J. Kb

I believe that the destruction of Western men was deliberate and malicious

The wife sent me this OpEd by Andrew Yang:

The data are clear: The boys are not all right

Here is one of the biggest problems facing America: Boys and men across all regions and ethnic groups have been failing, both absolutely and relatively, for years. This is catastrophic for our country.

The data are clear. Boys are more than twice as likely as girls to be diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; are five times as likely to spend time in juvenile detention; and are less likely to finish high school.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t get better when boys become adults. Men now make up only 40.5 percent of college students. Male community college enrollment declined by 14.7 percent in 2020 alone, compared with 6.8 percent for women. Median wages for men have declined since 1990 in real terms. Roughly one-third of men are either unemployed or out of the workforce. More U.S. men ages 18 to 34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners.

Many boys are thus often growing up raised by single mothers, the share more than doubling between 1980 and 2019, from 18 percent to 40 percent. A study from 2015 found that “as more boys grow up without their father in the home, and as women … are viewed as the more stable achievers, boys and girls alike [may] come to see males as having a lower achievement orientation. … College becomes something that many girls, but only some boys, do.”

On a cultural level, we must stop defining masculinity as necessarily toxic and start promoting positive masculinity. Strong, healthy, fulfilled men are more likely to treat women well.

Everything he said is correct and we need to fix it.

But I don’t think we will.

Remember the Obama Life of Julia ad?

Simply, everything done by a husband or father in Julia’s life was replaced by government.

Strong men protect and defend society. Weak men don’t.

The weakening of men allowed government agencies to step in and fill the role, with the added benefit that the weakened men were unlikely to rise up in armed resistance.

As Miguel often reminds us, qui Bono?

Men have been denigrated by society and are dropping out.

Women are less likely to find husbands and fathers to help raise children.

Women turn to drugs, alcohol, and consumerism to fill the void left by a lack of a husband and children.

When they do have children they are raised with the help of government programs.

The lack of skilled men encourages corporations to seek out workers overseas, lowering costs.

Everyday the most tinfoil hat conspiracy theories become evidently true.

I’m left to the conclusion that the destruction of men in Western society was a deliberate act to create a dependent serf class that is incapable of being independent and raising children without government and lacks the capability to mount a violent revolution against the system that crushed it.

If it wasn’t, explain to me how anything would be different.

 

My used trucks just went up in value again

Car companies stand to make billions by charging you monthly fees for add-on features like heated seats

How would you feel about paying $5 each month for the ability to lock and unlock your car from a distance through an app? What about a $25-per-month charge for advanced cruise control or $10 to access heated seats? What if those charges continued long after your car was paid off?

Not content with the relatively low-margin business of building and selling cars, automakers are eager to pull down Silicon Valley-style profits. But unlike with Netflix, you won’t be able to use your ex-girlfriend’s uncle’s login in your new BMW.

For automakers, the advantage of this model is clear. Not only do they get a stream of recurring revenue for years after an initial purchase, they can hope to maintain a longer-term relationship with the customer and build brand loyalty, said Kristin Kolodge, vice president and head of auto benchmarking and mobility development at J.D. Power.

Brands including Lexus, Toyota, and Subaru invite owners to pay for the convenience of being able to lock or start their cars remotely through an app. In some BMWs, you can pay to unlock automatic high-beam headlights, which dim for oncoming traffic. In 2020, BMW floated the idea of pay-as-you-go heated seats and steering wheels. General Motors and Ford both offer subscription plans for their hands-free highway driving systems.

Automakers run the risk of making customers feel like they’re paying twice — once for a function to be built into a vehicle and again to activate it, Kolodge said. They may have more luck asking people to subscribe to brand-new services, rather than familiar features, she added.

Still, automakers see dollar signs. Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler), Ford, and GM each aim to generate at least $20 billion in annual revenue from software services by 2030.

Over-the-air capabilities open up huge opportunities for carmakers to introduce new subscription or pay-per use features over time, Wakefield, of AlixPartners, said. Someday, you may be able to fork over extra to make your car more efficient, sportier, or — in an electric vehicle — unlock extra range for road trips.

Very simply, fuck you, no.

A new truck is well over $50,000 for anything other than a bare bones work truck.

Payments on a new truck are easily over $800 per month (ask me how I know).

So on top of the payment for the truck, I’m now going to have to pay for all the options I wanted as a monthly fee?

And let me guess, they will be seasonally priced.

So I want to run the Max A/C setting in the South in summer it’s going to be $25 per month.

And there is literally no end to what this can do.

Did you want the high horsepower sports package?  That’s $50 per month or we leave the limiter on.

The new car market will die.

People will hang onto used cars and keep fixing them until they disintegrate into rust.

People will not stand to pay monthly subscription charges for options they used to pay for once.

Or there will be an entire sub-industry of jail breaking cars to unlock all the options without a fee.

Ultimately it means I’m done buying new cars and I know I’m not alone.

Sewing the seeds of their own destruction

I was going through one of my favorite Twitter feeds chronicling how much schools are torturing students who opt out of masking.

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1490821954760183808

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1491148587925127168

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1491193429258555392

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1491168345986859009

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1491188426628284416

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1491153877802303488

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1491190086993874946

It just goes on and on.

I know how pissed parents are at this.

Now imagine how pissed the kids are.

They have been frozen out, starved, forced to sit outside in the cold,, expelled, and threatened with restraining orders and arrest for choosing not to wear a mask in school when it was optional and forced to wear masks on school while politicians and school administrators went maskless on their presence.

How do you think these kids think about the Leftists that have been abusing them for two years?

Do you think they will forgive and forget what was done to them in their formative years?

I have a feeling there is a massive wave of anti-Leftists coming as these kids enter adulthood and want retribution.

At least I hope there is.

We should take the Lt. Aldo Raine approach to maskers

If you have been following the news the Left has made an about-face on masking kids in school.

The New York Times, CNN’s medical expert Dr. Leana Wen, and others have admitted that mask wearing by children in schools is utterly useless.

Virginia passed a bipartisan bill making masks in school optional.

This occurred after Stacey Abrams got caught in Georgia visiting a school unmasked while all the kids were masked, and then called everyone who called her a hypocrite “racist.”

This occurred after countless Progressives such as AOC, Eric Swalwell, and Gavin Newsom were caught at public events unmasked.

I’m old enough to remember how for the last two years how these very same people called those of us who didn’t want to wear masks selfish grandma-killers who deserved to be driven out of polite society.

They did this long after it was demonstrated unequivocally that the vast majority of masks and situations in which people were told to wear masks had zero influence on the spread of COVID-19.

They did this long after it was demonstrated unequivocally that masking hurt children, causing them to have educational, developmental, and socialization delays.

The reason for continuing mask mandates was made perfectly clear by a Democrat Virginia State Senator (who, to be fair, has been against masking of children for a while).

“The decision to wear a mask in public – when there is so little correlation with public health – makes it de facto a political decision. In other words, by wearing a mask in a public setting, the wearer is able to communicate a political message, e.g. “I Care About Others” or “I voted for Biden.””

It is crystal clear that the change in the Left’s opinion on masking children (and everyone else) had nothing to do with science and everything to do with polling and Biden’s crashing popularity.

Reading off of this I found myself thinking of these two movie scenes:

 

The Leftists who harangued and abused us for two years over masks cannot be allowed to pretend like they didn’t do what they did and have been simply motivated by “the science” and concern for the public health this entire time so they can escape any political fallout come midterms.

They should be indelibly marked as maskers forever so that we can hold them accountable as the damage to our children continues to manifest for years to come.

A big “M” carved into their foreheads is a good start.