Disney feeds on yesterday while starving tomorrow’s childhood



Disney still prints money, but creatively it feels like a company on borrowed time. Marvel and Star Wars once powered revenues, yet a collapse in quality and a relentless release schedule have dulled both brands. The animation studio that set the global standard now leans on sequels and live-action remakes.

Worse, Disney struck a devil’s bargain by cultivating the “Disney adult.” By chasing the childless consumer, the company bought short-term profits while starving its future. At this rate, the company will have no next generation to buy into its nostalgia-based market.

Disney once sold childhood to children and, by doing so, sold a future to parents. By pivoting to the childless super-consumer, it sold out both.

Walt Disney’s dominance came from talent and timing. He had a gift for stories that delighted children and amused their parents. He also built in an era when mass media suddenly reached every living room, the postwar baby boom swelled the audience, and families had disposable income for the first time. Walt converted that moment into a network of theme parks that became rites of passage. In America, childhood meant Disney, and Disney meant childhood.

The empire grew after Walt’s death. Parks multiplied. The company expanded into television, music, sports, and games. Disney stretched its reach to older kids and teens, building an ecosystem where a child could live almost entirely inside one brand. That was the genius: Every formative memory wore a set of mouse ears, and nostalgia was guaranteed on the back end.

But invention is hard. Replicating Walt’s spark isn’t a system you can scale. Disney wanted every demographic and every dollar. Children had been the untapped market, but kids don’t control income; parents do. Marketing directly to adults looked unrealistic — until executives realized nostalgia could do the work.

Nostalgia as strip mine

Nostalgia feels like striking gold. You don’t need to create; you need to repackage. Decades of artistry built so much goodwill that the faintest echo could trigger warm feelings: a musical cue, a costume redesign, a cameo. For young adults who discovered the world is harsher than childhood promised, revisiting Disney’s stories and parks delivered comfort on demand.

That same generation had fewer children, often none. The old route — enchant the kids to unlock the parents’ wallets — narrowed. Disney pivoted. Sequels, reboots, and remakes pushed out originality. Marvel briefly rescued the strategy, but social justice sermons plus a firehose of content burned out the audience. Lucasfilm looked like another bottomless mine, yet once the initial excitement faded, fans saw the studio couldn’t craft new myths. The product kept coming; the magic didn’t.

From children’s parks to adult playgrounds

The parks followed the money. Regular attendance became a status symbol among young adults eager to flaunt luxury consumption online. Disney obliged, hiking prices and layering on exclusive experiences squarely aimed at childless visitors with cash to burn. Elite dining clubs, after-hours parties, and “premium” line-skipping converted nostalgia into a subscription lifestyle. Even Walt’s no-alcohol rule vanished. Spaces designed for families became curated playgrounds for nostalgic adults.

Nothing exposed this shift like the Star Wars hotel. The Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser promised full immersion — actors in character, missions, staged set pieces, and themed cabins — at an eye-watering starting price of $5,500 for two nights for two people, but often much more. Families had no chance. The corridors filled with adults paying thousands for a few days of role-play and an Instagram dump. When the novelty faded and the numbers stopped working, Disney shuttered it.

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Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Eating the seed corn

For a while, the nostalgia economy worked. Remakes still posted strong weekends. Parks extracted more revenue per guest. But the company stopped enchanting children. Re-skinning "Beauty and the Beast" or "Aladdin" keeps cash flowing for a season; it plants nothing for the future. You can only harvest memories if children are making new ones now. Disney has been eating seed corn instead of planting for tomorrow.

That creative retreat shows up in the audience. The company trains adults to consume experiences rather than build households. Disney adults don’t just buy tickets and merch; many postpone or abandon the basics of civilization — marriage, kids, a home — so they can keep chasing the next “exclusive.” Some even treat continuing their bloodline as evil. Disney is not solely to blame for this wider phenomenon, but it reinforces it and profits from it.

None of this means Disney’s executives are uniquely foolish. They followed the incentives. The audience that most reliably spends money was the one you made last generation: the kid who grew up inside Disney’s ecosystem and never left it. Social media turned that audience into free marketing. Wall Street demanded predictable growth, and nostalgia delivered on time. The trap is that nostalgia always cannibalizes tomorrow to feed today.

The moral is bigger than one company. A civilization that feeds on recycled memory while sneering at renewal is a civilization drifting toward hospice. Disney once sold childhood to children and, by doing so, sold a future to parents. By pivoting to the childless super-consumer, it sold out both.

What Charlie Kirk meant to us



Charlie Kirk was killed on September 10, 2025.

Like all conservatives, I think I must have seen hundreds or maybe even thousands of Charlie Kirk videos over the years. On YouTube, on Twitter, on Instagram. Videos of him being interviewed on Fox, videos of him hosting his show in his studio, and endless clips of him talking with students on college campuses.

You can’t go out, sit at a table for hours and hours over and over again, talking with anyone who comes up to you, without revealing that you, too, are human.

I don’t remember the first time I heard about Kirk, but it was early on, when he — and I — were much younger. Before he had kids and before I had kids.

Over the years, I, along with many conservatives of our generation, watched Kirk evolve and his impact grow — usually via the particularly intimate medium of our phones. His killing — no, murder; no, assassination — hits home in a close and terrible way.

Endless stream of mourning

I’m not alone in that feeling. To scroll through X Wednesday afternoon into the evening was to encounter an endless stream of shock, anger, and mourning. I read lots of posts from young people reflecting that it’s hitting them harder than they thought something like this could.

There were posts from parents noting how broken up their high-school and college-age kids were. There were abundant tributes from just about every big name in conservative politics praising Kirk for everything he did. Ben Shapiro wrote that when he met the 18-year-old Kirk, he predicted he would be the head of the RNC one day.

Kirk wasn’t a politician; he never held office. There’s a distance between us and politicians. They aren’t so real; everything is kind of an artifice to keep up an image and satisfy constituents.

Kirk was an activist, speaker, and a strong advocate for the good and the American people. He was human, and we who watched him on our little screens felt that. You can’t go out, sit at a table for hours and hours over and over again, talking with anyone who comes up to you, without revealing that you, too, are human.

'I can't stop thinking about it'

Thursday morning, I woke to a text from my sister, a normal, not terribly online conservative with a 10-month-old son. “I can’t stop thinking about it,” she wrote.

As I was writing this column, a DM came in from a friend: "Just no words. It’s hitting me like crazy. He was my exact same age and stage [of life].”

So many young conservatives are hit so dreadfully hard by the killing of Kirk because, in some way, they felt like they knew him. They saw him express just what they believed — or what his words made them realize they believed — hundreds and hundreds of times.

For many, Kirk was them, a representation of their hopes and their collective sense about the world and the future. Kirk did everything we are supposed to aspire to, or everything we as parents would want our children to aspire to. He advocated for what he believed in; he stood up for what was right; he was a husband and a father.

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Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

A deeply American value

How many minds did Kirk change during his time on earth? How many people watched him debate on college campuses and then start to question what lies they previously thought they believed? I’m not sure it’s possible to accurately calculate the tremendous impact he had.

It takes a lot of bravery to go out, sit on a chair, and answer any question any person brings up to the open mic. Would you be able to do it? I don’t think I could. He fielded questions from people — often pretty nasty people — from all over the spectrum, but he never lost sight of the good and was never dragged down to the bad, as all too many have been. He devoted his life to trying to change people’s minds (and the world) with words and debate. It's a deeply American value, and he was killed while he was doing it.

Leave a legacy

On Wednesday, I saw a post from Charlie dated July 27, 2025. It was a video of his young daughter running up to him as he sat on a couch in a Fox News studio. She jumped on his lap; he hugged her and smiled. The text accompanying the video read: “Get married, have kids, and stop partying into oblivion. Leave a legacy, be courageous. Happy Sunday. God Bless all the parents out there.”

Kirk believed in something, and he devoted his life to it. He didn’t sit around speculating, he didn’t spend his time waiting, he didn’t see a problem and decide not to do anything. He wanted to make a difference in the world; he wanted to make it better, and so he did. He changed American politics in the 2020s and invigorated young conservatives in a way few others have, and he did it all while raising a family. He did exactly what his post on July 27 called for the rest of us to do.

Charlie Kirk got married, he had kids, he was courageous, and he left a legacy.

God bless his soul in eternal rest.

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Take your kids camping



I was on the ferry to Isle Royale National Park, sitting on a long, wooden bench, watching everyone else.

There were singles, couples, groups, and families. Watching a few kids slink along beside their parents, moms and dads making sure they had everything in the right place and everyone was coming along at the proper pace, I remembered the camping trips I used to take with my mom and dad.

None of us had cell phones, much less smartphones. When we were on the trip, we were on the trip and nowhere else. We were all there — wherever we were — together.

We were tent campers. We weren’t as hardcore as the people who do the deep backcountry stuff. You know, the trips where they hike in seven miles and set up their tent in the middle of the dense wilderness. But we were rustic enough for my parents to look down at RVs and any kind of electricity.

Scamps like us

Since then, they have moderated their stance. In their old age, they have acquired a small Scamp trailer — the smallest one you can buy, they assure us — and are constantly apologizing for its very existence, maintaining that they “put in their time.” We tell them that it’s OK, they are almost 70 years old after all. They can stop roughing it.

One summer when I was in middle school, we took a trip out to Maine. We camped the whole way from West Michigan to Acadia National Park. I was watching some old family videos the other day and saw some clips from that trip. We were packing up in the rain in New Hampshire. That’s rough. That video brought back all sorts of other memories from that trip. I remember my brother and I were so into skateboarding and almost killed ourselves every other day.

Dog days

When I was in 9th grade, we took a trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We went over to the Apostle Islands off the coast of Wisconsin, too. We brought our dog along. Once, way up north, she jumped out of the car and right into a ditch. We thought her leg was hurt.

My parents were annoyed at the prospect of wasting a day (and money) trying to find a vet way up there. Then, all of a sudden, she miraculously started walking fine again. For the rest of her life (she lived to the ripe old age of 19), we always joked about how she was “faking it” on the U.P. trip.

I was getting really into music around that time and brought my trumpet because I swore I couldn’t take any days off. I would practice with a whisper mute around the campsite and sometimes in the car without a mute. If my parents were ever annoyed, they didn’t show it. They were always supportive, even when we didn’t have any room to spare in the blue Dodge Caravan and I was incessantly running the same passages over and over in the back seat.

In-tents experiences

After my sophomore year of college, we took a big trip, the biggest we ever took. We camped all the way out to California and back. We went to Yosemite, Zion, Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain National Park, and a bunch of other places along the way. I saw a video from that trip the other day, too. We were on the beach south of San Francisco. My dad was filming. My mom and sister were talking with one another near the water, and my brother and I were goofing off down the beach, acting like a couple of idiots.

My parents took us camping because it was cheap. They loved it, of course, they did it before we were born, but I know that a big reason for camping our way across the country in a tent was the affordability.

We almost never stopped for fast food. If we did, it was a crazy treat. Instead, we made sandwiches using soggy cold cuts drawn from the bottom of the blue-and-white cooler in the trunk. It was always half ice, half water in there. We would sit outside a rest stop with our sandwiches, a big bag of half-crushed Lay’s potato chips, and plastic cups filled with water from the drinking fountain near the bathrooms inside.

Some trips, my brother and I shared a small tent while my mom, dad, and sister slept in a bigger one on the other side of the campsite. Other trips, we all shared one big tent together, all five of us. I remember laying there at night, joking with each other, the cold dampness of the sleeping bag on my arms, my mom and dad on one side of the tent, us kids on the other.

IRL or bust

None of us had cell phones, much less smartphones. When we were on the trip, we were on the trip and nowhere else. We were all there — wherever we were — together. Crammed in the car, asleep in the tent, packing up the site in the rain, hotter than hell in Zion National Park in July, sitting around the fire in the morning, freezing after emerging from our sleeping bags in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Some of my most potent childhood memories are from those camping trips. They weren’t fancy or luxurious, we never went to Disney World or any big resorts, and I know I, in my foolish youth, sometimes wondered why my parents were so old-fashioned taking us camping in tents. But they really were special. I know it now, though I didn’t realize it for a long time.

It’s only as a dad that I now understand how much work those trips were and how much they mattered. Taking us three wild kids camping across the country in a tent, seeing all those incredible places. Spending all those days and nights together, just our family, camping. Our parents must have really loved us.

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The woke party’s favorite costume: Moderation



I usually enjoy David Harsanyi’s critiques of the left. But in a recent column, he drew a distinction I can’t accept. Quoting Rahm Emanuel’s plea for Democrats to rally behind “Build, baby, build!” Harsanyi praised politicians he believes embody a centrist alternative to the party’s radicals: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein.

Harsanyi presented these figures as the future of a Democratic Party that might rediscover moderation. He contrasted them with open socialists like New York City's Zohran Mamdani, whom he regards as the party’s worst tendencies made flesh. In his telling, Beshear, Spanberger, Shapiro, and Stein represent a kind of Democratic “loyal opposition” that conservatives should welcome.

Abigail Spanberger shows how the Democratic ‘moderate’ label works: not as a rejection of cultural radicalism but as a smoother delivery system for it.

That picture collapses under scrutiny. On social questions, the supposed moderates fall squarely in line with the party’s most zealous activists. Beshear, though personable and pragmatic on some issues, is an LGBTQ fanatic who promotes woke causes across Kentucky. Spanberger has been a reliable ally of the gender-identity movement and has now gone so far as to support biological men competing in women’s sports. Stein in North Carolina vetoed four separate bills meant to curb DEI excesses and limit radical gender programs in his state.

These aren’t minor disagreements tucked around the edges. They reveal a deeper truth: The “moderates” whom Harsanyi and Fox News commentators now flatter are not moderates at all. They dress the same ideology in calmer rhetoric. Spanberger, the supposed pragmatist, sounds indistinguishable from Tim Walz or Mamdani when she explains her social positions.

So why do some on the right elevate them? Because these Democrats don’t call themselves socialists, don’t chant slogans for Hamas, and don’t traffic in the same racial agitation as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett, or Omar Fateh. But the distinction is cosmetic. On gender, DEI, and race politics, the so-called moderates embrace the same policies.

This misreading exposes a larger problem on the right. For years, the Republican establishment avoided direct confrontation on cultural issues, preferring to rally donors around national defense, Israel, or deregulation. On marriage and gender, Republicans surrendered the ground years ago. When the Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, Conservatism Inc. shrugged. Now, some seem relieved to pretend “moderates” in the Democratic Party represent a saner alternative. They don’t.

And the Democrats know it. Clinton-era strategists at the Third Way think tank now tell their party to tone down the woke jargon and talk more about housing or infrastructure. But Third Way doesn’t advise abandoning cultural radicalism — only camouflaging it. The goal is simple: Keep core constituencies like college-educated white women and black urban voters while soothing independents with bread-and-butter messaging. Beshear, Stein, Spanberger, and the others know their futures depend on that balancing act.

This is where Republicans must stop indulging illusions. They will be forced to fight on this terrain whether they like it or not.

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In Virginia, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears — a black conservative who supports Trump’s immigration policy and holds traditional views on marriage and gender — trails Spanberger despite Spanberger’s increasingly open embrace of the left’s cultural program. In Northern Virginia’s suburbs, her positions do not hurt her. They energize her base. The clearer she becomes, the more firmly those voters rally to her side.

That is the lesson Republicans cannot ignore. Spanberger shows how the Democratic “moderate” label works: not as a rejection of cultural radicalism but as a smoother delivery system for it. Sears, to her credit, understands the stakes. She knows she cannot avoid the social questions. If she does, she loses. Her only path forward is to expose Spanberger’s record and force voters to confront it.

What’s happening in Virginia is the same fight Trump is waging nationally — against a cultural left entrenched in the administrative state, NPR, and the universities. These battles connect. They will not fade, and the right cannot win them by pretending “moderates” exist in the Democratic Party.

If Republicans cling to that illusion, they won’t just lose a governorship here or a Senate seat there. They will lose the defining fight over culture, identity, and the moral core of the nation. The Democrats’ so-called moderates are not the antidote to radicalism. They are the mask that allows it to advance.

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