The aspiration gap and rising discontent | Hour 3

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 in 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 vpeteclendershow 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, you recall I think it was last week I discussed an article from Rob Henderson. He's the guy who coined the term luxury beliefs when referring to like you're so privileged, you're so wealthy and affluent that you can have these beliefs, right. And he's an author, it's like a social science kind of guy. Whatever, does a lot of sociology stuff. He's on Twitter a lot commenting, and he does interviews and stuff about sort of mentalities, the psychology behind stuff. And anyway, he had a piece called Rage of the Falling Elite, and he talks about like how the left has lionized Luigi Mangione, right, the propulsion of Zoron Mamdani into the mayoralty or mayorship in New York City, and he talks about how the children of the wealthy have this expectation that they will obviously and easily be welcomed into the ranks of the elite where their parents are, and when they are not when they go to you know, university and get a master's degree in basket weaving and then oh my gosh, I have actually no marketable skills and oh my gosh, I have to work like eight hours a day, and like then all of a sudden, it's like I'm not gaining access to this this elite class. And how he talked, and he goes on to talk about how behavioral economics has long recognized that, you know, the higher the expectation that people have, and that they don't achieve that expectation, then they become enraged by it. Right, there's this gap, this delta. This gets into what was also is also referred to as elite over production. And this was from a guy Urchin was his name, Professor Turchin, who came up with this this term. ANDREWS. Stuttafford, writing over at National Review the other day, elite over production and disappointed aspirations. He kind of hooks into this theme as well. And by the way, the stuff that I've been discussing over the last two hours, I believe there is a nexus here between not just the rise in left wing violence that we're seeing this elite overproduction, the failure to meet expectations, and then the rage that people feel and then they like it's I think it was Henderson who said, like, this isn't a battle between the haves and the have nots. It's a battle between the halves versus the have mores. Right, they're looking at the one percent and they're in the two percent, and they're like, you know, eat the rich, right, And these are the revolutionaries. And throughout history, the revolutionary leaders have always come from basically the children of the elites, because they're close enough to see the way this world operates, but because they can't gain access to it, they want to tear it all down, right, and they pay lip service to the needs of the proletariat, the workers, the common folk. But it's not really about that, right. The next is there with Islamism, there is this like, and I've talked about this after October seventh, when you know, we would have these debates, and you see the debates with people who you know, say, well, the Palestinians have a right to return because of the nakba, right, And they call it the nakba which I forget exactly what the words like, the tragedy or travesty or something like that, the disaster, right, And they claimed that this that this disaster was them leaving their lands during the nineteen sixty seven war. Right. However, first off, most of them fled, they went, they went to different countries like Jordan and stuff, because they were refugees during war when all of the surrounding Arab nations attacked Israel and got their butts kicked. Right, that's the nakba, that's the humiliation. Was that this tiny, little, plucky, upstart country just beat the whole you know, pan Arab world. Right, that this was Nasrism, right, the guy who tried to unite, the Egyptian leader, who tried to unite all of the Arab world against Israel, and like, we're all one big house of Islam, right, and we're going to expel this house of war. Because that's how Islam thinks in these black and white terms. You are either under the House of Islam or you are under the house of War and you'll never guess what they do to the house of war people, Yeah, they do war anyway, So that humiliation. So the expectation super high, right, and then they don't meet it, and so that leaves this humiliation. And that is especially acute in cultures in the Middle East, in the Arab world, very acute. Not just the Arab world, it's also you know in other countries too, But that like this great humiliation, and that's what drove a lot of the rage and still does. So back to this piece at National Review, Elite over production occurs when members of the elite, or those with the talents to join it, or who have been led to believe that they have such talents. You could be a talentless child of a one percenter elite parents, have a couple of kids and they're kind of screw ups. So you don't have the talent to be in the elites, but they've been told they do because you're special. Right. So when members of the elite, or those with the talents to join it, or who have been led to believe they have the talents to join it, when they become too numerous for a society to accommodate their aspirations. That's what elite overproduction is. A recent article in the Financial Times by John Burne Murdoch noted the discontent fell by many young people, young adults that they are earning more. It adds that they are earning more than their parents at this stage in their lives. Financial Times article finds that many young adults are discontented and they say, you know, we're not I can't own a home. They have all these economic grievances, right, but they are earning more than their parents did at their age. You don't hear that at all. Right. This is called the aspiration gap between somebody's position in society and the one they could reasonably have expected to attain given their age and education level, and that reliably drives the discontent. The aspiration gap. This idea, and I've talked about this before. You go back fifty years, the average home was about nine hundred to one thousand square feet, and you had bigger families all sharing one home, one bathroom, probably didn't have central air conditioning. Right now, the homes are average over two thousand, and if you are coming from the elite it's probably way bigger. Right, You've got a much larger home. You grow up in this environment of a you know, of a six bedroom, four and a half bath or whatever, and a certain lifestyle. Certain you know, you go on vacations, you have all the latest trendiest clothing. Right. Your parents get you the car when you can drive, and a nice car, new car at that. Right. You come from this and the fish doesn't know it's wet, right, and so you think, okay, well, I'm going to do what the elites do, which is to go to college, get my credential, and then I then I'm in an elite, I'm in the I'm in the group. And then you realize this is the real world and you're not not actually able to achieve this on your own. And that's what drives the discontent. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. 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They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are visit creative video dot com. All right, let me jump over to the text line. David says, would Rob Reiner's son fit into this this does a situation? Or was he simply mentally ill, angelic and frustrated or was he just mentally ill, jealous and frustrated or was he just part of the elite that was talentless which caused frustration, anger and acting out in poor ways. Now it's not too controversial, Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty clear that Rob Reiner's son, who murdered his parents allegedly was mentally unstable for a very long time. That being said, there probably is some element of this aspiration gas app that caused discontent. There probably is some element of that in his in his mind. Right. Oh my goodness, I'm trying to I'm trying to read the text line here. Oh, here's a good example, hunter Biden, right, like, that could be a good idea, a good example of it. Or Ian says, uh, Occupy Wall Street trust trust fund brats, that's another good one, right. These Marxist revolutionaries, like the leaders of these movements that like, they band together and they you know, lead the masses and stuff like, they usually come from the ranks of the almost elites, right Like their parents were part of the system, but they got shut out somehow for some reason. And this is becoming pronounced because of elite over production, particularly due to the expansion of higher education. It has upset the balance between expectations and outcomes. This from the Financial Times piece by John Byrne Murdoch. As more and more people go to university, the average graduate shifts from being among the economic elite to being the norm, placing them much further down the socioeconomic pecking order than graduates of yesteryear. They were told putting in the years of hard work would bring with it not only a good job and wage, but a certain status in society. And most have found out it has not. I remember growing up and hearing the phrase that today's college degree is like your parents high school degree. Like it was expected that if you were going to have job prospects going into the market, you would have to have a degree. And that became the truth, right like that, I mean, it's not the truth, but that became true. Like college degrees then became necessary for all sorts of things that we now see. You don't really need a college degree for Did I need a college degree to be a reporter? No? I did not. I've been saying this. Well even before I went to college, my parents were having none of it. But you know, but my parents did not go to college, They did not graduate college, and so they wanted all of us kids to go to college because they wanted us to be in a better position. And what does that mean. It means that you would be in sort of the elite, you would rise to a station above. Right. Well, when everybody is doing that, and colleges are handing out these degrees that are not really preparing you for any kind of real job that you know derives any benefit for society, Like you're not going to get paid well, especially when people direct you into majors that have no prospects. So Debra says, what you are saying about the kids who grow up elite then are discontent in their young adulthood. So true. There is also another side of this. I will use myself as an example. I grew up in a higher income, but then was not as successful at the lifestyle I expected out of college, but I learned how to cope with it. My parents never coddled me in the job career I selected for myself as something I learned to be happy and satisfied with. I live on much smaller budget than how I grew up, and you have to learn to love your life and be happy without the disdain that is probably not taught to children of the rich. Elites with no skills to take care of, no skills to take of themselves, then just end up being bitter and resentful towards those working hard at being successful. So this is my suggestion as an antidote for this gratitude. I feel like being grateful no matter what station you are in life. That's not to say you don't you know, have aspirations, not to say that you don't try to work, you know, hard, to get ahead, to be more comfortable, whatever, but to be grateful of that which you have achieved, that which you have and like when you start, you know, start identifying things on a daily basis, And it doesn't come naturally to most people, right, Limbay used to talk about this all the time, like trying to be optimistic. It takes work at first because it's not really a natural disposition. Because pessimism will save your life, you know, ten thousand years ago. Like if you think the worst is going to happen all the time, like that is probably a survival mechanism thinking, oh, look at this furry little animal. It would never hurt me. And then you're eaten by the lion and all the rest of the survivors they're like, Okay, that's not a furry, little cute animal to pet. Let's kill it and eat it so it doesn't kill us and eat us. Right, So, you know, looking for ways to be grateful it's a good thing to do every day if you can intentionally think of something to be grateful for in your life, and you'll probably find more often than not. It's not any materialistic thing, right, it's the people. It's experiences, right, it's a sunset, whatever it might be. They're non tangible things. Well, I mean except people. You can touch them only with permission. Along these lines. Oh, hang on a second, I did have right. Let me let me throw that away, because I did get a tweet pointing out that that one of my parents did, in fact finish college. My dad did finish college after forty five years. He went back to college, so he did get his degree, and I left it. I made it sound like they never got their college degrees. Mom never did, but Dad did. He did go back to college, got his degree, and then Dad says in this tweet, we were focused on the four of you kids, so you would be in a better place for a time. The point is that anyone can obtain their dreams, which were getting the kids first, then finishing my education regardless of time. That's from my dad. So he's listening, and so hi Dad, But but yes, I did not mean to imply that he never got the degree, because he did. He went back when we were adults and he did finish his degree, and was it the Empire State up in New York. And they actually counted his real life experience towards the degree credits, which are smart. Like, that's a good model, because like you're going to tell like, in my dad's case, he was a comptroller or CFO for decades and like you're telling me this guy couldn't get a degree as an accounting Give me a break. He's only been running books for you know, companies and corporations for decades. So it was a good model, all right. So along these same lines, I mentioned Peter Turchin, the guy who came up with the elite overproduction. This is actually part of this. It's a historical field that analyzes patterns in history in a scientific way to find predictive meaning. And he invented this whole school of thought, this field called cleo dynamics, clio dynamics, cleo dynamics. He wrote a book in twenty twenty three called End Times. It explains why he thinks we are in for a rough go of it in America based on historical patterns He writes, quote, many common Americans have withdrawn their support from the governing elites. And by the way, every time I say the word elites, just I'm put air quotes around that. I just I try to sometimes use the word fa leites, But then people are like, what is that word you're saying? So the faux leads, the elites, they're not like, they're really not like. You look at them sometimes a lot of them, and you're like, are these really the best and brightest of the society really? So they have Many common Americans have withdrawn their support from the governing elites. They have flipped a finger in the face of America's ruling class. Large swaths of degree holders, frustrated in their quest for elite positions, are breeding grounds for counter elites who dream of overthrowing the existing regime. Elite over production. You have too many educated young people who aspire to join the elites, but not enough places for them. The kids graduating then are basically useless. They come out of school carrying massive debt. They are a revolution utionary class. Rod Dreyer a writer. I think he's now living in Hungary or something, but he says, I've been saying that in this space, and I will say in my forthcoming book on the Weimar Republic, the young middle class Germans of the early nineteen thirties were the most enthusiastic mass converts to Nazism. A significant number of these young men had been pro Nazi from their student days in the nineteen twenties, when they saw their parents lose everything in hyper inflation and all the things that gave meaning to a person's life in Germany had collapsed in the wake of the First War. But it took the World War, but it took growing up in the chaos of the nineteen twenties where nothing was solid and social atomization was everywhere. That rendered them anxious, filled with anxiety. Then when the depression hit, it was clear that they had no hope of ever achieving stable middle class life. That's why they rushed to Hitler's side. He says, I hope you understand this is in no way of justification, but it's an explanation. And here's the parallel with today. Gen Z, the first cohort of which was born in nineteen ninety seven, is the first one to have grown up under digital conditions, which creates a sense of psychological instability that is hard for us olds to appreciate. Plus, their society really has been coming apart. We olds can remember when it wasn't like this, but they can't. This is their reality. As Peter Turchen and Ron Dreerzo research into the Weimar Germany era, the educated middle class is the revolutionary class in most cases. Keep in mind too, that students were the ones hit hardest by the COVID lockdowns. It's what radicalized a lot of them. There's a Belgian psychologist named Matthias Desmond. He wrote a book called The Psychology of Totalitarianism, which arose in part out of his reaction to the COVID panic. He said, although the Enlightenment tradition arose from man's optimistic and energetic aspiration to understand and control the world, it has led to the opposite in several respects, namely the experience of loss of control. Humans have found themselves in a state of solitude, cut off from nature and existing apart from social structures and connections, feeling powerless due to a deep sense of meaningless. They live under clouds that are pregnant with an inconceivable destructive potential, all while psychologically and materially depending on the happy few, whom he does not trust and with whom he cannot identify. It is this individual that Hannah Ernd named the atomized subject. It is this atomized subject in which we recognize the elementary component of the totalitarian state. He says, this is who we are today what Desmond described, and none more so than the young rodrierg goes on to say, we olds laugh at the young as you know, snowflakes, but we shouldn't. That very fragilization is why so many of them demand authority figures to take control. I got a text here that we haven't taught resilience. I covered this a couple of years ago. Classes that are being taught on like adulting, and like one of the assignments I remember was some college kid I guess was like their assignment was to take their niece to an amusement park and it almost paralyzed her. The student like, I don't know what to do? How do I do this? And this is like you know, twenty one twenty two year old per and they don't know how to do it. Fix a flat tire, change a tire, don't know how to do it right. Dad taught us how to change a tire when we got a car. You should everybody should know. That builds resilience. But here's the thing. When you do that thing that's uncomfortable, like the student taking their niece to the park, after you do it and you realize that wasn't so bad, I can do that. That then becomes an infectious way of thinking that you can overcome these things, and you look at challenges not as something to stop you, but as something to overcome. Regarding my comments earlier about gratitude, nine to eight zero number says on the text line, I stop and pick up every penny I see on the ground. I use it as a reminder to say a little prayer of thanks for something small in my life. Shoes on my feet, food in my belly, et cetera. That's a good ritual, Da, says Pete. People who embrace the leftist ideology all seem to have one thing in common, a massive chip on their shoulder. I'm assuming a chip on their shoulder. It might be an envy chip, or an inferiority chip, or a bigotry chip, or maybe it's chip in the brain. Is that what you're talking about. But they all have this massive chip and it drives everything. And it's also the reason they are willing to burn it all down if they think they didn't or couldn't create it all because of their chip. Marx had it, Angles had it, Lenin and Mao had it, and so does Barack Obama and Zoron Mamdani. Well, at the core of Marxism is envy. I mean, that is the that's the entire animating emotion is envy. It's to tear it down because these people have more than you. Right, Everything else is just constructed like scaffolding around that sentiment. Back to Rod Dreyer's piece on his substack, he quotes the staff editorial over at the Free Press pointing out that the discourse legitimizing political violence has become normalized on the Zoomer left. The Free Press editors wrote quote, if you think education provides inoculation against such moral perversion, it's exactly the opposite. According to one survey, forty percent of Americans who have graduate or professional degrees agreed that violence is often necessary to create social change. I went over these numbers a couple days ago. Forty percent with these degrees compared to twenty three percent of Americans with no education beyond high school, so it's almost double. Among the terminal degree holders would be Trump assassin Cole Allen, who graduated from cal Tech and is an award winning test prep tutor. Couldn't have put it better himself. It's a comforting thought to imagine that only a crazy person could travel across the country by train with guns and knives to try to murder Donald Trump and members of his cabinet. The trouble is that isn't true. There's no evidence so far that Alan was suffering any kind of a psychotic break. His manifesto does not read like the deranged ravings of a madman. It represents a coherent worldview evil though it is, but a coherent worldview that sees violence as a valid way to achieve necessary political ends. Unfortunately, he's not alone, right Lenin wrote Vladimir Lenin wrote about this the use of violence essentially, well, you're gonna have to crack a few eggs to make the omelet. I mean, he didn't use that axiom, but that's the mentality. And this is part this is part of the dehumanization of your opponents. Right if somebody is standing in your way. And I've talked about how this usual. The blueprint is pretty consistent here across all of these Marxist regimes throughout history, which is, you know, identify the oppressor who's oppressing us, and you know they're the rich, the elites, the the governing entities, right, so you tear them down, you replace them with yourselves, and then yay, long live the revolution. We won. Everything's going to get better. And then, of course things don't get better because Marxism is inherently flawed. It denies human nature, and so then when things don't work, then it's like, okay, well, now after we've you know, murdered everybody that was standing in our way to take control, now there are obviously outside forces that are trying to prevent our success. So then you start rounding up people that you accuse of being these foreign actors, foreign agents, and then you just kind of keep expanding the category, you know, because there's always somebody else to blame for your thing not working. They the people who live in these countries that get taken over. They are the first victims of the totalitarian state. They're the first victims. Like I feel for people that like I talk about the try cooms all the time, but I don't include all of the people of China in that because there are a lot of people. I mean, you're just born into this society and you are victimized by your government by this evil ideology. You're the first victims, and then they weaponize everybody, you know, against the rest of the world, the Western civilization. Back to the Free Press editorial. Among those who share Allan's view, the people who celebrated after Charlie Kirk was killed allegedly by a man who is offended by Kirk's opinions on the gender binary. The people who have turned Luigi Mangioni, who's accused of murdering the United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. They made him into a hero. Those people they think the same thing as this guy, Cole Allen. They worship him, not because they think he was innocent, but because they think he did it. That's why they like him, because they know he did it. The same faction of the left would have celebrated if Allan had not been stopped. How significant a faction well, According to an Emerson College polling survey, more than forty percent of gen Zers said that the murder of the healthcare CEO was acceptable forty percent. This is the same educated generation that in just a few years will find the job market closed to about half of them. If predictions about AI wiping out fifty percent of white collar jobs within five years bears out right, and the anthropic chief AI company said that this is all San Francisco tech titans talk about, and they are shocked that the rest of us, especially the Washington political class, are not talking about it. The political violence and the discourse around it is heavily weighted to the left now, but it won't stay there, not in a general crisis, nor will the political violence. A few days ago, the state of Virginia voted on congressional redistricting plan that will effectively disenfranchise most Republicans in the state, of whom there are many. In response, Florida then did its plan. Nate Fisher tweeted an appropriate response to Virginia. But what this reveals is both sides have given up on persuasion, recognizing the country is so divided that it's basically impossible. So it's a race to rig the system in your favor. All while speaking in grand terms about our democracy. 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 p 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.