“I saw this from InstaPundit reader Bart Hall and it got me thinking:
I notice interesting military trends which more than hint at a pattern, at least from an historical perspective.
Taiwan, Japan, and Australia are seriously arming up. South Korea, Philippines, and Vietnam … less so, but significantly.”
This was an interesting response from Grok when I asked it to draw the 7 Trumpets.
Why men and women are diverging ideologically, even as they become more alike economically and educationally.
In most wealthy nations, women have steadily closed the gap with men in education, income, and professional achievement. Today, they earn the majority of undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctorates. More than half of all STEM degrees now go to women, and their presence in the tech industry has grown—from 31 percent in 2019 to 35 percent in 2023. In major metropolitan areas like Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., women under 30 now match or outearn their male peers.
Given these gains, one might expect that as men and women converge in education and income, their cultural values and outlook on the world would also grow more aligned. Yet the opposite seems to be happening.
Children will be taught that “worrying and feeling down” are normal and are not mental health conditions, as concerns grow over a sharp rise in young people on sickness benefits.
Revised relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) guidance issued to schools this month instructs teachers not to encourage self-diagnosis of conditions such as depression or anxiety.
The changes come as a result of growing concern over the number of young people who are economically inactive or have mental health conditions.
Related … Has AI caused the jobs recession?
In a recent New York Times article titled, “Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back,” Rachel Drucker laments what she calls “a collective shift” in men, a “slow vanishing of presence.” So many single men, she writes, aren’t “sitting across from someone on a Saturday night, trying to connect.” Instead, they “have retreated from intimacy, hiding behind firewalls, filters and curated personas, dabbling and scrolling.” She adds, “We miss you.”
It has become something of a cliché to assert as an evident fact accepted resignedly, that the West is in decline. But it isn’t. The West is essentially the Americas, Central and Western Europe, Israel, Australasia, and Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, arguably the Philippines and beleaguered elements in South Africa. Obviously, some of these places are in better condition than others. A degenerating society is one that has lost the will to defend itself from both external and internal enemies and where belief in the value of the society or civilization and loyalty and pride in the country have eroded to the point where there is legitimate doubt that they can be sustained under any pressure. No part of the Western world has achieved such a condition.
There was a time, not long ago, when Americans — regardless of region, class, or politics — shared a common cultural foundation. From the Saturday morning cartoons children watched to the nightly news programs adults relied on, mainstream culture was both a mirror and a glue: it reflected our values while keeping us tethered to the same national experience. That era is over.
We have entered the Age of Alternative Culture, an era defined by fragmentation, algorithmic echo chambers, and cultural isolation masquerading as global connection.
Update: Guys I bumped this post because people have questions or personal stories and hopefully we can all learn something.
What did I do today?
I got older.
Or maybe just a bit more adult.
I went to Costco.
I bought something I have needed for a long time.
Something Kathy had asked that I do many times.
To survive the geopolitical turmoil of the 21st century, the West needs to revive its industrial base.
As recent events in Iran have so aptly demonstrated, technological progress married to industrial might produces the most tangible form of power. In the recent conflict in the Middle East, this meant that a second-tier power like Iran was clearly outmatched – first by Israel, then by America.
The West needs to learn this lesson and apply it to its rivalry with a far more formidable foe: China. Unlike the theocrats of Tehran, China’s ambitions are distinctly material. And, until recently, China has made tremendous headway facing relatively little, and largely ineffective, Western opposition.
Yes I watched this entire series.
From soft power to hard muscle.
I’ve been throwing punches and kicks for the better part of a decade now. Boxing, kickboxing, the usual rotation of compound movements in the gym — nothing revolutionary, just the steady accumulation of speed and skill that comes from consistent work. It’s meditative, really. The rhythm of training, the incremental progress, the quiet satisfaction of knowing your body can do what you ask of it.
But something curious has happened in recent years, something that crystallized when my fiancée asked me a question that stopped me cold: “Is this what men find attractive now?”
