The role familial culture plays is really understated here. I grew up in a working-class immigrant neighborhood in NYC. I can’t think of anyone from an Asian immigrant family that goes around at night spraying graffiti or surfing trains. We mostly had parents that sent us to test prep and piano classes. I know Nigerian and Ghanaian and Uzbek families that also raised their kids in a similar way, and there’s hardly any delinquency ever.
"Once upon a time, these boys would have been absorbed by other things: a boxing gym; a basketball court; a church; a job... It was hardly free of violence or danger. But there was a way things were done. There were guardrails."
Those activities still exist. The right questions to ask (but are absent in this otherwise interesting piece) is what the guardrails were and why they (seemingly) don't exist now. Isn't a large part of "guardrails" very simply the presence of a father in the home? It doesn't matter how much sympathy I might have for the plight of children in certain communities facing difficulties if those same communities refuse to acknowledge that a basic component of raising children is responsible parents.
"There is something worth admiring in the reckless kids who stand on top of moving trains."
No, there isn't. But there would be something to admire in kids who are strong enough to ignore peer pressure to do dumb things that will get them injured or killed.
"The same idiots causing your train delay are descended from men who faced down saber-toothed tigers when we lived in caves." Seriously? I mean if you want to really get technical, we're all descended from the men who faced down saber-toothed tigers or we wouldn't be here to begin with. That said, being stupid and showing your ass or acting out criminal behavior is not anything close to facing something that's determined to rip your freaking head off. Actually the ones you are trying to make an analogy to have long been digested by said cat. The breakdown of the nuclear family, demoralized/understaffed law enforcement, progressive prosecutors unwilling to prosecute crime, complete failure of our public schools, social media/phone addiction, excessive medicating/over prescribing pharmaceutical drugs to kids are a few of reasons we have this nonsense today.......
I agree with the premise of the essay. But the author did state the “how” in challenging boys...boxing clubs, martial arts, churches, sport...all of that is available...
I will say this: When I was a teacher in an inner-city (now called urban) school in LA 25 years ago, the coaches created a boxing club at the middle school. It was great. Discipline problems decreased in the classrooms. The boys needed an aggressive out let.
Education has gone so far to the feminine side of things it left our boys behind. The zero-tolerance of fighting in schools has been a trade off. Instead of allowing boys to learn from a bloody nose on the playground, we let the thing fester inside them until they explode. I have said we have traded bloody noses for body bags.
“The respectable classes—the people, mostly white, who have money and live uptown or in the suburbs—tut-tutted about the whole thing on X, formerly Twitter, or Instagram, or wherever respectable people tut-tut about things now. They objected to the broken glass, the umbrellas of the hot dog stands that had been smashed or pummeled. The mess.”
What an utterly repellent attitude. I’m sure McCaffery would have the same response should those rioters have descended outside his family’s home in safe little Sunnyside.
At the age of 12 I was headed in that direction, stealing, breaking windows, skipping school. Then I entered the 7th grade, signed up for band and the whole course of my life changed.
Our elites think it's so wonderful to open our borders and promote grievances among the dispossessed. Do you think this will end well when a 1000 Union Squares erupt? Or when "the respectable classes—the people, mostly white, who have money and live uptown or in the suburbs" no longer venture into the cities because they are overrun with violent young minorities bent on destruction? This is the natural end result of the insane policies being imposed on our nation by the uniparty globalists, albeit largely Democrats. We have hordes of young men learning nothing - being prepared for nothing - in substandard schools run by these fools. It is long past time put a stop to the madness. Close the damn borders. Now. Deport the illegals. Now. And then start enforcing laws and standards. And still it might be too late to repair the damage caused by those who hate our country.
This is so trite, hackneyed and unoriginal that if it weren’t for the author’s clear self-absorption and self-congratulation on his “unique” insights, I’d think this was a ChatGPT type creation.
Men who survived the battles against sabre toothed tigers probably taught their sons how to make a weapon, how to recognize animal tracks, how to build a fire...and how not to run like an idiot straight at the tiger and think he’ll survive. Maybe the author should stop glorifying stupidity, find a mate and have children of his own before sharing his “wisdom“ about the behavior of young men. Grow the F up.
Boys need a way to harness their destructive potential.
Instead, we live in a matriarchal society that tells them that being rambunctious is a sickness and not wanting to sit still all day for class is grounds to be prescribed medicalized meth.
Also, the author just realized that men need to utilize violence from watching the Ukrainian war? I guess no one was paying attention to Iraq and Afghanistan for the past 20 years until it was too late.
“The respectable classes—the people, mostly white, who have money and live uptown or in the suburbs—tut-tutted about the whole thing on X”
I’d love to see the evidence that it was mostly white people and people with money; I’d be shocked if it were actually true. I’m pretty sure people of color and people “without money” are just as decent and were just as incensed.
And society does these young boys no good by making excuses for them. What happens to those children who make it alive past puberty? When parents, teachers, and society at large have failed to instill purpose and socially acceptable values to these kids, we get a wave of smash-and-grabs, carjackings, street muggings, and other assorted crimes and criminal gangs. I fail to see anything admirable about this situation.
We have progressives from the 60's to thank for the breakdown of the American family, paying poor women to have children without benefit of husband or father. Now after generations of children having children, society is being terrorized and destroyed by this newest crop of fatherless boys.
American taxpayers picked up the 3 trillion dollar tab for this debacle and now the same taxpayers are told they are to pay the hotel bills for law breakers from other countries who have rights that exceed their own rights.
The worst of all of this disorder is the sheer magnitude of wasted individual human potential. The collective cannot and never could love and raise a child. That is what PARENTS do. Enough.
The Boys Who Surf Subways
The role familial culture plays is really understated here. I grew up in a working-class immigrant neighborhood in NYC. I can’t think of anyone from an Asian immigrant family that goes around at night spraying graffiti or surfing trains. We mostly had parents that sent us to test prep and piano classes. I know Nigerian and Ghanaian and Uzbek families that also raised their kids in a similar way, and there’s hardly any delinquency ever.
"Once upon a time, these boys would have been absorbed by other things: a boxing gym; a basketball court; a church; a job... It was hardly free of violence or danger. But there was a way things were done. There were guardrails."
Those activities still exist. The right questions to ask (but are absent in this otherwise interesting piece) is what the guardrails were and why they (seemingly) don't exist now. Isn't a large part of "guardrails" very simply the presence of a father in the home? It doesn't matter how much sympathy I might have for the plight of children in certain communities facing difficulties if those same communities refuse to acknowledge that a basic component of raising children is responsible parents.
"There is something worth admiring in the reckless kids who stand on top of moving trains."
No, there isn't. But there would be something to admire in kids who are strong enough to ignore peer pressure to do dumb things that will get them injured or killed.
"The same idiots causing your train delay are descended from men who faced down saber-toothed tigers when we lived in caves." Seriously? I mean if you want to really get technical, we're all descended from the men who faced down saber-toothed tigers or we wouldn't be here to begin with. That said, being stupid and showing your ass or acting out criminal behavior is not anything close to facing something that's determined to rip your freaking head off. Actually the ones you are trying to make an analogy to have long been digested by said cat. The breakdown of the nuclear family, demoralized/understaffed law enforcement, progressive prosecutors unwilling to prosecute crime, complete failure of our public schools, social media/phone addiction, excessive medicating/over prescribing pharmaceutical drugs to kids are a few of reasons we have this nonsense today.......
I agree with the premise of the essay. But the author did state the “how” in challenging boys...boxing clubs, martial arts, churches, sport...all of that is available...
I will say this: When I was a teacher in an inner-city (now called urban) school in LA 25 years ago, the coaches created a boxing club at the middle school. It was great. Discipline problems decreased in the classrooms. The boys needed an aggressive out let.
Education has gone so far to the feminine side of things it left our boys behind. The zero-tolerance of fighting in schools has been a trade off. Instead of allowing boys to learn from a bloody nose on the playground, we let the thing fester inside them until they explode. I have said we have traded bloody noses for body bags.
“The respectable classes—the people, mostly white, who have money and live uptown or in the suburbs—tut-tutted about the whole thing on X, formerly Twitter, or Instagram, or wherever respectable people tut-tut about things now. They objected to the broken glass, the umbrellas of the hot dog stands that had been smashed or pummeled. The mess.”
What an utterly repellent attitude. I’m sure McCaffery would have the same response should those rioters have descended outside his family’s home in safe little Sunnyside.
At the age of 12 I was headed in that direction, stealing, breaking windows, skipping school. Then I entered the 7th grade, signed up for band and the whole course of my life changed.
OK - all true, but now what?
Our elites think it's so wonderful to open our borders and promote grievances among the dispossessed. Do you think this will end well when a 1000 Union Squares erupt? Or when "the respectable classes—the people, mostly white, who have money and live uptown or in the suburbs" no longer venture into the cities because they are overrun with violent young minorities bent on destruction? This is the natural end result of the insane policies being imposed on our nation by the uniparty globalists, albeit largely Democrats. We have hordes of young men learning nothing - being prepared for nothing - in substandard schools run by these fools. It is long past time put a stop to the madness. Close the damn borders. Now. Deport the illegals. Now. And then start enforcing laws and standards. And still it might be too late to repair the damage caused by those who hate our country.
This is so trite, hackneyed and unoriginal that if it weren’t for the author’s clear self-absorption and self-congratulation on his “unique” insights, I’d think this was a ChatGPT type creation.
Men who survived the battles against sabre toothed tigers probably taught their sons how to make a weapon, how to recognize animal tracks, how to build a fire...and how not to run like an idiot straight at the tiger and think he’ll survive. Maybe the author should stop glorifying stupidity, find a mate and have children of his own before sharing his “wisdom“ about the behavior of young men. Grow the F up.
Very true.
Boys need a way to harness their destructive potential.
Instead, we live in a matriarchal society that tells them that being rambunctious is a sickness and not wanting to sit still all day for class is grounds to be prescribed medicalized meth.
Also, the author just realized that men need to utilize violence from watching the Ukrainian war? I guess no one was paying attention to Iraq and Afghanistan for the past 20 years until it was too late.
Screw the Ukrainians, man. That ain’t our fight.
There is something worth admiring in the reckless kids who stand on top of moving trains.
No, there really isn’t.
“The respectable classes—the people, mostly white, who have money and live uptown or in the suburbs—tut-tutted about the whole thing on X”
I’d love to see the evidence that it was mostly white people and people with money; I’d be shocked if it were actually true. I’m pretty sure people of color and people “without money” are just as decent and were just as incensed.
And society does these young boys no good by making excuses for them. What happens to those children who make it alive past puberty? When parents, teachers, and society at large have failed to instill purpose and socially acceptable values to these kids, we get a wave of smash-and-grabs, carjackings, street muggings, and other assorted crimes and criminal gangs. I fail to see anything admirable about this situation.
But I thought toxic masculinity could be suppressed and turned into toxic feminism. Who knew?
read Sheluyang Peng and THINK
We have progressives from the 60's to thank for the breakdown of the American family, paying poor women to have children without benefit of husband or father. Now after generations of children having children, society is being terrorized and destroyed by this newest crop of fatherless boys.
American taxpayers picked up the 3 trillion dollar tab for this debacle and now the same taxpayers are told they are to pay the hotel bills for law breakers from other countries who have rights that exceed their own rights.
The worst of all of this disorder is the sheer magnitude of wasted individual human potential. The collective cannot and never could love and raise a child. That is what PARENTS do. Enough.