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Posted

I guess if we are dropping college admission anecdotes, my senior year of high school, the admissions director at Virginia Tech changed, and the new girl categorically wanted to reduce the number of private school admits vis a vis public school. So out of my graduating class at our regions top private school, a grand total of one student was admitted. One! For comparison, we placed 30+ kids at UVA, a school with an objectively more rigorous admission policy and demand. This just happened one day, and any kid who was preparing to go to Tech was shafted. But that is just the vagaries of life, and I can't think of anyone who lashed out over it. 

 

Point being, shit happens.

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Posted
10 hours ago, Huckleberry said:

The author is operating from a belief that the way the world was in 2014 was based on meritocracy but that afterward as white males were systematically oppressed, this was the moment that the United States abandoned meritocracy. He believes that meritocracy results in fields dominated by white men.

This.  This is the takeaway.  It is the accurate and correct takeaway.  The best way that you can tell that white men are being discriminated against is that they are no longer disproportionately dominating various fields and professions.  Not "they are not getting opportunities that match their percentage of the population," but rather "they don't have a 10-30 percentage point leg up like they used to."

6 hours ago, UpperWestside said:

We are hurting as a society monetarily because we have a small percentage hoarding wealth while many of the rest of us are left to fight over scraps. It’s ridiculous on its face that the wealthiest country in the history of the world has so many people either already living in poverty or just a missed check away from the poorhouse. To me this is a sign of when a society will lose its moorings if things do not change. You cannot have a small class of people worth hundreds of millions to several hundred billion and expect that society to be thriving. This should be a shared concern for everyone. I feel the angst needs to be directed there because that old quote comes to mind of a house divided against itself cannot stand. 
 

This doesn’t mean I support disenfranchised white men vs. minorities looking for their fair share of the pie. We all, college educated or not, need to look at the cartoon villains holding all the money tha holds our society back from realizing its promise of having an actual American dream instead of the nightmare it has become for millions of people. That sucks to me because we get this one chance at life and a small group of folks want the super majority of it for themselves. We can do better I think.

And absolutely this.  Do you want to hear me say "white men in our society are fucked and are being fucked?"  Because here I am, saying just that.  I've been concerned about our young men, definitely including our young white men, for some time.  Shit, old-timers here will recall our family alarm bells going off 15+ years ago when my son was in first grade, and we realized that the current educational structures are just poorly suited for how boys are and how they think.

We corrected previous biases, and have set up an educational system that's closer to a level playing field for males and females.  And, it turns out, on a level playing field....females regularly outcompete males.  Girls are better at school (as currently designed), to put it succinctly.  They start pulling ahead at a young age, and by the time dumb boy lizard brains catch up, they're already past the college/learn a profession/trade years, and women have put some real distance between them.

Then, layer on the fact that our society is doing a great job of poisoning their minds (Andrew Tates and Tucker Carlsons and Charlie Kirks telling them that bitches and minorities are the problem, they need to get back in the kitchen/to the plantation/back to one of those mexican countries) that young men (1) become a toxic presence in society and (2) do nothing to actually improve their lot because hey, it's not their fault.  The American Dream was stolen from them by woke trans black mexican amputee women.  All of us should be able to be the next  Elon Musk (that's right -- they don't HATE billionaires, they IDOLIZE them.  How you gonna fix that?  When they worship the very thing that fucks them the hardest?)

16 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

20 years ago I might've skimmed over this and rolled my eyes. But after raising a Gen Z daughter I can see the differences in how young women spend their day vs young men and wholeheartedly agree with this. I have never seen my daughter pick up a controller for a Playstation or Xbox. She last played Minecraft and Roblox. Her downtime is spent on more mentally stimulating activities. It's a 180 to her male cousins. At 17-18, all the young women in her circle are already locked in on which colleges they are going to. The boys? Not so much. It is truly eye-opening, and speaks to exactly what you are talking about here. In 4-7 years these women will be emerging from higher learning and entering the workforce in droves. It's not stopping any time soon. 

And yeah, I've seen this in real-time and -- importantly -- so has my son.  He figured out some time ago that having his shit together, having some social skills, and not descending into a life of just video games and Andrew Tate shit would actually give him a leg up in life.  He's not naive.  He's a tall, good-looking, white/hispanic man with a broad education and perspective and a charismatic presence.  Regardless of what the whiny tittybaby in Bozo's piece wrote, that DOES give you an advantage in the world we live in.  And he has much less competition in that respect that he would have 25 years ago, because his peers are falling behind.  (Also...him taking a "gap year" to grow up, and figure out how to be a man, was  maybe the best thing to ever happen to him.  We are HUGE proponents of the gap year for boys, as it lets them "catch up" and mature a bit before they take on whatever is next (college, trade school, doesn't really matter)).

TLDR; I actually worry a great deal about our young men.  One of the main reasons I worry is that too many of them are becoming whiny-ass pussies who take no responsibility for their lives and outcomes, instead taking a lazy blame approach that ends up pointing a finger at the weakest among us instead of the larger systemic issues that are the real problem.  Of course, that's because they have no interest in reining in oppressive billionaires because they want to BE the oppressive billionaires.  Weak white men are mad that they no longer have as many avenues to be shitty white men.  Waah.

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Posted
4 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

They start pulling ahead at a young age, and by the time dumb boy lizard brains catch up, they're already past the college/learn a profession/trade years, and women have put some real distance between them.

100%. As a past and current dumb male, it's pretty clear women mature faster than we do, and timelines we give them both for educational attainment, family and career building, puts boys at a disadvantage.

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Posted
7 minutes ago, G650 said:

100%. As a past and current dumb male, it's pretty clear women mature faster than we do, and timelines we give them both for educational attainment, family and career building, puts boys at a disadvantage.

Yeah....definitely drawing on my own experience of realizing that the girls were studious and could actually pay attention to and advance their studies, whereas Brisket (who was actually a pretty smart guy) was busy laughing at farts with his buddies and thinking about the boobs of every one of those girls in class.  "Academic focus" wasn't something my dumb ass brought to the table in spades.  And my dumbass buddies seemed to be in the same boat.

We need systems that account for young male development timelines and are aimed to help men grow and achieve -- socially, professionally, etc. -- along those timelines.

Posted
9 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yeah....definitely drawing on my own experience of realizing that the girls were studious and could actually pay attention to and advance their studies, whereas Brisket (who was actually a pretty smart guy) was busy laughing at farts with his buddies and thinking about the boobs of every one of those girls in class.  "Academic focus" wasn't something my dumb ass brought to the table in spades.  And my dumbass buddies seemed to be in the same boat.

We need systems that account for young male development timelines and are aimed to help men grow and achieve -- socially, professionally, etc. -- along those timelines.

Yeah, all I have to say is thank god I was intelligent, or at least good at testing. 

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Posted (edited)
57 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

20 years ago I might've skimmed over this and rolled my eyes. But after raising a Gen Z daughter I can see the differences in how young women spend their day vs young men and wholeheartedly agree with this. I have never seen my daughter pick up a controller for a Playstation or Xbox. She last played Minecraft and Roblox. Her downtime is spent on more mentally stimulating activities. It's a 180 to her male cousins. At 17-18, all the young women in her circle are already locked in on which colleges they are going to. The boys? Not so much. It is truly eye-opening, and speaks to exactly what you are talking about here. In 4-7 years these women will be emerging from higher learning and entering the workforce in droves. It's not stopping any time soon. 

I’m horrified by most of the Gen Z boys I meet. I’m glad I have daughters. I like to think that if I had a boy I would have done a good job of raising him like @Brisketexan did his (he’s got a good one), but the truth is I think the problem is way beyond parenting. It’s everything. It’s the dismal tide. 

A pretty ok kid my daughter’s age was at our house and called Andrew Tate “the top G,” and when I responded in an even speaking that Tate was “the opposite of what a man should be” the kid seemed very personally wounded. It was troubling.  

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted (edited)

I read the article just now. For those skewering the guy for a poorly written essay that is emblamatic of why he couldn't make it as a screenwriter, reading the last 7 pages was infinitely worse. A more damning repudiation of millennial and Gen-X white man's ability to write, indeed. Anyways, a few quick points:

1) I take umbrage with the title. The Lost Generation will ALWAYS refer to Papa Hemingway and his expat peers in Paris post-WWI.

2) I thought the essay was fine and appreciated the plight. I mentioned this before, but I was consulting at a FAANG post George Floyd and was around some staffing of projects both contract and w2 and we were unabahsed in dashboards that tracked the HR KPI's around hiring and were very vocal about prioritizing underrepresented minorities (e.g. not white OR asian/indian) and underreprsented minority (e.g. not male, but else). I've heard from friends that era has been over for a while, for good or bad.

3) The fundamental issue is that in order to disrupt the old mode of white privilege and help the minorities (who are, in fact a majority), it doesn't happen without change and for the in power group taking a step back or accepting less award. There has to be a cohort of white males who lose percentage of the pie as other groups gain it, in order to more evenly disperse resources in a world of scarcity. The seeming injustice is that these white males were born and raised in a group with outsized power and representation and were coming of age in a time of political and social "reset". 

4) An analogy for me is the conversation I see playing out in bad schools/neighborhoods and white flight. Sounds far removed but bear with me; the main thrust of this analogy is that a group of people are going to have to be "sacrificed" in order to right the sins of your grandfathers past. You and your children are going to have to live through the growing pains of re-integration and the trough of disillusionment (e.g. schools getting worse, crime getting worse, property values temporarily depressing, higher risks of bad outcomes, etc.) before the tide lifts and society is better through a better area. 

At some point we are able to, on the surface, double ledger account for the puts and takes of this sort of social correction. The conflict I believe is a tale as old as time. When we peel the onion down we see we STILL live in a world of scarcity and we STILL only have a finite amount of resources to go around and we STILL are all competing and will either cling to the structure that exists or will push for a new structure to exist that will optimally serves us to get the biggest slice of pie. This seems to be both the human condition and the base rules for capitalism. 

 

Edited by Vegas64
Posted
Just now, Bozo_Casanova said:

but the truth is I think the problem is way beyond parenting. It’s everything. It’s the dismal tide. 

On this you and I agree.  Parenting boys these days means helping them OVERCOME the structural failures of society that disfavor them.  It's not the solution, it's the thing that can help some boys overcome those social failings.  

I don't put it all on "we let women compete, and it turns out, they kick our asses" - it's more than that.  But the bottom line is that society has changed in myriad ways the last 50 years that are NOT good for men: (1) our educational systems are even more poorly designed for them, (2) physical/manual/factory labor opportunities have plummeted (3) better-educated women have better options than "I gotta marry a guy, even a loser, if I want to have a home and food on the table," and a dozen more social changes that hurt mediocre white guys.

I've often asked the callous question of "what are we gonna do with all our morons?", but it's a genuine question asked in hyperbolic terms.  It used to be that a mediocre dude could get a good job at the auto plant, marry a gal who was happy to be a part of that life, and have a good and fulfilling life.  Those opportunities are dwindling, and fast.  Everyone should have a life of basic security and dignity (or at least a really good opportunity for that), if we are to have a functioning society.  

They do not.  And instead of spending an ounce of energy at addressing these massive structural challenges.....we allow the oligarchs to pit everyone against each other.  And the author of this piece is a happy and willing accessory to that counter-productive bullshit.

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Posted
1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

better-educated women have better options than "I gotta marry a guy, even a loser, if I want to have a home and food on the table," and a dozen more social changes that hurt mediocre white guys.

ding ding ding

Posted
2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

I've often asked the callous question of "what are we gonna do with all our morons?", but it's a genuine question asked in hyperbolic terms.  It used to be that a mediocre dude could get a good job at the auto plant, marry a gal who was happy to be a part of that life, and have a good and fulfilling life.  Those opportunities are dwindling, and fast.  Everyone should have a life of basic security and dignity (or at least a really good opportunity for that), if we are to have a functioning society.  

Do you know who else used to ask this question? Nazi Germany though they referred to the morons as "useless eaters". Let that sink in as it should be sufficiently scary.

Posted
13 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

A pretty ok kid my daughter’s age was at our house and called Andrew Tate “the top G,” and when I responded in an even speaking that Tate was “the opposite of what a man should be” the kid seemed very personally wounded. It was troubling.  

Seeing that clown get his ass beat did my soul good

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Posted
Just now, Vegas64 said:

Do you know who else used to ask this question? Nazi Germany though they referred to the morons as "useless eaters". Let that sink in as it should be sufficiently scary.

You can do one of three things with that group of humans:

1) Realize they are part of society, and help build a system for all (which is why I've asked the question repeatedly over the years)

2) Exterminate them (the Nazis liked this one)

3) Weaponize them as foot soldiers to serve the oligarch class (that's the path we've chosen here....but if they're brown and such, we've chosen a bit of option 2 as well)

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Posted
8 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

On this you and I agree.  Parenting boys these days means helping them OVERCOME the structural failures of society that disfavor them.  It's not the solution, it's the thing that can help some boys overcome those social failings.  

I don't put it all on "we let women compete, and it turns out, they kick our asses" - it's more than that.  But the bottom line is that society has changed in myriad ways the last 50 years that are NOT good for men: (1) our educational systems are even more poorly designed for them, (2) physical/manual/factory labor opportunities have plummeted (3) better-educated women have better options than "I gotta marry a guy, even a loser, if I want to have a home and food on the table," and a dozen more social changes that hurt mediocre white guys.

I've often asked the callous question of "what are we gonna do with all our morons?", but it's a genuine question asked in hyperbolic terms.  It used to be that a mediocre dude could get a good job at the auto plant, marry a gal who was happy to be a part of that life, and have a good and fulfilling life.  Those opportunities are dwindling, and fast.  Everyone should have a life of basic security and dignity (or at least a really good opportunity for that), if we are to have a functioning society.  

They do not.  And instead of spending an ounce of energy at addressing these massive structural challenges.....we allow the oligarchs to pit everyone against each other.  And the author of this piece is a happy and willing accessory to that counter-productive bullshit.

 

So there are two things here. I agree with most of this, but 2) is incorrect. There are a bazillion of these jobs out there, but we have told masses of people they are too good for them.

 

But the first is something I have said for a long, long time. The 20th in America was welfare for mediocre white dudes. Full fucking stop. You could an abject moron, and not just survive, but actually thrive. This is the truth as much as it offends anyone to hear it.

 

The second part is we absolutely have to provide for our citizenry. I have said it several times here, but straight society just has no clue the amount of people who are just clinging on to survival. Any recognition of them is invariably some form of they make poor choices. Yeah no shit? They are working at their capacity. The answer isn't just let them starve, it's to provide a basic stable life. It should be a boast that the US can feed and house everyone no matter how great or small! It's literally a way to brag how rich we are! But yeah we suck of billionaires who are robbing us blind. It's madness.

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Posted
8 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

3) Weaponize them as foot soldiers to serve the oligarch class (that's the path we've chosen here....but if they're brown and such, we've chosen a bit of option 2 as well)

r/LateStageCapitalism - I fixed that famous cartoon to show a more accurate representation of wealth inequality

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Posted
1 minute ago, G650 said:

 

So there are two things here. I agree with most of this, but 2) is incorrect. There are a bazillion of these jobs out there, but we have told masses of people they are too good for them.

 

But the first is something I have said for a long, long time. The 20th in America was welfare for mediocre white dudes. Full fucking stop. You could an abject moron, and not just survive, but actually thrive. This is the truth as much as it offends anyone to hear it.

 

The second part is we absolutely have to provide for our citizenry. I have said it several times here, but straight society just has no clue the amount of people who are just clinging on to survival. Any recognition of them is invariably some form of they make poor choices. Yeah no shit? They are working at their capacity. The answer isn't just let them starve, it's to provide a basic stable life. It should be a boast that the US can feed and house everyone no matter how great or small! It's literally a way to brag how rich we are! But yeah we suck of billionaires who are robbing us blind. It's madness.

Monday Night Raw Yes GIF by WWE

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Posted
16 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

3) The fundamental issue is that in order to disrupt the old mode of white privilege and help the minorities (who are, in fact a majority), it doesn't happen without change and for the in power group taking a step back or accepting less award. There has to be a cohort of white males who lose percentage of the pie as other groups gain it, in order to more evenly disperse resources in a world of scarcity. The seeming injustice is that these white males were born and raised in a group with outsized power and representation and were coming of age in a time of political and social "reset". 

But what’s in bold above is a core them of the essay and I thought it was provocative. The white males who hold power didn’t lose it, and the ones who were denied opportunity during the period we are discussing never had it.

Posted
1 minute ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

But what’s in bold above is a core them of the essay and I thought it was provocative. The white males who hold power didn’t lose it, and the ones who were denied opportunity during the period we are discussing never had it.

Correct. As is his wont, Vegas64 missed the point. No white cohort lost a percentage of the pie; the age group that had it still has it, the age group that doesn't have it never had it. That justifiably creates resentment, but that resentment is being aimed at the wrong people as we all agree. 

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

never had it.

Depends how you define "power," because they almost certainly do have the power to fuck up over and over again without being incarcerated for much of their adult lives (or being summarily executed during a traffic stop)

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Posted
1 minute ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

But what’s in bold above is a core them of the essay and I thought it was provocative. The white males who hold power didn’t lose it, and the ones who were denied opportunity during the period we are discussing never had it.

So in that sense, they are the first generation to have to deal with the social and political reset. It's going to be messy and it sucks for them. I think your point is that we should acknowledge this and try to address their situation (and perceived situation) and find a way to embrace them for political means? Okay sure. I don't think you'll get an argument there except or until the point where the embracing conflicts with the demographics and issues of those who are being benefited by their loss. At which point it's just a math equation, which group is bigger and/or more helpful to the greater cause?

Posted
27 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

I’m horrified by most of the Gen Z boys I meet. I’m glad I have daughters. I like to think that if I had a boy I would have done a good job of raising him like @Brisketexan did his (he’s got a good one), but the truth is I think the problem is way beyond parenting. It’s everything. It’s the dismal tide. 

A pretty ok kid my daughter’s age was at our house and called Andrew Tate “the top G,” and when I responded in an even speaking that Tate was “the opposite of what a man should be” the kid seemed very personally wounded. It was troubling.  

I haven’t seen data for the U.S. but a UK dive into who followed and liked Tate revealed that he was not really a huge white male  influencer, although he was certainly a male influencer. I suspect but don’t know that this pattern would hold here. Note that this is a UK article and “Asian” there means South Asian and particularly Pakistani and Bangladeshi. 

 

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/21/why-ethnic-minority-boys-are-more-drawn-to-andrew-tate/

I think there are other manosphere influencers more optimized for the whites like Peterson, Rogan, etc. 

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Posted (edited)
3 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

So in that sense, they are the first generation to have to deal with the social and political reset. It's going to be messy and it sucks for them. I think your point is that we should acknowledge this and try to address their situation (and perceived situation) and find a way to embrace them for political means? Okay sure. I don't think you'll get an argument there except or until the point where the embracing conflicts with the demographics and issues of those who are being benefited by their loss. At which point it's just a math equation, which group is bigger and/or more helpful to the greater cause?

If we're being totally accurate, Millennials are not even the first generation to feel like they have it worse than the preceding generations. You don't think there were Gen X and Boomers who entered a "politically correct" workforce and resented the fact they couldn't LARP as Don Draper, smoking cigars, drinking whisky, and fucking secretaries all day?

Edited by chainsaw
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Posted
2 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

Correct. As is his wont, Vegas64 missed the point. No white cohort lost a percentage of the pie; the age group that had it still has it, the age group that doesn't have it never had it. That justifiably creates resentment, but that resentment is being aimed at the wrong people as we all agree. 

True, I should have said lost the forecasted percentage of the pie they were groomed to believe was theirs based on a mix of history, entitlement, privilege and what they've been groomed to believe their whole lives instead of implying they lost something they already tangibly had.

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Posted
4 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

But what’s in bold above is a core them of the essay and I thought it was provocative. The white males who hold power didn’t lose it, and the ones who were denied opportunity during the period we are discussing never had it.

Yeah, an analogy comes to mind in the Military or any other organization with a defined promotion/tenure schedule for up or out.  You watch the guys in front of you get their promotion every two years and think I can live with that and sign up and then there is an end to GWOT leading to reduction in force and now the standards for getting that next promotion are higher since there are fewer spots than there used to be.  The guys that thought they were on this ride for the long haul and would have made it under the old standards now have to get off and are disappointed.

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Posted
Just now, 956 Worldwide said:

I haven’t seen data for the U.S. but a UK dive into who followed and liked Tate revealed that he was not really a huge white male  influencer, although he was certainly a male influencer. I suspect but don’t know that this pattern would hold here. Note that this is a UK article and “Asian” there means South Asian and particularly Pakistani and Bangladeshi. 

 

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/21/why-ethnic-minority-boys-are-more-drawn-to-andrew-tate/

I think there are other manosphere influencers more optimized for the whites like Peterson, Rogan, etc. 

 

I feel like Peterson is starting to age out. But that's just my gut sense, not off any data.

Posted
13 minutes ago, G650 said:

Seeing that clown get his ass beat did my soul good

This is an aside- by way of background I’ve been a boxing fan my entire life and spent 15 years in boxing gyms on an off, and even did some coaching. I wasn’t any good, but I know what I’m looking at. 
 

I will grant Jake Paul a modicum of respect for this one thing: he started late and yet got to the level of a decent local pro. He would be like the 5-6th best heavyweight boxer in DFW, for example. That’s good enough to get your ass beat flat by Anthony Joshua past his prime, but it’s not nothing. 
 

I don’t know anything about the sport of kickboxing, but because it has “boxing” on the name and Andrew Tate was apparently a professional kickboxing champion I just assumed he could box well enough to hang with Chase DeMoor, because DeMoor can’t box, like at all. Evidently not. 

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Posted
6 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

The white males who hold power didn’t lose it, and the ones who were denied opportunity during the period we are discussing never had it.

But YOU are missing the point.

Today's white males do not "have it worse than everyone else."  Instead....they have just as average/shitty a lot in life as everyone else (even that's not true.  Come on, it's still better to be a white dude than a black dude, we all know it).

What they have lost  is SOME of the unfair advantage their predecessors had.

They do not want a "fair shake."  They want to get back the unfair advantage their predecessors had.

 

Now, if your point is instead "now that we see that in a more egalitarian society, white males also get fucked, because everyone is getting fucked, and we should do something about everyone getting fucked," I'd agree with that.  But I'll also observe that a material chunk of young white men is not interested in the "do something about everyone getting fucked" path. Instead, they choose the lazy, convenient path of punching down and blaming women and minorities for taking....some of the unfair advantage away.

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Posted
6 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

Depends how you define "power," because they almost certainly do have the power to fuck up over and over again without being incarcerated for much of their adult lives (or being summarily executed during a traffic stop)

Indeed, and that’s extremely significant. 

Posted
3 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

and resented the fact they couldn't LARP as Don Draper, smoking cigars, drinking whisky, and fucking secretaries all day?

I mean.....SIGH.  It's okay to have some retrograde fantasies, fellas....right?  Help me out here.

4 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

I should have said lost the forecasted percentage of the pie they were groomed to believe was theirs based on a mix of history, entitlement, privilege and what they've been groomed to believe their whole lives instead of implying they lost something they already tangibly had.

And this, I would agree with.  "We thought we'd get to start every inning on 3rd base, or at least second, and now, we actually have to step up to the plate and bat - THAT'S NOT FAIR" is closer to the dynamic we're dealing with.  And I get why you don't like being without the inherent, unearned advantages you thought you were entitled to, but here's the thing.....you weren't actually entitled to them.

Getting white males to swallow the truth pill of "you shouldn't have been, and aren't, entitled to anything other than the same opportunities as everyone else" is one of the challenges of our times.  It's not going well for us.

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Posted

That is true, but the bigger challenge almost all humans face is getting over the fact that life, itself, is not fair.

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Posted
7 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

I mean.....SIGH.  It's okay to have some retrograde fantasies, fellas....right?  Help me out here.

And this, I would agree with.  "We thought we'd get to start every inning on 3rd base, or at least second, and now, we actually have to step up to the plate and bat - THAT'S NOT FAIR" is closer to the dynamic we're dealing with.  And I get why you don't like being without the inherent, unearned advantages you thought you were entitled to, but here's the thing.....you weren't actually entitled to them.

Getting white males to swallow the truth pill of "you shouldn't have been, and aren't, entitled to anything other than the same opportunities as everyone else" is one of the challenges of our times.  It's not going well for us.

And so THIS finally gets to the heart of the extrapolation or the political point I think Bozo was trying to grasp with.

We, as society and politics, can meet these aggrieved white males where they are with a measure of empathy and understanding and gracefully bring them into the big tent but it doesn't help when you have others take the position of that being just another example of the white man being coddled and privileged and helped in a way that no minority or marginalized group ever got.

But also we shouldn't be surprised when to your point the white male group who feels they got the rug pulled out from underneath them doesn't just accept it and deal with the new reality but instead chooses to try and fight back and win back the ground (privilege) they've perceived to have lost (though they never really had it).

Posted
25 minutes ago, G650 said:

So there are two things here. I agree with most of this, but 2) is incorrect. There are a bazillion of these jobs out there, but we have told masses of people they are too good for them.

Tell me more.  Are there really?  By that kind of job, I meant manufacturing (that doesn't require a degree/advanced training) and agriculture (75+ years ago, a shitload of dudes worked out on the farm).

See this:

Fig1.png

269-03.png

 

in 1980, 20% of American workers were in manufacturing (and in 1980, most of those were men).  Today, it's 8.31%

In 1950, there were nearly 50 million farm jobs.  Today, there's around 2 million farm jobs.  Granted, that hit was more across the board racially (lots of minority farm workers at all relevant periods), but for men in general, it is a blow across the board.

Yes, there are good jobs in the trades like plumbers and electricians.  And those trades have grown some, but not NEARLY enough to capture all of the jobs lost in manufacturing and ag:

 

assets%252F9342c7ee957c42b28f68132232c5a

 

Posted
2 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

But also we shouldn't be surprised when to your point the white male group who feels they got the rug pulled out from underneath them doesn't just accept it and deal with the new reality but instead chooses to try and fight back and win back the ground (privilege) they've perceived to have lost (though they never really had it).

The battle has already been decided.  This viewpoint has won, handily.  Like "Ole Miss over Tulane" handily.

The entire national power structure in our government is dedicated to fostering, stoking, and fighting for that exact worldview:

image.jpg?ve=1&tl=1

That's it.  That's our full national approach now: governmentally, socially, educationally.  Full-on white grievance, take every bit of advantage back, and hate/blame/undermine everyone else.

Maybe what I don't get is why we're even having this pointless fucking conversation.  The whiny bitch-ass author has fucking WON.  It's his world now.  Complete domination, anything that deviates from that will be crushed by the regime.  Don't believe me?

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSxOeuIen7EQXoasPP2Ifh

So, this whole thread is just mental masturbation.  The battle is over.  White men won.  Completely, totally, and without any exception or reservation.

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Posted (edited)
27 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

But YOU are missing the point.

No, I'm just not playing along. 

27 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Today's white males do not "have it worse than everyone else."  Instead....they have just as average/shitty a lot in life as everyone else (even that's not true.  Come on, it's still better to be a white dude than a black dude, we all know it).*

What they have lost  is SOME of the unfair advantage their predecessors had.**

They do not want a "fair shake."  They want to get back the unfair advantage their predecessors had.***

 

*Holy strawman, Brisket! Who said they"have it worse than everyone else"?

** Sigh, you are here begging the question. You bolded the word lost and it's important to your point, but did most of them ever have that advantage? I'm not sure. But either way, that isn't even what this is about.
What you (ostensibly) read in the essay and from me (who you know personally) is first-hand  personal knowlege of millenial men excluded from consideration for jobs and promotional opportunities on the basis of their race and gender, usually by white boomer and Gen X men, and that's significant too.
You aren't addressing that at all. Instead, you're sort of vaguely suggesting that it didn't happen, or maybe didn't happen a lot, and if it did, they deserved it because their motivations are bad, ie

*** "they want to get back the unfair advantage their predecessors had." 

I don't buy that. I think most people just want to move up in the world, forward in their career, etc, and there's nothing wrong about wanting that. 
 

27 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Now, if your point is instead "now that we see that in a more egalitarian society, white males also get fucked, because everyone is getting fucked, and we should do something about everyone getting fucked," I'd agree with that. 

I said that too, because that's what white progressives don't seem to want to address. 

 

27 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

But I'll also observe that a material chunk of young white men is not interested in the "do something about everyone getting fucked" path. Instead, they choose the lazy, convenient path of punching down and blaming women and minorities for taking....some of the unfair advantage away.

You don't care about them getting fucked and said so, to wit:

Quote

Summary from Brisket: don't come bitching to me about your generation getting fucked.  Nope, shut the fuck up, I am going to tune your ass out because nobody ever has and nobody ever will give a fuck about our generation, so fuck off.

...

In summary: fuck 'em. 

 
 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted
1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

Tell me more.  Are there really?  By that kind of job, I meant manufacturing (that doesn't require a degree/advanced training) and agriculture (75+ years ago, a shitload of dudes worked out on the farm).

See this:

Fig1.png

269-03.png

 

in 1980, 20% of American workers were in manufacturing (and in 1980, most of those were men).  Today, it's 8.31%

In 1950, there were nearly 50 million farm jobs.  Today, there's around 2 million farm jobs.  Granted, that hit was more across the board racially (lots of minority farm workers at all relevant periods), but for men in general, it is a blow across the board.

Yes, there are good jobs in the trades like plumbers and electricians.  And those trades have grown some, but not NEARLY enough to capture all of the jobs lost in manufacturing and ag:

 

assets%252F9342c7ee957c42b28f68132232c5a

 

I'll state right up front I don't think manufacturing are good jobs. I think it's the most soulless dehumanizing thing on the planet, and if anyone disagrees I am happy to arrange a visit to a low or mid tech factory. Shipping those jobs to China is the best thing this country ever did.

 

But people need to set aside "plumbers" as some north star for blue collar work. There is a whole world out here that is a blank spot in the map on these stats that get thrown around. And it is all chronically under employed. Without hyperbole, I really thought about 10 or 15 years ago, that our industry would almost cease to exist because there were no young people coming in to replace retirees. And I don't mean that hyperbolically, I mean actual zero young people. We went a decade without seeing one. Now this has changed in the past 5 years as kids have realized that maybe it's a better opportunity, and I'm happy about that, but there could be a lot more coming in. Most blue collar type companies are always 10%-20% understaffed, in perpetuity. You can do the math on that country wide.

 

Now a downside to this is that if talented people start to flow in, then less talented get displaced. And we are back to the moron issue. But I am a big UBI proponent anyway. 

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Posted (edited)
26 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

I mean.....SIGH.  It's okay to have some retrograde fantasies, fellas....right?  Help me out here.

And this, I would agree with.  "We thought we'd get to start every inning on 3rd base, or at least second, and now, we actually have to step up to the plate and bat - THAT'S NOT FAIR" is closer to the dynamic we're dealing with.  And I get why you don't like being without the inherent, unearned advantages you thought you were entitled to, but here's the thing.....you weren't actually entitled to them.

Getting white males to swallow the truth pill of "you shouldn't have been, and aren't, entitled to anything other than the same opportunities as everyone else" is one of the challenges of our times.  It's not going well for us.

I think that the last statement is in fact what’s under debate- what does it mean to “have the same opportunities as everyone else.” And that’s been reflected most starkly in the shift from “equality” to “equity” on the linguistic front. And a substantial constituency rejects that shift.

Imagine that tomorrow you woke up in Gaullist-occupied America and the new overlords introduced French-style equality (equality, not equity is enshrined in the French National slogan). Race, ethnicity, origin religion is not recognized by the state, and it’s prohibited for anyone to collect that data or even ask about it. 
 

There is a strong case to be made that this represents “the same opportunities for everyone.” There is a strong case that it wouldn’t be fit for purpose given American realities (there is also a strong case that it’s  not fit for French realities).

But what is absolutely true is that there is not consensus in either France or America on the “equality or equity” more desirable question. And in the U.S. there is an established set of laws and regulations that bias “equality” while the conversation and practice in lots of institutions has trended towards “equity” and that creates inherent tensions because they are not—and unapologetically not—the same thing.

So you are kind of begging the question at hand, it isnt settled culturally or legally. I rather think most of the demographic under discussion would gladly sign up for the French version of “same opportunities for everyone.” 

Edited by 956 Worldwide
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Posted
1 minute ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

No, I'm just not playing along. 

*Holy strawman, Brisket! Who said they"have it worse than everyone else"?

** Sigh, you are here begging the question. You bolded the word lost and it's important to your point, but did most of them ever have that advantage? I'm not sure. But either way, that isn't even what this is about.
What you (ostensibly) read in the essay and from me (who you know personally) is first-hand  personal knowlege of millenial men excluded from consideration for jobs and promotional opportunities on the basis of their race and gender, usually by white boomer and Gen X men, and that's significant too. You aren't addressing that at all. Instead, you're sort of suggesting that it didn't happen, or maybe didn't happen a lot, and if it did, they deserved it because their motivations are bad, ie

*** "they want to get back the unfair advantage their predecessors had." 

I don't buy that. I think most people just want to move up in the world, forward in their career, etc, and there's nothing wrong about wanting that. 
 

I said that too, because that's what white progressives don't seem to want to address. 

 

You don't care about them getting fucked and said so, to wit:

 
 

I don't care about them getting fucked because they've chosen to sign up for the white grievance wars and enlist in the "punch down at minorities and women" squad.  So, yeah...based on that, fuck em.

And as for your first-hand accounts, groovy.  There are still a shitload of fields where being a white male carries an inherent advantage, and I'd suggest that society-wide, it all comes out in the wash, and white men actually STILL have an outsized advantage in comparison to their overall percentage of society.  That is, I'm going to bet that among 20-30 year olds, "well-paying jobs" still go to white males at a percentage higher than their actual percentage of the population.  Here's my quick find from 2016 - yes, nearly a decade out of date, but I'm betting that the numbers remain pretty close, percentage-wise:

georgetown-snip-2-thumb-636x486-37587.pn

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Posted
3 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

But what is absolutely true is that there is not consensus in either France or America on the “equality or equity” more desirable question. And in the U.S. there is an established set of laws and regulations that bias “equality” while the conversation and practice in lots of institutions has trended towards “equity” and that creates inherent tensions because they are not—and unapologetically not—the same thing.

So you are kind of begging the question at hand, it isnt settled culturally or legally. I rather think most of the demographic under discussion would gladly sign up for the French version of “same opportunities for everyone.” 

Thus the white nationalist quest (successful, so far) to ban "CRT" (which they define as "teaching that our society had any race-based problems, ever").

Because the issues arise largely from systemic, generations-long pressures.  We kept minorities down, so their kids and grandkids remain disadvantaged.  We favored white men, so their kids and grandkids have an advantage.  IF we don't talk about that, or even acknowledge that it exists, then yeah...anything that even hints at acknowledging that reality is gonna piss off white people.

Because of these generations-long biases, generic white guy was more likely to be born into a middle class or better family -- which, statistically, sets him up for future success -- than generic black or brown guy.  So, now that white guy has a 100 yard head start, we want to declare "everyone has an equal chance to win the race that starts right now!"

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Posted (edited)
12 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

So you are kind of begging the question at hand, it isnt settled culturally or legally. I rather think most of the demographic under discussion would gladly sign up for the French version of “same opportunities for everyone.” 

And we would have MUCH more and better cheese. But it would not be great for anybody who was not "heritage American" because the kind of "colorblind nationalism" that is practiced in the real life of France is often quite a bit like like what we see MAGA working towards - a sort of perscriptive cultural American-ness that treats others with deep suspicion.

10 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

And as for your first-hand accounts, groovy.  There are still a shitload of fields where being a white male carries an inherent advantage,

I think you are really dug in, and  unfortunately not responding thoughtfully. Again, do you not understand that the consistent theme of what I've posted, including the post you repsonded to is that GenX and Boomer white males did not give up anything or lose any advantage? You're just reciting the catachism here. 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted (edited)
6 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Thus the white nationalist quest (successful, so far) to ban "CRT" (which they define as "teaching that our society had any race-based problems, ever").

Because the issues arise largely from systemic, generations-long pressures.  We kept minorities down, so their kids and grandkids remain disadvantaged.  We favored white men, so their kids and grandkids have an advantage.  IF we don't talk about that, or even acknowledge that it exists, then yeah...anything that even hints at acknowledging that reality is gonna piss off white people.

Because of these generations-long biases, generic white guy was more likely to be born into a middle class or better family -- which, statistically, sets him up for future success -- than generic black or brown guy.  So, now that white guy has a 100 yard head start, we want to declare "everyone has an equal chance to win the race that starts right now!"

It's funny you mention CRT because I had that thought as well reading this. I came to the conclusion that the reason it was such a bogeyman was actually prescient and strategically deft by the party of the aggrieved white man. CRT was a tiny interdisciplinary framework found almost entirely in the ivory tower of academia and had zero to do with anything else, but to hear the aggreived white man tell it, it was everywhere and all at once. 

But the genius was to kill it as an infant in the crib before it got full grown and then you had to address the conclusions that reframe everything. 

If my cynical interpretation is true (and I think you are agreeing with me) then it actually was politically savvy to demonize, isolate and eliminate CRT while it was being sold as "just an academic framework and just an honesty interpretation of history, nothing to fear for the aggrieved white man." which might not have been entirely the truth.

Edited by Vegas64
Posted (edited)
4 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

If my cynical interpretation is true (and I think you are agreeing with me) then it actually was politically savvy to demonize, isolate and eliminate CRT while it was being sold as "just an academic framework and just an honesty interpretation of history, nothing to fear for the aggrieved white man." which might not have been entirely the truth.

CRT was never going to be dangerous. It's like any other critical academic framework  - somewhat self-evident, highly self-referential, analytically useful, and fragile when confronted by ambiguity. 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted
3 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

And we would have MUCH more and better cheese. But it would not be great for anybody who was not "heritage American" because the kind of "colorblind nationalism" that is practiced in the real life of France is often quite a bit like like what we see MAGA working towards. 

I think you are really dug in, and  unfortunately not responding thoughtfully. Again, do you not understand that the consistent theme of what I've posted, including the post you repsonded to is that GenX and Boomer white males did not give up anything or lose any advantage? You're just reciting the catachism here. 

 I think both you and brisket have arrived at the “equity is more desirable.” Where brisket is failing is at acknowledging an uncomfortable but real truth: shifting to “equity” means some individuals have been denied some opportunities that would have been available to them under the “equality” model. 

And a refusal to admit that truth leads to the lack of empathy. It is much easier to call those people whiners. Just like on the “equality” front it’s easier to frame inequity as a pure function of personal responsibility. They are really both screaming into a mirror. 

Lots of culture war battles stem from a desire to not acknowledge uncomfortable truths. 

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Posted
35 minutes ago, G650 said:

That is true, but the bigger challenge almost all humans face is getting over the fact that life, itself, is not fair.

Right. A big part of growing up is realizing the world doesn't revolve around you and that you can do everything right and still get the short end of the stick for arbitrary or no reasons at all. We can and should work to provide a system that helps alleviate the worst symptoms of that and to minimize the unfairness, but there's no way to actually eliminate unfairness and create a perfectly meritocratic system. There will always be some number of people who have bad luck.  It doesn't help anyone to indulge their anger and encourage them to attribute their bad luck to false causes.

These guys don't need JD Vance's bullshit, they need Shoresy:

 

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Posted
5 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

 I think both you and brisket have arrived at the “equity is more desirable.” Where brisket is failing is at acknowledging an uncomfortable but real truth: shifting to “equity” means some individuals have been denied some opportunities that would have been available to them under the “equality” model. 

And a refusal to admit that truth leads to the lack of empathy. It is much easier to call those people whiners. Just like on the “equality” front it’s easier to frame inequity as a pure function of personal responsibility. They are really both screaming into a mirror. 

Lots of culture war battles stem from a desire to not acknowledge uncomfortable truths. 

Good post. 

Posted
6 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Where brisket is failing is at acknowledging an uncomfortable but real truth: shifting to “equity” means some individuals have been denied some opportunities that would have been available to them under the “equality” model. 

I don't think anyone has denied that, I think we are debating what it means.

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Posted
30 minutes ago, G650 said:

I'll state right up front I don't think manufacturing are good jobs. I think it's the most soulless dehumanizing thing on the planet, and if anyone disagrees I am happy to arrange a visit to a low or mid tech factory. Shipping those jobs to China is the best thing this country ever did.

 

But people need to set aside "plumbers" as some north star for blue collar work. There is a whole world out here that is a blank spot in the map on these stats that get thrown around. And it is all chronically under employed. Without hyperbole, I really thought about 10 or 15 years ago, that our industry would almost cease to exist because there were no young people coming in to replace retirees. And I don't mean that hyperbolically, I mean actual zero young people. We went a decade without seeing one. Now this has changed in the past 5 years as kids have realized that maybe it's a better opportunity, and I'm happy about that, but there could be a lot more coming in. Most blue collar type companies are always 10%-20% understaffed, in perpetuity. You can do the math on that country wide.

 

Now a downside to this is that if talented people start to flow in, then less talented get displaced. And we are back to the moron issue. But I am a big UBI proponent anyway. 

The vast majority of Americans, clamoring for more US manufacturing jobs, have zero desire to work those jobs themselves. Or Dave Chapelle put it more succinctly, "I want to wear Jordans, not make them."

If these jobs are brought here, the manufacturers will start to complain that they need more immigrants to work them.

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

I think you are really dug in, and unfortunately not responding thoughtfully. Again, do you not understand that the consistent theme of what I've posted, including the post you repsonded to is that GenX and Boomer white males did not give up anything or lose any advantage? You're just reciting the catachism here. 

You've definitely said that. The question is whether the evidence actually shows it. I'm sure it has happened in particular companies and maybe even in particular industries. And that sucks. As I said in my first posts in this thread, a rush to change can also lead to an outsized and immediate impact. I think poorly implemented policies or ones that had a goal of making significant changes to the diversity of a company in short time frame (e.g., a couple of years) had negative impact on certain groups of workers. But the primary driver of the resentment in the original article appears to be the belief that prior to DEI policies becoming mainstream, the workplace was more fair and meritocracy based. That isn't a call for fair treatment. It is a call for the return of treatment that more favored white males. What is true is that the ones who lost some of the privileges attached with being a white male weren't those that most benefitted from them. And from a certain angle that can be seen as an unfair punishment. It would be fairer to take from those that reaped the awards of privileged, and I've repeatedly advocated that in this thread (despite your insistence that I don't care and want to abandon these people). 

I have no idea why you derisively dismissed this post, but it is an excellent response that captures both the need for empathy but also why we can't just feed negative beliefs that may not be based in fact. 

14 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

I've been a bit simplistic in some of my responses because I didn't have the time to give this 5,000+ words when shit needed doin over the weekend. What I and Dahobbs and others have been pretty clear about though, I think, is that we are willing to believe that some young white men have been discriminated against by silly employment policies, but that it isn't a real widespread issue. There's reams of data backing up the fact that it isn't really a widespread issue. It's certainly not as severe an issue as Republicans pretend it is. That means that many, and I believe most, young white men who believe they've been discriminated against are wrong in that belief. Now I can empathize with why they wrongly think that. I grew up in a conservative family surrounded by conservative families. I remember the whispered racial grievances of the 90s and 2000s. We were all too good and too respectable to be racist; that was for white trash. But my mom and tons of friends' parents would talk about how it wasn't fair that underperforming black kids were taking our spots in college and that reverse racism was the only real racism left in America.

It's easy to start believing that shit and if you start believing it might be true you'll start spotting things that you think reinforce it as you progress through life, because the world is a big place with a lot of people in it and many of those people make mistakes and some of those people are just shitty people who do bad things. I was a shitty student from a middle class home at a very diverse high school full of high-achieving minority students.  I absolutely could've gone down that path. I like to think I'm smart enough that I never would've fallen for it, but if I had been born ten years later and Trump was mainstreaming unapologetic racism again at the time I was becoming an adult and politically aware, I could see an alternate timeline where a version of 19-year-old me bought into the racial grievances.

I think about that alternate me and I wonder: would it help turn him away from that path to have a liberal tell him that those peddling the racism were right about him being screwed over to help some dumber black kid or whatever? Fucking of course not. "Even the liberal [centrist pundit] agrees with us that the left has gone too far" is some of the most effective conservative rhetoric.  The idea that reinforcing that rhetoric would result in liberal political gains is insane. 

Of the white boys and young men who've bought into these false racial grievances, some are undoubtedly open to persuasion. Those who are a little smarter than most of the others, those who have some liberal friends, those who stumble onto a lefty podcast that starts to make sense to them, etc. But persuading all those young white men requires convincing them that their racial grievances are mistaken.

And for the very select few who might've been unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and actually did get shafted for being white, we can say "shit man, that sucks and shouldn't have happened, but you can't let that experience poison you." Using me as an example again, my dad died from medical malpractice when I was a teenager. That experience has undoubtedly impacted how I feel about our healthcare system. If that had happened now to alternate me, with frauds peddling woo healthcare bullshit from the White House, I could see him buying into it. But I didn't buy into it, even though I was pretty familiar with all of that woo bullshit 20 years ago, because I wasn't surrounded by people saying "well you know RFK Jr. is right that there are a lot of problems with the healthcare system!" It was still the type of thing only kooks bought into and that helped me look at their bullshit critically.

If we were talking about healthcare rather than discrimination, Bozo's proposal to reach me would've meant indulging my worst feelings and most wrong beliefs. It would've meant telling me something like "you're right to be angry, they killed your dad for money." But that's not what happened; what happened was that a doctor who was by most accounts a good doctor made a horrible mistake, because he's a person and people make mistakes. I'm very glad Bozo wasn't there to tell me comforting lies when I was at my worst; I'd be a worse person today if he had.   

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