Molineaux is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and president/CEO of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Lately, I’ve been binge watching stories about con artists and cults. Every story I’ve watched starts with the primary human desire – wanting to belong and be part of something bigger. With few notable exceptions, we are all – yes all – motivated to belong. Our survival instinct is wired to this deepest longing in our hearts and undergirds most human activity. Scratch below the surface of our egos and you’ll find a story about belonging.
These are the most common stories we tell ourselves about belonging:
- Ambitious? You must succeed to belong.
- Money conscious? You must be wealthy or impoverished to belong.
- Generous? You must help others to belong.
- Religious? You must have the right beliefs to belong.
- Power seeker? You need to have or provide protection to belong.
None of these motivations are based on inherent human value. Instead they are based on a belief that we must always do more or be different in order to belong. This is the crux of any con or cult. “You can belong if (fill in the blank).” In one way or another, our biology has already groomed us, making us ready for exploitation. Our vulnerability may be greater when we have fewer communities to which we feel included. People who belong to more than one community seem less likely to become a victim of a con or cult. But no one is immune. No. One.
Within our politics, I see correlations between what happened to individuals in the docudramas and what is happening to our society at large. There are competing accusations about the delusion of the liberal academia/media and the alternate reality of MAGA populists. Our communities have been purged of those who “don’t belong,” which limits our ability to think critically. We cling to the community we have, fearing exclusion and social death.
While we cling to our beliefs and fight over who is most deluded, the conflict entrepreneurs (aka the con artists) tweak our fears of being excluded, declaring our enemies to be people who think differently from ourselves. They promise happiness when we vanquish our enemies at the ballot box or in school board meetings.
Our current conflict about the direction of our nation is being fueled by our own fears. What are the deepest desires of the American public? To feel included in society with a sense of belonging. Full stop.
I propose the fastest way to get out of our own way – to co-create a better future – is to start by being a community where everyone, in good faith, can be included and see an opportunity for themselves in society. There should be no litmus test to belong. Are you human? You belong.
For social cohesion, we do need to agree on norms. Formal norms include agreeing to abide by a common set of laws. Informal norms could include being respectful towards others, honoring human dignity and generally being a decent person, especially when no one is looking.
As conflict entrepreneurs predict dystopian futures while pointing at an outgroup (or group of “others”) to blame, I predict that the future is in our hands, minds and hearts. We can create an inclusive society through small acts with people we don’t know. We can engage others with curiosity, being kind and showing compassion by including people we’ve been conditioned to fear and blame. Getting to know people who are different from ourselves is the “missing piece” our society needs.
A healthy community is one where there is room for individuality and shared responsibility for the common good. This means taking turns in traffic instead of speeding ahead to cut in line. Or returning your shopping cart instead of leaving it by your parking spot. It might mean giving up your seat on the subway to a person who needs to sit.
Feeling included costs us nothing in material wealth. Inclusion is how we pause to consciously connect to each other. Do we stop in our faith community to welcome a new person? Do we smile at the person next to us in line? Do we look people in the eye with warmth and curiosity, seeing them fully?
Cults are part of culture. We need shared beliefs that bind us together. It is when our cult-beliefs are unhealthy that we separate from each other. Our nation is more separated from itself now than ever before in living memory. Only the pre-Civil War era was more divisive, leading Abraham Lincoln to note, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Deprogramming from our collective unhealthy cult beliefs is the challenge that lies ahead. It will involve every one of us committing to each other that we will not leave anyone behind. And we will want assurance that we will not be left behind, either.
We will be entering uncharted territory in the days ahead. The outcome is uncertain and mysterious. Our ability to manage our fears with compassion for ourselves and others is essential. And we must remember that certainty in chaotic times is the currency of con artists and cult leaders. They promise us a sense of belonging and a certain future, while separating us from each other. They take our money and disappoint us over and over again, until we break.
This time, the nation and democracy could break. It’s up to us.
My list of docudramas on con artists and cults:
- “Inventing Anna”
- “Tinder Swindler”
- “Fyre Festival”
- “Bad Vegan”
- “20/20, The Cult Next Door: The Mystery and Madness of Heaven’s Gate”
- “20/20, The Dropout: The Rise and Con of Elizabeth Holmes”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers a keynote speech at the 62nd Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026, in Munich, Germany.
Marco Rubio is the only adult left in the room
Finally free from the demands of being chief archivist of the United States, secretary of state, national security adviser and unofficial viceroy of Venezuela, Marco Rubio made his way to the Munich Security Conference last weekend to deliver a major address.
I shouldn’t make fun. Rubio, unlike so many major figures in this administration, is a bona fide serious person. Indeed, that’s why President Trump keeps piling responsibilities on him. Rubio knows what he’s talking about and cares about policy. He is hardly a free agent; Trump is still president after all. But in an administration full of people willing to act like social media trolls, Rubio stands out for being serious. And I welcome that.
But just because Rubio made a serious argument, that doesn’t mean it was wholly persuasive. Part of his goal was to repair some of the damage done by his boss, who not long ago threatened to blow up the North Atlantic alliance by snatching Greenland away from Denmark. Rubio’s conciliatory language was welcome, but it hardly set things right.
Whether it was his intent or not, Rubio had more success in offering a contrast with Vice President JD Vance, who used the Munich conference last year as a platform to insult allies and provide fan service to his followers on X. Rubio’s speech was the one Vance should have given, if the goal was to offer a serious argument about Trump’s “vision” for the Western alliance. I put “vision” in scare quotes because it’s unclear to me that Trump actually has one, but the broader MAGA crowd is desperate to construct a coherent theory of their case.
So what’s that case? That Western Civilization is a real thing, America is not only part of it but also its leader, and it will do the hard things required to fix it.
In Rubio’s story, America and Europe embraced policies in the 1990s that amounted to the “managed decline” of the West. European governments were free riders on America’s military might and allowed their defense capabilities to atrophy as they funded bloated welfare states and inefficient regulatory regimes. Free trade, mass migration and an infatuation with “the rules-based global order” eroded national sovereignty, undermined the “cohesion of our societies” and fueled the “de-industrialization” of our economies. The remedy for these things? Reversing course on those policies and embracing the hard reality that strength and power drive events on the global stage.
“The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending,” Rubio said, “because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life.”
I agree with some of this — to a point. And, honestly, given how refreshing it is to hear a grown-up argument from this administration, it feels churlish to quibble.
But, for starters, the simple fact is that Western Civilization is an abstraction, and so are nations and peoples. And that’s fine. Abstractions — like love, patriotism, moral principles, justice — are really important. Our “way of life” is largely defined and understood through abstractions: freedom, the American dream, democracy, etc. What is the “Great” in Make America Great Again, if not an abstraction?
This is important because the administration’s defenders ridicule or dismiss any principled objection critics raise as fastidious gitchy-goo eggheadery. Trump tramples the rule of law, pardons cronies, tries to steal an election and violates free market principles willy-nilly. And if you complain, it’s because you’re a goody-goody fool.
As White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said not long ago, “we live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” Rubio said it better, but it’s the same idea.
There are other problems with Rubio’s story. At the start of the 1990s, the EU’s economy was 9% bigger than ours. In 2025 we were nearly twice as rich as Europe. If Europe was “ripping us off,” they have a funny way of showing it. America hasn’t “deindustrialized.” The manufacturing sector has grown during all of this decline, though not as much as the service sector, where we are a behemoth. We have shed manufacturing jobs, but that has more to do with automation than immigration. Moreover, the trends Rubio describes are not unique to America. Manufacturing tends to shrink as countries get richer.
That’s an important point because Rubio, like his boss, blames all of our economic problems on bad politicians and pretends that good politicians can fix them through sheer force of will.
I think Rubio is wrong, but I salute him for making his case seriously.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.