The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Assholes: A Theory – Book & Feature Documentary Film by Aaron James

Episode Date: November 28, 2020

Assholes: A Theory - Book & Feature Documentary Film by Aaron James Assholesatheory.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, come in here with another great podcast.

We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. To see the video version of this, go to youtube.com forward slash chrisvoss. Hit the bell notification button so you get all the notifications of everything we do. Also, go to goodreads.com forward slash chrisvoss. the bell notification button so you get all the notifications of everything we do. Also go to Goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. See all the books we're reading or reviewing over there. You can go to Facebook.com forward slash The Chris Voss Show to see all the wonderful things we're doing there as well. And, of course, subscribe to all nine podcasts at thecvpn.com. And this episode is brought to you by IFi audio and their new neo id s d the neo is the new

wave of digital sound listening for your desktop music gaming and bleeding edge bluetooth even mqa audio file decoding uh we're using in the studio right now i've loved my experience with so far just makes everything sound so much more richer and better and takes things to the next level. IFI Audio is an award-winning audio tech company with one aim in mind, to improve your music enjoyment of quality sound, eradicate noise, distortion, and hiss from your listening experience. Check out their new incredible lineup of DACs and audio enhancement devices at ifi-audio.com. Today, I've got a most interesting guest. He's got multiple books that he's taken and done, and he's got a movie that's out too

as well, which is pretty interesting because it seems very topical for what's going on in our world today. The gentleman's name is Aaron James. Aaron, welcome to the show. How are you? Hi, Chris. I'm fine. Thanks for having me on the show. Appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. We certainly appreciate you being here. So Aaron, give us a little bio on who you are and what you're about.

Right. So I'm a professor of philosophy at UC Irvine, and I do research in ethics and political philosophy and lately sort of money and finance issues. And I've sort of, I started out dabbling a while back in writing popular writing. I wrote a book called Assholes of Theory. And then that book was turned into a documentary by a filmmaker named, a Canadian filmmaker named John Walker. He discovered it in a bookstore and decided that it would make a great documentary. And he wanted his daughter

to see it, for example, to know how to deal with assholes, be able to pick them out and, you know, and then and, you know, understanding at the time when the project got started, you know, there was this sort of growing asshole problem in society and it looked like assholes were sort of taking over. And, and so it seemed like a pressing thing. So the documentary was, was made and, and it's now finally being aired across a lot of platforms and stuff. And then I also have another book just recently out last month called Money From Nothing. And that's coauthored with Bob Hockett, who's a finance ace and law professor at Cornell University. He used to work

for the New York Federal Reserve and also the IMF. And so we put our heads together sort of doing both philosophy and law and finance to figure out, to explain the nature of money and the nature of the central bank and what it allows us to do to help repair the social contract and, you know, maybe address our assholes problem. So the book is, as it were, sort of the solution to the assholes problem, at least in the big scheme of things. Yes, you've been quite prolific. Wow, man, I think my whole brain is just left over Thanksgiving. Prolific.ific i mean you've got you've got your book assholes a theory uh assholes a theory of donald trump i'm not sure why you pick him as a movement but uh actually no i think we all i think we all have seen that movie um sadly uh but uh but i think that his

supporters many of his supporters agree that he's an asshole, but think that that's a good thing because he's a force for good because he's going to get things done and only way an asshole can and things like that. So I don't know if it's that controversial to say that he's an asshole. Maybe to some, everything's controversial, but yeah. 70, 80 million people agree with you. According to the recent election. So your book entitled assholes of theory was there a reason you didn't go with assholes of fact um yeah i guess um one thought was an asshole what an inquiry like you're looking into something

but that might have sounded too you know pro, proctological. So yeah, I went with a theory. Well, actually assholes, a fact is, is, is already controversial because, because when you think of, before I wrote the book, you know, when I first started thinking about the topic, you know, one possibility was that the term asshole is just like a way of venting and blowing off steam. You're not, when you say call someone an asshole, you're not stating a fact, right? You're not, you're not stating a truth that like, say from a moral point of view, you're not stating a fact, right? You're not stating a truth, like, say, from a moral point of view. You're just venting and yelling or whatever. Or, you know, it's merely expressive, as philosophers would say. It doesn't have cognitive or descriptive content.

But I thought that that wasn't right because I thought I could define the term in a way so that when you thought about the definition, you think, hey, I've met that guy. That's a guy. Some people are assholes. Other people aren't assholes. So, yeah, it can be a fact if someone's an asshole versus not. I guess I never really thought about it. But from a factual sense, I mean, unless you're yelling at a donkey's butthole, you're probably not addressing what a true asshole is, I suppose.

Yeah, right. So originally, it's a sort of metaphor i think it originated in the world war among world war ii soldiers as we now use it and so the the the off the um soldiers would use it toward the superior officer who was abusive and at first they're using it as a metaphor they're likening him to an asshole like a part of the human body and he smells and he's foul and he something to be ashamed of and he's air, he's airing out in public, what should be kept concealed. That was sort of what they were saying. It was a way of insulting, but it gradually became acquired, you know, its own sort of meaning. So you can

use the term asshole calling this or that person an asshole, man, we're an asshole. Hey, asshole cuts me off in traffic. You know this asshole cut caught in line at the supermarket and not ever think about body parts right um so it shows that that uh what started as a term for body parts you know as in a metaphor as an insult likening someone to mark for became a became came to have its own uh meeting as a kind of moral classification so in your definitions what qualifies as an asshole then? Yeah. So I offer a definition and that's the asshole is the guy it's, it's usually men, but not only men who allows himself special advantages in cooperative life out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people.

So it's, it's like, this is the guy who's, who cuts in line at the post office. Normally people are expected to wait. He takes a special advantage is cutting to the front. Now someone could do that if it was an emergency and it would be all right. Right. But this guy thinks that he's entitled to take such advantages. And he's got sort of like standing rationalizations for it. Well, like I'm rich or I'm beautiful. My time is more important than other people. I'm famous, you know, whatever that's his, that's his sense of entitlement just produces those rationalizations. And then he's immunized against the complaints of other people. Like, so somebody at the, in the line says, Hey, buddy, you know, there's a net, there's a line here, get to the back of it. Asshole. He's like, ah, piss off.

So, you know, kind of a cooperative person might go, oh, wait, oh, is there a line or, or is there a problem? No, no, actually I have an emergency. I have an excuse, you know, but the asshole is just like walls out that complaint. Doesn't feel a need to really listen, take it seriously, address it. And that was, so they're sort of dug in in entitlement in that way. Note to self, according to Aaron James, I need to stop cutting in lines. So is there another aspect to assholedom? I mean, like there seems like to be a real asshole, you kind of have to be tuning out like everyone else,

almost in a narcissistic sort of sense. Yeah, I think that's really related to it. I mean, you can be a narcissist in the sense that you're really self-absorbed, but not necessarily be an asshole. I mean, some people can be just deeply depressed and sort of, you know, withdrawn and they don't associate with others because they're just so absorbed with their self and their anxieties. There's that kind of person. Other times, like some often great political figures have a narcissistic streak because they're sort of, you know, preoccupied with their own greatness or their place in history and stuff like that.

And they won't necessarily be an asshole. They, they, they might sort of take, be able to tolerate more abuse than a normal person would because they're a bit narcissistic. So they wouldn't be an, be an asshole, but a lot of, a lot of proper assholes, as I put it, they're not borderline assholes or half-assed assholes. They're not just going through an asshole phase they're not just a teenager you know where you know most especially male teenagers have an asshole phase you know and then uh they're proper proper real assholes they tend to be very they tend to be narcissistic in the sense that they're very self-absorbed they're self-absabsorbed, dug in. It's difficult to get through to them. They'll very easily disregard the complaints of other people. Sometimes toxic.

Well, let's see, what do they call it? Narcissist is a personality that's often associated with assholery, as I put it. But I think of that as a broader category. And so you have to sort of define the asshole um specifically now what's the difference between an asshole and a fucker let me write this down yeah i mean have you thought about doing books on the other four oh yeah yeah i am tempted to do it i mean i kind of decided not to but i'm totally tempted i mean um fuck is a fascinating word just because it has like this incredible variety of meanings. And so one way to insult like you, you fucker.

I mean, sometimes you can be saying that the person has betrayed you. Sometimes you're just saying if you say just fuck off, then you're meaning like it's a way of creating alienation. Like, so get away from me, you know, saying like, I don't want to have anything to do with you or go to hell would have a similar meaning hell is like going away from you for eternity you know you're like so i think of like um um um fuck has these other sort of uh sort of these other meanings and has a lot of different meanings depending on which like version of it you mean and but that's different from the asshole or the jerk or the douchebag or the dumb fuck or um you know dick face so do you have any ted talks on this asshole stuff because i know i've never done one actually i would just love to have a ted talk where you're just probably too much swearing for them we're going to define what an asshole is this who in

the audience knows what an asshole uh but so this evolved this is really funny how when did you write the original book on assholes a theory and then how did it evolve into a film yeah so that came out in 2012 it was in like 2010 that i started getting ideas for the theory that i gave you like putting together a definition just like on summer break and i was surfing and then i'm a surfer and then you know like surfers seem to like, I was finding themselves calling myself them assholes. And I thought, wait a minute, like, you know, that has content. And like, what is it? Well, what is it to be an asshole? You know? So that got me going.

And then I had, I had the definition. I started working up the definition, you know, just, and I would, you share it over beers, you know, for fun with friends and stuff. And then I was on a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in the behavioral sciences at Stanford. And they had these lunch meetings with all the other sort of scholars. And I would sort of share the definition for fun. And then they, from their different disciplines would say, oh, that reminds me of this, you know, from psychology or this from history or this from economics or something like that. And so I, I sort of accidentally became like a repository for the world's asshole knowledge. And, and so I just, you know, gradually just from all these fun

conversations with everybody, you know, like, cause it was like, people like really love talking about it, you know, like, you know, just kind of without really studying too hard for it, you know, like gradually just acquired a lot of ideas and kind of worked out a system kind of about. And then and then I wrote the book because the person who was visiting the center there, who is now a literary agent, not Don Lamb, but he used to be the head of Norton Press. And he offered to represent it as a book. So we did that. And then it did well as a book. And then, you know, later in the publicity, that was when John Walker encountered in a bookstore. And then, you know, he proposed, you know, I want to make a documentary around the book. And, you know, he's like, you know, he does, he's a good documentary filmmaker. So it seemed like a fun idea. I, that was totally new to me and I didn't have no, I have no experience with it. And so it was kind of curious which direction he would go. And he said, Oh, I want to really focus closely, follow the argument of the book, you know,

starting with the theory and working out the different ideas and the different social dimensions and the areas of social life you discuss. And, and I, that seemed like not something that would be easy to do. But it turned out that really, really, he did it just like that. And it, and it worked out really well. And it was really fun to see, you know, bringing in, you know, how do you use video, the video or in the filming scenes to really develop it or what kinds of clips or editing or what kind of tone do you set? So I got to be involved at every, you know, along the way, you know, contributing and being in it both. And then also, you know, contributing, making decisions about it. And so,

and it came together really nicely. It's sort of like the, the thing that he described to me that I sort of was imagined and hoped it would be it did did it became that and it was even better than than that so um that was that was i was happy with that we should probably mention uh it was released the movie uh or the u.s theatrical release was uh october 30th 2020 so people can rent or buy it from amazon is that correct correct? Yes. Amazon and a bunch of, it's actually really widely available. Google play YouTube, um, and Dango, uh, Apple TV, direct TV, um, a bunch of VUDU, a lot of outlets actually. Now it's, it should be.

Yep. And, and I'm reading off the website. You guys got a lot of, uh, great press off of it. Uh, a lot of official selections and film festival stuff and all that good stuff. So evidently people really like assholes. Yeah, or they like understanding their frustrations with them. I think that was really what got me interested in having a theory about it was understanding my own frustrations with people I wanted to call assholes. And then when I wrote the book, I really sort of stayed true to that. I like this book is, this book is for people who are

frustrated about the asshole in their life. And this, the point of the philosophy is to help you understand it and then maybe have some insight in how to manage them. And you guys have some great characters that appear in the film. If you want to drop some names. Oh yeah. So yeah, John Cleese, um, that came about cause John Cleese had been, um, he'd, uh, I retweeted the book when it came out, he liked the book and he, like, I think he mentioned, he tweeted it a couple of times. And then when, when John Walker was making the film, you know, he approached them and asked, you know, would you like to be in the film? And then he agreed. So they went and, you know, did nice interviews and stuff. And then it turned out actually that John came to the North American opening, the film opening at Hot Docs Conference in Toronto.

And then so that was fun. I got to meet him there. And, you know, we did like I got to have dinner you know, have dinner with him and stuff. And we did some interviews and things like that. So he's been really great in supporting the project since then. He's actually really a pretty philosophical guy himself. He's, you know, he's just really smart. He's one of these sort of people from England who could have gone the academic route going to Oxford or Cambridge, but, you know, became a comedian instead of, you know, obviously

like, you know, obviously if you know Monty python's stuff it's it's pretty philosophically sophisticated or just really smart and or trenchant in its social you know critics commentary and criticism and um so yeah it was a nice um a nice uh confluence i love watching him on twitter he he's good at taking apart trolls he's trolling trolls yeah trolls yeah yeah so uh you got some cool people in the film so people should check it out you're you did you did you uh one of my favorite songs in the world is dennis leary's song asshole if you've ever oh yeah yeah maybe that should have been the theme song or something i don't know yeah that's in the mood that's in the film actually is it really okay yeah? Okay. Yeah. I think it is. There you go. Yeah. That's awesome,

man. Yeah. I always love this like song. So do you ever, do you ever do any family divorce court work where you come in as an expert witness to, I could have used you in my previous six divorces. That's right.

Yeah. That's clarification. Yeah. For us, it's a testimony on whether this person is or is not an asshole. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure. It might help with the settlement.

But I know judges resonate with the theory because they're used to dealing with assholes in court and similar with, well, like anyone else. But yeah, no, I haven't ever helped with it. Well, I have, I've had a lot of people write me and talk about their exes, you know, like I was married to an asshole or like, so that's, that's surprising. I mean, some, some people also have said to me, like, I used to be an asshole. I was a CEO and I was an asshole and someone gently gave me your book. And, and I, I think I saw myself, you know um which was sort of impressive for them to be willing to sort of own up to it and and maybe take stock maybe that's the sign of like coming out of it if they're if they're you know in their older age or whatever

you know easing up or something i probably could have used the book when i was younger uh to just just give me a tip off that, you know, it could be you. When everybody is an asshole. I think, wasn't George Carlin did a bit on that? When everyone else is an asshole, it's you. And I don't know. I don't remember. Yeah, no, I think it's sort of the plight of being male to some degree.

I mean, I could identify with the asshole as I defined it just by understanding ways that I was sort of raised as a male to not have to listen to other people, to just move in and take up space when you want it, sit on a bus bench and just spread your legs because, hey, this is mine. The world is mine unless someone else fights me for the spot or whatever, you know, like, so even men who aren't really proper assholes, not full fledged assholes might still have a, you know, sort of find it easier, you know, easy to pull an asshole move, you know, not listen to people, shut them down, you know. So, I mean, in some sense, proper asshole is is sort of out there and really a problem but um the way i think about it you know we are we all have an inner asshole and um and understanding the proper assholes what partly a way of understanding ourselves

because we could all we can all sort of understand or resonate in some sense you know where that where the asshole's coming from and And, and then, you know, what, what keeps us from going there is sort of an interesting question. It's a lot of, it's a lot of factors. But that's different from somebody like the psychopath who I think of as, as we think of as beyond the pale, like, as I think about it, they don't have moral concepts or they just aren't motivated them for them. So it's actually difficult for us to even understand, find them intelligible, like how they would just kill somebody, say, their sandwich and they wouldn't see that any reason not to kill someone why why would you kill someone for their well i wanted i was hungry i wanted the sandwich or something like that's what a proper psychopath

and like i don't think that's really hard for understand but an asshole won't won't say that they'll often employ moral concepts, at least to rationalize what they did, what they've done. Right. And then we can understand that. I mean, if just a breakup or a divorce, you can find yourself in this like vigorously argumentative mode, you know, no matter what somebody says, you don't listen, you just shoot it down, you know, kind of you're kind of dug in and entrenched. And that kind of rationalizing is something we're all really good at, especially when trust is in decline in, you know, either close relationships or even among friends or especially in society now. I think a big part of why you see just sort of people seeming to

believe or rationalize all kinds of stuff that would have seemed crazy, just totally crazy not too long ago is it's partly just a lack of trust in society. And so people are kind of defensive and dug in and just then sort of turning reason and moral arguments sort of into just rationalization and self-defense and self-assertion. And even people like that who aren't normally assholes or not proper assholes in their lives can get themselves into this kind of asshole funk.

One of my biggest challenges that I re I had to realize, and I had never heard of gaslighting up until Donald Trump. And I couldn't figure out why I was getting triggered so bad. And then one day somebody said to me, you have an issue with being gaslit probably from your childhood or something. And, and, and so that got me to be able to address you know assholes in my world

better and understand them better because i would you know just when people lie to me and i find out or if it's so blatant you know like if i go i'm the king of spain right now and you're like no you're not and i'm like no i really am like you're stupid if you don't think i'm the king of spain right now i mean you never know i could be the king of Spain right now. I mean, you never know. I could be the king of Spain. I'm just, I'm just moonlighting as a podcaster. Pretty sure you're not the king of Spain. How dare you, sir?

No, I'm just kidding. So, so yeah, I mean, but, but yeah, I imagine there's a lot of people going on this journey. Are you ever worried that people read the book as an instruction manual? Like maybe they're trying to, they're a little bit intro introverted they want to amp up their ass hold them i mean there could it could be i don't know if the book's that useful in that way because i mean it might inspire some people you know who you could reverse engineer it yeah right i mean i mean in some sense i i think the book is i'm like i'm not good enough at being an ass like it takes a lot of skill to really be a successful assholes.

I think, I mean, a lot of people are like prone to try to be an asshole. They kind of can't get away with it because people, they don't offer enough to like other people or they're not skilled at evading accountability or they're just not shameless enough. And they kind of, so they gradually become more cooperative. They want to have a, you know, a wife or a girlfriend or whatever, a partner. And so they got to rein it in and eventually become a nice, you know, kind of a

more restrained person. But the people who aren't like that, who managed to just go all the way with it, it takes a tremendous amount of social skill of a certain kind. You know, just evading accountability, being shameless to a degree that other people aren't, being able to deflect and wall out, being able to get people to doubt themselves, like you mentioned, gaslighting, knowing when you can lie or twist the truth and get away with it or just bullshit. All these sort of tricks or tactics that the successful proper assholes know how to use. And they're often not just terrible. They often have to have redeeming features. Like they're really charismatic or they're, or they're rich or they're famous or they're cause other people won't sort of tolerate them if they don't offer some like interesting redeeming quality. So it actually takes a lot to really succeed. And yeah, I mean, I guess hopefully

the book will say, well, making that point, you know, make it seem like you shouldn't try, but, but certainly there's plenty of inspiration in the culture for people think, oh, that's the way to get ahead. Note to self, Aaron says I should get another redeeming quality to offset my ass. If you want to get ahead, you gotta be, you gotta offer people something good. Otherwise they just won't give you the time of day. Yeah. It's interesting how well people get away with that trade off, isn't it? Yeah, no, it's, it's really, it's pretty amazing. I mean, it's an old,

it's an old fact about human beings. I think that when there's somebody who sort of giving a lot, us a lot and doing a lot for us, then we're willing to sort of forgive a lot of transgressions. We're willing to set aside normal rules. And according to anthropologists, in fact, that goes back to early like human beings, hunter gatherers, societies, you know, like the skilled hunter who could bring back the big piece of meat or whatever. They give that person a bit more slack, you know, like they wouldn't, they sort of knock them down if they got too selfish or whatever.

But, you know, they're sort of, if they're making a bigger contribution to the group, then it was sort of more, it's fair for them to take more for themselves or something. So it's sort of like, we have this idea that is okay, that you do have special entitlements. If you're making special contributions, that's sort of like, and then the asshole was really playing into that and exploiting people's sense of sort of fairness or willingness to, you know, suspend the normal rules. And that's, you know, we do let celebrities and people in power get away with all kinds of stuff, give them a pass, forgive them. You know, there were great movies that that asshole did, you know, so

love those movies. So it's okay that they're an asshole, you know, to their, to the people they work with or whatever. We don't think about it. Mel Gibson. Yeah, no, there's lots of lots of examples like once i started working on this i started hearing from people within hollywood and they'd list through the celebrities and people that don't have an asshole persona um um from behind the scenes stuff they just seem like complete assholes you know like uh just how they treat people on set and stuff like that you know but it's exactly that i'm the star and so you know they're just so they just treat people terribly i think we just saw that on tv yesterday with diaper don which is trending on twitter yesterday but he's sitting at the little table and he screams out at some press agent don't you don't

talk to me that way you're not the president of the united states uh yeah that was a weird like a child childish uh petulant um i mean do you ever yell at your students and go i'm the professor at the uc you know i mean it really is kind of far he took that i'm i'm i've had the feeling he's always wanted to say it he just finally got around to it well yeah it's it's kind of remarkable like normally he felt he's felt more confident to just blow people off walk it's kind of remarkable like normally he felt he's felt more confident to just blow people off walk away but the fact that he now feels like he needs to say i'm the you know shows his insecurity and he knows he knows he's lost the loss of the election he's i mean if you're having to tell us you're the president of the united states yeah i mean

it's a little bit like the quintessential asshole line is like the guy in a restaurant you know it was like you know do you know who i am you know yeah i mean i would never have thought that that person would feel the most aggrieved of anyone on the planet earth yeah right no that's that's what's that's what's amazing and um is that a person with extraordinary power and privilege and wealth and uh well alleged wealth i mean um you know but like you know fame and you know it feels like that like they're aggrieved so how is so so deeply aggrieved and like obviously really feels it um and how how is that possible and i think that's where you kind of have to if you think about asshole psychology which we ourselves have you think like about your own ability to sort of sustain your own feelings of rage, you know, like block out your, say it's like a, you're getting divorced or you're breaking up with a partner or whatever, like the things that they're saying

about you, no, you just block that out and you make a really big deal about their faults and, you know, kind of like, and get really focused on the things that they did wrong and totally ignore the things that they might have a point about, and then, you know, just totally dwell on it and then, and then yell a lot and like get, get really hurt. And so like, we can all sort of get into that dark bad place. All of us can and it's but some people, real assholes are just, just there all the time,

just live in that grievance. And unfortunately, in our political moment now, that's really resonated. And now it's like triggered a lot of people and drawn them into sort of a massive mass grievance culture and mass yelling. And, you know, anyway, yeah. You brought up a really good word there, shame or shameless uh ness and a lot of people that are assholes or seem to be professional in it uh they they seem to lack the ability to be shame shame or they have a shamelessness about them yeah well i think i i think what what that shows for one thing is that uh shame um shame and and and guilt is a hugely important part of why we cooperate with other people. I mean, we don't just do things because when somebody's sort of shaming us, we sort of anticipate, well, if I did that, you know, what would people say?

What would they be thinking? Even just a look, if they give a sideways glance at me, you know, kind of like, OK, I don't want to be that guy. You know, that's a really, really big part. It's not just like the threat of punishment, you know, or going to jail or something like that. That's like what, that sort of coordinates us to some degree, but a big part of why we cooperate with others is just our own sense of shame, which is partly about how we'll appear in the eyes of other people. And we just don't like that image of ourselves. Can't live with ourselves. Like could, would think of ourselves as,

you know, a terrible person would, you know, could we have trouble loving ourselves? And so that's a really big part of human motivation. That's basically Rousseau's story, by the way, of human motivation.

But then there's these exceptional cases where they just, that sort of ordinary kind of regard is just, it's just all dysfunctional or mixed around or something. And they're just not deterred by the idea that other people are going to be really upset and feel like what they're doing is shameful or there's criticizing. They'll just be very comfortable in just ignoring them or blocking them or acting like they don't, they're not real or they don't exist. And then they might sort of find themselves with a perverse kind of pride in pissing off people, you know. And that's where kind of it's all then sort of being, if not immoral, but being upsetting to people. If that becomes a source of pride for you then you're

like you're like so then your sense of worth is sort of based on you know owning other people or dominating other people or or pissing them off or whatever like that's a that's a bad place to get and we're getting i mean everybody can get in some version of that you know in like a dysfunctional relationship but for the asshole that's where they live yeah it's it's interesting to me i mean just the zero shame i mean they're just you see some of the stuff that donald trump does um i mean it doesn't doesn't matter how shameful it is i mean he just he just doesn't care it's almost like they do it for support like i don't know they get something off of it or something yeah it's interesting that for him he's really sensitive to how he thinks he appears, but it's, it's different.

It's like humiliation and it's not, it doesn't feel ashamed of himself, but it's the idea that if he feels like he's being lowered in his, his idea of how other people think of it's lowered. If he's seen as a loser, he's not seen as dominant. He said, then he gets really, really upset by that. Right. And that's what you saw in that, the meeting just yesterday, you know, and then he lashes out and he'll, you see him construct reasons and, you know, like just make stuff up or yell at people, you know,

and stuff like that. Cause that, that's sort of, that's the sort of perverse version of the thing that ordinarily helps reign us in like, ah, okay. You know, you know we don't know how I like, like how we look in the eyes of others. So we're more cooperative or more pleasing or accommodating or, you know, like, or just nice, you know, nicer, a little bit, you know, a little bit respectful, polite, a lot of politeness and just manners is about just showing, showing regard for other people, you know, politeness. So they don't get upset at you so that we don't have a fight so we can just get along yeah like like that um that's something we all do and and um and you can kind of see how much our lives run on that and relationships run on that by seeing the

people who are just work in a completely different way yeah the i remember i think it was in the 50s or 60s there was a movie called the American, and it kind of coined that term of what idiots we are when we run around the world and we think we're the exceptional country full of assholes. And you've been mapping this, at least from your books, launched 2012. Are we getting worse as a country of assholes? Yeah, well, I mean, my guess is probably I don't have a study for it. You know, scientists could work on some measures for it. But if you just work in sort of, well, for one thing, there does seem to be an American asshole. Americans compared to Canadians, for example, or even compared to Mexico.

I mean, it just seems like per capita, there's just like a higher proportion of assholes in the country, for sure. There's other countries that have a serious problem, too, like Brazil or Israel, for example, have a high asshole population. In America, you can kind of see why, because in some sense, some of the things that are great about America are optimism and stuff like that. That's a good thing, but it's historically founded on denial of a certain kind, like the westward migration, regardless of who we're going to mow over you know when you know when when the country's being manifest destiny was kind of a essentially asshole doctrine you know because it's like you know we will we're going to rule over you well why do you think that's a good idea they you know like the people who are already there

say you know like uh well it's manifest us that we will rule over you you know like and that's that so it's just basically a way of shutting them down, you know, you know, saying la la la. So, and, and in the culture, that's not, you know, just the dream of like expansion is, is great and big and infinite and so wonderful. And we all like the idea of, of, of ourselves in that way and prosperous. And we're the top and we're the best. And like, we've, we've, our country for a long time is really,

and a lot of what's good about a lot of our successes has partly been tied with those. It's a kind of a delusion. It's, and partly it's been made good because sometimes delusions translate into real success, sort of like with athletes, you know, who, who always believe they're going to make, you know, say the basketball shot like Michael Jordan or whatever. And then he makes it half the time, which is all really high average. You know, he, he misses half the time, you know, but he,

so he's, he's wrong half the time. But the delusion still helps them be a better athlete so that America's had that. But then there's this denial component that is really baked into American culture. And then you see that play out in politics, you know, and a lots of like, you know, play out in politics you know and lots of like you know subcultural movements you know like religious sex and stuff or conspiracy theory um and now the politics you know based on denial and just on propaganda and bullshit and constructing an

alternative reality you know the right has recently gone gone to that so i mean i think it has gotten a lot worse um i mean when I wrote the book in 2012, in the first place, I, I, I added a, the last part of the book is a, is a model of how a capitalist society could degrade and decline by its own standards of value because the asshole population got out of control and drove cooperation out of the system. And the idea of that was that there was a cautionary tale for us, right? That like, look, we're headed this direction and there's a real, real risk that we're going to go off the cliff, you know, into full-fledged asshole capitalist sort of society.

And it seems like in the meanwhile, you know, well, partly with the rise of Trump and Trumpism and also just lots of other dimensions of it, it just seems like we just decided, OK, let's do it. You know, let's go over the edge, you know. So I think we've I think we've gone way, way, way into like the asshole problem has gotten really, really serious. And it's we'll see now if we can rein it in. I don't but I don't think that I mean, I think the election of Joe Biden is a good thing for sort of preserving a lot of what America has been in the past in terms of its basic Republican institutions. But I don't think that we get to keep it necessarily unless we do something serious to address the underlying causes of the rise of the asshole problem, including Trumpism, but it predates Trumpism for sure. So that's as much a symptom as it is a cause of the current problems. If we ascribe it to politics, I remember one of the big changes, um, with politics and, and kind of brought us to Trump in my mind was when Newt Gingrich back in the nineties, uh, took office and he really, he really put it down in the gutter where you're calling people names and, and, uh, it was getting really ugly on, on, uh, on, you know, just, just,

just, just really in the gutter sort of thing. A lot of people ascribe him as launching us into this whole area where we, we get really nasty about in politics and stuff. And, you know, now we just see the worst of it with Trump. Yeah. I tend to, I tend to think, I mean, there's not one cause, but if you're looking at sort of one of the salient figures, it was Newt Gingrich who really deliberately tried to destroy the comedy that previously existed between the parties, including the friendships. I'm like deliberately discouraged, you know, within the Congress, people associating within the House, people associating with one another, encourage, you know, the GOP members to go home to their districts and not have friendships with the Democrats. And that coincided with the rise of sort of talk, talk, right radio, and then which and Fox News picked up on that, which was a different

kind of politics. It wasn't allowed before under the fairness doctrine, you know, which required sort of like an attempt at equal fair treatment of different points of view. But when that was repealed, then Rush Limbaugh was one of the first pioneers on this. He shows that you could, you could sort of just have a red meat, take no prisoners type of politics, and it would be really lucrative and he would be really famous. And so, you know, so, and he's super good at, at, at what he does. And then Roger Ailes from Fox News started Fox News, doing the TV version of it. So I think those are sort of similar kind of trends. But Newt Gingrich, I think, is a really central figure.

And in fact, and I quote this in the book, in the 2012 book, is that when you look at Newt Gingrich, he's got these lines where he basically describes himself as an asshole. It almost perfectly fits the theory that I described. So he says, I don't remember the line exactly well enough, but it's something like this. I've always been able to justify whatever I wanted to when I needed to for my purposes. Wow. Yeah.

I mean, he says that. That's I needed to, for my purposes, you know? Wow. Yeah. I mean, he just, he says that and, uh, um, That's a hell of a thing to be proud of. Yeah, yeah, no, he's just totally forthright about it. Um, so I, I think, you know, at the time it was a really different era and, um, and it, it wasn't so obvious that he was going to sort of, sort of set off this train of events that would culminate in a in a radically different uh type of politics but i when looking back i think i i agree with you and sort of looking to him um i mean even someone like richard nixon you know who's probably an asshole in some ways but i mean he he still fits within a much older model of of of politics you know i mean for by today's standards he was like a president by

today's day yeah i mean you know oh my god wow we will i mean he's just he's just been laying in the grave for the last four years going seriously like what the fuck yeah i at least respected the constitution have to. Right. Right. Right. So even that is an, even the fact that he was the most powerful man in the world and voluntarily left office, just knowing that because his political, you know,

credibility had, had dropped like that, that actually speaks well in favor of him. You see that now. I mean, you know, that shows that he had respect for the Republic, you know,

respect for our basic Republican, smaller institutions. And the, you know he's back for our basic republican smaller institutions um and the you know even though he'd said some things about well if the president does it that's the law you know suggesting he was above the law but in the end you know um he i think you see the tone of it is that he did you know have a sort of basic respect for the rule of law um and now you see now it's just assume that trump's going to do everything he can to stay in power and pursue every last avenue uh to subvert you know whatever rules or get you know whatever electors or whatever you know legislative officials they can to work the system right until

all those options are exhausted um he's not going to stop so that's shows just contempt for the rule of law as i understand it yeah so do we just need to make your book an educational thing? We put in all the elementary schools and junior highs and say, I don't know. Unfortunately, it's like being clear about the problem doesn't necessarily tell you the solution, you know, it's not a solution here. Yeah. Well, I do have the solution. I have what I think is a solution, but that's the other book I mentioned, the newer book, Money from Nothing. And that's about renewing the social contract to address the long term causes. And so that's not just about us understanding what it is to be an asshole and how our political system has become ch that they can have a certain amount of status in life, you know, because they feel respected. They can feel like they're an equal, but they've got a prosperous life ahead of them. So if they sort of are cooperative, work hard and play by the rules and contract that seemed to work during its more prosperous era during the sort of, you know, post-war decades in which, I mean, there was a lot really good

about, there was a lot of problems then, you know, but there was a lot of, a lot that was really new and unprecedented in that era. And, and even that, even that era, like you might think that that era was much more racist and sexist compared to our own day but even then there was like a lot of racial progress in the 50s compared to before that um like eisenhower for example you know like there was a lot of things that were temporarily temporary you know benefits like new deal extended benefits for for afro-americans and he extended them permanent like that and certain people were really upset at him about that but that was an era of sort of even racial and gender progress. I mean, there was a lot, there's a lot that was good about it. That doesn't mean it's a model, perfect model for today,

but if you could have sort of low inequality, high rising standards of living, you know, people with an expectation that they really are going to have, you know, rising wages and their children are going to do better. That's, that engenders a sense of cooperation also a shorter work week like because it was only in 1940 that we got the 40 hour work week you know the late 30s so the after the war the the the 1950s and 60s were sort of the first time that you were really enjoying the shorter work week with more money a very low poverty um high degree of political cooperation. I mean, it was an unusual time in good in many respects. Was it just an exception?

I mean, you might say, well, that was sort of just this golden period. And like, it's not really a model of what America can really be. That's a sort of cynical view about it. But I think we have to get back to something like that in order to give people a sense of confidence and trust in institutions so that they feel like, well, yeah, if I go along and I'm part of the system, then it's going to work well enough for me so I can be excited to have it work well for other people. So, you know, part of like getting support for fairness in the system and support for cooperation is feeling like each of us is getting a fair shake. And I think that's what's fallen apart since like basically in the 1970 years, at least 40 years where working people have not seen an increase,

a pay increase adjusted for inflation. So massive wage stagnation and hard times for the white working class. Also industrial, de-industrialization, you know, like, you know, the client of industry and the Rust Belt, you know, the client of, of industry and the rust belts, you know, and lots, lots of other places, this, those as a result of both technological trade and international technological change in international trade, those were foreseeable economists knew about that, but they basically decided, nah, don't worry about it. Like, let's not, let's not what there's a lot you could have done. You can compensate those people. You can use government to invest in new industries in those places to replace those jobs so that people can sustain a livelihood.

But they thought, well, you know, people will move and we'll just adapt. And in the long run, the adaptation will be efficient or whatever. And so I think there were just decades of just ideology and groupthink and conventional wisdom that was really terrible for working people for decades on end, right? So like people's trust and faith and confidence in the American social compact, eventually they're like, you know, fuck it. No, like, no, I'm like, fuck, this system doesn't work. I don't trust these people. And I think that's part of why Trumpism, he comes along, he's, you know, he's obviously has contempt for the system where they're like well okay maybe he'll break the system and maybe that's a good thing you know like that was the the the promise of trumpism in the first place and it comes from that backdrop of

feeling like this isn't working and we need to we need something better um yeah because that's what i do when my when the power goes out of my house i throw in a molotov cocktail because i'm like well that'll probably fix everything well yeah yeah yeah don't set your house on fire if you're yeah like just fuck government is maybe read a book or the constitution might be a good start uh but no i i i totally agree with you on the decline of the middle class and everything else yeah to a point that we're now in that scarcity moment where everyone's an asshole to each other because everyone's just scraping and for scraps and fighting over nothing and, and coronavirus hasn't made it any easier. Uh, in fact, it'll make it worse. Uh, and you

know, we've got to somehow come out of this curve that we've declined. We're in. Yeah. Can I make a point right there? our book about money is basically the big idea is money is not is not scarce um money gets created from nothing by the central bank in just the way that promises money is a kind of promise and we just the way that you and i can create a promise have authority to create a promise about our future whereabouts you just decide you know i'll be there that. That makes a real change. If I promise you, then you have a claim against me that I appear. I have an obligation. That's basically what the central bank is doing when it creates money. And we can do that. We can create as many promises

that we can faithfully redeem. And right now, in an era in which there's not enough money in the economy, the answer is just the government needs to just create more money, spend more money into existence and direct it to the right places. And then to invest, for example, in new industries, you know, like in green, clean energy technology could be in the Rust Belt, like to create jobs, you know, massive investment, public investment, which just spends new money into existence, that can do a lot to sort of renew our economy. And like, if there's a worry about

inflation, there's, we shouldn't worry, because as long as the money that you're creating, isn't chasing the same stock of goods, then you don't have too much money chasing too few goods, because the amount of goods and services you're getting for the new money is increasing as well. As long as they increase together, the supply of money and the supply of goods and services, that doesn't create a price inflation problem. And then similarly, we think that the central bank can do lots of new things for us that give us much more directly, give us money. For example, we can all have accounts at the central bank in the way that the big banks now have accounts at the central bank. And then the way the central bank now just gives money, creates dollar assets for the big banks, it can just put money in those accounts,

just type in the credits. The way it now creates money is it just types into a computer, you know, like a certain number of credits, and it can just give each of us like a thousand or $2,000 a month. If we're worried about inflation, it can attach an interest rate to those, to that, to influence saving and spending. But that's a very direct way that basically that we can make sure that everybody has enough money. And so you improve spending, that's good for business because they can count on people having money to spend and they'll get sales, they get profits, they can hire workers, et cetera. So this is, it's a capitalist friendly way of using the central bank as we now have it to make sure money's getting available. Now, when we wrote the book before the coronavirus, we revised it a lot when the pandemic first came

out, but we wrote the book and it sounded, when we were writing these ideas, it sounded really wild. But just after the coronavirus broke out, like the Fed started doing unconventional things and we've got the monetary stimulus, the $1,200 checks, you got much bigger employment. Now there's calls for stimulus checks, you know, all the time. So that became pretty normal fast. And, but we think that can be done, not just in like one-off spurts, but you could be done in a regular way. And that'll be a much smoother system that we can all feel a lot better about more secure, you know, a greater certainty that our prospects, we're going to be relatively have enough money, not starve, be able to pay rent, you know, things like that, have a decent future, things like that. That's interesting. I like the perspective on that because it's funny how that's tied to your

asshole books because if you don't have money, then you become an asshole and you're scrambling. But so those sort of things, I mean, we need to do, we've got to have some sort of FDR-ish big deal or whatever they used to call that thing, or we've got to have some huge bailout. I mean, my friends in other countries, you know,

they're getting a monthly side bid, you know, um, and I mean, we've got, I think next month we've got the moratorium up on more, uh, uh,

evictions. I know in my hometown, Las Vegas, there's people, even though there was a moratorium, they were still evicting people. And I don't even know if there's a penalty to that, hometown, Las Vegas, there's people, even though there was a moratorium, they were still evicting people. And I don't even know if there's a penalty to that. But, yeah, we definitely need a better moral contract with our human beings.

I'm hoping that there's something left on the table where we can do that. But, yeah, like you say, there has to be a priority, too. It was interesting to me, like during the, was it the cares act with the $1,200 check that everybody got $1,200, but people at a higher bracket got money. So like if you're a multimillionaire, it's at 1200 bucks, you got like a million dollars and you're like, wait, these guys aren't hurting.

Well, they only got 1200 bucks. They just got the same amount. Everyone got the same amount of money, wasn't it? No, no. There was actually a scale system to it. And so you've got a percentage of how much you made based upon the thing. I know the people that got bailouts through the separate facilities for keeping businesses afloat. I know people got pretty big.

My understanding of it is we should probably go back and check and see my memory is still serving me rightly but there were people that would this wasn't part of the ppe this is there was a scalable system to bailouts and so people would get if you the more you were worth or the more you contributed the system the more you'd gotten out and so there were people getting these checks and it was quite surprising because everyone was like i just got $1,200 And yet there were people that definitely weren't hurting that got it. I may have confused it with the PPE, but I'm pretty sure. So we should go back. I think that, I think some of those facilities, those were like, I think the bailout was a good, the bailout was a good thing, but the, the inequitable nature of it for those reasons

in the different facilities was was a big problem and it partly the problem is is well it was just like there wasn't accountability for who got what money at the at the bigger businesses level um um but but also just it was just too difficult it was difficult to get people that even the 1200 checks right a lot of people were waiting around a long time a lot of people huge numbers of people still haven't got still haven't got the check but have a right to it because you don't have the you just don't have the banking system isn't set up to quickly get people money. But that's like totally avoidable. I mean, if we all had accounts at the central bank, then the money just appears, right?

And on any month that the money needs to appear, you just drop it in and then announce it. If you want people to save it, you just raise an interest rate on that amount like an ordinary bank account. If you want people to spend it, you lower the interest rate. There's a much more efficient and better for everyone way of running monetary policy. That's where you do all the same things that we do now, except you just don't rely as much on the big banks as an intermediary. You just run it through everybody's bank accounts with the central bank. And that could be a much better social contract for everyone. Like we can all, you know, feel like we're getting a much better fare or shake as a result. I mean, if you got like, you know, got better job opportunities, more flexible work, you've got some sure money, you know, then that's like, that's a nicer social

compact. You can think, oh, I can plan a life around that. You know, I don't have, I'm not fighting over scraps as you, as you put it, you know, I, I don't have to be an asshole to get ahead. You know, we're all getting, we're all getting a fair shake and I can plan a nice life around, you know, enough time off and, and reasonably good job and some sure money, you know, and more flexible hours, you know, which we have working at home now,

like then that's like something you could get excited about and feel like, okay, you know, like, you know, we don't need asshole politicians to like break the system. Like let's just improve the system. Yeah.

I like the idea of the Fed doing that. You know, the Federal Reserve has been caught a lot of things. I remember early on in this crisis, they were dumping sometimes trillions. I think one day it was like $4 trillion they were dumping in the stock market to keep liquid and keep the crash that we saw in 2008 and stuff. And I was just like, wait, they're dumping trillions of dollars into all the rich people's accounts for this. Well, they weren't putting them in the accounts. They were creating liquidity in the market. Right. They're buying back treasury bills, but then the people

who have it tend to pile the money into stocks. Yeah. And you're just like, wow, okay. And then everybody else gets like $1,200. Right. Yeah. So that gets like $1,200. Right, yeah. So that was a problem with the 2000, I mean, the 2008, after the financial crisis, the original bailouts, that was a similar kind of problem.

I mean, the thing that worked when Bernanke did it was the central bank bought mortgage-backed securities and that buoyed housing prices and that helped everybody. That through trial and error, they sort of figured out that that was the way to do it. So you need sort of a more democratic way of getting the money out. Like the way – the Fed can do it. It's nothing wrong with the Fed per se.

It's just the way that we've sort of set up this hierarchy. So the central banks or – like this hierarchy of parties, the people who have wealth are expected to get the money down to everyone else and it does doesn't work it's not an efficient operation so it's much better to do it bottom up i mean you just give the money directly to people and they spend it and then business and firms you know get the money when they get they sell them stuff or hire them or you know like or you know like you know sell goods and services they get the money that way.

It's a much more efficient operation and it's better for democracy. It's more efficient kind of capitalism. I mean, it makes good on capitalism. It's not socialism for the haves and capitalism for the have-nots. It's actually a more, it's a kind of capitalism that makes good on a social contract that we can all sort of get behind and have faith in.

Yeah, rising tide lifts all boats. I know if I ever get a central bank account, I'm borrowing a trillion. Okay. And then I'm changing my phone number. So give us the book that you discussed this in and and then the other books in your plugs before you go. So that's money from nothing. It's called money from nothing or why we should learn why we should learn to love the federal reserve.

Learn to stop worrying about debt and love the federal reserve. That's just public debt. You don't have to worry about private debt. We have to worry about, but a U S public debt, you don't have to. Um, and then, uh, the, then And then the earlier book was Assholes of Theory, the 2012 book. Assholes of Theory of Donald Trump was during the primaries. That was, what, 2016? And then the documentary is called Assholes of Theory as well.

And that's now out on all the platforms we mentioned. And I saw a lot of videos on tiktok and instagram and twitter and stuff and you know people are doing bits about how they're going to visit their trump family and their biden voters and they're like i get to be the so uh the great thing about your books is this would be a great christmas gift you can give to your trump family when you go for christmas and you can be like how to quit being an ass here's here's how to identify that you're an asshole could be you and then uh you know another good thing is you wrap it you can get on amazon.com you can get uh biden harris

2020 wrapping paper give that to your favorite trump voter and uh you're you're that might not be the best way to open a discussion, but we're shutting it down. But yeah, the perfect gift this year for the asshole in your life. I, I should do your ads for you on Facebook. Yeah. Yeah. This is for you.

You know, like, do you find that you have assholes in your life? This is a common, this could be an infomercial really to the relative. A lot of them aren't assholes and they maybe they might think twice about Trump if, if they really thought, wait, okay, I guess he is an ass.

I don't know. Maybe it depends on which. Yeah. I don't know. No, I see this as a perfect gift book for this Christmas. So I think you can really turn this into an infomercial i'd love to see the infomercial on this i can't go wrong absolutely yeah you get that one guy who

used to do all the infomercials he used to have all those uh tv gimmicks you know yeah that or that or if you get the uh you know or if you order now but wait there's more you know there's more assholes i don't know i don't know yeah that's right right all right guys so check out aaron james and his uh his collection of asshole books assholes a theory assholes a theory of donald trump i'm not sure it's a theory anymore it's probably more factual but you can update the book later i suppose that's my opinion and And money from nothing. You know what this reminds me of? Money from nothing or why we should stop worrying about debt and learn to love the Federal Reserve. It reminds me of that movie with Peter Sellers,

How I Learned to Love the Bomb. Strange. Yeah, that we model. We do a play throughout the book on Dr. Strangelove. Oh, do you? Yeah. It's fun, yeah. There you go.

Well, it'll be interesting to see. I think what's her face is going to be. She used to run the Fed and I believe Biden's over the she's put her over. Treasury Treasury Department. Hello. I said he'd be a stockbroker and I can't remember that. Well, Aaron, it's been wonderful to have you on. I think you're a consummate gentleman.

I appreciate you helping us identify assholes. I have a mirror in my house, so I've been told that it could be me. So I definitely will read the book and watch the movie. So everyone ordered the movie up. You can either share it with a friend. You're like, Hey Bob, we're going to sit and watch a movie together.

Reminds me of a time. My friend had a, had a girlfriend who had a crack problem and she's, he's like, you need to come over and we're going to do an intervention. There was like an HBO show about addiction and crack and stuff. And so he's like, I want you to come over cause we're doing intervention.

And so maybe, maybe we could use the movie or the books as an intervention tool. I don't know. Yeah. It could be, be definitely a starting point for discussion that could lead to interventions. Yeah.

Maybe, maybe you can use it when you go visit your Trump family relatives and it could become the new what what's that what's that movie everyone watches at christmas there's a few of them but the black and white one a christmas story or oh the black and white um uh the the jimmy stewart movie yeah yeah jimmy stewart yeah that one it could become the new uh annual thing where you sit down and you're just like who's an asshole in the family let's figure it out we're over here we'll have an intervention so there you go i'm gonna be mailing this to a lot of people after this anyway guys uh thanks

for being with us thanks to my audience for tuning in be sure to uh see the video version that's on youtube.com which has chris voss go to facebook.com forward slash the chris voss show go to goodreads.com forward slash uh chris voss there's a lot of damn chris vosses in here uh go to the cvpn.com or chris voss podcast network.com you can see online podcasts thanks so much for tuning in thanks for being here stay safe wear your mask we'll see you next time