I’m not going to talk about why I don’t do populist politics, but the operating theory behind how I look at functional class in American society. Then I hope those reasons will become self-evident. Populist politics is the very opposite of self-determination, it is fandom.
The problem right now is that people who ought to know better, and I'm talking about the genius class. I used to call them the slice because there was an alternate slice. So let me just quickly give you my peasant theory. 85% of Americans are peasants. That means they don't work for the man sitting next to the man. They are living their lives based on their common sense of their common experience of their lived experience. That's the word that a lot of people like to use, but basically they are some derivative of the portrayals of life on TV.
And this is a functional description of class. I'm not saying if you're a classy person or a person with no class whatsoever. I'm not talking about that dimension. I'm talking about a functional class because if you talk about a socioeconomic class, then things get wildly complicated. This is one that has to do with power. And I don't often like to talk about power because I'm not. political, but let me break it down for you very quickly.
Those of you, I know that if you followed me, you already know this, but basically there are the rulers. And the idea of the rulers is something that we knew when both the Tea Party and Occupy were saying the same things about banks in 2008, which is there's this 1%. And they're kind of untouchable. And they are the people who can decide because they are the rulers. All right. The rulers are the people who make up the rules. But they exist in a world of deadly cutthroat competition where they understand that the only rules that there are are the rules that they enforce. In other words, they live in a world beyond rules, all right? And they have to deal with power all the time.
And it has...Sometimes to do with ambition, but more of the times of acquiring power, defending power, and how to deal with losing power. And they're not all billionaires and they're not all evil. They're not all good, but they operate in a very different way than the rest of us. And the one thing that the rulers can do that nobody else can do is is they can bestow upon you rewards that nobody else can give you, all right? If I am the man in the Oval Office, I can invite you to the Oval Office, and an invitation for the Oval Office is something nobody else on the planet can give you, all right? If I dance on stage with Ariana Grande or, I don't know, with Beyonce, there's nobody else in the world that can give me that honor. So there's an honor that's associated with the rulers that nobody else can give you.
You can be the head of Walmart and millions of people can shop in Walmart just buying toothpaste and they can make you rich. But that's something from the bottom up. And I know a lot of people who think about socialism as a panacea think, oh, the rich people are stealing from the poor people, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's not what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the rulers.
The second are the geniuses. The geniuses are the people who keep the lights on, without which the rulers couldn't do jack. The geniuses are the people who make the White House run. That means the chief of staff and everybody that reports into the chief of staff, because the chief of staff is the right-hand man to the president. If the chief of staff doesn't know what he's doing, then the ruler becomes ineffective. The ruler still has the honor and the glory but he may not be able to be competent in doing anything, all right? And that's how dictatorships fail.
Dictatorships fail because they don't employ the genius class because rulers only care about loyalty. You have to be loyal to me. You have to be dedicated to me. You have to ride or die with me because those are the only rules that exist, all right? It's omerta. It is you're being a made man. It is absolute loyalty unto death. And if I ever have to question it, I know that you're possibly going to be somebody who stabs me in the back. And that's something that rulers are very sharp and perceptive in because you can't underestimate the intelligence of people in power because they know how to keep their back clean. All right. They know how to hold on to their assets. And that's what they're doing all the time. That's the river those snakes swim in, all right?
So a genius... in order to get the honor and glory of being the person that keeps the power of on that the rulers have. All right. They have to be very clever. They have to be experts. So if you are the pilot for air force one, you know what the hell you're doing all the time. All right. And there's no question that you're an expert. All right. I would give the, uh, another another kind of genius i said is is the gynecologist for the women uh the rich women on the upper east side of manhattan all right those women will talk and if you are to be trusted then you will become a professional you will be become the genius and you will have to know all right because they will show you all right so the expert real estate agent uh... for commercial properties in chicago you know what you're talking about if you are running a division of chevron and you have thousand roughnecks that report up to you somehow I don't know the business you know what the hell you're doing all right.
If you are a navy aviator and you do night landings on aircraft carriers your genius And then you become an instrument of power for the rulers, because they don't need second best. They don't need second rate. So the genius class is very important to the competence of the rulers. And everybody else is a peasant. So when the genius class thins out, when the universities give out fake grades, when everybody gets participation trophies, then no matter how good the rulers are, the quality of life in the country will go down because you ask who's the best person in the world to do that, and they're really not the best person in the world. They're just the best person you can find, all right?
You basically have a goon squad. And if you have a goon squad, it doesn't mean it doesn't matter how enlightened a ruler that you're going to be. Your people are going to be incompetent and you're only going to be able to accomplish mediocre things. All right. So you better lay low and then then you try to do manipulate reality. So everybody thinks you're doing OK. And that's where we are right now. We don't have enough geniuses that are working for the rulers so that we can actually have a civilization that's worth retaining.
And then when you get the alternate slice or the alternate, the opposition geniuses who are scrambling for power. And that's when it's dangerous. And maybe that's what we have right now. I'm not so sure. I'm just explaining the peasant theory without actually applying it, the dynamics that would occur within it that I see from current events. But the reason I started this video was because I wanted to talk about... what we don't see enough of, which is the independent organization of geniuses, which is possible.
And it's important that it's possible. So that would be the equivalent of guilds in Europe. Not labor unions, but guilds. So if you had the royal seal and you were provisioner to the king, If you live in Brooklyn, you know about Boar's Head. All right. That's the best deli meat you're going to find. So there's a seal of approval there that you know that there's some genius people that are cutting up pigs just right. And making cheese is just right. Or the Champagnoise process of making champagne. Or your certified Kentucky bourbon. So those kinds of geniuses should be in the practice of talking to the public, talking to the peasants, talking to us peasants.
Because when we don't find out who they are, we only know the geniuses on the first team, the first team geniuses that have the attention of the rulers. I'll give you a perfect example. The problem is I can't remember the name of this guy because this happened during COVID, Osterholm. His name is Michael Osterholm. Michael Osterholm is one of the world's premier epidemiologists. This is the guy who discovered toxic shock syndrome. That guy is still around. And I read his book in early 2020. And everybody who talks about Fauci, who doesn't talk about Osterholm, kind of doesn't know what they're talking about. Because Fauci was the genius. And don't doubt that he's a genius. But he's the one that the administration picked. That was the person put in front of all of us as America's genius.
But he's not alone. He's not the only person who knows what goes on. And what happened was the ability of the geniuses to propagandize using their honor and glory and their ability to capture the public imagination that marginalized the other geniuses who knew exactly as much as Fauci.
Because even you knew somebody who was a class clown who was as funny as Eddie Murphy. But Eddie Murphy got on Saturday Night Live. Lorne Michaels was the ruler that got Eddie Murphy in front of everybody. And of course, Eddie Murphy is a genius. All right. But there are other people as funny as Eddie Murphy. They just didn't get on Saturday Night Live. And there are people who got on Saturday Night Live who are not that funny. We don't need to go there.
But point is, the genius class is thick. But the rulers pick the first team. And the first team gets all the honor and glory. Even if we have a thick bench, even if we have a thick bench, you get those guys out there and some of them will be superstars. So Fauci was a genius genius. And he got all the credit and all the dirt heaped upon him as if there were no senior world-class epidemiologists out there during COVID. And that's what happens in a crisis. So what we need, again, is the ability for the genius class to self-present, to self-represent what they do. And the problem is that we've outsourced all of this to journalists. Why is Wolf Blitzer, why does this person still have a job? What does he know? He doesn't know anything. He reads the script, he has a producer, and the producer is from CNN, I guess. The ruler of CNN has everybody's attention, and Mark Zuckerberg can get everybody's attention. We're not learning who the geniuses are in our society because we're only looking at the first string players. We don't know if we know them because their genius is validated clearly. but because the rulers pick him, all right?
So let's bring this down to cases and talk about, and let me emphasize what's important of the peasant classes. The peasants should be able to, to handle their own business. If you're not really handling your own business, then you need to play whatever game the rulers say you should be playing. And in that case, you're not free.
The strength and the power of American citizenship is that you can be a free citizen. And a free citizen that handles their own business, that keeps themselves living within their own means, can tell the geniuses and the rulers to mind their own business. And if you can't do that, if you are dependent on the geniuses and you're dependent on the rulers, then you're not actually fully free. And you need to be getting there and you need to be taking the time to do that, to invest in yourself, all right? To handle your business, to mind your family, all right?
To keep within control as much as you possibly can, to build up your skills so that you can meet the criteria of the genius. And that's what's wonderful about a free country. That's what's wonderful. about a free country. I'm not going to say because it's a democracy or it's a republic. That's a trap that you guys get caught in because that's all about power. As a peasant, you should not be interested in power. You should be interested in self-determination. Self-determination. Nobody cares about your ability to Karen somebody. That's not power, that's pettiness. That does not add to your character. You do not have the character worthy of managing people. So putting your business in the street and talking out loud, You know how that goes. All right. I wonder, wonder who taught you how to talk like that. All right. You are not.
You need to be focused on your soul, on your mind, on your health. And you need to master those things to be a free individual. Because when you have a large society of peasants who are actually free, who actually mind their own business, then they are self-possessed and they have the power. And then what's good for them is good for the country because they are the majority. They're 85% of us, all right? We all have to eat corn. We all have to eat wheat. We all have to eat meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, all right? If we're not farmers, if we're not ranchers, if we're not fishermen, then we're dependent on that free exchange, all right? So you have to master your own thing, but that goes back to Aristotle and all that stuff.
When you run afoul of a free peasant society, you're making a gigantic mistake. You're taking a giant risk. And it is the job of the geniuses to communicate clearly what is the nature of the world. And when the geniuses are captured by the rulers, then they will misrepresent the reality of the world. That's what happened to Fauci. And whose fault was that? It was the peasant's fault for not studying, oh, I have a health problem. I need to find out. I need to read. I need to find out who this Michael Osterholm is, all right? We looked to some African doctor who was put on TV that we never knew about, all right? But a 10-second sound bite was given credibility by the rulers and the media, and then we swallowed that hook, line, and sinker.
We didn't read the 400-page book by the other world-class PhDs in this area because we didn't care about our own health. We thought the rulers would save us. We just have to listen to the rulers and be loyal. That doesn't work. That doesn't work. Your loyalty should be to yourself, to your family, to those things that you control, which are generally fairly small. But that's okay. The point is you have millions of fairly small independent people who are free to look after their own business I'm being redundant.
I guess I'm just rubbing this in because we don't hear enough people who say it. And I'm old enough to have seen it a lot of life. And I feel it's my responsibility as a peasant who's walked among geniuses, maybe met a ruler or two. I guess I did meet Jimmy Carter. I shook his hand, met his wife, shook her hand. But that's probably about it. I don't even think that way. I don't even think about my proximity to famous people. So I can't tell you. It's about taking care of myself, taking care of my family, being a river to my people and living with honor and living in truth.
That's what we can do. And all we have to do is fight our own demons, you know, and avoid the devil's temptations that are all around us that the rulers might decide, hey, we're going to tempt them this way. All right. Even the Cheerios bee tempts your tummy with the taste of nut and honey, which ain't nothing, honey.
So we have rulers who don't play by any rules, but they want to make rules and they are demanding loyalty and they give honor. There are geniuses who understand the way the world works. who know what the hell they're doing all the time. And they can run the mechanisms of society, of a civilization, whether they're a brigadier general in the army or they are a surgeon that does hip replacements. Or they are a programmer who makes a language an order of magnitude faster. Or they are a farmer who figures out how to get 10% more crop yields on the same land without using GMO. Or a chef who comes up with a new recipe and changes the cuisine. All the experts, they're all the geniuses.
And the rulers... the wealthy, the powerful, the influential, seek out these people because they're the best of the best. And these are the practitioners. These are the people who own their areas of expertise and they teach and they profess and they practice. And you should seek to be a student of these people, to increase your ability as a peasant to handle your own business, to maintain your integrity, to be self-reliant, and to be free in society. And then you have the power over yourself because you are self-possessed. You have self-control. Therefore, you have self-determination.
Therefore, in an open society, there's mobility so that you become the genius. You can become the genius and then you can approach that meritocracy. We don't run everything as a meritocracy. Running a meritocracy means making everybody Karen or making everybody a cop or making everybody an informant. We don't need that much law and order. We need people to have character. When people have character, when people have discipline, you don't need so much law and order.
You can bend the rules specifically for a situation where you see that if the law says sit at a stop sign for 12 seconds before you cross the road, Well, there's leeway in that law. It says, well, if there's no traffic coming and you made a complete stop, you can go. All right. But we could put in a surveillance society where the camera there and says, you crossed that 12 second barrier line. Now you have violated law and order. That is suppressive. That's not how you treat a free citizen who is self-possessed to have self-control.
So. And I could even talk about indigence or what happens when you are a danger to yourself or to other people, or you can't handle your own emotions and you can't handle your own. You can't even feed yourself. You can't pay your own rent. All right. You can't even take the bus reliably when there's public transport. When you're indigent, then the rulers will find a way to manipulate public perception so that they can pass laws, more laws, give them more control, which is all they want. All they want. That's a power game. And so why you are a peasant, you should not be playing those power games. You should not be enabling geniuses who work for these rulers to get them more power than they have. Because that is, as Noam Chomsky famously said, that's manufactured consent.
Your consent must make sense for you, for everyone. And that is the only part of all the things you wanna talk about that should get into law but we have 400 500 years of common law from that we inherited from the English there's not so much more law that we need okay we need we need appropriation bills we need to decide how to spend money and and for priorities we don't need new laws we don't need new laws. We need new responsibilities as peasants so that we have leeway. Because we are human beings with a soul just like every genius, just like every leader. And we know that they're not accountable to the same standards as we are. We know that. We know that.
But if they were actually righteous people, if they were actually good people, if they actually fought evil and they protected and served the people, then we want them to have power. But we have kind of muddied up the idea of character. We've made vice into virtue. We've celebrated chaos. And that's just a wrong direction that we've gone since the invention of the counterculture. I mean, we have 70 years of that. We'll figure it out because everybody figures it out. Everybody who lives to be 40 years old says, okay, some of what they taught me was wrong. I've been living with some lies in my life. And that's what a peasant has to do.
They have to come and confront the fact that they were stupid kids. All right. And they said, okay, I'm an adult now. There's no excuse for me not to be an adult. You can keep saying, yeah, well, I'm just a young person and I'm still discovering stuff. You can do that until you're about 33. And then you're 33 and you're like, Nobody thinks you're a kid. Then you have to deal with the happy-go-lucky 20-year-old who's 13 years younger than you are. That's the problem with fast fashion and a fast fashion society. When you're approaching middle age and the kids have more freedom than you do. Think about that.
Now we have, what is it, Gen Z or Gen Alpha are making up new words that we're supposed to know? Yeah, right. We ain't putting up with that. But I say so as a peasant, a free citizen. who believes in law and order, but not too much law, but not too much order. We need creativity. We need soul. We need spirit. So that is the essence of my peasant theory.
I haven't had any reason to change it. I came up with this somewhere about 2007 when I saw populism taking over and when I saw The dynamism of the change in the way that we look at history and the way that we look at news and the way that we learn things got perverted. And a lot of people thought they were more in the power game than they were. And a lot of older institutions conceded their power to the rapidness of young people who are moving fast and breaking things. And they changed the way that they did journalism and it changed the way that Americans interpreted their their nation and themselves. And that hasn't been good. And it has set up a contingent of people who believe that the nation is. primarily wrong or mostly incorrect that requires radical change. But that's not the case.
We need to pay attention to pizza. Because pizza is a 2,000-year-old recipe that's still good today. And if you can't eat pizza, that means you're handicapped. And we don't need to change pizza for you. You just don't eat pizza. Eat something else. Have a bottle of Soylent and some vitamin supplements. Sorry, sorry, but teeth are necessary. You need them to chew, and these are incisors. They're supposed to chew meat. That's why you have a large intestine and a small intestine. Your body is designed to eat meat. So if you can't eat meat, there's something wrong with you, all right? If you don't like fried chicken and watermelon, there's something wrong with you. That means you've been culturally bamboozled. So, that's all I'm going to say this morning.
I'm sorry for going on this much, but I appreciate those of you who have spent the time to listen to me. I hope this has helped. I hope this helps you put things in perspective, that you understand that the rules are slightly different. for the rulers, for the geniuses, for the peasants. And speaking for the peasants is a peasant myself. Self-possession, self-determination are critical for you to be free. And when you're a free citizen, you don't have to listen to everything the rulers say, but you want to approach genius so that you have a little bit more influence when you live in truth and when you are a practitioner and you are perfecting your craft and you are making yourself useful to as many people as possible. and not just in a symbolic way but in a real way because it's what you do for a living it's how you earn your money and when you earn your money doing righteous good work then you are a practitioner among many practitioners and maybe one day at the level of meritocracy you might get picked by a ruler and certified but those of you who know stuff And not who are just relating a story that you heard over here, but something that you do.
And I'm guilty because I'm a writer, but I've always wanted to be a writer. And that's not something that was born yesterday. And I first started. being in the public and writing and telling stories in 1991. So this is a very deep part of my life. I've written thousands of essays. I didn't just figure out how to use Adobe Premiere and do that thing where it gets in your face. And it cuts back. I'm a writer. I write paragraphs. I write essays. I haven't written books. I'm an online creature. Anyway, thanks again for listening. I hope it helps.
Peasant Theory Explained