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I'm Scott Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice. Narratives about the attempt on Trump's life were shaped as the event was unfolding. Most of them are misdirects. The real story? The crisis of young American men. Misdirects, as read by George Hahn.
Moments after he was shot by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks and swarmed by Secret Service agents, Donald Trump had the instinct and physical courage to pump his fist for the crowd and shout, fight. That image of him, defiant with blood running down his face, may help him recapture the White House and mark the year, possibly the decade.
Soon after, anyone with an internet connection rushed to vomit out an explanation of events that rendered their perceived enemies as un-American, dangerous even. Republican Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia announced on X, quote, Joe Biden sent the orders, unquote. Equating Biden's clumsy shooting metaphor, it's time to put Trump in a bullseye, to instructions to carry out a hit.
Elsewhere, conspiracy and misinformation from the left speculated the shooting had been a false flag staged by the Trump campaign itself. People on the far right declared that the Secret Service's failure to prevent the shooting was caused by the DEI assignment of incompetent female agents. Spoiler alert, more white men protecting white men from other white men isn't the solution.
There's also an understandable raft of questions wondering why, if attendees at the rally could see the shooter on the roof, the Secret Service did not. Thus far, it appears this was a story of incompetence versus a conspiracy. Regardless of your politics, there are few people who deserve to be relieved of their duties more than Director Kimberly Cheadle. When President Biden addressed the nation on Sunday, he highlighted the need to cool down the temperature of American politics. Look,
There's no place in America for this kind of violence. It's sick. It's sick. It's one of the reasons why we have to unite this country. We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this. This is a reasonable request and also has zero chance of happening. All of these narratives are an effort to get you to look away. We knew who the perpetrator was before knowing who he was.
A lonely young man with access to weapons of war trying to recapture social status with a perceived heroic act of violence. I've written and spoken a lot about the obstacles—financial, educational, social, sexual, spiritual—facing young men today, so I won't re-litigate my case. If you're interested, you can read more at the links in this post at profgalloway.com or find my TED Talk on YouTube. The CliffsNotes?
Over the past generation, there's been a deliberate transfer of wealth from the young to the old. Among other things, the result is unaffordable and indefensible costs for education and housing. Things are especially bad for boys and young men. Algorithmically generated content on social media contributes and profits from young men's increasing social isolation, boredom, and ignorance.
With the deepest-pocketed firms in history attempting to convince them they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen, they grow up without acquiring the skills to build social capital or create wealth. They face an educational system biased against them and enter a workforce where the minimum wage is below the poverty line.
Many boys grow up with nearly no male role models. The results include loneliness, depression, suicide, and an increased susceptibility to radicalization and belief in conspiracies. Alienation and disaffection drive depression and violence. By age 27, high school dropouts are four times more likely to be arrested, fired by their employer, on government aid, or addicted to drugs than their peers who graduated.
One in seven men reports having no friends. And three of every four deaths of despair in America, suicides and drug overdoses, are among men. We're facing declining household formation, reduced birth rates, and slowing economic growth just as the baby boomers are entering decades of non-productive retirement.
There is, to put it simply, a cohort of young people in our country who are denied the same opportunity presented to my generation, the chance to live a meaningful life. A generation of alienated young men can quickly thrust a nation into darkness. I spent last week in Germany for the European Championship. In between football matches, we did bike tours, learning about the history of Deutschland.
For most of its centuries-long history, Germany has been a progressive society, tolerant of diverse religions, nationalities, and sexual orientations. Central to its 12-year descent into fascist totalitarianism was the same incendiary that inspired the Russian Revolution, the Arab Spring, and the fall of the Roman Empire. Struggling young men.
The Great Depression left many young men in Germany unemployed and without prospects. The National Socialist Party capitalized on this desperation by promising jobs, economic stability, and a return to national greatness. For young men from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, the Nazis offered unprecedented opportunities for social mobility.
By joining the party or its affiliated organizations, men could gain power, status, and influence that were otherwise unattainable in the rigid class structure of Weimar Germany. These recruits made up the two million strong Hitler Youth, and then the Sturmabteilung, or SA, also known as the Brown Shirts. Sometimes it takes just one disaffected young man to change the course of history.
Gavrilo Princip was born on July 25, 1894, in the village of Obliai in Bosnia, at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was the second of nine children in a poor Serb peasant family. Only three of his siblings survived infancy.
Think about that last sentence and the impact on your perspective had you been raised in an environment where only one-third of your brothers and sisters survived. Gavrilo moved to Belgrade in 1912 where he joined a Serbian nationalist organization, the Black Hand, a secret military society known for its use of terrorism to achieve political aims.
Princip's assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife set off the chain of events that led to World War I and set the stage for World War II. He was 19. There have actually been only 231 documented acts of political violence between 2010 and 2020 in the U.S. However, with 40,000-plus gun deaths each year and 10 mass shootings a week, the
It's naive to think large, frequent gatherings such as political rallies won't eventually be subjected to random violence. What makes it more likely, the glycerin to the nitro of struggling young men, is access to weapons of war. The AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle Crooks apparently used is not a weapon for hunting, target shooting, or self-defense outside of a war zone.
Cue the dull comments from gun violence apologists. The original AR-15 was designed in the 1950s because U.S. combat soldiers needed an accurate weapon that fired multiple rounds at the enemy fast. The AR-15's descendants, once banned by President Clinton, are now the best-selling guns in America. When Trump was president, he considered reinstating the ban until the NRA talked him out of it.
We knew who Thomas Crooks was before we ever heard his name. As my Pivot podcast partner Kara Swisher put it, he was that kid. Somebody none of us had any trouble imagining. A kid with little social capital or connection to others. We know that kid. Some of us were that kid. A classmate told the New York Times about Crooks being mocked as a freshman for his dorky SpongeBob t-shirt and poor hygiene. She said, quote,
Those other kids would always say, hey, look at the school shooter over there, unquote. The coarsening of our discourse, income inequality, and political polarization are problems that warrant our attention and resources. But the accelerant poured on almost every serious problem in our society is a generation of young men who lead increasingly bleak, lonely lives. We don't have a monopoly on struggling young men.
But we do have a monopoly on struggling young men who have access to weapons of war. We need more empathy, as well as programs that restore more connection. Investments in third places.
Vocational programs, expanded freshman seats at colleges, child tax credits, negative income tax credits, a $25 minimum wage, a culture of mentorship, more men teaching in primary schools, age gating of social media, mandatory national service, and fiscal tax policies that stop the transfer of opportunity and prosperity from young to old.
Each side wants to blame the other's rhetoric or find a novel conspiracy. The issue is more boring and hiding in plain sight. The most dangerous person in the world is a lonely young man, and we are producing too many of them. Worse, we arm them with weapons that every other developed nation recognizes are instruments of war.
The U.S. is nearly impervious to foreign threats, but it's waging war on itself. The front line of this war is on our own soil, raging and largely ignored. The struggle of young men. Life is so rich.
