Mumbled Grumbles

Just the ramblings and occasional rants of a middle aged man. No need to pay any attention.

[mumbledgrumbles]

Identity Consumerism and the Medicalization of the Self

We all chase a sense of who we are. Most of us, if we’re honest, have felt that quiet itch for a label that fits, something solid to pin on our chests so the world—and we ourselves—know where we stand. In earlier eras it might have been a trade, a faith, a neighborhood, or the plain fact of being someone’s kid or someone’s parent. These days the market offers slicker options. Identity has become…

[mumbledgrumbles]

Just remember, half of all people you meet have an IQ score below 100.

[mumbledgrumbles]

The Cult of the Strongman: Why People Cling to Putin and Trump, and What It Costs

It’s a pattern as old as human societies and as predictable as it is baffling: a certain slice of the population—often around thirty percent in modern polling—latches onto a strongman with a loyalty that survives every self-inflicted disaster. Putin in Russia, Trump here at home. The psychological machinery is the same. People crave the illusion of a decisive father who will punish the right…

[mumbledgrumbles]

Where the decline began

Found on Reddit. Just have to agree with this . . . Is there any one leader of your country that gets the most of the blame for the nation’s current day problems? by u/Intrepid_Arrival5151 in AskTheWorld https://embed.reddit.com/widgets.js

[mumbledgrumbles]

AI is going to make stupid people even stupider. The echo chambers of the internet as already lowered collective thought to the lowest level in my lifetime, and it's only going to get worse.

AI is designed to reinforce people's distortions, fantasies, and paranoia.

I mean, think about it. AI is a product. It makes money by keeping people engaged for as long as possible. No one is going to make an AI product that tells its customers, "You are definitely batshit crazy."

[mumbledgrumbles]

This internet has put the stupids in charge of the world.

I guess we'll see how they fare.

[its-where-the-wild-things-are]

[mumbledgrumbles]

The transgender identity is itself a social construct. So, no, people do not have to accept it as a given.

[mumbledgrumbles]

An observation.

Transwomen activists. You know the ones. The ones who send death threats to certain authors of children's books. The ones who call certain feminists a word that comes out of their mouths like a slur. The ones who lurk on reddit, ripping into liberals for being too compromising. The ones who believe, at a political level, "I am woman" (and you better effing agree, or else). The ones who make themselves up as caricatures of actual womanhood.

Yes, those ones.

It seems to me, they are the perfect embodiment of male entitlement.

The embodiment of male ego.

Even, the embodiment of male aggression.

Surely everyone can see this.

But, no one wants to say it out loud.

[wilwheaton]

republicans suck

[mumbledgrumbles]

Oh, yeah, as if facts matter to people who vote MAGA.

[mumbledgrumbles]

[mumbledgrumbles]

Ideologies are for stupid people

[mumbledgrumbles]

Anti-Intellectualism in the US. - The Political Compass

Distrust and scorn towards intellectuals has always been a powerful force in the United States, according to a Pulitzer Prize-winning book w

[mumbledgrumbles]

How the new masculinity turned its back on strength, honor, and morality

Modern masculinity, at least as performed by many of today’s most visible male pundits and “alpha-influencers,” bears little resemblance to the classic ideal of steadiness, courage, and self-sacrifice. From Theodore Roosevelt’s “strenuous life” to the quiet resolve of civil-rights icons who risked comfort for conscience, strength once meant carrying burdens, not broadcasting grievances. Yet the loudest voices in the contemporary manosphere invert that code: their measure of manhood is how convincingly they can claim persecution. In place of honor we find endless complaint; in place of duty, a search for scapegoats.

Nowhere is this inversion clearer than in Donald Trump’s political persona. Even as a billionaire and a former president, he casts himself as “the most persecuted man in American history,” styling every indictment or electoral loss as proof that shadowy elites oppress both him and the “forgotten men” he claims to embody. Scholars have traced this pose of “masculine victimhood”—a performance that reframes lost privilege as injustice—across his rallies, Truth Social posts, and fundraising appeals. The effect is to recode grievance as grit: if the strongman can cry foul, so can every disaffected follower who fears slipping status.

A similar choreography plays out in the media sphere. Bill Maher, once a self-styled iconoclast, now devotes monologues to lamenting that men are the “last acceptable target of discrimination,” warning that feminism has gone “too far” and created a new “gender apartheid.” Joe Rogan’s marathon podcasts, once about curiosity, are increasingly dominated by guests who rail against “cancel culture,” selling the idea that the male voice itself is endangered. Although Maher and Rogan differ in tone—one sardonic, the other bro-convivial—both repackage progressive vocabulary (“rights,” “representation,” “safe spaces”) to argue that men, not women, are the true marginalized class. The rhetorical trick is simple: trade the language of liberation for the language of loss.

The online manosphere industrializes that trick. Influencers such as Andrew Tate rise to fame by preaching gym discipline and financial hustle, yet pivot quickly to fantasies of male dispossession: women, governments, and “soy society” supposedly conspire to neuter the natural order. Scholars tracking this content note how grievance is monetized through courses, crypto schemes, and Patreon channels, all under the banner of rescuing men from feminized decline. Even academic studies of European “manfluencers” observe identical patterns: neoliberal hardships are real, but influencers misattribute them to feminism, redefining victimhood as the core of contemporary masculinity.

What unites Trumpian rallies, bro-podcasts, and TikTok hustlers is a shared appropriation of progressive identity politics. The civil-rights frame—assert injustice, demand recognition—has been reverse-engineered into a script where men petition for special concern because they feel “erased.” Instead of grappling with structural changes (automation, wage stagnation, shifting family norms), these figures externalize pain, recasting men as an aggrieved bloc owed restitution. It is a politics of pre-emptive alibi: failings are not moral lapses or market forces but symptoms of feminist oppression.

The cost of this posture is twofold. First, it hollows out classical virtues. Strength, once linked to restraint, is now measured by volume; honor, once tied to responsibility, is eclipsed by retweets of outrage. Second, it sidelines genuine discussions about male well-being—mental health, unemployment, educational gaps—because any policy remedy that is not emotionally satisfying to resentment entrepreneurs is dismissed as weak. Thus a generation of young men is taught that dignity lies not in bettering themselves or serving others, but in perfecting a rhetoric of injury.

If masculinity is to recover moral ballast, it must abandon the easy allure of grievance and return to the harder, older ethic of accountability. Manhood need not be measured by domination, nor by melodramatic claims of oppression, but by the quiet bravery of doing what is right without needing to announce how wronged you feel. Until popular male leaders stop performing weakness for clout, they will continue to blur the line between empowerment and entitlement—and the deficit in dignity will only deepen.

[depsidase]

[wilwheaton]

It hurts me like you wouldn't believe that Gen X is lumped in with the Boomers.

Like, you have no idea how much that sucks.

I get it, I totally get it. My demo (white men between 45 and 65, more or less) went hardest among all demographics for Shitler and Jeffrey Dahmer Vance, and there is just everything in the world to hate about that.

But the Boomers are our parents, and they are the ones who voted for Nixon, twice. They voted for Reagan, twice. They voted for W Bush, twice. They invented "political correctness" and mastered the art of the racist dog whistle.

They suck so hard, and a whole lot of us in Gen X have spent our entire lives trying to clean up the mess they made.

And I know this comes off as hashtag not all men, but I have to say it: there are so many of us who despise the Boomers, grew up listening to punk rock, hating Reagan and both Bushes, invented Grunge, volunteered for Obama and our local version of Bernie, and feel closer to Millennials than we do our parents. We hate Late Capitalism even more than you do, because we remember a time before the Boomers handed the keys to the oligarchs. We remember a growing economy and a president who wasn't a complete fuckup, surrounded by complete fuckups.

We are on your side, we listen to you and we hear you the way we wanted to be heard. We scold you about Chat GPT because we care about you and don't want you to become functionally illiterate.

I know I'm not the only Old who feels this way. We love you damn kids today, and we're doing our best to support you.

In other words:

[sunthroughdarkclouds]

URGENT HELP SAVE THE LIFE OF MY CHILD.

Dear humanity,

Please Help Me – My Son May Die at Any Moment.

I'm Amal, a mother of three children, living under the weight of the genocide taking place in Gaza. 🍉

Here’s my story, and I’m reaching out with a hopeful heart 💔✨, hoping someone will feel what my family and I are going through.

My son is suffering from a severe and life-threatening injury after being shot by Israeli drones. He urgently needs medical treatment outside Gaza.

Time is running out, and we are facing a critical situation. I am asking for your generosity to help us save him either through a donation or by sharing this urgent plea with others

I beg you, i kiss your feet, to help my son. My son may die at any moment.

I lost most of my family. I'm afraid to lose my son too 🥺

Mohammed deserves to live a happy and healthy life, just like every other child on this earth.

So I humbly ask you to donate even a little or at least reblog this appeal.

Please Donate now:👇

https://www.gofundme.com/f/join-us-in-our-struggle-save-our-family-from-war-in-gaza

I'm assuming the money goes pay for guns for Hamas rapists.

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