How about that title, hey? Really reels you in. It’s a HUGE LIE, of course, but what headline isn’t these days? The media! You cannot trust them! They are mostly paid just-ok money to do copious research and fact-checking and that is what a liberal bias is, I guess! Hahah, fuck!!!! I just finished watching The Newsroom and I want whatever drugs Aaron Sorkin had access to in the early 2000’s.
Most people, who are idiots (I can say that as a proud idiot), get their news from the internet equivalent to a bunch of fliers posted on a utility pole. I listen to podcasts, and I am miserable. I’m pretty sure no one else I know listens to the Bulwark, and definitely not Alan, who sneered at me when I told him to give it a shot. His disdain for people who still think Reagan had some good ideas is justified, so I wasn’t mad at his sneer. It’s cool that I get to be friends with him. He is an amazing person. Anyway I am going to recommend that you listen, if you can stomach it, to one bulwark episode featuring actual real ex-Republican Bill Kristol. If you have any extremely old republicans in your family who are not MAGA you will feel a certain affinity for Kristol, who worked in the Bush Cheney White house. Remember those WMD’s? Did we ever find those things? It feels like America is on meth now and we just have to hope and pray and set some really hard boundaries. Anyhoo, this episode is a 30 minute conversation between Kristol and the youngest host on the network, Cameron Kasky, who was an Uvalde shooting survivor and a founding member of the March for Our Lives Movement. The whole conversation is worth listening to, but I really need to highlight something that Cameron said which gave me so much relief and a fair bit of hope for the future of…well not me probably and definitely not the bees, but somebody.
I have been going out of my gourd listening to the myriad dem pundits I follow diagnose the various ills in our culture that led to Trump’s reelection and I have been on absolute tinterhooks waiting for someone to say the thing I feel like is incredibly obvious, but also I haven’t been able to properly describe in words. Something about how misogyny played a much larger part in this crisis than anyone is talking about, and when are we gonna talk about it, and then I start wheezing and my eyes turn all black like Cate Blanchett in the Fellowship of the Ring. When Hasan Piker went on the daily show to tell Jordan Klepper the reason for young men turning to Trump was the eCoNoMic AnXieTy they felt, Klepper was like “hmmmm, interesting.” Chat. This interview followed a lengthy segment where Klepper had gone to college campuses to talk to young horny Trump bois who were at a Charlie Kirk event. Will it blow your mind when I tell you that not one of them talked about how they were going to pay back their student loans? But a fair few of them were very willing to talk about UFC, and “Gulf of America! Fuck Yeah!”. Like I guess the Animal House 3: Hitler Youth Camp vibe could be a mask for the anxiety produced knowledge that the social safety net has collapsed for their generation. It could be. But it’s so clearly not. This is cultural. This is 19 year old dudes who think “Your Body My Choice” is a very cool catchphrase. And I desperately need someone to admit that. Whatever reckoning is going to come of how badly we fumbled the bag on 2024, if we skip the role misogyny played, we might as well just let Hakeem Jeffries do whatever it is he’s doing.
OH MY GOD I am so sorry to constantly talk about politics at you. I am. I really want to be the fun cool girl writer who skateboards up with a new movie review that includes a cheeky list of popcorn toppings to try. I’m going to go see 28 years later soon, maybe I’ll talk about that next and do some recipes and whatnot. But for now, please go listen to this youtube of Cam and Kristol. Especially 13:38 when Cam puts words to the thing I have been internally screaming for so very long. If you will not listen because you actually like to enjoy your personal time, I’ll summarize: Kasky says that the pandemic did it. When young straight guys were unable to associate IRL with young women for their horniest 2-3 years, the spectre of those women became larger and stranger, and scarier, until that fear inevitably turned to anger and hate. Hate stoked by algorithms that brought them to the manosphere, which itself is made of men who never aged out of being horny teens. Voila, perfect sharknado of sexism!!!!
Why is this hopeful? For one, a young person said these words, better than I ever could. A youth! For two, we’re not in a pandemic anymore. There is a real possibility that what happened to these young dudes is only possible when we make every single kid stay at home when they hit puberty. From the parents I have spoken to, that’s not going to happen ever again, global plague or no. Ok, I hope this brought a single one of you some sort of break in the solid stream of hot diarrhea reading about current events has become. I love you, good night. Or day! It can be day.
