Ezra Klein

So relatively few liberal democracies are now at a replacement rate or above, if any of them are.

I think Israel is, although whether Israel's a liberal democracy is its own question.

So he sort of starts there and says, look, the core of masculinity, thymus or thymus, I don't know how you say the Greek word, is testosterone.

This thing that Francis Fukuyama is talking about in The End of History and The Last Man, this thing that Nietzsche is talking about is just testosterone and we are destroying testosterone.

And we're destroying it with endocrine-disrupting chemicals that are in all the things we buy, destroying it with bad diet, destroying it with chemicals in the water.

And it is creating, and is maybe a sort of actual effort to create, and this is where things begin to find you to cope it off the rails, a docile form of man who is suited for the long house of liberal democracy and

and not suited for the displays of dominance and hierarchy and the conquest and excellence that has driven civilization forward and defined man forever.

And then, as you say, it kind of ends with a stirring call to throw out your plastic cutting boards and filter your water.

But this is the argument, you know, that there's like a sort of some stuff I actually agree with on chemicals, some stuff I'm generally worried about and hormonal changes.

And then the sense that what's really happening here is the destruction of what it means to be a man and literally the vital fluids that make men manly.

That's the book.

And the person of Donald Trump in the 2024 election became a vehicle for this feeling.

This guy who stood up and pumped his fist covered in blood after an assassination attempt rather than cowering behind his Secret Service guards or a lectern or, you know, staying on the floor.

This guy who would say anything he wanted to say, no matter who it offended, who did not play by the rules of feminized society.

This man who kept driving forward through adversity, you know, lawsuits and electoral losses and made his own reality around him.

That Trump, for all his sedentary lifestyle and obesity and the fact that he's, you know, in advanced age and, you know, I haven't measured his testosterone, but it's probably not that high anymore.

But that Trump represents...

What masculinity in a way is supposed to be, which is an effort to dominate other people in a bid to achieve greatness for yourself, your kin, your country.

And liberal democracy thwarted that until he came back and like bust through the and showed you could still do this.

Interior decorating.