The disturbing trend of how we see fellow Americans (09-15-2025--Hour2)

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 dpeteclendershow 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. So in the last hour I mentioned a study. This was done by two psychologists in twenty twenty three named Christopher Petscow and Noor Kittilie. And what they uncovered was how number two findings really Number one, how Americans see each other. And conservatives tend to view liberals as immature, and liberals tend to see conservatives as savage. So there's a bit of a difference in the way we perceive each other. Right, conservatives look at people on the left and they think irresponsible, gullible, irrational, right throwing tantrums and such, unable to form, you know, a logical argument and debate and discussion and that sort of thing. And that Now, again this isn't true, like hashtag. Not all liberals, right, but this is in general how the right sees the left. The left sees the right as aggressive, cold hearted, and barbaric, which obviously, now if you are viewing somebody through that kind of a lens, right, you've now escalated your response. That's acceptable. The researchers also found number two, liberals overestimate how dehumanized they are by conservatives. In other words, they think conservatives view them even more negatively than conservatives actually do. And by the way, I took part. In a. I don't know what you would call it. It's not a seminar. It was like maybe an experiment. It was called Better Angels. I think they rebranded it to something else. This was up in Henderson County in western North Carolina a couple of years back, probably like around twenty eighteen or twenty nineteen, I want to say. And the idea is, and they hold these sort of workshops that's a better word for it, all around the country, and they bring together people of the left and of the right, and then they break you apart into red groups and blue groups right, and they ask you a series of questions, and the questions are modeled very much after. In fact, the guy who created it was a marriage counselor, and so a lot of the questions are following along a marriage counselor sort of therapy session, if you will. Some of the questions and some of the questions were, you know, like what do you think that your opposing party thinks of you? What are the biggest thing or like the biggest lies or misconceptions I should say that they have of you? And what are the biggest misconceptions you would think that they say you have of them? And then so they broke everybody apart into the groups, into the teams. You go through these things, then you come back and then you share it, you go around the table and that sort of thing. And it was a it was a pretty interesting workshop. I didn't like because they ask at the end, if you, like, what did you take away from it, like what do you think you've gained anything or whatever? And my answer to that at the end of it was no, because like I was expecting better answers. I was expecting there to be some sort of insight. I was expecting to learn something else about what animates and what motivates the people on the Blue team and everything they said, I already knew. There was nothing that they no arguments, no slogans, no introspection, nothing that they provided that was new to me. So I mean it. I mean it was a valuable experience because it was an experience, but to that extent, like, no, I didn't really learn a whole lot. I didn't learn anything really. So the left thinks that the right dehumanizes the left disproportionately to what actually is the case. On the flip side, here, conservatives underestimate how dehumanized they are by the left. That's the gap here. Right conservatives think liberals view them more positively than they actually do. And that's what we all saw last week. And if you are like me, you are now aware of people in your personal orbit who searched for any kind of a way to rationalize, justify, excuse, offer some nuance to why murdering a person during a free speech campus event is somehow. You know, I'm not saying he should have done it, but I'm not saying he should have been guilled. But here's here's some type of explanation for why it's okay. It's it's never okay. There isn't anything else to stop the sentence when you say it's not acceptable, period. Don't add a butt, don't need it, don't need to try to justify or figure out some other way or play what about is am I or anything like that. You don't there's no there's no benefit to doing that. And what Rob Henderson, who is again he is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute at the Times dot com, He says, this gap matters, This gap in the way we perceive the other side. Seeing somebody as immature leads to contempt. Right, You laugh at them, you dismiss them, You don't take them seriously because they're children. They don't know what they're talking about. Just rolling your eyes at them. Seeing somebody as a savage that leads to rage. You want to punish them, maybe even hurt them. There was a twenty twenty five report from the Network Contagion Research Institute showing where this can lead. Nearly one third of Americans now say that killing certain public figures can sometimes be justified. About half of left leaning respondents agreed with that statement. Half the breakdown is alarming. Forty one percent of Democrats said assassinating a political leader could be at least somewhat justified, which is what we heard last week. So why you're seeing all of these social media posts, maybe it's why you've heard some comments from your neighbors or family members to this extent that has shocked you. Like, wait, what that means Democrats? Oh, by the way, so that was forty one percent. Twenty nine percent of Republicans say the same. That means Democrats are forty percent more likely to endorse political assassinations. Both of those numbers are still too high. This should unsettle everybody. It suggests that a growing share of progressives, though, have built a worldview that sees political violence as acceptable. Right wing extremism is real, but the left wing verse is just as dangerous and far less studied. It also appears to be getting worse. This trend is not happening in a vacuum. It is being shaped in the very places where young people learn what's acceptable, including college campuses, which is precisely why Charlie Kirk went there. Universities are meant to teach students how to argue, persuade, and think critically. Too often they now teach students that shouting down, harassing, or even physically confronting opponents is justified. Yeah, we've been seeing this for a while. They're meant to teach students how to argue. It was one of the best I guess mistakes. It wasn't a mistake, but like the well choice, the best choice I made was to take as much philosophy classes in college as I could enjoyed it. I was pretty good at it, even if I couldn't really memorize all of the different names of every single theory and all of that a lot of memorization, But that was far better for me because I learned to think and to ask the why why do you think this thing? Let's run through some thought experiments, testing your opinions and such. And philosophy is not required in college most colleges anymore, maybe it should be so. When I was a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's, and before he died, my mom and my dad took care of him as he got worse. Forty years ago, there were no treatments and not much support for caregivers and family. But things are different today because of the work of so many people, including the Alzheimer's Association of Western Carolina. It's a great organization with awesome people with huge hearts. I've been a supporter for twenty five years. This cause means a lot to me. I particip paid in the annual walk to end Alzheimer's and I'm leading a Charlotte team again this year and it's called once again Pete's Pack. You can sign up and you can join the team and walk with us. It's on October eighteenth, that truest field. Sign up at alz dot org slash Walk and then you can search for my team name Pete's Pack. There's also a link at thepetepod dot com. There's also a link in the description of this podcast. Also, I'll be am seeing the Gastonia Walk on October eleventh, and so you can make a team and join that one too, or make a donation and help me hit my goal of five thousand dollars. If you do, I really appreciate it. There are a bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas. You can go to alz dot org slash walk for all the dates and locations. We're closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's. Can you help us get there? Will you walk with me for a different future? For families, for more time for treatments. This is why we walk. Uh. Yes, I am aware now of what is going on with Rjorie kel High School. My goodness, what's it been a week since you we're in the news. Well, congratulations, you have done it again. Rderie Kill High School here in Charlotte says they are doing an investigation as to who would paint on the spirit rock, which is specifically designed to be painted upon. But somebody painted live like Kirk, live like Kirk. I guess I should give it one of these, right, A Christian man who talked about the importance of having purpose, having faith, being committed to your wife, having children. That's they don't want to live like that, everybody. My goodness, what a terrible example to set for people engage in debate rather than violence. We don't want to send that kind of a message. Gosh. So they're going to be investigating, so Eric, it's a pete tweet. Eric says, if I understood the news report correctly, Charlotte school is seeking to punish students for memorializing Charlie Kirk's martyrdom on the school's spirit rock. I e. The thing on campus solely there to be painted by students. It's absolutely insane, particularly so when the spirit Rock got to get painted with the BLM, clenched fist and all of that. So that's allowed on the Spirit Rock. A fiery but mostly peaceful painting of the Spirit Rock at Audrie Kel. We also had the the Durham Police chief her social media comments. We had the this racist guy down in Munroe, Democrat Party official of some kind that's been in our newscast as well. I mean, this guy's just i mean seething and just oozing with racial animus. We had the UNC Charlotte professor emeritus, so retired, but he made comments. It's like, this is a very clarifying moment because you should just be able to say murder is wrong. That's it. Murder is wrong. That's the standard, pretty simple. And if you're going to start couching it in all sorts of ways to make it sound like well in this case though, maybe then you've lost the plot. You have already lost the plot. Glenn Reynolds at instapundit dot com. He talks about the preference cascade. You've heard me talk about preference cascades as well. He says everything is becoming clear. The number of Charlie Sorry. The murder of Charlie Kirk at the hands of a leftist gunman has revealed that many, many more Americans and even people elsewhere around the world supported Charlie and his views that was commonly appreciated. In other words, people didn't realize how many others like them there were. This is the same thing that happened with Rush Limball when he got on the radio and people were like, wait a minute, somebody else thinks of this way about things too, And that's why Limball was so successful. I mean, he was a master of his craft, of course, but people finally heard a voice saying the things that they thought and that they were saying too. But they thought they were alone, and then you realize you're not alone. Preference cascade. So that's one side of it. Charlie's views, uniformly disparaged by the press as far right, are in fact mainstream, generally held by the majority of people, and his assassination has caused people to step forward and realize that the normal American community is actually a huge majority. But then there is another preference cascade occurring on the left. Something else is being revealed, which is just how awful the views of the other twenty percent are. The approving response to the assassination from so many otherwise apparently respectable people has demonstrated just how many people there are who adhere to a leftist ideology of hate. These are large numbers of people in professional and managerial jobs, military posts that are saying it's okay to assassinate Americans, that's a national security threat. They're mostly government employees of some sort who genuinely believe that holding ideas they don't like should carry the death penalty. He says that Trump has acted as the great clarifier. And here's another Robert Sterling. He's an investor, an entrepreneur, and a business advisor, and he went on a self described long rant on Twitter and he says, my liberal friends are completely oblivious about how radicalizing the last week has been for tens of millions of normal Americans. You have zero clue. I'm not talking about people who are online. I mean regular everyday Americans. The so called normis millions of them, tens of millions. Maybe they're logging on, they're engaging, and they are furious, and I will be candid. They blame you, guys. They blame the left, and you may not want to hear that. You may not think it's justified, but they think you're the bad guys. Here. Game on Week one starts now, and every touchdown brings you closer to a payout. With Draft Kings sports book and official sports betting partner of the NFL, this isn't just football, it's first touchdown fireworks anytime. TD rushes live bets that ride every momentum shift. 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Play responsibly on behalf of Boothill, casino and resort Kansas. Fees may apply in Illinois twenty one plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario. Bonus bets expire seven days after issuanz s Sportsbook dot DraftKings dot com. Slash promos NFL Sunday Ticket offer for new subscribers only and auto renews until canceled. Digital games and commercial use excluded. Restrictions apply additional NFL Sunday Ticket terms or at YouTube dot com slash go Slash NFL Sunday Tickets Slash terms Limited timeofer. So this is Robert Sterling again, an investor, entrepreneur, business advisor, and he took to the Twitter machine and he laid out he said, here are the facts, and I think he lists three of them. Yeah. Number one tens of millions of Americans started this week seeing a twenty three year old woman, a young woman in whom virtually every parent watching pictured their own daughter stabbed in the neck by a career criminal. These people then found out the murderer had been released from jail fourteen times over. Fact two, two days later, tens of millions of Americans watched the video of Charlie Kirk get murdered speaking to college kids. Millions of these people knew who Charlie was. Millions of them did not. Upon seeing the video. However, these normal Americans from across the land and across the political spectrum agreed that he was the victim of a terrible, fundamentally unjustifiable crime, and their hearts broken sympathy for his family. Good people who had never even heard the name Charlie Kirk before wept. Fact three, Immediately after seeing the footage of a peaceful young man get shot in the neck, these same people logged onto Facebook and Instagram. And remember we're talking about regular Americans, not the perpetually online people of Twitter or Blue Sky, and they saw some of their local nurses, school teachers, college administrators, retail workers celebrating this horrific crime, not just offending it, but cheering it. Those are the facts that happened. It is still happening. And here's what it means for you Democrats who are reading this. These normies, these middle of the road, non political citizens, just became politically active. They realized that politics cares about them, even if they don't particularly care about politics. And by the way, that is a paraphrase or a rephrase of the famous axiom from Pericles. I actually use it in one of my own ads. You may not take an interest in politics, but politics takes an interest in you. And after watching Arena Zarutska and Charlie Kirk both bleed out from the neck, they think their lives and their physical safety of them and their families the bedrock of human society, the foundation of mass law's hierarchy of needs. Now it depends on political activation, whether they desire it or not. These people are now sprinting to the right because they blame you, guys, for everything that just happened. They blame you because even if you count yourself as a moderate Democrat, your party supported the district attorneys, the city council members, and the mayors, the judges, that let fictitious concerns about mental health and racial justice supersede very real concerns for their families safety. So let me take a side step here and mention what mass Law's hierarchy of needs is Abraham mass Law Masslow. If you think of it as a pyramid, and at the bottom is these are the fundamental requirements, the biological requirements for survival. Right. This is the base of the pyramid. Air, water, food, shelter, clothing, sleep, reproduction. That's the foundation. That is the physiological needs, the fundamental biological requirements for survival. The next layer up is safety needs, security and predictability in one's environment. This includes things like personal security for example, no violence, no crime, no war, right, health and well being, stable environment, financial security, safety nets. Right. So that's the second most important foundational building block of the hierarchy of needs. The next one up social connection and acceptance. This includes family, friendship, community, romantic relationships, group membership, affection, and intimacy. Right. These are all needs of us humans, right, but the primary ones like to go back to the like this is the bare minimum at the bottom of this pyramid, the foundation air, water, food, shelter, clothing, sleep, reproduction, then personal security, health and well being, then family, friendship, community, group membership, and then the next level up from there recognition, competence, and respect. You can call this esteem. This includes things like self respect, confidence, respect from others, reputation, recognition, achievement. And then the very top, you could say, the least needed thing. But you can get there once you have all of these underlying needs met is self actualization, realizing your full potential. This means creativity, personal growth, moral development, pursuit of meaning, purpose driven action, peak experience like joy, transcendence, and insight. And the key is that you don't get to have all of these pieces at the top of that pyramid in the hierarchy. You don't get there if you don't have the underlying needs being met right if you have to For example, and this is a problem in a lot of third world countries, is like you don't have po water, let's say, and you have to walk or a member of your family has to walk three hours each way with a jug of water on their head drawn from the only water source available, and you have to walk three hours each way to bring home a day or two worth of water. You're going to do that first, because you need the water to live, right, and if that's going to consume that much time, then it robs you of the time to pursue these other things. That's why the crime issue is so important, because when you don't have a safe community, then you don't get to the other levels of the pyramid. And a society or a community or a city that doesn't work to protect its law abiding populace, then you are not going to have the high trust necessary to engage in the commerce, which allows people to be elevated in their quality of life, their standard of living, the ability to pursue self actualization. You don't get to the top of the pyramid because you're afraid to leave the house, right, You're afraid to engage in the commerce. You can't do anything because you're going to be attacked or robbed or something. So this is the connection to the Zarutzka murder. This is what people see there and they are pinning the blame on these quote reforms that haven't worked. All Right, You hear me talk a lot about incentives, right, Well, let's talk about incentive trips, the kind that companies offer employees to fire them up and reward their teams. 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Let me get to a couple of messages real quick, and then I'll get to Tim who's waiting on the line. It's a pete tweet from just me who says, in all the years I worked in CMS, or as I call it see the mess I never heard of anybody accused of vandalis for painting something on the rock outside of a school. If offensive words ever appear, it's painted over. I would imagine we now know the political leanings of the principle at Ardriquel. Yeah, I think we did know what her politics were before. Russ says, I usually unplug on the weekend, but this weekend I watched Erica Kirk's address and scroll the good bit seeing how Charlie's murder was being covered and how it was affecting people. One of the most one of the most interesting was a reposted TikTok of a college aged girl having a real time existential crisis. She said another woman she followed and really admired had posted approvingly about Charlie's death and said all you had to do was watch his videos to see how bad he was. So this girl spent hours watching Charlie Kirk videos and realized she had been lied to about so much. Watching a few hours of his videos resonated with her and made more sense to her than her previous beliefs. She was questioning everything she had ever believed from social media and her teachers. Yeah, I said it from the beginning. You've made Charlie Kirk more powerful in death than he was in life. Much like Obi wan Kenobi. You strike him down, he will become many times more powerful. All right, let me go over and chat with Tim. Welcome to the show. Hey, Tim, Hey, I tell you just hit on something that I've been thinking about for years, and I've actually come up. I came up with a term quite a while ago about issues that society can evolve into to where these particular issues or even something you can talk about, and I refer to them as societies luxury issues. You know, It's like after everything else has been taken care of, after your food is in, after your basic necessities are done, then you can think about something else. Maybe people can start thinking about being artist stir things like this if they're not so busy working out in the fields. And you know, and and the thing of it is is a lot of luxury issues can be just simply wonderful. I think about what it has taken for our society to evolve to the point that we can even think about going to Mars. Yeah, or we can put satellites in the thing. But then here's the other side, you think about how our society has evolved to the point that somebody can actually make their preferred pronouns the most important thing in their life. Yeah, and it's just ridiculous. There is what you called uh society luxury issues. The term that is used is luxury beliefs. It's a real thing, okay, and it is exactly what you're what you've described. It's it's it's some of the same reason why, for example, richer societies, wealthier societies have cleaner environments than poorer country because once you have provided for all of the foundational elements in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, then you can now focus on other things. You can spend some money, your discretionary income. You can spend this on cleaning up the environment, making things nicer. Right, That's that's part of that structure. But to your point about the political and the ideological, the luxury luxury beliefs, right, become something something that people can now identify with and make it their entire personality and persona because everything else is taken care of. You know, I'd say you hit on something else too. That's just perfect. You know. I've been to Haiti and if you've ever been to Haiti, you understand that the place is a landfiller and they don't have time to think about cleaning a place up. Their in survival mode almost all the time, right, and you know, if Haiti want to first thing they should do is just go buy some garbage trucks and start cleaning the place up a little bit. That's not it's not a priority. And that they have the luxury. Of doing exactly Tim, I appreciate the call, man, I got to run great points. Thank you for the call. Luxury beliefs, Yes, they are real, and that is at the core of a lot of this problem is that people are spending too much time navel gazing and looking inward. It's a symptom of narcissism. 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,