This is essay is part of Applied Biofoundationalism. All chapters are linked at the end. Enjoy.
I don't think Bezos had much to do with the Washington Post editorial decision, even if he sent the command.
He is a reactive social entity. A proxy for shifting consensus. Elites are gifted cultural creatures; they're high-status for a reason. They're acutely sensitive to shifts in high-status trends. What happened was fairly unremarkable when you contextualize it within the environment that it occurred.
What Bezos is doing isn't exerting contrarian editorial will, he's making a business decision. The degree that this business decision is a good one is the degree to which the environment has changed. It used to not be an environment amenable to this, but now it is.
Bezos has taken an action that's now socially acceptable enough to take. He has taken this action because it's in the best interests of WaPo as a vehicle for mainstream influence. He is protecting his assets. The richest man in the world (he'd be the richest if it weren't for the divorce) knows how to preserve his assets.
The tides are shifting, Jeff is simply riding a wave.
The Currency of Prestige
Newspapers and legacy media are terrible, decaying businesses. Bezos does not own the Washington Post for the cashflows. The 200k ragequit unsubscribes WaPo got from the endorsement decision don't matter.
The "currency" of a media outlet is not its net income, but its vestigial prestige; you leverage that not through anything found on the income statement, but by wielding it for power and influence. Power and influence are typically not found in stale ideas and swimming against the current.
WaPo is "credible" journalism (to the extent there is such a thing anymore), and MSM prestige is a dwindling metaphorical line item on its balance sheet. A sure way to expedite the demise of your prestige, is to have your media outlet become a platform for last year's fashion trends.
The cultural shift is palpable lately. Supporting Trump and rejecting neoliberal religious orthodoxy are so en vogue that you can don a MAGA hat on the streets of LA and NYC and get fist bumps instead of purple-hairs "literally shaking" at you. It doesn't scare the hoes like it used to if you think they're not sending their best. If you don't have the same opinions as Coca Cola's HR department, that will not get you ostracized by your LinkedIn friends anymore.
Political beliefs change when their utility changes. The environment dictates the utility, and thus the expression, of these beliefs. We don't wake up one day and have different opinions because we considered the "facts".
Facts are what you curate to advocate a narrative. As I'm sure you’re aware, there are many facts; which ones do you subscribe to? Only the good and true facts? Ah, don't we all. It's not "fake news", it's more appropriately understood as "fake narrative". Fact check? No no, narrative check.
The Overton Window oscillates, and dictates what narratives are culturally acceptable to promote. This oscillation is spearheaded by a highly-disagreeable few who keep fighting with each other over where it should drift. The rule of the radical minority is very real.
As the utility of political stances (narratives) change, the expressions of them do. Political beliefs among the elite are mostly signalling mechanisms. They are adopted for their utility, because they are tools. They are vanishingly rarely principled noble stances.
Diminishing Woke Returns
Woke is a social cudgel with not only diminishing marginal utility, but increasingly negative effects. Whereas being based is currently in that sweet spot of "edgy but not too edgy" so as to be cool. To support minimally viable border security no longer decrements your social credit score. Patriots in control!
If Big Jeff really had innate political conviction about the wokes and their shenanigans, he would have done something like this a while ago. The they/thems aren't exactly a new problem. Elon exerts editorial influence over Twitter, and mandated changes before it was culturally obedient to do so; that is how a trendsetter acts. Bezos is simply following the path that Trump bulldozed, and Elon paved.
The pedigree class publicly shifting (eg. Bill Ackman, Shaun the Sequoia VC who started "noticing" things, etc.) indicates a cultural shift that's underway.
Elites are creatures of consensus, just like the rest of us. In fact they're even more sensitive to consensus, because of the status it confers. Status may be the most valuable currency for their socioeconomic echelon, and they have much more of it to lose than us. Thus, they are much more intentional about their actions, because they're keenly aware of the effects.
We shouldn't expect people in socially compliant positions (business leaders who must be sanitized enough for LinkedIn) to express socially non-compliant views. They didn't get to where they are by being heterodox political minds; rocking the interpersonal boat is typically not an expedient path to business success. There are exceptions to this, and they're exceptions for a reason.
Culturally, elites are better understood as windows into high-status consensus. A proxy for the tides. If you look through the window, you can see a storm coming. Jeff sees it too.
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Biofoundationalism chapters:
Biofoundationalism I: Moral Foundations Utility Theory & Hypermoralization
Biofoundationalism III: Verbal Intelligence and Factual Sediment
Biofoundationalism IV: Masculine Because You Have To, Feminine Because You Get To
> We shouldn't expect people in socially-compliant positions (business leaders who must be sanitized enough for LinkedIn) to express socially-non-compliant views.
From this you can also determine what are the socially compliant views, eg, if a LinkedIn thought leader says “not enough people are talking about X” we can infer that actually everybody compliant is talking about X.
I guess your theory could apply to Greenwald, Taibbi, Musk, Tulsi, RFK, also. But I think some people change their minds independently of social consensus. The timing might be the determining factor. Someone who was penalized for their decision is more likely to be someone with principals.