent shouldn’t get to slash support just because their career slows down.
The case for Dave: locking a canceled actor into 1990s sitcom money under threat of prison is extortion. 

Should child support be tied to what you earn today, or the best year you ever had?