Twice As Many Men Are Single Than Married Today. Are Women To Blame?
Young men look at dating culture and see women who are prepared to choose husbands but less prepared to become wives.Young men look at dating culture and see women who are prepared to choose husbands but less prepared to become wives.The last mile of a Wisconsin trucker
On July 31, 2026, a buddy of mine whom I’ve had on my podcast, a fellow trucker who really put down the miles and kept this country fed, turned over his last mile and passed on to the great truck stop in the sky.
Kevin Kenneth Koehnke died as he lived, out on the road and working, a lifestyle he hardly strayed from in his four decades over the road. Kevin had some kind of health episode immediately after completing a delivery in San Jose, California. An ambulance came to get him from his customer’s driveway, and he didn’t make it to the hospital. Kevin was only 64 years old.
'Awww, when I got to the yard, they had a hot load going down to Pennsylvania and they asked me to go, so I took it. Sorry, Gordo.'
Man of many hats
I came to know Kevin, like so many other people in my life these days, from the internet. At some point a few years ago, selfies Kevin was posting on Facebook began to be copied and were circulated around various corners of the internet, often with commentary attached written by posters who were imagining what someone who looked like Kevin would say, and were congruous with the custom-made trucker caps that Kevin had become known for.
There was an incongruity to Kevin’s habit of printing these hats, which come off as abrasive and unnecessarily inflammatory to some; by all accounts, Kevin was a very warm and talkative guy who really liked people and had friends all over the country. There is an innocent quality to these photos that Kevin took of himself that I believe connected with people at a deeper level than the sort of online meme legend that grew around him. That said, the memes followed the messaging on the hats, and once unleashed on Twitter, they touched a particular nerve.
Conversation with a 'Bub'
I’m a follower and friend of the poster "Big Sib," who first introduced me to these images of Kevin, and I became intrigued by the guy. Being a trucker myself, I’m familiar with the type that spends a lot of time on the road and, in times past, perhaps consumed a little too much AM radio, which provided a weird mental placeholder for the "normal" lives one cannot live while out over the road. Sib seemed to channel a particular "Bub" working-class outlook in the commentary he added to Kevin’s photos, especially those of Kevin enjoying a hard-earned meal, and it all sort of worked. Sib was one of the guys who helped Kevin become somewhat infamous online.
At some point I decided to try to seek Kevin out and invite him on my podcast, and sure enough, his contact details were found on a Facebook post he had made of his business card. I made a few phone calls and got in touch with him, and he agreed to come on my show, which you can listen to right here or on most podcast players of your choice.
Kevin had stopped at the Iowa 80 Truck Stop to call in and speak with me, and he filled my listeners in on much of his life story, from working on his parents' cabbage farm in Wisconsin as a kid, where he came into contact with the type of truckers made famous in films like "Smokey and the Bandit," through his life on the road, to various adventures and misadventures with police, abusive employers, and friends along the highway who helped him out when times were tough. It’s a fun listen and one of the most downloaded episodes of my podcast. You will also hear a lot about truck stop food and the types of freight Kevin hauled.
'Just like his dad'
When I received news of Kevin’s passing, I asked to be put in touch with his family by the folks at the Konrad-Behlman funeral home, who have been helping them along at this time. I’ve had a couple of phone calls with his mom, Pat, who is pretty spry and a great conversationalist at the ripe old age of 86. She had listened to the podcast at some point as well and got quite a chuckle out of it.
”Kevin told some pretty tall tales,” she said, laughing. “He certainly was not born in the cab of his father’s dump truck. I spent 24 hours in labor trying to push him out.”
Pat did mention that much of Kevin’s career was spent away from home and family and that he was indeed a very high miler. When Kevin’s father died, Kevin couldn’t be there and was a day and a half late getting home.
”Kevin was just like his dad — loved being on the road. Before we bought the farm, his father would drive the dump truck all day and then hop in an 18-wheeler at night for another company and run up to northern Michigan and back overnight. He often only lived on two or three hours of sleep.”
Pat tells me that Kevin worked for about 10 different companies throughout his career, and a certain pattern emerges from her confirmation about things he told me on the show. Kevin is what we in the industry call a "runner," a guy who basically lives in his truck, works his tail off, and almost never goes home. As of 2023 when Kevin came on the podcast, he told me that he had worked for 17 years straight, mostly only ever taking the mandatory 34-hour reset periods truckers are subject to under Hours of Service regulations. So no weekends, no going home, living in the truck, putting miles behind him as he crisscrossed the nation he loved so much.
The problem with "runners" is that trucking companies become dependent on them, reliable as they are, but often do not return much in the way of gratitude for all that hard work and sacrifice. Kevin told me he was fired from one company after requesting four days off to go visit family, being told he could take it, but when the time came, they wanted him to keep going. He had put over 1 million, 300,000 miles on one truck for that particular outfit and was thrown out the door as replaceable. This in an industry that has been whining about a supposed shortage of truckers since the mid-1980s. The real shortage, in Kevin’s case, was making it home for Christmas or almost anything else important.
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No days off
I invited Kevin to join my friends and me at the Mid-America Trucking Show in March 2024 and even managed to get him a media pass, which comes with access to a room with catered breakfast and lunch, something he would have taken full advantage of. I told everyone that he was coming, and there was quite a bit of anticipation about "Uncle Kevin" or "the Big Dog" coming to MATS. Having never met him in person, I was pretty pumped about getting to meet the guy myself.
Kevin told me months prior that he had booked the time off and that he was most likely going to rent a car and drive down to Louisville from his company's yard up in Michigan. When I arrived at MATS, Kevin was nowhere to be found, and it took me a little while to get ahold of him on the phone.
”Awww, when I got to the yard, they had a hot load going down to Pennsylvania and they asked me to go, so I took it. Sorry, Gordo.”
He sounded almost embarrassed on the phone, as if he knew he had let me down.
”But they knew you were coming here. What the hell, man?”
”You know how it is. No one wants to work, and I couldn’t say no.”
No one wants to work. An eternal Boomerism.
I’m not sure if his excuse was true or not, but it followed a pattern set by himself and his previous employers. Being a runner becomes a lifestyle for a certain kind of trucker, a badge of honor for being institutionalized to the truck. Kevin was 61 years old at that time and had never been married, no kids, and he didn’t see his family much.
Kevin’s mom, Pat, was not surprised by the MATS story.
”I haven’t seen Kevin in 15 years. He doesn’t come home.”
Heavy load
On my podcast, Kevin relayed the story of how he hurt one of his big toes, but didn’t think too much of it and kept on working. Eventually it got so bad that he had to stop and have surgery to prevent gangrene at a hospital near Atlanta, Georgia, pretty far from Wisconsin. He took a couple of months off afterward to recover at his friend's place in Michigan, and that may have been one of the only, if not the only, vacation the man ever had.
Kevin turned 64 on June 13 of this year, and Pat tells me that four days later, Kevin was in the hospital with pneumonia, having water in his lungs. The type of trucking lifestyle he led was clearly not good for his health. Once he recovered, he went straight back to work, taking little oxygen bottles in the truck to help him breathe. Pat is not sure whether Kevin lied to his employers about being fit to return or if they looked the other way, or perhaps failed to engage in any due diligence on a driver returning to duty. I contacted them to ask a few questions about what went down, and their head safety guy said it was "not their place to discuss a personal matter."
Well, a man died on the job under their employ, and I doubt they would give a stock answer like that to an investigator from OSHA or the Workers Compensation Board.
It seems to me that Kevin Koehnke was one of these guys who had some kind of hurt deep inside him and either ignored it or escaped it by just staying on the road. Many Old Hands know such a person, and to be honest, its an easy way out that I myself have undertook in the past. Always working long hours away from home is a good way to let the sleeping dogs lie, but a bad way to manage your own mental health. This scheme is then compounded by employers who take full advantage of the situation, almost like a drug dealer who is always there with the next hit to soothe the pain.
The trucking industry makes a good show of highlighting health and safety, managing hours of service, trying to color between the lines where so many shady operators do not, and end up as part of the steady stream of collisions and chaos on our newsfeeds. But it strikes me that the business is also opportunistic in its use and abuse of runners like Kevin and failing to ask why such a nice man would just keep on working like that, never saying no, always getting it done no matter the cost to his own health — mental and physical — or the cost to relationships with family.
"Having an intervention" is a phrase often tossed around for those with serious problems like addiction. Maybe interventions are needed for the runners like Kevin.
Save me a seat at that truck stop in the sky, Kevin. I’ll be there sooner or later, too, and I’ll be darned if you won’t need a hug.
*******
Pat Koehnke tells me they have yet to see any of Kevin’s personal items returned to them, including his phone or his wallet with all of his ID. If anyone has intel on Kevin’s things, please email me at gordilocks@protonmail.com, and I will see to it that you are connected with his family.
He was cremated in California and thus made easier to ship home, obviating the need for assistance from an organization like Truckers Final Mile, which assists families in retrieving the bodies of loved ones who pass on the road but whose companies refuse to help with getting them back home. It tells you something about certain players in this industry that such an organization exists at all.
You can read Kevin’s official obituary here. There are links to leave a message about Kevin or purchase a memorial tree at the link above.
And make sure you reach out and say hello to someone distant. You never know what they might be going through or how much it would make their day to hear from you.
This essay originally appeared in the Autonomous Truck(er)s Substack.
Nick Vujicic: A living refutation of abortion's culture of death
There are some people whose lives make you reconsider the way you’re living your own.
Nick Vujicic is one of them.
We live in a culture increasingly comfortable deciding which lives are worth living.
Born in Australia without arms or legs, Vujicic faced challenges few of us can imagine. Even with the love and support of his family, bullying, loneliness, and depression took a heavy toll. By the age of 10, he had sunk so deeply into despair that he contemplated taking his own life.
But Nick soon found something stronger than despair: hope in his Christian faith.
He came to understand that his life was not a mistake and that his disability didn’t rob him of meaning or purpose.
Vujicic went on to become an international best-selling author, husband, father, and one of the most sought-after motivational speakers in the world. His 2013 appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s "Lifeclass" introduced his story to a global audience. To date, he’s spoken in person to 11 million people across 87 countries.
Now his journey comes to theaters Friday in the documentary "No Limbs, No Limits: The NickV Story." The film traces Nick’s struggle with anger, depression, and hopelessness — and his discovery that life is worth living because every person has value and purpose.
That message could hardly come at a better time.
Search for meaning
Across the Western world, we are living through a crisis of loneliness and a search for meaning. Young people are more connected technologically than any generation in history, yet many feel profoundly isolated.
Who am I? Why am I here? What difference can one person make?
Nick has spent much of his adult life answering those questions.
His answer is simple: You matter. Your life has value. You were made for a purpose.
Our limitations, disappointments, and wounds do not determine our worth. The challenge is to recognize our value and decide what we will do with the life we have been given.
That’s one reason Nick’s story resonates so deeply with me.
Redefining perseverance
I first heard of him in 2009 when he co-starred in "The Butterfly Circus," a short film starring and produced by my friend Eduardo Verastegui. I was intrigued by this young man with no arms or legs who could swim better and faster than I could.
And I say that as a marathoner.
Running marathons has taught me something about perseverance, but watching Nick navigate life without limbs quickly puts my own physical challenges into perspective.
I began following him on social media. Over the years, I watched Nick marry, become a dad, and continue showing millions of people that what we lack does not define who we are.
His life declares that no human being is a mistake. No life is disposable. No person should be judged by what they cannot do or whether that life meets somebody else’s definition of “quality.”
Every person is unique and unrepeatable.
And every person can make a difference.
That message desperately needs to be heard today.
Culture of death
We live in a culture increasingly comfortable deciding which lives are worth living. Nowhere is that more apparent than with abortion, particularly when an unborn child has been diagnosed with a disability or genetic condition.
A troubling prenatal diagnosis can be devastating, as it was for Nick’s parents. In that moment, fear can quickly take over: This child’s life will be difficult. The family will suffer. Perhaps it would be better if this life never began at all.
Nick Vujicic is a living refutation of that philosophy.
Imagine trying to measure the value of Nick’s future before he had even been born.
No arms. No legs. What could he possibly accomplish?
The answer: more than most of us could have imagined.
That question has particular urgency for me because I live in Virginia, where voters this fall will consider a constitutional amendment expanding the so-called right to abortion. The truth is that our broader abortion culture too often treats disability, dependency, and difficult circumstances as reasons to question whether a life should continue.
Against that backdrop comes Nick Vujicic.
Some ask whether a life will be too difficult, too dependent, or too burdensome.
Nick’s life asks a different question: What if we give that child a chance? A chance to surprise us. A chance to love and be loved. A chance to become a husband or wife, a father or mother — or someone whose words might one day save another person’s life.
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Finding purpose
That is why "No Limbs, No Limits" arrives at precisely the right moment.
The film doesn’t pretend Nick’s journey was easy. He knew rejection, anger, depression, and loneliness. He knew what it was to wonder whether his life was worth living.
Then he discovered that suffering did not have the final word.
Faith did.
Purpose did.
Love did.
Nick’s story makes me admire human life more deeply — disabled and able-bodied alike. It also makes me examine my own.
I run marathons. I have arms. I have legs. I have opportunities Nick could only have dreamed about as a boy.
Am I using them?
Am I loving enough? Serving enough? Am I grateful for another morning, another mile, another opportunity to make a difference?
In an age of loneliness, Nick Vujicic reminds us that no one is unnecessary.
In an age of despair, he reminds us that circumstances are not destiny.
And in an age searching for meaning, he offers an answer our culture badly needs to hear: Your life has value. Your life has purpose. Now go find it.
Is college even fun any more?
The day I left for college was easily the most exciting day of my life.
First, I was going to the East Coast. I had been raised in Portland, Oregon, which was a pleasant, normal town to grow up in.
I think of my own parents watching me board that airplane in 1979. How excited I was. How bittersweet — and yet satisfying — for them that I was getting this incredible opportunity.
But to be back east! Near Boston and New York! To live where it snowed in the winter and the leaves turned colors in the fall.
East Coast people were smart and sophisticated. The men wore suits; the women wore high heels. People took trains from city to city, like in the movies.
A big music fan, I imagined myself hanging around at CBGB or Newbury Comics in Boston.
Everything about the East seemed intellectual, fashionable, advanced and elevated. I couldn’t wait to get there.
The Prestige
Secondly, the school I was going to was highly rated! It would be full of smart and interesting students from all over the country. Hopefully, I could keep up or at least wouldn’t embarrass myself.
But when I arrived — in 1979 — I found I wasn’t as lucky as I thought. My particular college was at the vanguard of pre-woke “political correctness.”
The professors were all former 1960s radicals. Feminism was on the rise. Activist students were constantly “outraged” by the most insignificant things. Anything non-PC was “abhorrent” or “egregious.”
Classic American college
Fortunately, there were some normal kids there too. I joined a popular campus band my freshman year and traveled to less-annoying colleges to play dances and parties.
Just being that age and being part of that East Coast collegiate culture was incredibly fun: exploring this older, more historic part of the country. Meeting all kinds of people. Making all kinds of friends.
As people were fond of saying: “College is the best four years of your life.” Which at the time seemed undeniable.
The anxiety of higher learning
Because of this, at the end of every summer, I watch various friends and acquaintances prepare to send their kids to college.
But I can tell by their faces and the way they talk that this is not the experience it once was. The parents are worried. The kids seem hesitant. Everyone is thinking about rising costs, scholarships, loans, and career considerations.
Going to college is not the freeing and exhilarating experience it once was. Now it is a business decision. A risk vs. reward scenario.
Strong and wrong
Besides being insanely expensive, most universities have become strongholds of leftism, feminism, and DEI sensibilities. Censorship is rampant. Woke-ism is brutally enforced.
Now, the main goal of college life is to avoid “harm,” prevent “trauma,” and create “safe environments.”
College is no longer a chance to spread your wings. It’s not about intellectual exploration and personal growth. For most people, it is a pathway to a career.
For men, that means studying engineering, computer science, and math. So they can build things.
For women, it means gender studies, sociology, and whatever ideological subjects are trending at the moment. So they can manage people.
98 Degrees
College is now a slog. Something to get through. “A degree” is the main objective. A bigger paycheck is the ultimate goal.
If you’re a white male, your college will likely find you guilty of something. You will be forced to acknowledge that guilt and show repentance.
You will also be expected to step aside to let disadvantaged groups go ahead of you, to make up for your sins of the past.
If you don’t step aside, you will be run over. Or reported. Or #metooed.
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Demography is destiny
Rapid demographic change is also reshaping higher education. College is no longer a gathering of young people who share a similar culture and background.
Now, every culture in the world is at your school. And often in the same or greater numbers than you are.
At the same time, your own traditions are devalued. Core Western civilization courses are now considered problematic.
As a consequence, many people advise high school graduates to reconsider a liberal arts education altogether. They urge young men to go to trade schools or other specialized forms of practical education.
Thank you, Mom and Dad!
I don’t know what I would do if I had a child just graduating from high school.
I think of my own parents watching me board that airplane in 1979. How excited I was. How bittersweet — and yet satisfying — for them that I was getting this incredible opportunity.
Now what does that scene look like? Anxious parents. Stressed-out kids. More pressure. Less adventure. All of it heartbreaking.
The future belongs to people who believe in one
The future will be different from today.
The cars will be different. The clothes will probably look worse. Our phones might still be little black bricks with touch screens, but there will be new applications and new platforms for the dissemination of information. Some cities will grow, some will shrink, new suburbs will be built, and already dying small towns will finally collapse.
There aren’t many logical reasons to have children in 2026. We don’t need them to work the farm or provide free labor at the shop.
We have a tendency to imagine the future as essentially the present but a little farther away, with some higher numbers at the end of the date.
But nothing stays the same forever.
People grow old and die. New people are born. And the people who inhabit the future won't simply have different names from the people alive today. In some important ways, they will be different kinds of people, because they will disproportionately be the descendants of the people who chose to have children now.
The end of the something
We are, in some way, at the end of something, even though we can't clearly see it yet.
The fertility collapse is too big, includes too much of the developed world, and is happening over too long a period of time for us to perceive the whole thing at once. The world's population is still growing, but fertility has fallen below replacement level across much of the world, and dozens of countries have already reached their peak populations.
People aren't having kids like they used to. Or, more precisely, certain people aren't having kids like they used to.
In America, liberals are having fewer children than conservatives. A 2026 study using decades of General Social Survey data found a widening fertility divide by political orientation, with the difference becoming especially pronounced among more recent generations.
Another recent survey found conservatives reporting 1.40 children on average compared with 1.09 for liberals. That sounds like a small gap until you realize it amounts to nearly 30% more children — and demographic differences compound with every generation.
Running on empty
The average secular, centrist Democrat Boomer might have had two kids in 1982 because that's just what you did. Today, his kids might have dogs.
We don’t yet see the impacts of the asymmetrical population collapse because we are still at the very tail end of secular liberals reproducing. But eventually the tail will disappear, the gas will run out, the engine will slow, and we will see a future of different people.
Sometimes I meet with older people who never had children or older secular centrist Democrats who had two kids but whose children haven’t decided to do the same. I wonder if they are able to see the self-eliminating tendencies of their general worldview or if they give any thought to why exactly their children haven’t chosen to become parents as they did and if, perhaps, in hindsight they might reflect that there were flaws in raising them the way they did.
Sometimes I find myself someplace where the average age is 64, and I wonder if the people realize what that means. It’s not that they should be lying awake at night sweating bullets because they aren’t replacing themselves. We can only do so much in this world, and some problems are bigger than us. But I do wonder if they realize that the future will be different in part due to their choices regarding procreation and child-rearing.
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Why bother?
There aren’t many logical reasons to have children in 2026. We don’t need them to work the farm or provide free labor at the shop. So we who have children today have them for deeper reasons. Sometimes they are outwardly religious ones, like the imperative to be fruitful and multiply. Sometimes they are less religious ones based loosely on culture or love of family. And sometimes it’s just hundreds of little signals that add up gradually to form a general attitude toward family life.
“We’d love to have more.”
If you are in the conservative world in any way, this is a phrase you are well acquainted with. You have heard it said too many times to count, and you have probably said it quite a few times yourself. It’s just what you say after a conversation about a baby, a new car to accommodate another kid, or any other funny story about family life.
It’s a short little sentence, but it being a sort of default thing to respond with very acutely illuminates the difference between the liberal world and the conservative one in 2026.
In the liberal world, this is not a phrase that is uttered naturally. There is no presumption that (of course!) you want more children. At best, children are viewed neutrally, and at worst, they are considered kind of a buzzkill for what could be a life of “freedom” and higher earning potential. On that side of the political world, it is simply not a cultural assumption that children are a blessing and the more the better.
Betting on the future
But that attitude is dying, literally. It doesn’t seem like it yet, I know. It’s slow. We are still over-saturated with young people born to the types that wouldn’t have kids today. We are still in the middle of that very long population bottleneck, and the ship is still coasting though the gas has just about run out.
But over time — a very long period of time — the attitudes of those who don’t care for a world of children will slowly dissipate and become less potent. They are self-eliminating, after all. That’s not opinion; it’s a cold fact of reality that we all see clearly now. The only people who will exist in the future will be people born to those who believed children are good, that the more life there is, the better, and the future should be one that is full of humans.
I’m optimistic.
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Welcome to the golden age of "illegal immigration tourism,” a truly perverse hospitality trend sweeping the European continent. In this upside-down world, guests don’t pay, hosts can’t say no, and room service is billed directly to someone else.
The author and academic Steven Pinker argues there has never been a better time to be alive. That is certainly true if you happen to be living on the receiving end of Western Europe’s taxpayer-funded generosity.
In Ireland, where I was born and raised, village hotels that once sustained regional tourism now operate as full-time reception facilities for Africans.
The Brussels package
There was a time when getting to Europe from North Africa was difficult, if not impossible. It required real planning and actual savings. Not anymore. Brussels bureaucrats streamlined the process entirely. Today, a person needs only a dinghy and a willingness to let the German state handle the reservation details — complete with complimentary linen changes and a buffet breakfast.
The recent real estate pivot in Hamburg-Harburg’s Inner Harbor perfectly illustrates the absurdity. Developers recently spent €60 million in combined public and private funds to transform a postindustrial harbor into a sleek waterfront destination. The crown jewel of this urban renewal project is the Niu Quay, a charming hotel aimed at middle- and upper-class visitors. It was supposed to transform the neighborhood’s dining, tourism, and nightlife. Instead, it opened with plenty of fanfare, enjoyed a remarkably brief run as a business, and then promptly shut its doors to paying guests.
Hamburg’s municipal housing agency, Fördern & Wohnen, then stepped in with taxpayer money, leasing all 340 rooms through at least the end of the year. The hotel’s primary function shifted overnight from hosting respectable tourists to serving as an all-inclusive sanctuary for incoming asylum seekers. The city’s public housing system is currently at 102.8% capacity, with hotel suites serving as an administrative workaround to avoid the optics of encampments in public parks.
Seasonal depression
There is plenty of dark humor in this arrangement. A Hamburg native, hamstrung by inflation and stagnant wages, faces an immediate dilemma. He hands over his hard-earned money that funds the municipal lease, only to be priced out of the very city his taxes are supposed to support. He buys the train ticket to the district. Upon arrival, he finds he cannot book a room at the newest hotel because the state outbid him using his own paycheck. If he wishes to enjoy a luxury staycation in his own city, he is out of luck. The state has monopolized the reservation desk and effectively nationalized the local leisure economy.
This situation is dire, and it’s not limited to the banks of the Elbe River. Across Europe, the traditional hospitality sector has morphed into a state-subsidized sanctuary network. In Britain, former Victorian seaside resorts and historic country houses have seen their traditional guest books replaced by lucrative, state-funded government contracts, effectively gutting the high streets and seasonal economies of beautiful coastal towns.
Five-star accommodations, complete with full spa access, state-of-the-art gyms, saunas, and heated indoor swimming pools, are now routinely repurposed to house one-star guests. In Ireland, where I was born and raised, village hotels that once sustained regional tourism now operate as full-time reception facilities for Africans, leaving local pub owners and shopkeepers to wonder where the actual tourists went.
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5-star fandango
The daily economics highlight the insanity. Last year, Hamburg spent an average of €82 ($95) per person per day just on hotel placements for migrants. Combined, the city-states of Hamburg and Berlin dump approximately €4 billion annually into housing and processing costs. That sum buys a staggering amount of high-end lodging.
While local residents cancel their own vacation plans to save money for winter heating bills, the government operates as Europe’s most aggressive luxury travel agent, booking out entire floors of freshly renovated properties without ever asking for a credit card pre-authorization.
City officials in Hamburg recently announced plans to dial back their reliance on expensive hotel leases. Directly after making that public pledge, they signed the lease for the Niu Quay.
Municipal negotiators insist they push for below-market rates, yet city agencies routinely sign off on premium room rates when state-run facilities close suddenly. A major processing center on Schlachthofstrasse shuts down this autumn, and the state's immediate solution is to upgrade the occupants to a trendy harbor hotel — proving that in public administration, failure simply buys you a better view of the marina.
Holding the bag
Everyday citizens are left holding the bag. The chairman of the local parliamentary group pointed out that small restaurants, family-run cafes, and retail shops built their entire financial models around a steady influx of tourists with plenty of disposable income. Now, the district's primary commercial center is occupied by a population being housed at the taxpayer’s expense. These men and women don't dine out on corporate expense accounts. They don’t order local services or buy goods from nearby stores. Why would they, when everything is taken care of?
This asinine arrangement shapes a migrant’s first impression of their host nation. Arriving directly into this level of comfort fosters an immediate sense of entitlement. It instills the expectation that the government will never stop providing luxury accommodations and daily provisions and that the rewards will come without any personal effort, financial contribution, or integration into local society.
European governments have created a system where the easiest way to secure a mid-tier luxury room in a major city is to abandon your documentation at the border. The working class finances the hospitality. The business class loses its customers, and the state acts as the master concierge, ensuring every stylish guesthouse stays filled at public expense.
They broke young men — then sold them toxic escapes
When Nick Freitas engages with young men, they often have the same complaint: The culture made them the scapegoat for its ills — and now they feel lost and don’t know what to do about it.
While he doesn’t deny young men’s predicament or blame them for it, Freitas does put the responsibility to do something about it on their shoulders.
The truth, he says, is that the institutions that shape the culture deliberately broke young men’s spirits by convincing society that masculinity was “bad, evil, toxic, horrible, and [needs] to be repressed” and then turned around and sold the young men they villainized toxic escapes, like social media, gaming, and pornography.
The path to a fulfilling life is still there, though — but it’s theirs to find and take.
On this episode of “Rufo & Lomez,” Freitas and fellow BlazeTV hosts Chris Rufo and Jonathan Keeperman talk through why so many young men have checked out — and why reclaiming faith, family, and responsibility is the way back.
It’s both “confusing and horrific” for young men, he adds, to try to make it in a world where they’re “emasculated” in order to be more acceptable to a culture that will reject them regardless.
The message so many young men receive today, says Freitas, is: “By the way, even after you've been emasculated, nobody's going to want to sleep with you … corporations don't want to hire you either.”
“So once you understand that they have legitimate grievances that are truly unique to their experience, well, now we can start to talk about, OK, how do we deal with this?” he continues.
Dealing with it, however, begins with rejecting the “escapes” offered by the same institutions that villainized men in the first place. Doomscrolling social media, pornography, and video gaming, for example, may offer temporary relief, but they ultimately prevent men from finding the fulfilling path they desire.
“One of the big things that I tell men is that look, I get my identity first and foremost through my Christianity. Why? Because it's eternal. … I always have identity, meaning, and purpose. I never lose it, and it cannot be taken away from me,” says Freitas.
When the culture inevitably condemns a Christ-centered identity, it’s men’s job to say “screw the culture” and continue to “pursue” what is godly, he continues.
“Ultimately, if young men choose to do that en masse, the culture will follow,” Freitas says. “The reason why there's been such a push not just to diminish men but to elevate women is because it’s the only way you can’t get self-correction.”
Choosing the righteous path, however, is no easy thing.
“There's pain involved in doing that,” Freitas acknowledges.
“You will be punished in society for doing that, but the more people who do it and the more critical mass you reach, the more things shift.”
Already, the tides have begun to turn.
Freitas cites an NBC News Decision Desk Poll of 18- to 29-year-olds that compared Trump and Harris voters on what they consider a successful life.
“The number-one thing for young men that voted for Trump was having a family; it was number six for women,” says Freitas.
Male Harris voters, however, placed family in 10th place, while female Harris voters put it in second-to-last place.
“That really gives me encouragement,” says Freitas.
To hear more, watch the episode above.
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