Show Notes
America is about to celebrate its 250th birthday, but some left-wing Democrats plan to skip the party. “When you forget who you are, it’s easy to be talked into becoming something else, says GAI’s Eric Eggers.
A new CNN poll found surprising support among Democrats for socialism, with 66 percent of those surveyed saying they have a positive view of socialism, compared with a minority – 42 percent – saying the same about capitalism and the free market system, a flip of their sentiments from 15 years ago. Is this caused by their hatred for President Donald Trump and his populist turn, or is it a longer-term trend?
“Sixty-four percent of Republicans said they would display an American flag or flag bunting outside their home on July 4th, compared to only 27 percent of Democrats, and this is not because Democrats live in apartments,” author and investigative journalist Peter Schweizer notes on the most recent episode of The DrillDown podcast.
“That’s a rather startling statistic. It’s crazy to me. Twenty-four percent of Democrats say they do not plan to celebrate the Fourth of July. So, it’s a stark disparity in terms of the feelings around patriotism,” he says.
“When Barack Obama was president, I don’t recall a lot of Republicans saying, ‘I’m not gonna celebrate the Fourth of July. I think Independence Day is a terrible idea, and I don’t believe that my country is the greatest,’” Schweizer adds. “They just didn’t like the president.”
Schweizer believes part of the reason may be a sociological theory known as “Elite Overproduction,” by academic Peter Turchin. Turchin’s thesis is that America produced many highly educated people with great expectations for an exalted place in American society. However, due to reasons such as technology, the Covid pandemic, and competition from abroad, our economic and social system could not meet these expectations. This created disappointment among highly educated people, causing them to turn to leftist politics and disruption out of their sense of frustrated ambition.
“This theory seems to fit the moment,” Schweizer says. The idea is that these elites who went to expensive colleges and got useless degrees are bitter and angry, so they are lashing out by challenging the existing authority. He notes, for example, that the BLM protest movement and turn towards socialism were pushed primarily by cultural elites, well-educated, mostly white, affluent people in New York and California. This is confirmed by looking at three important political figures who have come to represent this leftward, socialistic shift among elites:
NY Mayor Zoran Mamdani was elected with the full support of young, mostly white progressive professionals in the city. While a devoted fan of socialism, he is no “man of the people,” but a Bowdoin College educated son of a filmmaker and a college professor. He majored in “Africana Studies” while in school and had a brief, unsuccessful career as a rapper before going into politics, running as a Democratic Socialist. He got financial support from his wealthy parents.
Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico has two master’s degrees, one in Education from Harvard University before he returned to Texas to earn a Master of Divinity from the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. The hosts play audio of Talarico saying that “Jesus was a socialist.” Talarico’s only checking account is shared with his mother.
Maine Democratic Senate Nominee Graham Platner has been controversial for his “Totenkopf” (SS insignia) tattoo and his treatment of women, but he attended the very expensive Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, at least until he was expelled from it. A military veteran, Platner later became a local harbormaster in Maine and an oyster farmer who sells his catch to a single client – his mother’s seafood restaurant.
In each of these people, and others such as the mayor of his home city of Seattle, Schweizer sees frustrated elites who are bitter and angry that “the world isn’t beating a path to my door.” Instead, they turn to socialism as a way to punish those for whom it did.
America, 249-plus years young, is very different from postwar Europe where socialism took root and led to high costs of living and economic stagnation. The Times of London reported recently on European soccer fans visiting the US for the World Cup and being astonished by American affluence and abundance. The newspaper had previously surveyed Britons, asking them where they thought the UK would rank among the fifty US states in per-capita wealth. Most believed it would rank relatively high and were shocked to learn that the average British citizen has less wealth than someone from the lowest ranked US state, Mississippi.
This has real consequences. There are about 2,000 heat-related deaths in the US each year. Across Europe, that figure is 175,000.
“They can’t afford things like air conditioning,” Schweizer says, “with all the environmental regulations they have… It’s not just that we have more stuff. It’s that we have a better quality of life. The economic failures of Europe do actually kill people.”
“They can’t even take care of the dang weather!” Eggers quips.
The hosts close the show with anticipation over the forthcoming movie about “Young Washington,” due in American theaters on July 3. The movie, produced by Angel Studios, is unabashedly pro-America. “How little of that we get from the mainstream culture,” Eggers says.
