Not left, not right, but forward
As political factions begin attempting to win, or shame, young men back onto side, we have to stay the course
The coalition model of both politics and culture which has prevailed since at least 2012 remains smoldering ruins since early this year, and while individual policy and personality spats carry on apace, the broader culture has been swept of it’s prevailing ideology, with multiple strains of the old world vying to fill the gap. Judeo-Christian conservatism, a less social and more economic progressive left, and even more radical remnants of the previous ruling ‘social justice’ philosophy turning to car bombs as a protest against life itself.
As usual, the political tide shifts are a bit behind the culture, and as the two primary political parties in the United States begin to recognize and attempt to reconcile with the critical mass of disaffected and ‘checked-out’ young men… they cannot help but fall back on their frame, which is the very structure currently collapsing.
The ‘left’ which since it’s cultural ascendency in the 60’s and 70’s has steadily and increasingly eroded the standing of young men in public life seems to only just have noticed the alienation of such a sizeable gap of the productive population, and has already committed two months and twenty million dollars researching focus groups on how to communicate with them. These establishment politicians are so disconnected from how regular people live, they’re approaching the question of why young men hate them like they’re trying to figure out the aliens from the film Arrival.
The party’s trial run for this effort appears to be the morbidly obese influencer Olivia Julianna, whose pitch to young men is that they actually do agree with BLM, gay rights and college dude-bros are actually wholesome progressives that want minimum wage hikes and the Democrats just haven’t been welcoming. Doubling down with conciliatory language.
Surely the ‘right’ is doing better? Trump’s populism and direct appeal to young men who carried water for the campaign, even if inadvertently online by way of disdain for the ‘left’ and progressive social hegemony, would make the isolation, rejection and side-lining of young men in the workforce and education a motivating platform for Con Inc? Even addressing traditional conservative concerns, like the collapsing birthrate, lack of family formation, spiking of crime and a decaying standard of living one would think it would be — even cynically — useful to rally young men.
Well, ironically, while the left appears to be experimenting with not making brow-beating their single and only means of communication, prominent Republican commentator Tomi Lahren recently took to Fox News to berate young men as failed, indolent degenerates who expect a tradwife while living in their parent’s basement and fixing them with the label “stay-at-home-sons.”
Neither side proposes a solution or even addresses the millstones tied around young men when it comes to relationships, employment, home ownership or anything else. Whatever help this cohort gets will be home-grown, no matter who is in office.
The truth is, as the title suggests, neither ‘right’ nor ‘left’ but forward. I certainly don’t mean that as some cheap centrism of “the truth is in the middle.” I also don’t mean politics doesn’t ultimately affect the way things are… what I’m telling you, and disaffected young men generally, is that we are not even halfway yet to a place where we can operate as though we have cultural prominence.
Both of the above ‘strategies’ to win back young men are politically partisan women essentially demanding young, lonely men show up for them, for their ‘team.’ Expecting we, of whom many are in the middle of creating new but also deeply rooted and informed culture for ourselves and each other, to sublimate or even abandon those efforts to put out their house fires.
We shouldn’t. Especially those of us who are engaged in the formation of new cultures, like this blog, like the artists and writers and community-builders who have shared their successes with us. We should carry on building, adopt perhaps a mercenary attitude towards larger establishment structures where we can or must, but in our hearts divorce ourselves from ‘the culture war’ as it is being peddled to us.
They’ll stand outside in the social nuclear winter following November ‘24 and plead… and accuse… threaten… insult… apologize… coax… threaten again… but eventually they’ll have to come to the gate and ask to be let into what will be some of the only stable, generative and coherent communities left. And we will welcome them on our terms.
The funny thing is, both of them, particularly Lahren, are in a way berating young men for not being active, not becoming the leaders they expect them, even need them to be. By ignoring Lahren and carrying on our efforts, we will be doing just that… just not for her benefit.