No Mercy / No Malice: Boys to Men

00:01:28 · George HahnPlay from here

[00:01:28] S4: This is no mercy, no malice. Some people have called this week's midterms a blue wave. Incorrect. This was a political earthquake that triggered a tsunami. The fault lines crisscrossed American society and affordability crisis, ill conceived tariffs, and unpopular war, racist and cruel immigration enforcement, metastasizing AI data centers, unprecedented levels of corruption, ever less accessible health care, a tight job market, and a desire for checks and balances. America rejected Donald Trump, and more important, his MAGA movement in the biggest electoral route since 1974. And young men were the earthquake's epicenter, according to exit polls, swinging 36 points toward the Democrats in just two years more than any cohort. As I said on the eve of the election, young men are the ultimate swing voters, but the reasons why many of them voted for Trump in 2024 remain the same when they voted for Democrats this year. Young men are struggling. I wrote this piece three years ago. Some of the numbers have changed. The trend hasn't. Young men aren't loyal to a party. They're loyal to a feeling. The system isn't working for them. In 2024, they sent that message to Democrats. This week, they sent it to Republicans. Same guys, same pain, different recipient. So here's my advice to everyone who won on Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans alike. They didn't vote for you. They voted for change. And if it doesn't happen, there will be more earthquakes. Boys to Men, as read by George Hahn. America has a vision of itself as the land of opportunity, with rights and liberty for everyone. That is not and has never been the reality. But for two hundred fifty years, we've been closing that gap at a greater pace than any other multicultural democracy. Lately, however, there's evidence we're losing ground. Life expectancy is down, inequality is up, and our discourse has become increasingly coarse. Every segment of society, except the wealthiest, can point to setbacks. One group's slide is particularly steep, and its decline presents a threat to the commonwealth and our prosperity. Our young men are failing, and we are failing them. Boys start school less prepared than girls, and they're less likely to graduate from high school and attend or graduate from college.

00:04:32 · George Hahn, S5Play from here

One in seven men reports having no friends, and three of every four deaths of despair in America, suicides and drug overdoses, are men. I've written about this at length and about how it relates to declining birth rates on the No Mercy, No Malice blog. Alienation and disaffection drive despair and violence. By age 27, high school dropouts are four times more likely to be arrested, fired by their employer, on government aid, or addicted to drugs than their peers who graduated. We face declining household formation, reduced birth rates, and slowing economic growth just as baby boomers entered decades of nonproductive retirement. The lack of an open dialogue about these issues has created a void filled by voices espousing thinly veiled misogyny, demonization of vulnerable groups, and a vision for masculinity that wants to take non whites and women back to the 50s and old Spain, respectively. The good news is the dialogue has become much more productive recently. There's a growing recognition of the size and severity of the challenges facing young men, and we can now turn our focus to solutions. In 1945, The US economy was the arsenal of democracy, a coast to coast assembly line of tanks, ships, and ammunition. [00:06:12] S5: And of all the things that American independence means to you and to me and to ours, Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now.

00:06:12 · S5, George Hahn, S6Play from here

[00:06:12] S5: And of all the things that American independence means to you and to me and to ours, Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now. [00:06:32] S4: 40% of the nation's GDP went toward the war effort. Today, we spend 3% of our GDP on the military. But at the end of World War II, that economy lost its sole customer, and in short order, we had to find jobs for 10,000,000 young people, mostly men, leaving military service and coming home. Wages fell, rents rose, workers in every major industry went on strike, and a nationalist movement began bubbling up. Leaders of every stripe feared a return of the depression or worse. Except that's not what happened. The next thirty years brought record low unemployment, sustained economic growth, and world changing technological innovation. Millions of household enjoyed steady increases in their quality of life, so much so that we had to invent a new social concept, the middle class. [00:07:35] S6: The home of John and Margaret Bryant, the home they've always dreamed of, the happiest investment they have ever made. At last, the Bryant's have all the space they need, Big floor to ceiling closets for each member of the family. Large, comfortable bedrooms.

00:07:51 · George HahnPlay from here

[00:07:51] S4: The term working class couldn't encompass the two car garage, summer vacations, and son and soon daughter heading to college that exemplified an American middle class lifestyle. Contrary to perception, the postwar middle class was not solely the province of white men. 27,000,000 American women entered the workforce between 1950 and 1980, increasing their participation by 50%. The percent of black men who were in the middle class by income rose from 22% in 1940 to 68% in 1970. Underlying this prosperity was robust state support. The GI Bill funded college for 2,000,000 soldiers and home loans and small business loans for hundreds of thousands more. Truman's housing legislation expanded the government's role in building homes and financing homeownership. Eisenhower launched a forty year project to build a national highway system at a cost of over $500,000,000,000 in today's dollars. Income taxes were progressive. The top rate was 91%, and the wealth of the biggest earners was redistributed through social programs and investments in infrastructure, education, and science. The greatest innovation in the history of the West, the American middle class, was the product of intentional and sustained public investment. Our retreat from that vision has led to decades of prosperity but little progress. We've slid into a cascading pattern of failure to rear, educate, and employ young men. Returning to our tradition of investment could rebuild the engine of capitalism and reverse the slide in their fortunes. Some ideas. The day a boy walks into school, he's behind half the class. With brains that mature later than girls, boys almost immediately fall behind girls in school. We should redshirt them, just as we hold back college athletes for a year so they can develop further. This proposal comes from Richard Reeves, who wrote last year's landmark book of Boys and Men. He joined me on my podcast and recently left Brookings to found the American Institute of Boys and Men. Once in school, boys have fewer male role models. Fewer than one in four teachers in America are men, down from one in three in 1980. It's a vicious cycle. As the fewer male teachers boys see, the less interested they become in pursuing teaching themselves.

00:10:49 · George Hahn, Ed Elson, S5Play from here

Lacking male exemplars of strength, kindness, and generosity, boys look elsewhere for models, like Andrew Tate, the global alpha male sensation. [00:11:01] S2: Women should clean up. Not only should women clean up, women should clean up unprompted. Why is your lazy ass [00:11:09] S5: not doing the right thing?

00:11:11 · George HahnPlay from here

[00:11:11] S4: And an accused trafficker, rapist, and self proclaimed pimp. New York's NYC Men Teach initiative is a good start. It's focused on men of color, however. We need more programs encouraging menall mento go back to school and serve as role models for our boys. We need more extracurricular mentoring. One of the most influential people in my life was Cy Cordner, a stockbroker I met after walking into the Dean Witter Westwood office at age 13, who taught me about stocks and markets while in junior high. Cy, along with several other men who took an interest in me, helped shape the trajectory of my life and career. So do all mentors. Kids with mentors are 81% more likely to participate in sports, 78% more likely to volunteer in their community, and twice as likely to hold a leadership position at school. We need more male mentorship programs like Building Better Men, Growing Kings, and The Mentoring Alliance. At UCLA, I joined a fraternity my freshman year. Growing up without any siblings or a present father meant there were few men in my household. The Greek system has received a great deal of warranted scrutiny for encouraging reckless behavior, yet I would unreservedly advocate for a young man or a woman to join a fraternity or sorority. Zeta Beta Tau shrank an unfriendly place of 30,000 people down to a group of brothers who, in their own way, cared about one another. Within a week of pledging, my big brother told me to stop smoking so much pot and reduce my class load from four to three to ensure I did well my first quarter and gain some confidence. Common sense advice, which I lacked as a 17 year old male who'd never spent more than seven days away from home. Without a network of other men serving as guardrails for me, I likely would not have graduated. Since the 1990s, preparing our kids for college has become entrenched in our DNA as the fundamental step to a brighter future for them. The rigid emphasis on national exams and 200,000 liberal arts degrees has crowded out vocational education as a path to success and stability. Parents shouldn't worry about children who opt for woodworking versus computer science. Instead, we should worry about men who choose day trading and pornography over building, creating, and repairing.