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This guy is arresting his political opponents. All my international contacts in both business and politics are shocked to watch a European country become so dysfunctional. He brags about it. To who? A tiny group of disaffected radicals in Budapest. So sad for Hungary. #Hungary #Politics #Dysfunction #HU #EU

“If everything you offered wasn’t enough, offer your absence” - Mario Benedetti “The 15 Million Men America Has Lost to Marriage America has a problem that is remarkably difficult to discuss without changing the subject: young men are disappearing from marriage. In 2000, there were 20.7 million unmarried men aged 20–39 and 18.1 million married men—a gap of 2.6 million. By 2025, there were 30.4 million unmarried men but only 15.4 million married men. The gap had exploded to roughly 15 million. That is not a minor cultural adjustment. It is a demographic earthquake. The explanation cannot simply be that men have become unwilling to “grow up.” Economic and educational changes matter. Unpartnered men have lower education, employment and earnings than partnered men. In 2019, 26% of unpartnered prime-working-age men had a bachelor’s degree, compared with 37% of partnered men. Meanwhile, women have made enormous gains in education and economic independence. Marriage is therefore no longer an economic necessity for women to the same extent it once was. The consequences are visible. In 1980, 63% of Americans aged 25 were married; by 2021, only 22% were. The share with a child fell from 39% to 17%. By 2021, one quarter of 40-year-olds had never married, compared with 6% in 1980. And 39.5% of U.S. births in 2024 occurred outside marriage. None of this proves that marriage guarantees happiness, or that being unmarried makes someone dysfunctional. Nor does the 15-million figure mean 15 million men will never marry. But pretending that family formation is irrelevant is equally absurd. A society cannot manufacture spouses for people. Nor should it. But it can create conditions in which work, competence, responsibility, commitment and family formation are attainable—and respected. Instead, we have increasingly normalised economic dependence, digital isolation and permanent adolescence while treating personal choice as though it has no social consequences. The 15-million gap is therefore more than a marriage statistic. It is a warning that millions of young men are failing to make the transition into the responsibilities of adult life” - ChatGPT

Cuba’s Economic Failure: Beyond the Embargo For more than six decades, Cuba’s poverty has often been explained by one claim: America’s embargo made the country poor. Repetition, however, is not evidence. A study “The Forsaken Road: Reassessing Living Standards Following the Cuban Revolution and the American Embargo,” by Bastos, Geloso and Bologna Pavlik, published in the Journal of Development Economics challenges this narrative by separating three factors: the Cuban Revolution, the American embargo, and the extensive economic support Cuba received from the Soviet Union. Their findings show a major economic divergence. Correcting weaknesses in Cuba’s GDP statistics makes the gap larger, not smaller. When Soviet assistance is excluded, Cuba’s relative performance looks even worse. For decades, central planning was heavily subsidized by an economic superpower. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, that support largely disappeared, exposing the system’s underlying weaknesses during the “Special Period.” This does not mean the American embargo was harmless. Trade restrictions impose real costs, and a 2026 critique by Francisco Rodríguez argues that the study may underestimate the embargo’s effects. Still, an embargo can make a bad economic system poorer without being the reason the system is dysfunctional. Cuba did not adopt central planning because of the embargo. The Revolution restricted private property, nationalized businesses, displaced markets with political allocation, and transferred economic decisions to the state. Cuba’s history is therefore not merely a story of American sanctions. It is also a demonstration of what happens when a market economy is replaced by political allocation and then subsidized for decades by an external power. The embargo’s costs deserve serious measurement, but it should not become an alibi for an economic system whose institutions produced persistent failure. The central question remains: Why did Cuba remain economically dysfunctional even during decades of extraordinary Soviet support?

The Pathology Behind Compassion Something sinister can lurk behind compassion. Caring for others is noble, but when institutions are rewarded not for reducing suffering—only for managing it—care can become pathological. Munchausen syndrome by proxy shows the logic: a caregiver fabricates or induces illness in someone dependent on them to gain sympathy and attention. The caregiver looks devoted; the “sickness” is manufactured. In that sense, devotion can hide control. I call this the Daycare Governance model: society splits into infants to be protected (oppressed), caregivers who provide protection (allies), and predators to be removed (dissenters). Caretakers gain prestige, funding, and moral authority by managing suffering. Many may believe sincerely, yet incentives can overpower intentions—if status and resources grow with the number of “vulnerable” people, the system has reason to expand the victim class. It does so via concept creep (“trauma” broadens until ordinary difficulty counts), and by creating the perpetual patient, where normal sadness becomes pathology and struggle is rebranded as dysfunction. Care institutions and “victims” then reinforce each other. Dependency costs competence. True care prepares people to stand alone; pathological care keeps them dependent. Endless expansion of victimhood risks producing more dependency. We call it compassion—but compassion without boundaries can become control.

The Gender War and the Downward Social Spiral The growing polarization between men and women resembles less a public debate than a divorce involving millions. Both sides talk past each other, escalate tensions, and blame the other gender—all amid a severe mental health crisis. The gender war is a cultural debate among a psychologically struggling population. The people lashing out most intensely may fit recognizable psychological patterns. Each gender has two major failure modes and one healthy alternative: integration. Carl Jung called this individuation. Every man carries an inner feminine—the part that feels, intuits, and finds meaning. Jung called it the anima. Cut off from it, he becomes cold and contemptuous; overwhelmed by it, he becomes passive and moody. Every woman carries an inner masculine—the part that decides, asserts, and holds the line. Jung called it the animus. Cut off from it, she defers to stronger people; possessed by it, she becomes argumentative and rigid. These failures often pair off. The cold, contemptuous man finds a timid woman who cannot challenge him, while the passive man finds a domineering woman who can run his life. Each ideology may then rebrand these unhealthy dynamics as either manhood or liberation. A 2025 *Nature Human Behaviour* study of 14.8 million people across Taiwan, Denmark, and Sweden found that disordered people consistently marry other disordered people across cultures and generations. Balanced people, by contrast, do not need to dominate or be dominated. Yet they are trying to date within a pool increasingly shaped by dysfunction. They get hurt, become cynical, and begin drifting toward the very patterns they once rejected. The disordered worsen, while the healthy become corrupted—a positive feedback loop. Well-integrated people meet a growing pool of disordered partners and drift toward disorder themselves. Reversal may require a critical mass of people to reject cynicism.

Former American LNG lobbyist @_OrbanAnita is trying to worsen the looming energy crisis in Hungary. Hungary is in desperate need of energy but it is now a dysfunctional dictatorship and its leadership are trying to destroy the remaining functional energy infrastructure. 🇭🇺☠️ #EnergyCrisis #Hungary #Dictatorship #US #HU

Hungary is facing down an extreme food crisis and the clown government is going through the previous administration’s receipts. I am embarrassed for the Hungarian people. This has clearly turned into a highly dysfunctional country. Non-European. 🇭🇺 #Hungary #FoodCrisis #DysfunctionalGovernment #HU

So many have voted for THIS. Never mind there is a war going on, forest fires, inflation rampaging, drought in the West, dysfunctional Congress, national debt crisis, fiscal deficits out of control, food production crisis... #Priorities #CrisisManagement #VoteResponsibly #Nospecificcountrycodesarementionedinthetweet.

Trump’s approval is down, gas prices are up, unpopular war with Iran drags on. But dysfunction and debt inside Democratic party’s key institutions, crushed in fund-raising by its Republican counterparts, are creating rising anxiety for top Democrats https://t.co/B0kL1GdhLc #Trump #GasPrices #Democrats #IR

Aontú pq shows that 648 spinal surgeries were cancelled in last 5 years. CHI has refused to give proper detail as to why. Given the scrutiny that CHI are under, given the dysfunction. Given all the children who have been damaged, this is unacceptable. https://t.co/C2ki8CIkmp #SpinalSurgeries #HealthcareCrisis #PatientSafety #IE

The condition previously known as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) has been renamed metabolic ovarian polyendocrine syndrome (MOMP) to better reflect its broader health implications, as an international consortium of medical professionals found that many patients do not have ovarian cysts but rather experience widespread hormonal and metabolic dysfunction, aiming to improve diagnosis, treatment, and understanding of the condition. #MetabolicSyndrome #HealthCare #Women'sHealth #AU #US #ES #FR

The condition previously known as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) has been renamed to metabolic ovarian polyendocrine syndrome (MOMP) to better reflect its broader health effects, as an international consortium of doctors and researchers concluded that the old name contributed to misunderstandings and stigmatization of patients, who may suffer from hormonal and metabolic dysfunction without the presence of ovarian cysts. #MetabolicSyndrome #HealthAwareness #WomensHealth #AU #US