World's Strongest Man
In Praise of Tulsi Gabbard
Marine Sets World Record in Deadlift
The Spirit of '76
The Spirit of '68
The most powerful and influential form of radicalism in the Western world today has no real name in the United States. It does in France, or at least its adherents do: les soixante-huitards, “the ‘68ers.”
The reference is to a series of riots, very similar in form and complaint against the United States and the West, that swept the Western world in 1968. In one of those moments that reminds of the remark that history repeats itself 'the first time as tragedy, the second as farce,' this year's Democratic National Convention will also be in Chicago, allowing a repeat of the 1968 protests of that same event in that same city by those of that same ideology.
That event ended with police crackdowns that the media boldly criticized and bravely put on camera for the whole world to see, only to be disappointed when it turned out that the American world broadly approved of police crackdowns on these radicals.
The American national news media, whose correspondents had been among the victims of police brutality at the convention, were at the forefront of criticism of the Chicago police. According to journalist Barbara Ehrenreich: "In a rare moment of collective courage, the editors of all the nation's major newspapers telegrammed a strong protest to Mayor Daley." National NBC newscaster Chet Huntley announced to the nation on the evening news that "'the news profession in this city is now under assault by the Chicago police'."
However, to the surprise of the news media, and many of the people who had witnessed the Chicago "police riot", the general public did not take their side. "Polls taken immediately after the convention showed that the majority of Americans — 56 percent — sympathized with the police, not with the bloodied demonstrators or the press." A poll taken for the New York Times "showed an 'overwhelming' majority respondents supported the police in Chicago." CBS reported that 10 times as many people had written to them disapproving of their coverage of the events as had written in approval." Dailey himself received "scores of letters", praising him and especially attacking the press and demonstrators.
One aftereffect of this "backlash", was soul-searching by the "media class" who "spent the next few years" in "almost reverent" examination of the white working class/middle class, mostly non-coastal strata of population dubbed "the silent majority" (by soon-to-be-president Richard Nixon) and "Middle America".
Trump stands in the place of Richard Nixon this year, which is part of the farce; although he'd really like to be Reagan, and to reprise the 1980s, which he would do in a farcical way. The historical rhyme is clear enough, however, even if it's only a near-rhyme.
This is CNN
Never Thought I’d Say This…
Glory is the Reward
The motto of the Scottish Clan Robertson (also known by their Gaelic name, "Donnachaidh," which means "Duncan" and refers to another family in the clan) is Virtutis Gloria Merces. This is usually translated as "Glory is the reward of valor." However, a more obvious and literal translation is "Glory is the reward of virtue." As an essay that Dad29 linked today points out, both translations are proper.
Opening with a meditation on the film "Act of Valor," which was put together by Navy SEALs and combat veterans of the Global War on Terror, the essay eventually turns to concepts of Aristotelian ethics as filtered through Romans like Tacitus and later Christians like Thomas Aquinas. I think that many of you will find that you enjoy reading it.
It does raise the point that the Roman influence really wants to cash this "virtue" talk in terms of "manliness." That's not true in the Greek, where the term is arete and means "excellence." There's no suggestion that this is an especially manly quality, or linked to manliness, even though all the same virtues are under consideration. That is if anything a difficulty today, as young feminists may be inclined to dismiss this ethical school out of the sense that it has nothing to say to them, and perhaps holds them in disdain. In fact, everyone needs courage and self-mastery, justice and practical wisdom. Those aren't qualities that can afford to be lost in translation.
One might ask why glory should be the reward of virtue. Why not self-satisfaction, or peace of mind? Aristotle opens by saying that the ends of ethics -- i.e. the study and pursuit of virtue -- shouldn't be honor, of which glory is a form. This is because people can be unjust, and not bestow honors upon you even if you deserve them. Something more personal -- your own flourishing and happiness -- is what he thinks you should be seeking through virtuous behavior.
Yet for those who attain what Aristotle calls the capstone of virtue, honor is the chief concern: not in the sense of 'what people happen to honor,' but 'what is most worthy of honor.' He does not care what other people tell him is most worthy, but what his own reason and discernment do. To do what is most worthy of honor, using your virtues to excel in its performance, is the highest sort of work and demands the highest sort of person.
And that, of course, is glorious.
More on EVs
Yeah. Botched rollout across the board. All the world wanted was a small electric pickup truck for tooling around town, but nooooo, they had to exclusively build insane luxury EVs instead.I think after my [electric] tractor is done I'm going to start looking for a donor small pickup for an EV swap and build the only vehicle I will ever need. Maybe a Chevy LUV or Nissan Hardbody if I can find either. Both of those are the perfect size and indestructible.The plug-in hybrid is the best design for consumers in my opinion. Toyota was right about that. From a government policy perspective I'd have done a tiered push where there'd have been a rebate for all EVs under a reasonable weight class to incentivize non insane designs, and I'd give half the amount for a plug in hybrid rebate. That way people are still going in the direction you want with adoption but you're not accidentally incentivizing only options that are worse for the environment than small gas cars and not boxing people into only EV if the current tech doesn't work for them.Obama or Biden should have bit the bullet and committed to resources to building charging networks if they wanted this to work. Instead they did the neoliberal thing and tried to get private businesses to handle it for them. You know, because that worked so well with Obamacare and with tax prep and with...
It's true that Obamacare tried to preserve private insurance, sort of, rather than going to a full-scale socialized medical system. I don't think it worked very well, although I have my doubts that the US bureaucracy could do any better with a socialist medical system. Maybe some places can do it well, but as we've seen with the VA -- where the class of people who use the system enjoy significant public honor over what ordinary citizens do -- our government just can't do it well.
Hard Times for EVs
[Police] Chief David Adams said he’d be willing to give up some of his department’s equipment requests — Sutton said he wouldn’t allow the police department to go without new body armor — in exchange for a 3% COLA and so other departments could get some of their needs fulfilled. At the top of Adams’ cut list was the proposed electric vehicle.
Elizabeth Teague said the same about a proposed electric vehicle for the planning department — it’s not completely necessary.
There's an understatement.
Still, these two concessions alone will save close to three hundred thousand dollars. Not 'save Waynesville,' save Ford.
Ford Motor Company reported a whopping $132,000 loss on each electric vehicle (EV) sold during the first three months of 2024, amassing a $1.3 billion loss.
Coincidentally, it will also save Waynesville a smaller amount of money.
History & Tradition
[T]he president of West Texas A&M, Walter Wendler, announced in March 2023 that he was barring the event from campus. In a statement on his personal website, Wendler called drag shows “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny.” Spectrum WT sued, arguing that Wendler’s decision to cancel the show was a “textbook” example of discriminating against speech based on viewpoint.Legally speaking, Spectrum WT had a strong case. Since the 1970s, the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment protects speech on public university campuses, “no matter how offensive” and despite “conventions of decency....”But the lawsuit landed on the docket of Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee [who] had a new tool, supplied by the Supreme Court. Known as the “history and tradition” test, the legal standard has been recently adopted by the court’s conservative majority to allow judges to set aside modern developments in the law to restore the precedents of the distant past....In March, the Supreme Court rejected the student group’s request to hold a second annual drag show on campus. Kacsmaryk’s decision is now pending at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Also unresolved is a larger question: How much will the scope of American liberty change as conservative judges impose the past on the present?
Runaways
Poor Baby
My dog Conan found a rattlesnake tonight. I didn’t see the snake, but the wounds from the fangs are too wide for a copperhead and we don’t have moccasins on the mountain. Timber rattlers we definitely have.
Antivenin is expensive! But he’s my dog.
UPDATE:
The morning finds him alive and capable of standing and moving short distances under his own power. He’s drinking and shows no initial signs of organ failure or wound sepsis. He let me bathe the wounds, and the swelling is already beginning to subside. I hope that he is going to be fine in a little while; he is both young and strong.
UPDATE:
We did lose a chicken last night, because we were off at the vet instead of home to lock them up in their coop safely and their guard dog wasn't there either. This morning one of them was dead outside the door. A chicken for a dog is a good trade, but it underlines his value as a member of the family.
Grownup is as grownup does
[T]he students are fearful that their arrest records and suspensions will "follow them into their adult lives." Based on their recent actions, I realize that we're not dealing with the fastest set of tractors on the farm here, but I have a news flash for these rioters. Nearly every one of you is at least 18 years old and some of the juniors and seniors are in their twenties. You are already in your "adult life," despite the fact that you're not acting in a very mature fashion.
* * *
As of this morning, [the Columbia students'] encampments are still in place and the university is still "negotiating" with them. This is precisely the type of "education" that they shouldn't be receiving. The school is teaching them that they can get away with violating the law without consequences under the guise of free speech. All freedoms have limitations when they begin adversely affecting others. It's a harsh lesson, but it's one that these rioters need to be taught.
Compared to What?
“What's upsetting to me is, if you look at the month of January, I think we had 18 homicides during that month,” said Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears. “Fourteen of those were being investigated for self-defense, meaning that someone lost their life, and that case might ultimately be cleared. But that doesn't do anything for that family who lost someone."...On Jan. 3, a man allegedly wrestled a gun away from an intruder in his home, then shot and killed the man. On Jan. 5, a woman shot and killed her boyfriend who was allegedly attacking her.... Someone died, but no one was ever charged with a crime."So, we're just seeing a significant increase in the number of self-defense cases because we're seeing too many situations where both parties are armed, where multiple parties are firing their weapons during these very simple disputes," said Mears.The past two weekends, apparent arguments escalated to mass shootings in and outside Indianapolis nightclubs."We have to be better to each other, be better human beings,” said IMPD Chief Chris Bailey. “We're better than this. We have to treat each other better."
Wilderness Safety
Crazy Congresswomen from Georgia
Sen. Thom Tillis’s (R-N.C.) comments to CNN on Tuesday were particularly biting. Amid Greene’s efforts to oust McCarthy’s successor, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Tillis called her a “waste of time” and a “horrible leader.”“She is dragging our brand down,” Tillis said. “She — not the Democrats — are the biggest risk to us getting back to a majority.”Tillis added, “I’m embarrassed to have actually lived geographically in her district at one time before she was there.”
I'm not too impressed with Tillis himself, who is reliably bad on issues of liberty like unfettered domestic spying. (My other Senator is even worse; he's on that list too, and has used his office to profit wildly from insider knowledge.) He may think he's better for the brand, but that brand looks pretty tarnished to me.
However, I would just like to point out that Greene is only the latest in a Georgia tradition -- you could even call it an Atlanta-area tradition -- of sending wild-eyed Congresswomen to Washington. Cynthia McKinney was a long-time Georgia politician, sometimes a Democrat and other times a Green Party member -- even their presidential candidate in 2008. She endorsed a metric ton of crazy ideas in her time, including a suggestion that there were widespread hidden executions following Hurricane Katrina. She claimed that 'Bush knew' about 9/11 and let it happen on purpose; separately, that "Zionists" carried out the attack. She also reliably took the side of America's enemies in her foreign policy work, and was ever-ready to support Hamas or really anyone who was against Israel. Even David Duke.
On September 11, 2023, McKinney promoted a livestream called "Can Black People and White People Work Together to Defeat Our Common Enemy" with the Star of David, indicating that the "common enemy" is Jews. The livestream was to be hosted by Ayo Kimathi, the author of Jews Are the Problem and described by the ADL as "antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ+ Black nationalist extremist" and David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and anti-semite.In the livestream, Kimathi explicitly advocated for ties with White nationalists to actively eradicate "the Jew."
That said, she was also right some of the time. She saw through NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, and she was opposed to that Gaddafi business I was just talking about in the last post. Her ideas were often way out there, but sometimes she saw things others didn't. She was an honest representative of her district, where many of those views are very popular.
There are hundreds of people in Congress. The few crazies who get in there aren't the real problem: it's the majority that are outright crooked and power-hungry. It doesn't hurt Congress to hear some wild ideas now and then, especially since just a few of them turn out to be true. At least someone is speaking what they think is true and not just parroting the approved lines.
The Perils of NPR
During the volatile Arab Spring period, under a constantly rotating series of NGO affiliations, Maher went to multiple countries that were undergoing U.S.-backed regime change. Beginning in 2011, for example, she traveled multiple times to Tunisia, working with regime-change activists and government officials. In 2012, she traveled to a strategic city on the Turkey-Syria border, which had become a base for Western-backed opposition to Bashar al-Assad. That same year, she traveled to Libya, where the U.S. had just overthrown strongman Muammar Gaddafi.During much of 2011, Maher worked for the National Democratic Institute, a government-funded NGO with deep connections to U.S. intelligence and the Democratic Party’s foreign policy machine. The organization was “set up to do independently what CIA had done covertly worldwide,” says national security analyst J. Michael Waller. While initially some distance supposedly existed between NDI and the intelligence services, that relationship has devolved back to “the gray zone,” per Waller, and it appears that they often work in concert. “NDI is an instrument of Samantha Power and the global revolution elements of the Obama team,” Waller explains. “It has gone along with, and been significant parts of, color revolutions around the world. It is very much a regime-change actor.”
The broader argument the article makes is that we have been subject to a 'color revolution' here at home. NPR is part of the information warfare apparatus of the victorious coalition, which is tied to the same power structure that overthrew Gaddafi and then endorsed as his replacement the 'Government of National Accord' (GNA) even though that required the State Department delisting several foreign terrorist groups who belonged to GNA in order to allow for our official support.
That is not to say that it is the CIA, or that the CIA is doing anything to influence American elections. It is to say that the people who learned to use the CIA and the NGO archipelago to overthrow foreign governments during the Obama administration are the people currently being discussed here. They are spread widely among the seats of power in media, government, and the tech corporations. As they all belong to the same class, they have no need of a conspiracy because they all already know what their class interests are and how to advance their membership in that class.
As Time Magazine put it in early 2021, there was a "shadow campaign" to "fortify" the election using illegal and therefore unconstitutional methods to change voting rules. The article is remembered for being eye-opening and a sort-of confession, but it was wholly celebratory of the shadow campaign and its outcomes.
Likewise we probably all remember the fervent and constant repetition in the press that there was "no evidence" of any irregularity with the election, which was the most safe and secure ever. Information warfare is an important part of this sort of effort. Controlling the terms of the debate keeps the people from speaking the truth, even when they know the truth. It's not sufficient -- the courts played a crucial role in refusing to consider any of the cases brought, dismissing them all on standing or timing grounds -- but it is a necessary condition.
The Grave of Plato
Automatic Disbarment
She told us, ‘Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.'
In point of fact, deprivation of rights under color of law is a Federal crime. The statute is confusing in its wording, so perhaps she has a defense in claiming that she was not motivated by prejudice (but would equally deny that right to everyone, under color of law). She ought to be arrested and charged, though, and obligated to make that defense as a former judge to a jury of her peers— her fellow citizens, I mean, not legal elites.
Hawaii is trying the same thing. It’s a sort of small scale secession, refusing to be bound by the parts of the Constitution that they disapprove of existing.
A Modest Proposal
All higher-education courses could be done online via bots with no need for expensive classrooms, dorm rooms and other physical facilities.Instead of paying college costs currently approaching $100,000 a year, students could earn their degrees conveniently and inexpensively from the comfort of their own homes. Moreover, they would be given access to bots that they can use to take tests and write any essays required by the instructor bots. The students’ test answers would no doubt be perfect, and their essays would be persuasive and error-free, which would allow all students to be given A grades without having to disrupt their lives by attending classes, listening to lectures or reading.
It's a clever idea, which we are likely to adopt more completely than we like to admit.
Rodeo Songs
Duty to Protect Yourself
Infinity and the Divine
There’s a lot to be said about the use of the concept of infinity in theology, which I will write about once I’m not traveling. Different major theologians have thought that it was a wonderful way to think about God; others have disliked the usage for various reasons. Nicholas of Cusa, one of the fans, had diagrams meant to convey the impossibility of finite minds grasping God. Others thought other things.
Rodeo Riding
From under a black felt cowboy hat, hair blacker than coffee runs to the collar of his black shirt. The impression of severity is relieved by blue eyes the color of his jeans and a smile crease from the habit of grinning around a Marlboro. It’s an arresting face, burnished by years of outdoor chores, smoke, roistering humor and pain soothed by shots of Jägermeister. It befits arguably the greatest rodeo bull rider who ever lived and certainly the hardest-bodied, a man who never conceded to any power. Until a bull broke his neck.“I always knew something like this was going to have to happen,” he says.
Indeed. Every rodeo rider knows something like this is a constant danger.
The Post deserves some credit for this one. It's a pretty good piece. There is some fulminating in the middle about whether or not rodeo is cruel or should be allowed to exist, given that there is no practical reason for anyone to ride bulls -- and limited need, these days, to break horses. Ultimately, though, raising that concern probably just lets readers of that persuasion feel like their perspective is understood, and allows them to engage with a moving story about a courageous man who loved to ride hard and now has to leave it behind.
Except for the bull, that is. He took the bull home, where it lives a life befitting a retired rodeo star.
Petra
Who Are You?
At least four famous, not-often-enough-repeated Aristotelian questions can be asked of any given thing when we try to figure out what and why it is. They are: 1) “What is it?” – a tree, a rabbit, a planet? 2) “Is it?” That is, does it exist rather than not exist? Does it stand outside of nothingness? 3) Who or what put it into motion or into being? 4) “Why is it in existence?” What is the reason for which it now exists?Of human beings, we can add a further question: “Who are you?” That is, each of us has a particular, singular, unrepeatable existence unlike any other being that ever existed, but we are still human. Each human “what” is a “you.”
The Army has a Navy?
What this exercise attempting to cross the Atlantic has proven is that we may not need tankers. Our poorly maintained and continually neglected naval vessels, be they Navy or Army, may not be capable of making it to the conflict to begin with.
If someone watching this circus unfold wakes the hell up realizing we are in one hell of a self-inflicted hurt locker and starts to yank chains to immediately effect change?
Then, this crackpot pier idea will be that blessing in disguise.
Home on the Mountain
They Sure Have Pretty Sunsets
The one thing that isn’t fake in this town is the beautiful Mojave sky. This was taken by the roller coaster in the same casino with the bar mentioned below.
Coyote Ugly
Las Vegas
The weather is nice in the Mojave right now. I’m in town for a few days on business, if any of you happen to be out this way.
My Mother Writes
...I came across a letter written by your 4 year old preschool teacher. It said you had hit a boy named John. You told her that sometimes John hit you first but not that day. You said you only meant to give him a little muscle but you had eaten all your spinach and you hit him instead.She said she doubted that I had eaten any spinach. I said you ought to give a boy who admitted that he hit first credit for being a straight-shooter.
A Reverse for Liberty
More Lies and Dictatorial Actions
The rules clarify who is required to conduct background checks and aims to close what is known as the “gun show loophole” — which refers to the reality that gun-show sellers and online vendors are subject to much looser federal regulations than vendors who sell at bricks-and-mortar stores.
A Victory for Liberty
Throw me in that briar patch
A Western Story
This was NPR
Bottom Scandal of the Year
National Beer Day
The Declaration of Arbroath
Today is National Tartan Day, and more importantly the anniversary of one of humanity’s greatest political documents. The Declaration of Arbroath was a letter submitted in Latin to the Pope, protesting his support of English claims on Scottish independence. Along the way, the knights and barons declared that, while they accepted Robert the Bruce as their divinely-appointed king, they would throw him out and choose another if he failed to protect their rights.
From these countless evils, with His help who afterwards soothes and heals wounds, we are freed by our tireless leader, king, and master, Lord Robert, who like another Maccabaeus or Joshua, underwent toil and tiredness, hunger and danger with a light spirit in order to free the people and his inheritance from the hands of his enemies. And now, the divine Will, our just laws and customs, which we will defend to the death, the right of succession and the due consent and assent of all of us have made him our leader and our king. To this man, inasmuch as he saved our people, and for upholding our freedom, we are bound by right as much as by his merits, and choose to follow him in all that he does.But if he should cease from these beginnings, wishing to give us or our kingdom to the English or the king of the English, we would immediately take steps to drive him out as the enemy and the subverter of his own rights and ours, and install another King who would make good our defence. Because, while a hundred of us remain alive, we will not submit in the slightest measure, to the domination of the English. We do not fight for honour, riches, or glory, but solely for freedom which no true man gives up but with his life.
May it ever be so.
Le Morte d'Arthur
My dearest friend in the world, to say the least about her that can be said, told me last night that she has a cancer that has spread to her bones. You may recall that I wrote an Arthurian novel; it was dedicated to her. Starting tomorrow and for five days, which is as long as Amazon will allow it, it will be available for free on Kindle in the hope that more people will know her name.
There will be no comments on this post.
To Help Your Friends and Harm Your Enemies
Most people who have only read one thing Plato wrote -- or, more likely, excerpts from one thing -- read the Republic. It is without question the most famous of Plato's works, though very far from his best. Plato himself obviously wasn't satisfied with it, as he reprised the subject at much greater length in the Laws (on which I have written a commentary that you can find on the sidebar).
One of the more famous passages of this most famous dialogue has to do with the definition of justice. The antagonist in the dialogue, an aggressive man named Glaucon, gives what must have been the standard definition of the term. This was what Plato wanted to argue against, after all, so he sets up the most plausible definition in the popular sense of the time in the mouth of Socrates' opponent.
Socrates: And what is that which justice gives, and to whom?
Glaucon: If, Socrates, we are to be guided at all by the analogy of the preceding instances, then justice is the art which gives good to friends and evil to enemies.
Its members refer to it as the Axis of Resistance.... The Axis of Resistance includes Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and other groups, and both its strategy and its tactics have long been radical. The official slogan of the Houthis — the Yemen-based group that has attacked commercial ships in the Red Sea — includes “death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews,” for example.
Addendum to Last
The Mask of Fame
"Our Democracy" not Democratic
Earlier this year, pollster Scott Rasmussen asked voters a simple question: “Would you rather have your candidate win by cheating or lose by playing fair?”The answers he got back were, as he put it in a Daily Signal podcast last week, “the most terrifying poll result I’ve ever seen.”Among all Americans, just 7% said they would want their candidate to win by cheating. As Rasmussen put it, he’d rather see that number lower, but that’s not bad.But more than a third of the elite 1% he surveyed would condone cheating. And among those who are “politically obsessed” – meaning that they talk about politics every day – that number shot up to 69%.
They go on to list several other views that this group espouses at rates quite at odds with ordinary Americans.
- Nearly 60% say there is too much individual freedom in America – double the rate of all Americans.
- More than two-thirds (67%) favor rationing of energy and food to combat the threat of “climate change.”
- Nearly three-quarters (70%) of the elites trust the government to “do the right thing most of the time.”
- More than two-thirds (67%) say teachers and other educational professionals should decide what children are taught rather than letting parents decide.
- Nearly three-quarters (74%) say they are financially better off than before COVID, compared with 20% of the general public.
Young Men and Women Drifting Apart
People in 27 European countries were asked whether they agreed that “advancing women’s and girls’ rights has gone too far because it threatens men’s and boys’ opportunities.” Unsurprisingly, men were more likely to concur than women. Notably, though, young men were more anti-feminist than older men, contradicting the popular notion that each generation is more liberal than the previous one.
In America... Generation Z (typically defined as those born between the late 1990s and early 2000s) have their first romantic relationship years later than did Millennials (born between 1980 and the late 1990s) or Generation X (born in the decade or so to 1980), and are more likely to feel lonely. Also, Gen Z women, unlike older women, are dramatically more likely than their male peers to describe themselves as LGBT (31% to 16%).
I think partly the reason older men are less anti-feminist is because older men grew up with a better sort of feminism. The "Society for Cutting Up Men" existed in the 1970s, but it was a fringe: mostly women wanted what they plausibly referred to as equality. What young feminists want now is not equality but equity, meaning 'our side deserves more.' That's a different proposition. Apparently it's even worse in Europe.
Not all male grumbles are groundless. In some countries, divorce courts tend to favour the mother in child custody disputes. In others, pension rules are skewed. Men enter the labour market earlier and die younger, but the retirement age for women in rich countries is on average slightly lower. In Poland it is five years lower, so a Polish man can expect to work three times longer than he will live post-retirement, while for a Polish woman, the ratio is 1.4, notes MichaÅ‚ GulczyÅ„ski of Bocconi University. This strikes many men as unfair. Mateusz, the Polish fireman, recalls when a left-wing lawmaker was asked if she was so keen on equal rights, what about equalising the pension age? “She changed the subject,” he scoffs.
We don't do that here, but it is true here that women go to college and grad school more often, enjoy careers in comfortable settings more often, earn more on average in the younger generation (due, presumably, to those education advantages), live longer, and enjoy a consumer society that is built to cater to them because women control the lion's share of spending decisions -- 85%, in fact, if these numbers are right. Men commit suicide more, suffer from every form of violent crime more, go to prison more -- at 90%, even more disproportionately than women control how the money is spent -- and are more likely to work in physically demanding jobs that pay less. Meanwhile, however, if you are a man who wanted to compete for the comfortable jobs with women -- an academic professorship, say -- you'll be facing a formal system that intends to ensure that she has advantages in the selection process.
It seems like some sort of rough equality has already been reached, and now the conversation for the younger generation is about how much 'equity' is acceptable to those who end up on the short end. It was easier for us older folks to go along, even if there was grumbling, because the fairness of 'equality' was more evident than is the fairness of the current push for 'equity.'
UPDATE: This analysis puts the 'Gender War Scorecard' at a 66/34 female victory, but has also built out a Google sheet that lets you weight the different factors yourself as you prefer. (The writer is definitely a male.) If you're inclined to play with it, you can see what you come up with in terms of how close to 'equality' we are, and how close to 'how much equity is this going to take?' we are.
One thing that's not on our lists is mental health, which varies both by sex and by ideology. That may be an important factor in one's perception of one's well-being. The original article offers some examples of paranoia that seems to be inculcated by social media, which may be making the female experience phenomenologically unpleasant even as it may be empirically privileged. Liberal women experience the largest share of mental ill-health (over 50% of liberal white women under 30 in that study were diagnosed with a mental health disorder). Thus, this same political trend in young women towards liberalism that is dividing them from the men may also be heightening the problem of making them feel oppressed even if they are empirically doing ok.
Historical Medieval Battles
YouTuber Sensei Seth (whom I've never heard of before) visits Carolina Carnage, which he claims is the biggest Buhurt (from the Old French béhourd, meaning joust or tournament) tournament in the US.
England vs. USA, 2018
150 vs 150 Battle of the Nations