Matt Taibbi at Racket News had a very good interview with Savage on Dec. 17--many comments. "Are White Men a "Lost Generation"? Interview With Author Jacob Savage
The interview itself is paywalled. Prior to the paywall Taibbi says sorry not sorry over being part of the problem. Then at the end takes a dig along the very lines Savage was talking about, justifying the discrimination white male job applicants were receiving because women and minorities had received similar. Like maybe back in 66 to my way of thinking.
The Racket News interview and the comments were very informative to me. I do subscribe. Some of Racket News posts are paywalled, some are not.. I didn't check on this one.
I was once included in a candidate pool for an admin job which was all M and they needed to have a W in the pool. All 4 turned down the position because it paid too low so I--number 5--got the job (and it was a raise for me). This has all evolved in different ways.
Weekend open thread(ish), so a very brief statement of why I’m a conservative.
One. Poverty is caused by the breakdown of marriage. Get ‘Promises I can Keep’, which is a book by sociologists doing an ethnology of black, white, and Hispanic single mothers. Pay particular attention to the chapter ‘How Does a Dream Die?’ Promiscuity socializes men to be partyers, not providers. That’s even more important than the loss of a father’s income.
Two. The Sexual Revolution created a rape culture in which 1 in 3 women are the victim of sexual assault. While marital rape is absolutely real and deserves to be prosecuted, it is not doing the heavy lifting in the 1 and 3 statistics. But apparently having a third of their daughters sexually assaulted is the price liberal men are willing to pay to have “enlightened” views on sex.
Three. Government programs to help the poor and working class do not help as much as the left thinks they do, which is why there is net migration from blue states to red states. If these programs were effective, it would be the opposite.
Four. Transgenderism is a horrific medical scandal in which sexually abused and autistic girls are having healthy body parts removed. It is also an equally horrific human rights scandal that has cost women their right to single sex spaces.
Five. Despite the talk about “kings” and “dictators”, the left has been the authoritarian party going back to the Reign of Terror. It remains true today with the censorship, Covid authoritarianism, and selective prosecution of peaceful conservatives, such as people who object to school boards being labeled domestic terrorists while violent antifa gets a free pass.
Six. Abortion is the last shameful legacy of “scientific” racism, Social Darwinism, and eugenics. There is even a direct line connecting these to abortion via Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood. People who are pro-choice will be remembered by history the same way people who are pro-slavery are remembered.
Seven. Moderate Islam is fine, but devout Islam is extremely oppressive towards women through honor killings, mandatory head and face coverings, rape of uncovered women, acid in the face of uncovered women, female genetal mutilation, coerced marriage, and pedophilia. The official crime statistics in Europe show a five-fold increase in rape in the past twenty years and Dearborn and Minnesota show that the US is now on the exact same path. The left labels conservatives who object as “racist” but it will be yet another way they will be judged by history.
Eight. Europe gave up their guns and now European conservatives are routinely arrested for social media posts.
I was grateful Silver put his whole essay out there unpaywalled this week. One huge portion of the left I noticed missing.... Labor. Not mentioned in any of the three portions of Democrats. I have to wonder if we no longer exist. Silvers comments on Richardsonism made me go take a look, her most popular substack I've never read. I also searched for TLP on his link to popularity of substacks. Somewhere down around 150 when to my mind it should be top ten. Someday
I think Labor is taken for granted, but it should not be. Once Labor was a central part of Democratic organizing. At a Florida Central Labor Council Labor Dav Event I would often meet presidential candidates...then they didn't bother after Kerry.
Labor isn't just absent from his three factions. It's absent as an organizing principle of Democratic politics altogether. And that absence explains more about the party's current predicament than any amount of parsing between Capital-L Leftists and Abundance Libs.
The numbers tell the story. For more than three decades, unions represented roughly 30% of the American workforce. Today that figure sits under 10%, the lowest rate in over a century. In 2008, Obama won union voters by 34 points. By 2024, Harris's lead among union voters had narrowed to just 8 points. The Teamsters declined to endorse the Democratic nominee for the first time in over thirty years because internal polling showed their members favored Trump by nearly 26 points.
What's striking isn't just the electoral drift. It's the institutional collapse. When union density was high, labor served as a feedback loop that kept Democrats tethered to working-class concerns. Union halls were where presidential candidates showed up, as you note from those Florida Labor Day events. But unions did more than deliver votes. They aggregated preferences from below and transmitted them upward. They were mass membership institutions with actual accountability to their members.
What replaced them? Professionalized advocacy groups whose influence is donor-driven rather than constituency-driven.
So well-explained. I remember doing candidate interviews for county elections at the IBEW hall sitting next to someone from Sanitation. And a rally at the Post Office hall where I heard John Edwards speak. Under Obama that seemed to have diminished--except for AFT. When I went to a HRC rally there was no identifiable union presence outside of the AFT membership.
My crazy liberal mom bought me Democracy Awakening last year and I dutifully read it. It was a shoddier revision of history than what you got from the New Atheists. For example, she wrote that liberals abolished slavery. No, evangelicals abolished slavery. Liberals created “scientific” racism, Social Darwinism, and eugenics.
Depends on what you mean by “Labor”. If you’re talking about people who make their living with manual labor the all 3 faction of Democratic Party Silver discusses would scope that under “immigration”
If you mean labor unions, considering that the UAW now has more graduate students than auto workers in its membership, this is arguably a big component of the highly credentialed, but economically useless “Capital-L Left”. The there is the concern expressed for cuts to the highly unionized government workforce.
I guess I'd include all working class (without a bachelor's) plus all those with a degree who are working jobs typically done by those without a degree because they can't get better work. Blue collar unions, etc.
The Lost Generation is also, at least partially, a Dem reaction to Trump. A week after Trump's first win, a girlfriend with a 9th grade son at an exclusive Silicon Valley private school called to tell me about her week. The school parking lot had been full of women weeping, wearing Black and bemoaning the end of the US, as we know it.
A few days later, her Freshman Mother's Group held their regular Happy Hour. The school had formed groups so Mothers could discuss adjustment to high school and to facilitate parent camaraderie. Her group consisted of Mothers from a couple of generational wealthy families. Most of the rest were generic SV upper middle class and a few were scholarship kids.
As the drinks arrived, the wealthiest Mothers assured the rest of the group the election would never stand. The SV powers that be, had been meeting since the day after the election to determine the best way to rid the country of Trump. It should not take long.
Then talk turned to the Fly Over Country ill educated, misogynistic, racist rubes who had elected Satan. Two women with executive positions at large tech firms pledged to never again hire a straight, white male that was not physically or mentally handicapped. The rest of the Mother's chimed in their approval. Most worked in tech, education or government .
My friend had nodded along, but could not help noticing, they were all Mothers of straight white boys, lacking physical or mental challenges. They would be one day be straight white men, in need of employment.
As the drinks flowed and the rants continued, my friend joked the policy should begin as soon as their kids graduated college and were employed. She said suddenly you could hear a pin drop. The group ignored her joke. The gathering ended rather abruptly. Her subsequent invitations to Happy Hours and breakfasts were inexplicably lost during delivery.
Most of those young men have finished college in the last year or two and are now, presumably, employed or job hunting. Would love to know how the "never hire a straight white male" is working out for them.
The Lost Generation has seen lots of links and comments online. So many people were involved, either as perpetrators, silent and scared to speak up and jeopardize whatever job they had, or passed over for hiring. One thing I hadn't considered was the type of jobs lost.
These weren't jobs in corporate, those we already know of. Often work in academia, publishing, media, and entertainment pay less, but they are the thought leaders, those are the elite professions that influence how we think. Right away I think of bright guys in their early 30s who should be on a tenure track some of whom I see writing in places like TLP.
Chris Ruffo the conservative activist commented today..."My main criticism of the piece is the apportionment of responsibility. The author strains to avoid blaming the beneficiaries of DEI—women and minorities—arguing instead that the real perpetrators were the older white men who put DEI policies into place. He has it half right. Yes, some older white men in positions of power embraced these policies, but the pressure to do so often originated elsewhere: namely, from ideologically committed employee factions, or “diversity” groups, that weaponized identity to pressure the institutions into adopting racial and sexual discrimination. To diagnose the problem while refusing to name its agents is a strategic error.
“The Lost Generation” is a spectacular piece not because it settles the argument once and for all, but because it finally allows the argument to happen in public. That alone makes it worth reading."
Reflecting on the Savage article, several friends in my progressive network have had children recently, and I've noticed something that stopped me cold in. When the ultrasound revealed a boy, there was this palpable sense of disappointment, almost grief. This was not limited to a single person. The unspoken message seemed to be that bringing a boy into the world meant bringing a future problem into the world.
Savage's piece on millennial white men in professional America captures the institutional version of this, the hiring freezes and the promotions that never came. But what I witnessed at those baby showers suggests something has seeped deeper, into the way we imagine and judge children before they've drawn their first breath. Identity has become destiny in a way that would horrify the very theorists progressives claim to follow.
Can you think of one program meant to diversify a group that hasn't harmed another group? It all seems to approach the pinnacle of ridiculousness because goals are never met. Past wrongs never righted. Every new generation is more past skin color or heritage than the last. Evolution is doing more to integrate everyone than any one plan of man has. Think of the resources that have been wasted on DEI and many more of today's anti discrimination programs that could have actually helped someone in need. And then we now have groups like the Somalis in MN who don't want to integrate but are happy to be a subculture in a larger culture that they can easily dupe even though their education and life experiences are far below any of those of the politicians and resident of MN.
The meek shall inherit the earth. The wealthy with guilty consciences, will become extinct.
Matt Taibbi at Racket News had a very good interview with Savage on Dec. 17--many comments. "Are White Men a "Lost Generation"? Interview With Author Jacob Savage
The disenfranchisement of young men has already come at a heavy cost, and the biggest consequences likely lay ahead." https://www.racket.news/p/are-white-men-a-lost-generation-interview
The interview itself is paywalled. Prior to the paywall Taibbi says sorry not sorry over being part of the problem. Then at the end takes a dig along the very lines Savage was talking about, justifying the discrimination white male job applicants were receiving because women and minorities had received similar. Like maybe back in 66 to my way of thinking.
The Racket News interview and the comments were very informative to me. I do subscribe. Some of Racket News posts are paywalled, some are not.. I didn't check on this one.
I was once included in a candidate pool for an admin job which was all M and they needed to have a W in the pool. All 4 turned down the position because it paid too low so I--number 5--got the job (and it was a raise for me). This has all evolved in different ways.
- They all voted for it.
- It will accelerate leftist institutional decline.
Weekend open thread(ish), so a very brief statement of why I’m a conservative.
One. Poverty is caused by the breakdown of marriage. Get ‘Promises I can Keep’, which is a book by sociologists doing an ethnology of black, white, and Hispanic single mothers. Pay particular attention to the chapter ‘How Does a Dream Die?’ Promiscuity socializes men to be partyers, not providers. That’s even more important than the loss of a father’s income.
Two. The Sexual Revolution created a rape culture in which 1 in 3 women are the victim of sexual assault. While marital rape is absolutely real and deserves to be prosecuted, it is not doing the heavy lifting in the 1 and 3 statistics. But apparently having a third of their daughters sexually assaulted is the price liberal men are willing to pay to have “enlightened” views on sex.
Three. Government programs to help the poor and working class do not help as much as the left thinks they do, which is why there is net migration from blue states to red states. If these programs were effective, it would be the opposite.
Four. Transgenderism is a horrific medical scandal in which sexually abused and autistic girls are having healthy body parts removed. It is also an equally horrific human rights scandal that has cost women their right to single sex spaces.
Five. Despite the talk about “kings” and “dictators”, the left has been the authoritarian party going back to the Reign of Terror. It remains true today with the censorship, Covid authoritarianism, and selective prosecution of peaceful conservatives, such as people who object to school boards being labeled domestic terrorists while violent antifa gets a free pass.
Six. Abortion is the last shameful legacy of “scientific” racism, Social Darwinism, and eugenics. There is even a direct line connecting these to abortion via Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood. People who are pro-choice will be remembered by history the same way people who are pro-slavery are remembered.
Seven. Moderate Islam is fine, but devout Islam is extremely oppressive towards women through honor killings, mandatory head and face coverings, rape of uncovered women, acid in the face of uncovered women, female genetal mutilation, coerced marriage, and pedophilia. The official crime statistics in Europe show a five-fold increase in rape in the past twenty years and Dearborn and Minnesota show that the US is now on the exact same path. The left labels conservatives who object as “racist” but it will be yet another way they will be judged by history.
Eight. Europe gave up their guns and now European conservatives are routinely arrested for social media posts.
I was grateful Silver put his whole essay out there unpaywalled this week. One huge portion of the left I noticed missing.... Labor. Not mentioned in any of the three portions of Democrats. I have to wonder if we no longer exist. Silvers comments on Richardsonism made me go take a look, her most popular substack I've never read. I also searched for TLP on his link to popularity of substacks. Somewhere down around 150 when to my mind it should be top ten. Someday
I think Labor is taken for granted, but it should not be. Once Labor was a central part of Democratic organizing. At a Florida Central Labor Council Labor Dav Event I would often meet presidential candidates...then they didn't bother after Kerry.
Labor isn't just absent from his three factions. It's absent as an organizing principle of Democratic politics altogether. And that absence explains more about the party's current predicament than any amount of parsing between Capital-L Leftists and Abundance Libs.
The numbers tell the story. For more than three decades, unions represented roughly 30% of the American workforce. Today that figure sits under 10%, the lowest rate in over a century. In 2008, Obama won union voters by 34 points. By 2024, Harris's lead among union voters had narrowed to just 8 points. The Teamsters declined to endorse the Democratic nominee for the first time in over thirty years because internal polling showed their members favored Trump by nearly 26 points.
What's striking isn't just the electoral drift. It's the institutional collapse. When union density was high, labor served as a feedback loop that kept Democrats tethered to working-class concerns. Union halls were where presidential candidates showed up, as you note from those Florida Labor Day events. But unions did more than deliver votes. They aggregated preferences from below and transmitted them upward. They were mass membership institutions with actual accountability to their members.
What replaced them? Professionalized advocacy groups whose influence is donor-driven rather than constituency-driven.
So well-explained. I remember doing candidate interviews for county elections at the IBEW hall sitting next to someone from Sanitation. And a rally at the Post Office hall where I heard John Edwards speak. Under Obama that seemed to have diminished--except for AFT. When I went to a HRC rally there was no identifiable union presence outside of the AFT membership.
My crazy liberal mom bought me Democracy Awakening last year and I dutifully read it. It was a shoddier revision of history than what you got from the New Atheists. For example, she wrote that liberals abolished slavery. No, evangelicals abolished slavery. Liberals created “scientific” racism, Social Darwinism, and eugenics.
Depends on what you mean by “Labor”. If you’re talking about people who make their living with manual labor the all 3 faction of Democratic Party Silver discusses would scope that under “immigration”
If you mean labor unions, considering that the UAW now has more graduate students than auto workers in its membership, this is arguably a big component of the highly credentialed, but economically useless “Capital-L Left”. The there is the concern expressed for cuts to the highly unionized government workforce.
I guess I'd include all working class (without a bachelor's) plus all those with a degree who are working jobs typically done by those without a degree because they can't get better work. Blue collar unions, etc.
The Lost Generation is also, at least partially, a Dem reaction to Trump. A week after Trump's first win, a girlfriend with a 9th grade son at an exclusive Silicon Valley private school called to tell me about her week. The school parking lot had been full of women weeping, wearing Black and bemoaning the end of the US, as we know it.
A few days later, her Freshman Mother's Group held their regular Happy Hour. The school had formed groups so Mothers could discuss adjustment to high school and to facilitate parent camaraderie. Her group consisted of Mothers from a couple of generational wealthy families. Most of the rest were generic SV upper middle class and a few were scholarship kids.
As the drinks arrived, the wealthiest Mothers assured the rest of the group the election would never stand. The SV powers that be, had been meeting since the day after the election to determine the best way to rid the country of Trump. It should not take long.
Then talk turned to the Fly Over Country ill educated, misogynistic, racist rubes who had elected Satan. Two women with executive positions at large tech firms pledged to never again hire a straight, white male that was not physically or mentally handicapped. The rest of the Mother's chimed in their approval. Most worked in tech, education or government .
My friend had nodded along, but could not help noticing, they were all Mothers of straight white boys, lacking physical or mental challenges. They would be one day be straight white men, in need of employment.
As the drinks flowed and the rants continued, my friend joked the policy should begin as soon as their kids graduated college and were employed. She said suddenly you could hear a pin drop. The group ignored her joke. The gathering ended rather abruptly. Her subsequent invitations to Happy Hours and breakfasts were inexplicably lost during delivery.
Most of those young men have finished college in the last year or two and are now, presumably, employed or job hunting. Would love to know how the "never hire a straight white male" is working out for them.
The Lost Generation has seen lots of links and comments online. So many people were involved, either as perpetrators, silent and scared to speak up and jeopardize whatever job they had, or passed over for hiring. One thing I hadn't considered was the type of jobs lost.
These weren't jobs in corporate, those we already know of. Often work in academia, publishing, media, and entertainment pay less, but they are the thought leaders, those are the elite professions that influence how we think. Right away I think of bright guys in their early 30s who should be on a tenure track some of whom I see writing in places like TLP.
Chris Ruffo the conservative activist commented today..."My main criticism of the piece is the apportionment of responsibility. The author strains to avoid blaming the beneficiaries of DEI—women and minorities—arguing instead that the real perpetrators were the older white men who put DEI policies into place. He has it half right. Yes, some older white men in positions of power embraced these policies, but the pressure to do so often originated elsewhere: namely, from ideologically committed employee factions, or “diversity” groups, that weaponized identity to pressure the institutions into adopting racial and sexual discrimination. To diagnose the problem while refusing to name its agents is a strategic error.
“The Lost Generation” is a spectacular piece not because it settles the argument once and for all, but because it finally allows the argument to happen in public. That alone makes it worth reading."
Reflecting on the Savage article, several friends in my progressive network have had children recently, and I've noticed something that stopped me cold in. When the ultrasound revealed a boy, there was this palpable sense of disappointment, almost grief. This was not limited to a single person. The unspoken message seemed to be that bringing a boy into the world meant bringing a future problem into the world.
Savage's piece on millennial white men in professional America captures the institutional version of this, the hiring freezes and the promotions that never came. But what I witnessed at those baby showers suggests something has seeped deeper, into the way we imagine and judge children before they've drawn their first breath. Identity has become destiny in a way that would horrify the very theorists progressives claim to follow.
Can you think of one program meant to diversify a group that hasn't harmed another group? It all seems to approach the pinnacle of ridiculousness because goals are never met. Past wrongs never righted. Every new generation is more past skin color or heritage than the last. Evolution is doing more to integrate everyone than any one plan of man has. Think of the resources that have been wasted on DEI and many more of today's anti discrimination programs that could have actually helped someone in need. And then we now have groups like the Somalis in MN who don't want to integrate but are happy to be a subculture in a larger culture that they can easily dupe even though their education and life experiences are far below any of those of the politicians and resident of MN.
The meek shall inherit the earth. The wealthy with guilty consciences, will become extinct.