It’s time for another one of Max’s thought-dumps, where I share my thoughts on a variety of current events in as short a form as my mind allows.
Let’s get to it.
We Don’t Have A Flying Problem. We Have A News Problem.
The first two months of 2025 were a bad time, optics-wise, for the aviation world.
The first major U.S. aviation disaster of the year happened on January 29, when an Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter collided in-flight with American Airlines Flight 5342 as the latter was on approach to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. A 67 combined occupants on both aircraft were killed.
Only two days later, on January 31, Med Jets Flight 056, a medical evacuation plane flying from Philadelphia to Tijuana, crashed after take-off, killing all six aboard, who were Mexican nationals, and included a child patient and her mother.
Then on February 17, Delta Connection Flight 4819 crash-landed and overturned at Toronto Pearson International Airport. Miraculously, nobody was killed. There were numerous other incidents, some of which resulted in loss of life, but most of which didn’t.
The Left pounced, as the media likes to say, attributing the disasters to the policies implemented by the incoming Trump administration and the notorious DOGE commission led by Elon Musk, which included mass firings of air traffic controllers. Hearing it from them, everything was fine before January 20, when Trump took office for a second time, and since then, it’s been nothing but carnage in the skies, with planes falling from the heavens. From January into February, it seemed as though you couldn’t go a day without hearing about some aviation disaster.
Well, February is over. Are we really experiencing a higher-than-normal level of aviation accidents? Has flying gotten dramatically more dangerous in less than two months under President Trump?
I often stress that the world doesn’t work out in averages, nor do numbers capture what’s really happening. That said, statistics are how we make sense of the world and should play a big role in making any judgment concerning real-world phenomena. What does it say?
You may be surprised. From the NTSB:
In other words, we’ve had the safest month of aviation in terms of the number of incidents, like ever. Not only that, less than ten of the incidents involved loss of life:
Is it what you expected? I’d wager many of you didn’t, especially if you follow the mainstream news. What’s more, many of those who think we’re dealing with an alarming number of aviation accidents seem to have forgotten this was a big story a year ago also.
Remember this incident from last year?
I even wrote an essay on the topic of aviation safety at the time, a reminder of what a big talking point it was. Eventually, flying-related news faded from view, even though the number of incidents increased over the year, and everyone quit worrying about it. As you can see, 2024 was hardly some record year for aviation accidents. The trend has been overall remarkably consistent for almost 20 years now, validating the assertion that air travel not only has gotten much safer, but it’s among the safest ways to travel. Keep in mind: the data includes general and recreational aviation, which is where the vast majority of accidents occur.
What about all the other incidents, including collisions on the tarmac or near-misses on the runway? I don’t want to call these incidents “routine,” since there’s so little margin for error and the stakes are so high. However, if you’re shocked that these incidents occur at all, much of that has to do with the fact that the media typically doesn’t talk about them. If they provided coverage for all these incidents, you probably wouldn’t want to fly any longer. Just check out YouTube channels dedicated to air traffic control audio to see just how often these close-calls happen.
Bottom line: flying hasn’t gotten more dangerous. Flying is a fundamentally dangerous act, but we’ve mastered it to the point where it’s likely the least dangerous form of transportation there is. It’s the news, frankly, that’s dangerous.
While the media seldom kills anyone, it has the power to shape our perceptions. This is just as significant as the ability to take someone’s life. The media has played a tremendous role in whether wars break out or not, for example. The idea that all the news does is inform people has never been the whole truth. Again, if the media covered every single aviation accident that occurred, the airlines would probably suffer for it. There’s no such thing as taking safety too seriously, but as I once attested, commercial air takes it so seriously, it’s at the point the better option would simply be to not fly at all.
Politicizing such incidents is always pernicious. But politicizing so few incidents is ridiculous. Reflexing blaming politicians has always been a lazy, low-intellect form of discourse, but it’s even more so when the trend lines haven’t only not gotten worse, but they’ve actually gotten better. Aviation isn’t like the border, either, for example. The president has direct responsibility for what happens along our national boundaries, but they have no responsibility, direct or even indirect, for what happens to an aircraft. It’s not like anyone trusts Trump behind the controls of a plane anyway, right?
Consider, in the case of Med Jets Flight 056, their recent safety record would’ve rang alarm bells with anyone who thinks “planes are falling out of the skies”:
The Philadelphia crash was the second fatal incident in 15 months for Jet Rescue. In 2023 five crew members were killed when their plane overran a runway in the central Mexican state of Morelos and crashed into a hillside.
Did Trump and Musk have a hand in that prior incident as well?
It also wasn’t too long ago we were having a collective freak-out over train derailments. Much of this was precipitated by the devastating incident in East Palestine, Ohio in February 2023, where massive quantities of hazardous materials contaminated the small Rust Belt town, causing an ecological disaster. Yet it turns out that not only are train derailments more common than believed, like flying, the number of incidents has come down significantly over time and leveled off.
When it comes to either planes or trains, we see the same phenomenon: an attention-grabbing, highly-publicized event occurs, followed by coverage for weeks on end of other incidents of the same type. The public cannot be entirely blamed for thinking things are spiraling out of control, but all this does it prove just how dangerous the news can be.
The lesson here is that there’s no substitute for research. The news isn’t always wrong, but the news is also incomplete. We all have busy lives, but for anyone who wants to be better informed and better understand what’s happening, you need to do your research. You’ll never get the full story, otherwise.
The Case Against Universal Suffrage
Ukraine has resurfaced as a political dividing line. Following Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the White House, which ended in an argument between him and President Trump and Vice President Vance, the Regime is using it as a cudgel to divide the American public.
The only thing I’m going to say about Zelenskyy’s White House visit is this: watch the entire conversation, not just the end, the part that got the most media coverage. As even those who are willing to criticize Trump have pointed out, the Left’s narrative of the meeting is far from accurate. If you want to have an opinion on what happened, watch the entire conversation. Otherwise, your opinion is ill-informed.
Which brings me to the next topic: are proponents of the Russo-Ukraine war’s continuance being disingenuous? Specifically, are they being “chicken hawks,” demanding greater expenditures and blood and treasure out of spite for Russia, knowing full well no sacrifices will ever be asked of them, personally?
Ron Coleman speaks for those offended by this premise:
“Go volunteer to fight” isn’t a logical argument in a foreign policy debate, it’s an emotional one.
It’s actually not. There’s a reason, in the past, only warriors were allowed to participate in politics. Those who fight have more skin in the game than those who don’t. As such, it made sense to restrict political engagement to those who could be expected to decide in sober, judicious fashion. It doesn’t always work out this way, of course. But the thinking is sound: if you have something to lose, you’ll make your choices with that awareness in mind. People are people, and people aren’t perfect. You still need some form of assurance that they’ll make the best choice, though.
In fact, one of the reasons why our political system has become so ineffectual at performing its most basic of tasks can be attributed to the fact that participation in the political process has become so divorced from any tangible consequences. In other words, if voting meant you risk losing your property, wealth, or even life, we’d all vote a lot differently than we do currently. We may opt not to vote at all. Anyone who believes humans don’t function along lines of incentive is either not serious or doesn’t know as much as their high-priced college degrees confer.
Thus, we arrive at the case for restricting franchise. It’s well beyond the Overton window to say that not everyone should be able to vote. Democracy today is defined exclusively along the lines of mass democracy; barring few exceptions, all citizens should be able to vote. As we see nowadays, the logic for universal suffrage has been taken literally to where the Left is arguing for even non-citizens to be able to vote.
There are many reasons why mass democracy is a failed system, but a big one is that it makes votes disposable. One vote doesn’t matter a whole lot among millions of others. More importantly, as explained above, when people who’ll never suffer the consequences of their votes get to make choices affecting millions, it’s effectively a form of tyranny. Unlike a conventional dictatorship, however, it’s anarcho-tyranny, characterized by state-facilitated chaos and disorder, because in a mass democracy, everyone is in charge, yet nobody’s accountable, and governance is done along ideological lines, no matter how stupid or unpopular a policy is (see transgenderism).
So what does that make it when only a select few are able to vote? Democracy? Certainly not the way we understand it. It’s more like an aristocracy or even that dreaded ‘O’-word. Nobody likes the idea of only certain people being allowed to vote, but when the alternative is where everyone gets to vote, with the trade-off being that your votes don’t actually matter or that everyone else can make our lives worse without being affected themselves, is it really any better than an outright dictatorship?
The key to understanding the argument against restricting political franchise is that voting is an act of violence. Saying so bothers a lot of people, because none of us like to think ourselves as violent people. But it doesn’t make it false. If you vote for ‘X’ policy, you are arguing in favor of the state using its power to enforce a law or to affect specific outcomes. The state can only accomplish this through force. Force is violence. Part of being a mature citizen is understanding and coming to terms with this unpleasant fact of life.
The only way to mitigate this is to restrict the number of people who can actually exercise this form of violence. Though it seems unfair to say that only some people can impose their will upon others, the fact is, in a mass democracy, the will of the few is already being imposed on the masses. As such, our vote only has symbolic value. Again, what’s the difference between that and not being able to vote at all? The difference is only in our minds.
It’s worth noting that among the biggest supporters of restricted franchise also happen to be the biggest proponents of mass democracy: liberals. You often hear from those who believe in universal suffrage that only the votes of those with college educations should count. It turns out liberals might be projecting their own aristocratic or oligarchic aspirations onto others. The cognitive dissonance is ridiculous, but it also proves, at the end of the day, all of us recognize intrinsically that mass democracy doesn’t work.
All said, I doubt it’s going away during our lifetimes. Our entire civilization would need to collapse and be built from the ground up for the cycle to begin once again, to where only an aristocratic class has a voice in governance. Not even a political collapse can provide that reset; it has to be something akin to the Roman collapse. We’re now talking about hypothetical events well beyond our grandchildren’s lifetimes. Mass democracy is here to say, the only question is whether only citizens will continue to be able to vote.
Know this: if America ever allows non-citizens to vote in federal elections, you can bet your loyal super-secret agent Max will become an outright illiberal authoritarian. In the age of mass immigration and rampant illegal residency, our citizenship doesn’t mean much to begin with. Once franchise is extended to non-citizens, our citizenship will be worth nothing. When our citizenship ceases to have meaning, we no longer have a country.
When that happens, bring on the dictatorship. What do we have to lose?
California Democrats Embrace Fascism
I’m not kidding. What do I mean by this?
California State Assembly Member Rick Chavez Zbur is trying to pass an amendment to the state penal code:
And yes, this is an entirely politically-motivated proposition, not rooted in the realities of violence:
Liberals rationalize it by saying the policy is meant to protect citizens, since intruders are clearly dangerous people willing to use violence to get their way, the same way we penalize drivers for not wearing seatbelts. The law, if taken in good faith, seems meant to incentivize removing yourself from danger, rather than confronting it.
The problem is, we’re in our homes. It’s our last line of defense. I don’t advise anyone go charging out of their bedrooms, into the unknown, armed or not, in the dark of night, looking to confront an intruder, but that’s a tactical matter. The only reason politicians would deny lawful residents protection from prosecution is to protect criminals instead.
What does this have to do with fascism? Wouldn’t fascists take a much harder line against disorder? Maybe. But it’s important to understand that Social Darwinism - the application of natural selection and survival of the fittest principles to sociopolitical policy - is foundational to fascism, along with much of far-right political thinking. Basically, “let the strong win.” Criminals are obviously willing to use violence to get their way, so just get out of their way and you might not get hurt. If you do, oh well, we’ll catch him and jail him. The state ultimately holds a monopoly on violence, anyway.
Functionally, this is no different from fascism. The strong are up top, everyone else at the bottom. It’s why fascism has an allure, the same way communism has an allure because it purportedly puts the weak on the same level as the strong. However, as I pointed out above, fascism also privileges order. Hence, fascism, terrible a system as it may be, is at least predictable. Humans don’t have some sort of inherent bias towards democracy or libertarianism. As long as they understand the rules of the game and the rules are consistently enforced in a predictable manner, they’ll go with whatever insane system there is, if it means they get to live one more day.
Anarcho-tyranny is, by contrast, wholly unpredictable. It uses disorder to maintain order by terrorizing people into inaction and, consequently, into submission. This clearly doesn’t work as intended, since people still mostly live under the impression that they’re free to do as they please, as long as it’s within legal limits. As a result, a whole lot of people are getting into trouble for no good reason, all because the state cannot perform its most fundamental of tasks, which is to provide predictable order.
By further narrowing the circumstances under which residents can defend themselves, it ensures people won’t act even when it might be perfectly permissible under the law to do so. People have a biologically-ingrained self-preservation instinct, but it can be easily overwritten through social programming. Only when under immediate attack - a.k.a. “when it’s too late” - are those biological instincts triggered. When people act instinctively, they’re not thinking about what some law says they can or can’t do in that situation. Unfortunately, the law still applies.
If this is what life looks like under liberal democracy, I don’t think authoritarian fascism is something to lose sleep over. We’re nearly there.
Left-Wing Americans Arm Up
Gun ownership is decreasingly becoming a partisan issue. That must be a good thing, right?
Well, I suppose that depends on your perspective. I’m not a rights-absolutist in general, extending to gun ownership. Though I’m not a gun control proponent, I’m most certainly a “shooter control” proponent. I don’t believe everyone should be allowed to own firearms and I don’t think the Founders had that in mind, either. If it were up to me, leftists wouldn’t be able to own firearms, since they think they’re all big, scary, and radiate danger, anyway.
I’m kidding (sort of), but I am suspicious of the fact that liberals seem to have softened their stance on gun control and are themselves beginning to arm themselves.
Not only is gun ownership becoming more diverse across race and gender, but it also appears to have bridged a divide between political beliefs as more democrats arm themselves.
In a 2023 survey from the Pew Research Center, 45 percent of Republicans say they owned a gun and 20 percent of Democrats or Democratic leaners.
Men made up 40 percent of owners and women 25 percent, with 38 percent found to be White, 24 percent black, 20 percent Hispanic and ten percent Asian.
What are they preparing for? This is what’s most concerning - not a single interviewee cited crime as a reason. All the interviews cited either the feeling of being “targeted” for their race, gender identity, or politics. The reality is, most of us aren’t at risk of persecution; the media plays up the risks for political reasons. In some cases, it plays down the risk: one of the interviewees cites “Asian Hate”, which totally dropped off the radar once it became apparent Blacks were disproportionately among the perpetrators. The one person who came closest to citing crime specifically placed it in the context of violence against women, suggesting crime itself isn’t really the primary concern.
The one conservative interviewed for the piece had the most pragmatic reasons for staying strapped, reasons I often cite:
John Alvarado, 30, found shifting societal and social norms were creating a dangerous society. Dangerous enough that he started buying guns to protect himself and his family.
Alvarado, who is black and Latino, voted liberal for years but changed his tune during the pandemic after the mask and vaccine mandates in 2020 saw neighbors turning on each other.
As a result, he lost faith in the government and reconsidered his own beliefs.
‘When I first made my purchase, I was a lot more left leaning,’ he said, before declaring he is now ‘way more right leaning’.
Alvarado began attending a conservative Baptist church with his wife, where he went on to serve on the security team patrolling the building during services.
‘Bad guys, they exist everywhere. If I’m ready, always, I never have to get ready,’ he said, as he explained how the birth of his sons drove him into a 'protector' role for his family.
‘I feel like I’m not doing my job if I don’t have a firearm on my person ready to take care of something that may or may not happen,’ Alvarado said. ‘We’re here for a reason, and for now at least that reason is to safeguard the people that I care about.’
What Alvarado says here, any of us could and should cite as reasons for taking up arms. America isn’t a peaceful place and safety is not a given. With great freedom comes great responsibility. As long as our country decides that maintaining order is racist or somehow contrary to our values, we will always need to take strong measures to ensure our own safety.
Unfortunately, liberals are concerned with their safety only within a political context. Here’s what one, a retired Navy officer, explained as his reason for arming up:
‘You know the reason I decided to become a gun owner was not to protect myself against the Sinaloa cartel - you know, I don't have Walter White living next door to me - but to protect against the potential of this growing wave of antisemitism, ultra-right, white nationalism,' he told the NYT.
Mexican drug cartels not only have a presence in nearly all states, they are highly active, especially in our metro areas. The most dangerous far-right, White nationalist groups are nowhere near as entrenched as the cartels and live far removed from the population centers. The threat isn’t the same. The likelihood this retired Navy officer from California will ever need to protect himself or his family from a right-wing extremist or White nationalist is so unlikely, it amounts to a violent fantasy. It is, however, not unlikely the criminal who does end up threatening his life may have ties to the cartels, if only indirectly so. I doubt he understands how cheap his life is to criminals.
It’s undeniable: in their own words, liberals are arming themselves to protect themselves from their ideological opponents. They may think they’re the ones under siege, but by blowing the threat out of proportion, they’re only creating an environment where liberals will end up feeling like the only way to be safe is to start shooting anyone who isn’t a Democrat.
All they need is a signal that it’s okay to do so. Dangerous times, we’re living in.
You Remain In This Country At The Pleasure Of The United States
The Left has ferociously come to the defense of Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-Algerian and pro-Palestinian protestor, who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), purportedly to be deported from the country. A green card-holder and Columbia University graduate, Khalil is a front-man for the pro-Palestine, anti-Israel protests that have taken place in New York City, specifically, since the beginning of the Gaza war since October 2023.
The Left has described the arrest as nothing short of authoritarian by the Trump administration, claiming Khalil’s 1st Amendment rights were violated, among others. A number of Democratic Congressmen has called for his release, and Khalil has become the Left’s latest cause célèbre. A few thoughts on this.
First, listening to anyone on the Left rail about free speech never stops being tiresome. They’ve spent at least the last several years destroying the lives, assassinating the characters, denying the livelihoods, ostracizing, and even throwing in a complementary false accusation of racism, all over speech that doesn’t conform to leftist political standards. In some cases, nothing bad was even said, only the suspicion was raised. That wasn’t enough to stop persecution from occurring. The Left has never been supportive of free speech, but it sure enjoys exploiting the privilege for themselves.
Second, Mahmoud Khalil is a green card holder. He isn’t a citizen. Anyone other than a citizen stays entirely at the discretion of the U.S. If that wasn’t the case, then he wouldn’t be merely a “lawful permanent resident,” he’d be a citizen. We live in an age when the most basic of political principles goes over people’s heads.
As for the supposition that his 1st Amendment rights were violated, free speech absolutism doesn’t exist in America, and never has. More relevant, as a green card holder, Khalil’s rights aren’t the same as a citizen’s rights.
Mark Goldfeder explains on X, citing federal cases:
At least some First Amendment protections do apply differently to aliens than they do to citizens. Ready for those citations? See, for example. Citizens United v. FEC 558 U.S. 3 I0, 419-424 & n.51 (2010):
“The Government routinely places special restrictions on the speech rights of students, prisoners, members of the Armed Forces, foreigners, and its own employees. When such restrictions are justified by a legitimate governmental interest, they do not necessarily raise constitutional problems...
By the way, if speaking out in support of Palestine alone was enough to get someone arrested, as Khalil’s supporters claim is what happened to him, we’d have a lot more people in custody. If you ask me, not enough people are being arrested for what are very clearly violent, intimidating protests.
Third, the fact the Left has come so firmly in defense of a Third World, terror group-supporting foreigner isn’t surprising, but also quite illuminating. That’s who they’ll mobilize for, but where was this level of outrage on behalf of Laken Riley? Jocelyn Nungaray? Why is it always foreigners the Left comes to the defense of?
Fourth and finally, the idea that a person can speak out in support of a terror group hostile to the U.S., calls for the destruction of Western Civilization, and still be deemed worthy of living on our land just because he has documents saying he can is in defiance of common sense. The paper isn’t what matters. It’s what in the heart and mind that does. The idea we cannot get rid of someone, a foreigner, no less, who is so at odds with the U.S. and the West just because he was only exercising free speech or he has papers is so stupid, only the Left could come up with it.
We live in a time when American citizenship holds almost no meaning, figuratively or literally. Allowing foreigners to have such latitude to come here, promote violence, and advocate for people other than Americans, isn’t the flex some people make it out to be. Maybe kicking people like him out puts us back on the road to making America a country for Americans once again.
A Problem Only Violence Can Solve
“Insane” doesn’t even begin to describe this:
If you didn’t watch the video, a young Black male throws a piece of mall furniture over the balcony, landing just inches away from patrons below. If it landed atop someone, it would’ve likely caused serious injuries, possibly even death.
There isn’t much of a debate to be had. I don’t care what life circumstances this young man and his accomplice came from. I don’t care how much racism they endured (likely very little, given how fearful everyone is at offending Blacks). A proper society does whatever it takes to bring these social menaces to heel, even if it means taking their lives in the process. Incarceration is the humane option.
Race is absolutely a part of the story. No other culture valorizes criminality and violence the way Black culture does. Even someone who thinks racism is still a major problem in today’s world isn’t being honest if they say race has nothing to do with this. It’s not just a matter of “bad people doing bad things.” Sure, Blacks, don’t own a monopoly on crime, but again, we’re talking about culture. No other promotes and provides excuses for this sort of behavior. No other group is treated so fairly by society, exempt from both individual and group agency.
Until racism stops being the highest crime in the land and Civil Rights legislation ceases to be our Constitution, however, don’t expect anything to change. As long as skin color can be used as armor, as long as America’s history of racism and slavery is used as a cudgel to beat the country down with, as long as our institutions promote this crooked system, you’ll just have to stay alert, look up once in a while, and hope nobody tries to drop a piece of furniture onto you from above.
If there’s any good thing to come out of the coming civil war, it’s probably that social menaces like these will finally be forced to fight for their lives. Opportunities come with tragedy.
Patriarchy Means “Women And Children First”
Did you know:
73% of all women from every class survived the sinking of the Titanic.
Only 19% of men survived.
Of course, the feminist retort was something to the effect of “men built the ships” or that men created a system where they were expected to take the proverbial bullet. It seems as though they can’t decide whether it’s a good or bad thing that most men died and most women survived.
Titanic is one of the examples they use of men being ‘oppressed’ which is so funny considering it was more than a hundred years ago and the reason so many men died was because the crew was mostly made up of men and they believed women were less capable of helping and surviving
Leaving aside the fact that men aren’t using this as an example of being oppressed, I hate trying to retort feminist talking points because they’re entirely contradictory and nonsensical, and one can only effectively argue against something that at least makes logical sense. But I do want to make an important point I think everyone should understand.
The problem with looking at everything through the “oppression” framework is that it denies the fact that humans make judgments based on perceptions. If you see someone who appears big and strong, you’re going to naturally assume they’re more capable than someone who appears small and weak. “Looks are deceiving” is true only to a point. For the most part, it’s a cope. Besides, once you actually put people to the test, reality will set in.
The same way the food chain is dictated in large part by strength and aggression, human society is organized along similar lines. The one mitigating factor is that humans possess empathy, so we can also believe in protecting the weak. What seems like oppression to the feminist is, in fact, biological imperative combined with empathy. Women where perceived as less capable because, well, in many areas, they are. Also, women are the reproductive half of the species, so it just makes sense to prioritize protecting them over men. Again, biology makes the rules.
To keep things as simple as possible, if women were just as capable as men, we’d have thousands of years of evidence to draw upon. We don’t. If women were just as capable as men, oppression would be a far less prevalent phenomenon throughout history. Biology wins every time; you cannot do something it doesn’t permit you to do. It doesn’t mean oppression is good, but it’s not something that happens just because men felt like doing it. Everything we do in life stems from the convergence of ability and intent.
One more thing and I promise I’ll shut up:
My observation is that very many women genuinely do not have an intuitive sense of how much stronger men are than women, because men have not used their strength against them &, when playing, hold back their strength.
Read the entire thread to hear, from a woman, how much stronger even seemingly weaker men are compared to women. The fact that physical violence isn’t something women are familiar with, combined with non-stop feminist fantasies propagated in education and media, means that women are likely more divorced from reality today than ever before.
The fact is, the “patriarchy” is what allows civilization to exist in the first place. Men will elect to restrain themselves and put women and children ahead of them for the benefit of all, as opposed to relentlessly using their superior strength to get what they want. The question is, what are women willing to exchange to maintain biological equilibrium?
I know: when it’s time to do dirty work, when it’s time to do violence, those less capable ought to either help, or be quiet and stay out of the way.
It’s your turn: what are your thoughts on anything discussed? Were you surprised at how few flying accidents there really were? Is mass democracy still worth the trouble? Why do you think liberals are taking up arms? What do you think about anything else discussed?
Talk about it in the comments section.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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With re. to that last question -- "what do women give up for the sake of parity?" -- the answer in a sane world is sexual autonomy. See "The Garbage Generation" linked to at the bottom of this page: https://www.fisheaters.com/garbagegeneration.html
My take on "Go volunteer to fight" doesn't really contradict yours, but might cause some disagreement anyway.
American combat troops on foreign soil are not an inevitable consequence of lesser interventions (materiel aid, sanctions, etc.), so I consider "go volunteer" to be a non-sequitur unless the person being responded to is actually espousing sending troops… which I have yet to see anyone do regarding the Russia–Ukraine war. (Maybe I'm not reading the right people.) And yet, I see that “go volunteer” sentiment everywhere regardless—and not even just on policy discussions, but on pretty much anything to do with that war.
"Go volunteer" might have been a salient point in 1964/65 or 2002/03. So far, on pretty much every question pertaining to the ongoing saga, it’s not as much of one.