Dear readers,
My mornings have started to feel like an episode of What On Earth Happened Overnight.
Coffee in hand, I open the news and within about thirty seconds I’m muttering, surely this cannot be real.
At that point curiosity takes over. I go digging. I read. I follow the rabbit holes. I try to work out what the actual story is underneath the noise.
Then I write about it. Think of this as a public thought dump. It keeps me sane. And if it helps you make sense of things as well, that’s a bonus.
A small warning before we begin. By the end of this post you will be walking around feeling extremely pleased with yourself. You will casually drop phrases like motivated reasoning, tribal politics, media silos, identity loyalty, defensive solidarity and the rally-around-the-leader effect into conversation. Someone will ask what you’re talking about and you will say, in a calm and scholarly tone, “Oh, it’s the psychology behind modern politics.” They will nod thoughtfully and assume you have been reading very serious books. You and I will know the truth. You read a blog while drinking coffee. …………..
This morning I woke up, made coffee, opened the news and saw the investigators preliminary report about the strike on the Iranian school.
My first thought.
This government seems to operate by a simple rule. If something goes wrong, find someone else to blame before the facts arrive.
We’ve seen this movie before.
Something serious happens and within minutes the explanation appears. The culprit has been identified. The blame neatly packaged and sent off in the right direction.
Almost impressive, really. Sherlock Holmes usually waited for clues.
Then the investigation starts. Which can become awkward if the facts develop inconvenient habits.
I found myself staring at the screen thinking, who is comfortable doing that? Who announces the answer before anyone has even finished asking the question?
So naturally I did what curious people do. I went down a curiosity deep dive.
A dangerous hobby in modern politics.
The psychology behind this behaviour turns out to be well studied and mildly alarming.
Once politics becomes tribal, people stop weighing the evidence first. The question quietly changes.
Not is this true?
More like which side does this help?
Once that switch flips, the reactions become very predictable.
Criticism of the leader is treated as an attack on the tribe. Supporters close ranks. The controversy becomes proof that the leader is under siege. Loyalty tightens.
Evidence starts to behave like an optional extra.
The leader stops being evaluated as a public official and becomes the team captain.
If that sounds ridiculous, think about how often we do the same thing in ordinary life.
Take the parent who knows perfectly well their child is a menace at school. The teacher explains the behaviour. Other parents raise concerns.
The response is immediate.
Not my child.
Within seconds the defence brief is underway. The teacher misunderstood. The other children provoked it. There must be some context we are missing.
Parents across the world have defended worse behaviour with less preparation.
Evidence becomes surprisingly flexible.
Sport fans provide another excellent demonstration. Watch a group of supporters when the referee makes a call against their team. Twelve questionable tackles from their own side pass without comment. One borderline decision goes the other way and suddenly there is a conspiracy reaching all the way to FIFA headquarters.
Slow motion replay demanded immediately.
Sport fans are experts in tribal politics. They have been training for it since childhood.
Families are even better.
Every family has the relative who tells a story from ten years ago with enormous confidence and only a passing relationship to what actually happened. Everyone else remembers it differently.
This does not disturb them in the slightest.
Confidence, as it turns out, is rarely held back by facts.
Human beings are very good at protecting the stories we prefer.
Political psychologists call it motivated reasoning. Information gets interpreted in ways that defend identity and loyalty.
Facts arrive carrying emotional baggage.
And once a society drifts fully into tribal politics the warning signs start appearing everywhere.
People decide whether something is true based mainly on where they heard it.
Opponents stop being people with different views and start being described as corrupt, dangerous or illegitimate.
Political identity spreads across every issue. Climate, education, foreign policy, vaccines. The same team jerseys appear in every argument.
Add media silos where people hear the same interpretation repeated all day and the effect becomes stronger.
The final stage is defensive solidarity.
Criticism of the leader becomes criticism of the tribe.
At that point politics starts to look less like debate and more like sport.
You pick your team.
The captain is always right.
And once that happens, the facts are often the first casualty.












