I think progressives never thought about this because we banked on immigration and demographic change allowing us to win culturally and electorally but the issue is immigrants tend to be overwhelmingly male, that is how Trump won actually he won over a lot of Hispanic,Black,Asian and indigenous men who feel humiliated by a new culture, economy and world.
So what can we do rhetorically and policy wise to win more young men over ?
Mushrooms
What you’ve described is every complaint I’ve had with centrists and neocons in the democratic party. I don’t really know where the progressive part comes in.
Bernie did amazing with men to the point where “bernie bros” were being mocked in media, so has Mamdani in NY in polls.
If anything, I would argue that the Democratic party should be more populist and progressive. Focusing on things that pull up everybody, because everyone is struggling right now.
I don’t have any big answers, but just a small piece of advice: Don’t shame people for asking questions when they just want to learn.
I would think that’s the perfect opportunity to educate someone, but so many people will just down-vote a naive question and move on without explanation, which is even more confusing.
I’m speaking from my own experience. I still tend to be neutral on a lot of things so far, but my brain is kinda… unusual. I think most people might gradually feel pushed away, “othered”, etc. and eventually lean in the opposite political direction than you might want.
TL;DR: If you want people on your side, stop pushing them away. And maybe ask others on your side to stop too.
To be clear: There are some people who take the time to write out genuinely helpful answers. But the down-votes just raise another question: Why? Was the question offensive? And if so, how?
That is what I think the left has failed at and it kept me as a baby leftist for a while because I would as a question and they would accuse me of being an alt right troll.
I love debating. I especially love debating right wingers because it’s fun and makes the world better. One thing they are better about one of the few things is answering questions ,if you have questions they have answers. I would make fun of them and ask dumb hypothetical and they would still answer
Heh tbh I’m not even into debating. I’m just a curious dude who lives under a rock ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Man it’s like the majority of people here don’t have ‘regular guy’ friends.
The way to get to regular dudes, is to make them feel fucking included. Yes, diversity is fucking awesome. Yes, having women in leadership roles is fucking awesome. But for your average guy… who do they have to look up to on the left side of things? In the news? In congress? Who is on the national stage for these things? Who is talking to those people?
There isn’t anyone. There are tons of people talking to other groups of people, but there has been flat out no courting of the white dude demographic outside of White Dudes for Harris (which was brilliant but came too late).
Speak to the issues these guys are facing. Talk about dating. Talk about career struggles. Talk about feeling alone, and feeling vulnerable. And then, talk about solution based problem-solving for these things.
Why do you think the right wing latched onto guys who do the whole personal betterment thing? It’s the same shit that white supremacist groups do. They’ll get you with things that anyone can agree with like ‘Hey man if you work hard you’ll succeed. I fucking believe in you when no one else will.’ Then they go into the right wing bullshit because now they have you at an emotional level.
There is no online left presence doing these things, and there are multiple right wing people doing this shit.
Make a left wing Joe Rogan, and bro-dudes will watch that shit like shit on velcro. But it has to be a dude-bro talking to them. It can’t be Rachel Maddow or AOC, it has to be someone who comes from that background.
outside of White Dudes for Harris (which was brilliant but came too late).
Everyone that wasn’t “vote blue no matter who” thought that was comically bad and pathetic. It turned more men off Harris than towards her lol.
Make a left wing Joe Rogan, and bro-dudes will watch that shit like shit on velcro.
That’s not how it works though, because a “left wing Joe Rogan” can’t happen because the reason someone like Joe Rogan is so popular is because he sees through bullshit and calls it what it is. The democrats are on the wrong side of so many 80/20 issues that any “left wing Joe Rogan” would have to call out their own bullshit in exactly the same way that the actual Joe Rogan does.
I wanted to reminisce about the Daily Show when it was at its best. John Stewart and Stephen Colbert were huge for me. Realistically though they aren’t the right kind of people for the type of role model your talking about. Part of the left’s problem is that the language and style that are used is too intellectual. It contrubitues to the right being able to dismiss progressives as “coastal elites” Part of Bernie’s appeal is that he seems very down to earth and straightforward and that’s one of the reason that the right has so much trouble going after him. We need a progressive plumber.
I always make the same argument as to why left-wing politics has been so generally unappealing to working-class, average people - in spite of the irony. I vote left, I have a uni degree, and they still piss me off. Don’t talk about Marxist analyses, and don’t make everything about gender identity or Palestine (I care deeply about Palestine, but it’s not the main issue that I’d want my local political party to focus on) make it about the issues facing regular people on an every day basis. Say “bro, me like taxes” instead of producing a 20-page paper on the evils of capitalism.
I think Walz can be that guy, seriously.
Waltz is so obviously fake, insincere, and a typical democrat through and through that the Democrats have zero chance while he is on the ballot for President or Vice President. They need to try and make people forget he exists.
Why do we need a role model anyway? I’m a straight white married male with no kids and very progressive. I don’t need a role model to not be a piece of shit.
You’re a married male. People who are in their late teens/early 20’s are looking for life advice and people to emulate.
The sad thing is there’s not a lot of good advice right now.
The world is VASTLY different than 50 years ago. No you can’t just talk to the boss of the building and ask for a job.
The insane numbers game that job applications have become is so opaque that any advice in it is about as useful as sacrificing a goat.
Every company wants to remove as many humans as possible from its payroll. Covid and AI have proven this beyond a shadow of a doubt, loyalty means absolutely nothing now.
Just surviving in this current environment is a brand new challenge and field.
Nice for you bro!
But you should also think that a lot of people dont have the luck to see life as you and struggle with much stuff.
I understand. But you also can’t read one sentence about me and describe it as lucky. I had shitty abusive parents. I worked my way through college so it took a little longer. Struggled financially at times. Have lived with suicidal tendencies since my parents divorced when I was 12 and became even more shitty and abusive.
I’m only successful because of myself and the work I’ve put into my life to be where I am today. To me having a role model wouldn’t have done or changed anything. I get that others might need it, but I don’t think every straight white male in America needs a role model and is doomed to be a conservative just because they can’t find one.
There are plenty of straight white males that are progressive or liberal. The ones that are conservative aren’t that way just because of a shitty role model. Many are shitty in plenty of other ways.
A little out of the blue but I watched an episode of a German cooking show today where strangers are coupled in groups of five for a week and every day one of them has to cook for the rest of them. They then vote who was the best host.
This week was ALL 30-38 year-old straight Dads. Nobody talked about football.
Nobody chestbumped anyone. Nobody was mansplaning anything. Instead, they were all swooning over each others’ cooking skills, making each other cry over how much they love their kids and hugging each other for feeling insecure about their cooking. In other words it was the most realistic and “manly” portrayal of the male reality that I have seen in the media ever.
It’s easy to blame the media and the “culture war” for male alienation but I strongly believe that our perception of ourselves is largely influenced by our peer group’s portrayal in society. In other words: if I feel antagonized, I tend to overreact. If I am being told by Hollywood or social media to “stop being a mansplaning patriarch” I will be imprinted with the very idea to identify as such.
So long story short: non-toxic masculinity needs more representation AND it needs to come from a place of positivity, not judgement or condescension.
what is this cooking show because it sounds delightful. statesians have lost the plot when it comes to cooking shows
It’s called “Das perfekte Dinner”, it’s been on the air for 20 years and is one of those shows that defies the death of classic television.
It can appear quite boring if you come from watching things like chef’s table or hell’s kitchen, as there is little drama, its unscripted and it’s mostly very positive and no-nonsense.
My wife has watched too much great British baking show and this sounds right up our alley
Instead, they were all swooning over each others’ cooking skills, making each other cry over how much they love their kids and hugging each other for feeling insecure about their cooking. In other words it was the most realistic and “manly” portrayal of the male reality that I have seen in the media ever.
This is in no way a realistic or "manly " portrayal of the greater male reality.
Ok
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there is a cure for political illiteracy
Yawn. Anybody writing anything this long is clearly pushing an agenda so skip
Okay, so men should vote Republican. Got it.
Quit trying to make young white men feel guilty for existing. I come from poor white trash. As near as I can tell, my family never benefitted from slavery in any possible way. So fuck you. I dont feel bad about something I didn’t do, no one in my family did, and we aint gonna pay for it.
You are losing the class war, that’s what matters. Not you being young, or white, or a man.
The world is not America - so how come this is an issue in other places?
This white guilt argument just doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny and is just nazi propaganda. Let’s be honest here.
I don’t know where this “white guilt” stuff comes from. I’m the same demo as you, but never felt that.
Oh boy you surely never were a part of the target then
Can you tell me more about that experience?
Maybe stop labeling them the “enemy” with posts like these?
I think a big part of the issues end up being economic. Things are obviously not great for a vast majority of middle and lower income people. You spend all day working your 1-3 jobs and in the background there’s all the culture war battles going on.
Few regular people have the mental space to even engage with the nuance required to navigate some progressive talking points when they can barely keep a roof over their heads. Toxic masculinity just turns into masculinity = toxic. You’ve lost these people, even if there’s an actually good message in there.
The Right is amazing at drawing a direct line between, “These are the problems we know you’re having” and “This is exactly what you can do about it today”. And for the Right, they actually deliver results. Do the kids turn into insufferable dickheads? Sure. But does the rhetoric sometimes get them what they want? Yeah, it does.
Where does the Left even come close? Almost everything is a delayed effect. Protest for a good cause? Wait to see if the politics catch up. Be nice to people? Great start, but that doesn’t help these guys get people-skills to have good platonic and romantic relationships. Be more open emotionally? What happens when your friends don’t accept that from you?
The Left is full of high risk, upfront demands from people who aren’t already affiliated with potentially little to no reward. Granted, the desired outcome is a better and more just society. But like, carrots and sticks people. You need something that regular people can get behind besides just ideology. Especially when mainstream media has a lock on those that are tuned out of progressive spaces and every now and then see something leak through from the culture war.
We need an actual vision for the future. Not a list of things we don’t like about the present, but what do we see people doing one day. If you don’t have a place for any group of people in your society, they will be indifferent if it burns. You can’t build a progressive future without having an actual, honest to God idea of what opportunities you can provide to legitimately everyone. If your best plan is, “Conservatives get with the program or rot in hell”, don’t be surprised when they take you down with them.
It’s a tricky situation.
I think a lot of men, particularly rural men, want someone in their corner. I think a lot of people are underestimating how angry and hopeless many of these men feel. The study a couple years ago from NPR about how many families are living paycheck to paycheck, have less than like $400 in savings, and have nobody to call in during a financial emergency was astounding.
Most Americans are in a desperate situation. And they aren’t used to it. And they feel they don’t deserve it. And because of that, they’re going to vote for whoever promises to fix it, whether they fix it or not.
The issue is that neither party is willing to fix the wealth desparity and class oriented labor practices that cause it. They’re only interested in playing the same game we are now that keeps them paid, and grinds everyone else into the dirt.
Young men are not some new phenomenon. Their desire, in a word, is agency.
As the world has grown more interconnected, the world has become more visible. This has created a crippling awareness of their place in the grand scheme. Nietzsche’s void has opened beneath them and, in the ignorance expected of youth, they grasp at what is presented to them. Selling hope to the desperate, even false hope, is lucrative, so there is no shortage of hucksters and charlatans offering it to them.
The ultimate problem is that there is no pleasant truth. When faced with the existential horror of being, the truth doesn’t help. You cannot focus on learning to be a better version of yourself when facing raw terror. A comforting lie will get you to tomorrow. Truth will send you to the long, dark night.
So, when offered a pretense of agency, in almost any form, they take it. Some pretend that the problem is simply women. Some say it’s other ‘races.’ Some say it’s this or that ideology, whether economic, social, sexual, psychological, or anything else. They all just want to feel like they can make a difference, just like everyone else.
This is a better expression of what has happened/is happening than “they have no role models”.
The world has been changing faster and faster since the industrial revolution. Our culture seems to be experiencing growing pains from such rapid growth. There is less hope than ever,
“The comforting lie that gets you through to tomorrow” Absolutely, the propaganda has been layed on these men thick.
A lot of fancy words to say nothing
It all has meaning. I used high density language because I didn’t want to spend a long time on the response, which I admit does require a certain level of experience with the concepts to be readable. Was there something you’d like me to expand into simpler language to make it clearer for you?
I don’t follow the media and the debate where you live, but over here left leaning politicians and media tends to frame it as: women, minorites etc have a problem. Men are the problem.
You’re basically pushing any undecided man over to the right.
So we should lie?
Men are the problem. The patriarchy, the racism, the discrimination? Men.
And if you are too braindead to understand this, you’re too far gone anyway.
I have more respect for open misandry than you might expect, but if your emotions are preventing you from crafting worthwhile politics, remove yourself from the situation.
The calm, reasonable people are talking, and histrionic performance like this is a step away from panicking.
Your trauma response may be valid, but that does not mean it is productive.
Yes, I am telling you to calm the fuck down.
You can’t have a post like this and then wonder “Why do so many men go to the right?”
Maybe men are sick of being painted with a broad brush. We all have our own thoughts, beliefs and feelings.
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Troll grade: C-.
Does Trump pay you by the hour or per post?
I’m not payed, I just don’t see a reality where we can improve the world and not mention the hundreds of years of oppression by men at the same time, which, as you already said, will drive away the republicans. So you really gotta start thinking „should we ignore the obvious problem why woman are to this day fighting for human rights so we can find a compromise with Nazis?” and my answer is obviously no.
You’re making an excellent point here. I’ll bring it up at the next Council of Men that we should stop oppressing women. Good thing we figured that out - top notch work!
Maybe stop hating their guts…
the universalizing ideology of feminism for men is incoherent
and if you react with anger to someone, me, stating this fact, that feminism is and ought to be for women, you’re part of the problem, shut up.
feminism is full of lessons on how feminism helps women, men should read feminists
but it’s stupid to expect feminism/feminists to advocate for men’s issues
and it’s insulting to ask men to believe that all they have to do is be good feminists and they’ll get what they need.
if you’re a man and you want to write about how actually all men need to do is understand patriarchy, seriously shut the fuck up.
if you’re a woman and you want to write about how actually feminism is good for men, seriously shut the fuck up:
stop centering a tool for helping women, feminism, stop centering women, when men is the topic. do you understand? can you understand? the topic is men.
Young adults needs stronger world frameworks that don’t feel forced on them.
IMO that’s a virtue system!
I’ve been a Stoic for over 20 years now and managed to convert dozens of people to progressive thought just by discussing virtues that are inherit to human nature (justice, courage, wisdom, temperance). People like abstract virtues because they’re easy to incorporate to their personal world models with very little friction and friction is the real thought killer.
Most people are truth seeking but can be very slow learners and some really rebel against strong friction so there’s a need for more abstract approaches like - using “colorblind” instead of arguing race, using “cosmopolitan” when argueing geopolitics, using “secular” when arguing religion etc etc. Every other argument can follow afterwards.
This is the way.
I’m so sorry, genuinely, what? Could you further explain what you mean? I understand your first sentence, and then I got lost
Edit, maybe people aren’t online so much, but so many times I ask for clarification, and It gets ignored.
It’s important to me to understand different lines of thought, especially from men. I wish you’d respond.
Punching nazis can be nice and masculine if you like.
