SPIT OUT THE BLACK PILLS. YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHERE THEY’VE BEEN. YOU DON’T WANT THAT IN YOUR MOUTH:  Why do you still listen?

IT’S COME TO THIS: David Hogg’s Critique of Democrats: Men Want to Get Laid.

The newsy, clippable bit of Hogg’s interview/discussion with Maher was his diagnosis for why men are fleeing the party, and in particular for why younger men have been leaving in droves after having hewed the line within the party for years: young men want to get laid and have fun, and the Democratic Party has been the party of killjoys.

In acknowledging this, he’s not entirely wrong, but neither is he entirely right. The Democrat Party is entirely fine with young men having fun and even getting laid–the party is absolutely obsessed with sex, and only likes freedom in any form if it includes consensual sex between queers or in front of a computer screen.

Heterosexual sex between women and men, while not strictly forbidden, requires intense negotiations and multiple dangers for men when Democrats get their way.

But Hogg doesn’t seem to get that the problem goes much deeper than Democrats’ focus on promoting a pleasure-based lifestyle for everybody but heterosexual men. It’s that the Democrats hate masculinity per se, and are deeply hostile to the aspirations of men that go far beyond mere sexual pleasure (which men indeed do seek out and love).

If you’re feeling an enormous sense of whiplash at this point, you’re not alone. Prior to Covid and riots, much of Trump’s first term was taken up with headlines and articles and think pieces about what was then called “#MeToo.” Back in October of 2018, I wrote a post that began by quoting a piece by Christopher R. Taylor titled “The New Prudes,” which began:

The people who told us “love the one you’re with” and “if her daddy’s rich take her out for a meal, if her daddy’s poor, just do what you feel” are now telling us that you have to get signed proof for every stage of sexual contact and even if you do, if she regrets it later, it was rape.  The people who created Animal House are now wondering if its even okay to laugh at it.  People routinely say “that could never get made today” about films like Blazing Saddles, but could you even make Pretty in Pink?  Not according to its star Molly Ringwald.

Russ Douthat recently wrote about this odd shift in of all places the New York Times:

The world of Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford’s youth, the world that’s given us this fall’s nightmarish escalation of the culture war, was not a traditionalist world as yet unreformed by an enlightened liberalism. It also wasn’t a post-revolutionary world ruled by social liberalism as we know it today. Rather it was a world where a social revolution had ripped through American culture and radically de-moralized society, tearing down the old structures of suburban bourgeois Christian morality, replacing them with libertinism. With “if it feels good, do it” and the Playboy philosophy.

After spending 50 years tearing down everything everyone held dear, mocking morality, breaking apart a system of ethics and behavior, cynically undermining all sense of public etiquette and cultural norms… now we’re being told everything they said to do is all wrong.

Suddenly what pretty much everyone has done in the past is grounds for dismissal and attack.  Went to parties and got drunk?  Now you’re a sinister potential rapist.  Got a diary accounting for where you went and what you did?  Got witnesses?  You might need them now; all it takes is a woman to suddenly remember something she says you did, and a political benefit and you’re doomed.

It’s worth rereading the whole post in light of Hogg’s sudden revelation that his party have become a group of killjoys, including the conservation between John Podhoretz who believed the left’s #Metoo and anti-Kavanaugh tactics were “all situational,” and Jonah Goldberg reminding him that “once you use the neutron bomb, the radiation has an effect long after you use it.” Young Mr. Hogg is apparently only just now discovering how long the fallout lasts from one of his party’s biggest moral panics.

And that he’s not immune from its effects, either:

Related: The Costs and Consequences of Sexual Liberation. Review: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century by Louise Perry.

UPDATE: Stop the Coup!

OPEN THREAD: Oh, it’s lonely at the bottom. Man, it’s dizzy at the top. But if you’re standing in the middle, ain’t no way you’re gonna stop.

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Andor Finally Got Me.

MODIFIED LIMITED HANGOUT CONTINUES: Chuck Todd Claims Reporters Blindly Believed Sources About Biden’s Mental Frailty.

Chuck Todd basically admitting that reporters blindly believed their sources regarding Joe Biden’s obvious mental frailty is fantastic for three reasons.

First, Todd contradicts what he said ten days ago when he insisted (without evidence) that the regime media did report on Biden’s diminished capacity. Why, just last month he was furious about the suggestion that the media didn’t report on this.

The media “didn’t miss this story,” said an indignant Todd. “David Ignatius wrote a very high-profile column in October of ’23, saying, ‘Is he really running again? This doesn’t seem like a good idea.’ People like me were promoting Dean Phillips’s campaign because [Biden] was running.”

Boy, things sure have changed since Todd spewed that anti-science nonsense. Listen to him today…

“The real culprits are the people who are supposed to be our sources on all these things,” Todd admitted, adding, “who were constantly reassuring us behind the scenes, ‘No, no, no, no, it’s better than you think.’”

But-but-but — I thought the media “didn’t miss this story”?

Chuck Todd worked for the same network that ran this story on June 19th of last year: The deceptive Biden G7 video was quickly debunked, but it kept going viral anyway.

Misleading videos and false claims that President Joe Biden wandered off aimlessly from the G7 conference last week continued to go viral despite debunkings and fact-checks that tried to correct the record.

Google recommended false versions of the story as “top stories.” Deceptive video clips continued to accumulate millions of views on X. Copies of the videos were replayed on TikTok and YouTube with little context. Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, applied fact-checking labels to some posts but not to all.

The persistent nature of the misleading videos illustrates how major tech platforms and partisan media are playing off each other in the 2024 election cycle, keeping viral stories in people’s feeds after they’ve been proven to be misleading or even false.

And whose cable host said in March of last year:

“I’ve said it for years now: he’s cogent,” said [Joe] Scarborough on Wednesday. “But I undersold him when I said he was cogent. He’s far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he’s better than he’s ever been, intellectually, analytically, because he’s been around for 50 years. And, you know — I don’t know if people know this or not — Biden used to be a hothead. Sometimes that Irishman would getting in front of the reasoning. Sometimes he would say things he didn’t want to say.”

“Start your tape right now,” he continued, “because I’m about to tell you the truth. And eff you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second, and I’ve known him for years. The Brzezinskis have known him for 50 years. If it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it.”

Todd had it slightly closer to the truth when his story in April was: Chuck Todd Says Legacy Media Downplayed Biden’s Issues Due To ‘Fear’ Of Perception Of ‘Helping Trump.’