In light of political turbulence coming to the surface due the Presidential election, and the recent skirmishes at the Million Maga March, questions arise about why mobs are forming so easily. French social scientist Gustav LeBon (from 1896) wrote a book called ‘The Crowd,’ in which he presented the first study on mass psychology and the formation of mobs. He cited “mass college” as a major factor in social instability. As young people are channeled away from the productive fields that generated the society’s prosperity (and created the middle class), the nation is experiencing an economic slowdown related to bumper-crops of kids avoiding the trades and, instead, getting degrees in Beatles 101 or Rubik’s Cube Theory. Not in demand in the job market, they are relegated to menial jobs, simmer in frustration and (as LeBon says) ‘are given to the worst forms of socialism’. Will this powder keg find its spark in the culmination of the 2020 election?
