Category: Blaze Media
Bitcoin and the return of honest money
Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency. Blockchain. A decade ago, most Americans hadn’t heard those words. Even now, many don’t fully grasp what they mean. Some still dismiss Bitcoin as an internet fad — yet with one coin worth roughly $119,000, the joke is wearing thin.
The real story isn’t the price. It’s what Bitcoin represents: freedom, trust, and control over your own money. Those are conservative principles — and conservatives should embrace them.
Honest money for a dishonest age
In Denton County, Texans understand independence. We work hard, save what we can, and expect our money to keep its value. But Washington keeps printing dollars to solve political problems, and every new round of “stimulus” steals a little more of what Americans earn. That’s a big reason groceries, gas, and housing cost so much more today.
At its heart, Bitcoin isn’t about tech or speculation. It’s about trust — and keeping financial power in the hands of citizens instead of bureaucrats and corporations.
Bitcoin doesn’t play that game. Its supply is capped at 21 million coins forever. No bureaucrat or central banker can “stimulate” the economy by diluting your savings. It’s steady, transparent, and immune to the inflationary habits of modern government.
That’s not radical — it’s a return to honest value. Early Texans traded cattle, crops, and tools, and a handshake sealed the deal. Bitcoin is a digital version of that same trust: value backed by proof of work, not political decree.
Freedom in your own hands
Bitcoin is, at its core, a conservative idea. It rewards effort, limits government control, and protects personal liberty. You can own every rifle and round of ammunition in the world, but if the government freezes your bank account, you’re stuck. With Bitcoin, you control your money. Nobody can seize it.
The network itself is decentralized — millions of computers around the globe share the ledger. No single government, company, or regulator can shut it down. If one node fails, the others keep the system alive. It’s built to endure.
Lessons for a digital age
That model should guide how we build other technologies. Take artificial intelligence. Meta just poured $14 billion into one massive data center — a single point of failure. One cyberattack or natural disaster could wipe it out. America should follow Bitcoin’s example: distribute computing power, build smaller centers across the country, and bring skilled jobs to local communities like ours.
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dem10 via iStock/Getty Images
Bitcoin also saves money. Send $1,000 through a credit card processor and you’ll lose $40 in fees. Send it through Bitcoin and it costs about four cents. That difference matters to small businesses, churches, and local campaigns. Political donations in Bitcoin should be legal nationwide — transparent, secure, and independent of the big banks that profit from the current system.
A return to honest value
At its heart, Bitcoin isn’t about tech or speculation. It’s about trust — and keeping financial power in the hands of citizens instead of bureaucrats and corporations.
Here in Denton County, we understand that kind of freedom. It’s the same spirit that settled Texas: work hard, hold what’s yours, and keep government out of your pockets.
Bitcoin isn’t the future of money. It’s the return of honest money — and conservatives should lead the charge to make it America’s next great success story.
‘I am illegal’: Leftist who made shocking confession wins mayoral race in Minnesota
A Minnesota state representative who once confessed to her own apparently unlawful entry into the United States won the St. Paul mayoral race on Tuesday.
It was later revealed that Her’s ‘uncle’ was actually not a familial relative but a family friend.
Rep. Kaohly Vang Her (DFL) secured an over-two-point victory over incumbent Mayor Melvin Carter (DFL). The election results were determined in the second ranked-choice voting round, with Her receiving fewer than 2,000 votes more than her opponent.
“My family came here as refugees,” Her said during her victory speech on Tuesday evening. “Never in their wildest dreams would I be standing here today accepting the position of mayor. I want to thank Mayor Melvin Carter for his many years of service to our city. I started my political career working for him, and I will always be grateful for that opportunity.”
On the state House floor in June, Her, who was born in Laos, made a startling confession while advocating for public health care for illegal immigrants. She claimed that her father, who worked at the U.S. consulate, brought her family to America by falsifying immigration paperwork.
Her’s uncle had worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development and, because of that work, was immediately eligible to come to the U.S. at the end of the Vietnam War, she stated at the time.
Saint Paul Mayor Melvin Carter. Photo by Christopher Mark Juhn/Anadolu via Getty Images
Her’s immediate family did not qualify for the same expedited process. However, Her’s father claimed on federal documents that Her’s maternal grandmother was his mother to circumvent their ineligibility, she explained to state lawmakers.
“My father, as the one processing the paperwork, put my grandmother down as his mother,” Her stated.
RELATED: Minneapolis mayoral race enters second round of ranked-choice vote counting
Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
“And so, I am illegal in this country,” she continued. “My parents are illegal here in this country.”
It was later revealed that Her’s “uncle” was actually not a familial relative but a family friend. She claimed that her family would have been eligible to come to the U.S. anyway and that the falsified records only sped up the process.
Since immigrating to the U.S., Her has become a U.S. citizen.
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JD Vance offers calm election reflection, warns against ‘idiotic’ overreaction to Dem winning streak
Vice President JD Vance is cutting through the noise and reminding Republicans not to overreact to the Democrats’ latest winning streak in local and state elections.
To onlookers, it might seem like Democrats have regained their footing. New York City elected its first openly socialist mayor, California is poised to redistrict the state in a manner that gives Democrats an even greater electoral advantage, and fantasizing about murdering political opponents no longer disqualifies a person from holding the highest law enforcement office in Virginia. In short, Democrats won every election they were hoping to win on November 4.
‘The infighting is so stupid.’
In the wake of these electoral losses, Vance gave Republican voters a reality check.
“I think it’s idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections in blue states, but a few thoughts,” Vance said in a Wednesday post on X.
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Photo by ADAM GRAY/AFP via Getty Images
Vance noted that one of Republicans’ challenges is voter enthusiasm. Voter turnout has historically been difficult for local elections, even more so among Republicans. Because of this, Vance emphasized the importance of energizing the base and engaging voters in future elections.
“[Scott] Pressler, TPUSA, and a bunch of others have been working hard to register voters,” Vance said. “I said it in 2022, and I’ve said it repeatedly since: our coalition is ‘low propensity’ and that means we have to do better at turning out voters than we have in the past.”
Affordability was at the forefront of all successful campaigns this cycle. As Vance noted, cost of living will be a defining issue for all future elections, and it’s one Republicans need to stay focused on both on the campaign trail and in office.
“We need to focus on the home front,” Vance said. “The president has done a lot that has already paid off in lower interest rates and lower inflation, but we inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
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Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
“We’re going to keep on working to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that’s the metric by which we’ll ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond.”
Above all, Vance encouraged the MAGA movement to tune out distracting “infighting” and focus on the movement.
“The infighting is so stupid,” Vance said. “I care about my fellow citizens — particularly young Americans — being able to afford a decent life, I care about immigration and sovereignty, and I care about establishing peace overseas so our resources can be focused at home.”
“If you care about those things too, let’s work together.”
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How a Walmart employee helped rescue a woman who said her boyfriend strangled her multiple times that day
Nebraska law enforcement officers said a 47-year-old woman early last week informed them that her 31-year-old boyfriend had strangled her five to six times that day and had been preventing her from contacting authorities and leaving his presence.
It turns out the alleged victim was able to finally get the attention of police — with the help of a Walmart employee.
Barnhouse didn’t let her leave for the previous two days, as she was trying to get her belongings from the camper and return home to Kansas, officials added.
Gage County Sheriff’s deputies around 5:45 p.m. Oct. 28 responded to the Diamond T Truck Stop Camper Row on US HWY 77 just north of Beatrice for an assault that had occurred earlier in the day, the sheriff’s office said.
Image source: Gage County (Neb.) Sheriff’s Office
Upon arrival, deputies made contact with the 47-year-old woman from Hutchinson, Kansas, who told deputies that her boyfriend — 31-year-old Justis Barnhouse — had strangled her five to six times that afternoon, officials said.
Barnhouse took the woman’s cell phone so she couldn’t contact police about the incident, officials said. Barnhouse didn’t let her leave for the previous two days, as she was trying to get her belongings from the camper and return home to Kansas, officials added.
However, officials said that when the woman and Barnhouse went to the Walmart in Beatrice, she got the attention of a Walmart employee and asked the worker to follow her to the restroom.
The sheriff’s office said that allowed the woman to give the employee details about the strangulation — and the employee notified law enforcement.
When deputies arrived at the Diamond T Truck Stop Camper Row, officials said Barnhouse was there — and deputies arrested Barnhouse for assault by strangulation as well as third-degree domestic assault with two priors.
Barnhouse was lodged at the Gage County Detention Center on his charges, officials said. Jail records indicate Barnhouse was still behind bars Wednesday morning.
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Clothing should be fun
I do a lot of things for work. I take photos, I take videos, I write stories, I write columns, I write about style, and I write about life.
I also help guys dress better. Officially it’s called style advising, but down to brass tacks, it means me helping guys get clothes they are happy with. Helping them get rid of the junk that sits in their closet that they never wear and get into clothes that make them look, and feel, their best.
Exercising creative control in the physical space feels good in a way that’s deeper than exercising the same kind of creativity in the digital space.
It’s one of the most rewarding things I do. I know lots of guys dismiss the importance of clothes, but they do so at their peril. Our clothes really do have a huge impact on our psychological state. They can make us pretty unhappy or pretty happy.
Ready to wear
Does that make us “superficial”? No. It’s an acknowledgment of the fact that what we wear represents who we are to others —and to ourselves. If you aren’t happy with how you present yourself, you aren’t going to be happy with yourself. It’s that simple.
So I take personal satisfaction from watching a guy transform his wardrobe over the course of a year or two. What’s particularly satisfying is observing how his attitude toward clothing changes as he overhauls his closet.
The process usually starts with a pragmatic interest in not looking like a slob. Achieving a baseline presentability eliminates any negative attention slovenly dress attracts. From that point he may start to notice that looking a little more “put together” actually attracts positive attention. And once he starts to experience the fruits of dressing decently in public, he’s ready to start enjoying his clothes.
This means he’s comfortable and confident enough that he no longer sees dressing himself as a test to get “right,” but as an opportunity for personal expression and creativity. Clothes finally become what they’re meant to be: fun.
Or as a client deep into his own wardrobe revamp recently told me, “I’m just blown away by how fun this stuff can get.”
What a difference in attitude and mindset. A realization like that is generally a sign that a certain kind of psychological transformation has been completed.
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Making the man
I’m aware that the word “fun” may connote something shallow or frivolous — and in some respects clothing can be both. But the pleasure we derive from clothing also derives from its deeper meaning: the way it reinforces the eternal forms of man and woman, emphasizes our dignity as human beings made in the image of God, and reflects our culture, values, and even religious beliefs.
Remember the pastel cars of the 1950s? It’s hard to believe it, but there was a time when when cars weren’t only black, gray, or white. There was a time when cars were fun. Well, it’s the same thing with clothes. If you really look at the stuff the guys were wearing back in those old movies, they were actually having much more fun than the guy who wears dark jeans, a black T-shirt, and a gray hoodie in 2025. Coming to the final realization that clothes should be fun is actually a kind of returning to tradition.
Creative control
The thoughtfully designed, personal interior of your home feels more welcoming than an airport terminal. A carefully cultivated garden is more beautiful than an expanse of artificial turf. And a well-fitting and harmonious combination of shirt, jacket, and trousers is more flattering than a prison-like monochrome sweatsuit.
There’s also a peculiar psychological benefit to embracing clothes as a domain of fun. Exercising creative control in the physical space feels good in a way that’s deeper than exercising the same kind of creativity it in the digital space.
In our screen-dominant era, the experience of joyfully controlling your personal environment is humanizing and refreshing. It’s good to like how you look and know that you are the one responsible for it. It feels like we are actually doing something rather than just moving pixels around.
Of course, it goes without saying that not all fun is good fun. We know that’s true about all sorts of stuff in life. Many a bad decision sure was fun at the time. So it goes with the temporary thrill of donning stupid neon graphic T-shirts, grotesque Crocs, alien-green sweatpants printed with pizza motifs.
Many men today begin their style journey as overgrown children who have enjoyed this “bad” kind of fun for most of their lives: the dumb T-shirts and the stupid shoes. But then they decide to grow up, and after working through their wardrobe, they come to understand that these classic clothes are not just good for the soul or society. They are fun, and they are the right kind of fun, the kind of fun that edifies and enriches us.
Minneapolis mayoral race enters second round of ranked-choice vote counting
Minneapolis is still counting votes in its ranked-choice mayoral race after no candidate received more than 50% of the votes in the first round.
‘Everybody, this city showed up once again. … We got what appears to be near record turnout. And I’ll tell you what — it looks damn good for us.’
Minneapolis residents cast their votes between incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey (D), who is seeking a third term, and over a dozen other candidates. Voters were allowed to rank up to three candidates.
Frey held a 10-point lead over state Sen. Omar Fateh (D), considered his top challenger, in voters’ first-choice results. Frey received approximately 61,000 votes, which accounted for only 42% of the total, not enough to declare him the winner.
The mayoral election will now proceed to a second round of counting to determine the winner. In each round, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and their ballots are redistributed to the next-ranked candidates on voters’ ballots. This process continues until one candidate secures a majority of the votes.
The Minneapolis mayoral races have gone to at least a second round of tabulations since 2013. Frey won after six rounds in 2017 and after two rounds in 2021.
State Sen. Omar Fateh, Rep. Ilhan Omar. Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
Fateh, a Muslim Somali American and progressive Democrat who has been compared to New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, secured the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s endorsement in July, defeating Frey. However, that endorsement was rescinded a month later, citing “substantial failures in the Minneapolis Convention’s voting process.”
Fateh was endorsed by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who hoped to boost his campaign by joining him on the campaign trail.
“I am really excited to have her support,” Fateh said. “Minneapolis seems to be a tale of two cities: one for the wealthy and well-connected and one for everyone else.”
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Jacob Frey. Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D) endorsed Frey.
While it is still possible for Fateh to squeak out a victory over Frey, the current mayor holds a comfortable lead.
“Everybody, this city showed up once again. … We got what appears to be near record turnout. And I’ll tell you what — it looks damn good for us,” Frey stated at an election night party.
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‘Medals and lessons’: Glenn Beck remembers Dick Cheney
On November 3, Dick Cheney, former U.S. vice president under George W. Bush, passed away at the age of 84 from complications of pneumonia, compounded by longstanding cardiac and vascular disease.
He is a man who leaves behind a most “complicated legacy,” says Glenn Beck.
In 1989 as the secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush, Cheney brought the mentality that “a nation that can’t defend itself isn’t going to remain free” to the military. He modernized, refined, and finalized former President Ronald Reagan’s defense revival, leading to a swift and surgical Gulf War victory, all while masterfully navigating post-Cold War budget cuts.
“For the first time in decades, Americans felt pride without apology when it came to our military,” says Glenn.
In 2001, Republican candidate George W. Bush chose Cheney as his running mate — a decision Glenn says secured his presidency, as Americans trusted that Cheney’s military experience and success would balance Bush’s inexperience in national security. On September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers collapsed while the president was occupied at an event in Florida, Cheney stepped up as the acting president.
“He was steady, emotionless, and firm. He didn’t tremble. He didn’t panic,” says Glenn, “and in those first few hours, America needed that.”
But then Cheney — a key architect of the Iraq War that ensued after 9/11 — started down a dark path. “[The war] just stretched on and on and on, and the mission became blurry. Freedom became a slogan instead of a strategy, and freedom started to take a different meaning here in America,” says Glenn.
Cheney was a pivotal force in the rapid passing of the Patriot Act — a set of policies that expanded federal surveillance, detention, and intelligence-gathering powers — as well as the formation of the Department of Homeland Security and the expansion of FISA surveillance powers.
“None of those things had anything to do with freedom,” says Glenn.
Then when the anthrax attacks started, it was Cheney who insisted the U.S. expand its defensive bioweapons research programs, culminating in Project BioShield, which allocated $5.6 billion to accelerating research, development, and procurement of countermeasures against biological threats.
“So it was Dick Cheney that urged men like Dr. Anthony Fauci to push research further, faster into what we now call gain of function,” says Glenn.
Looking back at the mixed bag of Cheney’s accomplishments, Glenn says his life “offers both a chance to give medals and lessons.”
He teaches us both “the virtue of strength and the peril of excess.”
“He was the iron for many years in America’s spine after decades of doubt. But he was also a reminder that iron rusts if it is left unexamined,” says Glenn.
“Dick Cheney was a conservative for a man of his time, but he lost one of the main principles, and that is: Conservatives believe in the rule of law and the Constitution. He’s a patriot, yes, but he’s also a warning to us. He helped America find its courage, but he also taught us how easily courage can drift into control.”
To hear more of Glenn’s commentary and analysis, watch the clip above.
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It’s the testosterone, stupid!
It was with great interest that I read Matthew Gasda’s latest essay, on the state of men in 2025, “Masculinity at the End of History.”
Gasda has a lot of things to say that are germane to my new book, “The Last Men: Liberalism and the Death of Masculinity” (out December 16), not least of all whether America — and indeed the Western world as a whole — exhibits what could be called a “crisis of masculinity” in the first place.
We have reams of data showing what can only be described as a civilizational decline in testosterone levels, a decline that may have no parallel in history.
There are plenty of observers — writers, social scientists, journalists, politicians, celebrity psychologists — who think so.
A crisis in need of a crisis
Gasda disagrees. In fact, he believes the absence of a crisis is precisely what’s ailing America’s young men. Men need crises in order to be men. Without crises, their mettle isn’t tested, they have no higher aspirations to direct themselves toward, and so they fall into a listless state, an aimless state, a kind of suspended adolescence.
Porn. Pot. Video games. Social media. Processed food. Logging on and dropping out. We all know what it looks like.
“Masculinity is desperate for a crisis,” Gasda writes in the opening paragraphs of his essay.
It is docile, unsure, and formless. At most, it is at the germinal phase of crisis, lacking a catalytic agent to propel it to its full-blown state, which at least can be registered and reckoned with. After all, crisis implies that something is happening, that something is at stake. The uncatalyzed proto-crisis, or the noncrisis, of American masculinity is repressed, unexpressed, yet omnipresent.
It’s a typical literary switcheroo — Gasda is a playwright, after all — but he’s not wrong. Nor is he the first to say that what men really need is a crisis — read: something extraordinary — to give full form to their potential.
Declaring ‘war’
Back in 1910, the pragmatist philosopher William James, brother of the novelist Henry, wrote an essay called “The Moral Equivalent of War.” A committed socialist and pacifist, James nevertheless regretted the march of progress and with it the (apparent) decline of war, because he recognized war’s power to form young men and inculcate in them the highest possible virtues. War teaches men to subordinate themselves and their needs to those of the collective, to pursue a higher goal, and, if need be, to give their lives for it. War teaches men courage, service, self-sacrifice, stoicism, and patriotism, and all of these things are necessary for a properly functioning nation in peace.
But war is also a terrible, terrible thing — and it was rapidly becoming much worse, though just how much worse James could not have foreseen. What we need, James argues, is a “moral equivalent” of war, a substitute that could teach men the same lessons without the enormous destructive cost.
James’ proposal is quite clever: Rather than a war against each other, we need a war with nature. Young men should be enlisted into a national struggle to conquer and tame nature and to revolutionize the means of production. Send boys off to build railroads and skyscrapers and ships, and they’ll return as men, ready to lead families and the nation.
Manufacturing manhood
This isn’t too different, actually, from what Gasda advocates in his new essay, when he says a national project in which all or many men could participate might be a great spur to masculine revival.
If the objective of America in the years ahead is to reclaim global leadership in industrial production, that is, in the making of things in the real-world economy, as opposed to just in the realm of bits and pixels, then new avenues for masculine exertion, discipline, creativity, and camaraderie may arise from such a project.
There’s much to like in Gasda’s essay and much to agree with. He’s right about how the breakdown of communities and the loss of tradition have hindered the transmission of masculine ideals across the generations. He’s right about the need for rites of passage to confer status on men. Countless anthropological studies have shown the crucial role, in virtually every kind of society except our own, of tests of courage and fortitude at key moments in life, and psychologists have demonstrated how pain and trauma bond people together and provide a sense of shared identity.
He’s also right to argue that Americans must “historicize” masculinity. That is, they must understand its peculiar focus on strenuous exertion and relentless self-making in its particular historical context: a masculine ideal developed in conflict with a frontier, both the physical frontier of western expansion and the social and moral frontiers of a new national identity.
And he’s right, obviously, that we live in an age that’s fundamentally hostile to expressions of masculinity and that we can’t simply return to the past and past ideals, as so many simple-minded critics of the modern world, especially on social media, seem to believe.
That’s all to the good. But there are also serious problems.
No country for men
For one thing, it’s not clear just how much American men really could get behind a drive to, in Gasda’s words, “reclaim global leadership in industrial production.”
If America does return to industrial pre-eminence, most if not nearly all manufacturing is going to be high-tech and automated — hardly the kind of gigantic Soviet five-year plan that could simply swallow up millions of men and give them jobs in factories or even give them jobs at all.
It’s not just manufacturing that is on the verge of making human labor largely a thing of the past. Whole swaths of industry and even white-collar fields are undergoing the same revolutionary changes. Librarians and lawyers and proofreaders and doctors will be replaced by AI and large language models too.
The testosterone decline
A far graver problem, from my perspective, is that like the vast majority of the so-called “crisis of masculinity” literature that he derides, Gasda fails to take seriously, or even acknowledge, the biological changes that are throwing men’s masculinity into doubt — in particular, a headlong decline in testosterone, the master male hormone that’s responsible for making men men and not women.
Testosterone is not just responsible for sexual differentiation — for the physical characteristics that define boys, beginning in the womb and proceeding through infancy and the teenage years into adulthood — but it also governs male mood, motivation, libido, and even things like political attitudes.
Although we should be careful not to say testosterone determines political views, social psychology experiments reveal that a testosterone boost will make a man more likely to defend his position even when he’s outnumbered by people who disagree with him; it will make him more likely to continue fighting against a much stronger opponent; it will make him more accepting of hierarchy and inequality; it will make him more generous to his in-group — his own people — and more aggressive toward his out-group — potential enemies.
In short, testosterone and its effects are complex, but they work in ways that obviously tend toward behavior we associate with traditional masculinity. The less of it men have, the less masculine they become, as a basic rule.
Aggressively overlooked
Open a best-selling book like Richard Reeves’ “Of Boys and Men,” head to the index, and look for “testosterone,” and you’ll find a poverty of references. Reeves talks about testosterone for just a few pages, but only to dispel the notion that boys “are their hormones,” meaning boys aren’t doomed to be aggressive because they have more testosterone (pop science’s “aggression hormone”) than girls. That’s it. Apparently, biology just isn’t important when we’re talking about the serious problems with men today.
It’s a strange oversight. We have reams of data showing what can only be described as a civilizational decline in testosterone levels, a decline that may have no parallel in history. We know what this decline entails, and if we don’t, we really should try to find out.
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North Idaho Tallow Company
Compelling evidence
The first real herald of a civilizational decline in testosterone levels was the Massachusetts Male Aging Study, a gold-standard double-blind controlled study of men in the Boston area. The study took place over a period of around 20 years, from the end of the 1980s to the early 2000s. Men of all ages were selected at random and given a battery of tests at regular intervals. When the testosterone data was finally analyzed in 2007, it showed testosterone levels were declining year over year at a rate of about 1%.
That might not sound like much, but over a period of 20 years, that’s 20%, or one-fifth. On a longer timeline, say 50 years, that’s half of all testosterone — gone.
Researchers in other countries, including Finland and Israel, wanted to see whether the same trend was happening in their countries. In Finland, where male reproductive parameters are generally better than in the U.S., the researchers believed the Boston trend would not be replicated. Guess what? The trend was actually worse, and the researchers showed it was taking place over a much longer period of time. The results of the MMAS were replicated in Israel, too, and in other American studies.
Quantifying maleness
It’s hard to quantify exactly how many men have low testosterone, in large part because nobody agrees on exactly how little testosterone counts as low. Ask one doctor and he’ll give you one figure; another will tell you it’s half or double that amount.
Symptomology is generally the best way to go looking for low testosterone, and what we see, everywhere we turn, is men who look and behave like they have low testosterone.
In Japan today, there are millions of hikikomori, or extreme social recluses — young men who simply refuse to participate in society. They hide themselves away at home, often with their parents, and play video games, eat junk food, and just “rot,” to use a current term.
At least one expert believes there may be as many as 10 million hikikomori, in a nation of 120 million people — that’s one in 12 people. Unsurprisingly — to me at least — research has shown young Japanese men are at significantly greater risk of becoming hikikomori if they have low testosterone.
America has its hikikomori too, although they aren’t called that. Maybe as many as 6 million, by some estimates.
Some of them congregate in special subforums on the website Reddit, like r/lowT, where they discuss what it’s like to be a man with low testosterone: how they have no motivation, no libido, can’t sleep, can’t get an erection, are developing gynecomastia — man boobs — and are overweight and anxious all the time.
Many of these men also describe the miraculous effects of increasing their testosterone, more often than not through a doctor’s prescription of testosterone in gel or injectable form.
Spermageddon?
What’s even more worrying about this decline is that it’s part and parcel of a broader decline in reproductive health parameters among men.
This isn’t a surprise: If men’s testes aren’t functioning properly and producing enough testosterone, they’re unlikely to be producing enough of other important things either. Sperm counts and sperm quality — a measure of sperm’s ability to swim properly and do their job — are declining so rapidly that one expert, Professor Shanna Swan, is predicting a “spermageddon” scenario, in which humans are unable to reproduce by natural means.
Swan made this the subject of a 2021 book, “Count Down.” Simply by extrapolating the data for sperm-count decline, Swan has shown that by around 2050, the median man will have a sperm count of zero. One half of all men will produce no sperm at all, and the rest will produce so few that they might as well produce none, because they won’t be able to get a woman pregnant, try as they might.
What’s causing these changes? It’s lots of different things, a whole range of lifestyle factors — lack of exercise, smoking, bad diets, poor sleep, stress — but also widespread exposure to harmful chemicals known as “endocrine disruptors,” for their negative effects on the body’s hormonal (endocrine) system.
From low-T to trans
When I say endocrine disruptors are everywhere, I mean it: They’re in the food, the air, the water, the clothes we wear, our bedding and furniture, the deodorants and fragrances we put on our bodies, the little scented trees we put in our cars, anything that’s made from plastic.
A significant proportion of these harmful chemicals directly or indirectly mimic the effects of the hormone estrogen, interfering with the body’s crucial hormonal balance (more testosterone and less estrogen for men, the opposite for women). This is a nightmare for both sexes. As well as reducing testosterone and fertility in men, exposure to endocrine disruptors can lead to genital abnormalities, weight gain, and metabolic issues and even certain kinds of cancer.
New research has linked exposure to endocrine disruptors during gestation to transgenderism. French boys exposed to the chemical diethylstilbestrol, which used to be given to mothers at risk of miscarriage, had a massively increased risk — perhaps as much as a hundredfold — of undergoing gender transition later in life. On paper, it was always plausible that exposure to endocrine disruptors should be linked to gender dysphoria, but since transgenderism is such a toxic issue politically, there’s been little desire, until now, to pursue research into the link.
In a very real sense, then, not only have we created a society where masculinity is ridiculed, dragged through the mud, and denounced as retrograde, we’ve also created one where the biological constituents of masculinity, its very building blocks, are under direct attack at the same time. It’s a complicated problem, and it’s viciously circular. Biology and society exist in feedback loops, with negative effects reinforcing each other, deepening the spiraling decline.
While Gasda, like William James before him, may be right that men need a crisis to bring out the best in them, the very real danger today is that when one finally comes, men won’t have the energy or enthusiasm or desire to put down the controller, stand up, and answer its call. And if that really is the case, testosterone — the lack of it — will be to blame.
JD Vance’s half-brother becomes another casualty of Tuesday’s electoral bloodbath, losing Ohio race in a landslide
Cory Bowman, Vice President JD Vance’s 36-year-old half-brother, decided to run for mayor of Cincinnati after watching President Donald Trump’s second inauguration. He told Politico earlier this year, “I was just really inspired, because I look up to my brother not just as a political model but as a role model.”
Bowman’s stated goal was to address the city’s “deteriorating infrastructure, unsafe streets, and misallocated funds.”
‘Government can’t fix everything.’
Evidently the residents of Cincinnati, who haven’t had a Republican mayor since 1971, weren’t ready for change.
According to the unofficial totals from the Hamilton County Board of Elections, the Democrat incumbent, Mayor Aftab Pureval, beat Bowman by over 55 percentage points — 78.21% to 21.76%. Bowman qualified for the general election after securing only 13% of the vote in the May primary.
“Pray for our leadership,” Bowman said after losing the race. “We have to pray for our city. We want them to win because — I’ve said this since the beginning of the campaign — we cannot copy and paste national politics when it comes to these city elections. We cannot just divide ourselves more and more when it comes to these cities. We want our cities to succeed.”
Although Bowman made abundantly clear that he is proud of his family, particularly his older half-brother, he focused his messaging during the campaign on the needs of the city. Pureval, on the other hand, appeared keen to make the election a referendum on the Trump administration, stating during the Oct. 9 mayoral debate that Bowman “represents MAGA” and “you either support the Trump agenda or you don’t.”
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Photographer: Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“You can’t run for mayor and not be concerned with the federal employees who are getting fired, not be concerned with the racializing of our own public safety challenges here in our community,” said the Democrat mayor, who underscored in May that Cincinnati is a sanctuary city and should remain “a global destination for top-tier talent.”
Despite previously smearing his opponent and Bowman’s supporters as “MAGA extremists,” Pureval — who first assumed office in January 2022 — indicated in his victory speech that Bowman was “very classy” in how he handled the defeat and signaled an interest in possible collaboration down the road.
Bowman was one of several Republicans who experienced humiliating defeats on Tuesday.
Winsome Earle-Sears, Virginia’s Republican lieutenant governor, lost her state’s gubernatorial election by double digits to Democrat radical Abigail Spanberger; Republican strategist John Reid lost the election for Virginia’s lieutenant governor to Democrat Virginia state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi; and Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli lost the New Jersey gubernatorial race to Democrat candidate Rep. Mikie Sherrill.
Bowman wrapped up his concession speech with a Christian message, stating, “Government can’t fix everything, but you know what can fix everything is our relationship with Jesus Christ. And that’s why I want to encourage anybody watching, as well, if you’ve never given your heart to Jesus, if you’ve never even considered it, try it.”
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