The actual cultural war coming (11-12-2025--Hour1)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio and Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendarshow dot com, make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. All right, so I have been accumulating just a sort of a program not even a programming. No, we'll call it a peek behind the curtain. How I do my show prep is I will see something and then say something. No, I see something, and I will like bookmark it. If it's a tweet, I will grab the link. If it's on a website, I throw it into a document, a Google dot comment, and then I will come back and if there's anything that I come across, you know, if it's something that's like pertinent for right now, I will pull it out and it goes right into today's stack of stuff, right into Pete's prep pile, as I like to call it. So that's for the stuff that is of expiring value something that should be talked about immediately. But over the course of days, I will, and sometimes weeks or months, I'll accumulate a bunch of different stories that end up being lumped together, and then you get this fuller picture of a particular topic. So today's show is going to be some of that stuff. And it was prompted by a piece, well several pieces, but the big one dropped yesterday or sorry two days ago by Rod Dreyer, who is an American conservative writer, editor, and journalist. Writes about religion, politic culture ideas. He has worked for publications like The American Conservative. He has worked at The National Review, the Dallas Morning News, the New York Post. He's written several books. So he had a very very lengthy piece. It'll take you almost an hour to read through the whole thing, and he's got it at his sub Stack newsletter. I'm not going to be able to go over all of the points that he raises in that piece titled what I Saw and Heard in Washington, because he just returned to his He lives now in Budapest, I think, and so he had just returned to Budapest after spending three days in DC, had meetings with all these you know, Washington Conservatives and Republicans and maga people young and old. He dined with I think Orbon and the Vice president was there and met the family and all of that. So he did a big write up on his visit and what he came away thinking, and in a sentence, it's not good. It's not good. This is more of a cultural conclusion. But I'm going to start with something that animates part of what we are seeing. And this is a very large topic. Okay, so there are elements A and I welcome your input on all of this stuff because this is going to be h There are going to be various issues that are hit upon in Drere's massive write up, and every one of these different issues are complex, but they are all sort of in this ball, if you will, or under this heading of what's happening inside of the Right. This gets to the arguments involving the quote woke right. Israel is in there. The zoomers, the young zoomers or zoomer cons These are the younger generation that's now working in some of these you know, young professionals. They're in DC. It gets into housing, it gets into economic opportunity. It gets into the way the left has corrupted the institutions and largely created this reactionary groiper nation, the Nick Fouentes, Tucker Carlson, Candae Owens fight with people like Ben Shapiro. Right, So all of this gets swept up in Rod Dreer's piece, and this goes beyond politics, all right, And so like I urge you, I might have to say this multiple times for people that pop in and they didn't hear all of this. I urge you as you listen to these various topics to try to divorce some of the political arguments and personalities, right, and just think in terms of the macro at a cultural level. One of the guys I like to listen to when he puts his podcasts out is Andrew Claven and he does this podcast it's called Clavin on the Culture, and his most recent episode that he did, he was talking about how, and he has said this before, but he mentioned how like all of his colleagues at the Daily Wire, guys like Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, Ben Shapiro, that they were all they were all pessimistic about Donald Trump's ability to win reelection. But Claven wasn't Claven was the only one saying, Oh, yeah, he's gonna win. He's gonna win. And he's like, and I knew this because I don't follow the politics and the polls. I follow the culture, and what he saw in the culture indicated to him Trump was going to win. So let me start with housing. I have been saying for a long time, and I know this comes up in different ways in different stories along the way, which is, oh no, here's another apartment complex that's getting built, right, and I'm tired of all these apartment buildings going up. You've heard it said in Charlotte, You've heard it said in well like every city. Basically, I think, well, that's not dying. Too many apartments, more luxury apartment's, more apartment buildings going up. What about the traffic? I hate all of the apartment buildings, right, We don't need more apartment buildings than people go out to the city council meetings and they try to block all the apartments from being built and all of that. There was an analysis run by J. Parsons, a real estate economist, and another guy named Barrett Lindbergh, co founder of Savoy Equity who basically took the data and the analysis from Parsons and then blasted it out to his you know, tens of thousands of followers or hundreds of thousands on Twitter and gave a deeper analysis of it. And here's the headline. Is that in the apartment market right now, the cheapest, oldest apartments are getting crushed. But that's only happening in city that have just delivered lots of new apartments. And if you just think about it, it makes some sense if you have an understanding of how this kind of supply market would work. Right, the more you build, and you build luxury apartments, then people who can afford those move into those, and they clear out the second tier sort of. So you know, your luxury apartments would be class A, your second tiers class B, and then your class C the oldest, cheapest apartments, right, people move out of those. Well, when people are moving out of those, what happens The landlords need to fill them. So what do they do? They drop the rents, And that's happening. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina? Just a quick drive up the Mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. Nestled within the breath taking fourteen thousand acres of the Pisga National Forest, their cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally located between Asheville and the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. 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And the common goal between these revolutionaries on both sides, this is what's also referred to as the horseshoe theory, where you know, it kind of goes like the two prongs of the horseshoe. You know, it's like this this sea shape, and the edges, the ends of the horseshoe bend back towards each other. Right, they their common purpose is nihilism in the form of tearing down the current civilizational order because they believe it's a failure. They believe it to be a failure for different reasons. The tactics are the same. This is what James Lindsay has been talking about for like two years. Charlie Kirk recognized this as well. But it's nihilism. You've heard the term blackpilled. That's what this is also. And so they look at the current order and they say, this isn't serving us, this isn't conserving anything, this isn't helping me. And on the right, quote unquote, there is this nihilism in that. Well, the liberal order, the post World War two liberal order, was insufficient to ward off the transgressions of the Marxists. So we now have to burn it all down because it's become so corrupted by the Marxists. Some people just want to watch it burn. Those are the true nihilists. Those are the gropers. By the way, in my view, they're just nihilists. They're not seeking to build anything. I don't even know if they've thought it through that far. But one of the big complaints that they have is housing, and because of policies like zoning policies, regulatory burden, nimbiism, the not in my backyard stuff, I don't want you to build anything. Right then, and you hear it like I hear it all the time. Just go to your neighborhood Facebook group or the next door page or something right your HOA meetings whenever there's a rezoning and oh my gosh, there's going to be some apartments built nearby. It's going to increase traffic. I always tell them you are traffic. You live someplace and there was no traffic here before you lived here. So anyway, the data on class apartments, these are the cheapest oldest apartments, Class C or C class because I know on radio it probably sounds like I'm saying Class A, but I'm not. I'm saying Class C. Okay, they're getting crushed right now. In Denver the rents are down almost fourteen percent. In Naples, Florida down almost fourteen percent, Austin down thirteen percent, Phoenix down ten and a half percent, San Antonio down seven, Dallas down six and a half. And all of those cities have in common. And there are more Ashells on the list too. But as somebody pointed out to me last night, that there are a lot of people that moved away. So but all of these other places, they all have recently absorbed a massive wave of new apartments, and in cities that did not get this kind of a big supply wave, the sea class rents are actually rising. Twenty cities saw their sea class rents go up more than three percent nineteen of those twenty cities had supply below the national average, So it's basically musical chairs. Think of it like that. When a brand new luxury apartment opens up, where do the renters come from? All? Right? They move up from slightly older apartments. Those apartments now have vacancies, so they drop their rents to compete. That pulls in renters from the even older apartments, and down the line it goes. Eventually it hits the oldest, cheapest apartments at the bottom. And here's why they get hit the hardest. People living in class see apartments are already spending a huge chunk of their paycheck on rent. To fill the empty units, landlords have to cut prices a lot, sometimes enough to attract people who could not afford market rate apartments before. So it's like a waterfall effect. Right. But here's the important part, says Barrett Lindbergh, This proves that building new apartments, even the luxury apartments, reduces rents all the way down the spectrum. If it was just an affordability crisis, would see the CEA class rents falling everywhere. But we don't. In high supply cities and low supply cities. We would see the same thing, but we're not seeing that. We see a perfect split. If you build lots of new apartments, the sea class rents fall. If you don't build a lot of new apartments, those sea class rents go up. New supply at the top creates relief at the bottom. Also, he says, wages have been growing faster than rents for three straight years. More people can afford apartments today than before. The bottom line, this is what happens when you actually build housing. Supply works, right, This is the market sending the signal. This is how you reduce rent prices. You have more supply. But for some people, they won't believe this because they have been lied to for so long by people that they used to be able to trust or were told that they should be able to trust. And also they have a higher standard of living and a higher expectation and the lack of gratitude for the things that they do have. All right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why, Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. It's a Pete tweet from Trent who says apartments are going up around Ashville. It wasn't just Helene causing a drop in rent, but that is a factor. Yes, I agree. I think that's what I said, because, yeah, when I was there for you know, the eight years I worked in radio in Ashville, I covered a lot of these fights over you know, new apartments going up, and people on the right and the left. It was like the only bipartisan thing that they could agree upon, which was we don't want more apartments. It's like, well, that's how you get prices to drop, Otherwise they just keep going up and up and up. Also, I've noticed the NIMBI people in Ashville screamed the loudest about housing prices, but also scream the loudest when you try to do something to fix it. Yes, exactly, that's the problem with the NIMBYs. Not in my backyard. It's not even just my backyard. It's it's not anywhere. I don't want these things built anywhere anywhere where I can see them anywhere that I can that I have to pass on my way to work or whatever. So Will ricci Erdella is the managing editor of politics at Fox News, and he had an interesting right up the other day that folds into this discussion too. It's whether or not a family can live on one income right now, Obviously that income amount is going to matter if the one breadwinner in the family is just making twenty five thousand dollars a year, Like, no, that's probably not enough, you know, But if you're at you know, the median salary, you're making forty five to fifty five K. If you're in the middle class, which is, let's say fifty to one hundred and fifty thousand a year, but that's for a household. But somewhere in that range, you can actually do it because inflation adjusted, that's what people made. In fact, another stat I saw last night was that the middle class has declined as a percentage of the total population. However, it's because the the upper class has grown from like five percent to over thirty three percent, So there are more people earning more than one hundred and fifty thousand, and that is adjusted for inflation, and it includes all of the common expenses. The lower class has also shrunk. So you have this movement up right now. And I will say this person, inflation is real, and I have felt this. We were talking about it last night. Christie and I, like, we used to go to the grocery store. We get the same stuff all the time, basically, and it's usually about it was about four years ago, five years ago, it is about one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars per trip. Now it's pushing two fifty. So like, thanks Joe Biden for all of that. That's why they call it the silent tax inflation. Anyway, back to will Richie Ardella's piece, can a family live on one income today? Yes? But not today's lifestyle on yesterday's budget. For example, what size house did you grow up in? I've talked about this before. What size house did you grow up in? Right? From fifty years ago, most people were probably in about a one thousand square foot home, not a twenty five hundred square foot home as today. They had one car, probably a used car, not two, not three, not four new least right, one family phone just a landline. That was it. No smartphones for every person in the family. One TV, one in the whole house, no subscriptions, no cable, just antenna, no microwave, no central air conditioning, home cooked meals, no dining out, no childcare, one parent stayed home. Public schools only local sports, no travel leagues. Right, you played on your school team like that was it? Those were the options available. You either made the team or you did not, And that means you did not play basic health insurance. You would have to pay for your dental and any extras out of pocket. You had simple clothes. I would get hand me downs from my brother or a cousin who was older than me. Thrift toy stores, sorry, thrift store toys. Thrift store toys. Yeah, I mean back when I was growing up, like, it was not like you know the stuff that you get today. We weren't getting six hundred dollars xboxes for Christmas, you know, and rare vacations, but little debt. That's how most families lived for decades, and they raised kids, built communities and made it work. Now, there's one thing missing in his analysis here which I always feel the need to throw in, which is post World War Two, the rest of the industrialized world was flattened, right, So the United States enjoyed a boom that we are unlikely to ever see again because again the rest of the world was flattened. We did not have many competitors out there. We were it, so we enjoyed all of that prosperity. And as the rest of the world rebuilt after World War II, now we had more competition. Remember the Japanese, they were buying everything like Oh, they're just bought Rockefeller Center. We're going to be taken over by Japan and all of this. So his argument is that the issue is not that you cannot raise a family on one income. The issue is that we have inflated middle class to mean upper middle class. Luxuries, two cars, two iPhones, dining out like all the time, Amazon Prime and all the other subscriptions, orthodontics, soccer trips, Disneyland, a home office with Wi Fi like all of these things. We consider this to be now middle class. And if you don't get those things, now you have resentment and envy. And I feel like, well, I know that the antidote to resentment and envy, which that's what Marxism is, is gratitude for what you do have. But for me, being a gen Xer, I came up and we were not wealthy. We were middle class, and we came up at a certain middle class standard of living. And when I talked about it, when I went to college and I was in a dorm room, it was cinder block walls, tile floors, you know, a twelve x twelve room, Like that's it. Now you go to college and you got like luxury apartment status, and so kids who come from a quote middle class which is actually upper middle class luxury lifestyle, then going to college and maintaining that lifestyle, then getting out of college, now it's like reality, real world. Yeah, you've got, you know, four roommates living in some nine hundred square foot house and you're struggling and it's not so nice, and you don't have the grande countertops and the stainless steel appliances, like, you don't have that standard of living that you used to have. So part of this is expectation and when you are disabused of this notion that this is how normal middle class people live when you actually enter the you know, the real world, that breeds this resentment and this envy rather than seeing the gratitude that my parents were able to provide this lifestyle for me when growing up, but now I have to make it on my own. Which is another component of this, which is teaching kids resilience, and we don't do a good job of that. This is the bulldozer pairing kind of approach, right where you just clear everything in front of your kids so they have no challenges or obstacles to overcome. And then the first time they encounter resistance or an obstacle, they fall to pieces. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. Started in nineteen ninety seven in Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. 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I mean, they've stabilized the inflation rate. What was the inflation It was something like two and a half percent or three percent, something like that. That's the normal rate of inflation. The silent tax driven by monetary policy and the reckless borrowing that we've been engaged in for you know, the better part of the century and the existence of the Federal Reserve and all of that. But yeah, No, the problem was the massive infusions of new debt from the the ARP that Democrats ran through, right, the ARP, but Republicans voted for it as well. The COVID bailouts, like all of that spending the build back better, right, all of that spending trillions of dollars in new spending that we don't have that drove inflation up by double digits during the Biden administration. That has not been erased. It has not been erased. And to Trolley's point, here, Trolley the troll like, that's to their point. Trump and the Republicans are going to get wiped out in the midterms if they cannot address these economic realities, at the very least, the perception that things have not gotten better, right, They got to get prices down, Rodney says Pete. All of this can be wrapped up into one sentence, living outside your means, living beyond your means. Yeah, you can't work part time at Starbucks and live at Lake Norman. But today's young crowd wants that, and they want others to subsidize it so they can do it right. It's an unrealistic expectation that people have about the amount of work that they have to put in in order to realize the benefits and the amount of time it takes. We are an instant gratification society. Now that that's part of the expectation problem too. Seven oh four Numbers says, interesting how even in the same family, some children have a sense of entitlement and others do not. Personality must play a part, that said, I think public education instills a sense of entitlement. Well yeah, and they are told, you know that the reason why they are where they are is because somebody else put them there or is keeping them there. That's part of this as well. This gets to this lack of gratitude. It gets to the tendency for interpersonal victimhood, this TIV personality trait, and when you start seeing yourself as victimized, it becomes almost impossible to ever break out of that. People are not being taught that any obstacle is there for you to overcome. They're being taught that if there's an obstacle, that's somebody more powerful than you put it there to prevent you from succeeding, rather than saying, oh, here's an obstacle, I'll find a way over it, around it, or through it. Will Richie Rodella, managing editor of Politics at Fox News, real quick, just to finish his piece up here before the end of the hour. In nineteen sixty one, income worked because expectations were lower, families were more self reliant, and debt was not a lifestyle. You want one income, you can probably do it, but you have to live like the people who actually did it. Not poorer, just simpler and more deliberate. The people of the past did not have a choice, but you do also, I would add to that, and that's the conclusion of his piece there. But I would also add that the people who were living that lifestyle believed that they were better off than their parents before them, because they were in many cases the material goods that they had, that standard of living, it was better. And thank you. Mark email to Pete at the petecleanershow dot com. It's bananas, Pete. That's the acronym build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything. They're called bananas. You have more control over what your neighbor does with his land then you do with your own. Not that you own any land really, it's all loaned by govcoke. They let you rent it. In this case they call it property taxes. Right, and Tom says, Pete, you forgot to d walking to school in the winter in three feet of snow uphill both ways, right with new and Tom with newspaper wrapped around your feed for shoes. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.