The Authenticity of Fraud: The Yale Hillbilly + The Classless Aristocrat

Malcolm Collins
Both JD Vance and Trump represent a form of identity laundering and fraudulence that is extremely authentic. Yeah. And trustworthy. It builds trust. He grew up an actual hillbilly.

Then he found out that to achieve the things that society told him were valuable, he had to adopt another identity. He's a Princeton venture capitalist. Right? Yeah. Your true self is who you choose to be, how you choose to see the world.

Simone Collins
Yeah. He is not somebody who accidentally became who he is. He became who he is because he had a goal. I want to be x type of person now. And he has transformed himself.

All culture is a larp. I think this ties into that. And I think you're much more authentic when you're larping culture than when you're just defaulting into whatever culture surrounds you because you have consciously chosen it, therefore you own it. Would you like to know more? Hello, Simone.

Malcolm Collins
I am so excited to be talking to you today. We had done an episode on JD Vance that actually went live today, and I was, as Trump's VP and the writer of hillbilly eulogy. Hello, G. Hillbilly elegy. I'm always gonna get that wrong.

Effigy is what I'm always trying to say. Don't say effigy. Anyway, there was a really interesting discussion on the discord about the episode, and I'll put the interesting topic on the discord here so people can get these types of comments in real time as they're coming up. But it made me realize that this pic was fascinating from so many perspectives that I want to dive into, like, the psychology of this pic and the psychology that's represented. And Trump now having as his running mate, I think the personification of the never Trump movement and what that means for the shift that we've had.

Culturally speaking, both JD Vance and Trump represent a form of identity laundering and fraudulence that is extremely authentic. Yeah. And trustworthy. It builds trust. Yeah.

And so do you want to talk about this? Because you were the one who first notices. Yeah. So their particular brands and personalities, I think, are comforting and trustworthy in the same way that franchises are trustworthy, and I'll explain why. So I'd said earlier that it was very fitting to me, and I found it very pleasing that Trump is like the poor man's caricature of a rich man.

Simone Collins
In yesterday's conversation, how Trump is, he frames himself as this very, like, classy, successful businessman, whereas, like, your typical, like, waspy wealthy person in the US would seem as pretty trashy. And on the flip side, you have this man who's branded himself as a hillbilly and a man of people who nevertheless, after coming out of the marines, went to Yale Law School, worked in venture capital, worked with the tech elite, was totally not like the hillbilly. And yet we see them as being probably more authentic. When you actually come down to it. Then, like your average normal politician who's playing by the politician template of, I'm authentic.

This is me, and I'm basic. And I think a lot of what's going on there is they've both adopted characters that are predictable and in that way, trustworthy. You don't have to like someone to trust them. You have to feel like you can model and predict them. That's it.

Malcolm Collins
I think it's more than that. So I think JD Vance is a bit easier to study this from than Trump. Right. So JD Vance grew up like an actual hillbilly. So you read his book.

Can you talk to some of the stories in it? Yeah, I think, yeah, this is important that people recognize it. He was mostly raised by his grandmother, who he called Meemaw. And she really is this caricature as well, this, like the classic Scots Irish back country american. There was this one family story where apparently Meemaw said to her husband that if she came home, if he came home drunk again, she would kill him.

Simone Collins
And lo and behold, one day he comes home, take a drink, of course, light. One day he comes home drunk, passes out on the couch, and she. He wrote in his book, actually, that she poured gasoline on him. The family actually quibbled that, no, it was probably lighter fluid, but that was the only family quibble, by the way. Some context, but yeah, and lit him on fire.

And it was actually Jamie's, I think, aunt, one of the daughters who took pity upon this man and saved his life. This is a woman who does not. Fuck around with very backcountry value systems. You know, you set boundaries, and then you enforce him with violence. Yeah.

And I think this is the way that people are like, well, JD Vance is not really a hillbilly, but he was raised in that kind of culture and environment. And also when people are like, yeah, Trump's not really, like, a classy, wealthy businessman. He was raised really wealthy. Like, the way in which these people are frauds are, like, not exactly the. Stereotypes I want to make here around fraudulence, which is to say he grew up an actual hillbilly.

Malcolm Collins
Then he found out that to achieve the things that society told him were valuable, he had to adopt another identity. He's a Princeton venture capitalist, right? And he fit in with this new identity community that he was representing. When he was writing hillbilly elegy, he was writing it to explain, how could anyone ever vote for Trump? Which was genuinely something that was in his community.

People were asking, and he, at the time, was motivated to believe, I could never do something like this. I would never do something like this, not the person I am today. But then he thought, environment I grew up in, I can model them. I can begin to see how they might do certain things or why they might do certain things. And then he did something that a lot of people do at different points of their life, which is he was modeling this other community, this community he originally came from, and either because he thought through readopting this identity in the same way that he adopted the ultra urban monoculture identity to achieve success in venture capital and Princeton law and all that, he might have realized he could politically capitalize from this new identity and began to adapt it.

Like, maybe that was part of the early motivation, but why do people switch to, yeah, people code switch all the time. But maybe it was in modeling this, in engaging with this population. Again, I don't believe in a true self. Like a lot of people are. Like, oh, you should just be your true self.

Your true self is who you choose to be, how you choose to see the world. And I believe he began to choose. Like, he realized, I think, partially, that he had distanced himself from his real cultural ancestry because he had begun to dehumanize people with those value systems and that culture. And he realized that, oh, I shouldn't be doing that. They actually have some value to them, perhaps more value than the urban monoculture.

And this is the journey that many people have gone down. And so the question is, when was he pretending? Was he pretending when he was ultra urban, monoculture, venture capitalist Princeton guy? Or is he pretending now that he's still has many of their mannerisms, he can still close switch to access their community, but when he's making decisions about the metaphysical nature of reality, good and evil, et cetera, which identity is he channeling? He tells us which identity he's channeling, I think both in his actions and in his policy positions, and in that we can see that he is not somebody who accidentally became who he is.

He became who he is because he had a goal. I want to be x type of person now. And he has transformed himself from the way that he dresses and talks to his value system into a high class hillbilly.

Unknown
A poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed. Well, the first thing an old, old Jedi billionaire said, California is the place you ought to be. So they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly Hills. That is.

Where's so many people this year? Town gonna take a long time to meet everybody.

That's real nice, son. This year's what I carry.

Simone Collins
You once tweeted that all culture is a larp. I think this ties into that. And I think you're much more authentic when you're larping culture than when you're just defaulting into whatever culture surrounds you because you have consciously chosen it, therefore, you own it, you've thought through it, and you can, instead of deontologically or performatively acting out that culture, just, oh, I guess this is how it's done. Going through the motions. You're living it.

You're living the values, and you're executing on them with true fidelity to that cultural system. I actually think that this form of identity laundering or identity fraud is actually the core of the new vitalist framework. Look at our previous video, where they see the concepts of. We think that we've moved from a disgust based moral system to a cringe based moral system, to know a vitalist based moral system which elevates people like Tiger King, who is another person who I think represents this form of fraud. Oh, totally.

Malcolm Collins
Tiger King isn't who Tiger King is. Because of random circumstances that happened to him throughout his life, Tiger King decided to become Tiger King. It was a brand that he aspired to embody and now does embody in a very authentic way, because it is not something that he is. Because it's just what the people around him are. Because he chose to be.

Unknown
Keep rolling. Keep rolling. Now, this is the kind of movies we're gonna make here. Okay.

Ladies and gentlemen, before you hear it on the news, I'm gonna tell you myself. About an hour ago, we had an incident where one of the employees stuck their arm through the cage and the tiger tore her arm off. I can give you your money back, or I can give you a rain check. Yeah. This is what I value.

Simone Collins
This is what I like. This is who I'm gonna be, and this is what I'm gonna stand for. And I am living it 100% of the time at volume ten. Yes. And I actually think Andrew Tate is very similar.

Malcolm Collins
Yes. Yes. I guarantee you don't walk around your house with a sword, because you're not commander. I'm a commander. And I think that's one of the appeals about him.

Simone Collins
For people. Yeah. It's so funny when people see our value system and they're like, you can't just choose who you want to be. You can't just choose what you want to believe in, your moral system, and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, you absolutely can.

Malcolm Collins
That is the way the world works. That is a value system that you actually have because you own it now, the. Or because you chose it and you intentionally went into it. And this reminds me of when people are like, how could you guys be around racists? Like, why would it be a problem if we're around racists?

Like, we're trying to convince them not to be racist, and they go, if you're around enough racist, you'll become a racist. And it's, oh, what you're telling us is you hold your value system because the people you are around hold that value system, not because you chose that value system. They are susceptible to what the general public is doing in a way that we are nothing because they didn't choose to be who they are. Who they are is just an average of the people around them. And you also see this in Trump, Trump's identity, when people say it's like a fraudulent identity because he isn't accepted within high class culture.

He's not high. He doesn't. He is, as somebody who grew up, and this is actually interesting to me, because Trump did grow up wealthy, right? Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah.

But it's clear to me that his family was never accepted in high class culture. So I grew up in what was an exceptionally wealthy family. Now, I inherited none of it. The family had all the money taken from them, and I was disowned from them long before that. But they are a very.

I call it a bohemian grove. Wealthy family. Like that type of person. They were, well, like Dallas. There was a Dallas social book that listed, like, the most important families in Dallas, and we were in that book.

Unknown
We still have a copy of it. Somewhere in our house where when they used to have a social register, you might not know what social registers are. They had them in England where they would rank people by how important their family was. The Brett's, my love. The peerage.

Simone Collins
Yeah, yeah, the peerage. It was very important to, like, how you address other people. A lot of the old southern cities had this as well. And so we were in that book, and we would go to all the parties. And so I really understood how to code to this community.

Malcolm Collins
I went to cotillion, I went to all that. The house you were in when you were born, was featured in this magazine. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. There was a lot of.

So I knew that community. Now, the reason why I was expelled from my family is because I intentionally decided I did not like that community and I did not like their value system. But I think a lot of people can see when they interact with me or look at me. And my family was always considered an outsider within that community. We used to call you the Adams.

Simone Collins
Yeah. They called you because we were seen as so weird within that community. But that was like, I knew how to code switch into that. It's clear that was when you lived in Highland park. Right.

So the other Highland park families of Dallas, which is this wealthy neighborhood, it's like the Beverly hills of Dallas saw them as. Yeah, yeah. I grew up hanging out with the Bush family and those sorts of individuals, so I understood how to code switch into that and what it means to be that. It's very clear to me that for whatever reason, Trump did not grow up or was not acculturated into actual blue blood culture. He doesn't.

Malcolm Collins
He appears to want to be something like that, but he doesn't know how to code that way. And as I've mentioned in other episodes, to me, he actually codes like a persian. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Unknown
Look, I'm guessing there's some kind of soccer match from your home country going on, but some of us are trying to sleep, and I could almost deal with the noise, but it's the cologne, all right? I can smell it in my bed. That's how powerful it is. Okay. That's how powerful it is.

Simone Collins
Well, but also, he does all these other things that, like, quote unquote, like, classy people aren't allowed to do. Everyone knows. As a side note here, I genuinely do not think Trump knew this, that. Sure, if you want to, as, like, a very wealthy man of a high social class, you can have your mistresses or whatever, that you have to marry a respectable woman. Like, ideally, someone from your shared culture who has social status within your social groups and who is educated and respectable, and I'm not.

I mean, Melania is a queen. She is a fantastic woman, but she is an eastern european model. That is what trashy people marry. You know, trashy people marry the mail order brides who are incredibly sexy and accomplished and obviously great people, but that's not, like, the conforming thing to do. Well, I think a great example, you look at somebody like JFK, you have the absolute queen.

Malcolm Collins
Jackie Kennedy, right? Yeah. But he got, like, nothing otherwise. Sexual. Women.

Simone Collins
Yeah. He slept with them. Yeah, he sleeps with the Marilyn Monroe. He marries the Jack and Kennedy. You don't marry the Marilyn Monroe.

Malcolm Collins
Yeah, but Trump got his signals crossed around. And if I had to guess around, why this is my guess would be because his family made money in what was considered a low class industry, and so he. He was never really accepted as a use into the high class. So he was like a wealthy merchant family rather than a wealthy lord family or something? Not just.

Yes, not just that. He's a wealthy merchant. So people might not know this, but within blue blood circles, real estate is considered a very low class thing to be involved in. It's almost as low class as car sales. Yeah, well, my dad totally owns a dealership.

Unknown
Dude, do you know who his dad is? He's totally rich. He will totally hook you up. Dude, we're drunk. Which is.

Malcolm Collins
You can make. Oh, my God, you can. So you don't know this, but there's all these genres now on Netflix of wealthy real estate brokers, and they are the trashiest people in the entire world. They're great shows because they, like trashy people by, like, only super designer brands and do a lot of conspicuous consumption, which, again, is, like, the ultimate sign of being trashy. So.

Simone Collins
That is so funny because I've never actually heard you say that before, and I never thought that real estate was associated with, like, trashiness. But when you go and watch these real estate reality tv shows on Netflix, which I do, because I am low culture, thank you very much. Wow, you're right. It is not the waspy blue blood. It is not the prep.

It is the new agent. Francine. I'm like a lemur monkey. Mostly business. But I will throw my own shit.

Malcolm Collins
At you if I have to. A lot of people don't know this. They don't know if you didn't grow up in one of these things, you know? Because you can make an astronomical amount of money owning chains of car dealerships. Yeah, but it's just considered low class.

Unknown
My dad's, like, totally rich. We own this dealership. And what sorority are you in? Dude. Dude, get off my shirt.

It's worth more than your ass life. My dad owns a dealership. Hello. I can chill out for a while. I mean, I've already flunked out, but it's cool.

I'm gonna work at my dad's dealership. My dad owns this dealership. Well, and this is, like, for those who are not very familiar with american discussions of class. Cause I know we have a lot of non american viewers. Their class not at all in the United States is associated with how much money you have.

Simone Collins
There's, like, these two different versions of it. There's, like, social class wealthy, which means, like, you could have absolutely nothing, be drowning in college debt, and, like, living in a hovel out, like, slightly outside Brooklyn, but be very high class and know all the right people and go to all the right parties. Or you could be, like, an air conditioning company baron or a real estate baron and have the best clothes and have the best houses and actually live in mansions and actually have economic power and not be in those circles and not be. A note about the american class system is if you know how to code switch into it, you will generally be accepted regardless of your background. In fact, you will be considered higher class than the people who were born into that class.

Unknown
This might actually explain why JD Vance was so readily accepted and elevated within this culture, while Trump struggled so much to gain acceptance within this culture. This reminds me of something that Ayla wrote. Speaker one. I realize this might need some context for people who aren't regular watchers of the show. Ayla is a famous sex worker and sex researcher, and she ran away from her family at a young age and got her start working in factories where she's.

Malcolm Collins
I don't understand why I keep getting invited to all these parties and I'm treated as. So, like, why? Why is it that upper class society is so interested in having me at all their events? Yeah. Like, when will they realize that I am not one of them?

Yeah, but she doesn't get it in upper class, because upper class America always wants to believe that it's not classist. Ayla codes very well for extreme upper classes. Oh, totally. Yeah. The way she talks, the way she does her house, the way she dresses.

Simone Collins
The question she asked, her intellectual nature, her level of education. This probably also explains why Ayla was so easily accepted into upper class circles. But Trump was not. Signaling intellectual curiosity is considered intrinsically very high class by these communities, which is something that Ayla constantly does and Trump very rarely does well, attempting to signal your own wealth is considered incredibly low class, and that's something that somebody like Ayla never does, but Trump is constantly doing. And what's also interesting is sex work is not considered low class within upper class communities.

Malcolm Collins
And the same way, and a lot of people are really shocked by this. They're like, what? Sex work has always been considered low class. And it was like, actually, historically speaking, sex workers are generally Aspasia, right? That was her name.

What? Aspasia. Aspasia yeah. So if you look at, like, ancient greek culture, actually the highest class profession you could have as a woman was a special kind of sex work. Now, it's not normal sex work, but this was also true in the court.

Simone Collins
Queen sex worker. Yeah. But this was also true in the. Courts of La French, being a courtesan. Yeah.

Madame Pompadour. Yeah. So the idea of which is also really interesting, that sex work is not considered a low class profession if you do it while being an incredible intellectual, while something like real work, like being involved in real estate or car sales. I think people from middle class backgrounds or who didn't grow up in blue blood families would be very surprised by the professions that give you class status. Dings.

Unknown
And the ones that don't. An example here would be, I remember my mom telling me that I would be disinherited if I got a law degree because she considered being a lawyer. So low class. I actually got the similar threats if I went into profession as a doctor. And I think that a lot of people from non blue blood backgrounds would be confused by that and assume that those would be considered high class degrees or that something like Aylas work would bar her for being considered high class.

And it's like, no, no, not at all. Actually, this is something I noticed at St. Andrews where I went to school, and it's known for having a lot of blue blood kids go there, is that the blue blood kids all sorted into, like, one of two degrees. Either it was, if you went into the arts, you would go into the classics, which is like a completely useless degree, or art history or philosophy. But if you went into the sciences, where actually about, I'd say 50% of the kids did who came from blue blood families.

The generic degree you would get, or stem, was neuroscience or particle physics. Those were considered the two, like, really high class degrees to have, which, you know, humorously, both my brother and I have degrees in neuroscience. And again there, that's because it was considered the most technically challenging of the degrees. Therefore it was the classiest of the degrees. Also, I hope people can begin to understand why I abandoned that cultural group, even if it, you know, for a period, cut me off for my family, and it cost me what could have been a fairly easy life.

It just wasn't worth it. And. And really interesting. It's so funny that I grew up in this group that was traditionally aligned with the Republican Party. And as this group moved to align with the Democratic Party, the new group, I ended up adopting tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, they moved to the Republican Party from the Democratic Party.

So I have this weird perspective and insight across this transition. So I'm just going on a tangent here about how the class system works, because I think many people would find this amazing and interesting and weird, but because to me, I find it interesting and weird. It's a weird thing that, like, America still has this class system. What I will note is that it has mostly fallen apart. So it existed when I was growing up, but that was really the last generation that maintained it, and it has now transformed itself.

Malcolm Collins
And the new high class faction is the faction that JD Vance is LaRPing, which is a form of urban monoculture. If you look at our video on classically, Abby about, like, why her channel never really caught on or worked out, it's because when she says classy, she means normative within upper class culture. But the problem is normative upper class culture in America now is urban monoculture. And now there's a branch of upper class culture which we'll get to in another video, which I find very interesting, which is the tech elite, and they are not urban monoculture. They actually have their whole own set of value systems.

And that is where JD Vance is from and what we have seen, and I think what it has really transformed from the first Trump election till now and with the party switch that's going on in the United States right now, is the traditional upper class, the old merchant class descendants, right? They were bosom budded each other republicans because of, like, deregulation and stuff like that. Trump is now basically a union guy in many ways. I mean, you know, pro terrorists for everything like that. But what's interesting is, at the same time as he has lost the ability to work with these classic upperclassmen and like I said, able to sell us because that community doesn't exist anymore, the tech elite rose, and they began to move incrementally over the past years to being more Trump.

This is like a vitalik chamas teeter teal Elon. Like us. The coded tech elite culture is now a conservative cultural group and aligned with the conservative value system. This is the crypto conservatives, right. And a lot of the people in the crypto community have this extremist, authoritarian positions and stuff like that.

Unknown
We have another video where we're going to go into this in a lot more detail. But if you look at the old conservative party, the conservative party before Trump, and we'll call this GOP, Inc. It predominantly existed as an alliance of theocratic interests and blue blood slash big business interests. Big business left the alliance, and so did blue bloods, as both groups went woke. And that allowed for Trump to rise, where instead of appealing primarily to theocrats or big business, he appealed to angry and discontent Americans.

But this was also part of why his first administration struggled so much. Because angry, discontent Americans don't exactly make up a good or, like, governing bureaucracy. If you wanted to enact all of Trump's policies during this period, if you. If you look back at the nineties and the eighties, while big business and intergenerational wealth supported Republicans, tech entrepreneurs generally supported progressives. Well, just as big business went away, as Trump was changing the parties and the value systems, and as big business and intergenerational wealth solidly aligned themselves with the progressive Party, tech entrepreneurs began to move from being progressives to being staunch Republicans.

And we'll have another video as to why and how this happened, but I think JD Vance represents a solidification of this transition. But Trump's inability to properly signal that, it seems at some point in his life, what he decided is he was just going to decide for himself what it meant to be and look like an upper class person. And I think that is the core personal transformation he went through from his first presidency to this one, is. I think at first he thought that someday they would eventually accept him, the old upper classes would eventually accept him of New York, at least when he. Became president, at least when he became president.

Malcolm Collins
And he's realized, oh, no, they'll never accept me. And I. And all of these people who are more interesting and who like me for the way that I thought class worked, that is, for me, do represent me. And so the Trump that we see is more authentic than somebody trying to be their authentic self. I think you can say a lot of people are like, why is he so moderated now?

Simone Collins
Why is he so calm? Why is he looking more reasonable? This is so calculated. Maybe some of it's calculated, but I think a lot of it is that he's fuck you, guys. I'm comfortable with myself.

Now, a lot of that, that calmness and that lack of abrasiveness actually comes from a place of greater personal security. And I think that, in a way, choosing JD Vance as his running mate is the culmination of this. So I want to read something that was on our discord that I found really was like, wow. Like, the right. Our discord regularly schools us.

We're like, why don't we. Why don't we listen to our podcast when we could just be on our discord. We should just have a podcast reading the discord. Yes and no. To build a voter base, you need to appeal to different groups.

Malcolm Collins
Because there are only two parties. Different groups inevitably end up group together. You should differentiate between the technocratic elites and the liberal elites. Technocratic elites built a company. They're smart and entrepreneurial.

They pulled themselves up by their boots. Technocratic elites used. And I here I'll know. I'll say the techno elites, because technocratic means something specific and it's a form of bureaucratic. I'll actually.

Simone Collins
Tech elites. Tech elites. Tech elites used to vote alongside the liberal elites because both of them are, quote, unquote, elites. But Vance is using tech elites to side with rural appalachia because rural Appalachia is scrappy and entrepreneurial. We have a pull yourself up by your boots in, quote, mentality that tech elites like.

Malcolm Collins
And that's true. That is absolutely true. He found the overlap one of the reason why these two communities align with each other. I think it's also that the czech elites like contrarianism. That's another reason they really like this group.

They like things that are true, that you will be shamed for saying that's a sign of status within the tech elite community, because that is what leads you to be more successful when you are a venture capitalist, for example, having ideas that are true, that most people shame is how you beat the markets. It's how you choose the startup that everyone else thinks is a job was a good idea. Right? So, of course, these values end up getting lauded, which end up aligning with this new conservative movement. And I think that is what Trump has done here.

Now, there's another thing that I think Trump has done here that somebody else in the discord was saying that I think is really true. JD Hansen away represents somebody who was part of that genuinely accepted into elite culture that Trump strove for in his early days. But he turned it down. He didn't want it. He was the picture of the never Trumper because he was the picture of NPR elitism.

And as society began to change, as that community became more and more basically just Nazis, that is, they have. They believe society should be divided into it. That's no hierarchy with Jews at the bottom. And they're like, no, it's not Jews. At the bottom, it's Zionists at the bottom.

And I'm like, depending on the survey you look at, Zionists make up 95%, 92% of Jews. So that's just semantics at that point. Oh, I don't hate Christians, just the ones who believe that Jesus was the son of God. It's pretty close to a perfect circle, that Venn diagram there. But anyway, so he had that dream that Trump originally wanted, and he threw it away.

Now he works to denigrate that culture. He's. That culture is bad. That culture is toxic. He converted to Catholicism.

He is. You look at his background on the Senate floor, he's not just trying to be a standard Republican. He's trying to build his own moral framework. You see this, like we talked about with his policies yesterday, how they. It's not along party lines that he.

Simone Collins
He makes decisions. And he's cool with trust busting, but he's also cool with building pipelines, natural gas pipelines. He's cool with nuclear. He's against untethered, unfettered immigration. Like, there's.

I like it. I like it. Yeah. So what I see here is Trump choosing to side with and to have as his partner somebody who represented the culture that he wanted access to and who turned it down for the culture that Trump, that actually liked Trump and admired Trump. And I think that represents a psychological development from character building.

Malcolm Collins
Right. Is he realized that the best of the old culture are now realizing that culture is bad and that the cultures that he always appealed to being this authentic and that he chose it. Identity of what he thought elitism was, that appealed to them. Interesting. Yeah.

Simone Collins
So it's not, as Jon Stewart claims, that Donald Trump merely selected for VP the man who looked like Don Trump junior s actor in a lifetime movie.

Malcolm Collins
I don't think it is at all. I think that there's. I don't know how much of this is psychological, how much of it is strategic, but it does, to me, represent a real og. Trump would not have chosen the guy who led his detractors. Yeah.

As a running man. He would have chosen the guy who was first to jump in and support him. Like you were saying to me earlier, too. Pence really represented as Trump's first Mike Pence represented as Trump's first VP pick, GOP Inc. The old guard of the Republican Party, of conservatives in the United States.

Simone Collins
And so this VP pick represents something very different. It represents Trump. And not just saying, okay, I'm going to go the tech elite route. I'm going to go be a more authentic route. I'm going to go.

This is the new tone for the Republican Party. I'm going to call it. But, yeah, it is going to shape the future of conservatism in the United States, especially if they win. This is what DL said, which was interesting, was the first Trumpian revolution is it didn't have any elite factions. It was a completely the disenfranchised who were supportive of Trump in the early days, in his first run.

Malcolm Collins
And you can't build an entire party off of just the disenfranchise. And I think that this is why his party was so ineffective at actually operating the White House. They really struggled just to staff people. Things like, people didn't show up to meetings. There was, I can't remember the title of the book, but there were several books about what happened after Trump was elected.

Simone Collins
And in many cases, what happened is major governmental departments, when the changeover happens, they have these meetings, the people get sent out from the president's office and they're like, here's what's going to change. And of course, here you get these large government agencies sitting and waiting, okay, day one, like, the people are going to come in and tell us how it's going to be, and no one shows up. And they're just like, and then the deep state just didn't what it was. Going to do, just kept doing the deep state you need. The thing about elite I is what often makes them elite.

Malcolm Collins
There's different ways they can be elite. They can be born elite, like the progressive elite, but at least they have high quality education and stuff like that. Or they can prove their efficacy in the economic system by either ability to be productive. And that's what makes and make people money. That's a big one.

And siding with the elites who proved their elite status through shot calling and genuinely building value for other people, that's a pretty smart faction to bring over to your side. Damn straight. That is the tech elite. And what makes them so useful. Yeah.

Now, we should note that there are two groups of the tech elite, right? There's the old guard tech elite, who are fully urban monoculture. These are the ones who own the giant natural monopolies that control our means of communication. These are the founders of Twitter. These are your Bill Gates, your Mark Zuckerberg.

They are from a different generation, and their core goal is just to fit in with the old elite factions. But the new tech in Elite is predominantly of this new faction, which is just fascinating to me. And it's a very strategic alliance building. But there's another aspect of the interesting thing of the Trump alliance with the tech elite and the appalachian tech elite alliance. The appalachian tech.

Simone Collins
Yes. What an unexpected alliance. But it makes sense. Yes, it's an unexpected alliance. But when you think about it, it makes sense.

Malcolm Collins
But there's also, like, the ethnic thing about it. So one of the things about the tech elite is that they have a huge number of Indians in them. And so you're noticing a huge number of indian american conservatives rising. And I think we'll begin to see more and more leaders of the american movement. American conservative movement.

To be Indian Americans. You've got your viveks, your chamas, your. Or the last guy who ran the conservative party in the UK. Or name and post, or even Kamala Harris. Indian American.

No, she's half jamaican. Jamaican. I thought she was like, yeah, she's black. I think she's half jamaican, half white, but she could be half jamaican. Half.

Simone Collins
Yeah. Harris's maternal ancestry comes from Tamil Nadu, India. Her parent. Her parental ancestry comes from St. Anne.

Sorry, fraternal ancestry comes from St. Andrew. Yeah, her mom was. Yeah. So she's indian and jamaican, but I.

Malcolm Collins
Would consider Ikomal Harris has chosen to identify as black. She chooses whatever helps her in the moment. But I don't think that she's, like, part of the indian community or. No, she doesn't present herself as even remotely indian, which is interesting. But this is also something that we're seeing.

If you look at our friends who are part of this new conservative movement. Like, you can look at Aria Babu, for example, who I think is like a great natalist intellectual in the UK, indian immigrant. So I think what we might see is in the conservative intellectual class, more Indians are going to be represented, which I think is going to piss off some thinkers I know who. But I personally think it's fine. I love this alliance of the people who were able to economically compete with the people who are forced to economically compete.

And then there's this entire class of bureaucrats who've never really, in their lives. And I think that's what represents the urban monoculture, is they got ahead through conformity. Yeah. Yeah. The nonconformists, the rebels.

Simone Collins
If any of David Hackett Fisher's four groups that he covered in Albion seeds is going to be the adoptive group of the venture capital class in the United States. It would be the Scots Irish, it wouldn't be the Quakers, it wouldn't be the cavaliers, and it wouldn't be Puritans. Why don't you talk about this cultural group? Because a lot of people don't know what you're talking about. Yeah.

So in Albion, see David Hackett Fisher, a historian, describes four basically foundational waves of immigration that colored american culture going forward. The Puritans, who were very conservative, religious extremists, visionaries who came over and settled in New England. They were very hardworking, very conscientious, very looking down their nose at everyone else and very exclusionist then. That's true, by the way, that was the Quakers. The Quakers were the exclusionists.

Malcolm Collins
Look down your nose. Remember, the Quakers always look down their nose at the backcountry. Malcolm, what did the pilgrims do to Quakers who tried to proselytize in their area? Yeah, that wasn't looking down. That was just, get out of my community.

Unknown
They were. That was like tarring and feathering them and dragging. That is not looking down. They never. No, it's literally not looking down.

Malcolm Collins
Like, it's literally nothing. The Quaker community. Sorry, you're just misremembering the book based on modern stereotypes. So the Quaker community would constantly hand wring, which we see as the ancestor of the urban monoculture, about the backcountry, Scotch Irish who came in and were very rough and tumble. These are the wild.

Yeah. So to jump ahead, the Scots Irish were like the wild rebels and cast offs of Ireland and Scotland, where there were like massive border skirmishes all the time. It's a much more rural and tribal and less formal and, one could argue, less civilized part of the country. Quakers would debate among themselves what was worse, the savage Indians who would come in and attack and kill them, or the Scots Irish. They were like all terrifying.

Simone Collins
And it was a group also. That was even the way that they dressed freaked out the Quakers, who were very prudish. They wore higher skirts, the women did. They were very informal and the women were tough and they in one moment would slaughter a cow and then come in and serve tea. These are very tough people, which, of course, also stand in contrast to the cavaliers.

These were like the second 3rd sons of wealthy lords in the UK who came to the United States as immigrants, working very closely with the crown to basically make a lot of money, have a plantation, maintain the social class system that they were accustomed to in the United Kingdom. In England at the time, when you're looking at these different groups, you have these very conformist Quakers who are very also, like, religiously extreme, but they're in their own way. You've got the Puritans who are also religious extremists and also conformist within their own culture. And then you have these crazy renegades. Of course, the crazy renegades are going to be the ones most likely to ally culturally with the crazy renegades of venture capital, of startups, of going out and breaking things and doing things and ask for forgiveness, not permission.

Move fast and break things. That is. These are the mottos of Silicon Valley. Think about even the stories of Elon, like fighting in the halls of his company with his brother. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. When you read his latest bureaucracy. Sorry, bureaucracy. When you read his latest biography by Walter Isaacson, he describes how he would sometimes just wrestle with his brother Kimball in their office, their early startup offices, as employees looked on with mixed, probably horror and amusement. At one point, I think Kimball was even hospitalized.

Malcolm Collins
Yeah, but that's very much backcountry scotch Irish. Yeah. To correct the. The misinterpretation. This is important to correct because it is something that the culture believes but just isn't true.

The Quakers absolutely looked down upon and hated the scotch irish immigrants. Let's be honest. Just to. Not that I'm going to split hairs when you're here, but every one of these four cultures looked down upon the others. No, they did.

That's the exact point I'm making. No, the Scots Irish absolutely looked down upon the Quakers and rated them sometimes. And of course, the cavaliers are like. Who are all these? What you're missing and the point I'm making is the Puritans and the Scotch Irish actually got along and created an intermixed culture, which is what my family comes from.

So if you look at why they got along and why they. Because it's even mentioned in the book, like, I'm very surprised you don't remember this. You were like the Puritans, tarred and feathered, the Quakers who would come to their communities and preach. And it's like, yes, of course they did. I would tar and pether a woke person who came to my community and preached, too.

Simone Collins
Get the out. But they got along very well with the Scotch Irish communities, which is where the anti slavery came from communities. This is where John Brown came from, or the free State of Jones movement or many of these others. And you would be like, why would these two communities get along? Because they were both very.

Malcolm Collins
The Puritans were very okay with speaking your mind mindset, which is what the Scotch Irish were known for. They were very much just say whatever they believe. They were not largely calvinist as well. Just, they were not prude like the Quakers were. The Quakers were incredibly prude about sexuality.

And they thought the Scotch Irish were just like these, lewd, like, they would dress down, they would just dress in whatever was useful at the time. They didn't really care about sexuality one way or the other. It was a tool. And the Puritans were also known for engaging in sexuality more, and they were like, you're of a different cultural group. They very much had this mindset, you're not saved.

But I like that you speak your mind and you have the strong sense of whatever, and you're not telling me how to live my life. And that was where the Puritans had a hard line. Is other cultural groups coming in and telling them how to live their life? They were like, absolutely not. You guys are wrong.

But then the other thing is, both the Scots Irish and the Puritans were morally uncompromising in a truces. So the Quakers had this sort of, like, social signaling moral hierarchy, but they were actually morally compromising in the extreme. They were theologically against slaves, but they owned slaves at higher rates than any of the other groups. So you can look at wills of the period, and we have an episode where we talk about this, but it was like 43% of Quakers owned slaves, which was higher than even the height of the south. They were very amish.

You have quotes from the period of Amish thinking that slavery was a Quaker institution, because it really. The Puritans don't do it that much, and we don't do it. So it's a Quaker thing. Right? So they control the education system that they created this, like, lie of history, right?

That it was the Puritans who did all these things and not. No, it was them. But the Puritans were generally fairly against slavery, and they had this, like, moral extremist position. And the backcountry people were very okay with moral extremist positions. This is what's right.

This is what's wrong. This is why it's right. This is why it's wrong. Instead of what the Quakers had, which was these deontological, like, virtue signaling value positions, and so it allowed the two communities to merge very easily. Then I would say that almost entirely the puritan community that survived, that ended up having high fertility rates, ended up completely merging with the Scots irish tradition.

But the Scots Irish tradition, there is a branch that is just Scotch Irish. So that's left in the United States, which is where, like, country music and hillbilly culture comes from. But there is a different branch, which is represented a lot in Texas, for example, but where my family's from, which was the merger of the puritan and scots irish traditions. Yeah, that checks out. So let's bring this back to JD Vance as we wrap up for people watching.

Simone Collins
Then I could see them being, okay, so what is he. Is he urban monoculture? Is he tech bro? Is he hillbilly? What can I actually expect from him?

What can I model him? You guys are saying he is authentic. You're saying he's trustworthy, but what the hell is he now? I'm so confused. What would you say to that?

Malcolm Collins
I'd say he is who he has chosen to become. Who he has chosen to become. And you can say, why did he choose to be? Even if you're like, okay, but he only choose to become that thing because it helped him politically. He became urban monoculture because it helped him make money and move up.

He became what he is now because it helped him win the love of the conservative party. I want to say, even if that's true, if he acts out of line with this new identity, he will lose the power it has given him. If he is really that mercenary, then what's that line for? Pirates of the Caribbean? A dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest.

Unknown
It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict they're going to do something incredibly stupid.

Malcolm Collins
Let's see if I can push it here. You can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest, or really, what he means by that is do us in his best interest. So he's very trustworthy. A trustworthy man. That's a man who might do something stupid.

Simone Collins
That's good. And so either you could say he's a trustworthy man and he is honestly signaling his value system, or he's a dishonest man. And now this value system is what has allowed him to achieve power and fame, and so he will continue to do what's in line with it. So whatever it is, when Trump is. Definitely captain jacking it like that, and it's so easy to know what he's going to do.

Malcolm Collins
Yeah. And that's. I think that's why we like him. We like him for the same reason we like Captain Jack Sparrow. You know what I mean?

He actually like that scene in Pirates of the Caribbean.

Unknown
Hold up there, you. It's a shilling to tie up your boat.

Malcolm Collins
Where his little ship is sinking, and he steps off onto the pier. That is Trump walking into the presidency. His entire, like, media empire is burning to the ground. And he's just like, um. And the progressives, it's always like, you are without a doubt the worst politician I have ever heard of.

Simone Collins
But you have heard of me. But you have heard of me. You are without doubt the worst pirate I've ever heard of, but you have heard of me. That's got to be the best part I've ever seen. So it would seem.

Malcolm Collins
And that's what that is. The vitalistic framework is not the type of thing the same way. Yes, the most. The worst animal conservationist I ever heard of. And he'd be like, well, but you have heard of me.

But I think that's very much like us. Like, people are like, oh, my God, you guys. You're always being attacked. Everybody thinks you're crazy. And we're like, ah.

I was thinking, like, if we end up getting one of our shows approved, we should do a cover of if you're ever gonna survive, you gotta get a little crazy song.

Because that is the truth of the world we live in now. The groups that survive are the groups that are willing to think for themselves. And I also like that we live in a period where that is becoming culturally lauded among the conservative faction of our society. And the old pearl clutching, you must stay within our value set. Like, my family being called the Addams family, growing up in the local environment, conservative culture.

They were like, oh, they're weird. They do their own thing. Like, how dare they? And that is not. That is not the elite culture of today.

And so it is cool that, in a way, we've been able to find ourselves back into the good graces of an elite cultural faction, despite largely spurning that in my childhood, because the faction that I spurned ended up crashing, burning and disappearing. It's the faction that Abby, classically Abby, you know, Ben's sister, keeps trying to appeal to. Yeah. God, yeah. You really.

Simone Collins
You really did come from Scotts Irish. I was just thinking about, like, stories about things that your mom would do when you were a kid, and she totally, oh, it would be your birthday party or something, when you'd be like, oh, I want to go do this. And then you'd run off. And the other kids are like, I. Don'T want to do that.

And your mom, like, kneels down to them. She's like, you're going to do it, and you're going to look happy. And, like, little shit. That literally came from Scott's irish culture. Note here, people may be surprised because they heard earlier that my family was quite a blue blood family, like, intergenerational wealth when I was growing up.

Unknown
And they may be like, well, that precludes you from coming from the hillbilly culture. And it's like, not really. I mean, you can come from the scots irish culture and then end up making intergenerational wealth and moving into the center of a major city and becoming an important political family there without completely abandoning all of your cultural traditions. And I should also note that my mom married into the blue blooded family. She did not grow up in a family like that.

So she maintained a much purer version of this culture, as you'll hear in some of these stories. Yeah. Oh, yeah. She took it. She took it with one of my friends and said, she is.

Malcolm Collins
You're here to make my son happy today. So you go fucking do what he says he wants to do. Or I love that. My favorite thing that she did very much of this culture is I came home from school one day and the teachers came to them and told them that I had snitched on another kid and how good I was for doing that. And she took me aside and she goes, you little shit.

I was like, but they were beating. They were like, picking on another kid. She goes, that's what your fists are for. And I was like, I'll get detention. And she's like, I don't fucking care.

Be a man, seven. Don't go to the authority. Handle this yourself. That's how morality is enforced. Or another time, respect.

I got in trouble with the teachers at my school, and I go to my mom and I was like, I just was doing what I thought was right. And she heard what I had done. She goes, oh, yeah, I'm gonna let you in on a secret to you being a kid. Teachers are like, your authority. They're the height of what sets the culture in your community.

Unknown
I don't know how she says exactly. But she's like, two adults. Teachers are losers because they are. They are. They're making minimum wage.

Malcolm Collins
Then I don't know if they actually were. But she goes, and nobody respects them, so you shouldn't respect them. If you listen to their advice, you're gonna end up just like them. So she goes, so you do what you think is right, and if you get punished for it, so be it. Deal with that as well.

And I was like, okay. That is why I kept getting kicked out of schools. That is also part of why, you know, because my mom did not grow up in a wealthy culture. She married into one of those families. And so I think it was her raising of me to be so annoyed where they would, like, kowtow or bend the moral systems to fit what was socially normative.

And I was like, but no, like, it's wrong. It's wrong. And I need to say it's wrong because I know it's wrong. And it would be immoral of me not to do that, by the way. People are wondering, just, like, how white trash her family is.

Her name was Whannell. She was the first fan of the show, but she has died since this show started. So she'd watch it every day early, and she encouraged me to keep doing it. But her name was Whannell. Her name was Whannell because her parents decide between the names Winnie and Nella.

And I was like, yeah, that was. Another element of the Scots irish culture was insane. Names often portmanteaus, too. Yeah. So it's very much a Jackie boy Bob, or, like, it's very common in this culture to have double barreled names.

Simone Collins
Jim Bob, Mary sue. Like, Jim Bob, Mary sue. She was Winnie and Al. She. In the end, she was the classiest woman I.

Malcolm Collins
Well, she knew how to. And I actually think that's where a lot of her life came from, is a desire to fit in with upper class culture instead of being able to be who she was. Yeah, that was the constant. Yeah, no, she's. In the context of this conversation that was.

Simone Collins
This constant pressure, is that we always loved the Scots Irish Whannell. And then it was like the singing frog of Warner Brothers phenomenon, where we'd, like, present her to people, look, it's my mom. It's the woman we keep telling you about. We'd share her texts that she'd send to us that were super based with our friends, and then she'd hang out with our friends and just be nothing but this sophisticated, classy, witty woman. And we'd be like, okay, that's fine.

Malcolm Collins
That's not what we like. That's not what anyone who takes. But it was because she, unlike Trump, was able to succeed where Trump wasn't. She was accepted into extreme upper class culture multiple times. My dad and then the guy who she remarried, she was in, like, in Naples, Florida, which we don't know.

It's like this, where a lot of the midwestern business elite move, go to. Winter for the same. She was considered a very influential person among the wealthy society there because she was also classy, but that's not who she was. You know, a heavy drinking. And she was a very heavy drinking person.

She'd always say, well, you know, I can't. I can't talk with you until I've had my morning constitutional instead of a morning espresso. Anyway, Jen. With a massive ice cube and fresh squeezed lime juice. Yeah, that was what she always wanted, because she needed to say skinny and attractive, but she couldn't risk.

Simone Collins
Don't make it classy. Risk sobriety. Anyway, here's to authenticity, cosplaying culture, and a very interesting election season in America ahead, which will set the tone of our culture for the next four years, too. I am becoming increasingly confident that republicans are going to win. Now.

Malcolm Collins
The assassination of tip apparently didn't change things because half of society is run by a cult. I mean, 30% Trump Derangement syndrome is real. They are going to vote for whatever is not Trump. How many times do I have to say this? It changes nothing.

I think this. I think this election cycle may break Trump during Trump derangement syndrome for a lot of people. And I think JD Vance was built like a machine to do that.

You are so sweet. You are so truly pronatalist. That's a cute baby. She's got the wiggles. Do I need to go pick up the other one?

Simone Collins
It is time. Mac and cheese night. Double cheese. I was gonna have Mac and cheese and tomato soup. I think they go really well together.

The tomato soup, if I don't open it, will be good until August. So unless you feel like eating more of it later, you can. Mac and cheese with pulled pork on top would be so good. I don't know why. Oh, sorry.

Pulled slow cooker. Five day what? Brisket. That's an interesting idea. But today I'm interested in something a little simpler from my belly.

Your belly's feeling a little delicate. And you guys should know Simone is in extreme, searing pain right now, and she has been this entire episode. She is just tanking through it because one of her goals here is to not show any negative emotional states. And I've totally failed at that for multiple occasions so far this year, so I really gotta make it up. I don't think so.

Malcolm Collins
I think you've done an amazing job. You are a picture of stoicism, which is something I deeply appreciate. You know, show your emotions, but then keep with that puritan stoicism, okay? Damn straight. Malcolm.

Simone Collins
I love you. I love you too.

Good. Okay. I was terrified about having to go get the kids in that rain. It should let up. It's going to come back this evening.

But I love storm, especially now that soon we'll have power banks. Yay.

The Authenticity of Fraud: The Yale Hillbilly + The Classless Aristocrat

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1: Introduction to Themes

2: Identity and Trust

3: Class and Perception

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