Supporters for Mamdani tended to be more college-educated than those who voted for Cuomo; many have graduate degrees. One might find this surprising, since university graduates are supposed to have more knowledge about things like history and economics…and more ability to think clearly about things. But actually, it makes sense that Mamdani’s greatest strength is among college graduates, especially young college graduates. Why? Several reasons:
First, there’s student debt. A lot of people believed the promises about the right educational credentials practically guaranteeing a future income which would make any educational debt incurred almost trivial by comparison. Now they’ve found out that it isn’t so, and they are angry not at the educational institutions that benefited from their tuition, but on broader factors: ‘society’, or ‘boomers’, or, especially, ‘capitalism.’
Second, the education that many of these former students received encouraged them not only in an anti-capitalist attitude but in a broader hostility toward American society, hence priming them for a sense of resentment and an affinity for those promoting revolutionary change. In effect, this indoctrination largely immunized the universities they attended from blowback directed against themselves.
Third, there is a sense of entitlement coupled with a limited sense of options: the idea has been broadly promoted that college is the way to go for career success. At the same time the idea has been promoted that noncollege jobs (and noncollege people) are inherently inferior. There is a feeling that “I did what they told me and now look where I am.”
Here’s an interesting email that Peter Thiel wrote to some Meta executives and board members back in 2020. Excerpt:
Nick — I certainly would not suggest that our policy should be to embrace Millennial attitudes unreflectively. I would be the last person to advocate for socialism. But when 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why. And, from the perspective of a broken generational compact, there seems to be a pretty straightforward answer to me, namely, that when one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable, then one will have negative capital for a long time and/or find it very hard to start accumulating capital in the form of real estate; and if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it.
College debt has contributed to the negative-capital phenomenon, and what is taught in all too many colleges has contributed to the feeling that it’s impossible to get out of the negative capital trap.
Of course, Mamdani may not win the NY mayor’s race: only a small percentage of New Yorkers actually voted for him, and his extremism is sure to drive considerable pushback. But I’m afraid that we haven’t seen the last of the phenomenon he represents. This post notes that:
The kids who were radicalised and indoctrinated into Critical Theory at elite universities in the 2010s are now in their mid 30s. And they’re starting to climb the ladder. Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York is just the first of many, I fear.
The marketing approach taken by the Mamadani campaign also bears examining. @signulll says:
one under discussed part of the mamdani campaign was the usage of the video filters. every video used the same soft, humanizing tone consistently. it crafted a world around him. an aesthetic, almost utopian one. close shots, warm tones, delicate pacing.
it framed him as the delivery vehicle for a better feeling reality. beautifully cinematic. no surprise,
his mom is a well known filmmaker. this was vibe warfare. & he won. you have to understand how modern culture works in order to partake in it no matter what your underlying mission is.
…to which @Olivia_Reingold responded:
Filters are just the beginning.
Zohran is the director of a Hype House first and politician second.
From what I can tell, his team can shoot, produce, and edit a reel within an hour. That means there is about a ~60 minute lag time between when he appears in public, shaking hands in a given location somewhere in the city and the moment it goes live on his various channels.
Not every video of his gets uploaded to every one of his pages. They understood that their recent “Hot Girls For Zohran” video, in which esteemed political theorist Emily Ratajkowski declared that Zohran is like so totally cool, would preform better on Instagram than X, and so they pushed it primarily via Instagram reels and by adding @emrata as a collaborator to the post. T
hey are the kind of operation that would never be caught dead uploading a horizontal video to Instagram. This is a vertical-first shop. It’s the kind of team that makes Trump’s viral TikTok dance (the iconic shimmy) look cute. Zohran has introduced a new era that has instantly outdated that craze, making it look ‘so 2024’ in retrospect.
You’ll notice he cultivated virility without a signature dance, gesture, or gimmick. There was no TikTok dance that spread like wildfire. Merely supporting him became the meme.
All you need is a look at Cuomo’s feed to understand why the man got cooked.
(‘virility’ corrected to ‘vitality’ in comments)
I’m sure I’m not the only one who is reminded of a filmmaker named Leni Riefenstahl and her accomplishments in shifting the political winds in Germany. And no, I’m not asserting that Mamdani is equivalent to Riefenstahl’s client (although there are some points of similarity), but making the point that the aesthetics of the way that something is presented–in video or otherwise–can have a lot to do with how successful it is in the marketplace.
Your thoughts?
Re the 1st half of your excellent post. One description of phenomenon you describe is “elite overproduction.” I also note that intelligentsias tend to be alienated and bitter in the belief that their marginalized position (especially economically) is evidence of a deeply unjust society.
Schumpeter’s negative answer to the question “can capitalism survive?” is also relevant here. He argued that the real internal contradiction of capitalism is that only it could afford to produce an idle intellectual class that was predisposed to working for its overthrow.
I think the overproduction of worthless college degrees is and the resentment it generates among their holders is one problem. It provides a degree of anger for people who feel their ambitions, whether material or emotional are not being filled
I think there’s another problem which is, the what? The Zeitgeist? A problem with the higher education system and the hatred it preaches to students is that not only does it make students at best indifferent to their culture and past but makes them openly hostile to it. A rejection of the past means a rejection not only a rejection of its collective wisdom and prudence but the elevation of individual will as the highest virtue
If that sounds a little too high-minded think of it this way – we have a large, seething mass of resentful college-educated young people who think they are the smartest and most virtuous people the world has ever produced and that they are only being held back from immanentizing the eschaton by corrupt forces. They are on the cutting-edge of History and the past has nothing to teach them
More than Bernie Sanders who initially catalyzed that identity in 2015-2016, Mamdani is the more attractive and polished face that will take that to the next political step.
Looking ahead to the next year or two, if Mamdani is elected we can see how this will fare for NYC – it will make de Blasio look like a managerial genius in comparison. The danger is if it grows and jumps the fire lines of the Five Boroughs into the larger populace; if it doesn’t expand into the larger national population fast enough it will burn out when the disastrous nature of Mamdani becomes clear.
Btw… as Bruce Abbott commented in the previous thread if you want to look at the decline of the American higher ed system look no further than Bowdoin College which has gone from producing Joshua Chamberlain to Zohran Momdani. Somehow it seems totally appropriate to their respective given times.
Eric Hoffer:
“Nothing is so unsettling to a social order as the presence of a mass of scribes without suitable employment and an acknowledged status…The explosive component in the contemporary scene is not the clamor of the masses but the self-righteous claims of a multitude of graduates from schools and universities. This army of scribes is clamoring for a society in which planning, regulation, and supervision are paramount and the prerogative of the educated. They hanker for the scribe’s golden age, for a return to something like the scribe-dominated societies of ancient Egypt, China, and the Europe of the Middle Ages. There is little doubt that the present trend in the new and renovated countries toward social regimentation stems partly from the need to create adequate employment for a large number of scribes…Obviously, a high ratio between the supervisory and the productive force spells economic inefficiency. Yet where social stability is an overriding need the economic waste involved in providing suitable positions for the educated might be an element of social efficiency.
It has often been stated that a social order is likely to be stable so long as it gives scope to talent. Actually, it is the ability to give scope to the untalented that is most vital in maintaining social stability…For there is a tendency in the untalented to divert their energies from their own development into the management, manipulation, and probably frustration of others. They want to police, instruct, guide, and meddle. In an adequate society, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them. This requires, first, an abundance of opportunities for purposeful action and self-advancement. Secondly, a wide diffusion of technical and social skills so that people will be able to work and manage their affairs with a minimum of tutelage. The scribe mentality is best neutralized by canalizing energies into purposeful and useful pursuits, and by raising the cultural level of the whole population so as to blur the dividing line between the educated and the uneducated…We do not know enough to suit a social pattern to the realization of all the creative potentialities inherent in a population. But we do know that a scribe-dominated society is not optimal for the full unfolding of the creative mind.”
Responding to a Spectator article that refers to Cuomo as ‘another relic of the past’, @wretchardthecat asks:
“But who is the more prehistoric? Cuomo from the era of Boss Tweed, the Marxists of 1848 or the belated messenger from the 8th century? Which of these is “new”?”
My comment was “from the standpoint of elections, though, the modernity of the marketing approach may matter as much as…or more than..the substantive policy proposals.”
https://x.com/wretchardthecat/status/1939153009231163888
So the hyper-polished marketing was able to get 5% of NYC’s voters to vote for antisemitism, anti-white racism, and socialism. I can believe that there are that many short-sighted people with no understanding of current or historical performance of those ideologies in NYC.
I think Gov, Hochul’s last-minute proposal to build a new nuke plant was a deliberate attack on Cuomo. People started to ask “Why do we need to build a new nuke? Didn’t Cuomo just shut down the operating plant at Indian Point?” Sure made Cuomo look stupid although Hochul’s proposal is pure vaporware – who is stupid enough to invest in a nuke in New York State? And don’t you think Mamdani would fight it tooth-and-nail?
BTW, I sat through “Triumph of the Will” in its entirety. For its time, it slickly gave the German people what they wanted to hear – that a new, strong, modern leader could restore their pride in being German. That’s what Mamdani is selling too – a vote for him allows these NYC folks an opportunity to feel proud of being New Yorkers through virtue signaling.
I am reading this in one of those European countries that have a different financing structure for higher education than the US resulting in almost no student loan debt. I am not saying this system is superior or inferior. I am, however, noticing that the strong overrepresentation of socialist beliefs among college educated is just as much the case here (if not stronger). So I wonder if the debt is the primary cause or the curriculum (which is just as leftist here as in the US).
Considering David’s point in quoting Eric Hoffer about an overproduction of resentful intellectuals looking to “police, guide and meddle” – look at Karl Marx, the original useless, resentful pseudo-intellectual (and a rather nasty personality at that). He spent a lifetime of sponging, while cranking out an elaborate justifications for why he and his fellow resentful pseuds weren’t sufficiently honored, appreciated, and in charge.
AOC is the prototypical Mamdani voter, for that matter, so is Mamdani. The possessor of an expensive, shiny degree, useless beyond signalling that they were capable of sitting through 4-5 years of BS. Embittered when said degree didn’t immediately grant them keys to the kingdom, forcing AOC into a life as a servant to borderline alcoholics and Mamdani into living off his mother.
I would offer that the ‘college educated’ who have decided upon degrees which have no useful function in qualifying for employment made that choice because they were lazy. They figured a degree in basket weaving would make them employable at a great salary, they would not have to work hard, and they would be on the path to the fulfillment of the American Dream. Why take hard classes such as physics, chemistry and math? No one uses those things that I know. The parents of these lazy bones never did the talk about education and job seeking. My older sister wanted to get a degree in lit, parents noted there was not much market for that degree in the job market, and suggested she consider adding education as a minor, to have the fallback of becoming a teacher. She ended up with a degree in psychiatry. Worked for a while as a social worker, realized the futility of that job, and sought other employment. She always thought she know how to do the job better than those who had been there for years, and was unhappy in almost every job she had. She entered the workforce around 1967, and ended up rehabilitating row houses in Baltimore, in charge totally, and is/was successful.
One the tuition money has been spent, it is a little late to cry about how much of it was waste. That should have been done before filling out the application. Not only were the students lazy, they had lazy parents and guidance counselors that allowed them to do whatever they wished, perhaps ending up with a degree in something after 4 years, or not. Their expectations of making money hand over fist like the WS money managers did in the days prior to 2008, many buying BMWs right out of college for example, were not met, they are disappointed, and will likely take it out on someone instead of realizing their far reaching aspirations. I guess they have yet to grow up. Life is hard. Get over it.
I think there’s another reason for the academic rot. Higher education has fallen victim to Pournelle’s “iron law of bureaucracy.”
In Pournelle’s law, there are two types of people in an organization: those who are dedicated to the mission, and those who are involved in maintaining the organization. In all cases, the latter rise to prominence, and eventually write the rules for the former.
The latter — the administrative — group gained the upper hand over the teachers and changed the business model. Academia is no longer concerned with education, the passing on of knowledge. Our schools are now focused on harvesting student loans. All that sweet, easy money was too good, too easy to pass up.
In this new model, each student is viewed as an individual stream of revenue. To keep the revenue flowing in, the student must be coddled and endlessly catered to. Above all, avoid anything that might cause a student to drop out, cutting off that revenue. Thus the investment in really nice student housing and spiffy recreational facilities. Keep the students happy!
The administrative side then wrote the rules for the academic side: don’t do anything to interrupt the revenue. Give everyone A’s if necessary. Eliminate homework. Don’t challenge the students to the point of frustration. Create fluff course with fancy titles to keep them
engaged (hence, courses on comic books, for example). Convince the students they’re learning things of value — lie as much as necessary. But for heaven’s sake, keep the students on the college rolls for four years.
Our colleges won’t get better until the original business model is reimposed. Cut the bloated administration to the bone. Demand teachers get back to real teaching.
I think OC might be hitting very close to it – my daughter finally dropped out of taking community college courses towards an AA degree – because they kept changing the requirements. She got the distinct feeling that the local community college was all about harvesting those sweet, sweet GI Bill funds. Just keep the suckers signed up for another round of classes.
Probably even worse at four-year schools, especially the ones making bank on foreign students paying full freight.
I’d be willing to bet that many/most of the dumb degrees; English, Lit, Poly Sci. Psych, and Philosophy are undertaken with the conceit, either stated or unstated, that they are really pre-Law. That was the real path to unbounded riches. It’s all John Grisham’s fault.
I forgot to mention the foreign students. They pay the full amount, hence their attraction as revenue sources in large numbers.
Glenn Reynolds: What is College Good For?
https://instapundit.substack.com/p/what-is-college-good-for
Extending your thoughts: Gary Becker did a lot of the research that showed returns (financial) to a college degree were positively correlated. Didn’t matter the degree.
Why?
No one that I know of has further correlated the data on family formation. College grads have lower divorce rates than the rest of the population. The popular notion is 50% of all marriages end in divorce. College grads are about 10% if both went to college.
Becker’s data might be influenced more by having a formed family unit than the degree.
Before one gets all excited about current policy toward HE, like the student loan debacle, take a look at German universities during the Weimar years. They managed to be a stronghold for both Communists and Nazis.
Mamdani, grocery stores, and failure to understand the numbers he was reading:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/3458307/zohran-mamdani-government-grocery-stores-plan-accounting-error/
I think he doesnt care, he has shown no ethical concerns hes a monster and a terrorist enabler to be charitable
I very much enjoyed the post, the links, and the comments, as usual.
This is, as David said, one of the core problems that has driven some part of the disastrous situation we are currently experiencing:
“A lot of people believed the promises about the right educational credentials practically guaranteeing a future income which would make any educational debt incurred almost trivial by comparison. Now they’ve found out that it isn’t so,”
I was formulating a thought about this observation, but will quote a comment from Professor Reynolds’ post that says the same thing.
College degrees are now something of a Cargo Cult phenomenon: people, especially students, believe that ability stems from having a degree, rather than ability leading to the degree.
Regime capture the short form
https://x.com/MarinaMedvin/status/1940394418810568962
Trading Freedom for Control:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-167276880
AFAIK, Riefenstahl did not contribute to Hitler’s rise to power. The first film she made for the Nazis was in 1933, by which time Hitler was securely in power. Triumph of the Will came out in 1935. It’s arguable that it cemented his position, but I don’t see that it made a great difference.
It is not simply lazy/stupid on the part of college graduates, graduate students, and faculty.
About a dozen years ago, common core.
Now, Education is arguably a stupid field. But, in my view the greatest stupidity of it is something that they are maybe literally paid not to notice, that their design of experiments and their production control goals are maybe distinctly incompatible, and perhaps verifiably so.
Current university freshman have common core their entire primary and secondary training, plus the lockdown. If one is about six years into schooling, mid graudate school, if one started directly from highschool, then the last six years were common core, /and/ there was lockdown.
More nationally irregular, but potentially longer term, early elementary sex ed is sexual child abuse, and the abusers may have also been critical theory nutters. The experience of being placed by one’s parents in the custody of sexual abusers, and then having them push a theory of invincible power, might in addition to the direct harm and trauma, displace the development of the mind as a tool that can mitigate or alter the most ‘disparate’ situations of power that an adult may experience. IE, some of the incoming freshmen have been for years cripples where the understanding of human behavior is concerned.
Anyway also, federal department of Education was 45 ish years ago. A man of forty might easily see that ten years into that, his schooling started out still with some residual quality, but the signs of decline were also visible.
This problem has been developing for the last twentyish years of college entrants, or probably more.
It may in fact be difficult to find sane graduate students in engineering that also have a good background knowledge in enough other fields to understand what broader implications of engineering research might be.