Another of my little "vanity threads", I was just reading some PJ O'Rourke and thought how would he put this? These days, half the lower tier Internet thinks politics is just a competitive sport where you fling the loudest headline and wait for likes. The other half thinks it’s about feelings, as if your blood pressure qualifies as a political philosophy. But real political understanding takes the brain of a historian and the spleen of a Stoic. You need to build a working mental model of the world, not just collect outrages like Pokémon cards. Historians, bless them, have a superpower. They look at the same chaos and drama we’re all swimming in, but they squint, mutter “ah,” and start connecting dots like a conspiracy theorist with tenure. They know that what feels like the end of the world is usually just Tuesday with bad lighting. Meanwhile, most people argue about politics the way a drunk explains plumbing. Lots of noise, random parts, and no clue how any of it fits together. Grabbing headlines isn't thinking. It's cargo cult reasoning. If you want to understand what's happening, you can't just feel strongly about it. You have to do the hard thing and make it make sense. Otherwise you’re not engaging with politics. You’re just being used by it. And politics loves a useful idiot.
The original I wrote for my college class: Reading history, or politics, properly means making it coherent and alive in your mind. If you're not building a living sense of how things connect, you're not thinking. You're just reciting. A lot of people today think arguing politics means Googling a few headlines and dropping links like they’re facts. That isn’t insight. It’s cargo cult thinking. A historian doesn’t just know what happened. They know why, because they inhabit the pressures, blind spots, hopes, and fears of the people living it. They see the structure of events, not just their surface. Politics in the now is often clouded by raw emotion. But historians, with distance, read it clearly. What looks chaotic in the present becomes pattern in the rearview. That’s not magic. That’s the result of stepping back, cooling the blood, and looking for cause and effect. The very urgency people feel in the present often makes them blind to what’s actually happening. If you want a comparison, grabbing headlines to argue politics is like trying to build a bridge by scavenging car parts. No structure. No stress testing. No idea how anything fits. It might look busy, but it’s not going to hold any weight. Use your mind. Make the past and present coherent. If you don't, you're not engaging with politics. You're just clicking it like a slot machine and calling it wisdom.
What is a cargo cult? 1. Executive Summary (for a generalist/conservative audience): What’s a cargo cult? Imagine a tribe on an island during World War II. They saw American soldiers show up, build airstrips, and then planes started landing with crates full of food, medicine, and gear. When the war ended, the soldiers left, and the supplies stopped. So, some islanders built fake runways, wore fake uniforms, and waved signals—hoping the planes would come back. They thought the rituals brought the cargo. But they misunderstood what actually made the planes come. Why does it matter today? Because a cargo cult mindset is when people copy the look or ritual of success without understanding the work or systems behind it. Just like a company might install flashy tech tools without knowing how to use them—or a politician mimics strength without having substance behind their policies. Cargo cults are a warning: don’t just copy the surface. Learn what actually makes things work. 2. Historical/Academic Version (Expanded): The term "cargo cult" originates from anthropological studies in Melanesia, particularly around Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, during and after World War II. Indigenous islanders witnessed Allied troops building airstrips and receiving vast quantities of "cargo"—goods like food, medicine, tools, and clothing—airlifted in by plane. To the islanders, this sudden material abundance seemed miraculous. Their traditional societies placed great emphasis on a system of reciprocal gift-giving and status. In many of these societies, a "big man" earned prestige by giving generously. The more gifts you gave, the more revered you were. A man who could not give gifts—who had no access to material wealth—was of little status. When the Western soldiers arrived with unimaginable amounts of cargo, they were first perceived as the ultimate "big men." However, the islanders had no access to the industrial, bureaucratic, and global networks that produced and delivered these goods. Over time, a mythic interpretation emerged: that the cargo was always meant for the islanders, sent by their ancestors, and that the Westerners had somehow intercepted or diverted it. This inversion—resentment replacing awe—was a natural outgrowth of their worldview. Rituals began: imitation airstrips were built, soldiers’ behaviors were reenacted with bamboo rifles, and faux control towers were constructed. These were not mere superstitions; they were sincere, culturally logical attempts to unlock the system they believed was being withheld from them. Later, the physicist Richard Feynman famously borrowed the term in his critique of “cargo cult science”: scientific work that mimicked the external forms of real science (journals, experiments, jargon) without the rigorous core—questioning, falsifiability, and openness to being wrong. Why it matters: Modern cargo cultism is everywhere. We see it in politics when leaders ape the presentation of authority without the substance of governance. We see it in tech and business cultures that adopt buzzwords, agile frameworks, or "innovation labs" without understanding or valuing what actually drives insight, adaptation, or progress. It is a failure to distinguish process from performance—form from function.
Strongman followings and cargo cult psychology are two sides of the same coin because both stem from a desire for control in a complex world*, especially among those who feel disempowered. The poorly educated or socially marginalized may gravitate toward a strongman who promises to cut through the chaos with simple solutions, just as cargo cults arose from mimicking the appearances of power and abundance without grasping the deeper mechanisms behind them. In both cases, symbols are mistaken for substance whether it's uniforms, slogans, or rituals, and hope is outsourced to spectacle rather than critical understanding or structural change. *the same as conspiracy theorists (believers not commercial creators).
I notice this a lot Especially the street protesters on both sides. Interviews with sign holders show that these are headline people who live in bubbles, have one sided views I do notice the right will protest in a positive way for Trump and the left will protest in a negative way against Trump
Well there are practical limitations to protest signage in expressing a nuanced disagreement. Have to give it to the Swiss, A for effort here. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHLyb0lgH2L/?igsh=YzljYTk1ODg3Zg==
Sometimes I don't need to read your shitty sources to know where your mistake was. That's because of historical knowledge I keep in my actual head. Now be a good white piccaninny and squeal elsewhere. When you can be a man and say you were wrong, not just try and change the subject, let us know. Nobody can have a productive debate with your bad-faith argumentation.
The cargo cult analogy is great but culturally and historically dense so sometimes needs too much unpacking.