The Boy Problem

A Mother's Day Challenge

Nellie Bowles on the Pacific Palisades arsonist:

The man who prosecutors say started the fire is Jonathan Rinderknecht, who was 29 when he was arrested last October. In a court filing, prosecutors wrote: “Many of defendant’s Uber passengers on December 31, 2024 and January 1, 2025, described defendant as angry, intense, driving erratically, and ranting about being ‘pissed off at the world’ and Luigi Mangione, capitalism, and vigilantism.” He had apparently become obsessed with Luigi Mangione and is alleged to have searched things like: “free Luigi Mangione. And: “let’s take down all the billionaires,” and “reddit let’s kill all the billionaires.” According to investigators, after he was eventually taken in, he continued this rant, explaining that: “We’re basically being enslaved by them” (the rich).

The scariest part is that in a few years we are going to have so many of these smart, crazy young men. Coinbase just announced it would be laying off 14 percent of its workforce. Do you have any idea how dangerous 700 newly unemployed crypto guys are? Do you know what these people can do to themselves with an internet connection and 15 of those Celsius drinks?

Let’s talk about boys. They’re the losers of the digital age. You know the stereotype: sitting in the basement, in pajamas, playing video games (and, increasingly, gambling on sports). Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute estimates that there are 7 million men who have simply dropped out of the workforce. They exist on what Eberstadt calls “the archipelago of disability payments.” It is chronic state, and exists beyond the seven million. Boys having been slipping behind girls in an array of statistics—from high school dropouts (50% higher) to college graduation rates (black women graduate from college at a 44% rate and white men at 34%). Men commit 70% of the violent crimes. According to Perplexity, “about 11.5% of males over age 12 have a substance use disorder versus 6.4% of females.” And now, it seems left-wing fellas are catching up with the right-wing militia guys when it comes to violence. There was the LA arsonist—above—who was obsessed with Luigi Mangione (who is accused of assassinating the president of United Health Care; shot him in the back, real masculine-like), the shooter at the White House Correspondents Dinner; there was the killer of Charlie Kirk. An alarming number of mass shootings recently have allegedly been committed by transexuals. And, as always, there are the fabulously impotent right-wing militia boys, toting heavy weapons.

The boy problem has been especially difficult for the Democratic Party. In 2024, the gender gap was 10% of the electorate—55% of men voted for Trump, 45% of women. This is a far more serious deficit than the marginal differences that may accrue from the restriction of racial gerrymandering—which have been over reported by the media. Actually, the real effects of gerrymandering in 2026 may be different from those “predicted” by experts. In Texas, for example, the Republican gerrymander of House seats, expected to yield +5 for Republicans, is now down to +3 because Latinos who voted for Trump in 2024 are appalled by the ICE raids. Gerrymandering may prove a less important influence on the election than gas prices.

A few weeks ago, on one of our Two Joes podcast, I asked Denise Powell—a very bright Demooratic candidate for Congress in Nebraska—what she would do about the Dems’ gender problem. Powell had started a local group to promote women candidates…and she interpreted the question in the now-traditional Democratic way: she talked about the need to recruit more women candidates. She hadn’t given much thought to boys. Not many people have. One who did was Eric Greitens, the disgraced former governor of Missouri. When I asked him how to get boys to pay more attention in school, he suggested a tough hour of physical training for boys, first thing in the school day. That would calm them down, get the endorphins running.

A good part of the Democrats’ problem has been an overdose of feminism. The emphasis, as Denise Powell suggested above, has been to cultivate the abilities of women, to break the so-called glass ceiling. We are better off for that. BUT…In the process, the Democrats have gone overboard. They have prissified their use of language; progressive usage has become a minefield—does it really make a difference if we say humankind rather than mankind? I don’t think so. Indeed, it is a red flag thrown across the front grills of the pickup trucks of the unawakened.

Men are different from women. They are more heavily muscled, they tend to be more bullish in the china shop of “progressive” politics. Men are aggressive; women cooperative. Toxic masculinity is matched by toxic feminity, an equally obnoxious strain of disdain, only we’re not allowed to say that.

Another part is the mythology that women can do anything that men can. Actually, in my experience, they’re better than men at many things; the best editors I’ve had have been women (with notable exceptions like Bob Gottlieb); the best assistants I’ve had were women—they’re more orderly, precise and enthusiastic than young men. They seem less addled. Testosterone is a flummox for many young guys.

Many of my favorite politicians these days are women—Elissa Slotkin, Mikie Sherrill, Abigail Spanberger. Most of my favorite male politicians—Jake Auchincloss, Wes Moore, John James, Mark Kelly, Jason Crow—are men who served in the military. Which suggests something…

Men need physical coming-of-age rituals, like the military. Women should be welcome to participate—Pete Hegseth is such a jerk—but they are different. Men need the experience of what the military historian William McNeill called “muscular bonding.” We became a more successful species when we learned to hunt in packs—a training, McNeill suggests, not dissimilar from close-order drill. It involved dancing, our most primal communal activity. If you practiced the “kill the gazelle” dance, you might come home with meat for dinner. The mythic ritual of running a gauntlet, of being tested physically, has been lost in the mists of history. It may be a necessary part of the male maturation process that we, in our sophistication, have forgotten.

Donald Trump beat two women for the presidency. And you hear a lot of Democrats saying these days, that they need a male candidate in 2028. Jeez, I hope not. They need a strong candidate. Elissa Slotkin, mentioned above, is particularly adroit on this subject: “We don’t help ourselves by pretending we don’t have a problem. Staying on defense only doesn’t win anything. You must go on offense to win. Fear is contagious, but so is courage.” She has even praised Ronald Reagan in her response to Trump’s State of the Union. Reagan, she said, “understood that true strength required America to combine our military and economic might with moral clarity” — implying that genuine strength is more than just a posture. Most memorably, she has called too many Democratic candidates “weak and woke.”

Of course, strength without sense is not a recipe for success. I favored Janet Mills over Graham Platner in Maine’s Democratic Senate primary, before Mills dropped out. Platner’s florid machismo is the sort of thing Dems are looking for these days; but his undercooked progressivism shouldn’t be.

But then, Democrats think too much, period. They are an eggshell factory. And, remarkably, they don’t think enough about the most basic things, the things that really matter—the cultural and physical differences between boys and girls; the importance of intact families when it comes to social stability; the importance of choice and accountability when it comes to K-thru-12 education. Democrats should celebrate backslapping again, and belly laughs, and blocking and tackling; they should celebrate being noisy and jolly; they should celebrate anthems as much as they do rhapsodies.

There will be feminists who splutter when they read this. They will misread it as a plea for male superiority. It isn’t. It’s a plea for male equality, for cultivating the civic confidence in men that empowers them…and makes it less likely they have to set Los Angeles on fire to prove their manhood.

One More Thing

I’m not a big fan of Vivek Ramaswamy, who seemed a fool when he ran for president. But, running for governor of Ohio, he did say something important the other day:

“The number one factor that determines whether you achieve your goals in life … is actually you...It’s not the Jews. It’s not the White people. It’s not the patriarchy. It’s not the Black people. It’s not the foreigners.”

The need is to make boys stronger, not weaker. The need is for the witting exercise of freedom, not the shackling of male enthusiasm. There is a need, in the whispery corridors of Democratic Party, for more joyful noise.