By Darrell Dow
In the last five years, the net worth of the top 0.1 percent has rocketed from $12 trillion to $23 trillion. The average new homebuyer is 59 years old, up from 36 15 years ago. To deal with affordability anxieties, President Trump — supposedly representing populist right economics — endorsed 50-year mortgages. It’s no wonder Generation Z is seething with frustration. Their complaints about economic stagnation, cultural decay, and a system rigged against them carry real merit. Yet, in the absence of honest voices from established leaders, many young people are turning to provocative spokesmen like Nick Fuentes, who at least acknowledges the raw truths others dismiss. This anger isn’t baseless entitlement, but a justifiable response to a world that has systematically undermined their prospects. Christians, in particular, often wave it away as mere “anger,” “resentment” or “father hunger,” failing to recognize the structural injustices at play. As someone 30 years removed from Fuentes’ generation, I’m perplexed by the apathy of so many over 50. Now is the time to recognize and understand Gen Z’s anger and frustration, and help its men move forward with a plan for the future.
The American Dream, Fading Away
When I was in my 20s, the American Dream was still attainable to a degree. Today it’s a fading mirage. It’s time we confront this reality and chart a path forward, grounded in Christian nationalism that honors Christ’s kingship over nations.
My youth highlights the stark contrast. I paid my way through college with part-time work at a grocery store and even saved enough to buy my first house at 23 for just $54,000. Not long after, I married my high school sweetheart — a sane, kind woman, a wonderful cook, devoted to our children’s education, and faithful to me — before dating apps commodified relationships and iPhones fragmented human connection. Back then, upward mobility was the norm. About 90 percent of kids born in 1944 out-earned their parents. For those born in 1984, that figure plummeted to just 50 percent. Today, 78 percent of Americans lack confidence that their children will have better lives, leading many to delay or forgo parenthood altogether. We’re nearing a point where, for every man who graduates college, two women do the same. This isn’t an accident, the result of merely changing times. Rather, it’s the culmination of a planned cultural and legal revolution driven by the unholy alliance of feminism, alienism, and an overreaching god-state, systematically targeting boys and young men.
This undermining didn’t happen overnight. It’s unfolded over my lifetime with little opposition. When educrats, mostly women, began drugging boys with Ritalin; when feminist dogma inundated universities; when the legal system transformed marriage into a nightmare for millions of men; when waves of low-skilled immigrants depressed wages for working-class males; when trade policies eviscerated American manufacturing — where was the outcry? These policies weren’t accidents. A venomous coalition of anti-Christian oligarchs intent on eroding the cultures and peoples of the West, ultimately aiming to unseat Christ, imposed them on us. In the circles I’ve inhabited for 50 years, Christians have struggled to think in terms of group identity or structural injustices imposed by elites. This has left them unable and unwilling to wage any form of warfare. Anyone who highlights these realities is dismissed as “Woke Right” or too vehement, threatening the Gospel of Niceness. That’s why I’ve urged Christian nationalists to read thinkers like Sam Francis, James Burnham, and Neema Parvini — descendants of Machiavelli — to ground our movement in reality rather than an unholy mix of camp, kitsch, nostalgia … and stupidity.
Christian nationalism isn’t mere nostalgia for the “old America” of picket fences and school prayer. It’s the biblical assertion that Christ is King of nations (Psalm 72:11; Revelation 11:15), meaning no cabal of unaccountable oligarchs — media, financial, or technological — can usurp His rule through shadow governance. Today, a tiny elite controls our economy and culture’s choke points. BlackRock and Vanguard manage more $17 trillion in assets, holding stakes in 95 percent of S&P 500 companies and wielding proxy voting power to impose Environmental, Social, and Governance mandates that prioritize ideology over profits. Six corporations — Fox, Sony, Disney, Comcast, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount — dominate 90 percent of U.S. media. Three payment processors — Visa, Mastercard, PayPal — can debank individuals for their politics, as happened to Fuentes, Nigel Farage, Peter Brimelow, and Canadian truckers under Trudeau’s 2022 Emergencies Act. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s drawn from public SEC filings, earnings reports, and antitrust studies. Historical parallels are clear: Medieval popes excommunicated usurers for such concentrations of power and America’s Founders dismantled the Bank of the United States in 1832 to avert elite capture. If we refuse to name this concentrated power, we consent to a new feudalism cloaked in progressive rhetoric. A truly Christian nation must dismantle these monopolies and restore dispersed, covenantal authority to families, churches, counties, and states.
Given this siege by hostile forces, what should we tell young men? The country your grandfather inherited is slipping away. Good jobs demand obeisance to HR priestesses. Churches that once thundered “Thus saith the Lord” now thunder about “systemic racism.” Your natural instincts — for family, nation, hierarchy, and particular loves, the ordo amoris — are branded “hate.” But you’re not crazy or radical, you’re awake in a besieged world. This isn’t a culture-war skirmish. It’s total war against the conditions enabling Christian life. But sieges are broken by two types of men: those who hold the wall and those who tunnel beneath it. Both are essential, so I outline two tracks for young men.
1. The Wall: Covenantal Fortresses (Track B – For Most Young Men)
The first duty of a Christian man endures: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Psalm 127 calls children “arrows in the hand of a warrior.” The regime thrives on our delays — every postponed marriage or empty nursery cedes ground in congressional seats, school boards, and communities where the Ten Commandments become “hate speech.”
As I have written before, demographics are destiny, and identity politics is reality. Consider the data: Counties with fertility 25 percent above replacement voted Trump by double digits; childless urban cores gave Biden 70 percent-plus; white evangelicals who vote supported Trump at 77–81 percent ; married parents vote 75–80 percent GOP, while childless singles vote 70 percent Democrat.
In practice, this means:
- Marry young if possible, embracing responsibility early. A young wife might work initially, with prudence, but the aim is fruitfulness, not extended adolescence.
- Avoid enslaving debt; use credit for productive assets. Pursue trades, small businesses, or scalable work if suited, but we also need lawyers, doctors, and bureaucrats — different gifts for different households.
- Have many children if able, educating them in God’s truth and nature. Turn your home into a Western academy and productive unit, not just a consumption center.
- Diversify income through multiple streams and support Christian enterprises.
- Choose your ground: Relocate to red counties with accountable sheriffs, near extended family if feasible — even prioritizing this over a “good” church.
This isn’t retreat. A thousand covenant households in one county create a voting bloc, private-school network, parallel economy, and foundation for the other track.
2. The Tunnel: The Long March Through the Institutions (Track A – For the Few, the Focused)
We often say that we are in the midst of war. But wars are fought by young men. Institutions aren’t easily infiltrated and recaptured by married men burdened with mortgages and orthodontist bills. They’re seized by single men who live lean, work tirelessly, and master the regime’s language. Rather than browbeating them into marriage or labeling them incels or misogynists or implying they’re gay, we should support them. Wars are won by those who devote themselves fully to the cause.
This path suits the top decile in intelligence and drive: men 18–30, single, disciplined, willing to delay marriage 5–10 years for strategic gains. They must be bilingual, publicly using “national conservatism,,” “color-blind merit,” and “Judeo-Christian values,” while privately they read the banned books, join encrypted chats, and study the great architects of Western order.
Their objectives:
- Attend top-20 universities.
- Join the military for intelligence, combat arms, special operations positions.
- Pursue elite degrees in leverage fields like law, economics, defense, or intelligence.
- Live on half your income, amass capital, and seek long-view patrons.
- Work campaigns, intern at think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, draft briefs or papers shaping policy.
Track A relies on Track B’s children, votes, and social weight; Track B needs Track A’s policy wins and institutional shields. Together, they break the siege — the wall and the tunnel, fortress and infiltrator.
There’s much more to say about how older men can tangibly aid the young — mentorship, resources, networks. But that’s for another discussion. For now, let’s recognize Gen Z’s justified fury, reject apathy, and build a movement where Christ reigns, not oligarchs.
Darrell Dow frequently contributes to American Remnant.
