The Men We Ignore Aren’t Gone

Preface

This post was never planned. It started with some things I saw on a local social app—real people, real pain, and a lot of silence or shame where there should have been support. I started writing to figure out how I felt. I opened a chat with ChatGPT just to think things through. I had no idea it would turn into a blog post, or what would come out of it.

But as I wrote, it became clear:

If we don’t talk real talk with each other—about our struggles, our screw-ups, and the stuff no one wants to say out loud—they will.
The grifters. The strongmen. The algorithms. The ones who don’t care if we burn, as long as we’re too distracted to notice who lit the fire.

What follows is a mix of personal story, social observation, and a bit of a call to action. It’s not about blame. It’s about breaking the silence before it kills more of us.

Once Upon A Time

I remember sitting around a small fire made of scraps of lumber, with other shirtless white men, proud of the hard day’s work we’d just finished. We had our problems, but we worked hard—and back then, it felt like our families respected us for it.

These weren’t just coworkers; I went fishing or camping with some. I was never quite like those guys, though. I never learned the trades. I was the guy who made sure no tool got left behind and stayed to clean up when everyone else was done. That was a lot of what the 1980s looked like for me.

I miss those days, even though I struggled with lack of skills or opportunities for training, I could still find jobs as a laborer. I lived in Southern Arizona at the time, I am a convicted felon, and it was easy to slip through cracks to rehabilitate back into society. After a while, I answered a classified ad about tech training.

Holy crap, that was a bad choice. I was barely out of prison a few months, I hooked up with a church, and now I was going to learn computer and office skills! It didn’t feel like a bad choice. The actual school and its curriculum was absurdly weak, some instructors lacked skills in their topic, and there were lawsuits that a dummy like me had no clue about. I am still in debt over this mistake.

Ok, so, that is a real story and there are many other similar stories just as real. If it was ok for men to talk about their crap, we might start a support group. I would show up with my five bucks for the coffee fund and talk about how I saw much of this happening and felt powerless.

• In the ’80s and ’90s, skilled labor and training programs became harder to find. For white men, they became expensive. For marginalized groups, there were often grants or incentives meant to “even the playing field.” That approach eventually turned into what we now know as DEI.
• Business colleges and vocational schools promised a shot at something better. They were real good at finding grants or financing to get you signed up—but not so good at actually delivering on the promise. Some programs had real value. A lot didn’t.
  How many of you still owe for some of this?
• A lot of jobs just disappeared—shipped overseas, outsourced, or replaced with cheaper labor.
  Boise lost 400+ tech support jobs to HP cost-cutting. I was one of them. It hurt.
  Other companies filled roles with immigrant labor because it was cheaper. The work didn’t vanish—it just stopped being offered to people like me.
• Men carried so many expectations—provide, protect, solve problems.
  It wasn’t just white men—any man who couldn’t adapt fast enough started losing everything: families, homes, even our sense of purpose and love for our country.
  And no, I doubt this kind of collapse is unique to the good old USA.
• Conversations around race and gender made it feel like white men couldn’t speak up without being called racist, misogynist, or worse.
  I’ll be honest—I’ve felt guilt and shame just from watching too much news.
  When I was younger, all I wanted was to learn woodworking and live in a cabin with a chubby hippy chick.

Actions and Outcomes

A lot of this movement in American culture ground to a halt after 2016. Oh sure, there was a lot of campaigning and demonizing of whole demographics leading up to Trump 1.0. Remember? “I am going to build a wall.” This guy said a lot of other stuff that sounded good to Americans that felt the Democrats are bad leaders.

• Blaming our countries problems on “them” and “those people” was the right strategy at the right time. If it wasn’t this crew, it would have been some other.
• He promised to bring jobs back to America, but we got our first experience with the destructive power of tariffs.
• The swamp didn’t drain. It got new alligators—with red hats. You saw his cabinet picks from 2016, right? And what he has done so far in 2025?

These were MAGA’s top three issues, more or less. And in 2025, not much has changed; other than who our friends and enemies are, whose gulf is it really? And… Oh never mind, a lot is changing faster than I can keep up.

Let’s Change Shit NOW!

Look, these are some dark times. It’s not like many of us didn’t see some of this coming, but wow! We don’t have to accept any of this that we don’t want. We can stand up and fight, and we may get knocked down. Keep standing back up, we are worth it.

We won’t win any quality of life fighting each other with memes across the platforms. We need to be able to talk about really hard shit, from trans and gender topics to immigration and employment issues. Yeah, it won’t be easy; if we can’t come up with real solutions, Trump, Musk, YouTube, Facebook, and many other echo chambers will happily take your attention and help you learn which side you hate and why; it’s how they get paid.

Our real problems aren’t about genders, the color of our skin, religion, or lack of faith. These are the distractions they use while the worst color of humans keep stealing our money, our time, our soul; I am talking about the green humans.

Hey, I have a shop now!