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Writer's pictureCameron Macgregor

Men and the City Part 19: Crushed Dreams and Red Pills

Updated: Jun 14, 2023



Men in the city know the system is broken. American optimism is famed throughout the world for its exuberant futurism and almost religious conviction in “truth, justice and the American way.” Generations of American men dreamt of the two-story white house with black shutters and red doors encased in a matte white picket fence with a doting wife and two adoring kids in the summer family portrait, a blissful suburban land of “barbecues and ball games.” The American male believed strongly that after years of loyal 9:5 card-punching, of playing by the rules like a good Samaritan, of hard work and sacrifice, and with Christian charity he would be awarded the American dream. For masses of American born and bred men those dreams are crushed.


Backlash against the Manosphere will only stiffen a mobilizing masculine resistance.

Baby boomers live in denial, the Gerontocracy is delusional, and the beta-bureaucrats and blue-pilled-normies are so embedded in the Matrix they lash out at anyone who tries to wake them up. Truly, faith in a lost American dream, in the hazy paragon of what America once was and a devout disbelief in how it has fallen makes the red pilled tragedies to come that much harder to swallow. When the truth finally breaks through the surface of the collective consciousness, the loss of idealism will be traumatizing, leaving the masses in an emotionally benumbed Wasteland worthy of TS Eliot. Post shock and disillusionment a fiery anger that will explode in a mushroom cloud of revolt.



The Neo-Masculine awakening swelling deep in the psyches of young men is bubbling to the surface. The Manosphere is going mainstream, trending in a flurry of YouTube videos, Instagram reels, and even day-time television shows like Dr. Phil. (see video below) The Matrix is responding as expected with reactionary subterfuge: misdirection, obfuscation, and ad hominem slander. Mainstream backlash against the Manosphere will only stiffen a mobilizing masculine resistance. (see my video above) Bitter recoil from the Gerontocracy only confirms what men in the city already know; that the mainstream media spews Orwellian disinformation, that Hollywood and Wall Street are corrupt, that the system is broken. More are waking up every day.




Crypto’s Red Pill Moment










This week saw government crackdowns on the Cryptosphere intensify. The SEC followed through on escalating threats against the industry to file lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase – the two most important cryptocurrency exchanges in the world – for illegally transacting unregistered securities. In short, the SEC claims that owning tokens is equivalent to owning shares in a company. Legal action from the Feds comes years after innumerable tokens, Shitcoins and ICO Ponzi schemes have been traded, pumped, and dumped with devastating losses inflicted on retail investors (so much for looking after average investors). Crypto normies like Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong requested regulatory guidance for years and Coinbase even went so far as to approximate the Howie Test (the legal precedent governing securities) when vetting new tokens thinking they would get a fair hearing. Consider this crypto’s red pill moment.


Consider this crypto’s red pill moment.

Cryptos – more specifically Bitcoin and Etherium (DEFI) are the nascent scaffolding of a parallel monetary system and as such they threaten the dollar. Pretending fiat and crypto can coexist is increasingly untenable. Savvy investors, baby boomers, and institutions are sorting through the fiat carnage of bank runs and inflation in search of off ramps. While Gold remains the go-to safe haven (some fear Gold could be banned too - see below), Bitcoin is more liquid, easily transferable, and can transact without banks. In short, Bitcoin is better money than fiat and easier to adopt than Gold. Fear is forcing the Feds to impede crypto’s growth, constrain its network effects, and if possible, shut it down completely. A boomerang effect or negative feedback loop in the opposite direction is more likely.



While Draconian lawsuits cripple institutional adoption in the short-run, in the long-run crypto’s antifragile networks will only multiply. If the SEC, Jaime Dimon, and Janet Yellen are telling us in unison that cryptocurrencies are fraudulent, illegal, and unsafe they must be valuable indeed. Further, if the US government bans crypto entirely including Bitcoin and Etherium, global adoption will skyrocket and crypto exchanges, blockchain developers and innovators will flee the US entirely, a process that some cryptos began years ago. In the end, the fate of cryptocurrencies are inextricably tied to the collapse of fiat. If fiat fails, crypto will prevail and the reverse is likely true as well. Regulators have simply rendered the outcome binary – as it always was – like a UFC cage fight, two currencies enter only one wins.


Boom and Doom











Meanwhile, the specter of financial crisis hovers ominously above like darkening storm clouds. Mortgage rates are dangerously high, and signs of housing stress are showing. Further, while the rate of inflation – at least the official numbers – has fallen, inflation remains stubbornly high and even Jamie Dimon warns that the terminal rate will climb still higher, and stay high for the foreseeable future. That does not bode well for government debt either and yields (interest payments on national debt) in key bond markets like German Bunds and US Treasuries will go higher. As debt rises, rates will too until they hit escape velocity and defaults spike.


Despite SEC crackdowns, in the long-run crypto’s antifragile networks will only multiply.

Don’t worry, says Wall Street, forget the bad news bears because Artificial Intelligence and a Fed pivot are priming markets for the next bull run. In recent weeks warning signs in the economy and beyond have fallen on deaf ears. Sparring with bullish traders on Twitter is certain to provoke fiery animus from dogmatic Wall Streeters (and others) convinced that debt does not matter, and neither do economic fundamentals. Financial markets are just slot machines so get in the game and make some money. If you don’t, you are a sucker for missing out on the AI tech boom. Indeed, Wall Street believes America’s financial bubble is strong, “unbroken and unbreakable.”


Such uncritical thinking is complacency bordering on negligence. After decades of fiat economy it’s impossible to know what has value and what does not, what is a fugazi, and what generates real wealth? As the cost-of-capital soars fugazi wealth vaporizes, sometimes in drips and drops, sometimes in a typhoon. The trouble is America’s institutional investors are so beguiled by "bubblenomics" all they can do is what they have always done – buy the dip. Nothing could be riskier than assuming the convergence of crises overwhelming America – sprawling tent cities, humanitarian disaster on the border, proxy war with Russia, regional bank runs, mounting household debt, and rising inflation – are irrelevant to the bottom line.


Red Pills and Wake Up Calls


Born on the 4th of July is a film that every young American man should be required to watch. Tom Cruise’s acting chops are pushed to the limit as he portrays the wild gyrations of tragedy that consumes a young man’s life. Cruise plays Ron Kovic, a starry-eyed pubescent, a naïve do-gooder, and perhaps the apotheosis of the ideal American man. He is patriotic, optimistic, moral, a man committed to his country and willing to put his life on the line to defend it. What he fought for, suffered for, what crippled and destroyed him was a lie. Kovic like so many of his generation was black pilled, his faith broken.



Red pills are falling from the heavens and will soon rain down on the most willfully ignorant of normies. Men in the city are coalescing into a movement because we are tired of the lies, the empty promises, and false dreams. Lies, like financial bubbles, can go on for a long time, so long that even the most steely of skeptics give in. Then, suddenly, like the fleeting youth of a twenty something bonvivant they end. Where are we on this continuum no one knows with certainty. While the Age of Prosperity is ending, and the Age of Scarcity is fast approaching the switch has not yet happened. Nevertheless, the rise of the Manosphere, the global spread of Bitcoin, the collapse of faith in fiat economy and the American dream suggest the end is near.


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