This week I was listening to Scott Galloway’s Prof G podcast, where he and neuroscientist Sam Harris discussed recent events in Minnesota and the broader posture of the administration. Midway through the conversation, the discussion took a turn.
Having catalogued the dangers of creeping authoritarianism at home, they paused to credit the president for what they described as firmness and clarity abroad—particularly toward Iran and so-called “jihadist” movements.
It was a jarring moment.
Not because the impulse to confront fundamentalism is wrong but because confidence delivered without historical memory is not clarity. It is amnesia.
With respect to Iran, one hardly needs a graduate seminar to recall that much of the region’s instability traces back to Western intervention: the overthrow of a secular nationalist government, the long indulgence of regional strongmen, and wars prosecuted with moral certainty but little foresight. Against that backdrop, to suggest that recent policy represents a clean break—or an obvious improvement—requires ignoring the accumulated wreckage of earlier certainties.
Nor is consistency easier to find elsewhere. The same administration that speaks the language of order and resolve abroad has shown a troubling tolerance for violence by authority at home, along with an indifference to norms that once restrained power. It asks a great deal of credulity to believe that a government careless with dignity on Monday becomes a principled steward of freedom on Tuesday.
This dissonance is especially pronounced in discussions of Israel and the broader Middle East. Support for democratic allies matters. So does concern for civilians who live far from the negotiating table and bear the costs of decisions made without them. Treating geopolitics as a series of strongman endorsements—rather than as a web of human consequence—may feel decisive, but it is not statesmanship.
I am opposed to fundamentalism in all its forms, regardless of race, religion, or flag. The instinct that excuses coercion, glorifies force, and reduces complex societies to caricature is not confined to any one culture. It appears wherever certainty replaces humility and power stops listening.
Which raises a final, unavoidable question.
If moral seriousness requires confronting extremism, it must also require consistency in where and how we look for it. Selective outrage is not moral clarity. It is convenience dressed up as courage.
The harder task is the older one: to defend democratic values without surrendering them, to confront violence without sanctifying it, and to remember that restraint, too, can be a form of strength.