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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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This is a suicide posts about an entrepreneur who failed and is going thru certain twitter communities.

https://twitter.com/smb_attorney/status/1720486539325587858?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

https://twitter.com/moseskagan/status/1720231141826015303?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

https://twitter.com/moseskagan/status/1720232058109469137?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

A few thoughts.

  1. Yes business owners do kill themselves when their business fails. Capitalism does have brutal aspects.

  2. I laugh when the one guy posts go talk to a therapists here’s the suicide prevention helpline. When your business is failing your issues are not lefty mental health. Your dealing with a real issue of not being able to provide for your family and seeing all your dreams disappear. It’s one of the most emasculating things that can happen to someone especially someone who is use to being able to handle stuff

  3. He shouldn’t have killed himself. I’d assume he could have found some consulting or being an employee for a bit gig.

  4. Society has very little tolerance for failed men. After the fact everyone will say he showed some signs and should have helped out. When you are failing you have the stench of failure and people honestly try to run away from you.

  5. I know someone whose dad killed themselves so when there business failed. I always thought the lefts argument that rioting and looting isn’t damaging was false. Being able to provide for your family is life and it’s something men take very personality.

  6. Females somehow survive with nothing. Not sure how but realistically society is far kinder to widowed mothers.

your issues are not lefty mental health...seeing all your dreams disappear...one of the most emasculating things

I don't have a lot of love for the left's frames around mental health and therapy, but this point is just silly. Or rather would be better if you just stopped wtih the real issue of providing monetarily. Are you suggesting that 'seeing your dreams disappear' is somehow a real issue, separate from and contrasted with 'mental health' concerns. Same re: feelings of emasculation. You undermine yourself by begging the conclusion.

I suspect the 'lefty' who advocates therapy very much agrees that lost dreams and feeling emasculated are real issues, and would understand them to be the exact 'mental health' issues you are suggesting aren't invovled.

Yeah, I mean, I don't like the whole "toxic masculinity" concept when it is used as a motte-and-bailey*, but if a man hypothetically (not saying this man necessarily did) killed himself because he could not provide for his family and felt emasculated, it would be textbook example of what some leftists mean when they say "toxic masculinity hurts men as well as women".

*The bailey: "men suck!". The motte: "we want to address toxic masculinity because doing so would help men as well as women!".

It’s an especially stupid reason to commit suicide because it’s still possible to provide for your family if your business fails - you can still get an ordinary job, or do consulting work, drive an Uber, whatever it takes. The only sure way to be unable to provide is to be dead, so what does killing yourself accomplish? Your spouse now has to shoulder the entire burden on their own.