This post is personal. I usually cite and frame things more formally—but not this time. This came through quickly, and I wrote it because I felt it. If you’re here for fully cited deep dives, those will continue to arrive in your email. Subscribe if you want to catch those when they drop.
In this episode, Sarah Barker offers a Buddhist-informed psychological critique of U.S. President Donald Trump’s admiration for El Salvador’s mega-prison model. Rather than engage in partisan rhetoric, Barker examines the deeper forces at play—fear, craving for control, and trauma reenactment—through the lens of Theravāda Buddhist psychology and media theory.
This post reframes authoritarian spectacle not as a strength, but as a dysregulated mind scaled up. It’s not about politics—it’s about the mental habits we reward, the media we consume, and the craving we mistake for leadership.
I don’t expect agreement. I expect discernment.
What part of this touched something in you?
What part resisted?
Music in this episode
Title: Theta Waves 144 hz
Artist: Syntropy
Song Link
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