Despite not having any kids, I’ve become intrigued lately by all the doomsdayers out there raising alarms about birthrates and replacement rates. Elon Musk, who has 14 children with five different women himself, talks about it almost every day on X. Recently, he retweeted a user who shared some shocking graphs:
Source: OurWorldinData
Then there’s this one:
Source: National Statistics Offices
Wow. That is what’s called a precipitous collapse. The West will be extinct before long at this rate.
Anecdotally, my grandmother had eight kids. My biological father had seven. My mother had four. I have two half-siblings who have two kids each. My youngest half-sibling has none, as do I. Only a few of my cousins have more than one child. I’ve witnessed in my time a severe narrowing in the number of kids couples have over the generations. Marriage rates have also gone down. The average age people marry has gone up. And the number of children people have who happen to get married or cohabitate has shrunk across the board.
Not so in Africa, according to the graphs above. Especially countries like Nigeria, which actually has a population explosion that is projected to reach over 400 million by 2050, according to the World Bank. The United States’ population is currently 340 million for comparison.
So, what’s going on? Why can’t the West reproduce itself? I’ve heard all the excuses: expensive housing, cost of living, the job market, etc. However, according to a recent study that looked at the population trends in the African country, “income does not play any significant role in the demand for children in Nigeria.”
The 2022 study is titled “Fertility and Population Explosion in Nigeria: Does Income Actually Count?” You can check it out at this link here.
There are some key takeaways aside from the obvious ones involving increased life expectancy, declining death rate, and high infant mortality. Nigeria has seen improvements in both those areas over the last 59 years, though its infant mortality rate is among the highest in the world, and correlates with the higher number of births.
But if it’s not income or medical care that’s keeping the West from reproducing, what is? Culture, mainly. Take a look at Nigeria’s attitude toward children in general, and see if there’s a marked difference with the West’s.
From the study:
Children are viewed as a future investment and given the uncertainties of them having a brighter future, a poor household can produce more children to try their odds. That is, out of the very many children, some could have a chance to become prominent individuals in the society. Apart from that, some traditional Nigerian households views greater number of children as a strength to the family in terms of providing family labour at the subsistence level.
There are other cultural factors at play, which I’ve broken down here:
early marriage
universal marriage
prolonged childbearing
low contraceptive use
cultural emphasis on large families due to fear of lineage extinction.
I bold-faced the last one because it ties in with high infant mortality.
Fear of extinction fostered increased reproduction in the face of perceived high child mortality with the expectation that some of the births would survive to carry on the lineage.
It also is what most differentiates Nigeria from the West. Those few who procreate here in the U.S. do so within a bubble of relative security. It’s never been safer or easier to have kids from a medical point of view. Yet families in the U.S. remain largely fractured and small. Members are often adrift from one another. Who fears their family name dying out who isn’t named Trump or Musk?
Meanwhile, Nigerians reproduce as if they have a gun to their heads. Is it mostly due to the infant mortality rates? I don’t think it’s that simple. I get the sense that even if infant mortality were to suddenly incline here, it’d be met with indifference. Most women support abortion rights and put off having children until their 30s. Few men want to become fathers. Fertility and parenthood are not treated with celebration but looked at like nuisances. As obstacles to having fun or achieving life and career goals.
People are staunch individualists, focused intensely (selfishly, even) on their career and capital acquisition over reproductive relationships. We’re a culture obsessed with entertainment, dopamine fixes, and endless sensory distraction. To put it crudely, women would rather strip on OnlyFans or sip mimosas at the bar with their girlfriends on Friday nights, while men would rather play video games and jack off to internet porn, than do something as backbreaking like start a family. Much less a family above the replacement rate.
Sex education starts young, with a heavy emphasis on contraceptive use. We all remember the condom and banana demonstration in fifth or sixth grade. Sex ed also pounds on this idea that getting preggo is basically the end of the world. While out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy is obviously not ideal, that anti-natal sentiment carries on into adulthood. Fewer people marry, and hardly anyone marries young. In fact, the idea of getting hitched prior to age 25 is seen as absurd. Your twenties are supposed to be for “experimentation,” and screwing around, not getting serious with anyone.
None of this is to say Nigeria’s population explosion is an ideal to aspire to for the West. Severe poverty persists. Excess population is a drain on resources. In fact, the baby boom is considered a crisis in the country. The study states in its conclusion:
Population control is therefore sacrosanct to save the nation from peril.
Nigeria’s high infant mortality rate also continues to be a problem. By reducing that, in addition to better sex education, the country may be able to reign in its population.
In fairness to the West, medical technology may help extend life spans and quality of life far beyond what’s typical. Many people continue to work into their seventies and beyond, and not just our politicians, either. Plus, our infant mortality rates are extremely low (5.6 deaths per 1,000) compared to Nigeria’s (72.2 deaths per 1,000) and other African countries.
It is possible that a birth rate below replacement is a natural and inevitable byproduct of a modern, developed civilization. But it’s odd and disquieting that even in the face of imminent extinction, our collective response is nonchalance. At what point, if at all, does self-preservation kick in? For many Millennials and Gen-Zers, it will be their social media accounts that will serve as their final legacy, not their genetic progeny. A sad state of affairs.
I found this study fascinating because it helps dispel the myth that income and cost of living are the biggest factors in why few in the West want kids or want many of them. It’s not a financial issue, it’s a cultural one. I don’t see those trends reversing anytime soon, if ever. We’re never doing away with sex education. We’re never going to tell our teens to shack up young or put off college to have a family. We’re never going to be anything but workaholic, screen-addicted, materialistic pleasure-seekers who only seem to have families by accident instead of intention. What modern woman aspires to having kids period, much less four or five? What man would choose breadwinning over fantasy football and e-thots? Face it. We just hate kids.
To quote a meme I recently found on X: “We traded bedtime stories for higher GDP.”
No, seriously. Why? Why does Harvard, a name synonomous with ultra elite education; a bastion of uber smartypantsism; the university whose name you have to say with the proper inflection(it’s HAH-verd, not HAR-verd) or else you’re glanced at askew with disdain — need desperately to suck President Trump’s nipples for that sweet federal funds milk?
According to Axios, the Trump Administration is freezing $2.2 billion in funds due to “diversity, equity and inclusion practices and alleged antisemitism.”
Wait a minute. Is this not the same university that once saw the likes of boy wonder tech wizard Mark Zuckerberg grace its halls? The Zuck who hacked into the university’s computer system so he could steal photos of female classmates and rank them according to their looks for his website Facemash? The same Zuck who would go on to found Facebook, now Meta?
Last I checked, Zuck’s networth is almost $200 billion. $2.2 billion is like chump change to him. Why doesn’t Harvard just call The Zuck up and ask him to spot them a few billy? Did they lose his phone number or something? What if they made an account on Facebook and tried to “poke” him? Is poking still a thing?
(Plus, Zuckerberg is Jewish. So him handing his alma mater a gigantic check would help dispel the whole antisemitism thing. Two birds with one stone.)
Or what about President Obama? He graduated Harvard Law School. He should know all kinds of loopholes and tricks. He’s a lawyer, afterall. Even if he couldn’t help, he might know someone else who could. He was the Commander in Chief. He probably has a big network on LinkedIn he can tap.
Or what about calling JG Wentworth? Doesn’t Harvard remember the slogan? “It’s my money and I need it now!” Just call 877 CASH NOW. So easy.
Meanwhile, Harvard is shitting its pants about losing their few billion. University president Alan Garber says:
“For the government to retreat from these partnerships now risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals, but also the economic security and vitality of our nation.”
This guy Garber should change his name to Gerber. As in Gerber baby food. As in he sounds like a big crying baby. This is Harvard, dude. You have the smartest, the best, and the brightest people on the planet within arm’s reach! There’s no need to get hysterical. You swing a cat and you’re gonna hit someone making the next trillion dollar tech start-up.
Harvard getting its panties twisted over this is like Lex Luthor freaking out that Superman might fine him for jaywalking. If I were a student or graduate of Harvard I’d be embarrassed.
I’m sorry, but if Harvard can’t figure a way out of its little $2.2 billion problem, then I don’t see it being any better than your local community college.
Recently, I had the exquisite pleasure of telling a DEI proponent how much I think their ideology is trash.
So-called diversity, equity and inclusion is all about separating people according to supposed “privileges,” often based on race, gender, and ethnicity. But also background, economics, sexuality, physically able-bodiedness, among other things. Then trying to assemble people of all these various stripes into every situation for the purposes of “inclusion.” You see this most pronounced in the casting of movies and TV shows now.
The idea is to create a human mosaic of the modern world, I guess. It’s why Doctor Who became a lesbian, and is now a gay Black guy. It’s why virtually every White lead must be paired with a token Black best friend anymore. For example, I was just watching Inside Out 2 last night (which is a good movie, check it out), and wouldn’t you know it, the 13-year-old White chick Riley just so happens to have two “diverse” best friends, one Black, and one Mexican or something (not sure). Then there was that Chris Pratt movie The Tomorrow War where Pratt somehow has two Black friends despite being a White guy living in the suburbs. That still cracks me up.
You see this sort of colorful casting and mixing most glaringly in NFL commercials, where virtually every married couple is interracial, and quite often middle-aged uncool White guys play fools getting corrected by cool and wise minorities. A trope so common it’s become, well, a trope. There’s even an X account called White Men Are Stupid In Commercials that tracks the trope.
Now, personally, I don’t watch TV much, and I rarely watch the NFL anymore. I don’t care about 99% of DEI shit when it comes to entertainment, just because I don’t watch much of what’s out here. I don’t really care that Riley has two minority friends, or that White guys are idiots in NFL commercials. I had friends of all backgrounds when I was a kid myself. I don’t care that the Little Mermaid is Black. The actress who plays Ariel is actually very nice, and I think she was unfairly targeted with a lot of racist B.S. when she took that role. I’m simply pointing out the trend and noticing the differences. And laughing about it, of course.
DEI itself all sounds very nice on the surface. That’s why it’s been successful in wedging itself into politics and the corporate world (for now). In fact, “superficiality” is really its defining characteristic as a belief system. It puts all this emphasis on generally superficial things, ignoring what makes people truly unique — their thoughts and beliefs and accomplishments. But even worse, it makes one’s physical appearance assumptive of one’s beliefs and status within the culture. Surely you recall Joe Biden’s comment to Blacks that if they didn’t vote for him, they “weren’t Black.” Because the assumption there is that if one is Black they must automatically vote Democrat, and that by voting otherwise is to commit a sin against the Black community.
How terrible that must be. To think that because of your skin tone you should be beholden to some political party. How stupid and silly. And how is that working out, by the way? Democrat-run inner cities are shitholes. It’s not to say Republicans would necessarily do better. Some places are just going to be ghettos regardless of whatever party is in charge.
As a biracial person myself, I can’t even tell you how much I’ve been condescended to and pandered to and told how freaking awesome it must be to have the “best of both worlds.” Very often by White liberals or Whites who have bought into this DEI nonsense. Or Whites who seem to think it’s their duty to make sure I know that they know they’re totally comfortable around non 100% Whites or whatever. All the while, I hate being biracial, and largely because some people can’t help but make race one’s biggest defining characteristic and want others to join in on their fucking race-fest. And for a host of other reasons I go into in the article.
I will say, though, that if there’s one benefit to being biracial, it’s that I’m able to speak frankly about race matters while being insulated (somewhat) from criticism as a full White person would be. Though that shouldn’t be the case. Everyone should be able to talk freely about race.
DEI also runs counter against competency, favoring superficiality over qualifications that actually matter. DEI only “works” in areas where people are interchangeable and where the placement of diverse individuals is being done largely as a symbolic gesture. This is why it’s so predominant in entertainment. To me, it’s a meaningless gesture and just a way for companies to pat themselves on the back and feel good about themselves. It’s not like I’m going to buy a bag of Tostitos because a biracial White/Hispanic guy who looks like me is munching on some in a commercial. I don’t like chips much anyway. In fact, I may purposely NOT buy them just out of spite because Tostitos thinks I’ll fall for that pandering shit.
Anyway, I’m not going to get too deeply down the DEI rabbit hole. There are enough commentators out there arguing against it way better than I ever could. As a thought system, it’s a piece of shit. I’ll just leave it at that.
In my 42 years I’ve noticed that people, including myself, rarely if ever fail or succeed based solely on their race and ethnicity. In virtually all cases, it comes down to a merit or a meaningful characteristic of some kind that make a real difference. Some of which are earned, while others are purely happenstantial or genetic. Here are a few of them:
This has to be one of the biggest and the best privileges one can have. I often joke with friends that if reincarnation is real, I just want to come back as a hot surfer dude who lives on the beach and gets laid all the time. I don’t care how dumb I am. I don’t care if I get eaten by a shark at 25. I don’t care how superficial it may be. I just want to be a hot guy who fucks hotties in my next life. I am so done with this fucking face of mine.
Do you know how easy life is for attractive people? Do you know how much more welcoming people are to attractive people versus ugly ones? It is life on easy mode. Even more so if you’re a guy, just because few men are considered hot by women.
You could be a convicted felon and still have women head over heels for you, just because you’re hot. The guy in the mugshot above is Jeremy Meeks, whose picture went viral. Now he’s a model. If the guy had not happened to be born with perfect bone structure, he’d have been ignored and probably rotting away in a jail cell by now. Instead, he’s got a career.
This may be an extreme case, but it’s indicative of a real form of privilege and power a person can have purely accidentally and through zero effort of their own. Is it fair? No. But life isn’t fair, as we all know.
Look, all this DEI shit is just a way of talking about social status. And attractiveness is something that grants a person instant status. I’m not saying being hot is everything. If you’re really dumb but hot, your dumbness may really work against you and cost you. But let’s not pretend being good-looking is not a huge key than can open a lot of doors to a better life. My life would be very different and certainly better if I looked more like Antonio Banderas than a slightly less-pockmarked Danny Trejo.
Intelligence/IQ Privilege
At the end of the day, this form of privilege is really the only thing that matters. Hotness may get all the attention, but intelligence and IQ are monolithically way bigger and matter way more for survival and long-term success.
For sure, you can level up in life. You can apply yourself. You can earn degrees. You can learn different skills and such. But your intelligence is very often your hardware, not your software. You either have the ability to become a brain surgeon, or you don’t. Not everyone is cognitively equipped to deal with strenuous material or certain kinds of material. I don’t think I could ever become an engineer or a math expert no matter how much I tried. I have zero knack for things like construction or mechanics. I like to write, and that’s about it. I’m probably above average in that area. But I’m no Hemingway or Tarantino. In school growing up and in college, I consistently ranked in the top fifteen or ten percent of my class. But I was never a top one percenter. I was never that kid who was really smart.
There’s a certain cynical side in me that believes that humanity largely serves at the whim of a very small intellectual elite. Not the wealthy. Not the “powerful.” The intelligent, because in most cases it is IQ that put someone in that lofty position. Take Jeff Bezos, for instance. The guy completely transformed how ecommerce is done, and his company Amazon has a virtual monopoly in the U.S. Or take Google, Microsoft, Meta, etc. Our lives are largely controlled by a handful of hyper-intelligent guys working in Silicon Valley. Or take J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Nolan film that came out last year about the scientist. That whole movie is about showing how we live in a world shaped by a smart guy who (with other smart guys) invented a device (the atomic bomb) that can wipe us all out in an instant.
DEI talks all day and night about “economic inequalities.” But the truth is wealth is often a symptom of intelligence. Bezos, Zuckerberg and others are not super wealthy by accident. They invented things that reshaped society. They mastered the game of capitalism. Money is just a reward system for smartness, really. We can debate all day about whether it’s fair or right that some random guy gets paid millions on Wall Street trading with a proprietary algorithm software he created, but the fact is financial firms and hedge funds are willing to pay top dollar for such people and their talents.
This is another big one, and I don’t just mean being able-bodied and so forth. Obviously not being paralyzed or being born with some incapacitating disease or disability is a big privilege to have. But good health is pretty much the best thing to have when it comes to winning the genetic lottery. High intelligence and good looks are rare. But most people are at least given a decent-enough body that if they take care of it they can be in optimum health. Having good eyes is a privilege, as many people need glasses or lose their sight as they age.
Mental health is especially valuable. I used to work with the mentally disabled, and I can tell you that NOT having a brain that sabotages you at every turn is a gigantic plus in life.
Then there are nice features to have, like height or athletic ability. I was usually on the taller side in my classes. I’m six feet now as an adult. But I was never much of an athlete. I could compete up through junior varsity soccer in high school. But there was always a huge divide between me and the bigger more athletic boys. I could just never keep up.
Youth Privilege
I have to laugh when I see these DEI activists crying on TV news shows or podcasts about inequities and inequalities and all sorts of unfair things in life, because usually they are young people in college or right out of college.
I’ll be sitting there thinking, sir or madam, do you not realize that you are in the prime of life? Do you not realize how you likely have decades before you need to worry about gray hair, back pain, heart problems, and many other age-related issues? How are you not appreciative of the fact that in fifty years you will likely still be here while many people will not be here even tomorrow? There are people in their 90s that are as you read this languishing on their death bed, with only days or hours to live. I think of my beloved grandmother’s last days with cancer. She spent almost six months in a hospital before finally passing away. I loved her deeply and wish I could have spent more time with her. Six months is a blink, really. It all went too fast, and now she’s gone.
The younger you are, the more time you likely have in life for everything. Time is itself a real privilege. We all have some it, we just don’t know how much.
Those are just a handful of big privileges that matter in life a lot more than race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other things. Yet I never hear DEI people talk about them, because they’d rather focus on superficial bullshit that frankly, doesn’t matter all that much. They’d rather throw up tokens and symbolic castings on TV shows or movies and act like all that stuff equates to “progress.” I’m a little more concerned that we live in the Nuclear Age where we can destroy ourselves at the push of a button. I’m more concerned that half of humanity wants to blow the other half up because they don’t believe in the same sky daddy. But hey, at least the Little Mermaid is Black, right? We got that going for us.
It’s not to say racism and discrimination don’t happen and impact people’s lives. But one should be cognizant of the many tools they may have in their toolbox. Sometimes some privileges can be canceled out by deficiences elsewhere. Years ago as a teen I went to church and there was a White guy there I knew who was exceptionally good-looking. He was blonde and blue-eyed. I remember him because I was honestly jeolous of the guy’s looks when I first met him. He was what DEI weirdos would accuse of having White privilege. Except he had a rare immunity disorder that caused him to be sick a lot. Like every month he would end up bed-ridden and have to stay home for days. Imagine having to live with something like that? I woudn’t trade in my uggo face for a better one if it meant I’d be stuck in my house sick as a dog all the time. It just wouldn’t be worth it.
There are some privileges that cancel out other privileges. A healthy young Black guy is in a better spot overall than a 60-year-old White guy with heart problems. One’s got fifty some years to live. The other not so much. Wouldn’t youth and health privilege cancel out the supposed White privilege in that scenario?
DEI, like many race-obsessed thought systems, is divisive, demoralizing, and counterproductive to living a good life. It also trains people to ignore the many gifts they do have and should be thankful for and try to use for their own benefit and others. I count myself there, too. I agonize far too much over being biracial. I let it affect me when it shouldn’t. I should really just get over it and realize everyone’s an individual and not a semblance of features.
Years ago, this was a taboo subject for me. If someone asked me, “What are you?” (which, by the way, is not really the most tactful way to ask someone about their ethnicity) I would freeze up. I’d get angry, but try not to show it. Sometimes I’d just ignore the question altogether as if it were clearly only asked by mistake, or uttered due to a Tourette tic, and therefore to be ignored so as not to embarass the asker. It would take me hours to calm down.
Nowadays, I don’t really care as much. I’ll usually answer with some generic version of, “I’m a lot of things.” If I’m feeling spicy, I’ll say something like, “What, are you a census taker?” It’s more a source of humor for me now. I can laugh at it. I don’t turn into some schizoid weirdo anymore when the subject of my race comes up. I can examine it detached, clinically, and somewhat neutrally. But it’s not exactly a subject I care to get into. I truly do wish we lived in a race blind world where it was no big deal. But people are curious. And like it or not, race is a fascinating and often contentious subject.
I should probably clarify what I mean when I say, “I hate being biracial.” That’s a pretty extreme statement. I don’t hate myself, to be clear. I hate my racial mixedness and my skin tone that implies it in the same way a 5’2″ guy might hate the fact that he’s short. Or a balding guy hates that he’s losing his hair. Or the way someone might hate that they struggle with their weight. I don’t view race as some “extra” thing about one’s identity. It’s just another physical attribute of one’s body. I hate that it’s a “conversation piece.” Something that it feels I have to justify or explain. It’s like missing an eye — you’ll invariably get that question of how you lost it. I also hate the size of my nose and my acne-prone skin too, for that matter. So, it’s purely in that vein.
I’m not saying being racially mixed is inherently a negative. Some people I’m sure love it or take “pride” in it. Me, not so much. It’s always felt like I was wearing clothes that don’t fit.
I tend to surprise people when I bluntly state how I don’t like being mixed. “What, OMG, but what about Tiger Woods or (fill in the blank racially mixed celebrity)?” Yeah, what about him? His race is Wealthy Celebrity Athlete, not whatever mix he is.
“Oh, but you have the best of both worlds. Whites tan at salons all the time so they can look like you.” If it’s so great, then everyone would be in an interracial relationship so they could have mixed kids. Except the vast majority aren’t because they don’t want that, because most people want their kids to look like them.
“But you look like the future.” What future? When? In two hundred years? Why should I give a fuck what people hypothetically may look like in two centuries?
“But Jesus was biracial” (yes, someone said that). What? No he wasn’t. He wasn’t even really human (assuming he existed). You see any ordinary people turn water into wine or rise from the dead? I didn’t think so.
::sigh::
Race carries with it more social baggage than most other physical characteristics. People tend to assume all kinds of different things about your race. One’s race can often result in far different life experiences and perspectives. I don’t subscribe to many of the left wing concepts about DEI, unconcious racial bias, and a lot of other race-themed stuff. It all seems to be targeted unfairly in one direction — at Whites. A lot of it is nonsense. And also because honestly, I just don’t care. So-called “bias” is often rooted in simple pattern recognition. If a woman by herself sees me walking down the street at night, she’s more apt to feel afraid of me than another woman. Well, duh. That’s because men commit like 99% of all assaults, and mostly they assault women. By the same token, if you had to guess who the majority of shooting victims in major cities are, and you thought Black youths, you’d be correct. Stats are not a form of “bias.” Self-preservation based on pattern recognition is not bias. But I get where the leftoids are coming from in some ways. Some genuine racism exists. Okay, got it.
I’m also not as extreme as, say, Jesse Lee Peterson, who refuses to acknowledge that racism even exists. But I also get where he’s coming from there, too. Racism is very overrated these days as a social ill. Most times if someone doesn’t like you, it has nothing to do with your race. They just don’t like you individually. Too many people are too quick to assume it’s all about race and racism. It really isn’t. I also don’t care for the right wing platitude, “There’s only one race — the human race.” Really, you sure about that? Because I’ve never seen a right winger (or anyone, for that matter) just blindly choose where to buy a house. Usually “the type of neighborhood” (i.e. how many Blacks/Browns live there) factors a great deal into where one intends to live, especially if they’re White.
Basically, I’m 64% European. Mainly a mix of Italian, Irish, English, Portugese, and other things. While also being about 25% Indigenous American due to my Mexican/Hispanic background. The small remainder is a mix of West Asian (4.9%) and Sub-Saharan African (2.7%). The precise genetic mixing is not that important. What’s important is that I’m dark and different looking enough to not just be “plain boring” White. Most people don’t really know what the hell I am just from looking, though many will guess Hispanic, as that part of me dominates my physical features.
For the fortunate, their race or ethnicity is not a contentious issue. For some it’s a total non-factor. For me, even the fact that I was racially mixed at all was a source of debate. Well, denial, really. My mother (White, mainly Italian and almost entirely European) always insisted that I too, was White, because “Hispanics are considered Caucasian.” That’s debatable in some ways depending on how closely related one is to the Spanish versus the native tribes the Spaniards and other Western nations colonized way back when. But few people will just lump Mexicans in with White unless they look totally White. Certainly not dark. I did not have “dark” skin, I had “Mediterranean olive skin,” according to my mom. Given that I am 64% European, I can see her point. But I think a lot of my mother’s beliefs were wishful projections on her part. She split from my father when I was barely an infant, and then the two fought a nasty two-year custody battle over me. My father is where I get my darker pigmentation, as he’s largely Mexican. My mother did not wish to have a Mexican-looking kid. She wanted a kid who looked more like her. So, therefore, I was “White,” darker complexion be damned.
It’s a tough thing for one’s mere conception to become the source of great conflict and drama between parents. When you add in the culture and racial clash, it can become pretty severe. Then when you also add in the fact that one parent denies that you’re even racially mixed to begin with, it can create a rather toxic identity-shattering brew. Making matters worse, I did not have the opportunity to know my biological father growing up. I never had any connection to my Mexican/Hispanic heritage. I did not get to know my many half-siblings on my father’s side. That whole part of my background was handwaved away and treated as though irrelevant. My mother later married a White guy whom I never cared for, and then had three more children. I was the lone mixed bastard offspring.
As a kid I adapted fine to the family dynamic. What other choice did I have? It was only as I got older that I realized what a shit deal it all was for me, and resented being the different one. I wasn’t even allowed to refer to my step-dad as “step-dad.” He was my “father,” which became a source of contention and conflict. My mother’s separation of me from my real father was never really explained and never justified. Making things worse, my mother became an extreme fundamentalist Christian in the Southern Baptist tradition. This was at the height of the “Moral Majority” and End Times stuff in the ’80s and ’90s. My mother viewed her past with my father as her old, “sinful” life. Now she was “saved.” This is not uncommon. Many women go out into the world, get pregnant by some dude they end up hating, then do the about face into the piety and religion thing. It’s practically a trope, which I call “whiplash conversion.”
This whiplash conversion trope is something White women excel at particularly. Get knocked up by a Brown/Black guy they were just “experimenting” with, then go running into the arms of a safe White guy provider and turn Christian and go to church three times a week. It’s become such a common thing that it’s mercilessly mocked on the racist side of X and other social media. It’s called “paying the toll,” “coal burning” or “mudsharking.” There are tons of memes about it which I won’t share here, but they’re easy enough to find. Having been the product of such experimentation and suffered as a result, I’d be lying if I said I don’t feel visceral anger when seeing such cataclysmic breakups happen to other children, especially boys. It’s not pleasant to know that most of society views you as the butt of a joke, even though they’d never admit it outloud. Sure, you can say it’s “only social media.” But social media reflects a lot of actual social thought.
For me, race mixing, and its consequence of racially mixed offspring, will always carry a negative taint, even though I myself am biracial. It will always be something that bears high risk. Like carrying nitroglycerine across a cobblestone road. It will always be something that represents pain and loss for me, due to the fallout between my parents and how it affected me. Divorce and parental strife is bad for children of all races, but for the biracial there is the added risk of losing touch with half their heritage, and potentially feeling lost and bearing an identity crisis later in life. Many biracial people report having conflicted identity issues no matter what.
Many biracial people would choose one side over the other if they could, and feel it isn’t themselves but society that chooses what they are. It’s that lack of having a choice about who you are that bothers me especially. I also have no choice but to perpetuate race mixing if I were to have kids. No matter what race my wife would be, my children will be mixed because of me. Do I risk potentially burdening them with the same issues I had?
Even in an ideal family situation, there’s a tendency to prefer association with those who look like you. Like tends to attract like. This is why Whites tend to buy homes in White neighborhoods. It’s why race tends to marry within race, even in supposedly multicultural America. Something like 80% of White women marry White guys. Black women and Asian women tend to be most open to marrying outside color lines. With Hispanic women, it’s more split. But then many Hispanics do pass for White or have some overlap (like myself).
Being biracial puts you at a statistical disadvantage when it comes to finding a partner, because you have to find one who is comfortable with both your backgrounds — something I’ve found is not often the case. You could, of course, try to find another biracial person. But we are actually few and far between, and depending on shade, we tend to go for our “dominant” side. Then there is the aspect of disappointing both sides. As I wrote about in the above-linked article, I’ve been told I’m “too White” by Hispanic women and not White at all by White women, or not White enough. Something I’ll always find sadly amusing.
You also have to watch out that you’re not just a “flavor of the month,” or that someone is only interested in you just because of your skin tone. Many years ago, a White lady at work tried to set me up with her only daughter because her daughter was “into Hispanic guys.” I politely told her no thanks. I have no idea what it means to be “Hispanic.” It’s just genetic happenstance to me. I’m just a man. I’d rather someone like me for me. This was a tough thing to do, because her daughter seemed nice and I did find her attractive, and I got along well with her mother. I sometimes think back to that encounter and think that had she approached me from a better angle, how it could have gone another way. But I didn’t have any idea what sort of expectations a girl who’s “into Hispanic guys” had, and it honestly made me uncomfortable. I get that race is a factor in attraction, but it’s usually not something that’s a first priority unless you’re fetishizing it. Oh well, it doesn’t matter now.
Being mixed is like living in a racial no-man’s land. Given the fact that virtually every social environment I grew up in was nearly 100% White, it’d have been far easier for myself to have just been White rather than only culturally White. Being Not Actually White but having to be surrounded by Actual Whites makes one feel like a fraud, as I suppose it would be for a “daywalker” of any other race. Half-Black, Half-Asian, whatever. I never really felt comfortable or fit in, even with my own half-siblings. It’s not exactly psychologically healthy to always feel alien, especially when living in your own house. Moving around as much as I did didn’t help things, either. And I moved a lot. You tend to feel more alone and isolated. It was increasingly harder to even relate to my own mother. I look very little like her, and in fact, look the most like my father out of all his kids. Had I grown up and lived in a largely Hispanic area, I would probably have felt the same alienness about my Whiteness.
It’s not all doom and gloom. Perhaps my experiences are what led to my self-reliant and highly individualist nature as an adult. Besides, virtually all kids have trouble fitting in in their own way. I knew a White girl in fifth grade who one day decided to stab herself in the side with a pencil because she didn’t like being in class. I remember the side of her t-shirt soaked with blood as she got up to go to the nurse. I wonder what kind of inner turmoil she must have been going through. For all my inner angst at the time, I mean, hey, I never stabbed myself or did any self-harm. It could have been worse, you know?
These days, mixedracedness and diversity are broadly celebrated. At least it would appear that way in the media. There is less cream cheese on TV and in movies in favor of caramel and chocolate. Racially ambiguous stars like The Rock and Vin Diesel are popular. Hell, we had a biracial president in Barack Obama. Doesn’t all of that mean we’re progressing? Surely we are on the cusp of a racially blind utopia. Daywalkers like myself should be rejoicing as we enter this new age. Except I think we’re more divided now than ever. I think a lot of diversity is forced, contrived for image, and not exactly genuine. Like I said before, people freely associate. We don’t exist in some hypothetical national narrative perpetuated by the media. We exist at the local level. In our own lives. Not in an NFL commercial. Racial and ethnic tensions still exist. But whether you’re one race or another, at least you know what team you’re playing on. When you’re mixed, you have no idea, and neither does anyone else.
My perspective has grown and matured over the years. In the end, you get handed the genetic cards you’re dealt, and you’ve got to play them however you can. Both my parents are short, and yet somehow I wound up six feet tall. Something like only 15% of men are six feet or higher. That’s a plus. Most of my family lived long healthy lives, even into their 90s. I’ve been healthy my whole life, knock on wood. I admit that a lot of my thinking about being biracial is colored negatively because of how my parent’s relationship fell apart. Had things gone better there I probably would feel rosier about it. But the chips fell as they did.
I don’t view any one race as inherently better or worse. But there’s no denying that being in a region where one race is the super majority that you’ll likely feel isolated and alien if you look different. However, it’s not like being White means you automatically fit in with other Whites. No race or ethnicity is a monolith. Still, I’ll probably go to my grave hating being biracial. For me it brough too many complications I’d just assume not have. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good thing for someone else. Everyone is different in their own way.
You think being broke and destitute is bad? This is far worse.
Dollar sign lesions. One of the first symptoms of this horrible new disease. (Made with Midjourney)
Forget Covid. Forget Monkeypox. Don’t even think about H.I.V. or Ebola. There’s a new pandemic threatening to strike soon. It’s called ‘“Sudden Wealth Syndrome.” What’s that, you ask? A recent Yahoo Finance article explains:
Sudden wealth syndrome is a real challenge for people who suddenly get a lot of money. Children who inherit enormous sums or receive unexpected wealth may experience overwhelming anxiety and uncertainty about what to do with all of their newfound income.
I don’t know about you, but that sounds downright terrifying. I once found $200 on the ground as a kid and I had to be hospitalized for six weeks due to acute shock. I couldn’t even imagine the impact of a million dollar windfall on my fragile psyche. Surely, that would kill me. I’m no longer worried about bleeding blood from my eyes, losing my immune system, or being covered in puss-filled lesions, I’m worried about waking up every morning with eight figures in my bank account.
So, what’s driving this new epidemic? Is there anyway to avoid this scourge? Or are we all doomed?
Well, as it turns out, Sudden Wealth Syndrome, will likely only effect the super wealthy. More specifically, their kids. There’s a generous tax incentive for inheritance that’s set to expire at the end of 2025. Right now, individual parents can transfer up to $13.61 million tax-free to their children, while couples can transfer up to $27.22 million.
But that tax incentive is scheduled to end in a little over a year. Many wealthy people are worried that if Democrats retain control over the White House, they won’t renew the benefit, and may even increase taxes. This has prompted a stampede as parents try to hand down their wealth before the window of opportunity closes. If that happens, the amount that can be transferred down tax-free may drop by a whopping half.
The article goes on to state that over the next decade, 1.2 million people worth $5 million or more will pass down over $31 trillion. The vast majority will come from those worth more than $30 million.
My heart goes out to those poor people who will soon be suffering from this ravaging new disease. I’ve had the good fortune of associating with a few trust fund kids in my life, and let me tell you, it’s not their fault that they’re often entitled, condescending, lazy assholes who think the world revolves around them. Those traits are just symptoms of Sudden Wealth Syndrome. They’re helpless victims in all this, and this new scourge threatens to only make things worse.
Is there nothing that can be done for these poor souls? I sure hope the CDC is cooking up a vaccine or some kind of cure for them. Should we hold a telethon and ask for donations? Maybe not. More money would just make things worse.
Luckily for the super wealthy, I’m here to help. I’m starting a professional counseling service. For the low rate of $700 an hour (plus travel and lodging expenses), I’ll happily lend guidance and emotional support during this troubling time. Note: my services are only available to heiresses aged 18–25 with modeling contracts, and my counseling involves sensual massages and seductive pillow talk.
Whenever I’m feeling masochistic, I like to visit r/Presidents on Reddit. That sub has a rule that won’t allow posting or references to current or very recent U.S. presidents. You can only mention up to Obama. The reason for this is to prevent fighting over modern day politics.
However, a side effect of that rule is that many posters have built the sub into a hazy idealized nostalgia feels zone. I’ll often encounter comments referring to the “dignity” and “respectability” of past presidents compared to the divisiness and nastiness of today (meaning Trump, basically). Particularly when it comes to old presidential debates.
Except how many people remember anything of substance from old debates? We really only recall the gaffes or the attacks. I remember “binders full of women” by Romney. “Please proceed, Governor,” by Obama. “Well actually, he forgot Poland!” said by George W. Bush to Kerry when the Massachusettes Senator happened to forget one of our allies in the global War on Terror. There was George H.W. Bush checking his watch in the 1992 three-way debate with Perot and Clinton. In the 1988 Vice Presidential debate Lloyd Bentsen delivered perhaps the G.O.A.T. comeback ever with his “You’re no Jack Kennedy,” to potato-mispeller Dan Quayle. Reagan had his humorous “youth and inexperience” line against a knew-he-was-going-to-lose Mondale. Then there was the famous Nixon vs. Kennedy debate, where the youthful JFK came across as dominant and likable on a newfangled invention called the TV, while those who listened by radio thought Nixon had won. Or so the legend goes.
Aside from all that, I can’t think of too many other presidential debate moments prior to Trump’s clomping and stomping foray into the modern day political arena.
The recent Trump vs. Harris debate did produce a couple of bangers. All by Trump. Most notably, in response to reports of Haitian migrants chowing down on family pets in Springfield, Ohio, “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats.” After the moderator informed the GOP candidate that a city official had not confirmed that, Trump followed up with, “Well, I saw it on TV.”
Hilarious. Hate him or love him, the man truly is a meme come true. The humorously visceral comment has caught on like a pop song ear worm. “They’re not sending their best,” and “Because you’d be in jail,” saw similar mileage.
Scott Adams puts it succinctly here:
I’m revising my debate scoring. My first impression was a tie, which I called a Harris victory.
But the only thing I recall about the debate today is “They’re eating the dogs.”
Visual. Scary. Viral. Memorable. Repeatable. And directionally correct in terms of unchecked…
Contrary to what Reddit intellectuals may think, there was never a golden age of agreeableness in American politics. Or politics in general. It’s comforting to paint the past in pleasing verdant green, when it’s mainly been a flame-red hellscape. The era of George W. Bush is even hailed as some better bygone age. How quickly people forget. I remember how viciously Bush was hated, in no small part due to his disastrous war of choice against Iraq. The man’s poor speaking skills were also routinely ridiculed. Reagan was called an “amiable dunce.” Lyndon Johnson hated Robert F. Kennedy. Andrew Jackson thought the people were a “beast” and hated the central bank with a passion. Nixon hated most and distrusted just about everyone.
Trump’s comments have gone viral on TikTok. AI photos of pets armed and wearing camo gear, ready to defend themselves against attackers have trended on X. In twenty years, cats and dogs and the threat of them being eaten will more than likely be the only thing remembered from that singular Trump/Harris debate. Is it “good” or “right” that a 90-minute discussion between two people who hold the keys to the nation’s future be ignored in favor of a silly soundbite? Maybe not. But that’s how it’s been down through history.
Is voting an inherent right? Or is it something that should be “earned” with maturity?
I was scrolling through Twitter on Election Day afternoon when I came across Peter Schiff’s tweet, which I’ve screenshot above.
If you aren’t familiar with Schiff, he’s a popular gold bug, media commentator, and CEO of Euro Pacific Capital. He famously hates Bitcoin, considers all digital currencies Ponzi schemes, and is often regarded as an economic “doom and gloomer.”
He’s 59 years old, lives in Puerto Rico for the tax benefits, loves gold, has been warning of an imminent global economic collapse for almost two decades now, and favors fiscal conservatism.
He’s the quintessential Boomer’s Boomer.
I like Peter Schiff somewhat. I think he’s right on many things. Not Bitcoin. But I mostly agree with his overall ethos.
Which is why his tweet on voting yesterday afternoon got me thinking.
Admittedly, the knee-jerk response to his proposal to raise the voting age to 28 is a resounding “No!” It seems preposterous on its face. How dare you suggest taking the right to vote away from people who are old enough to join the military and die for their country.
You can drink at 21. You can sign up for six figures of student loan debt at 18, even if you’re going to a posh private art school to learn fingerpainting. You pay taxes even when you’re still a minor. You can sign business deals at 18.
So why should you not be able to vote starting at 18?
I can remember graduating high school in the thick of the 2000 presidential election, and actively looking forward to casting my first ballot. I even volunteered to work for the GOP on a street reconstruction project, as the convention was being held in Philadelphia, where I lived. The idea of being able to have even a very small say in who ran the government was an exciting prospect for me as a newly-minted adult.
Of course, that election became infamous for being undecided until December, hung up by “hanging chads” in Florida. George W. Bush slipped through with a razor-thin margin of victory, thanks in part to a Supreme Court ruling to stop the recount process. It was a cold-plunge initiation for me into the oftentimes crazy democratic process.
Schiff’s proposal may sound anti-democratic on its face. But I don’t think it’s that simple. It’s about applying more standards to a democratic practice that Schiff feels is sacred, beyond just the incidental component of age. You could argue it puts more of a premium on democracy. Something freely given is rarely valued as much as something earned, afterall.
We apply standards to nearly everything in life. You have to pass a test to obtain a driver’s license, and you must abide by the rules of the road if you intend to keep your license. You have to apply to college, and pass your classes if you expect to graduate. You have to show up to work on time and do the job if you want to stay employed.
So why not apply stricter standards to voting?
At its core is the idea that those with a bigger stake in society should have a bigger say in how it runs. Why should the middle-aged father or mother of two kids, who own a house, pay property taxes, work two jobs, have no greater say in who governs them than the 19-year-old unemployed college student living in their basement?
Schiff aticulates another angle to his argument here, in response to a tweet:
Source: Screenshot of Peter Schiff’s Twitter
I disagree with Schiff’s assumption that older voters necessarily equal a better government. Some of the Founding Fathers were in their mid to late 20s and early 30s during the American Revolution. In fact, the average age of the delegates during the Constitutional Convention was 42. If anything, Schiff’s argument puts a premium on middle-age. Schiff, at age 59, inadvertantly undercuts his own age group.
Nor do I think that just because someone has kids or a mortgage that they’re more qualified to vote than someone who doesn’t. Much less that they’re more mature. There are plenty of dumb parents and irresponsible people who got conned into bad mortgages. And there are also plenty of saavy wise-beyond-their-years young people well under Schiff’s critical age of 28.
Schiff’s stance is likely a recipe for stagnation. But I’d be remiss not to point out that underlying his argument is the idea of wanting to filter out younger voters because so many of them vote in socialist policies that increase taxes on people like Schiff and workers (like myself) in general. Schiff’s proposal is more about trying to protect his wealth than in advocating some more pristine version of democracy.
And he’s not wrong about wanting to do that. As someone who spent years working in the harsh North Dakota oilfields to obtain some measure of financial freedom, I abhor the idea of a bunch of freeloaders coming along and helping themselves to my money out of some half-baked notion of “equity.”
But then again, it’s not really the young, socialist voters that are the biggest threat to an investor’s net worth. Bad policies by the Federal Reserve that caused it to print too much money, have now led to spiraling inflation, which has helped crater the stock market and economy. And I don’t see too many young faces sitting on that banking board at all. So much for the wisdom and maturity that supposedly comes along with age.
Schiff is right, however, in wanting to apply stricter standards to the power and privilege of voting. I don’t think voting should be a free for all. Otherwise you run the risk of mob rule. Voting should be regarded as an important duty, given to those who have proven they care about this country and have a vested interest in securing their community.
But is age the best way to apply the standard of civic responsbility?
I can think of better metrics. Living independently. Paying your own bills. Being free of consumer debt. Being gainfully employed or financially secure. Not having a criminal record. All things that aren’t necessarily age-related.
I do think you should be able to prove that you aren’t a burden to society and dependent on others (outside of factors beyond your control like physical handicaps, etc.), if you intend to have a say via voting in how it runs. Voting is something that should be earned rather than just handed out by virtue of reaching a certain magical age.
Dean Brooks 