To fix gender relations, log off, winning by losing slowly and other commentary

Culture critic: To Fix Gender Relations, Log Off

Gen Z has seen a “breakdown in basic trust between young women and men,” notes Spiked’s Georgina Mumford.

Some 53% “of men aged 16 to 24 agree with the disheartening statement that ‘the majority of women are only attracted to a small subset of men,’ ” while their female peers are asking if “men even like women.”

No wonder: Online, Gen Zers are “exposed to divisive, fear-mongering views of the opposite sex.”

So “young women suspect the cult of the ‘manosphere’ is lurking everywhere,” while many young men are “cowed by the constant portrayals of men as either ‘pathetic’ or inherently harmful.”

One solution: “focus on real-world interactions,” where it’s clear that most “men are not out to hurt women, and most women have no interest in seeing men humiliated.”

Eye on Ukraine: Winning by Losing Slowly

“Losing as slowly as possible — husbanding one’s manpower and resources during a careful strategic retreat — is a time-tested strategy against an ostensibly superior force,” explains Paul Schwennesen at Reason: “From George Washington to Ho Chi Minh,” this “inglorious yet practical approach” proved “devastatingly effective”; it’s even how Russia defeated Napoleon.

And “Ukrainian troops, though vastly outgunned and increasingly short on Western munitions, are executing a form of delay-in-depth warfare that exacts a mounting toll on Russian combat power” and makes “each successive advance punishingly expensive.”

Even the Soviets felt obliged to give up on Afghanistan, and “Russia takes more casualties in ten days of frontline operations in Ukraine than were killed in ten years in Afghanistan.”

Kyiv must “ensure that every meter Russia gains brings it closer to exhaustion”; it’s “a time-honored approach that has felled many an empire.”

Politics beat: Behind the Far Left’s Rise

Having “just suffered a historic defeat” and “lost the popular vote,” Democrats are “bereft of ideas and riven by internal division,” observes UnHerd’s James Billot — which leaves the party “open to challenges from the ideological fringes.”

Dem voters “have undergone a dramatic shift on Israel” and the “refusal to tone down criticism of Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war has forced once-taboo positions into the mainstream.”

This dynamic “is playing out at the ballot box,” where younger progressives are challenging mainstream incumbents.

Thus, “the anti-establishment feeling that fueled Trump’s return is moving in both directions,” with Democrats expressing a high level of “disaffection” from their party, while insurgent “fringe discontent” is gelling into a “coherent, organized revolt.”

Liberal: Democrats’ Leadership Vacuum

Most 2028 Democratic candidates would bring “much-needed generational change for a party verging on gerontocracy,” but the Liberal Patriot’s Justin Vassallo sees little “happening in terms of freely debating the party’s top priorities and errors,” even as it “remains largely disengaged from the constituencies it must reach to prevail in 2028.”

One “reason no Democrat appears capable of changing the state of play nationally is that even the most sensible ones are afraid of rebuking the positions that have saddled the party with such a dismal reputation.”

Sadly, the party’s “professional activists and pundits” instead “prefer the theatrics of leaders like [Gavin] Newsom, [J.B.] Pritzker, and Sen. Cory Booker” to Bill Clinton-era “moderation” and “triangulation.”

Aid watch: How Charity Fuels War Machines

Despite “heartbreaking” pictures of Gaza’s “desperate children clamoring for supplies,” warns Netta Barak-Corren in The Wall Street Journal, in every conflict after conflict, aid trucks “double as cash machines for warlords, militias and authoritarian regimes.”

In Somalia, “barely one-eighth of donated food reaches intended households,” with the rest stolen by powerful clans; the same holds in Syria and Ethiopia.

“Gaza presents the longest-running case of diverted aid,” for “several reasons.”

Officials figure that at least some aid gets through, “institutional survival” takes on outsized importance and “adversaries are able to adapt” as aid workers cycle out.

Accountability and pressure from donor states is key: “Tighten the taps now or watch the well run dry.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board