*How* people shut down thought because of high-status respectable halos

I don't find it convincing. Even though it's long, I don't recognize any of the examples as being 'Ra' ness and I can't think of any examples of 'Ra' in my own experience, the concept draws a complete blank. The name 'Ra' is also not that great as unlike some of the other reifications going around like Yvain's 'Moloch', which at least have some intuitive connection with their concept, 'Ra' seems pretty much arbitrary. In contrast, the first time I read about the prisoner's dilemma/tragedy of the commons, it hit me like an epiphany and I went 'of course! this explains everything, from people littering and cutting across the grass to war!' (And since Moloch is just coordination problems in general, it made equal sense to me.)

EDIT: Obormot and saturn2 on IRC note that 'Ra' seems in her telling to slightly overlap with the whole complacent-elite meritocracy going on in the Ivy League & Wall Street, of the Twilight of the Elites type.

Megyn Kelly walked by me once. If she had handed me a knife and asked me to remove my own heart and give it to her, part of my brain would have felt obligated to comply.

If I had to summarize it quickly, I'd say this is an article about how boring / generic things are seen as more legitimate, especially if large groups of people do them. For example, if you spend every waking moment working on some futuristic technology, people will see you very differently if you're doing it in your garage (alone), working for a small startup (small group, presumably all working on similar projects), or working for IBM (large group, doing unrelated work). Also, we don't like to talk about people's opinions, and we'd rather talk about the "opinions" of organizations like political parties.

I thought it was interesting, but I can't help feeling like it would have been a much better article without a Ra metaphor. It seemed like a huge stretch and a significant portion of the article was trying (and in my opinion, failing) to justify the metaphor.

I stopped reading at "Ra hates communication and introspection."
The marked difference between that post and Scott's Moloch is that the Scott had a lot of examples all pointing at the same concept. Here the author seems to have in mind one concept but starts explaining all the ramifications, without bothering to defining it. I still think that Ra doesn't exists, it's just a coalescence of many things that feel like they should come from a single source, only that source has never been defined.
That does it for me.

Sooo... brief comments while I read along.

He mentions "Moloch", and while attributes it's genesis to Ginsberg, he is clearly referring to Scott's Moloch, as per link on the first mention. But then:

What they have in common is that the Establishment is primarily an upper-class phenomenon, that it is more about social and moral legitimacy than mere wealth or raw power

which is nothing like the Moloch, which is a race to the bottom caused by lack of coordination, and is thus more pertinent to the lower strata of the population.

"Surely someone more important than me in the organization has checked that this plan is legal before asking me to execute it."

I hate this essay immediately, though a lot of that may be your false summary. (The link tries to make clear it is not about "high-status halos" in general.) Defending priests who raped children was not, I think, "primarily an upper-class phenomenon." Those who did the same for Roman Polanski were often rich, but for very different reasons.

Hmm...immediately brings to mind the Challenger disaster and the story of Feynman's investigation into the disconnect between risk assessments made by engineers (group 1 above) and management (group 2).

So far, what defines Ra:

Ra is something more like a psychological mindset, that causes people to actually seek corruption and confusion, and to prefer corruption for its own sake

Ra is a specific kind of glitch in intuition, which can roughly be summarized as the drive to idealize vagueness and despise clarity.

The worship of Ra involves a preference for stockpiling money, accolades, awards, or other resources, beyond what you can meaningfully consume or make practical use of

When an organization seems shiny, full of the best and brightest, and is presumed to be potentially good at everything, it is appealing in a very Ra-flavored way.

In my mind I synaesthetically imagine Ra as radiant white light and smoothness

Ra is evident in marketing that is smooth, featureless, full of unspecified potential goodness

When someone is willing to work for prestige, but not merely for money or intrinsic interest, they’re being influenced by Ra.

and I should stop, because I'm basically quoting the entire article. So far, nothing is given that feels like a good principle underlying all these stuff.
Basically, this whole article feels like an undefined, shiny blob. This article about Ra is very much Ra.