In the past week the Trump regime has seized a Venezuelan oil tanker in another attempt to provoke a war, announced that it wants to scan the social media accounts of World Cup fans for hurty words, declared that questions about Trump’s mental and physical health might be “treasonous”, and threatened the International Criminal Court with more sanctions if it doesn’t promise never to prosecute Trump.
Conservative American manhood has never looked weaker or more foolish.
Of course, manhood is a complicated idea and not one I’d normally bring into a discussion about the extremely crude actions of a superpower throwing its weight around. But it is the MAGA movement itself, and the far right in general, that has thrust its notions of masculinity back into centre stage. And fair enough: politics is a process of deciding how societies run themselves, and these movements have been very clear about their desire to rearrange society to put white men back on their thrones, white women back in the kitchen or the nursery, and everyone else back onto the periphery.
From the online “manosphere” with its obsession with “alphas”, “betas”, “sigmas”, high and low T — brilliantly described as astrology for incels — to US government offices publishing 1950s-style propaganda of white men with doting blonde wives promoting the MAGA agenda, the American right has made it clear that it represents the sort of patriarchal values that, they claim, made America great at some point in its past that nobody is quite able or willing to name.
Inevitably for a fantasy built on nothing but deep contempt for women, loathing for difference and terror of change, it falls apart the moment you test any if its loudly proclaimed beliefs. The whiplash 180 performed by the evangelicals, especially, has been astonishing to behold, as decades of incessant, shrill moralising about family values fell instantly silent the moment the MAGA orgy rolled into Washington led by an adjudicated rapist.
It’s how they could convince themselves that Joe Rogan knew more about viruses than virologists; how they still believe that a reality TV star who bankrupted casinos is a business genius worthy of running a country.
Since then, the chest-thumping by the MAGA broligarchy has been as tinny and transparent as a tech billionaire in the front row at an inauguration.
“Warrior spirit!” it has roared as it has brought Russia back from the brink of economic and military collapse.
“Rule of law!” it has bellowed as it tried to overthrow an election and then prostrated itself to a criminal who was besties with a paedophile.
“Freedom of speech,” it has howled as it goes through your phone, making sure you haven’t said anything mean before it’ll let you into its country.
“Jesus is lord!” it has chanted as it gave Israel weaponry to kill and main more children in the Holy Land than Herod could ever have dreamed of.
“America first!” it has whooped as it has made sure the world unites behind its back.
Yes, the delusion is strong. But I think what makes conservative men look weakest of all isn’t what they’re proclaiming but what they’re demanding. Because what they’re demanding when they insist that men — a minority — should run the country ahead of women, regardless of those men’s qualifications or mental capacity, is the most coddled, most snowflake form of special treatment.
At first glance, you might even say that what conservative men are demanding is the same affirmative action or DEI programmes that they are dismantling, but that wouldn’t be accurate: AA and DEI, after all, privilege minorities when equally qualified people apply for the same job, and real-world qualifications are meaningless to conservative men.
It’s how they could convince themselves that Joe Rogan knew more about viruses than virologists; how they still believe that a reality TV star who bankrupted casinos is a business genius worthy of running a country.
So, no. Conservative American men don’t want AA or DEI. What they want is something much less pragmatic and infinitely more pathetic.
They want the competition removed.
They want the rules changed back; back to when women and black people weren’t allowed to compete. Back to when foreigners were cheap, easily exploited labour rather than highly skilled experts. Back to when the man was the head of the household or the church or the country simply because a made-up god said so in a book written by people who didn’t know what germs were or that China existed. Back to when the most mediocre nobody could declare himself a winner in the game of life simply for having been born white and male.
MAGA pretends it is rediscovering the strength of right-wing, Christian nationalist manhood.
But all it is revealing is the same whiny, spoiled little weakling it always was.
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