Post #2: Education, Interest, & Understanding
Personal story time. I have a tight knit group of 7 friends/families (8 including me). We are all married, all very successful in career and wealth accumulation, all married and have at least 1 child. All college+ educated.
The men in this group fall 7/1 in terms of conservative/liberal. 6 of them voted for Trump. I didn't because I don't vote for liberals. The wives fall 7/1 liberal/conservative. My wife being the only holdout.
We get together once per year. Every other year is a men's only trip / women's only trip. Every other year is a trip where we all converge with our children.
Last year the men went on a white water rafting trip. The women went to the Taylor Swift concert in London. This year, we rented a beach house in Outer Banks.
On the rafting trip, we had a blast. And during the evenings, as the cigars were being smoked, and the bourbon was flowing, we'd get into many conversations about deeper stuff. Specifically politics, the rise of AI, business opportunities, and religion/atheism conversations. We'd talk the election, the tariffs threats, the federal reserve funds rate, the border crisis, inflation impacts, should we be involved in Russia/Israel conflicts... when did the universe start? the Big Bang makes no sense! No, it's the only thing evidence supports!
When my wife returned from London I'd ask how the trip went. So much fun. What'd you talk about? "Oh you know, so and so is dating someone... Travis Kelce thing seems not real... Shannon is thinking about quitting bc Mike is doing so well... who from our group is going down the lip filler & botox rabbit hole.".
This year at the beach... something may come up politically about ICE or whatever. "Fuck Trump!" says a tipsy wife. When pushed... "he's just a racist!." Now the men want to engage, "well let's talk about it." One of the lead women shut that down "NO! WE AREN'T TALKING POLITICS... nobody cares."
I say the rambling above because I think it's reflective of the dynamic between the two sexes. Men are interested in debating, discussing nuance, understanding the why behind important things. Women don't want to be bothered with that. It's not interesting. It might cause controversy. Let's just move on and discuss the latest grammy awards controversy. This board is mostly men. Twitter is mostly men. Reddit is mostly men. Men want to discuss and learn. Women want to go to Instagram.
The wake up call to me here is that this is a group of 16 people. Where I know 8 are highly curious, at least somewhat educated on multiple political topics, and tend to vote for the right. On the flip side, I know the other 8 are not curious at all about these topics, aren't interested in discussing something that doesn't confirm their priors, and tend to for the left.
This is problematic. One group of informed individuals are completely offset by one group of disinterested individuals. And mind you, these are married white women - who are most likely to be persuaded to conservative ideals. This problem only gets worse for the childless unmarried.
I've tried to engage these highly educated, highly successful women on their political views. And I kid you not, their support for the left boils down to essentially one of three things:
1. They want abortion rights
2. Compassionate. They're not a racist or bigots... those are on the right
3. Girl power. Feminism is not aligned to the right
This level of superficial thinking is making progress impossible. They aren't interested in debating, because even doing so would be giving oxygen to racists and abortion deniers. Women are hive creatures. It's evolutionary that they are for protection. That is true socially as well. They would rather be aligned to the mainstream majority position than the truth, because aligned with mainstream majority is safe
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My wife is an Ivy League educated, double major in Biology and economics, medical doctor. She couldn't give two shits about the federal funds rate or what 10 year treasury bills are selling for. And that's totally OK! I don't want her spending her time on wonky policy. I want her watching some stupid reality show she enjoys and to go buy that autumn sweater and enjoy the Taylor Swift show. Talking politics is boring and stressful for her and her group. Talking politics is entertaining and interesting for the men.
Women simply do not desire to go deeper on a single topic, let alone dozens of topics. Their emotions override their logical thinking. "Trump is a racist! I can't vote for a racist!" Their empathy makes it impossible to do what is necessary to move society forward. "This black kid raped a young girl... but he grew up poor and the system was against him and we should give him another chance!"
These are attributes that make women amazing in many parts of the world. Including raising children, healthcare, services, etc. My wife is a wonderful mom to my daughter, and there is nothing more important than that to me. All of these women in this group are amazing mothers. And that's why I want to see their progress through and protect their children politically from their ignorance
Conclusion - a demographic that is completely uninterested in learning about things that affect all of society should not be the majority voting demographic which decides policy that affects all of society. See: NYC mayoral race
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Our next post will be about the dangers of the political divergence between men and women, and how voting is a peaceful proxy for war
