Transcription
Right now, 80-something percent of Americans think we're extremely divided as a people. It turns out this is not even remotely true. We have more private opinion data on the American public than any organization. It's just not true. We have a shocking amount in common.
But more importantly, as I start to think that the people around me not only don't share my values, they share the antithesis of that, right? Like up is down, left is right, good is evil, evil is good. I'm like, what is going on? Right? I don't. So we first of all we retreat into smaller groups, right? This experiment of ours as Americans. This imagined community, this melting pot, yes, becomes a threat and we retreat to our tribes and we really hunker down there.
Have you seen the data, and we have this data as well, on the percentage of Americans who believe that other Americans are the greatest threat to their way of life? I agree. It is a majority of Americans believe that. Um, is white supremacy the greatest threat to Americans? It's 85% of progressives think that other Americans are the greatest threat to them?
What happens when you see your fellow citizens, who you may disagree with on the margins, as not just different but bad, like morally wrong? It's amazing the kind of evil you will allow when you think you're right and good. Oh my god. Of course. And so that's where the curse of virtue. Yeah. And that's where we are.
So this is the thing, and we're seeing the secondary effects of exactly what the China had hoped would happen, right? We are at each other's throats. We can't get anything done because we don't trust each other anymore. Social trust, which is probably the best predictor of the health of a culture, is at the lowest levels ever recorded in America right now. We don't trust the other anymore. Um, and our levels of resentment in America are higher than they were during the Great Depression. So, that's the bad news. This is all that's the bad.
There is some good news we can talk about. I, I, I actually. No, let's stick with the bad. Let's just keep digging. How do you, how do you measure resentment? You got to do it privately because people, uh, it was, it was really funny. The first time we measured fairness and resentment in private, when Trump was president the first time, Republicans, uh, they were like, all we asked was society even mostly fair? Do we live in a mostly fair society? And they're like, yes, 70% something like that. Like, yes. Publicly, in private, they were the most resentful of any demographic group. Really? Yeah. Back then it was, it was crazy. But of course, you can't say that, right? Right. If, if they're well, then he didn't make America great again, if this isn't fair. So we have a number of different ways, but it's that resentment data is probably the most frightening data we have.
That's why I'm asking about it because that, that festers. Yes, it does. Because there are a couple things about it. One, we're hardwired to cooperate as humans. Like, it's actually our superpower. We can always do more together than we can do by ourselves. But cooperation makes you vulnerable. And if other people aren't cooperating, then you get taken advantage of. So, we actually have like built-in mechanisms neurologically to be exquisitely sensitive to violations of fairness because it's a good sign you should stop cooperating and start competing, right? And when when you start to feel resentful, you become very zero-sum in your thinking. So, okay, someone's got to lose and you get to that sort of burn it down mentality. The behavioral economic studies on this are fascinating. If you and I are playing a fairness game, and you agreed we're going to, we'll split the pot, but the game is structured so that we could take advantage of each other anytime. You take advantage of me once, and we keep playing. I will zero you out, even if I get nothing, right? It's like, I will literally cut my face off to spite my nose just so you can't win. Justice for all. And by the way, doesn't that sound a lot like our politics right now?
I was just about to say, since you said burn it down, and since we're sitting here in Santa Monica, and since Spencer Pratt has completely upset the apple cart with regard to political messaging, there's something simmering right now. People are beginning to get, I think, to a point where you would have to get, if you're confronted day after day after day after day with examples of no consequences and the perception, or maybe the reality, but again, what's the difference? The feeling that everyone is getting away with murder, or maybe in this case, arson. Or just mass fibbing. And I can't imagine the species has an infinite capacity to live or function with that feeling.
Correct. I mean, and the thing is, is that's why it's these sort of collective illusions, right? Where I'm going along with it because I think this is not right, but I'm pretty sure everyone seems to be okay with it. I mean, and so I'll go along with it for a little while, but they're so fragile because they're lies, that it doesn't take much to actually tip this, right? If you do it right.
You know who Doug Ellen is? The name sounds familiar. Tell me. Yeah, he he wrote and directed and produced Entourage. Oh my goodness. Okay. That's by the way, Entourage is one of my guilty pleasures. Well, I mean, how do you not love it? I mean, especially in this town, in this industry. Um, well, he is all over the socials today. Yeah. His house was robbed. I saw it. Two masked, right? Two guys come in. He's got 15 cameras set up. All his neighbors have the same. He is sounding to me very. Now, he left a center guy, didn't vote for Trump, wants to be clear about all that, but he he lives in a fairly isolated enclave, and he is among, yeah, the chosen in this town. And he's had it. Yeah. And he's had it, and his neighbors have had it, and he's making these videos, and he is out of the closet. Yep. And he's pissed, and he's like, he's his version of the emperor has no clothes. Somebody has to do something because there's no justice, and this is insane, and we can't. He literally called the people who burgled his home animals, and then quickly explained that he's not going to apologize because they had masks on, and he doesn't know what color they are. He doesn't know if they're Jewish. He didn't care. They're animals, and they should be in jail for 20 years, damn it. Because they invaded my home, but they're not. They're not even being chased or investigated. And you can see this guy exploding with the frustration of a world without consequence.
And from a shattering an illusion and driving the change you want. That's the spark, right? That's the, the people I admire, the people. Oh, the wait, the guy that did Entourage, you know. Hold on. Okay. Yes. Hold on. I'll listen to him. You know, it's, um, I always try to tell people, okay, under collective illusions, it's a problem because they will destroy civilization. They really will. But they're also fragile because they're lies. And so if you understand the right strategy, you can actually shatter them and unlock change at a speed and a scale that would be unimaginable otherwise. But you got to get the right strategy.
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The strategy is about social proof, not persuasion. You try, if I try to. So imagine you believe that nobody cares about free speech anymore, which is one of the illusions on the left. The left believes the left doesn't care about free speech. It's just not true in private. So I'm like, okay, this is a problem because we got to believe in free speech. And so I start telling one, listen, free speech is under attack. It's really important. We got to preserve it. If I'm under an illusion, that reinforces the illusion. Sure. So the best example, by the way, so you never try to persuade when it's an illusion, if you know that's the problem, because it will make it worse. Best example of that, and then I'll tell you what the right way to do it. Remember the Sand Drugs campaign? Oh, yeah. Okay. Nancy. Yeah, that came about because the government noticed a very slight uptick in first-time marijuana use amongst teens. In response, they spent a billion dollars, got the best ad agencies in the country to come up with incredibly clever, whatever, you know, and they ran it for years and years. And from an advertising standpoint, it was unbelievably successful. The typical American teen saw three ads a day for six years. Like, that was also part of this is your brain is your brain on drugs. Any questions? I'm like, yeah, how's it like an egg? Okay, here was the problem. The government assumed the reason kids were trying drugs is they were curious about drugs. But private opinion data existed at the time that they ignored or didn't know about that completely refuted that. Kids were skeptical. What they wanted was what every kid wants: to fit in. And they were under what I think is kind of a funny collective illusion. Most American teens back then thought most teens did drugs. So into that illusion, you blitz them with a billion dollars of ads trying to scare them straight. What they took from the ads was this must be what we're doing. Why would the adults try to get us to stop? So as a result, scholars have pretty conclusively proven that that campaign directly caused an increase in drug use. Okay? So we don't do that. You do not persuade it.
Is it possible that that same dynamic was at work with Black Lives Matter with regard to the immediate reaction by lots of people who said, "Wait, all lives matter." And then all of a sudden those people were deemed racist because they didn't understand? So what was the underlying collective illusion there? Was it, was it the fact that there's a real belief that cops are fundamentally corrupt and they, and they in giant numbers unfairly target? Like what? No, they did a really good job. So my interpretation of it, so first of all, it tapped something that I think is right. Like any decent person should be against racism, of course, right? Discrimination of any kind should be unacceptable in a pluralistic free society. There is racism, and the folks on our side of things, we weren't really doing anything about it. Not really. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so into an event that had racial issues at play. There's no other alter. So I see something that seems profoundly wrong. That wasn't right. What happened? This side is very clever, and I don't mean this as derogatory as it's going to sound, um, but these are Marxists. The people that founded Black Lives Matter are avowed Marxists. It's just not my particular idea. I think it's a fairly evil ideology. I don't think they're evil. I think the idea is that. Fairly evil. Fairly. Anything that has consistently led to the mass murder and and starvation of, okay, tens of millions of people, probably is. Um, so I disagree with their starting, you know, assumptions of how the world should work. But all of a sudden you flood in with this thing that sounds right. Yeah, of course Black Lives Matter, right? And then you get, it's like if I want to control that narrative, then I can't let it become about everybody, right? Because then that's not, I can't, we have a whole agenda. So, so the defund the police, that came from them, that wasn't new. They had proposed that years before and got no traction, right? So into something where you tap a real feeling, like this isn't right, something should be done, and there's no other solution on offer. Like you could have done something that could have been the moment where we question qualified immunity. It's funny that our surgeons don't get qualified immunity. Yeah. They have to pay for malpractice insurance, right? You could have solved that problem by saying, we will go ahead and increase the salaries for cops to cover malpractice insurance, but we're removing qualified immunity. And if you consistently violate people's rights, just like a surgeon that keeps messing up, you will not be able to practice.
I want people to really understand that. So say it again, just a little slower and with the assumption that my audience's IQ is. I'm listening. That Chuck's here. Okay, so Chuck's here. I'll explain it to Chuck. So there was a very straightforward solution. Um, Chuck, uh, thank you, that, um, if you want to solve this problem, I mean, look, in any profession, there are bad apples. So how do you, how do you make sure they can't do a lot of harm? There was a very straightforward proposal that the underlying problem was qualified immunity. And for people that don't know, it's officers. It's anybody administering the law. This is why politicians didn't want it because they are covered under qualified immunity too. If you are doing something in the service of your job as an officer of the state, you have some qualified immunity from prosecution. Yeah, I'm a diplomat. I don't have to pay the car ticket. Yeah, politicians take advantage of that quite a bit. And the last thing they want to do is be held accountable for their behavior. And so you could have easily, if you said, "Okay, this was unacceptable. Let's understand what happened. Let's reform this. We should remove qualified immunity from officers." And again, not to put them at risk because most police officers are fantastic and they're important. And we can replace that with malpractice insurance, the way we do with surgeons, right? It's kind of sad that if someone goes to medical school and all the residency stuff and training, and she's a surgeon, and for whatever reason, ends up making a bunch of mistakes, she will not be able to practice. Right. And we think that's okay. Right. That's a consequence. That's called a consequence. Yes. So if we want to make sure there are personal consequences for bad behavior, you remove qualified immunity and you, you, and they say, like, there were even proposals to say, look, we will pay for the malpractice insurance. This is not an attack on cops. We just want to hold individuals responsible for violating the rights of other people. That wasn't the agenda on the Marxist side, right? And so the last thing in the world you want to do is expand the aperture on what this is. You don't want individual responsibility. No, no, no. You already have the defund the police movement that had gotten no traction, and all these other things that was just like antithetical to our fundamental values as Americans, as the only game in town addressing a very real thing. Again, racism is real. It's wrong, and we should all care about that.
Are we a racist country? It's always a work in progress. And I think that it's never finished. And I think that our brains are very, very tribal. And prejudice of any kind, you know, our brains use stereotypes all the time to navigate the world. It doesn't mean they're right. In fact, they're not right. Um, so we have to work hard to overcome that prejudgment and those things. And there are certainly a lot of racist people, or some racist people. Do I think the country is racist? I do not. Um, I think that fear makes us behave in ways that are probably.
What does the science say? Well, look, I can tell you from our private opinion data, it's just every way we've pushed the stuff around to try to understand it, it's like pretty shocking how eager we are to not judge people by the color of their skin or their gender, this, and really get what Dr. King wanted, right? Content of your character. That's still what people want in private. Now, what's interesting is when we, when we ask people in private whether they think we are systemically racist or we this, it's no. Right. When we ask them, what do you think most Americans would say? Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. Like us and.