TFP Article on "How Democrats Lost Men"

[ThatZanyFatball]

I know Bari Weiss and TFP are divisive, but I wanted to share this article with you fine ladies to hear your perspectives. I know you're mostly UK and this is US, but considering Trump's impact in the world right now it's pretty relevant.

I think the author makes some good points but then loses me when he says things like "The downside of such a safe and easy society is that men almost never get access to public honor, which leads many of them to entirely abandon that as a personal goal."

He doesn't seem to describe what exactly he means by "public honor." The idea that men need to be publicly, openly recognized and cheered for doing - manly? - things, and that's why they're trending right?

But other points, like "When you lose sight of the evolutionary pressures that underlie much of human behavior, you risk wandering into ideological nonsense." I think is a valid point.

https://www.thefp.com/p/how-democrats-lost-men?utm_source=cbs_news&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true

I think your take on it is much more nuanced than Bari Weisses to be fair.

It's interesting because there is footage going around of a young(ish) man heroically putting himself between a woman who had been pushed viplentl5 to the ground and the group of men attacking her. He is then pushed to the ground, pepper sprayed, disarmed and shot multiple times. But he ISNT being hailed as a hero by the right in America by and large. Even though he was doing quite a manly heroic thing (protecting women) and paid the ultimate price.

Trigger warning: a bad word. Also a cynical attitude towards the recruiting strategies of the British army.

The army as a place for working class men without many other economic prospects has always been a thing. There's things you could say there about class exploitation. It gets dodgier though when YouTubers/online philosophers start expounding on it as a way to use up "surplus men" or negate the problems such rootless men can cause. Often with a side line about how men "need" a hero's journey so it's actually good for them. I know this is a feminist forum, but it's not a good way to think about any group of people. And strangely ironic that it comes from the right not the blue haired, man hating harpies of the left.

Actually older men "solving" the social problem of too many young men by letting them go to war is more like the story of King David and Uriah than a classic heros journey.

Daniel Penny on the NY Subway is an interesting case of taking action in public, and nearly losing his liberty.
In a hugely litigiousness world where so many criminals and anti social types get away with it, those who actively intervene often come off second best.
I'm sure this is why fewer and fewer men take a stand in public, in addition to the fact that they'll be taken out without a thought.

Also bad. I thought he was treated unfairly and became a political football.

But at least he isn't dead? And it's interesting that HE was idolised by the right/held up as a symbol of injustice. But Pretti wasn't.
They can both be victims of injustice,.it isn't either/or. But I think it does show the American rights outrage in the first case wasn't wholly motivated by an honest concern with the rights/wellbeing of male good Samaritans.

I'm very much of the Batya Ungar-Sargon take on the ICE killings of both tragic deaths at hands of ICE.
That Trump was voted in on a mass deportations programme
And he's following this thru.
Democrats will never accept this. Especially federal forces in states territory.
Left activists are encouraging liberal citizens to get in harms way, including older citizens and young women who are often extremely angry.
Yes, plenty of arguments about ICE training, protocols etc.
And tragedies are solely that, tragedies.
But the activist left who had no issue when Deporter-In-Chief Obama turfed out way more illegals than Trump has, with the same lack of recourse to appeals etc.
And no issue with the many American citizens and other innocents slain and raped by some of the estimated 10-15m who came across the border with Biden.
We recall the Ukrainian woman on a bus who was killed outright by an illegal?
She didn't even make the next days news.
There's a family who's loved one was killed by an illegal, the Democrats have never reached out to them.
Daniel Penny would have been held out to dry by a totally politically motivated Democrat judge, hail the jury for saving him.

The bottom line is the Dems ran a terrible campaign. For LOTS of reasons, Harris wasn't a great choice - and everybody knew that. But the did it anyway.

How Harris even got to be VP tells us a lot about the Dems.

Biden could have said about his VP that he wouldn't have a ticket of two white men. That would have kept his options open.

He promised that he'd have a woman as his running mate. Too bad for Cory Booker, but that still left him plenty of options. Word has it that he was thinking of Amy Klobuchar or Gretchen Whitmer, either of whom would have been a good match for him.

Then, later, he needed to give something to Jim Clyburn, so he promised he'd have a black woman on the ticket. Then they looked at the Democratic senators and governors, and realised only one of them was a black woman, and went... oh shit.

Joe didn't like Harris, and Jill REALLY didn't like Harris, and you can tell Biden was reluctant to accept her because, though she was the only realistic option, the campaign spent a long time interviewing little known mayors and Congresswomen in the hope one of them would be better than Harris. (Given Karen Bass's performance as Los Angeles mayor, they might even have dodged a bullet.)

Sometimes colour blind meritocracy really does have something going for it. Underlined by the Harris campaign going "Oh shit! We need a white guy from the Midwest!" and picking Tim Walz, who was also a terrible candidate on multiple levels.

Compared to someone who was a frequent flyer to Epstein's Island, admitted multiple sexual assaults of young "women", is obviously senile (at best), is turning America into a fascist state and so corrupt that the concept is going to sue him for defamation, they were indeed terrible.

But then a lot of his voters didn't think the leopard with the published "leopards will eat your faces" brochure would actually eat their faces. Unfortunately for them, and the world in general, buyer's remorse comes far too late.

Just like his protege over here with his unique, treasonous, achievement. But his cult is just as hoping for the miracle which only a con artist can promise: luxury for peanuts. And in fairness, Trump is sort of doing that: giving out peanuts so he can have luxury.

Say what you really mean, instead of couching stuff in this kind of cryptic prose.
Obama deported way more illegals, separated children from their parents, removed many people with no recourse to legal appeals, yet because he had the full cooperation from the types of Walz back in 2008-2016, and was a media wizard, and the apex of the liberal world order, he's got away with the likes of you not calling him a fascist. Also because he cuts a cultured, intellectual character, unlike Trump who is common as muck in comparison.
Re Trump bunking up at Epstein Island, Biden would surely have had the dirt on him, yet nothing ever released 2020-24.

Isn't the fact that Obama deported more "illegals" but that noone was shot in the street, small (American citizen) children weren't arrested and taken to detention facilities 100s of miles away, people attending planned interviews for their green card weren't unexpectedly arrested etc etc etc proof that it is actually possible to deal.woth Americas immigration problem without resorting to those methods?
I am sure there is a big Ven diagram style crossover between Americans who would prefer greater control of Americas borders and would like immigrants who commit crimes to be reported. And Americans who don't like ICEs current tactics. A big part of those groups will be the same people..I know this because if you look back through the online arguments pre election, including on here, people supporting Trump were saying he was only going to be going after the worst criminals and that people.saying otherwise we're fear mongering. Trump said it himself!
And maybe Obamas team was just more competent than Trumps team, I don't know, but the fact is he did deport more people than Trump has so far managed with less violence against civilians or non-criminal immigrants. And the fact that a democratic president was willing to deport so many people contradicts your earlier point about democrats being unwilling to deport people.

And is there the very likely possibility that many red states won't cooperate with Trump? I'm actually not the biggest fan of Trump, I'm aware much is done for visual point scoring. But I'm also pretty certain Democrat governors will do anything to oppose him. The days of any cooperation between both sides is over.
Let's see what happens now that Trump has signalled a cooling down, talking to Walz, scaling down numbers. Are we going to see fewer activists on the street. Because there were none when Obama was deporting.

I think Obama's failure was more in preventing people crossing the border rather than being unable to deport them. And that became really bad under Biden, towns near border crossings were completely overwhelmed.

I suspect that is part of the reason for the over the top tactics now - it's a bit like the Rwanda scheme in the UK, or sending boats in Australia to a detention area - it's intended to make the idea of entering the country through improper channels unappealing.

Ah, just seen you've put illegals in quote marks. Quite telling.

I haven't seen this, but I don't think it's surprising stuff like this is interpreted through a political lens to a large degree. People's feelings about it tend to reflect what they thin about the whole situation.

I don't think there is really any doubt that the Democrats are failing to appeal to men, more so than women, we can look at the numbers and see that.

Im not American though I have American friends. But my understanding is that it's more federal than the UK. So States have more rights and powers than say Essex does. And both Democrats and Republicans are quite hot on that. Even if the fault is on the "red States" not cooperating with Trump or people in the "red States" not falling into line, it's still extremely sinister that that's used as justification for the shooting of people who are not (at that time) any sort of a threat. Since States have rights not to fall into line, and individual protesters have rights to protest. Regardless of any of the rights and wrongs up to that point, politicians arguing that people not falling into line is the cause of the deaths is troubling. And hypocritical since it contradicts the idea that it's in men's nature to want to protect women and that that should be celebrated. Then Pretti was only doing what came naturally as a man so why demonise him?

At the end of the day, Americans make up about 4% of the global population. American males are 2%. American adult males are even less. and American adult males that voted for Trump a proportion of that. They will do what they will do and maybe it isn't healthy for us (me included) to give too much headspace.to their feelings compared to the other 8 billion on this planet.

Where I do feel troubled is firstly that sort of hyper militaristic rhetoric has implications for the rest of the world (Someone somewhere is.going to be on the receiving end of what Bari Weiss claims is American mens need to have a hero's journey/let loose their warrior nature). And also just the rhetoric is toxic and self serving and involves kicking down on other countries (including NATO and the UKs contributions) and the deaths/sacrifices made by men in those countries. Which is annoying.

There are a few things that could take some of the heat out of this issue, but I'm not optimistic about the chances.

The first thing would be to dismantle the system of "sanctuary" cities and states. This has a couple of bad consequences. The first is that foreign criminals gravitate to those places knowing it's very unlikely they will ever be deported. The second is that, under the sanctuary policy, local law enforcement is banned from cooperating with federal immigration policy, which means that Ice can't enter Minnesota prisons to pick up criminals, which means raids in the community which stand a much higher chance of turning violent. The whole sanctuary policy is massively flawed, but I can't see the Democrat activist class allowing their politicians to compromise on it.

The second thing would be for the government to play smarter, and pay attention to polling that consistently shows Americans want criminal illegals deported, but aren't comfortable with heavy handed tactics against illegals who aren't actually a danger to the community. That would mean smarter enforcement instead of macho displays of force, and a serious effort to make sure Ice agents are properly trained and vetted. I don't know what the likelihood of that is, unless Tom Homan can sell it to Trump.

The third thing seems like a technical activist point, but it's very important. The National Lawyers Guild and ACLU have MANY flaws, but when they are training up legal observers for protests, they have qualified lawyers explaining what the law is, what your rights are, how you can stay safe. This can't be said for the "Ice Watch" groups springing up in cities like Minneapolis, who have their own lefty folklore version of the law - this is "freemen on the land" type stuff claiming that Ice isn't a legally constituted law enforcement agency (it is) and that Ice has no authority over US citizens (it does). They supply this bullshit to riled-up activists who are used to dealing with Minneapolis beat cops and then send them along to get in the faces of heavily armed federal agents. Often these are liberal white women who assume their status as liberal white women means the worst thing that could happen is that a cop will yell at them.

That last point makes me quite angry. Having been on plenty of protests in my time, at best they're being amateurish to the point of endangering their own activists, and at worst they've tacitly adopted a strategy of Palestinianism where martyrs are good for the cause.

That may all be true.

But the videos of the people shot don't show people behaving in a way that would justify them getting shot. I guess I can't square the American line about representing freedom of speech/freedom of protest with "get up in the faces of heavily armed federal agents" and you should expect to get shot. I think that whole rhetoric "these people were used to easy going beat cops/misinterpreted their privilege as white women" and that's why they got shot is troubling. In and of itself it's an arg6that presupposes some things..none of them good.

All movements like martyrs to be fair. American extremists were quite happy to use the incident on King Street for their rabble rousing purposes. What is more, the original topic of the thread was that men were being constrained, not allowed to act like men. But the concept of the "Hero's Journey" as something men need can be used by any political side, any movement or any side in a war for that matter.

I know most people on here disagree, but I really think that protesters outright disobeying when they are being told what to do by federal agents with guns pointed at them is completely nuts.

Passive resistance is a thing but it has to be done in a really careful, organised way. A lot of the time it means doing nothing - staying put, being limp. Or taking clearly planned, non-threatening action in a coordinated way as a group. The point being that it is clearly nonthreatening in and of itself. Maybe refusing to get out of a car could be that.

It doesn't mean suddenly running your car, which is a potential weapon and which has been used that way quite frequently recently, out of a group of officers who have told you to stop and get out. That just has a massively high chance of ending badly. If officers have guns out, the situation is close to something that could trigger their use. You don't take them out for empty threats.

I remember friends going to things like the WTO protests in Seattle, and there were a lot of passive resistance tactics. The stuff I am seeing in the US now feels more like riots in a lot of cases. It does seem like people are being encouraged to behave in dangerous ways.

Again though we can go all the way back to King Street when certain people got up in the faces (harassing them verbally and throwing projectiles) of people with guns tasked with keeping order, and got shot as a result. It's the hypocrisy I can't stand.
I think the US generally has more tolerance for misbehaviour in public as part of protest, and maybe a different line at which "peaceful protest" is considered to cross into "unacceptable disorder". Just in terms of public opinion. It's part of how they see themselves. But despite this we seem better at not killing people even when they are explicitly rioting.

As I said, it's the hypocrisy. If they want to posthumously pardon the British soldiers who were found guilty of murder/manslaughter then they could do that but effectively that would mean admitting their whole nation was founded on a lie/false grievance. Or the Boston massacre was wrong but so was the shooting of Pretti and Goode.

I mean - protesting is typically not done by actually interfering with any kinds of agents doing their job? Not in the US, and not in the UK that I can think of?

I'm trying to think of an example of that, and I am having trouble. I can certainly think of egregious examples of people holding a protest, and the state sending armed soldiers and just completely suppressing the protest. Tienanmen Square, some of the protests during the Arab Spring.

Maybe the Oka events in Canada but that was in fact a total shit show and could have been much worse.

I'm not sure it's really helpful to go back quite that far...!

Ok then. Little Rock and the protests against desegregation at that time. Angry mobs surrounded little children being escorted into school. They spat in their faces. They threw things.
The people doing those things were not nice. They probably didn't deserve to be gunned down in the street. And they weren't gunned down in the street.

There are already laws against obstructing police.officers, or other federal agents from doing their business. If someone is breaking the law there are other options apart from shooting them. If I consistently caused a scene in Tesco's I would get some sort of consequence because you aren't allowed to lie down in the aisles where people can't get past shouting. I probably wouldn't get shot though. And also, Petti didn't appear to be obstructing agents at the point he was shot so....

And Americans go back that far (to the Boston Massacre) all the time. There are big memorials in Boston etc. Its part of their founding history.

Trump is absolutely consistent on this, no young American men in foreign wars. If you think tomorrow he's going to renege on his most solemn vow to MAGA and put tens of thousands into Tehran, you haven't been listening to him for the last decade.
If anyone is going to send Americans to die abroad, it'll be the likes of Gavin Newsom if voters are stupid enough to put him in office in 2028.
I could also see the likes of Harris doing the same if she'd have won in 2024.

Left activists are really quite happy to encourage angry Americans to be put in harms way.
The likes of Walz are looking to gain political advantage by helping run a 24/7 insurrection against Trump who won a mandate for deportations.
People are very quick to always call Trump evil.
I'd actually say the Democrats are the evil ones here, made worse by their virtuous language in their criticism of the right.

They extracted Maduro with American men in American helicopters. One of those helicopters was hit but the pilot (very skilfully) managed it fly it and land it safely. What ever you think about the rights/wrongs of that operation, it was executed very well by people who were taking a risk. It could have easily gone differently. If the damaged helicopter had gone down a lot of American soldiers on board would have been killed.
If Trump does bomb Iran as he's being threatening then Iran likely will respond by bombing an American base..quite possibly without the prior warning they have last time. And there's a high possibility that will result in American loss of life. I don't know if you would classify Venezuela/Iran etc as "wars" though. Maybe special Military Operations. 😉

The American military is very technically advanced. So they can carry out operations in other countries (drone strikes etc) at minimal risk to themselves. So may e they can have war that it doesn't feel like war. But I do think the push in tone about warrior ethos/heros journey/men being let down by the democrats because they weren't allowed to be men suggests a shift in tone from "no more foreign wars". But well have to wait and see.