November 24, 2025 • 36 mins
The A&G Replay on Monday, November 24,2025 Hour 3 contains:
- Peaking at 60
- Mara Lago Face
- The Feminization of America
- Randi Weingarten's trash book
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
And broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the
George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong, Joe.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Getty, Armstrong and Getty and Hee Armstrong and Getty Strong
not live, We're not here. It's the Armstrong and Getty replay.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
But what we have for you is delicious a collection
of some of our best stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
You can hear more, of course on our podcast Armstrong
Eddy on Demand.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
And hey you get through your Christmas shopping list at
the Armstrong and Getdy superstore, shirts, hoodies and much more so.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Now enjoy the Armstrong and Geddy replay. We talked about
this a little bit earlier, but I want to get
into more of the specifics because I find this really interesting.
The headline sort of hides a lot of the really
good stuff. The headline being that you reach your functional
(01:14):
peak as a human later than they had previously thought.
Now functional functional is what we're going to get into
defining here that word as they use sixteen different dimensions.
This is a serious, like university study. This is not
I don't know so many studies and you should look
out for this. It's fun to talk about him. So
(01:36):
many studies that you hear that are you know it
turns out, you know it's paid for by the pudding corporation,
and it turns out you'd be better off eating more
pudding in your life or whatever, right exactly, Just dumb
stuff like that. But it turns out that people reach
their functional peak in their late fifties early sixties, decades
(01:57):
later than most people assume when you figure in all
these different things. So physical strength obviously, and certain cognitive
abilities like processing speed decline steadily after your mid twenties,
and I think we all canna test. Yes, if you're
past your mid twenties, you're aware of that, But a
whole bunch of other things you get stronger at for
(02:19):
quite some time, but they all diminish it eventually. Intelligence, personality,
emotional intelligence, decision making, overall functioning continues developing through midlife,
reaching its apex at around sixty years old. A twenty
five year old can process information faster, hold more items
(02:40):
in their working memory, and solve abstract reasoning problems more
quickly than someone decades older. So that stuff, you're better
at twenty five than you are later. And that's who
was I talking to the other day. They were younger
than me and they're talking about how they forget stuff now,
and I said, yeah, I finally had to give in
and start like leaving my self notes because I used
(03:01):
to just I used to be very proud of I
just I could remember everything I needed to do and
how I was going to do it, and I just
knew I was going to remember. That worked for a
while and then it until it didn't. Fluid intelligence, because
we were talking about working memory there, holding information in
your head and all that sort of stuff, peaks around
twenty five. Fluid intelligence, the ability to think on your
(03:25):
feet and solve novel program problems, peaks at twenty and
declines after that. Wow, isn't that something? Huh? Okay, that's
probably good for you know a lot of your military
age people and the kind of decisions they got to
make really quickly on their feet and they're around twenty
years old.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, man, there's a lot to this. Yeah, other terms
to understand and subtleties and the rest of Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Other advantages emerge with age that younger adults haven't had
time to develop. Crystallized intelligence, which is not a term
i'd but it means accumulated knowledge and vocabulary obviously keeps
rising well until your sixties, right that you can call
it wisdom if you wanted to. Financial literacy for some
(04:13):
reason improves into your late sixties early seventies. It goes
beyond that, it goes beyond other kinds of inteligence, and
that's something. Yeah, But then dig this one. Moral reasoning,
because this all comes under the category of you being
able to function. So some of then drop off early,
some of them go later. Moral reasoning tends to rise
(04:36):
through most of adulthood, and research indicates that it reverses
very late in life. Your moral reasoning will reverse very
late in life. It's all rob a bank and have
an affair or what's what's that all about. I'm gonna
have to ask my slaves if they agree very late
(04:59):
in life you're a little late in life. I think
I think you're just a bad person if you got
slaves at this point.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Well guilty, Yeah, is this thing true? I mean, it's
interesting that they came up with different terms, or more
specific terms for the aspects of wisdom. I'm not sure
we need all of them, but it's interesting to hear
it broken out. I mean, you just you have so
many case studies, not only your own, but those of
(05:24):
close friends and relatives and their experiences, and you just
you're You're like a much more experienced surgeon. Yes, Michael,
maybe that's why so many old people say whatever's on
their mind, because they have no more moral reasoning.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I don't know. Is the case of the efforts the
same as moral reasoning, yeah, or you know, combines in
some cases. But yeah, well, Katie and I were talking
earlier when you were gone. Just some of this stuff
really flies in the face of why do we have
eighty year olds running the country? Oh? On some of these,
some of these, but right.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
I got a bunch of old guys running the country,
and their financial literacy appears to be there is none.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Emotional intelligence climbs through midlife before tapering off. Based on
research comparing age groups older adults, this is a financial one.
I guess older adults are about twice as likely as
younger adults to avoid the sunk cost fallacy, the habit
of throwing good money after bad twice as likely at
(06:26):
like sixty as you would be at thirty. Of understanding,
now you know this turned out to be a bad idea.
Let's just move on, as opposed to well, we've come
this far, we better keep spending more money, right, Yeah, Yeah,
I would agree.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Again, it's a question of having lived through that sort
of thing a couple of times and realizing, Okay, this
is really disappointing, but we have to admit it's a
loser and move on.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Yeah. It's interesting that they separate out financial intelligence, where
it might just be all wisdom there, it's just accumulated
knowledge and personality also matures with age. Conscientiousness and emotional stability,
(07:07):
which are the two traits that are most strongly linked
to career success and life satisfaction according to this study.
I have to say that again. So the two traits
most strongly linked to career success and life satisfaction. Which
I don't know about you, but having a satisfying life
is way up on my list of priorities.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Who's ass you kiss? That's the most important thing. It's
not who you know, it's who you beep.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Wow, Conscientiousness and emotional stability are the two traits you
need for life satisfaction. That makes sense. But both increase
from early adulthood well into your fifties and sixties, so
that's good. Researchers waited these various dimensions and created a
composite intex tracking overall functioning and overall functioning peaks between
(07:53):
fifty five and sixty with clear declines emerging about sixty
five to seventy. So I got a few years left before,
I mean, because I'm barely functioning now, I got a
few really chairs left before it really starts to crash. Pressure.
You don't You don't get much time to enjoy your peak,
do you know? Well, we're not designed to live past that, right,
(08:16):
Really conscientiousness and emotional what was it? Stability? Stability? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Can that be translated as being beaten down or emotional stability?
I'm fine, I've been kicked before. Well, there, it is
true you get emotional stability.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
But I remember, God, quite a few years ago, I
was proud of some reaction I had to something, and
you you said, it's just because you have lower testosterolully
admit that, which took all the fun out of it.
But there is you do also gain emotional stability. Don't
you think it isn't just low tea because of Again,
(08:56):
because you've been through these situations before, this isn't the
first time you've had a boss shoot off about something
dumb or whatever situation are you, you get something in
the mail from the tax board that's going to be
a pain in the ass. It's not the first time
any of these things have happens. You don't quite get
as crazy.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Well please if anybody disagrees with this, By the time
you're playing in your third Super Bowl, you're focused on
the game.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
You're focused on doing your job and a way you
can't be the first time. As example, Or think about
raising kids, the second kid versus the first kid. I mean,
think about shir Yeah, the just the you know, the
first time your first kid falls down and binks their
head versus when you get into the second kid. Yeah,
they're out there, they're fine.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Getting back to the testosterone thing, though, what what you
need to remember, I think, or maybe you don't.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
I don't know, is that.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Virtually everything we think, everything we do, is chemicals slashing
around in our brain and the spark of the divine.
But and I believe in free will. I believe we
have a certain amount of control over how we're going
to react, and you work to develop that. But I mean, yeah,
(10:09):
so of course different levels of different chemicals is going
to affect the way you approach life.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
That's it's it's obvious, it has to be. Well, yeah,
I'm just trying to claim that any any growth I've
had is not all because I have Lord tip thoughts.
Oh no, no, not at all. I would never say
credit for some growth.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Well, I think that that discretionary part I was talking
about that absolutely grows because you've gone through it once
when you lost your head. You've gone through it another
time where you didn't lose your head, and you're thinking, yeah,
I'm staying calm again this time. Yeah, and then when
he leaves for the day, I'll take a poop on his.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Desk and whatever it takes. Vengeance. Vengeance is fine. A
little sugar in the gas tank take care of that probably, Yeah,
served cold, right, you know what I'm saying. Huh, good
luck breaking down in the freeway on the that's way
you hand it. When you get older. The fact that
you're like super quick thinking cognitive reasoning drops after twenty Wow,
(11:12):
that's early in life. Yeah, yeah, so kind of wrapping
enough studies. Studies cited by the authors show that people
typically earn their highest salaries and reach peak occupational prestige
between fifty and fifty five. It's not just because you've
been around the company for a long time or blah
blah blah. It's actually when you've got the most accumulated
(11:34):
knowledge and emotional stability and all those sorts of things. Yeah,
and shirt, you're most likely to do a good job
at it. Yeah, exactly. Now, the fact, as it says
here that the leaders of many political countries are in
their seventies or eighties is not Yeah, these are all
(11:54):
averages though, of course, I mean just flat out on
the face of it. Obviously, Donald Trump's brain is different
than Joe Biden's brain, absolutely true.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, And it strikes me that in a lot of
your tech industries, for instance, your your tech companies, they're
run by wunderkins, these these young phenoms who are not
fifty five years old, when they have their greatest success.
Is that because there is no accumulated knowledge to be
had in.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Their fields specific to that field.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I mean, management is management, dealing with people is dealing
with people. But maybe energy and willingness to work eighty
hours a week and not being tied to any sort
of quote unquote accumulated wisdom, maybe that explains it.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
I don't know. I mean because you'd think it.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Sam Altman, for instance, would hire a gray haired CEO
and say, I'll just worry about the innovation stuff. You
run the company. But that's not the way it goes.
The fifty five year old CEO would say, what are
we doing? What's the point of this?
Speaker 5 (13:01):
What is this?
Speaker 3 (13:02):
I keep telling you it's AI AI artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
All right, robots. The fact that my moral compass may
go south on me and my old age, that's got me,
uh concerned. I wonder what sort of high jinks I'll
be up to? How bad could it get?
Speaker 1 (13:21):
The Armstrong and Getty Show or Jack your Joe podcasts
and our hot links Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty The
Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 5 (13:40):
A sheriff's officer in Indiana went into an elementary school
to jokingly hand out tickets to students using the phrase
six seven. Everyone had a good laugh, and he pulled
out his gun and said, now tell me what it means.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
That is a dark joke, but a funny one. Oh
I'm funny. You have to have the cops come to
the school hanging out tickets for saying six to seven.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
That's pretty funny. Yeah, yeah, good stuff. They are calling
it mar A Lago face Jack. Since January, plastic surgeries
in DC have seen a wave of Trump insiders and
would be insiders asking for overt procedures in line with
what they're calling the mara A Lago face look for
(14:26):
the longest time instic surgery.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Mar A Lago the club where Trump lives down in Florida. Yes, yes,
that would that's the one.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Yes. Most plastic surgeons in Washington, d C, like other places,
have long gone with the nobody's sure you had anything done,
You just look good?
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Look well, uh.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
The President Trump is all in on aesthetics and Boulder
is always better and so uh. People in the inner
circle and those who would be again are embracing a
maximalist ethos when it comes to their look. Plastic surgeon
Troy Pittman is big in DC, I guess works with
a lot of Trump insiders. We're quote, we're seeing people
(15:12):
want to look like they've had something done.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
He says. I suppose that the logical next step, and
it doesn't have to be about mar A Lago. Maybe
that's what's been going on in Hollywood all these years,
and I didn't get it because I was as I
was saying, how's nobody told you that you took it
too far? Well, I suppose that when it's been around
for decades at some point the next logical iteration is
(15:37):
you want to look like you've had work done because
it makes you a certain sort of person.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
While all the school beltweers tend to be hashage about
their tune ups, the Palm Beach crowds all systems go,
says doctor Pittman. Fillers are big with this crew, especially
lips as are botox in disport, which I don't even
know about.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Let's see a different DC.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Politopastic platic surgeon says she's actually turned down a bunch
of people who want that because she just doesn't do that.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah, I didn't this all make sense to me. People
like me who've never had that done, and run around
with people who've never had that done. We've been wrong
all along. They're not trying to fool us. They want to.
Speaker 5 (16:17):
They want to.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
They want a big statement that says I get work done.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Okay, Well you're you're half right that, as Nelly Bowls
writes in the Free Press, the director of his Bigger
Lips doc and Eyes that Never Shut so it's not
to miss a thing. Tarantula lashes charcoal, smear it on
your lids. Everyone dresses to please the king, even if
the royal aesthetic is if Poltergeist were an escort anyway.
(16:45):
But then this other DC plastic surgeon who does subtle
stuff says.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
That these people.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Want extra fillers and injections on top of already treated faces,
which can be dangerous. She says it's a situation she
calls filler blind. If you add more and more product
to your face and are surrounded by people who do
the same, you lose sight of anatomic normalcy. Clearly that
is true. So no, they don't want you to know
it necessarily. They've just completely lost track of what's normal
(17:14):
and what looks good.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Man. If I could get a little something done without
anybody noticing that, I would absolutely do it.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
The fellas are in line too, Jack looking for a
botox liposuction and the suction and eyelid rejuvenation. It's Pete
Hegsat's Washington. Now you got a young fit and.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Hands, Jack Armstrong and Joe The Armstrong and Getty Show,
The Armstrong and Getdy Show.
Speaker 6 (17:44):
Wikipedia said that traffic to their site is falling because
people are using AI instead, and AI said the same
thing slightly reworded it inside of them as a source.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
It's pretty clever, actually, that's pretty clear. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
So the way we see our jobs around here, speaking
for myself is yeah, we bring you news of the
day and our thoughts, but we're also curators of you know, ideas.
I that's the most fun part of the job for
me is reading all day long and trying to find
the best ideas and bring them to you. Sometimes there
are sometimes they're not. And I came across that's the
(18:23):
way you describe our jobs.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I'm more of a lavishly paid to blather on barely
knowing what I'm talking about. Oh that's your special charm.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I came across this great piece by author Helen Andrews,
and a number of our more student listeners have centered
along saying in sn OMG, have you guys seen this?
And it's a little longer than something we would generally
read to you, but it is so good and I
think so important it's worth it. It's entitled The Great Feminization.
(18:54):
And here's a disclaimer real quickly, because, as you know,
a happily married guy who I love and respect my wife.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
I have two daughters. My mom is a saint. Blah
blah blah.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Women in women, womanhood are essential to the functioning of mankind.
I am a great believer in balance. People who ask
me about politics, I always tell them, Look, I'm a
really conservative conservative, but I believe we need navy seales
and poets for society to work. For the world to work,
we need men and women, the masculine, the effeminate. That's
(19:26):
the way we're made by God or creation or whatever.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Having said that, the great feminization Helen Andrews and Jack
obviously dive in whenever you want. In twenty nineteen, she writes,
I read an article about Larry Summers and Harvard that
change the way I look at the world. The author
argued that the day Larry Summers resigned as president of
Harvard University marked a turning point in our culture. We
entire a lot at the time. Oh yeah, the entire
(19:52):
and she explains exactly what happened. If you're trying to
remember what happened, the entire woke era could be extrapolated
from that moment. From the details of how Summers was
canceled and most of all who did the canceling women.
The basic facts of the Summer's case are familiar. January fourteenth,
twenty oh five, at a conference on diversifying the science
and engineering workforce, Larry Summers gave a talk that was
(20:13):
supposed to be off the record. In it, he said
that female under representation and hard sciences was partly due
to quote different availability of aptitude at the high end,
as well as taste difference as preferences between men and
women not attributable to socialization, meaning dudes just tend to xxct.
Some female professors and attendants were offended and sent his
(20:36):
remarks to a reporter in defiance of the off the
record rule. The ensuing scandal led to a no confidence
vote by the Harvard faculty and eventually Summer's resignation. The
essay argued that it wasn't just that women had canceled
the president of Harvard. It was that they'd canceled him
in a very feminine way. They made emotional appeals rather
than logical arguments.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Quote.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
When he started talking about innate differences and aptitudes between
men and women, I just couldn't breathe, because this kind
of bias makes.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Me physically ill.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Oh my god, said Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at MIT.
Summers made a public statement clarifying his remarks, and then another,
and then a third, with the apology more insistent each time.
Experts chimed in to declare that everything Somers had said
about sex differences was within the scientific mainstream. These rational
appeals had no effect on the mob hysteria. This cancelation
(21:27):
was feminine, the essay argued, because all cancelations are feminine.
Cancel culture is simply what women do when there are
enough of them in a given organization or field. That
is the great feminization thesis, which the same author later
elaborated on at book length. Everything you think of as
wokeness is simply an epiphenomenon of demographic feminization.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I like where this is. I like where this is going.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
The explanatory power of this simple thesis was incredible. It
really did unlock the secrets of the era we were
living in. Here's the point I disagree with. Wokeness is
not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a
result of post Obama disillusionment. It is simply feminine patterns
of behavior applied to institutions where women were few in
number until recently.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
How did I not see it before?
Speaker 3 (22:15):
My disagreement with the Marxism point is that Michelle Foucaut,
who's really the godfather of critical theory and neo Marxism,
he understood human nature and he understood how making an
emotional moral argument could get people to ignore facts. That's
why they're so intent on getting you to say a
(22:36):
man can give birth to a baby. Because if you
can be pried away from logic and rely on pure
emotion and what the crowd says you should say, then
they've gotcha. So this is not divorced from Marxism, it's
just another layer of it. But anyway, on with the essay,
(22:58):
let's see. Then she mentions a couple of firsts people
think about the feminization of like the first woman to
attend law school in eighteen sixty nine, first woman to
argue before the Supreme Court in eighteen eighty, first female
Supreme Court justice nineteen eighty one. But she says a
much more important tipping point is when law schools became
majority female, which occurred in twenty sixteen, or when law
(23:21):
firms associated became majority female, which occurred in twenty twenty three,
when Sandrade O'Connor was appointed to the High Court, only
five percent of judges were female. Today, women are thirty
three percent of the judges in America and sixty three
percent of the judges appointed by President Biden sixty three percent.
The same trajectory can be seen in many professions, pioneering
(23:43):
generations women in the sixties and seventies, increasing female representative
representation through the eighties and nineties, and gender par parody
finally arriving in twenty tens or twenty twenties. For instance,
in nineteen seventy four or only ten percent of New
York Times reporters were female. The New York Times staff
became majority female in twenty eighteen, and today the female
share is fifty five percent. Medical schools became majority female
(24:07):
in twenty nineteen. Women became a majority of the college
educated workforce nationwide. In twenty nineteen, women became a majority
of college instructors in twenty twenty three. Women are not
yet a majority of the managers in America, but they
might be soon. They're now forty six percent. So the
timing fits Wokeness arose around the same time that many
important institutions tip tip demographically from majority male to majority female.
(24:30):
All right, so what you're saying, here's here's what she means.
The substance fits too. Everything you think of wokeness involves
prioritizing the feminine over the masculine, empathy over rationality, safety
over risk, cohesion over competition. Give you a second to
(24:51):
absorb that. One hundred percent right, one hundred percent right,
and one hundred percent right. Those are all real interesting.
Other writers have proposed their own versions of the great feminization.
She drops a few names who looked at feminization's effect
on academia, offers survey data showing sex differences in political values.
One survey, for instance, found that seventy one percent of
men said protecting free speech was more important than preserving
(25:15):
a cohesive society. Whatever that means seventy one percent of men,
sixty percent of women said the opposite.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
That doesn't surprise me, and as a for some reason,
it popped into my head. You was talking about how
when women got involved in youth sports, how it changed.
Then we got uniforms at every age, and lots of
team pictures and lots of ceremonies ceremonies and stuff. Yeah, yeah, anyway.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
And then she issues a disclaimer, which probably isn't necessary.
But the most relevant differences are not about individuals but
about groups. Yes, an individual woman might be taller than
an individual man, but a group of ten random women
is very unlikely to have an average height greater than
that of ten men. The larger the group of the people,
the more likely it is to conform to statistical averages.
(26:03):
So again, you independent thinking, free speech loving women out there,
it's not about you. It's not about individuals, it's about
in large groups, tendencies become more and more true.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
The female group dynamics favor consensus and cooperation. Men order
each other around, but women can only suggest and persuade.
Any criticism or negative sentiment if it is absolutely to
be expressed, needs to be buried in layers of compliments.
The outcome of a discussion is less important than the
fact that a discussion was held and everyone participated in it.
(26:38):
The most important sex difference. The most important sex difference
in group dynamics is attitude to conflict. In short, men
wage conflict openly, while women covertly undermine or ostracize their enemies.
Any ladies like to disagree with that, Katie, feel free
to jump.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
In if you like. Okay, do women that ostracize their
enemies as opposed to confronting them openly and saying, hey,
we have a problem. We need to settle this. Yeah,
without a doubt.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Barry Weiss, in her letter of resignation from The New
York Times, described how colleagues referred to her in internal
slack messages as a racist, a nazi, and a bigot.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
And this is the most feminine part quote.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Oh, she said, he resignation. Wow.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Weiss wants asked a colleague at the Times opinion desk
to get coffee with her. This journalist, a biracial woman
who wrote frequently about race, refused to meet. This was
a failure to meet the basic standards of professionalism, obviously.
It was also very feminine. Men tend to be better
at compartmentalizing than women, and wokeness was in many ways
(27:48):
a society wide failure to compartmentalize. Listen to this. This
is another blockbuster point. Traditionally, an individual doctor might have
opinions on the political issues the day, but he would
regard it as his professional duty to keep those opinions
out of the examination room. Now that medicine has become
more feminized, doctors wear pins and lanyards expressing views on
(28:11):
controversial issues, from gay rights to gaza. They even bring
the credibility of their profession to bear on political fads,
as when doctors said Black Lives Matter protests could continue
in violation of COVID lockdowns because racism was a public
health emergency.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
You're nodding your head, Gati. You've been in a hospital
situations a lot more than us lately. You've seen that.
Speaker 7 (28:31):
Oh yeah, I've seen it. You know the little lanyards
where they it's like their key to the doors. They
all have the different little trinkets with you know, rainbows,
and I saw Palestinian flag recently.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, dudes wouldn't have done that.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Now, one more note and then we will take a break.
One book that helped me put together the pieces was
Warriors and Warriors The Survival of the Sexes by psychology
professor Joyce Beninson. Practically all of the scientists cite in
this article are women. By the way, it's worth pointing
out I think she theorizes that men developed dynamics optimized
for war, while women developed group dynamics optimized for protecting
(29:05):
their offspring. These habits, formed in the mists of prehistory,
explain why experimenters in modern psychology labs in a study
the Barons and Sites observe that a group of men
given a task will quote, jockey for talking time, disagree loudly,
and then cheerfully relate a solution to the experimenter. A
group of women given the same task will quote politely,
(29:27):
inquire about one another's personal background and relationships, accompanied by
much eye contact, smiling, and turn taking, and pay quote
little attention to the task that the experimenter presented. The
point of war is to settle disputes between two tribes,
but it only works if peace is restored after the
dispute is settled. Men therefore develop methods for reconciling with
(29:50):
the proonent opponents, and learning to live in.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Peace with people they were fighting yesterday.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Females, even in primate species, are slower to reconcile than males.
That is because because women's conflicts were traditionally within the
tribe over scarce resources to be resolved not by open conflict,
but by covert competition with rivals with no clear end.
All of these observations match my observations of wokeness, but
(30:15):
soon the happy thrill of discovering a new theory eventually
gave way to a sinking feeling. If wokeness really is
the result of the Great feminization, then the eruption of
insanity in twenty twenty was just a small taste of
what the future holds. Imagine what will happen is the
remaining men age out of these society shaping professions and
the younger, more feminized generations take full control.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
That's what I'm always saying that when we're all dead
who remember them before times, there won't be anybody around
to say, hey, it didn't used to be like this.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Yeah more Jack your show.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Podcasts and our hot lakes.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
The Armstrong and Yetty Show.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
So perhaps you would like to leave a flaming bag
of dog experiments on your neighbor front porch, but you
lack such an item. You could go with Randy Weingarten's
new book instead, Why Fascists Fear Teachers, Public Education, and
the Future of Democracy. If there was ever a flaming
(31:14):
bag of dog crap sold as a book. This is
it Why fascists fear teachers? Who are these fascists? We'll
get to that in a moment. So obviously the title
is designed to be eye catching and attract readers, but
by now, as this review puts it, the word fascist
is thrown around routinely. The book's title, Public Education the
(31:36):
Future Democracy is more significant deceptive. The book's purported intention
is to argue for public school's crucial role in our
democratic society, but it offers very little in the way
of education policy or ideas that would truly benefit teachers
or God forbids students.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
The random aim, yes, Randy Weingarten played the major role
in keeping the schools closed during the pandemic, for instance, Yeah,
I'm sorry, the American Federation of Teachers president for years
and years and years. The real aim is made clear.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
It devotes most of its pages to attacking her political opponents,
especially especially supporters of school choice, and defending the interests
of the American Federation.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Of Teachers, her big rich union.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
She starts out claiming ninety percent of American kids attend
public schools. Not so fast, it was a little over
eighty one percent four years ago at the beginning of COVID.
So and that's before the expansion of universal school choice
in states like Texas and New Hampshire. Half of American
children now have access to school choice. So the number
(32:42):
is far far lower than the ninety percent she claims.
So it's appropriate the book would start off with lies.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
As it continues.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
In that vein, Winingarden characterizes the school choice movement as
a conspiracy organized by Christopher Rufo, Moms for Liberty, and
other hard right wing activists. Quote a plot to destroy
public education. Yeah, I'd be all for that based on
where it right now, you know, honestly, Yeah, I see
your point. The real drivers of the choice movement, they
(33:09):
point out, however, her parents like Virginia olden Ford, a black,
low income other in Washington, DC who grew frustrated watching
her sons struggle in public school and help create the
DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, the nation's first federally funded voucher initiative.
But yeah, she's a conspiracy Not sure, Randy, let's see
(33:29):
Winngartan also insists that vouchers are devised by whites to
undermine desegregation. Oh, it's racism, probably systemic racism. This isn't
just wrong, it gets the history completely backward. In fact,
some teachers' unions fought against vouchers because they facilitated integration.
(33:50):
Wygarten claims she is quote willing to work with anyone
who wants to actually address the problems facing our public schools,
but she refuses to engage with school choice advocates who
propose concrete and constructive options for students underserved by traditional
school districts. Then she denigrates religious schools whose very purpose
is in doctrination, that's a quote. This animus causes her
(34:12):
to overlook the many advantages of faith based education, such
as the Catholic school effect, which has been demonstrated to
benefit disadvantage minority students in particular, has to do with
high expectations and discipline and that sort of thing. The
biggest deception in Windgarten's book is her portrayal of her
role Jackie loved this during the pandemic, I quote I
led the AFT in developing a concrete plan to reopen
(34:35):
schools as quickly and safely as possible. When, of course,
Winegotten and her union colleagues kept children American children out
of schools until the government approved her request for a
seven hundred and fifty billion dollar federal age package federal
aid package to feather their nest and hire more administrations
and more union members. Unbelievable. The book is primarily an
(34:55):
attempt to rehabilitate Winegarten's image after she backed the longest
school closures in American history, which yielded the largest drop
in student performance ever recorded.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Not to mention the emotional turmoil.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
And she mentions the Aforah mentioned fascists like ourselves in
her title replace facts and critical thinking with propaganda that
romanticizes the nation's past. No, absolutely obscene. You know, I
gotta apologize to flaming bags of dog crap comparing them.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
To this book. It's insulting. Yeah, that's really maddening. I mean,
we've talked about this a lot, and I hate her
so much. Do you think she actually believes she's doing
the right thing for kids or did she abandon that
a long time ago. I don't. She couldn't. There's no way.
There's no way she possibly thought keeping the schools closed
(35:44):
was the best thing for the kids. Not a chance
she actually believed that.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Now unless her own evil in her need to you know,
explain it has perverted her own mind to the point
that she can't recognize truth. She's like, oh, J Simpson
who thought he didn't kill his wife?
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Yeah, what a horrifying human being.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Yeah, Armstrong and Getty
And broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the
George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong, Joe.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Getty, Armstrong and Getty and Hee Armstrong and Getty Strong
not live, We're not here. It's the Armstrong and Getty replay.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
But what we have for you is delicious a collection
of some of our best stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
You can hear more, of course on our podcast Armstrong
Eddy on Demand.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
And hey you get through your Christmas shopping list at
the Armstrong and Getdy superstore, shirts, hoodies and much more so.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Now enjoy the Armstrong and Geddy replay. We talked about
this a little bit earlier, but I want to get
into more of the specifics because I find this really interesting.
The headline sort of hides a lot of the really
good stuff. The headline being that you reach your functional
(01:14):
peak as a human later than they had previously thought.
Now functional functional is what we're going to get into
defining here that word as they use sixteen different dimensions.
This is a serious, like university study. This is not
I don't know so many studies and you should look
out for this. It's fun to talk about him. So
(01:36):
many studies that you hear that are you know it
turns out, you know it's paid for by the pudding corporation,
and it turns out you'd be better off eating more
pudding in your life or whatever, right exactly, Just dumb
stuff like that. But it turns out that people reach
their functional peak in their late fifties early sixties, decades
(01:57):
later than most people assume when you figure in all
these different things. So physical strength obviously, and certain cognitive
abilities like processing speed decline steadily after your mid twenties,
and I think we all canna test. Yes, if you're
past your mid twenties, you're aware of that, But a
whole bunch of other things you get stronger at for
(02:19):
quite some time, but they all diminish it eventually. Intelligence, personality,
emotional intelligence, decision making, overall functioning continues developing through midlife,
reaching its apex at around sixty years old. A twenty
five year old can process information faster, hold more items
(02:40):
in their working memory, and solve abstract reasoning problems more
quickly than someone decades older. So that stuff, you're better
at twenty five than you are later. And that's who
was I talking to the other day. They were younger
than me and they're talking about how they forget stuff now,
and I said, yeah, I finally had to give in
and start like leaving my self notes because I used
(03:01):
to just I used to be very proud of I
just I could remember everything I needed to do and
how I was going to do it, and I just
knew I was going to remember. That worked for a
while and then it until it didn't. Fluid intelligence, because
we were talking about working memory there, holding information in
your head and all that sort of stuff, peaks around
twenty five. Fluid intelligence, the ability to think on your
(03:25):
feet and solve novel program problems, peaks at twenty and
declines after that. Wow, isn't that something? Huh? Okay, that's
probably good for you know a lot of your military
age people and the kind of decisions they got to
make really quickly on their feet and they're around twenty
years old.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, man, there's a lot to this. Yeah, other terms
to understand and subtleties and the rest of Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Other advantages emerge with age that younger adults haven't had
time to develop. Crystallized intelligence, which is not a term
i'd but it means accumulated knowledge and vocabulary obviously keeps
rising well until your sixties, right that you can call
it wisdom if you wanted to. Financial literacy for some
(04:13):
reason improves into your late sixties early seventies. It goes
beyond that, it goes beyond other kinds of inteligence, and
that's something. Yeah, But then dig this one. Moral reasoning,
because this all comes under the category of you being
able to function. So some of then drop off early,
some of them go later. Moral reasoning tends to rise
(04:36):
through most of adulthood, and research indicates that it reverses
very late in life. Your moral reasoning will reverse very
late in life. It's all rob a bank and have
an affair or what's what's that all about. I'm gonna
have to ask my slaves if they agree very late
(04:59):
in life you're a little late in life. I think
I think you're just a bad person if you got
slaves at this point.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Well guilty, Yeah, is this thing true? I mean, it's
interesting that they came up with different terms, or more
specific terms for the aspects of wisdom. I'm not sure
we need all of them, but it's interesting to hear
it broken out. I mean, you just you have so
many case studies, not only your own, but those of
(05:24):
close friends and relatives and their experiences, and you just
you're You're like a much more experienced surgeon. Yes, Michael,
maybe that's why so many old people say whatever's on
their mind, because they have no more moral reasoning.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I don't know. Is the case of the efforts the
same as moral reasoning, yeah, or you know, combines in
some cases. But yeah, well, Katie and I were talking
earlier when you were gone. Just some of this stuff
really flies in the face of why do we have
eighty year olds running the country? Oh? On some of these,
some of these, but right.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
I got a bunch of old guys running the country,
and their financial literacy appears to be there is none.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Emotional intelligence climbs through midlife before tapering off. Based on
research comparing age groups older adults, this is a financial one.
I guess older adults are about twice as likely as
younger adults to avoid the sunk cost fallacy, the habit
of throwing good money after bad twice as likely at
(06:26):
like sixty as you would be at thirty. Of understanding,
now you know this turned out to be a bad idea.
Let's just move on, as opposed to well, we've come
this far, we better keep spending more money, right, Yeah, Yeah,
I would agree.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Again, it's a question of having lived through that sort
of thing a couple of times and realizing, Okay, this
is really disappointing, but we have to admit it's a
loser and move on.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Yeah. It's interesting that they separate out financial intelligence, where
it might just be all wisdom there, it's just accumulated
knowledge and personality also matures with age. Conscientiousness and emotional stability,
(07:07):
which are the two traits that are most strongly linked
to career success and life satisfaction according to this study.
I have to say that again. So the two traits
most strongly linked to career success and life satisfaction. Which
I don't know about you, but having a satisfying life
is way up on my list of priorities.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Who's ass you kiss? That's the most important thing. It's
not who you know, it's who you beep.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Wow, Conscientiousness and emotional stability are the two traits you
need for life satisfaction. That makes sense. But both increase
from early adulthood well into your fifties and sixties, so
that's good. Researchers waited these various dimensions and created a
composite intex tracking overall functioning and overall functioning peaks between
(07:53):
fifty five and sixty with clear declines emerging about sixty
five to seventy. So I got a few years left before,
I mean, because I'm barely functioning now, I got a
few really chairs left before it really starts to crash. Pressure.
You don't You don't get much time to enjoy your peak,
do you know? Well, we're not designed to live past that, right,
(08:16):
Really conscientiousness and emotional what was it? Stability? Stability? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Can that be translated as being beaten down or emotional stability?
I'm fine, I've been kicked before. Well, there, it is
true you get emotional stability.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
But I remember, God, quite a few years ago, I
was proud of some reaction I had to something, and
you you said, it's just because you have lower testosterolully
admit that, which took all the fun out of it.
But there is you do also gain emotional stability. Don't
you think it isn't just low tea because of Again,
(08:56):
because you've been through these situations before, this isn't the
first time you've had a boss shoot off about something
dumb or whatever situation are you, you get something in
the mail from the tax board that's going to be
a pain in the ass. It's not the first time
any of these things have happens. You don't quite get
as crazy.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Well please if anybody disagrees with this, By the time
you're playing in your third Super Bowl, you're focused on
the game.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
You're focused on doing your job and a way you
can't be the first time. As example, Or think about
raising kids, the second kid versus the first kid. I mean,
think about shir Yeah, the just the you know, the
first time your first kid falls down and binks their
head versus when you get into the second kid. Yeah,
they're out there, they're fine.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Getting back to the testosterone thing, though, what what you
need to remember, I think, or maybe you don't.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
I don't know, is that.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Virtually everything we think, everything we do, is chemicals slashing
around in our brain and the spark of the divine.
But and I believe in free will. I believe we
have a certain amount of control over how we're going
to react, and you work to develop that. But I mean, yeah,
(10:09):
so of course different levels of different chemicals is going
to affect the way you approach life.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
That's it's it's obvious, it has to be. Well, yeah,
I'm just trying to claim that any any growth I've
had is not all because I have Lord tip thoughts.
Oh no, no, not at all. I would never say
credit for some growth.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Well, I think that that discretionary part I was talking
about that absolutely grows because you've gone through it once
when you lost your head. You've gone through it another
time where you didn't lose your head, and you're thinking, yeah,
I'm staying calm again this time. Yeah, and then when
he leaves for the day, I'll take a poop on his.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Desk and whatever it takes. Vengeance. Vengeance is fine. A
little sugar in the gas tank take care of that probably, Yeah,
served cold, right, you know what I'm saying. Huh, good
luck breaking down in the freeway on the that's way
you hand it. When you get older. The fact that
you're like super quick thinking cognitive reasoning drops after twenty Wow,
(11:12):
that's early in life. Yeah, yeah, so kind of wrapping
enough studies. Studies cited by the authors show that people
typically earn their highest salaries and reach peak occupational prestige
between fifty and fifty five. It's not just because you've
been around the company for a long time or blah
blah blah. It's actually when you've got the most accumulated
(11:34):
knowledge and emotional stability and all those sorts of things. Yeah,
and shirt, you're most likely to do a good job
at it. Yeah, exactly. Now, the fact, as it says
here that the leaders of many political countries are in
their seventies or eighties is not Yeah, these are all
(11:54):
averages though, of course, I mean just flat out on
the face of it. Obviously, Donald Trump's brain is different
than Joe Biden's brain, absolutely true.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, And it strikes me that in a lot of
your tech industries, for instance, your your tech companies, they're
run by wunderkins, these these young phenoms who are not
fifty five years old, when they have their greatest success.
Is that because there is no accumulated knowledge to be
had in.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Their fields specific to that field.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I mean, management is management, dealing with people is dealing
with people. But maybe energy and willingness to work eighty
hours a week and not being tied to any sort
of quote unquote accumulated wisdom, maybe that explains it.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
I don't know. I mean because you'd think it.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Sam Altman, for instance, would hire a gray haired CEO
and say, I'll just worry about the innovation stuff. You
run the company. But that's not the way it goes.
The fifty five year old CEO would say, what are
we doing? What's the point of this?
Speaker 5 (13:01):
What is this?
Speaker 3 (13:02):
I keep telling you it's AI AI artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
All right, robots. The fact that my moral compass may
go south on me and my old age, that's got me,
uh concerned. I wonder what sort of high jinks I'll
be up to? How bad could it get?
Speaker 1 (13:21):
The Armstrong and Getty Show or Jack your Joe podcasts
and our hot links Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty The
Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 5 (13:40):
A sheriff's officer in Indiana went into an elementary school
to jokingly hand out tickets to students using the phrase
six seven. Everyone had a good laugh, and he pulled
out his gun and said, now tell me what it means.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
That is a dark joke, but a funny one. Oh
I'm funny. You have to have the cops come to
the school hanging out tickets for saying six to seven.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
That's pretty funny. Yeah, yeah, good stuff. They are calling
it mar A Lago face Jack. Since January, plastic surgeries
in DC have seen a wave of Trump insiders and
would be insiders asking for overt procedures in line with
what they're calling the mara A Lago face look for
(14:26):
the longest time instic surgery.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Mar A Lago the club where Trump lives down in Florida. Yes, yes,
that would that's the one.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Yes. Most plastic surgeons in Washington, d C, like other places,
have long gone with the nobody's sure you had anything done,
You just look good?
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Look well, uh.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
The President Trump is all in on aesthetics and Boulder
is always better and so uh. People in the inner
circle and those who would be again are embracing a
maximalist ethos when it comes to their look. Plastic surgeon
Troy Pittman is big in DC, I guess works with
a lot of Trump insiders. We're quote, we're seeing people
(15:12):
want to look like they've had something done.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
He says. I suppose that the logical next step, and
it doesn't have to be about mar A Lago. Maybe
that's what's been going on in Hollywood all these years,
and I didn't get it because I was as I
was saying, how's nobody told you that you took it
too far? Well, I suppose that when it's been around
for decades at some point the next logical iteration is
(15:37):
you want to look like you've had work done because
it makes you a certain sort of person.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
While all the school beltweers tend to be hashage about
their tune ups, the Palm Beach crowds all systems go,
says doctor Pittman. Fillers are big with this crew, especially
lips as are botox in disport, which I don't even
know about.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Let's see a different DC.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Politopastic platic surgeon says she's actually turned down a bunch
of people who want that because she just doesn't do that.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah, I didn't this all make sense to me. People
like me who've never had that done, and run around
with people who've never had that done. We've been wrong
all along. They're not trying to fool us. They want to.
Speaker 5 (16:17):
They want to.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
They want a big statement that says I get work done.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Okay, Well you're you're half right that, as Nelly Bowls
writes in the Free Press, the director of his Bigger
Lips doc and Eyes that Never Shut so it's not
to miss a thing. Tarantula lashes charcoal, smear it on
your lids. Everyone dresses to please the king, even if
the royal aesthetic is if Poltergeist were an escort anyway.
(16:45):
But then this other DC plastic surgeon who does subtle
stuff says.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
That these people.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Want extra fillers and injections on top of already treated faces,
which can be dangerous. She says it's a situation she
calls filler blind. If you add more and more product
to your face and are surrounded by people who do
the same, you lose sight of anatomic normalcy. Clearly that
is true. So no, they don't want you to know
it necessarily. They've just completely lost track of what's normal
(17:14):
and what looks good.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Man. If I could get a little something done without
anybody noticing that, I would absolutely do it.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
The fellas are in line too, Jack looking for a
botox liposuction and the suction and eyelid rejuvenation. It's Pete
Hegsat's Washington. Now you got a young fit and.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Hands, Jack Armstrong and Joe The Armstrong and Getty Show,
The Armstrong and Getdy Show.
Speaker 6 (17:44):
Wikipedia said that traffic to their site is falling because
people are using AI instead, and AI said the same
thing slightly reworded it inside of them as a source.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
It's pretty clever, actually, that's pretty clear. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
So the way we see our jobs around here, speaking
for myself is yeah, we bring you news of the
day and our thoughts, but we're also curators of you know, ideas.
I that's the most fun part of the job for
me is reading all day long and trying to find
the best ideas and bring them to you. Sometimes there
are sometimes they're not. And I came across that's the
(18:23):
way you describe our jobs.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I'm more of a lavishly paid to blather on barely
knowing what I'm talking about. Oh that's your special charm.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
I came across this great piece by author Helen Andrews,
and a number of our more student listeners have centered
along saying in sn OMG, have you guys seen this?
And it's a little longer than something we would generally
read to you, but it is so good and I
think so important it's worth it. It's entitled The Great Feminization.
(18:54):
And here's a disclaimer real quickly, because, as you know,
a happily married guy who I love and respect my wife.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
I have two daughters. My mom is a saint. Blah
blah blah.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Women in women, womanhood are essential to the functioning of mankind.
I am a great believer in balance. People who ask
me about politics, I always tell them, Look, I'm a
really conservative conservative, but I believe we need navy seales
and poets for society to work. For the world to work,
we need men and women, the masculine, the effeminate. That's
(19:26):
the way we're made by God or creation or whatever.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Having said that, the great feminization Helen Andrews and Jack
obviously dive in whenever you want. In twenty nineteen, she writes,
I read an article about Larry Summers and Harvard that
change the way I look at the world. The author
argued that the day Larry Summers resigned as president of
Harvard University marked a turning point in our culture. We
entire a lot at the time. Oh yeah, the entire
(19:52):
and she explains exactly what happened. If you're trying to
remember what happened, the entire woke era could be extrapolated
from that moment. From the details of how Summers was
canceled and most of all who did the canceling women.
The basic facts of the Summer's case are familiar. January fourteenth,
twenty oh five, at a conference on diversifying the science
and engineering workforce, Larry Summers gave a talk that was
(20:13):
supposed to be off the record. In it, he said
that female under representation and hard sciences was partly due
to quote different availability of aptitude at the high end,
as well as taste difference as preferences between men and
women not attributable to socialization, meaning dudes just tend to xxct.
Some female professors and attendants were offended and sent his
(20:36):
remarks to a reporter in defiance of the off the
record rule. The ensuing scandal led to a no confidence
vote by the Harvard faculty and eventually Summer's resignation. The
essay argued that it wasn't just that women had canceled
the president of Harvard. It was that they'd canceled him
in a very feminine way. They made emotional appeals rather
than logical arguments.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Quote.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
When he started talking about innate differences and aptitudes between
men and women, I just couldn't breathe, because this kind
of bias makes.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Me physically ill.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Oh my god, said Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at MIT.
Summers made a public statement clarifying his remarks, and then another,
and then a third, with the apology more insistent each time.
Experts chimed in to declare that everything Somers had said
about sex differences was within the scientific mainstream. These rational
appeals had no effect on the mob hysteria. This cancelation
(21:27):
was feminine, the essay argued, because all cancelations are feminine.
Cancel culture is simply what women do when there are
enough of them in a given organization or field. That
is the great feminization thesis, which the same author later
elaborated on at book length. Everything you think of as
wokeness is simply an epiphenomenon of demographic feminization.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I like where this is. I like where this is going.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
The explanatory power of this simple thesis was incredible. It
really did unlock the secrets of the era we were
living in. Here's the point I disagree with. Wokeness is
not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a
result of post Obama disillusionment. It is simply feminine patterns
of behavior applied to institutions where women were few in
number until recently.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
How did I not see it before?
Speaker 3 (22:15):
My disagreement with the Marxism point is that Michelle Foucaut,
who's really the godfather of critical theory and neo Marxism,
he understood human nature and he understood how making an
emotional moral argument could get people to ignore facts. That's
why they're so intent on getting you to say a
(22:36):
man can give birth to a baby. Because if you
can be pried away from logic and rely on pure
emotion and what the crowd says you should say, then
they've gotcha. So this is not divorced from Marxism, it's
just another layer of it. But anyway, on with the essay,
(22:58):
let's see. Then she mentions a couple of firsts people
think about the feminization of like the first woman to
attend law school in eighteen sixty nine, first woman to
argue before the Supreme Court in eighteen eighty, first female
Supreme Court justice nineteen eighty one. But she says a
much more important tipping point is when law schools became
majority female, which occurred in twenty sixteen, or when law
(23:21):
firms associated became majority female, which occurred in twenty twenty three,
when Sandrade O'Connor was appointed to the High Court, only
five percent of judges were female. Today, women are thirty
three percent of the judges in America and sixty three
percent of the judges appointed by President Biden sixty three percent.
The same trajectory can be seen in many professions, pioneering
(23:43):
generations women in the sixties and seventies, increasing female representative
representation through the eighties and nineties, and gender par parody
finally arriving in twenty tens or twenty twenties. For instance,
in nineteen seventy four or only ten percent of New
York Times reporters were female. The New York Times staff
became majority female in twenty eighteen, and today the female
share is fifty five percent. Medical schools became majority female
(24:07):
in twenty nineteen. Women became a majority of the college
educated workforce nationwide. In twenty nineteen, women became a majority
of college instructors in twenty twenty three. Women are not
yet a majority of the managers in America, but they
might be soon. They're now forty six percent. So the
timing fits Wokeness arose around the same time that many
important institutions tip tip demographically from majority male to majority female.
(24:30):
All right, so what you're saying, here's here's what she means.
The substance fits too. Everything you think of wokeness involves
prioritizing the feminine over the masculine, empathy over rationality, safety
over risk, cohesion over competition. Give you a second to
(24:51):
absorb that. One hundred percent right, one hundred percent right,
and one hundred percent right. Those are all real interesting.
Other writers have proposed their own versions of the great feminization.
She drops a few names who looked at feminization's effect
on academia, offers survey data showing sex differences in political values.
One survey, for instance, found that seventy one percent of
men said protecting free speech was more important than preserving
(25:15):
a cohesive society. Whatever that means seventy one percent of men,
sixty percent of women said the opposite.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
That doesn't surprise me, and as a for some reason,
it popped into my head. You was talking about how
when women got involved in youth sports, how it changed.
Then we got uniforms at every age, and lots of
team pictures and lots of ceremonies ceremonies and stuff. Yeah, yeah, anyway.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
And then she issues a disclaimer, which probably isn't necessary.
But the most relevant differences are not about individuals but
about groups. Yes, an individual woman might be taller than
an individual man, but a group of ten random women
is very unlikely to have an average height greater than
that of ten men. The larger the group of the people,
the more likely it is to conform to statistical averages.
(26:03):
So again, you independent thinking, free speech loving women out there,
it's not about you. It's not about individuals, it's about
in large groups, tendencies become more and more true.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
The female group dynamics favor consensus and cooperation. Men order
each other around, but women can only suggest and persuade.
Any criticism or negative sentiment if it is absolutely to
be expressed, needs to be buried in layers of compliments.
The outcome of a discussion is less important than the
fact that a discussion was held and everyone participated in it.
(26:38):
The most important sex difference. The most important sex difference
in group dynamics is attitude to conflict. In short, men
wage conflict openly, while women covertly undermine or ostracize their enemies.
Any ladies like to disagree with that, Katie, feel free
to jump.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
In if you like. Okay, do women that ostracize their
enemies as opposed to confronting them openly and saying, hey,
we have a problem. We need to settle this. Yeah,
without a doubt.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Barry Weiss, in her letter of resignation from The New
York Times, described how colleagues referred to her in internal
slack messages as a racist, a nazi, and a bigot.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
And this is the most feminine part quote.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Oh, she said, he resignation. Wow.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Weiss wants asked a colleague at the Times opinion desk
to get coffee with her. This journalist, a biracial woman
who wrote frequently about race, refused to meet. This was
a failure to meet the basic standards of professionalism, obviously.
It was also very feminine. Men tend to be better
at compartmentalizing than women, and wokeness was in many ways
(27:48):
a society wide failure to compartmentalize. Listen to this. This
is another blockbuster point. Traditionally, an individual doctor might have
opinions on the political issues the day, but he would
regard it as his professional duty to keep those opinions
out of the examination room. Now that medicine has become
more feminized, doctors wear pins and lanyards expressing views on
(28:11):
controversial issues, from gay rights to gaza. They even bring
the credibility of their profession to bear on political fads,
as when doctors said Black Lives Matter protests could continue
in violation of COVID lockdowns because racism was a public
health emergency.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
You're nodding your head, Gati. You've been in a hospital
situations a lot more than us lately. You've seen that.
Speaker 7 (28:31):
Oh yeah, I've seen it. You know the little lanyards
where they it's like their key to the doors. They
all have the different little trinkets with you know, rainbows,
and I saw Palestinian flag recently.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, dudes wouldn't have done that.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Now, one more note and then we will take a break.
One book that helped me put together the pieces was
Warriors and Warriors The Survival of the Sexes by psychology
professor Joyce Beninson. Practically all of the scientists cite in
this article are women. By the way, it's worth pointing
out I think she theorizes that men developed dynamics optimized
for war, while women developed group dynamics optimized for protecting
(29:05):
their offspring. These habits, formed in the mists of prehistory,
explain why experimenters in modern psychology labs in a study
the Barons and Sites observe that a group of men
given a task will quote, jockey for talking time, disagree loudly,
and then cheerfully relate a solution to the experimenter. A
group of women given the same task will quote politely,
(29:27):
inquire about one another's personal background and relationships, accompanied by
much eye contact, smiling, and turn taking, and pay quote
little attention to the task that the experimenter presented. The
point of war is to settle disputes between two tribes,
but it only works if peace is restored after the
dispute is settled. Men therefore develop methods for reconciling with
(29:50):
the proonent opponents, and learning to live in.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Peace with people they were fighting yesterday.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Females, even in primate species, are slower to reconcile than males.
That is because because women's conflicts were traditionally within the
tribe over scarce resources to be resolved not by open conflict,
but by covert competition with rivals with no clear end.
All of these observations match my observations of wokeness, but
(30:15):
soon the happy thrill of discovering a new theory eventually
gave way to a sinking feeling. If wokeness really is
the result of the Great feminization, then the eruption of
insanity in twenty twenty was just a small taste of
what the future holds. Imagine what will happen is the
remaining men age out of these society shaping professions and
the younger, more feminized generations take full control.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
That's what I'm always saying that when we're all dead
who remember them before times, there won't be anybody around
to say, hey, it didn't used to be like this.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Yeah more Jack your show.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Podcasts and our hot lakes.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
The Armstrong and Yetty Show.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
So perhaps you would like to leave a flaming bag
of dog experiments on your neighbor front porch, but you
lack such an item. You could go with Randy Weingarten's
new book instead, Why Fascists Fear Teachers, Public Education, and
the Future of Democracy. If there was ever a flaming
(31:14):
bag of dog crap sold as a book. This is
it Why fascists fear teachers? Who are these fascists? We'll
get to that in a moment. So obviously the title
is designed to be eye catching and attract readers, but
by now, as this review puts it, the word fascist
is thrown around routinely. The book's title, Public Education the
(31:36):
Future Democracy is more significant deceptive. The book's purported intention
is to argue for public school's crucial role in our
democratic society, but it offers very little in the way
of education policy or ideas that would truly benefit teachers
or God forbids students.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
The random aim, yes, Randy Weingarten played the major role
in keeping the schools closed during the pandemic, for instance, Yeah,
I'm sorry, the American Federation of Teachers president for years
and years and years. The real aim is made clear.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
It devotes most of its pages to attacking her political opponents,
especially especially supporters of school choice, and defending the interests
of the American Federation.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Of Teachers, her big rich union.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
She starts out claiming ninety percent of American kids attend
public schools. Not so fast, it was a little over
eighty one percent four years ago at the beginning of COVID.
So and that's before the expansion of universal school choice
in states like Texas and New Hampshire. Half of American
children now have access to school choice. So the number
(32:42):
is far far lower than the ninety percent she claims.
So it's appropriate the book would start off with lies.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
As it continues.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
In that vein, Winingarden characterizes the school choice movement as
a conspiracy organized by Christopher Rufo, Moms for Liberty, and
other hard right wing activists. Quote a plot to destroy
public education. Yeah, I'd be all for that based on
where it right now, you know, honestly, Yeah, I see
your point. The real drivers of the choice movement, they
(33:09):
point out, however, her parents like Virginia olden Ford, a black,
low income other in Washington, DC who grew frustrated watching
her sons struggle in public school and help create the
DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, the nation's first federally funded voucher initiative.
But yeah, she's a conspiracy Not sure, Randy, let's see
(33:29):
Winngartan also insists that vouchers are devised by whites to
undermine desegregation. Oh, it's racism, probably systemic racism. This isn't
just wrong, it gets the history completely backward. In fact,
some teachers' unions fought against vouchers because they facilitated integration.
(33:50):
Wygarten claims she is quote willing to work with anyone
who wants to actually address the problems facing our public schools,
but she refuses to engage with school choice advocates who
propose concrete and constructive options for students underserved by traditional
school districts. Then she denigrates religious schools whose very purpose
is in doctrination, that's a quote. This animus causes her
(34:12):
to overlook the many advantages of faith based education, such
as the Catholic school effect, which has been demonstrated to
benefit disadvantage minority students in particular, has to do with
high expectations and discipline and that sort of thing. The
biggest deception in Windgarten's book is her portrayal of her
role Jackie loved this during the pandemic, I quote I
led the AFT in developing a concrete plan to reopen
(34:35):
schools as quickly and safely as possible. When, of course,
Winegotten and her union colleagues kept children American children out
of schools until the government approved her request for a
seven hundred and fifty billion dollar federal age package federal
aid package to feather their nest and hire more administrations
and more union members. Unbelievable. The book is primarily an
(34:55):
attempt to rehabilitate Winegarten's image after she backed the longest
school closures in American history, which yielded the largest drop
in student performance ever recorded.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Not to mention the emotional turmoil.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
And she mentions the Aforah mentioned fascists like ourselves in
her title replace facts and critical thinking with propaganda that
romanticizes the nation's past. No, absolutely obscene. You know, I
gotta apologize to flaming bags of dog crap comparing them.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
To this book. It's insulting. Yeah, that's really maddening. I mean,
we've talked about this a lot, and I hate her
so much. Do you think she actually believes she's doing
the right thing for kids or did she abandon that
a long time ago. I don't. She couldn't. There's no way.
There's no way she possibly thought keeping the schools closed
(35:44):
was the best thing for the kids. Not a chance
she actually believed that.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Now unless her own evil in her need to you know,
explain it has perverted her own mind to the point
that she can't recognize truth. She's like, oh, J Simpson
who thought he didn't kill his wife?
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Yeah, what a horrifying human being.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
Yeah, Armstrong and Getty
Hosts And Creators
Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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