The Right Needs a Place for Sensitive Young Men

I. My Kind of People Were Missing

I don’t like sportsball. I don’t drink alcohol. Fishing is boring. Meth is horrid. Protestants are frauds. And country music is annoying. Red America has nothing to offer me.

I kept looking for them. The quiet ones. The strange ones. The ones who scribbled lyrics in math class and drew castles in the margins of economics textbooks. They were always there in school—invisible, maybe, but present. But somewhere along the way, they disappeared. At the rallies, the conferences, the think tanks, I scanned the room and saw only khakis, slogans, and those cheap plastic water bottles that always looked like they were bought in bulk from a sad gas station. My kind of people weren’t there.

They didn’t leave because they were scared. They left because the right made no space for them.

I mean the sensitive ones. Not in the therapist’s sense—God help us—but in the ancient sense. The attuned. The boys who winced at ugliness. The ones who felt the weight of history like a coat they couldn’t quite take off. They didn’t want to talk about tax brackets. They wanted to talk about Tolstoy. But if you bring up Tolstoy at a GOP dinner, someone will inevitably ask if he’s “that Russian socialist,” then offer you a beer and a punch to the shoulder.

Eventually, the sensitive boys stop speaking. They start drifting. They find themselves among people who don’t share their values, but at least share their sensibilities. And so the left wins—not by being right, but by being the only side that lets artists sit at the table without mocking their hands.

The right, meanwhile, is shocked to discover the table has been moved.

II. What the Right Thinks It’s Defending

Michelangelo was a painter, or, in the words of the modern Right, a faggot.

The right speaks often of civilization. Of its decline, its enemies, its glories. But for all the talk, it never quite explains what it’s defending. Roads? Law and order? A house in the suburbs and a 401(k)? Those are symptoms of civilization, not its soul. Civilization is not brick. It is breath. It is the cathedral, not the zoning permit. It is the lullaby, not the market index.

You cannot conserve what you do not understand. And the right, in its fixation on the material, forgot the metaphysical. It became allergic to imagination. Suspicious of beauty. Hostile to form. When the arts turned against it, it didn't retaliate with better art—it responded with defunding. Cut the programs. Mock the galleries. Let the weeds grow through the marble.

And this is why Cthulhu swims left. Not because the left is good, or true, or noble—but because it swims. It moves. It creates. It writes, paints, films, edits, designs, choreographs, and posts. Cthulhu is hideous, yes—but he is alive. The right, in contrast, too often clings to preservation without creation. It wants the fruits of culture without planting the seeds.

So while Cthulhu churns forward—ever mutating, ever absorbing—the right watches from the shore, arms folded, muttering about family values, as if a teenager raised on Marvel and porn will rediscover virtue by accident. But the current is real. It moves. And it carries with it the young, the gifted, and the lost. Because no one else is offering a raft.

III. How the Left Became the Gatekeeper of Culture

The Right shat on everyone who made culture and was shocked when the culture turned against them.

They didn’t win because they were better. They won because they showed up. When the sensitive young men went looking for a home, it was the left who opened the door. Not with wisdom. Not with grace. But with one precious thing: permission. Permission to make something. Permission to feel strange and not be exiled for it. To create without being ridiculed by people who thought Thomas Kinkade was the height of fine art.

That’s why the Bernie Bros exist. Because the right never figured out how to talk to the boy who read Marx and Dostoevsky in the same semester and wondered if they were both right, somehow. The left didn’t care if he was confused. It praised him for caring at all. It gave him theory, yes—but also aesthetic. A sense of belonging. A moodboard for the revolution.

And what did the right offer? Tax cuts and country music. A politics of payroll deductions paired with the emotional range of a rusty lawnmower. The kid who felt too much, who thought in metaphors and cried during films, was told to toughen up or shut up. And then we wonder why he shaved his head and started quoting David Foster Wallace between shifts at the co-op bookstore.

The left offered the studio. The right offered a job. And as much as men need to work, they also need to sing. When the only side that lets you hold a paintbrush demands your soul in return, you still say yes—because at least they handed you the brush.

IV. The Flight from Beauty

Crabs are ugly and will cut you up to make you like them.

Somewhere along the way, beauty became suspicious. To appreciate it was to risk sentimentality. To create it was to risk mockery. So the right began to flinch. Not just at modern art, but at all art. Not just at postmodernism, but at expression. Beauty had been captured by the enemy, so the strategy became scorched earth. If we can’t reclaim it, we’ll reject it. If we can’t understand it, we’ll insult it.

This was the Republican Shategy.

Call it common sense. Call it realism. Call it grit. But it was cowardice—camouflaged in baseball caps and cheap bravado. Better to laugh at a symphony than to learn why it matters. Better to mock the ballet than to admit your body is incapable of that kind of control. Better to pretend the creative boy is weak than to admit he sees more than you do.

That was the shategy. A long campaign of cultural self-sabotage disguised as moral clarity. And it worked—for a while. Enough to win votes. Enough to rally the base. But not enough to keep the culture. That slipped away silently, behind the sneers and slogans.

You cannot mock your way to meaning. You cannot build a future by rejecting every tool that has ever shaped one. The left took the arts and turned them into a weapon. The right responded by throwing its own artists under the bus. And now, when they look around and ask why nothing beautiful is being made, they are greeted with silence—followed by laughter from the enemy’s stage.

V. The Aesthetic Desert

White Trash is Red America’s most popular aesthetic and lifestyle brand.

Wherever the right tried to build culture, it built parking lots. Every rally looked the same. Every influencer sounded like a parody of a parody. The stage lighting was harsh, the fonts were tragic, the music was either generic or a war crime against melody. It was a world allergic to atmosphere—run by people who couldn’t tell the difference between a Gregorian chant and a Kid Rock remix.

Into this vacuum walked the white trash.

Not the real white working class—flesh and blood, proud and battered—but the costume version. The meme. The lifestyle brand. White Trash became a curated aesthetic of dysfunction. Trailer park chic with a MAGA hat and a dip can. It was performance art pretending to be patriotism.

And still, there was something buried in it. Something almost worth mourning. White Trash Beautiful. The pickup truck with rust patterns like lace. The melancholy of dollar store Jesus candles flickering on vinyl countertops. A kind of poetry that had no words because no one gave it a language.

The sensitive young man could see it. He could feel it. But he wasn’t allowed to say it out loud—not in those rooms. Not on that side. The right had no place for elegy. Only outrage, only victory, only noise.

So beauty, unable to speak, began to die. And all that was left was content. Shouted opinions on stages lit for UFC fights. Yard signs instead of symbols. Patriotism as branding. Belief as merch.

VI. The Boomers

Boomers gonna boom.

The Boomers saw the culture turning and assumed it was a phase. They thought the art world would come back around once everyone got tired of performance pieces involving menstrual blood and Marx. In the meantime, they went golfing.

They built financial empires but left no myth. They fought the culture war the way one might fight a leaking faucet—with vague annoyance and a preference for someone else to deal with it. When their sons picked up guitars or sketchbooks, they asked if it would pay the bills. When their daughters wrote poetry, they suggested nursing school.

It wasn’t hatred. It was incomprehension.

To them, meaning came through labor and accumulation. And when the left began handing out grants for interpretive dance pieces about late capitalism, the Boomers laughed, shook their heads, and tightened the family trust. They thought the culture would survive without anyone feeding it. They thought the kids would come home eventually.

Instead, they came home with tattoos and gender theory.

And then there was the Shart Tuah Girl. The prophetic outcome of a generation too proud to admit the rot. Not because she was evil, or even unusual—but because she was what happens when attention becomes value. She became famous for being feral, and no one on the right knew how to respond. They blamed her. But it was the Boomers who abandoned the stage, and she who climbed onto it—uninvited, unqualified, unforgettable.

The mic was still warm. No one else had touched it in years.

VII. The Need for Guardians of Form

The IQ shredder also destroyed discernment.

There’s a quiet boy who notices everything. He can’t help it. He sees the chipped paint, the poor phrasing, the mismatched tie and lapel. He hears when the melody is wrong and feels when the silence is doing too much. He may look fragile. He may sound strange. But he’s not weak. He’s alert. And he’s essential.

Because when no one like him is left, the rot goes unnoticed until it becomes collapse.

These boys—these sensitive young men—are not liabilities. They are civilization’s quality control. When trained, they become architects, composers, editors, and saints. When abandoned, they become ironic, bitter, or mad. Every society must choose what to do with them. Elevate or exile. Form them or lose them. The left weaponizes them. The right laughs them out of the room.

But this is not an endorsement of losers.

The sensitive man must not be coddled. He must be formed. That means standards. That means tradition. That means pain. His softness must be hammered into precision, not flattered into formlessness. The left tells him he’s perfect as he is. The right tells him to man up or disappear. Neither offer is honest. Neither will make him strong.

What he needs is a guild, not a pity party. A liturgy, not a lifestyle brand. A calling, not a cope. Because without him, we lose the sense of when things are off, when the soul has slipped, when the forms are bending. He doesn’t lead the march, but he ensures the flag is flying straight.

VIII. The Myth of Anti-Intellectual Masculinity

Your sense of masculinity is a marketing ploy.

Masculinity was once a cathedral. Now it’s a protein ad.

Once, the ideal man was strong and subtle. A builder of worlds, not merely a breaker of doors. He had force, yes, but also restraint. Charisma, but also conscience. And above all, taste. He could quote scripture and sharpen a blade. He could reason in Latin and ride a horse. He could govern, compose, command, and carve. He was terrifying because he was complete.

But then came the myth: that intellect is effeminate. That reflection is weakness. That the only masculine virtue is dominance. And so, the ideal collapsed into caricature—part warrior, part gym influencer, part televangelist with biceps. A masculinity sold by the algorithm and measured in deadlifts.

The right bought it wholesale. And the sensitive young man? He was cast out. He didn’t grunt. He didn’t clap on command. He asked too many questions. Worse, he answered them.

But every great culture made room for its eccentrics. The right had its chance—and it chose camouflage and shouting. The left, meanwhile, offered strange altars and strange incense. So the boy who dreamed of building golden machines went to where they gave him tools—even if those tools were poisoned.

What the right lacks is a Willy Wonka: a man both whimsical and disciplined. Rooted in excellence, but not enslaved to convention. Magical, but methodical. A craftsman of marvels, not a mascot of slogans.

Until the right can make room for that man, it will lose its best men—one dreamer at a time.

IX. Building the Alternative

Patronage is Red America’s penitence.

The culture will not shift on vibes alone. It must be built—brick by syllable, grant by gesture, choir by curriculum. That means patronage. That means production. That means institutions. Not in theory. In fact. Because no matter how many podcasts the right starts, it won’t matter if they still look like a car commercial and sound like a bar fight.

Proposed individual solutions are humble, but powerful. Fund a sculptor. Commission an oil painting instead of buying another gun safe. Learn to read poetry out loud, properly. Form study circles. Build home libraries with more than biographies of Lincoln and Churchill. Give your son a violin. Praise complexity. Celebrate restraint. These are not bourgeois indulgences. They are civilizational anchors.

But emergent systemic solutions are where the tide turns. We need publishing houses that don’t apologize. We need fashion that elevates instead of flatters. We need salons, churches, and magazines that set taste instead of chasing it. We need film schools that teach framing and faith. We need architects who build for awe, not efficiency.

It will feel unfamiliar at first. Some will accuse you of snobbery. Others of affectation. Let them. Because what they mock, they secretly need. They have been starved of beauty so long they now fear it.

But the sensitive young men are still out there—waiting. Some have gone quiet. Some have gone mad. Most have gone left. And they will come back only when they hear the sound of craftsmanship calling them home.

X. Toward a Sensible Nobility

This wicked generation demands nobility and decries refinement.

He is not weak. He is waiting.

The sensitive young man stands at the edge of every culture, half in awe, half in exile. He is cautious, but not cowardly. Awkward, but not stupid. He is the kind of boy who stares too long at stained glass or loses sleep over a single phrase. He has not left the right because he hates it. He has left because it gave him nothing to love.

He does not need comfort. He needs command. He does not need a safe space. He needs a banner. Something high, clean, and perilous to serve.

He needs nobility—not of blood, but of soul.

This is the final failure: that we have confused nobility with pride, and sensitivity with shame. But the civilization we claim to defend was built by men who could carve a statue, kneel in prayer, bleed with dignity, and die without irony. Men who cried at the right moment and then returned to their work without complaint.

To build again, we must call these men back. Not through bribes. Through beauty.

The future will not belong to the side with the strongest economy or the loudest memes. It will belong to the side that makes its children weep at the sight of a great cathedral, then want to build one. And that begins by giving the sensitive young man a place in the order—not beneath it, not beside it, but at its foundation.

He was never the problem. He was the craftsman waiting for a reason.