TLP Weekend Edition (February 1-2, 2025)
What we're reading and checking out.
📖 "Bro time matters," by Richard Reeves. In his eminently sane fashion, Reeves, who founded the Institute for Boys and Men in 2023, makes the case for single-sex spaces and organizations that focus on men. He notes how in our current cultural era, support for these places has often been lower than for female-only spaces, but argues that it's nonetheless important for men's development and well-being to have close relationships with one another. He writes:
I get it. Men in groups can egg each other on to bad behavior. We might get more tribal, more aggressive. The good news here is that rates of violence are way down, which means of course male violence. High school boys are much less likely to get into a fight. The bad news is that many men are isolated. Connection to other men can be, literally, a lifesaver. I hear a lot of women saying that they wish their male partner had more male friends. I think we’re in a bit of a confused state about the whole idea of male solidarity right now.
At a time when men are falling behind their female peers on a number of fronts, fostering healthy, all-male environments may be the first step toward lifting them back up.
📰 “Steve Bannon on ‘Broligarchs’ vs. Populism: The fight for Donald Trump’s ear,” in The New York Times. Speaking of bros, Times columnist Ross Douthat hosts a fascinating interview with the always bombastic Steve Bannon on the internal dynamics of the Trump coalition and the “populist nationalist” movement he has been involved with over the past 20 years. Bannon is unflinching in his evaluation of the role of tech billionaires in MAGA:
Marc Andreessen and the oligarchs are nothing but a bunch of progressive leftists that had their Damascene moment between 10 and 11 o’clock on the evening of Nov. 5 when the Trump movement won Pennsylvania.
The oligarchs are not conservative. They’re certainly not on the right. Everything they’re doing—crawling on their bellies, to try to get into and pollute this movement—is because they see the raw political power of this movement. I find it disgusting and revolting.
Bannon doesn’t mince words and, as one of the OG Trumpers, he offers keen insight into what his ideological cohorts are thinking about these days. Well worth considering regardless of whether you support or oppose Bannon and his views.
📖 “As Unions Die, They Become More Popular and More Brittle,” by Marty Manley. On his Substack, Modern Times, “former machinist, labor organizer, McKinsey consultant, Assistant U.S. Secretary of Labor, and co-founder/CEO of Alibris and RedLink,” Marty Manley explores the paradox of surging support for labor unions coupled with exceptionally low levels of private sector unionization:
Interest in labor unions is surging in the United States. During the Biden administration, petitions for union elections at the National Labor Relations Board more than doubled. Biden backed unions in every way he could. Gallup finds that 71 percent of the public now supports unions—a 60-year high.
These trends led many pro-labor folks to hope that the annual Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey of American union membership might finally show an uptick. It didn’t happen. The report dropped this week—and despite a progressive National Labor Relations Board and several high-profile union organizing drives, unions continue to shrink....
A headline that union membership and density are entering their eighth straight decade of decline is bad enough. But if you dig slightly deeper, the news is even worse: private sector membership is collapsing, but public sector membership is basically stable. 32.2 percent of public employees now belong to unions, compared with only 5.9 percent of private sector workers...stable public employee unions have masked private-sector union collapse.
The mask is coming off. The BLS report shows just over 7 million public-sector union members and 7.2 million private-sector members. In other words, public employees, who make up just 14.5 percent of the US workforce, constitute nearly half of all union members. They will soon be a majority.
Read this piece to get a deep dive into the data and also why these trends matter politically...a lot.
🎧 “What DeepSeek means for the AI race,” by The Economist. Trying to make sense of what’s real and what’s fluff with the market-rattling announcement about this Chinese company’s AI advances? This podcast does an excellent job of laying out the facts and potential meaning of the DeepSeek launch. As host Mike Bird says on the potential upside of all that market turmoil:
The reason I find that fascinating is because you end up in this weird position where, yeah, the market is down and people are perhaps obsessed about that and they see it and they don’t like it, but the surplus is flowing to you. If you’re ever planning on using these AI services in the future. You’re the beneficiary. And if we think back to the Jevons Paradox that was all initially around the use of steam engines and the price of coal and the fact that, you know, the falling price of coal, massively increased use of steam engines. The major beneficiary of that when we look back, we’re not talking about transfer between coal companies and steam engine companies. It was everyone who got to travel by train. Yeah, right. It’s like ultimately the winner of these things is the consumer.
🎹 The Quiltbox Sessions, by Dan Dorff Jr. and Ronnie Kuller. Engaging with politics and our coming AI overlords all week induces many headaches and much stress. So, it helps to take the mind off of things you can’t do anything about with some sweet melodies and neat arrangements of classical music played on piano, accordion, and violin by these two highly talented musicians and composers.
"At a time when men are falling behind their female peers on a number of fronts, fostering healthy, all-male environments may be the first step toward lifting them back up."
Which men are falling behind? WORKING CLASS MEN. Does Richard Reeves know any working class men? If he did, he wouldn't infantilize them the way he does.
Working class men are not suffering from a lack of men's bowling leagues - they are suffering from a lack of BREADWINNER WAGES.
It costs money to go out with the guys. And it costs money to impress a pretty working class girl, who considers staying home to raise her kids a luxury beyond her grasp. But working class men don't have money anymore, because jobs requiring physical ruggedness and strength are no longer valued.
Stop treating working class men like whiny babies and start taking their need to earn a manly wage seriously. That would help to rebuild communities and heal male loneliness and lack of self respect. Blue Collar Lives Matter.
Public sector unions are a trap for the Democratic Party. They are unpopular and in the case of the teachers unions, visibly crazy. But how to decouple from such a big part of the base. You have some Democrats at the local level (school boards) trying to do that but their tenure in office is unstable because the base strikes back. School boards have become a sort of farm team for other government offices when, on the merits, they are rivaled only by sheriffs as the most important local officials.
To fix this several things must be done. First, move school board elections to the general election dates rather than low turnout dates that are dominated by the unions. Appointed boards don't seem to preform any better than elected ones (e.g. Chicago) so that is a non-starter. Second, get some philanthropist with impeccable liberal credentials to drop a couple of billion on a School Board Academy. There is (or was) such a thing for aspiring Superintendents but it was national and the SBA needs to be organized locally and focused on recruiting as well as training board members. If it is privately funded, it can't be defunded by the unions though they will try to infiltrate it. Consideration should be given to paying board members and exempting them from term limits. I tend to think that these latter two ideas would cause more problems than they would fix but people should think about them. Term limits can be dealt with by a robust recruiting process that creates a succession chain. Unpaid boards can be ameliorated by the discipline to stay focused on major policies and adequately supervise the staff.