Speaker 1: Meaning a light man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: his wing. They've down in a forest.
Speaker 2: Man, it gonna cause the tree fall, letting five thousand
Speaker 2: miles away.
Speaker 1: Many nobody seen it. Nobody else. You might seem like
Speaker 1: you don't need to know, man Big, like you followed
Speaker 1: him another story and you got back in fact that
Speaker 1: that's don't win. Man got back and dag on panel. Man,
Speaker 1: Now you don't don't matter.
Speaker 2: Man, all right, So we're finally back normal monologue schedule.
Speaker 2: We'll continue on, but the foreseeable future back from travel
Speaker 2: hopefully won't happen again. So today's episode is with John Carter,
Speaker 2: a great substacker, one of the elite few for whom
Speaker 2: I read religiously. And he did a great article about
Speaker 2: the boomers, about a clip from Kevin O'Leary, at least
Speaker 2: in my mind, the guy from Shark Tank talking about
Speaker 2: people making seventy k a year wasting their money on
Speaker 2: twenty eight dollars lunches, the idea, of course, being that
Speaker 2: if you take that money, if you invested into an
Speaker 2: index fund, you'd have enough money for a down payment
Speaker 2: on a house. Now, look, I realize it. It is
Speaker 2: cheaper to pack lunches at home. But the sentiment really
Speaker 2: ticked people off. Felt like, hey, man, look, you're worth
Speaker 2: a couple billion dollars. Why are you telling me you
Speaker 2: know how to make it right? It seems out of
Speaker 2: touch when housing prices are exploding at the same time
Speaker 2: as wages are stagnant. Oh and also food is more
Speaker 2: expensive than it's ever been. It rubs people the wrong way.
Speaker 2: They get really mad, and understandably so. Carter makes the point,
Speaker 2: I think quite insightfully that this is sort of the
Speaker 2: marshmallow test gone. For those who aren't familiar, it's a
Speaker 2: classic experiment where you give a kid a marshmallow, you
Speaker 2: put it on the table, and you say, if you
Speaker 2: can wait five minutes, I'll give you two. Of course,
Speaker 2: this is checking a kid's time preference. Are they able
Speaker 2: to defer a win now for a bigger win later?
Speaker 2: Are they able to defer their enjoyment? And what the
Speaker 2: authors of this study found is that you can track
Speaker 2: those kids over time and they're much more successful. You know,
Speaker 2: the kid who's likely to do that is likely to
Speaker 2: out earn his counterpart with low impulse control. And it
Speaker 2: makes sense now what Carter said What he wrote, and
Speaker 2: I thought this was particularly interesting, is that this experiment
Speaker 2: has been broken. The idea coming from boomers is that
Speaker 2: you're the kid who couldn't wait. You're too stupid, You
Speaker 2: just didn't have enough self control. You didn't offer the
Speaker 2: marshmallow a firm handshake, you didn't pull yourself up by
Speaker 2: your bootstraps. Simply was a failure of character. And while
Speaker 2: certain I think we can all think of people who
Speaker 2: do manage their money poorly, that doesn't account for the
Speaker 2: scope of the breakdown we're seeing. Seems as if, at
Speaker 2: a very basic level, something is wrong, well past the
Speaker 2: ability of people to make good decisions. There's an additional
Speaker 2: layer to this. You don't need me to tell you this,
Speaker 2: You've no doubt seen it.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: I've said before that in my social circle almost everyone
Speaker 2: is downwardly mobile. Almost everyone is doing worse than their
Speaker 2: parents or their grandparents. And so, yeah, we feel that
Speaker 2: we see that. And the argument that John Carter made is, well,
Speaker 2: that isn't the way the experiment was set up. What
Speaker 2: actually happened is that the kid who waited, oh, he
Speaker 2: didn't get anything at all. The rules were broken. He
Speaker 2: was promised if you do this, you will reap a reward.
Speaker 2: And he didn't get anything. Look at education, he went
Speaker 2: to school, you got the good degree, you kept your
Speaker 2: debt down, and now what you're a professional podcaster in
Speaker 2: my case at least, or you're working at a restaurant.
Speaker 2: You're working two or three jobs which all combined seem
Speaker 2: to take you a lot of time and don't actually
Speaker 2: get you out of the consumption trap. You can never
Speaker 2: push through into actually saving You're keeping your head above
Speaker 2: water maybe, but if then not by much. And the
Speaker 2: idea that in that situation where you followed the advice,
Speaker 2: you did what Dave Ramsey told you to and it's
Speaker 2: not working, that you are simply an idiot for not
Speaker 2: being born in nineteen fifty three. Well, it rubs people
Speaker 2: the wrong way. It's sort of insulting. It sort of
Speaker 2: brings out this sort of murderous rage that I think
Speaker 2: we've all seen all too many times, especially because you
Speaker 2: look at how our elders got to their position. You know,
Speaker 2: they had the advantage of an immense amount of cultural capital.
Speaker 2: They acquired assets before explosive inflation and were able to
Speaker 2: rise that value up throughout their entire life. But now
Speaker 2: on the back end, they're turning around and saying, well,
Speaker 2: I did it, so can you. You just need a
Speaker 2: push harder, You just need to work more. Failing to
Speaker 2: appreciate the advantages they had and the disadvantages their children
Speaker 2: or grandchildren do as well. It's a profound inversion, and
Speaker 2: it's particularly frustrating from the conservative world, whether religious or
Speaker 2: political leaders, because they will defer to these sort of aphorisms,
Speaker 2: these sort of harmless sayings we've all heard a hundred times.
Speaker 2: I've mocked them already. But then they will say, well,
Speaker 2: why are you so angry? There's something wrong with you
Speaker 2: for objecting to this situation. You are a virile and
Speaker 2: anti semi living in your mother's basement. You are an untouchable,
Speaker 2: unlovable insect because you won't go along, you won't sit down,
Speaker 2: shut up, and let us dispossess you again. Can you
Speaker 2: imagine why young men are angry? And look, it's not
Speaker 2: just young men. Young women are equally miserable, maybe if
Speaker 2: not more so, although they express it differently, and they're
Speaker 2: afforded different advantages and costs than we are. And when
Speaker 2: I say we, I just ran my analytics, it's I
Speaker 2: think there's one percent at one point nine percent. We're
Speaker 2: trending up. But you know what I mean, of course,
Speaker 2: are equally trapped in this cycle of downward mobility and misery.
Speaker 2: And when we look at why politics is breaking down, well,
Speaker 2: this is a huge part of it. Every issue, whether
Speaker 2: it's Israel or anything else, has tinge of this in it.
Speaker 2: You can't get away from it, you can't escape it.
Speaker 2: When I was going up to the Old Glory Club conference,
Speaker 2: I was writing from the airport with Dave Green, the distributist,
Speaker 2: and he's mentioned this live, so I'm not telling a
Speaker 2: tale out of school. But he was talking about going
Speaker 2: to the beach with his family, wife and children. All right,
Speaker 2: sorry about that, duties.
Speaker 1: Of a landlord.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I have completely and totally lost my train of thought. See,
Speaker 2: you know what boomers are annoying. This issue touches everything.
Speaker 2: Dave Green, That's where we were anyway, and he was
Speaker 2: describing the process of going to the beach with his
Speaker 2: family in an area that he grew up in area
Speaker 2: of a state renowned for its beaches. And at the
Speaker 2: time when he was there, it was families, right, that's
Speaker 2: who went there. But in the time since the people
Speaker 2: who grew up there as baby boomers, have bought houses
Speaker 2: which have ballooned in value that they have become million
Speaker 2: dollars luxury investments. Right, what used to be is sort
Speaker 2: of towns where working class families would go for a
Speaker 2: weekend at the beach, maybe rent a place for not
Speaker 2: all too much money. And you know what, even with
Speaker 2: these inflated prices, he and his family went, and what
Speaker 2: did he find there? Old people scowling at him because
Speaker 2: his son was being too loud. The families that had
Speaker 2: made this speech what it was are now inconvenient to
Speaker 2: the elderly folks retiring there. You see it everywhere. It
Speaker 2: drives you completely and totally crazy because you can't get
Speaker 2: away from it. Oh, you have an objection to well,
Speaker 2: the situation with Israel, Well boomer pops up and says, no,
Speaker 2: you're not allowed to. Similar to dating, similar to anything else,
Speaker 2: this generational traction, It runs through everything. You can't get
Speaker 2: away from it. And the worst part is, well, things
Speaker 2: get worse when they're gone. Right, you have the institutional knowledge,
Speaker 2: you have the belief in the American system, which you
Speaker 2: or I might not share, but does at least keep
Speaker 2: the lights on does keep the wheels of this political
Speaker 2: machine running. When they're gone, that all stops. And that
Speaker 2: may be, as Kevin Deanna said the last time we spoke,
Speaker 2: the deepest cruelty of the boomer that will miss them
Speaker 2: when they're gone. And when I say boomers, of course
Speaker 2: we understand, I don't mean all. You know, there are
Speaker 2: a great many of them that are good. It's a
Speaker 2: huge generation. But this issue is everywhere. You can't escape
Speaker 2: from it, even on vacation. And so that's why I
Speaker 2: thought this essay by John Carter so interesting, so worth
Speaker 2: your time. It's a good episode. I think you guys
Speaker 2: are going to enjoy it. But before we start, should
Speaker 2: mention if you want the episodes early in ed free,
Speaker 2: you can check them out on Patreon, Substack, or gum Road.
Speaker 2: You can also head over to Axios Remote Fitness and
Speaker 2: Coaching and get some training. So, without further ado, here's
Speaker 2: John Carr. All right, John Cotter, welcome to the Jay
Speaker 2: Burdon Show. How you doing man?
Speaker 1: Pretty good? It's good to be back. Thanks for having
Speaker 1: me on again.
Speaker 2: You know it's a good episode, man. Where we are
Speaker 2: approximately eight seconds in and I've already managed to flub
Speaker 2: the name of a guest, and it is two of
Speaker 2: the most simple names in the English language. So you
Speaker 2: know what if this is, if this is how this
Speaker 2: is gonna go, it's gonna be an absolute disaster.
Speaker 1: I completely missed that. What did you say?
Speaker 2: I said, John kotta like you live in Massachusetts because
Speaker 2: apparently despite taller girl living, I can't manage to do it.
Speaker 2: But in all seriousness, man, you wrote a really great article.
Speaker 2: And look, you know what, I'm not going to have
Speaker 2: you read back through it. You know, we're not going
Speaker 2: to do it blow by blow. The article will be
Speaker 2: linked down in the description if you want to go
Speaker 2: through it. But uh, you've entered into the generational debate.
Speaker 2: So let's just get into it with the inciting incident, right, Like,
Speaker 2: what prompted you to write this piece?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you know, what was it Kevin O'Leary
Speaker 1: that that troud that I that I think he's Canadian
Speaker 1: and then I apologize for that. So he had a
Speaker 1: tweet that enraged large numbers of people talking about how
Speaker 1: the younger generation, you know, they they were just very
Speaker 1: financially irresponsible, you know, spending twenty six dollars on lunch
Speaker 1: or something, and how if they took that money and
Speaker 1: they just invested it instead, you know, they would and
Speaker 1: put it into like an index fund, they would they
Speaker 1: would have enough for a down payment on a house,
Speaker 1: you know, after ten years or something. And of course
Speaker 1: this this precipitated the usual generation slop debate, where like
Speaker 1: all the boomers and the spiritual boomer boomer con types
Speaker 1: were sort of taking a side, and you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, these these millennials and zoomers, like they're just
Speaker 1: terrible with money, and they they're lazy, and they complain
Speaker 1: too much, and not all the younger people just just seething,
Speaker 1: just be just just so furious. So my sort of
Speaker 1: take on it is that they do have kind of
Speaker 1: a limited point and that yeah, a lot of younger
Speaker 1: people are terrible with money. You know, I'm not great
Speaker 1: with it myself, frankly. Uh, But that this is very
Speaker 1: much a function of of the conditions that they were
Speaker 1: raised in. So use the example of the marshmallow test,
Speaker 1: which I think was like done in like Stanford or
Speaker 1: something back in the nineteen seventies, where you know, for
Speaker 1: you for the small fraction of your listeners who don't
Speaker 1: know what the marshmallow test is that's when the experimenter
Speaker 1: puts a marshmallow in front of a kid and says,
Speaker 1: you can eat the marshmallow now if you want, but
Speaker 1: if you wait ten minutes, I'll come back and give
Speaker 1: you a second marshmallow. And then they would track the
Speaker 1: kids after that look at their academic performance and their
Speaker 1: life outcomes, and they found that the kids who had
Speaker 1: the self controlled weights, who had low enough time preference
Speaker 1: that they could postpone immediate gratification for a larger future reward,
Speaker 1: would tend to do better in life. And you know,
Speaker 1: that obviously makes sense, and there's gonna be confounding factors there,
Speaker 1: Like you know, obviously it's related to intelligence, the variability
Speaker 1: to conceptualize the future in the first place, and intelligence,
Speaker 1: of course is related to is related to, like, you know,
Speaker 1: good life outcomes in general. And then you know, some
Speaker 1: people in my comments they pointed out, yeah, if the
Speaker 1: kid doesn't like marshmallows, like you know, maybe they wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to play, which is also a good point. You
Speaker 1: have to want the reward that's on offer. But what
Speaker 1: happens if the experimenter doesn't give the kid a second marshmallow,
Speaker 1: or like when they come back and they snatch away
Speaker 1: the first marshmallow and they put down two marshmallows each
Speaker 1: other one third the size of the original marshmallow. Right,
Speaker 1: And if you run that experiment a second time after that,
Speaker 1: you would probably find that not a single one of
Speaker 1: the kids would wait. They would just cram that marshmallow
Speaker 1: right into their face. Because the thing with the marshmallow
Speaker 1: test is that you're not just testing the kid's ability
Speaker 1: to postpone gratification. You are also testing the trustworthiness of
Speaker 1: the experimenter. And the point that I was making is
Speaker 1: that with all of the rug pulls that have been
Speaker 1: inflicted on Gen X and Millennials and zoomers over the
Speaker 1: last you know, thirty years, a lot of young people
Speaker 1: quite rationally conclude there's there's no point in saving because
Speaker 1: by the time, you know, for instance, I save up
Speaker 1: enough for a down payment on a house, the only
Speaker 1: twice as much to get like a down payment on
Speaker 1: a house. You know, like that, there's you know, the
Speaker 1: future is just going to be worse than the present,
Speaker 1: so you might as well enjoy what you can in
Speaker 1: the presence. Thus the avocado toast.
Speaker 2: Well, and this is a concept my buddy Sean Wiland,
Speaker 2: who's writing a book it should come out sooner or later,
Speaker 2: has been talking about for a while. I don't know
Speaker 2: if he originated it, but financial nihilism the idea that, well,
Speaker 2: the game is so rigged it doesn't even make sense
Speaker 2: to play out your hand, you know, why try it's
Speaker 2: an unclimbable mountain. And I think it's important to make
Speaker 2: a distinction between a understand bowl and correct reaction, right, Like,
Speaker 2: obviously the correct answer is to be, you know, like
Speaker 2: the rat in the bucket of water, right, you know,
Speaker 2: swimming until the very end. Right, it's not a great shot,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it's right, It's better than nothing, and so
Speaker 2: look like it. It is grim, but it is understandable.
Speaker 1: You can see it, like like, even though even though
Speaker 1: all the rats in that experiment died because the entire point, yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe maybe we are as you know, Billy Corgan said,
Speaker 2: all just rats. And I don't know if the solog
Speaker 2: would have gone quite as well, but the message would
Speaker 2: have been just as true. But the uh, I see
Speaker 2: it constantly and I feel the poll of it, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, look, part of the reason I'm a semi
Speaker 2: professional podcaster with a you know, less than total grasp
Speaker 2: of the English language is effectively you know, after throwing
Speaker 2: your elfit you know, multiple different careers and you know
Speaker 2: due to you know, no real fault of your bouncing off, right,
Speaker 2: you know, company gets shut down, you couldn't advance up
Speaker 2: the ladder. It's like, well what do I got? And
Speaker 2: I see a lot of guys in that same situation.
Speaker 1: I think I'm an exactly of that situation, right, Like
Speaker 1: I put like a decade of my life into cultivating
Speaker 1: an academic career and then, like, you know, just the
Speaker 1: very vulnerable point in that career, I got slammed by
Speaker 1: the DEI stuff, which is why I'm a professional racist
Speaker 1: on some stack now, you know, like.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a growing club. And look, as much
Speaker 2: as I appreciate it, don't join this. And it's way
Speaker 2: better race to make money. And do I don't think
Speaker 2: that a circular economy of racist podcasters is the way
Speaker 2: to get out of this.
Speaker 1: No, uh no, we're we're just like I don't know,
Speaker 1: the guys of mynest write in the Cedrilist papers or something,
Speaker 1: but I think that's maybe giving us too much credit.
Speaker 2: Well, they were also all rich, you know, which is
Speaker 2: really the way to start it. There's an old joke
Speaker 2: about uh, you know, race like having a race car,
Speaker 2: where it's like, what what's the fastest way to become
Speaker 2: a millionaire driving a race car? And the answer is
Speaker 2: start with ten million dollars.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: There's something similar to being a political dissident, right, you know,
Speaker 2: which is it's it's apparently much more fun if you're
Speaker 2: if you're generationally wealthy. But yeah, one of the things
Speaker 2: that you brought up in this that I think is
Speaker 2: continually aggravating is the incredibly dismissive attitude that the stereotypical
Speaker 2: boomer has towards tho the words those who are younger
Speaker 2: than them, right, that oh, you are just too lazy
Speaker 2: or stupid to have made the decisions I have. And sure,
Speaker 2: look there are many cases like that. I've this is
Speaker 2: a breach of multiple different laws. But you know, albred
Speaker 2: acted enough. I've told the story before of you know,
Speaker 2: meeting with a client who was explaining to me her
Speaker 2: situation with debt and she had taken out a twelve
Speaker 2: thousand dollars loan to buy a dog. So I no,
Speaker 2: that's true. Yeah, no, she got a dog loan. It
Speaker 2: didn't go well, as you can imagine. That is a h.
Speaker 1: That guy I always forget his name with one of
Speaker 1: the show who like.
Speaker 2: Advised kalb Hammer Yes yeaheah, yeah, like four years before
Speaker 2: he came her out. I was just actually doing that
Speaker 2: for a job, which, let me tell you, Uh, the
Speaker 2: boomers aren't all wrong. Don't get me wrong. There is
Speaker 2: a shocking amount of just uh, you know, a financial retardation.
Speaker 2: But I think a lot of people who look at
Speaker 2: it and say, well, no, I don't finance pure bread dogs.
Speaker 2: I live within my means, I save money, I went
Speaker 2: to school, got the degree I was supposed to, and
Speaker 2: now what. And I think that's where a lot of
Speaker 2: the rage comes from that, like I did what you
Speaker 2: said and I ended up here. I listened to Dave
Speaker 2: Ramsey and yet here I am.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, exactly. You study hard, you go to school,
Speaker 1: you pick a major which is you know, practical, you
Speaker 1: do all all the right things, and then you know,
Speaker 1: you get screwed anyhow, right, and that sort of I
Speaker 1: mean the other the other aspect isn't just kind of
Speaker 1: financial literacy. It's also the kind of general demoralization, right,
Speaker 1: like the quiet quitting phenomenon of just like, you know,
Speaker 1: why would I work harder then I'm being paid to
Speaker 1: work and I'm not being paid that well, so screw you.
Speaker 1: Like it's like, you know, that's the general destruction of
Speaker 1: work ethic, right. He's this in academia amongst like, you know,
Speaker 1: the the undergraduate population who were quite happy to submit
Speaker 1: essays written by chat GPT because you know, it's all
Speaker 1: kind of a scam. Why I waste more time than
Speaker 1: you have to studying? It's all bullshit, right, And so,
Speaker 1: I mean the first time that I had this kind
Speaker 1: of discussion with the marshmallow test actually was a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago with an older gentleman, uh sort of
Speaker 1: connected to my family, who was bemoaning the fact that
Speaker 1: he couldn't find good help these days. I think he
Speaker 1: was running like a contracting business or something, and he's
Speaker 1: just sort of, you know, the work ethic of these
Speaker 1: kids is so terrible, and I so I explained exactly
Speaker 1: like this, this Marshmallow test dynamic to him, and he's
Speaker 1: just the look on his face like he'd never heard
Speaker 1: anything like this before, he'd never thought about it before.
Speaker 1: And then you know, a couple of years later, he
Speaker 1: actually came up to me in an event. He lives
Speaker 1: on the other side of the country, so I don't
Speaker 1: see him very often, and he was like, you know,
Speaker 1: that really affected me. That really made me see it
Speaker 1: like a different way. I never thought about that before.
Speaker 1: And you're just you're just absolutely right, like, you know,
Speaker 1: why would they work hard? Like I was like, yeah, So,
Speaker 1: you know, that was part of my motivation in writing that,
Speaker 1: because I think a lot of the boomers, like they're
Speaker 1: not actually bad people for the most part, they just
Speaker 1: uh don't understand things very well. And if they can
Speaker 1: be made to understand them, you know, maybe that can
Speaker 1: do a little bit of good. You know, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, they're going to be around for
Speaker 1: a while and they vote, and they've got a ton
Speaker 1: of money. And if we can harness that for our
Speaker 1: purposes by converting them ever so slightly to like away
Speaker 1: from evil, uh, you know, like that that could be
Speaker 1: very important. And we're gaining control of our countries and
Speaker 1: like these sort of like you know, wider political struggle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean a couple of things there, you know,
Speaker 2: the correlation or that I guess that the relationship to
Speaker 2: academy is easy to see, like I was in COVID,
Speaker 2: or I was in school during COVID, and my grades
Speaker 2: and my work ethic, to be honest, dropped off a
Speaker 2: cliff because it's sort of it was apocalyptic, right, It
Speaker 2: pulled back the curtain, made all things known, and you're like,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, this is a giant scam. I'm paying
Speaker 2: good school prices to go to the University of Arizona.
Speaker 2: Was getting a degree?
Speaker 1: Mill Is the University of Arizona like making you pay
Speaker 1: like full ride.
Speaker 2: No, No, the University of Arizona has a big online program.
Speaker 2: So I was saying, you know, this ostensibly august educational institution.
Speaker 2: They were giving me the same thing I could have
Speaker 2: done basically via a correspondence course. You know, they're kind
Speaker 2: of like lowest quality degree mill And once you've seen that,
Speaker 2: like if you have a certain personality, it's very very
Speaker 2: hard to care because you're like, oh, well, okay, this
Speaker 2: this was kind of a shell game all along. And yeah,
Speaker 2: sure it probably would have been you know, ethically, and
Speaker 2: you know, perhaps you know, career wise better to have
Speaker 2: maintained that, you know, a average through college, but just
Speaker 2: psychologically it's really tough to do.
Speaker 1: Motivated, to motivate yourself, Yeah, exactly. So the reason I
Speaker 1: asked that question was that the university that I was
Speaker 1: working at during COVID, so they sent all the students
Speaker 1: home as soon as the lockdown started in March, and
Speaker 1: then shortly after that they announced that, you know, they
Speaker 1: would refund residence fees, but they were going to charge
Speaker 1: exactly the same tuition fees. And I was just appalled.
Speaker 1: I was like, like, this is not like an online
Speaker 1: like zoom school is not the same as being in
Speaker 1: a lecture theater. You know, like you don't have that
Speaker 1: in person interaction. It's it's just not comparable, and you're
Speaker 1: charging the same for that. And then of course, like
Speaker 1: there's all the intangibles that like, you know, students aren't
Speaker 1: just paying for the coursework, right, Like you know, you're
Speaker 1: paying for the university experience, like you know, running around
Speaker 1: drunk at two o'clock in the morning with your friends
Speaker 1: and like doing pranks and you know, like all going
Speaker 1: to parties and stuff like joining clubs like all all
Speaker 1: of the universities, which they can't do because they're in
Speaker 1: their bedrooms at home, in their pajamas, right, but they're
Speaker 1: still getting charged the same amount, And all of the
Speaker 1: sort of boomer professors were kind of like, wha, well,
Speaker 1: you know, which, there's much work for us to In fact,
Speaker 1: it's even more work for us to do this online.
Speaker 1: We're st long to figure this out, like of course
Speaker 1: we have to charge the same And I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, but like they could just go to
Speaker 1: con academy, man, like, which is free. And you're basically
Speaker 1: sending the message to them that there's no functional difference
Speaker 1: between like a good nominally good state school and like
Speaker 1: some fly by night online correspondence academy so which is
Speaker 1: like one tenth the price. So like, why wouldn't they
Speaker 1: just do that? Like you're shooting yourselves in the foot,
Speaker 1: you know, absolute warrants and uh yeah, sure enough, like
Speaker 1: you know, enrollments dropping off a cliff since then, So
Speaker 1: typical short sighted boomers frankly, yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's it's incredibly frustrating because you scale, you see
Speaker 2: that same behavior happen in kind of every segment. So
Speaker 2: obviously you have education, you have you know, the economy
Speaker 2: as well. Right when you are it has made very
Speaker 2: clear to you that your place of work has no
Speaker 2: loyalty to you whatsoever. Yeah, right, that they will, at
Speaker 2: the drop of a hat outsource your position, hire someone
Speaker 2: who looks a different way.
Speaker 1: Right, And if you're that happen to your older siblings,
Speaker 1: you see that happen to your parents, you know, like
Speaker 1: like that's been going on, that that zero loyalty to employees,
Speaker 1: Like that's that's been the case since like the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: Now, oh one hundred percent. Like one of the examples
Speaker 2: I think of is how incredibly competitive college admissions have become, right,
Speaker 2: where you have a wider and wider group of people
Speaker 2: competing for kind of a smaller and smaller kind of
Speaker 2: roadway to you know, the upper middle class. And what
Speaker 2: I've seen, you know, even when I was applying to
Speaker 2: schools ten years ago, right I'm old now, but was
Speaker 2: that it was sort of comedic, Right, how much better
Speaker 2: even you know, the white girls in class would do
Speaker 2: than you. You know, you a small school like I
Speaker 2: went to, you kind of knew how smart everyone was.
Speaker 2: You know, sure there's some who were, you know, particularly
Speaker 2: good test takers, but you kind of know, right, and
Speaker 2: you're looking around and you're like, wait a minute, how
Speaker 2: did she how did he manage to get into that
Speaker 2: school that I got denied from. I know that I've got,
Speaker 2: you know, a better GPA. You start to get a
Speaker 2: little bitter about it. I even think of guys who
Speaker 2: are younger than me, you know, who are who are
Speaker 2: in kind of my social group, you know, who are
Speaker 2: applying now were already have and man, it's it's grim.
Speaker 2: You know, You've got kids that are you know, academically gifted,
Speaker 2: captain of you know, sports teams, and they're you know,
Speaker 2: happy to get into kind of like third tier state
Speaker 2: schools which look like there's there's other elements to it.
Speaker 2: College is kind of fake.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: There's a big article and I think Bloomberg that came
Speaker 2: out basically tracking your return on investment, which basically said,
Speaker 2: you know, anything out of the top fifty is functionally
Speaker 2: the same.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's again a discussion for another day. But it is
Speaker 2: a huge status game. Yeah, and it's demoralizing when you
Speaker 2: think about, you know, your parents are kind of older
Speaker 2: people in your family who didn't apply themselves particularly much
Speaker 2: and got into that kind of upper echalot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've all reasoned about how they would screw around
Speaker 1: when they were kids, and you know, all the mistakes
Speaker 1: they made and then they just kind of stumbled into
Speaker 1: a good life and you're like, oh, it's not nice,
Speaker 1: you know, and like and then meanwhile you look around
Speaker 1: and because of that intense competition, you've got like just
Speaker 1: insane levels of striverdom of like, you know, kids like
Speaker 1: trying to min max their college applications starting when they're
Speaker 1: fourteen years old. You know, particularly with like Asian and
Speaker 1: South Asian students are pretty bad for that, although well
Speaker 1: like a lot of the white girls do this as well.
Speaker 1: And then you know, and that's like soul crushing all
Speaker 1: on its own, right, Like it's demoralizing seeing people that
Speaker 1: live like that. You're like is it worth it? Though?
Speaker 1: Like do I want to succeed if that's the price.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, of course, you have
Speaker 1: all the DEI from of action stuff where you consistently
Speaker 1: see people getting elevated to levels that you know that
Speaker 1: you know, like you're like, well, I would have been
Speaker 1: qualified to do that, more qualified because that person's an
Speaker 1: idiot how they get in because they were a black
Speaker 1: woman or you know whatever, And yeah, like all of
Speaker 1: that contributes to just like the general like destruction of motivation.
Speaker 1: And that's actually a really bad thing, right, Like, I'm
Speaker 1: not making excuses for in action or laziness. It's actually
Speaker 1: incredibly poisonous because like that, when you get like that demoralized,
Speaker 1: you have a tendency to just kind of like sit
Speaker 1: back and be like, Okay, screw it, and then you
Speaker 1: don't do anything with yourself, right, it's uh, And then
Speaker 1: you know, and then you start developing bad, lazy habits
Speaker 1: as a result of that, and you come back like
Speaker 1: ten years later and like and you're kind of a
Speaker 1: piece of shit actually, right. It turns into this sort
Speaker 1: of like self feel like prophecy where the system deprives
Speaker 1: you of opportunity and then as a result, you end
Speaker 1: up being the kind of person that shouldn't be given
Speaker 1: opportunity to.
Speaker 2: Well. And funny enough, this is actually a point from
Speaker 2: famous Canadian Kermit the Frog impersonator Jordan B. Peterson. We're
Speaker 2: gonna mention rats a lot in this one. I didn't
Speaker 2: mean to, but you know what, I guess it's the
Speaker 2: theme of the episode. But he has the example of
Speaker 2: you know, rats playing and one of the things he
Speaker 2: said is that look like if you know in this
Speaker 2: this sort of play, this cooperative game. The rats fight,
Speaker 2: it's like you know, puppies or whatever. And if the
Speaker 2: weaker rat isn't allowed to win at least a certain percentage,
Speaker 2: he gives up. The game ends. He just slops over
Speaker 2: and accepts it. And again, much like our earlier rat example,
Speaker 2: that is not, I guess you could say that the
Speaker 2: correct thing to do on sort of a mathematical level.
Speaker 2: But man is an animal, right, we have those same instincts.
Speaker 2: And you hear a lot you know, of course you
Speaker 2: mentioned quiet quitting, but also you've heard, you know, a
Speaker 2: number of articles about the phenomenon of you know, young neats.
Speaker 2: They don't quite use the term, but men who've just
Speaker 2: checked out. You're seeing this already in education, where higher
Speaker 2: education's on track to be about sixty forty female male.
Speaker 2: You're seeing this in the corporate world, you know, and
Speaker 2: look understandably, there's another part of this which is just
Speaker 2: blatant discrimination and hiring. The sort of a chilling example.
Speaker 2: One of my buddies is, you know, running out. He's
Speaker 2: you know, moving on to something else, and so he
Speaker 2: has kind of a long runway before that, and you know,
Speaker 2: he's kind of a dead man walking, and so people
Speaker 2: are talking to him quite frankly, and he recounted an
Speaker 2: experience with one of his higher ups who is basically
Speaker 2: at the same time, you know, bemoaning the low quality
Speaker 2: of the diversity hires and then wondering why quote, why
Speaker 2: don't we ever see people like you? And you know,
Speaker 2: Jesus might listen to this, but he was sort of
Speaker 2: struck by that, right, like, you mean, you would.
Speaker 1: Would be in a murderous rage of that right.
Speaker 2: And to be fair, I don't think this woman was malicious.
Speaker 2: She was also complaining about hr but an older woman
Speaker 2: from a previous generation who clearly doesn't get it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: one d there is a problem with guys dropping.
Speaker 1: I can't find like competent diversity God dammage. And then
Speaker 1: this is like, you know, at a societal level, this
Speaker 1: is going to shape up to potentially be one of
Speaker 1: the greatest tragedies has ever befallen our civilization, because like
Speaker 1: expertise needs to be passed on, people need to be
Speaker 1: trained into it. They need to be given those education
Speaker 1: and it's a very delicate process of you know, mentors
Speaker 1: identifying the potential mentees who have the qualities required like
Speaker 1: they have the potential to actually learn the things that
Speaker 1: need to learn, and then going through all the extremely
Speaker 1: difficult work of educating them, which you know, for a
Speaker 1: lot of professions like that can take like ten years, right,
Speaker 1: And so you know, if you have someone who has
Speaker 1: all the potential but they're not given that opportunity, God,
Speaker 1: I sound woke now, right like, because like this is
Speaker 1: exactly the kind of talking point that you'd hear from
Speaker 1: them all the time back when de I was getting
Speaker 1: rolled out in the first place.
Speaker 2: Well, John Carter, I'll have you know you are a
Speaker 2: member of the woke, right even totally right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, guilty, right, Like, but you know this was like
Speaker 1: you know, under the under the the assumption that you know,
Speaker 1: like the perfect human equality, right Like they always say like,
Speaker 1: oh well, they're just not given the opportunities. That's why
Speaker 1: they can't succeed. And they've now inflicted that, right So
Speaker 1: they they you know, yanked all that opportunity away from
Speaker 1: the young white guys, which has led to them being demoralized.
Speaker 1: But you know, just as importantly, they haven't gotten that
Speaker 1: education that t training uh to do what they could
Speaker 1: have done otherwise. And in a lot of cases, it
Speaker 1: will just be too late for them by the time
Speaker 1: this all sort of the fever burns itself out. And
Speaker 1: then meanwhile, all of the efforts of education was then
Speaker 1: kind of squandered on these people who couldn't benefit from
Speaker 1: it because they're they're idiots, or in the case of
Speaker 1: a lot of the girl boss types, they might not
Speaker 1: be stupid exactly, it's just like temperamentally, they don't have
Speaker 1: what it takes to be you know, a high level
Speaker 1: creatives or you know, like good doctors or scientists or
Speaker 1: engineers or what have you. You know, they're probably well
Speaker 1: suited to to raising babies who will like smart babies
Speaker 1: who will then later become scientists, doctors and engineers, but
Speaker 1: like they're not suited to it themselves because they're women.
Speaker 1: And then we're going to have that sound of the
Speaker 1: situation where like all of the people in the profession
Speaker 1: don't have the talent necessary to actually carry out their
Speaker 1: professional duties. All the people who could have been trained
Speaker 1: to do that weren't and are kind of rotting in
Speaker 1: the fields. And then what happens after that, right, because
Speaker 1: now you've got this like, you know, the people who
Speaker 1: would then have to do the training, like the new
Speaker 1: body of professionals are too retarded to have actually learned
Speaker 1: what they needed to learn, so they can't pass it
Speaker 1: on either.
Speaker 2: Well, and here's the thing, I've remarked on this several
Speaker 2: times that almost everyone in my peer group is downwardly mobile. Yeah,
Speaker 2: with a few notable exceptions. And look, you know the
Speaker 2: old adage about you know, if you meet one bad driver,
Speaker 2: it's them, If you meet meet three, it's you.
Speaker 1: Holt.
Speaker 2: You know, if it were just simply me and all
Speaker 2: my peers were wildly successful, then you know what, I'm
Speaker 2: a loose all right. I feel like that's not true, because,
Speaker 2: to be honest, most people I know are not doing
Speaker 2: as well as their parents, and the guys who are
Speaker 2: are uniquely talented.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know anyone who is as
Speaker 1: doing as well as their parents, unless unless in the
Speaker 1: rare case where they really came from, like a particularly
Speaker 1: impoverished background. But yeah, anyone who's like middle class.
Speaker 2: Like no, Yeah, I mean I can legitimately think of
Speaker 2: two off the top of my head. And even if
Speaker 2: we lower the standard to simply having a professional job
Speaker 2: or having benefits, we're probably hit around forty to fifty percent, right,
Speaker 2: less than half, and you know, I'm nearly thirty at
Speaker 2: this point, right, the kind of point where you're supposed
Speaker 2: to be through that figuring it out stage, and yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's incredibly radicalizing, especially when you kind of do
Speaker 2: the math, because you're like, okay, well, the argument that
Speaker 2: all of these disadvantaged groups could be they are simply
Speaker 2: you know, aspiring astrophysicists, right that just given the opportunities,
Speaker 2: they could go to space camp and we'll have you know,
Speaker 2: a new golden age.
Speaker 1: I'll be rocket scientists exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you know, rocket surgeons and all that. And well,
Speaker 2: has it happened?
Speaker 1: No, it hasn't.
Speaker 2: If you've been in the corporate world, if you've been
Speaker 2: in education, it hasn't. And when you're thinking, well, you know,
Speaker 2: even within my own family, like setting aside the broader
Speaker 2: kind of like cultural or ethnic block, seemingly people a
Speaker 2: lot like me, you know, shared a lot of my
Speaker 2: you know, genetic makeup. Certainly my culture seem to have
Speaker 2: done fine. And if everyone in that you know, similar
Speaker 2: culture and genetic background is downwardly mobile, the individual explanation, well,
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem to hold up. But it can't just
Speaker 2: be that everyone under the age of thirty is retarded.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, and this is why whenever you
Speaker 1: see like boomer con types handing out advice this this
Speaker 1: gets right to the heart of why that always elictits
Speaker 1: such rage, because everyone under a certain age understands full
Speaker 1: well that this is these are systemic issues, right, this
Speaker 1: is this is a matter of we'll go into the
Speaker 1: issues because we all kind of know what they are.
Speaker 1: And then everyone over a certain age sort of refuses
Speaker 1: to see that in a large part because they were,
Speaker 1: you know, participants in creating that those systemic issues, and
Speaker 1: they individualize it. They're like, oh, well, you just need
Speaker 1: to work harder, right, it doesn't matter if you're talking
Speaker 1: about like you know, the economy or getting married and
Speaker 1: having kids or you know whatever it happens to be.
Speaker 1: Like they always kind of like focus it on this
Speaker 1: like individual level. And it's like, yeah, you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: like you want to have you want to be a
Speaker 1: high agency person. You don't want to like sit there
Speaker 1: bemoaning like woe is me. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: like you need to be aware of these systemic conditions
Speaker 1: because like you know, those kinds of things cannot be
Speaker 1: solved at the individual level. They can only be solved
Speaker 1: at the political level.
Speaker 2: And I think that look, a lot of that advice
Speaker 2: is is mel well meaning, and I get it, right.
Speaker 2: I understand that if someone you know asks you for
Speaker 2: trouble or asks you for help with their trouble landing
Speaker 2: a date, for instance, you'll offer that kind of boom
Speaker 2: er advice. You'd be like, I don't know, man, get
Speaker 2: in better shape, you know, maybe get a new barber, go.
Speaker 3: Talk to girls more, right, And because it's directionally to
Speaker 3: the bar and buy a girl a drink, Yeah, Like,
Speaker 3: directionally that is correct, And particularly in some examples, I
Speaker 3: think we can all think of guys who actually do
Speaker 3: need that advice, you know, regardless of the culture that
Speaker 3: they'd be in.
Speaker 2: If you're you know, BMI starts with a four and
Speaker 2: you know you kind of look a little bit like
Speaker 2: Asmin Gold, that probably wouldn't help you, you know. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, the frustration comes from the fact of, like, well,
Speaker 2: look like that's peanuts in comparison to these deep structural
Speaker 2: systemic issues, Like the problems that we've outlined are very
Speaker 2: very real, and when you've especially if you feel as
Speaker 2: if you've already run through to kind of pull yourself
Speaker 2: up by your bootstrap's advice. You know, you've done the
Speaker 2: hard work, you've done the entry level career where you
Speaker 2: grind to try and press your boss, and when it
Speaker 2: doesn't come around, it's like, well look, man again. It's
Speaker 2: like when you're offered two slightly smaller marshmallows. It's like, well, look,
Speaker 2: at a certain point, I'm the idiot for continuing to play.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm Charlie Brown running up to the football
Speaker 2: for the twenty fifth time. I saw some.
Speaker 1: I saw some I saw some tweets several months ago,
Speaker 1: because this is just like a perennial part of the
Speaker 1: discourse right time is a flat circle. And it was
Speaker 1: like the guy was saying something like how every every
Speaker 1: like really intelligent guy he knows who has like, you know,
Speaker 1: like a physics degree and uh giant IQ or whatever,
Speaker 1: Like they've all dropped out and they're like beach bums
Speaker 1: working at like bars down and like the Caribbean or something,
Speaker 1: and like and it's like, yeah, actually, and I've met
Speaker 1: those guys, you know, and like, and the fact is
Speaker 1: they're they're actually happier. You know, their their lives are
Speaker 1: completely aimless, but like they're way happier they were than
Speaker 1: they were in they were striving because like and it's
Speaker 1: like the fight club things need to let go, right,
Speaker 1: It's like they've just like abandoned any hope of like
Speaker 1: being upwardly mobile, of having that kind of upper mobile
Speaker 1: class life and professional respects and all of these kinds
Speaker 1: of things. And they're just like, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna it's gonna go hang out in the sun,
Speaker 1: serve people muyeties on the beach and like have sex
Speaker 1: with the waitresses.
Speaker 2: And look you meet one of those. It's kind of
Speaker 2: a charming eccentricity. You know. Oh that's a funny path
Speaker 2: through life. But once you know half a dozen, it's like, well,
Speaker 2: this is a grave miss out location of human resources.
Speaker 2: Oh put it mildly.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is this is the pathways
Speaker 1: was getting out before. This is how we end up
Speaker 1: losing indoor plumbing inside two generations, right, because like, if
Speaker 1: you're not cultivating your high quality human capital, like if
Speaker 1: you're not making sure that knowledge is getting passed to
Speaker 1: those people who can use it, then that knowledge will
Speaker 1: just get lost and it happens very quickly, like that
Speaker 1: could happen in one generation, and then once it's lost,
Speaker 1: it's gone and can be rediscovered. But usually, you know,
Speaker 1: like rediscovering something is a lot more work than just
Speaker 1: passing it on. And uh, I feel like we're already
Speaker 1: seeing like signs of that that kind of systemic instability,
Speaker 1: like a lot of sort of just like little experiences
Speaker 1: I've had over the last year or so of like
Speaker 1: things that should work but don't. And it's always like,
Speaker 1: you know, things like scheduling scheduling issues or like you know,
Speaker 1: database type stuff that like like the kinds of things
Speaker 1: that would be handled at the corporate head office, which
Speaker 1: you just know is packed full of diversity hires, and
Speaker 1: just like just retarded mistakes that just cause like immense
Speaker 1: amounts of chaos downstream because like someone forgot like didn't
Speaker 1: do the logistics properly. And uh yeah, it was like
Speaker 1: that that I'd say in play em a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. It's like the uh, what was it a
Speaker 1: competency crisis and the collapse of complex systems or something
Speaker 1: like that, which is prophetic.
Speaker 2: So the the reaction to this has been extraordinarily poor. Look,
Speaker 2: you know, some of this is simply, you know, old
Speaker 2: men looking at young men's problems. That's a certain amount
Speaker 2: of that's perennial. But the reaction, particularly from right wing
Speaker 2: cultural institutions, you know, whether those are our churches, whether
Speaker 2: those are you know, political parties, whether those are just
Speaker 2: the kind of you know, think tanks and media organizations,
Speaker 2: has been astonishingly poor. You, of course, remember what happened
Speaker 2: at Heritage not too long ago. What's happened at all
Speaker 2: of the different kind of Republican feeder organizations. There was
Speaker 2: an all out war.
Speaker 1: Remind me what happened at Heritage.
Speaker 2: Oh well, when the president of Heritage refused to ritually
Speaker 2: denounced Tucker Carlson because one of the usual suspects demanded it,
Speaker 2: they went on a full scale witch hunt, which included
Speaker 2: trying to force quite conservative, practicing Roman Catholics to eat
Speaker 2: Shabbat dinner, which is not permitted, and then when they
Speaker 2: didn't do that, that was used as a proof of
Speaker 2: their deep and abiding ethnic hatred. Yeah. Of course, but
Speaker 2: we've seen these same purges directed primarily at young men
Speaker 2: on the idea justified because they are all quote unquote gropers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the young Republicans like a year exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And here's a tweet, actually a tweet with a
Speaker 2: response from Meghan Basham, who is sort of a kind
Speaker 2: of like IDW adjacent of conservative watchdog, you know, big
Speaker 2: about you know, the kind of rooting out the woke stuff,
Speaker 2: but very much on the kind of worried about the
Speaker 2: woke right train. So if you can put yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: well she she writes for the Daily Wire, So yeah,
Speaker 2: you got the type total. So I'll read this one
Speaker 2: and then I'll read a response because I think this
Speaker 2: this perfectly describes the issue, right, So Meghan says, discussing
Speaker 2: why young white men are suddenly much more attracted to
Speaker 2: the wicked ideologies of Nazism and white supremacy no more
Speaker 2: legitimizes or exposes their sins, and discussing how the breakdown
Speaker 2: of the black family has led to higher rates of
Speaker 2: black crime legitimizes those sins. Why are we suddenly not
Speaker 2: allowed to talk about how we got here? So fairly reasonable,
Speaker 2: you know. She takes a different view on several things
Speaker 2: in that than I have, but a legitimate question.
Speaker 1: But she's not like Condemntory in the same in an
Speaker 1: unreflective way.
Speaker 2: I agree with, yes, like she has a conservative view
Speaker 2: of many things which I don't agree with, but it
Speaker 2: seems to be, you know, in good faith. And then
Speaker 2: a secondary guy replies and all sort of surmise this
Speaker 2: because or summarized this rather because it's quite a long post.
Speaker 2: But a character Will Spencer, who's again sort of an
Speaker 2: infamous character really going after you know, the Christian nationalist types,
Speaker 2: which I'm not a Christian nationalist, but a lot of
Speaker 2: my friends are, so I have no great affection for him.
Speaker 2: So basically he goes on to talking about how really
Speaker 2: what this is is all a giant op right, It's
Speaker 2: a giant plan to get at exactly how George Lincoln
Speaker 2: Rockwell infiltrated the space. And he says that if you
Speaker 2: have objections to the way things are set up, it's
Speaker 2: because you are a secret member of the American Nazi Party.
Speaker 2: The only way you can have criticisms of the current
Speaker 2: system is either if you are an insane, woke leftist
Speaker 2: or the mirror image the so called woke right woke.
Speaker 1: The surprise he didn't rise, he didn't connect that to
Speaker 1: the the SPLC. Now that we know that the SPOC
Speaker 1: was literally funding the American Nazi Party.
Speaker 2: Well, John, I don't mean to break it to you.
Speaker 2: He's not particularly bright. He'll probably get there. We'll give
Speaker 2: him a couple of weeks of hard thinking and maybe
Speaker 2: he'll get there. But that's that's at least one level
Speaker 2: of abstraction. And I think that we're dealing with a
Speaker 2: with a you know, a real smooth brained individual. But
Speaker 2: suffice it to say that reaction that, oh, you have
Speaker 2: complaints when someone says like, yeah, guys are being driven
Speaker 2: into a dark place by this. Now, I may disagree
Speaker 2: with her diagnosis on exactly what part of radical young
Speaker 2: men is the dark part, although I think we can
Speaker 2: all say there clearly is something there. You know, look
Speaker 2: at a lot of the a lot of what happens
Speaker 2: in the in cell community, a lot of what happens
Speaker 2: in the kind of like really you know, dark kind
Speaker 2: of nihilist, violent extremist category. I realized that's a goofy term,
Speaker 2: but like, there are guys like that, and you can say, like,
Speaker 2: there's clearly a danger to pushing that, to pushing guys
Speaker 2: to that limit, to convincing them there's no point in
Speaker 2: playing the game. You're screwed. You can't get into politics,
Speaker 2: you can't get into academia, you can't enter the professional world.
Speaker 2: They go somewhere, and the reaction from the nominal right wing,
Speaker 2: who is perhaps best set to answer these concerns, to
Speaker 2: answer these questions, they are, at least on their face,
Speaker 2: not ideologically opposed to the existence of young white men,
Speaker 2: as our counterparts on the left are, well, what are
Speaker 2: they met with? They're met with exactly the same thing. Oh,
Speaker 2: you're not doing well. It's because of you. You are inherently,
Speaker 2: unredeemably broken. It's exactly the same thing that drove so
Speaker 2: many people away from the left half a generation before.
Speaker 1: You're literally a Nazi, yes, yes.
Speaker 2: Which to your point time is a flat circle because
Speaker 2: many people from for instance, the Daily Wire, like one
Speaker 2: Benjamin Shapiro, loved to make fun of people for saying
Speaker 2: that ten years ago.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the Hitler on the Rainbow Slide means like, yeah,
Speaker 1: totally everyone I don't like his Hitler. I know there
Speaker 1: was like a Rod Dreer, I think it was Rodreyer,
Speaker 1: one of those typically sort of like wet John Wyn.
Speaker 2: You have to be you have to be careful with
Speaker 2: me and Rodreer, I will say things that will lend
Speaker 2: to the deletion of my channel if we go on
Speaker 2: for about Rod Dreer for too long, So I will
Speaker 2: try to keep myself from interjecting.
Speaker 1: I do not like him with that. Yeah, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not not a huge fan myself. So he had but
Speaker 1: he had this very typical kind of Dreer essay months
Speaker 1: ago where he went to DC and he was sort
Speaker 1: of mixing with all of the Republican staffers. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I actually I wrote my first ever magazine article in
Speaker 2: response to this because it made me that bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, no, it got under my skin too.
Speaker 1: But what kind of struck me is the they have
Speaker 1: very little like insight into like why this happens, right,
Speaker 1: Like they don't and they don't actually understand what is happening,
Speaker 1: which I think it's so the number of like un
Speaker 1: ironic like gnat socks that I've run into is very small,
Speaker 1: Like it's the number of people who will make painter
Speaker 1: jokes is almost one hundred percent inside of a thing, right,
Speaker 1: so what you know what's going on there? Uh? And
Speaker 1: basically we've all grown up inside this oppressive system that
Speaker 1: uh you know, using the painter and his whole thing
Speaker 1: as like the excuse makes us the permanent villains of
Speaker 1: every narrative and then uses that to justify taking everything
Speaker 1: from us. And you know this and this kind of dynamic,
Speaker 1: you know, you know it goes back to like elementary school,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're young enough. So like when you
Speaker 1: sort of click to that and understand what's going on there,
Speaker 1: you know there's obviously gonna you're going to feel a
Speaker 1: certain degree of injustice there. And by you know, making
Speaker 1: sort of jokes about you know, happy merchants or what
Speaker 1: have you. You you're essentially signaling. It's a form they
Speaker 1: call it vice signaling. Sometimes you're especially signaling to the
Speaker 1: other guys around you that you do not hold these
Speaker 1: things sacred, which you know that your oppressors hold sacred.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a way of sort of saying, like
Speaker 1: saying to all the other guys, like, listen, it's okay
Speaker 1: to like talk frankly with me, because I get it
Speaker 1: too right. So it doesn't necessarily mean that you like
Speaker 1: you hate the Jews or whatever. It just means that
Speaker 1: you don't take anything about that discourse seriously at all.
Speaker 1: It's not a concern for you, Right, you're not going
Speaker 1: to like get like you're not going to like you know, uh,
Speaker 1: You're not the kind of person who's going to have
Speaker 1: a nervous breakdown if some kind of emotional trigger word
Speaker 1: is used in your presence. And guys like Dreyer like
Speaker 1: they're still deep inside that they still have all those
Speaker 1: triggers implanted in their mind. They still have a lot
Speaker 1: of motional conditioning layered and layered on them, which makes
Speaker 1: it so that you just you can't talk to them
Speaker 1: actually because like you know, like you know, if you
Speaker 1: say the wrong thing, they will denounce, right. And you know,
Speaker 1: to a large that there's a large amount of like
Speaker 1: generational separation there because like that's you know, amongst younger people,
Speaker 1: like it's generally just like liberal women who are like that.
Speaker 1: But amongst the older generation, they're pretty much all like that.
Speaker 1: Whether they're conservative or liberal, it doesn't really make a
Speaker 1: difference actually, Like so yeah, I mean that's basically in
Speaker 1: my opinion, that's kind of what's going on there. They
Speaker 1: just like they don't understand that, Like they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's you worship Hitler. It's like no, no, I mean
Speaker 1: some small number of guys have kind of an unhealthy fascination.
Speaker 1: But that's not really that common. It's more that we
Speaker 1: just you know, aren't holding him up as like, you know,
Speaker 1: this centerpiece of our fucking universe, right, and because of that,
Speaker 1: we can make jokes about him and about everything else.
Speaker 1: And that's I think actually like that actually scares them
Speaker 1: more than like, you know, being an unironic nat sock,
Speaker 1: because like, if you just don't take the things as
Speaker 1: sacred that they hold sacred, that's a dangerous thing.
Speaker 2: Well, and you see this in the whole sort of
Speaker 2: dialogue around quote unquote media literacy, you know, the idea
Speaker 2: that there is exactly one way to interpret any film.
Speaker 2: You know, recently with the conclusion of The Boys, where
Speaker 2: you know, this character Homelander, who's kind of memes into
Speaker 2: being a right wing symbol, was uh, kind of garishly humiliated.
Speaker 2: It was really embarrassing for.
Speaker 1: Them took his powers away and then tortured him to
Speaker 1: death or something. I ye, like two seasons of the
Speaker 1: Boys and then sort of lost interest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and look, I don't pretend you have watched it.
Speaker 2: I am enough of a zoomer that I don't really
Speaker 2: watch television. But point is the that that what came
Speaker 2: before that, Right, Why are a lot of young guys
Speaker 2: identifying with the villain now? Part of it is that
Speaker 2: sort of vice signaling, Right, Darth Vader has always been cool.
Speaker 2: You know, there are a whole lot of bikers who
Speaker 2: have you know, mid century German symbology who don't seem
Speaker 2: to particularly know a whole lot about the painter himself,
Speaker 2: right as the symbol as a rebel.
Speaker 1: Remembered like ten probably over ten years ago. Now, there's
Speaker 1: like this like map of this I forget, like what
Speaker 1: the game was. It was a Star Wars game, and
Speaker 1: you could play either as the Empire or as the
Speaker 1: rebellion and they and it was a map of the
Speaker 1: world according to like with countries like color coded according
Speaker 1: to like which side they played and like how likely
Speaker 1: they were to play that side. It was pretty funny
Speaker 1: because like the entire global South, we're all rebellion, and
Speaker 1: then like the entire global North, we're all Empire. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and I think a big part of that, at
Speaker 2: least for guys like us, is that, like, to be honest,
Speaker 2: really the only way we are represented as the bad
Speaker 2: guys and any time where you are confidently existing as
Speaker 2: a man, you know, as a white guy, is displayed
Speaker 2: as villains, and I think that many people.
Speaker 1: Unless there's one exception to that, at least in modern media,
Speaker 1: which is which is the sort of middle aged, older
Speaker 1: white guy who is using his influence and abilities to
Speaker 1: protect and to protect the younger diversity and sort of like,
Speaker 1: you know, hand over to them the world essentially, like
Speaker 1: you see that trope brought out every now and then.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but what I'm but I think that, you know,
Speaker 2: the reason that you know so many of the right
Speaker 2: wing symbols or villains is that it's sort of accepting
Speaker 2: that role, like, yeah, I am the villain in your story.
Speaker 2: We are are mutually incompatible here, so you hoist the
Speaker 2: black flag and you can tell you're right one hundred
Speaker 2: percent that that makes them very uncomfortable. This whole discussion
Speaker 2: about media literacy is the idea that, oh, you're stupid
Speaker 2: for behaving that way. It's like, oh, well, what happened
Speaker 2: to death of the author?
Speaker 1: Guys?
Speaker 2: You know, I thought we could reinterpret things and.
Speaker 1: We ever, I don't. I don't know if you ever
Speaker 1: talked about Starship Troopers that's come up on.
Speaker 2: Oh we should.
Speaker 1: Actually this is because I last year I played my
Speaker 1: part in reviving the perennial Starship Troopers discourse, and I
Speaker 1: and I and I wrote like a pretty long essay
Speaker 1: about this, which I think, you know, you and your
Speaker 1: readers might enjoy it because, like I opened the first
Speaker 1: the essay, the first like few pages of it are
Speaker 1: my take on what a good opening to a starsh
Speaker 1: Troopers movie. That was like that was actually trying to
Speaker 1: do like the original book, well, like how that would look.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of like like scene by scene,
Speaker 1: but like the sort of you know, philosophical point I
Speaker 1: was trying to make. There was that like the media
Speaker 1: literacy people. First of all, like you know, there's the
Speaker 1: fact that Verhoven was not practicing media literacy himself, because
Speaker 1: you know, obviously he tried to invert the meaning of
Speaker 1: the original of Heinleine's original work. But then if you
Speaker 1: consider each layer of media, you know, there's the book
Speaker 1: that has like a certain pretty obvious meaning. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's quite didactic. It's hard to misinterpret the Starship Troopers.
Speaker 1: And then there's the movie which sort of flips that meaning,
Speaker 1: tries to flip that meaning on its head, but it's
Speaker 1: so hamd fisted about it, and actually just you know,
Speaker 1: but then after the movie came out, you have the
Speaker 1: mean layer that gets gets put on top of that
Speaker 1: as a new layer of media, and that actually has
Speaker 1: to be interpreted sort of on its own as something
Speaker 1: somewhat independent from the movie itself, because there's meaning there
Speaker 1: that's like not in the movie, and then that was
Speaker 1: used to like reinvert the movie back to like its
Speaker 1: original the original meaning of the book.
Speaker 2: Well, I will have to have you back on because
Speaker 2: I'm actually and this is horrible podcasting because I have
Speaker 2: no idea when this episode will come out. But in
Speaker 2: the next day or two I'm actually going to be
Speaker 2: recording an episode on the Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Speaker 2: And I've been sort of thinking, oh, it would be
Speaker 2: a ton of fun to do Hindlin's three works of
Speaker 2: speculative political fiction and sort of an unofficial series right
Speaker 2: to hit all of them. And I've already honest.
Speaker 1: What are you considering for your third work, Stranger and
Speaker 1: a Strange Land.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Stranger in a Strange Land just is sort of
Speaker 2: to round it out, But what might be fun, Josh, I've.
Speaker 1: Already the civic fascism, the anarcho libertarianism, and the hippie
Speaker 1: liberalism basically.
Speaker 2: Well and two things.
Speaker 1: One.
Speaker 2: I've read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress before and
Speaker 2: enjoyed it, but it's been years, so going back through it. One,
Speaker 2: the libertarians are never beating the allegations because there is
Speaker 2: a fifteen minute digression in that book about how the
Speaker 2: age of consent is stupid.
Speaker 1: Dude, that's not even like you think that's bad. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you how much Highline have you read.
Speaker 2: I've read that and Starship Troopers.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you've read, like those are kind of somewhat
Speaker 1: earlier works. So if you read his works from the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, where by that point he become sort of
Speaker 1: a literary star, and the science fiction firmament and editors
Speaker 1: were scared of him, so his books started to have,
Speaker 1: you know, very self indulgent, so that he got I
Speaker 1: think worse than Anne Rands for like, like I remember,
Speaker 1: I think it was like Friday, which is nominally a
Speaker 1: book about this genetically engineered super assassin or something, but
Speaker 1: somewhere in there there's like this conversation about sex between
Speaker 1: the genetically engineered superassassin and like I don't know, some
Speaker 1: some guy that goes on for like one hundred pages,
Speaker 1: like it's it's just it's interminable. Like it's basically it's
Speaker 1: like hindline, like laying all of his fetishes there, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's just like come on, man, and he did
Speaker 1: a lot in his later books. I mean, he's another one.
Speaker 1: Basically the entire thing is like a work of fetish fiction.
Speaker 1: It's I Shall Fear No Evil, which is about a
Speaker 1: billionaire having like an eight like an aged billionaire like
Speaker 1: on his deathbed who has his brain transplanted into the
Speaker 1: body of his hot secretary.
Speaker 2: And it's just lovely.
Speaker 1: And then like you know her, like her her ghost
Speaker 1: or whatever like remains inside the body and starts like
Speaker 1: talking to him. So she's like inside him, and it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a and he's he's fully enjoying being a young woman.
Speaker 1: I'll just put it that way.
Speaker 2: Less you doubt that that some people just should not
Speaker 2: have been allowed to escape middle school without being shoved
Speaker 2: in a locker and give it wedgies. Uh, this is
Speaker 2: what happens when you let people do whatever they want.
Speaker 2: I say, like I actually enjoy hindlines like kind of
Speaker 2: speculative political faction. It's interesting and not looking to spoil
Speaker 2: the discussion on spoil the discussion on the Moon is
Speaker 2: a harsh Mistress. I'm I'm almost done with it, but
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: I will say this, It is interesting the constraints required
Speaker 2: to make a narco libertarianism feasible, and I will leave
Speaker 2: that there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean also, Moon is a harsh mistress?
Speaker 1: Is the original polycool?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, no, it It gets a little freaky. And
Speaker 2: one of the other parts where you sort of roll
Speaker 2: your eyes is damn, I'm supposed to be doing this
Speaker 2: another day, but you're just gonna go for it.
Speaker 1: Is.
Speaker 2: There's this very heavy handed moment where our main character
Speaker 2: explains to these sort of backward country yokels his polycool situation,
Speaker 2: and then he's he's thrown in jail for bigamy, and
Speaker 2: you know, of course he's morally outraged, and apparently both
Speaker 2: the Moon and Earth unite in condemning the backwards rednecks
Speaker 2: of Kentucky who said, hey man, it's kind of weird
Speaker 2: to have like an eight person pollicule where one of
Speaker 2: your wives is fifteen, And yeah, it's again, man, every
Speaker 2: stereotype about libertarians is completely and totally true. It's all
Speaker 2: based in fact. Well, John, this has been a ton
Speaker 2: of fun. Man, I enjoyed this. I've said this a
Speaker 2: couple times, but you are one of an elite few
Speaker 2: people on substack where I read your articles religiously. They're
Speaker 2: quite good. Although I will say I was a little
Speaker 2: behind on this one, so I didn't catch it when
Speaker 2: it first came out, but one of my good friends
Speaker 2: sent it to me, so at least in my social circle.
Speaker 2: You're sort of a literary celebrity. But where can people
Speaker 2: find you, man?
Speaker 1: I mean substack, barsoom dot substack dot com, postcards from
Speaker 1: barsoom and uh that's you know when I when I
Speaker 1: publish for every week or two, I try to get
Speaker 1: something out, and you can find me pretty much every day, uh,
Speaker 1: coal posting on x You know I've I've been on
Speaker 1: on there all day doing the the migrant rape gangs reports,
Speaker 1: participating in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got I'm gonna have to do an episode
Speaker 2: about it, but I'm not even trying to.
Speaker 1: I think on this one, I just can't read it
Speaker 1: as I've been reading it all day and it's it's
Speaker 1: like an info hazard, man, Like it leaves scars on
Speaker 1: your soul reading some of that stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean, my my reaction uh at probably much to
Speaker 2: the distress of my legal counsel, is uh. There are
Speaker 2: traditional British solutions for problems like these. William Wallace didn't
Speaker 2: do anything this bad and look what they did to him,
Speaker 2: exactly before I further incriminate myself, John, this was a
Speaker 2: ton of fun and everyone at know keep your head
Speaker 2: up like it last forever.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on