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Old 03-19-2025, 11:48 AM   #8319
Monahammer
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist View Post
The trouble is Trump's support is now young men, not the elderly
This is a sort of late stage society sickness that is manifesting in a different way than typically, historically speaking.

When historical empires have produced long periods of peace, a problem ends up arising when young men (especially those in the mid to upper classes) have their upwards mobility potential limited, and start seeking other opportunities to find the upwards mobility they were promised. Yes, this is a bit gender specific but we are talking about history and many societies didn't have a lot of social mobility for women at all.

The young men would typically form mercenary bands, or become men at arms, or become highway men- generally they use the force that they represent to cajole society a bit and get what they want. Power structures started recognizing this, and so would engage in periodic expeditionary wars to essentially bleed out this class in a foreign land (e.g. crusades.) A much more recent example of this could potentially be seen in the Vietnam war, but typically people use the Crusades as an example.

But now we are in a new scenario. Professional militaries and technologies are so advanced that a general draft seems hard to rationalize. There's a massive class of disenfranchised young males who, rightly or wrongly, thought they had much better prospects than are manifesting and it's causing great angst. They are then being controlled and force fed media like Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan, which doubles down on their insecurities and offsets to xx (other groups, religions, sexes, sexual preferences, whatever just OTHER). I think this is where it's a bit different than the Nazi movement or other historical examples of groups trying to hold on to societal power. Plus, this group has been additionally targeted, again rightly or wrongly, by the large scale social movements of the last 2 decades. It's probably the hardest time in anyone's living memory to be a young adult male.

It's an interesting problem and I don't really know how to address it in the long term.
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