The problem, said she, is that we are not the same. This nameless “she” is a box folk. Someone who believes it is worthy and noble to stuff all eight billion of us into one satisfying box. A box where if we were all the same, if no one had too much or too little, if the dream of Uncle Sam being a benevolent Sugar Daddy for all of is realized, perfect people achieved, am I right? One problem—prominent arreolas. Because men don’t have those and that’s a troublesome difference. Answer? flat chested people with small nipples. Perfect.
I dunno . . . in two instances, Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and early Soviet Communism, the pursuit of flattening perpetuated old heirarchies and differences. Mao destroyed the empire and replaced it with his version. The Bolshevik Revolution (1917) and early Soviet policies sought to flatten class society dramatically. And became the IRL instance of Orwell’s “some animals are more equal”. In Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), the rhetoric was all about smashing the “four olds” (old ideas, customs, habits, culture), attacking bourgeois elements, and promotin perpetual revolution to prevent new elites from forming. The pursuit of total leveling ended up perpetuating arbitrary power differences under the guise of equality.
In both cases, the revolutionary promise of flattening hierarchies and ending exploitation didn’t abolish power structures—it simply swapped the old kings/aristocracy for new ones (party cadres, commissars) under a fresh ideological costume. Nothing fundamentally changed for the masses except the branding.
Gender Freedom
Well . . . maybe the diagnosis is wrong. Marx critiqued economic and class disparity in his period. Mao targeted the Four Olds. Fast forward to Twentieth Century ‘Merica and even our poorest are wealthy by world standards. So maybe the problem is gender and/or race. If we were all the same gender and race then . . . . problem solved, right?
First, the demand was that women give up their traditional roles for masculine roles. Women should be more like men. They should pursue careers, public life and leadership. Sex should be liberated from the oppressive chains of motherhood and mewling puking babes. Free LOVE! So awesome!
So not awesome. And so not feminist. What about the men? What about what women need? Are women just wet holes in which men can stick things into? How about if men were more like women—men embracing emotional vulnerability, nurturing roles, domesticity, sensitivity? Together, these form the blueprint for psychological androgyny as the ideal: everyone blending “masculine” (assertive, independent, goal-oriented) and “feminine” (empathetic, relational, cooperative) traits into a flexible, gender-neutral whole. The theory (popularized in the 1970s by folks like Sandra Bem) argued this mix makes people more adaptable, creative, and mentally healthy, free from rigid roles.
What God Wrought
Genesis 1:27 ESV, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
But God is wrong, right? He messed up. He made Adam and Eve different. So we should fix that. We should flatten the differences between men and women so everything is equal. Equality of outcome, right? Maybe not. If God made us different, with different gifts, then it’s a huge act of hubris to believe we can improve on God’s plan. Eve, imho, was created to help Adam love God more dearly. And the other things, child bearing and rearing, along with running the home. Exclusively? That’s not up to me. It’s a choice every woman faces once she knows she’s pregnant. I will say I watched my son’s Mom choose to be a full time mother because that role is preoccupying.
The Romans expected the husband to run the business of the house and the wife to run the home. Dad managed the property, business, contracts and public obligations. He also represented the family in politics and civic life. Last, he performed religious rites tied to lineage and ancestors. Mom’s domain was the house. She ran everything in the home that kept it running smoothly.
Uniquely Made
Psalm 139:14, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
DEI, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. I know the goals. The goals are admirable. It’s the implementation that is trouble. Diversity in practice means advantaging perceived downtrodden groups of people over others. One problem: the subjective declaration of who is oppressed and needs help and who is an oppressor. These definitions shift with the winds of society’s moods. As I type this, white boomer women are the current caste of demons. Diversity has come to mean “not white”.
Let’s talk about equity next. For socialists, equity means equality of outcome. Equality of outcome tries to force God’s insane diversity into one, uniform box. When a system demands identical results from unequal inputs, it must rely on coercion, because the outcomes won’t match. This creates perverse incentives where effort is punished, stagnation is rewarded, and excellence becomes a liability.
Last is inclusion. The goal is to include those identified as excluded from the majority. It’s a noble goal. In practice? It’s the Critical Theory version of musical chairs: the music stops, and suddenly there are fewer chairs than people, but don’t worry — the chosen tribe already has their seats reserved. Tribe members must master the orthodox slogans, hashtags, and ritual confessions. One wrong verb tense and you’re exiled to the outer darkness with the other heretics. Inclusion becomes a gated community with a very enthusiastic HOA.
Those Durn Heathens!
We don’t fit into a neat box pleasing to the box folk. There are eight billion of us on the planet. We speak an estimated 7,164 languages. So there are as many as 7,200 ways you can earn side eye, maybe more. 7,200 cultural landmines that have to fit into a box pleasing to boxfolk. For example, asking for utensils at an Indian family’s table, because civil people eat with forks, obvi.
Is it working? Are we a more diverse, equitable and inclusive world? No. The result of the box folk stuffing us into their bubbles hasn’t been less strife. It has been more division, inequity, and exclusion. The very people who claim to want a better world seem to make things worse. Oh.
Yeah but . . . its’ those other people that are box folk, right? I mean, I love all people. Science is real. No Human is Illegal. Women’s Rights Are Human Rights. Kindness is Everything. And you can’t disagree with that, can you. Because if you do you are all the evilist, most hateful things. You foul bad box person you! Heathen!
In Praise of Arreolas
Flat chested is a bit of a myth. More so once a woman becomes pregnant and her body starts getting ready to birth and care for a child. That androgynous dream of masculine women and feminine men is ruined by child birth. She needs new underwear because the old bras won’t fit. If you know, you know. If you don’t, ask your mother.
Men have nipples. Women have arreolas. God gave us those differences. In His image he made us. The boxfolk are wishing for a fantasy not of God’s making. It says above that science is real. It is. Science for the box folk became a psuedo-religion where you can’t ask questions. You must just believe.
No, not going to explain arreolas to you. I’m 66 as I type this. My son is 30. His Mom nursed him when he was an infant. I know and if you don’t, go ask a Mom. I say flat chested because if women were more like men then boobs would be less obvious. You, hormonal teenage boy . . . knock it off.
Flat Chested Somalia
Minnesota has a problem. The state’s historic high-trust, Scandinavian-influenced culture built a generous, low-oversight welfare state assuming civic honesty, community reciprocity, and minimal fraud. Massive resource dumping (expanded social programs, especially post-2010s refugee resettlement + COVID-era relaxations) aimed to “flatten” racial/economic inequities—pouring billions into nonprofits, child nutrition, autism services, housing stabilization, etc., often with self-reported claims and light auditing to avoid “racist” optics.
Some Somali immigrants, coming from feckless government and war lord rule, saw opportunity. Minnesota high trust culture was ripe for explotation. So they did what comes naturally—figure out how to use Uncle Sam’s money to benefit themselves. We brought the Somalis out of the country. Then assumed mere presence would bring their country out of them. Doh.
The result? Industrial-scale fraud (estimates from $1B+ to as high as $9B across schemes like Feeding Our Future, with 78+ indictments, 50+ guilty pleas, and most defendants Somali-American per federal prosecutors). Funds allegedly bought luxury cars, real estate abroad (including in Kenya/Turkey), and even funneled millions to groups like al-Shabaab. Oversight was allegedly deterred by accusations of bias, allowing the schemes to balloon.
Instead of equity, you get escalating inequity: Taxpayers (the old “high-trust” base) foot the bill, a small connected subset extracts massive wealth, and the broader community faces backlash while politicians defend the system. The “kings” aren’t gone—they’re just new middlemen/nonprofit operators/clan networks thriving on the very programs meant to level the field.
Uncle Sam is Overweight and Out of Shape
But TRUMP! One reason Trump won is that we have been spending our way to ruin through various administrations for at least a century. The methods for making things equal have changed over the century—peaking with Obama and Biden. Some of the issues addressed in that century needed attention. We succeeded in a lot of cases.
Now the problem is that the big targets have been flattened. But the itch to flatten things, to make things more equal, remains. And there is Uncle Sam’s money to be had if you can convince him of some big, possible political win. DEI flowered, LBGTQIA+LMNOP2S . . . became the fashy thing. Oppressed Somalis, and so on. The headline making social miseries got more absurd.
Trump is a symptom, not a problem. We are not the problem any longer. Uncle Sam’s bloat and an unwillingness to recognize that our differences are strengths—this is what’s ailing us.
Hips and Sausages
Gen Z? Gen Alpha? Earlier? Somewhere along the way the spell broke. Women started experiencing baby fever. Men becamed angered that the blame was mostly aimed at them. Trad men, trad women, trad families started trending. Men’s Rights became a trending tag.
The trend is away from flattening. Curves are trending, flat chested is not. This old man is happy that the trend is toward feminine women and masculine men. God made Eve to be a help mate to Adam. Help mate with? I say in “It’s Eve’s Fault” that the help was with loving God more dearly.
Well . . . what’s next? I don’t know. The boomer flattening project is losing its energy. I’m a young boomer. I, and my peers, are only getting older and more feeble. The Democratic Party doesn’t seem to have a bench or a vision for the country. The younger leaders are still singing from the boomer grievance hymnal and it’s not landing like it once did. So far, we are headed into an unknown future. Trump can’t be re-elected so his plan to drain the swamp has an end date.
The only thing I have is my own pattern since I left home at 19. Things become scary, are sometimes bad, sometimes worse, then when things hit a peak, I learn the next leg of my journey. If the pattern holds for our country it will be similar.