man male masculine

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">6/20 primary on boogaloo</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>tag macho 11/22  amazing how many nodes</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">see TWO 2</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">nexus building here (isms/phobias</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see incel and red pill</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see mass shooter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bully</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">domestic violence</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">see lakoff</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bak 920 html <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">pivotal</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"> </span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">=</font></div><div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>aha a real man</b> merkin fights to the death rather than surrender and become someone's bitch, but the good xian woman knows her place and happily submits to husband, he has dominion over her; in wrestling winner pins defeated down, not unlike rape?</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" style="">12 21  see all </font><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/conservative/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/conservative/</a></font></font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Some of you will be familiar with DARVO, an acronym for deny, attack and reverse victim and offender. DARVO describes the behavior of psychological abusers when they are being held accountable for their behavior. </b>Donald Trump and his supporters clearly exhibit DARVO habits. Rather than accept blame for anything they do, they turn around and accuse those blaming them of creating the problem. <b>Victimized Bully Syndrome (VBS), as I'm describing it, though, is slightly different from DARVO. With DARVO the abusive behavior comes first and DARVO only emerges if the attacker is asked to take responsibility. But with VBS the cries of being victims come first and are used to justify the underlying bullying behaviors. The bully under VBS is always already acting in self-defense.</b></font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Take this example: In a recent interview with Fox News, Dr. Mehmet Oz, candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania suggested that Americans had been victimized by President Biden's "one-size-fits-all" COVID-19 "rules that <b>limit our freedom.</b>" According to Oz, U.S. citizens "<b>want government to get out of their way</b> to </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">stop scaring them into submission.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">"</span></font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If we set aside the sheer stupidity of a doctor suggesting that we need "as many different approaches as possible" to the pandemic, the critical takeaway is Oz's claim that Biden's policy is designed to victimize the public by scaring them, taking away their freedoms, and destroying their dignity. According to this logic, refusing to wear a mask, get vaccinated, or support public health policy is a valid defense, rather than bullying behavior that puts everyone in peril.</font></div></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">6 22 an</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha: hooked up to jumper cables; real men do not talk about feelings, but Biden and Raskin have to great effect, so in great GOP trad of turning sterength (swift boat) into an attack, these 2 pow:</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">6 22</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">united States <b>Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) appeared on a recent edition of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia)'s podcast and suggested that Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) is unable to do his job because his son committed suicide.</b></font></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Raskin served as the House of Representatives' manager of former President Donald Trump's second impeachment for inciting the January 6th, 2021 Capitol insurrection. Raskin also sits on the Select Committee investigating the attack, which was triggered (at least in part) by Republican lawmakers refusing at Trump's behest to acknowledge President Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, with just 24 hours remaining before public hearings revealing what the bipartisan congressional commission has found begin, Gaetz and Greene have launched a new and unusually cruel offensive against Raskin.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"When people encounter trauma, they often associate a lot of the other things around that trauma with it, even if they don't naturally or even rationally associate. And what I worry about for the Congress and for Jamie Raskin, you know, no one would ever want to lose a child, particularly to suicide," said Gaetz.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"As human beings, our hearts go out to him. But I think that he takes that trauma and he associates it now with his work in the Congress to such an interwoven way that he's unable to do the congressional experience outside of just the dungeon of that personal trauma," Gaetz continued, "and I think it makes him look at everything in these very like, dark and severe ways."</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Greene agreed.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"You know, we try to come to the job to uplift people," Gaetz resumed.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We're here to serve the people," Greene interjected.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"Well and we love this country," Gaetz added.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"Absolutely," said Greene.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><b>"We're not here out of a sense of grievance</b> or <b>hatred</b>.</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> We love America," Gaetz said.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"No we love it," Greene chimed in again.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"And we want to <b>vindicate the rights of our citizens</b> and we want to champion their causes and<b> battle their dislikes,</b>" Gaetz remarked.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Yes that's right," Greene said.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"But I think for Jamie Raskin, it's really like, his service in the Congress has almost become like inextricably attached to this sad personal trauma he's had," Gaetz proclaimed. "And I do think it clouds his judgment and you could see that, that very darkness and that pain manifest on Thursday in a way that's not particularly relevant to the challenges that we've talked about, but it might be deeply relevant to what he's going through. And the country shouldn't have to go through all that with him."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Greene then stated the quiet part out loud.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"Well my goodness, it's a horrible thing, what he went through, but it doesn't change the fact of, uh, his political beliefs," she said, "and</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> I believe he's </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">a communist</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> and I believe what he's doing on the January 6th Committee is completely wrong."</span></b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watch below via PatriotTakes:</font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div><div><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 19.2px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 19.2px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">several times muscle car plows into activists?</font></p><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 19.2px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 19.2px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/desantis-2653522421/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/desantis-2653522421/</a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Florida </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">man</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> was arrested and charged with multiple felonies last Thursday after intentionally performing a "burnout" with his car over a Pride-themed mural painted on an intersection in Delray Beach, <b>opening him up to become the first person charged under the state's controversial new "anti-riot" bill pushed by Republicans.</b></span></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed the bill meant to crack down on protests in the wake of the George Floyd uprisings earlier this year, just as the trial against former Minneapolis police officer Derick Chauvin was wrapping up. The legislation was heavily opposed by <a href="https://www.clickorlando.com/news/florida/2021/04/22/florida-gov-ron-desantis-sued-over-states-new-anti-riot-law/'" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">first amendment activist</a>s and Black lawmakers in the state. Now a young Trump supporter may be the first person entangled by the new law.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Alexander Jerich, 20, is accused of deliberately making skid marks across a mural meant to commemorate the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting, in his Chevrolet Silverado PICKUP TRUCK</b>. According to <a href="https://www.wpbf.com/article/delray-beach-pride-crosswalk-vandalized-arrest/36755336" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><u>WPBF</u></a>, Delray Beach Police have since charged Jerich with criminal mischief, reckless driving, and evidence of prejudice. Just prior to the incident, <b>Jerich was allegedly participating in a pro-Trump rally in celebration of the former president's birthday that was put together by the Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A witness <a href="https://www.wftv.com/news/trending/florida-man-arrested-vandalism-after-doing-burnout-through-pride-street-mural/Q5IQH6FBTZD7DM6WG6TFJMEGHI/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><u>told</u></a> the police that heard someone holler "tear up that gay intersection" before Jerich shortly defaced the mural with his car. The incident was also caught <a href="https://twitter.com/cbs12/status/1407662216711753730?s=12" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><u>on video</u></a>, which allowed the police to identify Jerich, who turned himself in, through a license plate search.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rand Hoch, founder and president of the Palm Beach Human Rights Council, <a href="http://miami.cbslocal.com/2021/06/18/man-charged-vandalism-delray-beach-lgbtq-pride-crosswalk/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><u>told</u></a> WFOR that Jerich carried out "<b>a deliberate act of violence </b>against the LGBTQ community. We've made such progress here in the last 30 years on LGBTQ issues. To see someone do something like this took me by surprise."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Kudos to the Delray Beach Police Department for swiftly identifying and arresting this hateful criminal," Hoch added.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The city had just unveiled the mural two days before the incident, according to law enforcement, and paid north of $16,000 for its creation.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Jerich could now be subject to heightened penalties imposed by Florida's new GOP-backed "anti-riot" law </span><a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/04/21/racist-unconstitutional-and-anti-democratic-fl-passes-anti-protest-law-ahead-of-chauvin-verdict_partner/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><u>signed</u></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> back in April. As WPEC's Sam Kerrigan </span><a href="https://twitter.com/cbs12/status/1407662216711753730?s=12" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><u>noted</u></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">: "When it comes to this case, the key here is that this</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);"> <b>new anti-riot law</b> also stops someone from damaging historic property or a memorial.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> And under the law, this new Pride mural in Delray Beach, here, <b>qualifies as a memorial because it's dedicated to the lives lost in the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando."</b></span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hoch, too, suggested that Jerich could be charged under the new GOP measure.</font></p><div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="font-weight: 700; 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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/is-trump-a-fascist/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/is-trump-a-fascist/</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hours before a mob of far-right insurrectionists — including members of the Proud Boys, QAnon supporters, White nationalists and members of various militia groups — violently stormed the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, then-President Donald Trump held a <b>"Save America" rally in Washington, D.C.'s Ellipse Park. Trump and his allies showed a propaganda video at that event, and according to Yale University professor Jason Stanley — author of the book "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them" — that video was <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/74504/movie-at-the-ellipse-a-study-in-fascist-propaganda/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">full of fascist themes</a>.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stanley has made no secret of the fact that he considers Trumpism a fascist movement. In an article published by Just Security on February 4, the Yale professor identifies some of the overtly fascist themes in the video presented at the Save America Rally.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"On January 6," Stanley explains, "Trump supporters gathered at a rally at Washington D.C.'s Ellipse Park, regaled by various figures from Trumpworld, including Donald Trump, Jr. and Rudy Giuliani. Directly following Giuliani's speech, the organizers played a video. To a scholar of fascist propaganda, well-versed in the history of the National Socialists' pioneering use of videos in political propaganda, it was clear, watching it, what dangers it portended. In it, we see themes and tactics that history warns pose a violent threat to liberal democracy. Given the aims of fascist propaganda — to incite and mobilize — the events that followed were predictable."</font></p><div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3d619c76ae0bb94e8ec177c600ae18d5" id="aec08" style=""><div class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: flex; max-width: 550px; width: 550px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><blockquote class="twitter-custom-tweet twitter-tweet" data-partner="rebelmouse" data-lazy-tweet-id="1357322129977524227" data-twitter-tweet-id="1357322129977524227" data-twitter-extracted-i1612543483650385016="true" style="margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; width: 602.543px; background: rgb(245, 245, 245);"><div style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NEW A movie was shown at the Ellipse on 1/6. It's escaped attention. Until now. We asked a top expert on propagan… https://t.co/UzIExOEwPK</font></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Ryan Goodman (@Ryan Goodman)<a href="https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/statuses/1357322129977524227" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">1612445788.0</a></font></blockquote></div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Fascism, according to Stanley, "is a patriarchal cult of the leader,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation by a treacherous and power-hungry global elite, who have encouraged minorities to destabilize the social order as part of their plan to dominate the 'true nation,' and fold them into a global world government."</span></b>
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Such themes, Stanley stresses, were "laid bare in the video" that Trump and his allies showed at the Save America Rally.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"In it, Trump is repeatedly represented as the nation's father figure," Stanley notes. "It is laced through with i</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">mages of masculinity, and mournful loss at the hands of traitors, clearly justifying a violent restoration of recent glory."</span></b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the video, Stanley adds, Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is now Senate majority leader, "is wearing a Kente cloth, an image evocative of Ku Klux Klan ideology — that Jews support Black liberation movements as a way to undermine White rule and destroy the nation. The next frame shows the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, flanked by two Jewish congressmen, Representatives (Jerry) Nadler and (Adam) Schiff. Pelosi, too, is controlled by Jews…. Fascist propaganda creates an awesome sense of loss, and a desire for revenge against those who are responsible."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although Stanley draws parallels between Trump's video and Nazi Germany propaganda of the 1930s, he stresses that Trumpism is a distinctly American brand of fascism.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stanley explains, "Fascism is not an ideology consigned to Europe. Black American intellectuals from W.E.B. Du Bois to Toni Morrison have spoken of American fascism. America has a long history of anti-Semitism similar to Nazi anti-Semitism, central to the ideology not just of the Ku Klux Klan, but to Henry Ford's 'The International Jew.' In its American version, communist Jews supposedly use Black liberation movements, control of Hollywood, and labor unions to destroy the nation in the service of a global elite. We should not be surprised at all by the rise of a fascist movement in the United States."</font></p><div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><li class="from-your-siteitem"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2017/05/trump-really-building-fascist-regime-or-it-all-just-showmanship-either-way-threat/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: lighter; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Whether Trump Is a Fascist or Just a Clown, He's a Threat to Our ... ›</a></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/nyu-fascism-expert-explains-the-next-moves-in-trumps-authoritarian-playbook-hes-a-fundamental-break-from-american-tradition/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: lighter; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">NYU fascism expert explains the next moves in Trump's ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-and-fascism/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: lighter; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Fascism: As polling turns against him, Trump lays groundwork for ... ›</a></li></ul><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</font></div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><li class="around-the-webitem"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.vox.com/22225472/fascism-definition-trump-fascist-examples" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: lighter; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">What is fascism? And is Donald Trump a fascist? - Vox ›</a></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.newsweek.com/robert-paxton-trump-fascist-1560652" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: lighter; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">I've Hesitated to Call Donald Trump a Fascist. 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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">// cawthorne stolen honor, going for seal team 6 macho?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><h2 class="widgetheadline h2" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer; overflow-wrap: break-word; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="widgetheadline-text custom-post-headline" href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/tom-cotton-army-ranger/" aria-label="Tom Cotton has claimed he was an 'Army Ranger.' That's just not true" data-type="text" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" word-break="word-break" break-word="break-word" outline="outline" px="px" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Cotton has claimed he was an 'Army Ranger.' That's just not true</font></a></h2></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">=</font></div><div><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="mw-headline" id="Building_the_bomb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Building the bomb</font></span></h3><div><span class="mw-headline"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">....</font></span></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">fake name to rent truck? Kling for buddy but also Klingon warrior mega-male</font></div><div><span class="mw-headline"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">McVeigh's original plan had been to detonate the bomb at 11:00 am, but at dawn on April 19, 1995, he decided instead to destroy the building at 9:00 am.<sup id="cite_ref-AmerTerror220_62-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing#cite_note-AmerTerror220-62" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[62]</a></sup> As he drove toward the Murrah Federal Building in the Ryder truck, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">McVeigh carried with him an envelope containing pages from <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turner_Diaries" title="The Turner Diaries" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">The Turner Diaries</a></i> – a fictional account of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_supremacy" title="White supremacy" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">white supremacists</a> who ignite a revolution by blowing up the FBI headquarters at 9:15 one morning using a truck bomb.<sup id="cite_ref-TimeWeight_24-4" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing#cite_note-TimeWeight-24" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[24]</a></sup> McVeigh wore a printed T-shirt with the motto of the Commonwealth of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia" title="Virginia" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Virginia</a>, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic_semper_tyrannis" title="Sic semper tyrannis" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Sic semper tyrannis</a></i> ("Thus always to tyrants", according to legend what Brutus said as he <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Julius_Caesar" title="Assassination of Julius Caesar" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">assassinated Julius Caesar</a>, also claimed to have been shouted by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilkes_Booth" title="John Wilkes Booth" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">John Wilkes Booth</a> immediately after the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Abraham_Lincoln" title="Assassination of Abraham Lincoln" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">assassination of Abraham Lincoln</a>) and "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" (from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson" title="Thomas Jefferson" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Thomas Jefferson</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">).</span><sup id="cite_ref-AmerTerror226_36-1" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing#cite_note-AmerTerror226-36" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[36]</a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> He also carried an envelope full of revolutionary materials that included a </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">bumper sticker with the slogan, falsely attributed<sup id="cite_ref-SpuriousJefferson_63-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing#cite_note-SpuriousJefferson-63" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[63]</a></sup> to Thomas Jefferson, "When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is <b>tyranny</b>.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">" Underneath, McVeigh had written, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"Maybe now, there will be </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">liberty!</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">" with a hand-copied quote by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke" title="John Locke" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">John Locke</a> asserting that a man has a right to kill someone who takes away his liberty</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><sup id="cite_ref-TimeWeight_24-5" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing#cite_note-TimeWeight-24" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[24]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-AmerTerror228_64-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing#cite_note-AmerTerror228-64" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[64]</a></sup></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">McVeigh entered Oklahoma City at 8:50 am.<sup id="cite_ref-AmerTerror229_65-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing#cite_note-AmerTerror229-65" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[65]</a></sup> At 8:57 am, the Regency Towers Apartments' lobby security camera that had recorded Nichols's pickup truck three days earlier recorded the Ryder truck heading towards the Murrah Federal Building.<sup id="cite_ref-RTASecurityRyder_66-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing#cite_note-RTASecurityRyder-66" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[66]</a></sup> At the same moment, McVeigh lit the five-minute fuse. Three minutes later, still a block away, he lit the two-minute fuse<b>. He parked the Ryder truck in a drop-off zone situated under the building's day-care center,</b> exited and locked the truck. As he headed to his getaway vehicle, he dropped the keys to the truck a few blocks away.<sup id="cite_ref-HomelandStudyKeys1042_67-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing#cite_note-HomelandStudyKeys1042-67" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[67]</a></sup></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">...</p></span></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mocking the womanly wimp squishes:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1020 tom d</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an all-too-literal fashion, The Donald is indeed proving to be history's "fire and fury" president.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And don't for a moment think that there was no warning about the over-the-top burning now underway in this country. After all, in 2019, parts of </font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Australia</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> were singed to a crisp in a way never before seen, killing at least 25 humans and possibly more than </span><a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/more-one-billion-animals-have-been-killed-australias-wildfires-scientist-estimates-180973926/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">a billion</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> animals. </span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And that country, too, was headed by a climate-change denier, a man who once </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/09/scott-morrison-brings-coal-to-question-time-what-fresh-idiocy-is-this" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">brought</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> a piece of coal to parliament and handed it around while</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);"> soothingly telling other legislators, "Don't be afraid, don't be scared."</span></b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">https://yyy.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/09/scott-morrison-brings-coal-to-question-time-what-fresh-idiocy-is-this</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> In addition, in recent years, the Arctic (of all places) has been <a href="https://www.livescience.com/zombie-wildfires-burn-arctic.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">smoking and burning</a> in an unprecedented fashion, heating its permafrost and releasing staggering amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Oh, and this June, the temperature in a <b>small town in Siberia <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/climate-new-high-temperature-heat-record-arctic-siberia-context" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">crossed</a> the 100-degree mark for the first time.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>By the way, Russia, too, is run by a leader who <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-24/putin-is-finally-worried-about-climate-change" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">until recently</a> was a climate denier. </b>I mean, what is it about the urge of so many of us in such a crisis to support those dedicated to quite literally destroying this planet as a livable place for... well, us? (Hey there, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-bolsonaro-amazon-fires-climate-change-united-nations_n_5d80eaa7e4b077dcbd64bd42" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Jair Bolsonaro</a>!)</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">1st debate</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">dominance, power, force, louder <b>man</b>splain;  BSdozer, biggest mask i have ever seen; clearly he had a couple lines (of attack memorized, like vet deaths, but ovetrall goal/strat was to flood the zone/bs disraction, targeting joe's stutter?  had to get away for trump disasterous record of (in)action and the fact that he does not know anything, much less how gov't works</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trumps-debate-performance-showcased-the-only-thing-his-cult-cares-about/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trumps-debate-performance-showcased-the-only-thing-his-cult-cares-about/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-is-using-the-tricks-of-reality-tv-against-a-and-its-not-going-well/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-is-using-the-tricks-of-reality-tv-against-a-and-its-not-going-well/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">i</font><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">t’s hardly new or revelatory to say this, but it’s critical to remember the role that “The Apprentice” played in turning Donald Trump, a notoriously bad businessman with a string of bankruptcies, into an American icon of capitalist success. Everything from careful editing to set designers giving the dreary Trump Organization offices a glow-up came together to create the illusion of success where only failure and mediocrity had been before.</span></font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>It was an experience so profound for Trump that he did something highly unusual: He learned something. He absorbed the idea that a well-constructed illusion of competence gets you all the benefits of being accomplished, without having to do the hard work of actually achieving anything.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unfortunately, it was a lesson we are all paying the price for now.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Thursday evening, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/health/coronavirus-testing-cdc.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">the New York Times published an exposé</a> about how the Trump White House forced the CDC to publish <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/08/28/democrats-go-after-top-trump-officials-following-reports-of-changed-cdc-testing-guidelines_partner/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">dangerously misleading coronavirus testing recommendations </a>on its website.  t<span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">he new “guidance said it was not necessary to test people without symptoms of Covid-19 even if they had been exposed to the virus,” Apoorva Mandavilli writes, noting that actual public health experts at the agency strenuously objected because the virus is often spread by asymptomatic people and vigorous testing is crucial to preventing that.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s not hard to see that Trump’s reality TV instincts fueled this effort to discourage coronavirus testing. <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/04/22/trump-doesnt-want-coronavirus-testing-his-instinct-is-always-to-hide-the-truth/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Trump has made clear</a> <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/06/23/donald-trump-thinks-coronavirus-testing-is-a-plot-to-destroy-him--and-no-hes-not-kidding/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">from the beginning of this pandemic</a> that he would prefer to leave as many coronavirus cases on the editing-room floor as possible, and he thinks the best way to do that is to keep people from getting tested. Trump truly believes that the best way to get coronavirus numbers down is not by preventing people from getting infected in the first place, but by hiding the true number of cases and juking the stats.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even during this week’s town hall hosted by ABC News, Trump asserted this belief, claiming that the only reason the U.S. has more 20% of the world’s coronavirus cases (despite having only 4.5% of the world’s population) is that “we do much more testing.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, the <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">U.S. also has more than 20% of the world’s deaths</a>, a fact that exposes that Trump’s instincts aren’t just immoral, but wrong. Those dead Americans tell the real story of what’s happening, and no amount of trying to monkey with the numbers is going to change that.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump is also playing the reality TV game with the vaccine. He has been dropping hints for weeks, reality TV-style, that there will be a shocking and heartwarming twist right before the election, which he clearly views as the penultimate episode of this “season,” in which he will dramatically unveil the vaccine that will save us all and also ensure his re-election. He’s even <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-asks-states-to-be-ready-for-vaccine-by-november-11599075477" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">used CDC resources to prop up this insinuation that the big vaccine reveal is coming</a>, right in the nick of time.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“You could have a very big surprise coming up,” Trump said in a press conference last week.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“We’re going to have a vaccine very soon, maybe even before a <b>very special date. You know what date I’m talking about,”</b> he added. <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-makes-rosy-vaccine-timing-front-center-campaign/story?id=72877119" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Gee, I have no idea. What date could he possibly mean?</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s doubtful that Trump cares, one way or another, that he’s making empty promises. In reality TV, it’s normal to hype some big revelation to lure in viewers for the next episode, only to produce some anticlimactic nothing-burger. All that matters is sucking people in, not delivering them what was promised.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s playing the same game here. He doesn’t care that there won’t be anything close to a readily available vaccine this year. He just wants to hype that idea long enough to somehow scrape out an election victory, legitimate or otherwise, at which point he’ll not only abandon the idea entirely, but most likely interfere with the process of getting one safely on the market.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But of course, trying to deceive people about their own health and lives isn’t just reality TV sleaze. It’s a deeply immoral gambit that appears to have given the CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield, a minor crisis of conscience. At least Redfield he wasn’t willing to lie to Congress flat out, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-redfield-vaccine-timetable/2020/09/17/155ce8ce-f90f-11ea-a275-1a2c2d36e1f1_story.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">and told the obvious truth that</a> even if a vaccine is approved this year, it probably won’t be widely available until the middle of 2021. He also encouraged mask-wearing, even though Trump seems to think every mask applied to a face is <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/06/18/trump-suggests-some-people-wear-face-masks-as-part-of-an-effort-to-damage-him-politically-partner/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">an eff-you personally directed at him</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump, as usual, reacted poorly to someone trying to pierce his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-redfield-vaccine-timetable/2020/09/17/155ce8ce-f90f-11ea-a275-1a2c2d36e1f1_story.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">poorly constructed illusion of competent leadership</a>. He responded by claiming that Redfield had “made a mistake” and offered “incorrect information.”</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is just another example of Trump treating the leaders of important government institutions not as if they were public servants, but as if they were TV producers whose main job is to clean up Trump’s image, cover for his ignorant mistakes and odious statements, and present him to the public as the brilliant statesman he absolutely is not.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Much has been written about the hard work that it took for the team on “The Apprentice” to conceal Trump’s repugnant personality and mediocrity as a businessman.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“What we did, that was a scam,” Bill Pruitt, a former producer on “The Apprentice,” <a href="https://people.com/politics/apprentice-creators-donald-trump-scam/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">said in the Netflix documentary “The Confidence Man,”</a> which explored how the people behind that show used TV magic to make Trump seem smart and accomplished.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“If you walked around Trump’s actual office in Trump Tower you’d see the wood’s chipped, and what’s that smell?” Pruitt added, noting, “It wasn’t the empire we were going to have to sell to people. We needed to gussy it up a bit. And we did.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Most of us knew he was a fake,” <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/07/how-mark-burnett-resurrected-donald-trump-as-an-icon-of-american-success" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Jonathan Braun, another producer, told The New Yorker</a>. “But we made him out to be the most important person in the world. It was like making the court jester the king.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/31/the-tv-that-created-donald-trump" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">In a 2017 essay about “The Apprentice,”</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum wrote that “the Trump of ‘The Apprentice’ receives endless praise, even behind his back. All scandal and debt are erased; </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Trump’s combative streak is alchemized into Daddy’s tough love.”</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For Trump, being a fake success is better than being a real success. For one thing, it’s less work. For another, it feels like cheating the system, and <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/08/04/trumps-base-loved-that-he-was-a-liar-and-a-cheat--but-now-its-coming-back-to-bite-them/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Trump loves to believe he’s doing that</a>. So even with the death toll from the pandemic closing in on 200,000 Americans, Trump still clings to this notion that he doesn’t need to actually <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">do anything about it</em>. He just wants someone to come in and edit reality to make it <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">look</em> like he’s doing something.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While it was undeniably hard work for the team at “The Apprentice” to present this false image of Trump-the-competent-businessman, they at least had the benefit of being able to contain the illusion within the rectangular frame of the TV screen.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The real world, it turns out, is too big to be captured and controlled in an editing bay. Trump’s increasingly futile efforts to make the pandemic disappear through reality-TV antics keep running up into the biological realities of people who get sicker and sicker, wind up in hospital ICUs and then on respirators, and then die. Trump can’t hide that his management of this crisis has been a total failure, and on some lizard brain level, he seems to understand that he’s unpopular. That’s why his next big gambit is to try to replace the real election, which he would almost certainly lose, <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/09/03/trump-has-a-plan-to-steal-the-election--in-fact-he-has-a-bunch-of-them/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">with a fake one where he’s declared the winner</a>.</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">---</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/mass-delusion-why-trumps-followers-believe-their-leader-has-given-their-lives-meaning/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/mass-delusion-why-trumps-followers-believe-their-leader-has-given-their-lives-meaning/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">w<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ithin the next few days, we will pass a grisly benchmark: more than 200,000 Americans dead from the coronavirus.</span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/04/health/us-coronavirus-friday/index.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"> Public health experts predict that number may rise to 400,000 by the end of the year</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. If the Trump administration pursues a “herd immunity” strategy, where the disease is allowed to spread unchecked throughout the country, then millions of people may die.</span></font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/15/herd-mentality-trump-again-asserts-coronavirus-disappear/5812463002/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">During Tuesday night’s ABC News town hall broadcast, Donald Trump admitted that allowing the coronavirus to infect the American people en masse is his preferred strategy</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is clear that wearing a mask that covers one’s mouth and nose is the easiest way to slow the transmission of the coronavirus. If a national mask mandate had been instituted across the United States in March, many thousands of lives would have been spared, and the country’s economy might not now be in ruins.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Why then do so many Americans refuse to wear masks during this pandemic?</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Social scientists and other researchers have reached several preliminary conclusions.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">People with lower cognitive abilities <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8519169/Real-covidiots-People-refuse-wear-mask-lower-cognitive-ability-new-study-shows.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">find it difficult to follow directions about when to wear a mask</a> and when it is appropriate and safe not to do so. Moreover, when the rules about wearing a mask are inconsistent, it becomes even more difficult for people with lower cognitive abilities to wear masks consistently and correctly.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Researchers have also found that people who exhibit the “dark triad” of behavior and personality traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy) <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/narcissists-psychopaths-face-mask-requirement-mandate-social-distancing-covid-19-coronavirus-1519732" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">are also more likely not to wear masks</a> as compared to others.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/dudes-who-wont-wear-masks/613375/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><b>Among men,</b> a refusal to wear a mask is connected to a sense of fragile and embattled masculinity</a>, in which <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/05/23/on-trump-masks-and-masculinity-what-the-presidents-bare-face-really-reveals/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">masks are viewed as being “weak” and “feminine” and “not cool.”</a> For such men who lack confidence in their sense of self and overall identity, not wearing a mask is a selfish act which they view as strength and perhaps as evidence that they are “alpha males” who can win a primitive test of “survival of the fittest.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Scientific American, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-condoms-of-the-face-why-some-men-refuse-to-wear-masks/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Emily Willingham suggests that masks are also viewed as a “condom of the face”</a> by men who are afflicted with “toxic masculinity”:</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, they go maskless. In doing so, they expect that their masculine ideology group will accept them, respect them and not reject them.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The irony is that these men think they’re manifesting the ideal of the rugged, individualistic American, when their refusal really traces in part to a fear of what other people will think about them. Drunk on a toxic brew of self-interest and that masculine ideology, they mistake their refusal to protect themselves and others as a mark of character when instead, it’s a mark on their characters.</font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Moving from the general to the specific, what is known about the relationship between wearing a mask during the coronavirus pandemic and a person’s political values and beliefs?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unsurprisingly, political partisanship and support for Donald Trump and the Republican Party is highly correlated with refusal to wear a mask and opposition to other public health initiatives which are intended to stop the pandemic.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Such thinking and behavior also reflect the fact that <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/22/republicans-remain-far-less-likely-than-democrats-to-view-covid-19-as-a-major-threat-to-public-health/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Trump supporters, Republicans, and other conservatives exist in a media echo chamber which has assured them that the pandemic is a “hoax” or “fake news”</a> crafted by liberals and intended to hurt the Trump administration</b>. As has been repeatedly shown by media scholars and other researchers, the right-wing echo chamber is a system ruled by epistemic closure in which incorrect information, outright lies and conspiracy theories dominate. As is often cited, viewers of Fox News actually know less about empirical reality and the world as it relates to current events than people who watch no news programs at all.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3562796" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">politicized quality of wearing a mask is the result of extreme asymmetrical polarization in which movement conservatives, leading Republicans, right-wing news media, white right-wing evangelical churches, and other influential figures on the right have politicized broad areas of public and private life</a> — to the point where basic questions of public health and the common good are transformed into partisan issues of personal identity and the self.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump leads an authoritarian cult of personality. Given that, his ability to influence the thinking and behavior of his followers is extreme.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s repeated suggestions that his followers should not wear masks, should feel free to ignore social distancing rules and attend his rallies, and should even take up arms against Democratic officials such as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan have a direct and measurable impact on public health by encouraging the spread of the coronavirus.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Trump’s power over his followers reveals something much more dangerous and troubling about American society than “just” the coronavirus and its season of death — and even more than the underlying social inequalities and pathologies that made this pandemic so much worse than it should have been.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Beginning in the 1980s, American conservatism has morphed into a type of religious politics in which fact and reason have been subsumed by faith. This manifests in many ways: anti-intellectualism and anti-rationality, racism and white supremacy, hostile sexism and misogyny, a worship of ignorance and greed, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/09/us/evangelicals-trump-christianity.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">right-wing Christian fundamentalism</a>, a disregard for truth and empirical reality, and contempt for expert knowledge.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At its root, faith is a belief in that which cannot be proven by empirical or other ordinary means. The Republican Party’s policies on taxes, the environment, social inequality, education, public health and other issues (tax cuts pay for themselves!) are rooted in faith. They are easily refuted and disproved by the empirical data. In practice, that makes no difference to those who are true believers.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If today’s American conservatism is a type of religious politics, then Trumpism is one of its most dangerous sects and a de facto cult. In the age of Trump, refusing the mask is a form of sacrament, a political-religious symbol that signifies loyalty to Donald Trump and his movement.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Authoritarianism and other fake populist movements gather power through their ability to transfer the leader into a type of godhead, an extension of an embattled and fearful self that is made immortal through loyalty to the Great Leader. Moreover, authoritarianism — and fascism in particular — is a type of <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/03/27/trumps-death-cult-finally-says-it-time-to-kill-the-useless-eaters-for-capitalism/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">death cult where the followers will willingly sacrifice themselves for the greatness of the Leader.</a> <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/06/03/novelist-and-screenwriter-aleksandar-hemon-on-the-magnitude-of-catastrophe-facing-america/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Trump’s followers, as their predecessors did in Germany, Italy and elsewhere, are prepared to kill or die for their leader.</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the heart of Trumpism is a form of existential angst, what is a fundamental crisis of meaning and human value.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Writing at the Metta Center for Nonviolence, <a href="https://wagingnonviolence.org/metta/2020/02/stop-cult-trump-satisfy-human-need-meaning/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">UC Berkeley professor emeritus Michael Nagler explains this</a>:</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Because of my background in ancient religion and culture I have special reason to be alarmed by the frequent references to the psychopathology of the president and his followers as a “cult.” Not that I find these references misleading — on the contrary, they contain a truth that’s more dangerous than we may realize.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I’m old enough to remember “the Jonestown massacre” of November, 1978, in which some 900 Americans committed what they called “revolutionary suicide” at the behest of a deranged demagogue. After the horrific event sunk in, I could not stop asking myself, “How could 900 presumably educated, mature adults, poison themselves — and in some cases their own children — and do it for such an obvious egotist? What was wrong with them? What were they lacking?”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Strangely no one seemed to be asking this obvious question.</font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The question, Nagler continues, “has come back to haunt us with greater urgency. But this time it’s not just a circle of deluded followers — it’s the whole country that’s at the mercy of an egotistical demagogue. </b>… And the cup he’s offering is not cyanide but ecocide: the extinction of all life on earth. … As we know from the nightmare of Nazism, when the ‘leader’ supports the delusions, the conspiracy theories of a deluded element in the society, as the current president is doing, the combination can reach extremely dangerous proportions.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the Wire, <a href="https://thewire.in/world/hollow-man-in-the-confederacy-of-dunces-the-phenomenon-of-donald-j-trump" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">cultural theorist Sibaji Bandyopadhyay explained the role of collective narcissism and sadism</a> in attracting profoundly damaged people to neofascist movements and political cult leaders like Trump:</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is therefore quite feasible to imagine that at certain historical conjunctures there may arise situations in which the vacuous ego of one megalomaniac succeeds in superimposing itself on many an ego by the conduit of primary narcissism. And indeed, the ‘art’ involved in the deal offered by Donald Trump is squarely predicated upon what may be termed transactional narcissism. In this scenario, to use the formula of Freud, people accept Trump as their “high ego-ideal” and “exchange [their] narcissism for homage to [it]”. In short, it is not a tale of isolated, solitary self-love but that of interdependence and reciprocity: rising to the level of being a fully-exposed syndrome, Trump’s Other-abjuring narcissistic persona both feeds on and flares up the mostly latent similar sort of narcissism of the mostly forgotten masses.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But, this is not all.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whoever courts an ego-ideal, secretly pines for the tantalizing interplay of pleasure and pain. By transferring primary narcissism to the safe-keeping of some supposed strongman, more often than not, s/he automatically takes on the role of being passively active in some theatre of sadomasochism.</font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As journalist Bob Woodward has recently revealed, Donald Trump knew from the beginning that the coronavirus was lethal, not a hoax. Trump simply chose to lie to the American people about the pandemic, as well as to actively sabotage relief efforts, and in doing so committed a crime against humanity. Trump’s political cult members are not moved by these facts. They continue to gather at his command at rallies where thousands huddle together unmasked to bask in the glorious revelation of his presence. At Trump’s rally last Sunday in Nevada, thousands of his followers actually ran into the arena, as though they were on fire with joy.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was perhaps too irresistible to liberal schadenfreude, this image of Trumpists enthusiastically running into a pandemic petri dish as though it was the healing fountain at Lourdes.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/carl-bernstein-homicidal-trump_n_5f601967c5b6e27db131af04?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Journalist Carl Bernstein</a> told CNN’s Anderson Cooper,  “We are witnessing a homicidal president convening ― purposefully ― a homicidal assembly to help him get re-elected as president of the United States instead of protecting the health and welfare of the people of the United States, including his own supporters whose lives he is willing to sacrifice.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To those outside <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/04/07/cult-expert-steven-hassan-trumps-mind-control-cult-now-faces-an-existential-crisis/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">the Trump cult</a> such behavior makes no sense and is just further proof that <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/07/13/dr-john-gartner-donald-trump-is-the-most-successful-bio-terrorist-in-human-history/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Trump’s followers are human “deplorables” – in this example fulfilling their role as human bioweapons for Trumpism.</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But such an analysis ignores the power of Trumpism and today’s version of “conservatism” as a type of religious politics. Trump’s followers run toward death because he and his movement are providing them with emotional nourishment and meaning in their lives.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump’s neofascist movement will not disappear even if the Great Leader is voted out of office on Election Day and decides to step down. Such people will just latch onto another American fascist and demagogue, in whatever form he or she may take</b>. Decent Americans may see the Trumpists and others of their ilk as tainted, but they themselves feel touched and empowered. In living the faith of their right-wing political religion, Trump’s followers have found “salvation” through a leader who is simultaneously “like them” but is also a type of semi-divine prophet whose example they aspire to imitate or emulate.</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/evangelical-explains-how-the-movement-swooned-for-donald-trump-and-betrayed-its-own-ideal-of-masculinity/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/evangelical-explains-how-the-movement-swooned-for-donald-trump-and-betrayed-its-own-ideal-of-masculinity/</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Rea salon</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>F</b><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">our years in, people are still struggling to understand the overwhelming support for Donald Trump that has come from what should have been its least likely source: American evangelicals.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">They</em> belong to a socially conservative movement that embraces traditional Christian morality and family values. Their leaders have loudly insisted, especially during the Clinton years, that the moral character of our president deeply matters. They take as their highest infallible authority a Bible whose central themes include God’s love for the poor and the vulnerable, and a demand to love one’s neighbor — even one’s enemies — to the point of great personal sacrifice.</span></font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">He,</em> by contrast, is a man whose lifestyle displays little regard for Christian morality or family values. His dishonesty and infidelity have been almost daily news items since before he took office. His reputation for sexual predation, bullying, narcissism and a host of other sins and vices antithetical to Christianity has only continued to grow since he took office. His most notable advice for interacting with half the human population is “grab ’em by the pussy”. Who could have predicted such an alliance?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2003, philosopher Daniel Dennett wrote an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/12/opinion/the-bright-stuff.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">op-ed in </a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/12/opinion/the-bright-stuff.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The New York Times</a><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </em>lamenting the discrimination faced by atheists in the United States, particularly in politics. Dennett’s lament could be echoed by members of a variety of religious minorities. But within evangelical circles Dennett’s lament seemed bizarrely disconnected from the truth<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">. </em>For the dominant narrative among evangelicals is just the opposite: <b>Christians are persecuted;</b> religious freedoms are being curtailed; discrimination against Christians and their faith is rampant; their values are under siege by hostile forces in American culture aiming to promote an anti-Christian agenda. (Dennett himself had said in print elsewhere that “safety demands that religions be put in cages … when absolutely necessary,” and he wrote as if theologically conservative Baptists, among others, were prime candidates for caging. This was just fuel for the fire.)</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As an evangelical myself, for a long time I mostly embraced the narrative of embattlement. In 2016, however, shortly before the presidential election, I found myself crashing into it. I was president of the Society of Christian Philosophers, a professional organization formed in the late 1970s for the purpose of promoting fellowship among those who self-identify as both philosophers and Christians. There was an incident that fall in which a presenter at one of our conferences made some inflammatory remarks about members of the LGBTQ community. The remarks went beyond the sorts of moral objections that familiarly arise out of traditional Christian sexual morality, and seemed to arise out of sheer bigotry. They made their way onto social media and drew predictable (and justified) condemnation. As president, I felt compelled to respond.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">i wrote a </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/runloganrun/posts/10209140940855184?pnref=story" target="blank" rel="noopener" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">public post on Facebook</a><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"> in which I expressed “regret for the hurt that was caused” by the remarks, and emphasized the SCP’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. I can’t say exactly what I expected to come of this, but what I certainly did not expect was the flood of outright hate mail that I received rapidly in the wake of it </span><em times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding">from fellow Christians</em><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">, some signed with phrases like “In the truth of Christ.” Several minor news outlets wrote about the incident. Conservative columnist Rod Dreher </span><a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/society-christian-philosophers-richard-swinburne/" target="blank" rel="noopener" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">wrote an </a><a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/society-christian-philosophers-richard-swinburne/" target="blank" rel="noopener" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">article</a><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"> condemning me. Evangelical leader Al Mohler condemned my remarks on his weekly podcast.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">How could such a frankly anodyne expression of regret and concern for others provoke such anger, especially within a <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Christian </em>community? The answer, I learned in conversation with colleagues who had signed a petition demanding an apology from me, was that I had triggered the evangelical sense of embattlement. (That’s my gloss, not their words.) The fact that it was not <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">perfectly OK </em>to make the sorts of inflammatory statements about the LGBTQ community that this person had made left a lot of traditionally-minded Christian philosophers feeling persecuted. They felt unsafe in what they took to be a kind of refuge from an academic culture hostile to them and their views.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Never mind Jesus’ own declaration that we are blessed when persecuted for his name’s sake; the threat to unfettered freedom of expression that had been raised by my expression of concern for the LGBTQ people in our midst was, for many Christian philosophers, intolerable. This despite the fact that, demographically speaking, straight white males are overwhelmingly in the majority in the Society of Christian Philosophers, and traditional Christian beliefs are featured in and defended at just about every conference that it sponsors.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This sense of embattlement goes a long way toward explaining why evangelicals might want to cozy up to powerful political figures. But it still leaves us wondering: Why Trump? There is another, more important piece to the puzzle.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In her recent book, “<a href="https://bookshop.org/a/2464/9781631495731" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation</a>,” Calvin University historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez argues compellingly for the conclusion that <b>evangelical infatuation with Trump stems in large part from the “cult of masculinity” that American evangelicalism has both cultivated and succumbed to over the past century. What evangelicals wanted, and found, in Trump was not just a (potentially) powerful ally, but a <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">man </em>of a certain sort — a political strongman whose brash and swaggering demeanor made it clear not only <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">that</em>, but <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">how </em>he would wield power on their behalf.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He was a man who would “tell it like it is” — code for something like “confront people and issues aggressively<b>, without concern for the usual norms </b>of tact, diplomacy, respect, and concern for the feelings of others.” He would “turn over the tables” — code for something like “deliberately upset or circumvent the usual rules and protocols for getting things done in Washington in order to push his own agenda and the agenda of supporters.” In displaying this demeanor while at the same time embracing a socially conservative and superficially Christian-friendly political platform,<b> he sent a clear message. He would deal with evangelicalism’s “oppressors” and cultural enemies in the manner of a political John Wayne, James Bond or Jack Bauer. He would be a hypermasculine tough guy, a modern day Goliath, who would fight on their side in the culture wars.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here, too, my experience with the Society of Christian Philosophers controversy is instructive. Predictably, in the wake of my unimpressively mild expression of support for LGBTQ persons in our society, many called me a “liberal.” (I’m quite sure that the day <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">before </em>I posted that message, most of my academic friends would have described me as quite conservative). Some Christian philosophers puzzlingly called me a Nazi. But the slur that was most striking, and now seems most interesting, was this: some called me a “cuck.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A cuck</b>, I discovered by consulting the Urban Dictionary online, is a “weak, effeminate, inadequate man.” (It is apparently derived from “cuckold” which, of course, means something else entirely.) What was wanted by my critics, although I didn’t fully understand this at the time, was someone who would lead the Society of Christian Philosophers in a certain, decidedly masculine way — an intellectual John Wayne who would put the academic persecutors of the Christian faith in their place. A leader who instead sought to look out for the feelings of vulnerable minorities and to ensure that the Society of Christian Philosophers would be seen as a welcoming and hospitable space for <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">all </em>of its members, and not just the straight white male conservative majority, was not just manifesting the wrong set of values; he was effete, insufficiently masculine, an inadequate man.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a 2012 address entitled “<a href="https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/the-frank-and-manly-mr-ryle-the-value-of-a-masculine-ministry" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Frank and Manly Mr. Ryle</a>,” the influential evangelical pastor and writer John Piper commented that “God has given Christianity a masculine feel.” Piper drew this conclusion on the basis of the fact that the Bible tends to characterize God in terms usually reserved for males (masculine pronouns, stereotypically male gender roles and so on), and the leadership of the early Church was predominantly male. But, if we may mince words for a moment, none of this really implies that Christianity, at its origins or even for much of its history, has been given a <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">masculine </em>feel in any of the contemporary senses of that term.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Notre Dame sociologist Gail Bederman has pointed out, the term “masculinity” and its cognates only came into common use in the late 19th century as changes in the economic conditions of middle-class males, together with anxieties and challenges posed by the burgeoning women’s movement, were beginning to erode and call into question previous ideals of “manliness.” The American version of the “Muscular Christianity” movement played an important role in cultivating ideals of Christian masculinity; and, as Du Mez explains, the history and development of this movement is deeply intertwined with the history and growth of evangelicalism. The 20th-century conception of masculinity which evangelicals embrace is both patriarchal and racialized (hence Du Mez’s focus on <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">white </em>evangelicalism). There is a strong case to be made for the conclusion that it is not God who has given Christianity a “masculine feel” in this sense, but instead <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">evangelicals themselves, and their 19th-century predecessors, </em>have given <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">American Christianity </em>that feel.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Jesus and John Wayne”<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </em>is a tour-de-force indictment of the white evangelical cult of masculinity. But the indictment comes not so much at the level of analysis as at the level of mere description. Although Du Mez has done a brilliant job of weaving a narrative that brings into high relief the relevant tendencies and trends within American evangelicalism, analytical commentary was not her book’s main task. Nevertheless, as has often been the case with evangelicalism’s president-hero Donald Trump, description is all it takes to indict. The picture that emerges is one according to which, time and again (and increasingly over the years), the culture and visible leadership within American evangelicalism has persistently valorized a John Wayne-style conception of masculinity, sought to empower and emulate leaders who exemplify this conception, and embraced a political agenda that supports it.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under the banners of “biblical manhood and womanhood” and the promotion of “family values,” evangelical leaders like James Dobson, Mark Driscoll, John Piper and many others have decried or sought to prevent the “sissification” of American Christianity. They have advocated a conception of gender and gender roles that idealizes masculinity and links it with power, aggression, domination and strength in all spheres — not just in the home, but in business and military culture, in politics and in foreign policy. In doing so, they have sought shelter in the arms of powerful, paradigmatically masculine politicians even when (and to some extent because) the politicians have been known to behave in ways radically contrary to the Christian values they hope to promote. Indeed, time and again, even as they have denounced their cultural and political enemies for threatening Christian family values, male evangelical leaders themselves have behaved in ways that flagrantly disregard those same values. (The <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/08/11/jerry-falwell-jr-is-the-true-face-of-white-evangelicals--and-dumping-him-changes-nothing/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">current scandal </a><a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/08/11/jerry-falwell-jr-is-the-true-face-of-white-evangelicals--and-dumping-him-changes-nothing/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">involving Jerry Falwell Jr.</a> is only the most recent in this trend.) In their pursuit of power and the promotion of a patriarchal and heterocentric value system, they have worked to defend, protect and restore power to evangelical leaders guilty of a bewildering variety of misogynistic, predatory and abusive behaviors.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many people, some evangelicals among them, have tried to explain evangelical support for Trump as a purely instrumental alliance: Although they can’t really <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">support</em>, much less <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">admire</em>, the man, they have (grudgingly?) allied with him for the sake of greater goods. They have compromised some of their values in doing so but, so the narrative goes, they have done so in fidelity to the most important Christian values. But Du Mez puts the lie to this narrative. Her book comes to a close by highlighting what, by the middle of the book, has already become entirely evident:</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Evangelicals hadn’t betrayed their values [in electing Donald Trump]. Donald Trump was the culmination of their half-century-long pursuit of a militant Christian masculinity. … He was the latest and greatest high priest of the evangelical cult of masculinity. … Within their own churches and organizations, evangelicals had elevated and revered men who exhibited the same traits of rugged and even ruthless leadership that President Trump now paraded on the national stage. Too often, they had also turned a blind eye to abuses of power in the interest of propping up patriarchal authority.</font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I grew up in evangelicalism and to some extent still comfortably inhabit that world; but, in contrast to many of the friends with whom I grew up — friends, for example, like the one whose main critique of one of the more recent “Star Wars”<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> </em>films was that he “didn’t like all the female leadership” — I have largely abandoned the conceptions of gender and gender roles that are so often, and mistakenly, held up as <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">the </em>biblical conceptions. I teach feminist philosophy, and my wife is a pastor. Far from having any concerns about the “sissification” of Christianity (a sexist term that I use here only to represent the language of people whose views I oppose), I think that the Church would benefit from <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">losing </em>whatever distinctly “masculine” feel it has been given over the course of its history and especially in the last century. Ironically, I have arrived at such “non-evangelical” values by reflecting carefully on what follows from the commitments that my evangelical teachers taught me to hold most dear: love for others, love for Jesus, reverence for God’s Word.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But I can still speak the language of the value system into which much of evangelicalism has fallen, and I still know the mindset. The mindset is one that would see a book (by a woman, no less!) making the points that Du Mez makes as an attack most likely motivated by an “anti-Christian” agenda — feminism, perhaps, or support for LGBTQ rights. It is a mindset that would have a hard time responding to mere argument with the concession that something has gone badly awry with the evangelical masculinity movement, not because reason and argument are not valued but rather because of the entrenched idea that arguments can seductively lead one astray. It is a mindset that is a deeply wary of arguments reaching conclusions different from those reached by the “respected authorities.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What then can be done? What critique could possibly be offered that might actually <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">speak </em>to people still at least partly in the grip of American evangelicalism’s cult of biblical manhood and womanhood? What is needed, it seems to me, is not so much reasoned argument as a new lens through which to view the authorities in that movement — again, folks like Dobson, Driscoll and Piper. To hold up the lens, in turn, it will help to speak the language.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So I give you “the bitch.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>As most of us know from film rather than actual prison experience, to make someone <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">your bitch </em>is to co-opt them as an ally and active supporter by way of a certain kind of oppression, usually sexual domination.</b> The man who is made another man’s bitch is held in thrall by the bitch-maker, reduced by fear or felt weakness to a position of submission to <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">and respect </em>or maybe even affection for the bitch-maker. Not just any victim of prison rape is the rapist’s bitch. Rather, the bitch is the one who <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">responds </em>to the rape by sacrificing his values, integrity and autonomy in an effort to draw near and submit to the rapist. And not every bitch is a rape-victim. Doug Stamper in “House of Cards” was President Underwood’s bitch — not because Underwood raped him (he didn’t) but because, for reasons not entirely evident in the series, Stamper found himself deeply in thrall to Underwood’s power and ruthless, domineering leadership.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Within the evangelical cult of masculinity (and its counterparts in other ideological circles, both religious and secular), the <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">bitch</em> — as the very name implies, with all of its demeaningly misogynistic implications — is not masculine, but rather feminine. Whatever power the bitch himself might hold, he is ultimately the “beta” rather than the “alpha.” He is not to be admired for his own sake; his position is not to be aspired to. What one wants, ultimately, is to be the alpha.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Importantly, there is no particular </span><em style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">value system </em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">that goes along with being an alpha; nor, indeed, is there even any particular demeanor or personality disposition that goes along with it. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The heroes of masculinity — people and characters like John Wayne, James Bond, Jack Bauer and Jack Reacher, but also just about every chivalric knight in Arthurian legend and every male hero from “Lord of the Rings” — have a diverse range of personalities, demeanors and value systems. But what they most saliently have in common, at least in the popular imagination, is a commitment to their principles and values that cannot be shaken by threat, pain or oppression, as well as a commitment to pursue their mission come-what-may, but only within the boundaries set by their principles and values. This, too, is their most salient point of contrast with the bitch, the man who responds to threat or abuse by compromising himself in submission to a bitch-maker.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2016, evangelical leaders became Trump’s bitch. They have remained so to this day.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is, of course, nothing objectionable in itself about finding a hero, looking up to a role model, or even seeking a powerful ally in effort to further one’s own legitimate aims or to liberate oneself from oppression. But a <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">man</em>, under the conception of manhood that evangelicals and their secular counterparts have embraced, will do these things only within bounds set by their most deeply held values and principles. To compromise those values and principles in submission to or defense of a strongman, whether out of fear or calculated, transactional pragmatics, is to become the strongman’s bitch.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As Du Mez points out, there are some values evangelical leaders did <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">not </em>compromise in submitting to Trump; but the values that were not compromised were simply those wrapped up in their own cult of masculinity and power-worship. Their moral values — the very values they appealed to in condemning Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewisnsky, and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s alleged corruption and deceitfulness, the very values they appeal to in condemning the sexual lives and practices of others (even as they themselves do the same and worse) — they <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">did </em>compromise in submission to Trump. In doing so, they became Trump’s bitch.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So evangelical leaders, along with others who have abased themselves before Trump in fear of their cultural enemies, stand condemned by the very value systems they proclaim. By the lights of their own conception of masculinity, they are unmanly. By the lights of the value system that valorizes “biblical manhood,” they are not to be followed. <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">They</em>, rather than those who suffer persecution for taking a stand for LGBTQ rights or for the rights of women, <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">they</em>, rather than men who stay at home to care for children so as to support the careers of their wives or who pursue careers or hobbies culturally coded as feminine, <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">they</em>, rather than those who have more stereotypically feminine personality traits and dispositions (ironically, traits like love, peace, patience, gentleness and kindness, which the Bible labels “fruits of the Spirit”), represent the true “sissification” of Christianity.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Evangelicals should not be surprised that this has happened within their ranks. They have fallen prey to what they should recognize from their own scriptures as a common temptation for God’s people. In the time of the Judges, God ruled over Israel; but Israel, according to the familiar story, was ashamed to be unlike the other nations in lacking a king. Eventually, God gave them what they wanted, delivering to them as king the finest specimen of traditional manhood in all the land, namely, Saul. But the divine commentary on Saul reported to Samuel is telling: “Do not consider his appearance or his height,” God says to Samuel as he is about to anoint Saul king, “for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So too, we might say in light of the history traced by Du Mez’s book, contemporary evangelicalism has fallen into the trap of looking at appearances rather than the heart. Forsaking the steadfast commitment to Jesus and the principles that treat love for neighbor, concern for the oppressed and the obliteration of artificial hierarchies among human beings, evangelicalism has turned submissively to the desire for a strongman to preserve them in a place of privilege and power and to provide them with public recognition as partners in the deal-making that shapes the policies of our nation. This is a posture that many secular value systems will condemn; it is a posture that is certainly condemned by what I take to be an authentically Christian value system. but the point of the present essay is that it is also a posture that is condemned by the value system of “masculine” evangelical Christianity.</font></p><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/wannabe-stormtroopers-white-men-with-guns-in-trumps-america-are-ing-the-sanctity-of-representative-democracy-and-our-american-system/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/wannabe-stormtroopers-white-men-with-guns-in-trumps-america-are-ing-the-sanctity-of-representative-democracy-and-our-american-system/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/wannabe-stormtroopers-white-men-with-guns-in-trumps-america-are-ing-the-sanctity-of-representative-democracy-and-our-american-system/" during="During" the="the" two="two" most="most" successful="successful" american="American" protest="protest" movements="movements" in="in" my="my" lifetime="lifetime" you="you" never="never" saw="saw" a="a" demonstrator="demonstrator" carrying="carrying" gun="gun" civil="civil" rights="rights" marches="marches" and="and" anti-vietnam="anti-Vietnam" sit-ins="sit-ins" employed="employed" political="political" activism="activism" songs="songs" signs="signs" to="to" spread="spread" their="their" messages="messages" even="Even" face="face" of="of" bigoted="bigoted" cops="cops" vicious="vicious" dogs="dogs" weaponized="weaponized" firehoses="firehoses" non-violent="non-violent" tactics="tactics" worked="worked" /></font><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/wannabe-stormtroopers-white-men-with-guns-in-trumps-america-are-ing-the-sanctity-of-representative-democracy-and-our-american-system/" during="During" the="the" two="two" most="most" successful="successful" american="American" protest="protest" movements="movements" in="in" my="my" lifetime="lifetime" you="you" never="never" saw="saw" a="a" demonstrator="demonstrator" carrying="carrying" gun="gun" civil="civil" rights="rights" marches="marches" and="and" anti-vietnam="anti-Vietnam" sit-ins="sit-ins" employed="employed" political="political" activism="activism" songs="songs" signs="signs" to="to" spread="spread" their="their" messages="messages" even="Even" face="face" of="of" bigoted="bigoted" cops="cops" vicious="vicious" dogs="dogs" weaponized="weaponized" firehoses="firehoses" non-violent="non-violent" tactics="tactics" worked="worked"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Vietnam War ended largely because of the unrelenting protests on college campuses, in the streets of Washington, DC, and all across America. Folk ballads and leaflets were the weapons of choice. The only guns used were the ones </font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline-color: initial; outline-width: initial; transition-duration: 0.3s; transition-property: color; cursor: pointer;">callously fired by the Ohio National Guard</span> against peaceful anti-war kids at Kent State University.</font></font></a></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/wannabe-stormtroopers-white-men-with-guns-in-trumps-america-are-ing-the-sanctity-of-representative-democracy-and-our-american-system/" during="During" the="the" two="two" most="most" successful="successful" american="American" protest="protest" movements="movements" in="in" my="my" lifetime="lifetime" you="you" never="never" saw="saw" a="a" demonstrator="demonstrator" carrying="carrying" gun="gun" civil="civil" rights="rights" marches="marches" and="and" anti-vietnam="anti-Vietnam" sit-ins="sit-ins" employed="employed" political="political" activism="activism" songs="songs" signs="signs" to="to" spread="spread" their="their" messages="messages" even="Even" face="face" of="of" bigoted="bigoted" cops="cops" vicious="vicious" dogs="dogs" weaponized="weaponized" firehoses="firehoses" non-violent="non-violent" tactics="tactics" worked="worked"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The incredible advances made in the civil rights era came not from military-style tactics by gun-toting Black militias but from the courageous and dignified men and women of color like the late <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">John Lewis</strong> and <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Rosa Parks</strong>, who sat holding only her purse on a segregated Alabama bus.</font></a></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/wannabe-stormtroopers-white-men-with-guns-in-trumps-america-are-ing-the-sanctity-of-representative-democracy-and-our-american-system/" during="During" the="the" two="two" most="most" successful="successful" american="American" protest="protest" movements="movements" in="in" my="my" lifetime="lifetime" you="you" never="never" saw="saw" a="a" demonstrator="demonstrator" carrying="carrying" gun="gun" civil="civil" rights="rights" marches="marches" and="and" anti-vietnam="anti-Vietnam" sit-ins="sit-ins" employed="employed" political="political" activism="activism" songs="songs" signs="signs" to="to" spread="spread" their="their" messages="messages" even="Even" face="face" of="of" bigoted="bigoted" cops="cops" vicious="vicious" dogs="dogs" weaponized="weaponized" firehoses="firehoses" non-violent="non-violent" tactics="tactics" worked="worked"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Conversely, the protests this spring to reopen Michigan, Oregon, and elsewhere during the coronavirus pandemic were some of the most disturbing scenes I’ve witnessed in recent history.</font></a></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font color="#000000"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/wannabe-stormtroopers-white-men-with-guns-in-trumps-america-are-ing-the-sanctity-of-representative-democracy-and-our-american-system/" during="During" the="the" two="two" most="most" successful="successful" american="American" protest="protest" movements="movements" in="in" my="my" lifetime="lifetime" you="you" never="never" saw="saw" a="a" demonstrator="demonstrator" carrying="carrying" gun="gun" civil="civil" rights="rights" marches="marches" and="and" anti-vietnam="anti-Vietnam" sit-ins="sit-ins" employed="employed" political="political" activism="activism" songs="songs" signs="signs" to="to" spread="spread" their="their" messages="messages" even="Even" face="face" of="of" bigoted="bigoted" cops="cops" vicious="vicious" dogs="dogs" weaponized="weaponized" firehoses="firehoses" non-violent="non-violent" tactics="tactics" worked="worked"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">as </span><em style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding">MSNBC</em><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"> commentator </span><strong style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding">Steve Schmidt</strong></font></a><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://twitter.com/steveschmidtses/status/1255955260402733056?lang=en" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer"> tweeted</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">, “Let’s be clear about something. Camo-clad paramilitary fetishists festooned in tactical gear and carrying assault rifles storming our state capitols while ‘protesting’ is obscene. It is an assault on the sanctity of representative democracy and our American system.”</span></font></font></p><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.3em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wannabe Stormtroopers</font></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Things have only deteriorated since Schmidt’s tweet. Wannabe stormtroopers are front and center during the recent protests against racial injustice and police brutality in Portland, where long rifle-toting right-wing militias have clashed with demonstrators.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their objective is clearly transparent: to ignite a civil war along the red versus blue political battle lines that President <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Donald Trump</strong> has so blatantly encouraged. His goal is to <a href="https://theglobepost.com/2020/09/05/gop-strategy-2020/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">stoke enough fear</a> among undecided swing voters to win another term this November.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guns have also <a href="https://theglobepost.com/2020/08/26/protest-kenosha-shooting/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">surfaced most horribly, in Kenosha, Wisconsin</a>, where a 17-year-old white Trump supporter from Illinois, <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Kyle Rittenhouse</strong>, allegedly murdered two innocent protestors with a Smith & Wesson AR-15 style .223 rifle, a gun he had no legal right to own.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rittenhouse has since become a cause célèbre among the most virulent of the right-wing echo chamber, being reinvented as a courageous patriot that traveled to Wisconsin to protect the city from the demonstrators [twt pix]</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">president Trump, never one to miss a moment to cleave Americans further apart, </span><a href="https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1300559713713692679" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">defended the arrested murderer</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">, “They very violently attacked him…I guess he was in very big trouble, he probably would have been killed.”</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump did not clarify who “they” was, but his implication was that they deserved to be slaughtered. No doubt a presidential pardon is in the offing and perhaps an appearance at a Trump campaign rally. After all, this is the year 2020.</font></p><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.3em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s Rethoric</font></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Also worth noting is the shift in Trump’s rhetoric. In the aftermath of the 2017 <a href="https://theglobepost.com/2019/10/01/history-racism-us/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Charlottesville</a> white power rally, when tiki-carrying racists chanted, “Jews will not replace us!” Trump employed a <a href="https://theglobepost.com/2017/08/13/white-nationalist-violence-charlottesville/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">moral equivalency</a> between the neo-Nazis and the counter-demonstrators. He said there were “very fine people on both sides.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, however, he never misses a moment to label racial justice demonstrators as “thugs” and that the Black Lives Matter supporters as part of a “Marxist organization.” Very fine people now only exist if they support Trump’s dystopian vision.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I admit I’ve been naïve. I had no idea about the assortment of military-style assault weapons Americans are allowed to legally own and openly carry. I can imagine Vietnam veterans wishing they had possessed those same long guns when they were splashing through a soggy rice field with an M-16 that often jammed during battle and consequently being slaughtered like so much cannon fodder.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now guns are all the rage among Trump supporters to protest, among other things, mandates requiring Americans to <a href="https://theglobepost.com/2020/09/01/masks-new-normal/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">wear masks</a>, or people of color demanding equal treatment from law enforcement and justice from the courts.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">No governor or mayor has ever suggested suspending the 2nd Amendment, confiscating guns, or imposing martial law. Yet, in March, more guns were bought in the United States than ever before: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/01/business/coronavirus-gun-sales.html" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">around two million</a>, roughly, sadly, the same amount as were purchased in the wake of the Sandy Hook murders and President <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Barack Obama</strong>’s re-election in 2008.</font></p><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.3em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fuming Macho Men</font></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What gives? Was the initial toilet paper shortage the “trigger” that led these GI Joe wannabes to rush out to their neighborhood gun store and grab the latest AR-15? Is it the fear that people of color will finally get justice instead of bullets that brings out the macho men? Is it this kind of imagined domestic Armageddon exactly what these paranoid jack-booted men want?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whatever legitimate complaints they have are overshadowed by the real threat of a mass shooting by one of their own. We know it only takes one <strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Tim McVeigh</strong> nutcase to go off at one of these rallies.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Someone like Kyle Rittenhouse.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These <a href="https://theglobepost.com/2020/06/18/us-boogaloo-bois/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">fuming macho men</a> decked out in Soldier of Fortune gear and red MAGA hats waving Confederate flags and “Don’t Tread on Me” banners seem just a hair’s breadth away from emptying the magazines on their AKs. I mean, why else do they own those guns if not to hunt humans?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite their fury, they appear well-fed with ample resources for brand new pickup trucks, expensive weapons, body armor, and ammo. The practical side of me would suggest to them that they should have saved the money they just spent in those gun stores for a tumultuous economic time like this one, but who dares argue with an angry male wielding a loaded gun?</font></p></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trumps-church-of-white-masculinity/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trumps-church-of-white-masculinity/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the <span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">week before last, we watched Americans respond to the altar call at the church of white masculinity. During the Republican National Convention, speakers humbly prostrated themselves at the foot of white masculinity, arguing that the rejection of a white male savior would be our ruin. The disciples of white masculinity preached that </span><a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/8/25/21402005/abby-johnson-rnc-trump-abortion-convention-2020" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">feminists were coming for the unborn</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">, the </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/us/politics/trump-lgbtq-rights.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">LBGTQIA community was coming for our children</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"> and </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/st-louis-couple-in-rnc-speech-defend-show-of-weapons/2020/08/25/ea7c8b94-e687-11ea-bf44-0d31c85838a5_story.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">racial minorities were coming for the rest of us</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">. Furthermore, the RNC paraded women and speakers of color to state that President Trump was not racist, he was right —and </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/us/politics/daniel-cameron-rnc-speech.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">those who refused to convert were deviants seeking the destruction of the nation</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">.</span></font></span></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This altar call is not much different from Rudyard Kipling’s “<a href="https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_burden.htm" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The White Man’s Burden</a>” or D.W. Griffith’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0004972/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Birth of a Nation</a>,” which both portrayed white men as the saviors of civilization. Today it manifests itself in the sanctification of white men who embrace their privilege with religious zeal. In Rep. Ted Yoho’s flaccid apology for verbally abusing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, he cloaked his attack in holiness, stating, “I cannot apologize for my passion, or for loving my God, my family and my country.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The disciples harken back to a perceived golden age of America, when the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/27/michael-kimmel-masculinity-far-right-angry-white-men" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">racial and gender power structure were correctly set</a>, before the chaos caused by the recognition of the rights of racial minorities, women and the LBGTQIA community. <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691151830/change-they-cant-believe-in" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">This threat to white masculinity has intensified</a> with the election of the nation’s first Black president, a female speaker of the House, a Latina on the Supreme Court, marriage equality, the MeToo movement, and the possibility of a female president. The alt-right and neo-Nazis embody these fears, arguing that white America is losing to immigrants and racial minorities and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/27/michael-kimmel-masculinity-far-right-angry-white-men" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">questioning the manhood of any white people who criticize them</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b style="">A <a href="https://www.prri.org/research/prri-atlantic-poll-post-election-white-working-class/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">2016 PRRI/Atlantic survey</a> finds a quarter of whites (24.9%) believe that diversity has come at their expense and that society has become too soft and feminine. </b><b>Further, 93.1% of whites who agree with both of those statements reported voting for Trump</b>. More than a third of white evangelicals (35.6%) agreed with both statements, followed by less than a quarter of white Catholics (23.7%) and mainline Protestants (23.1%).</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">when examined along gender lines, the data show white evangelical men (45.1%) are significantly more likely to agree with these statements than their female counterparts (24.5%)</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Among women, however, white evangelical women are significantly more likely to agree with these statements than white mainline Protestant women (19.8%) and white Catholic women (12.1%).</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">As Kristin Kobes Du Mez argues in her recent book, “<a href="https://kristindumez.com/books/jesus-and-john-wayne/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Jesus and John Wayne</a>,” white evangelical culture has focused on the declining sanctity of white manhood. This is why Donald Trump captured <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/11/09/exit-polls-show-white-evangelicals-voted-overwhelmingly-for-donald-trump/?utm_term=.1d405c4e0db0" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">78% of the white evangelical vote</a> in the face of numerous claims of sexual misconduct and racism. And, in the 2017 Alabama Senate race, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/alabama-exit-polls/?utm_term=.7e328a80da8a" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">former judge Roy Moore, who had also been accused of sexual misconduct</a>, received 80% of the white evangelical vote.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As ordained bishop of the church of white masculinity, President Trump has attempted to impose his masculinity by questioning the masculinity of his male opponents and showing disgust for his female adversaries. In the face of a call for social justice, the president has sacrificed free speech at the altar by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/06/08/timeline-trump-church-photo-op/?arc404=true" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">dispatching federal officers and troops to stop peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park for a photo-op in front of St. John’s Church</a>. He proclaimed the sanctity of his white masculinity by rebuking the suggestions of scientists and downplaying the harm of the COVID-19 virus. He resisted wearing a mask to show the world his strength. In suit his followers have harassed protesters and questioned the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/dudes-who-wont-wear-masks/613375/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">masculinity of those who take precautions against the virus</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The actions of Trump and his worshippers, among most other Americans, are considered deplorable. At the church of white masculinity, these behaviors are saintly.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">boogaloo bomb and gun attacks; worries spec ops hyper-masc radicalized by qanon?!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">guys generally angry for a while at loss of status [but anger by ppl more generally to McC for no aid bill covid 3?]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/columnist-explains-how-the-rnc-dressed-up-the-fury-smoldering-at-the-center-of-the-populist-republican-party/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/columnist-explains-how-the-rnc-dressed-up-the-fury-smoldering-at-the-center-of-the-populist-republican-party/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">alex h</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">during the 2020 Republican National Convention last week, it was painfully clear that President Donald <b>Trump was emphasizing white grievance along with fear-mongering</b>. Some of the speakers tried to soften Trump’s image and show empathy, including First Lady Melania Trump and White House Senior Adviser Ivanka Trump (the president’s daughter). But journalist <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-rage-that-fuels-trumpism-still-burns/2020/08/27/f76f554e-e898-11ea-970a-64c73a1c2392_story.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">David Ignatius</a>, in his Washington Post column, stresses that Trumpism continues to be a very bitter and angry ideology.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans, Ignatius writes, “dressed up their rage in prettier colors at this year’s convention.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“Speakers from First Lady Melania Trump to Vice President Pence tried to make the GOP sound like a party of healing and tolerance,” Ignatius explains. “But smoldering at the center of the populist Republican Party, there’s still the bright orange ball of fury that is Donald Trump — wounded and angry and promising white men in his trademark, code-worded slogan that he’s going to ‘Make America Great Again.</b>’”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The United States, Ignatius stresses, is a very “wounded” country in the Trump era. But he applauds former Vice President Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, for calling out Trump’s racism as well as violence at protests. <b>And he warns that Trumpian rage is as strong now as it was four years ago.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"When historians try to understand what happened to the United States in these years, they will study what spawned the Trump spasm of rage,” Ignatius argues. “Perhaps the most striking demographic change in the years preceding his election was the catastrophic decline in the health, income and cohesion of white men without college educations. That group voted 64% for Trump in 2016, making it one of his largest voting blocs, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">according to the Pew Research Center. The best account of this white collapse is ‘</span></span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/05/01/how-fighting-one-pandemic-can-deepen-another/" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Deaths of Despair </a><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/05/01/how-fighting-one-pandemic-can-deepen-another/" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">and the Future of Capitalism</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">,’ published this year by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton.”</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Research by Case and Deaton showed how high suicide rates have become, in recent years, among whites who lack a college degree. And Ignatius cites “the loss of income and respect for working-class white men” as one of the things that fuels the anger and bitterness of Trumpism.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“For white men without a college degree,” Ignatius explains, “their ‘median earnings lost 13% of their purchasing power between 1979 and 2017,’ even as per capita national income rose 85%,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> write Case and Deaton….<b> A freewheeling democracy that prizes individualism is our great American gift. But it’s also why we need good leaders so badly — to hold together and avoid the abyss of social disintegration.</b></span></font></p></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/donald-trump-and-americas-cartoon-masculinity-is-a-desperate-attempt-to-cling-to-a-fading-ideal-author/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/donald-trump-and-americas-cartoon-masculinity-is-a-desperate-attempt-to-cling-to-a-fading-ideal-author/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[long-ish]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are moments when merely following the news replicates how it must feel to enter a portal into a surreal realm of hallucination, where dropping acid is an act of redundancy and Lewis Carroll reads like the newspaper. Take the following sentences from a <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/21356150/american-men-wont-wear-masks-covid-19" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">professional journalist in a serious publication</a>, Vox, on the unique resistance many American men have against wearing face coverings in public during a pandemic involving an airborne virus:</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It would seem that the obvious way to get more men to wear masks would be to make the manliest version of a mask possible. Maybe put guns on it, or a football team, or make a mask that makes men feel like a super-soldier spliced from Rambo and Captain America.</font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Nike and Under Armour, according to the same Vox story, are marketing masks similar to those that comic book heroes would wear to fight crime, and the leading men’s fashion magazine, GQ, recommends a particular mask that will make its wearers resemble gladiators in the video game Mortal Kombat. </b>Donald Trump, forever arrested in the mindset of an evil six-year-old from a Stephen King novel, boasted that he looked like the Lone Ranger in his mask, prompting many Americans to wonder if he was wearing it incorrectly.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Epidemiologists and other doctors, insistent on ruining everyone’s fun, caution against several of the macho, costume-party masks. Because they are often made with more porous material than standard facial coverings, and feature “cool looking” valves, they may be less effective in preventing COVID-19 transmission.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the United States were a sane society, the revelation that many seemingly functional adults require the enticement of looking like a video-game monster to observe public health protocols would provoke sustained soul searching and institutional deliberation to determine exactly where and how it all went wrong. How are families, schools and conduits of public information failing so miserably to raise men of minimal competence, maturity and compassion?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">the inquiry becomes even more urgent when one considers the sad reality that the Batman-impersonators are not even the worst culprits of failed manhood. According to several polls, </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">20 percent of men never wear masks — but only 8 percent of women</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A significant amount of American men are willing to risk the deaths of their neighbors to avoid looking “weak” or “afraid.” In high numbers among this group of dangerous fools are police officers, bikers and conservatives, or to use Trump’s proud assignation, “the tough people.”</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Given that the “tough people,” including Trump himself, appear as frightened as kittens in a thunderstorm at the mere thought of women holding power, black families moving into suburban neighborhoods or Mexicans crossing the southern border, their posturing and preening, unlike their pandemic behavior, is the ultimate mask. The motorcycles, the guns and the eagerness to violate “political correctness” fail to conceal their obvious insecurity and frailty.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump is the ultimate symbol of the sad state of American manhood.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Characteristically unable to advance in the 21st century, the United States has frozen into a form of primitive masculinity. Tom Digby, a philosopher and author of the brilliant book, “<a href="https://bookshop.org/a/2464/9780231168410" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Love and War: How Militarism Shapes Sexuality and Romance</a>,” identifies this <b>largely obsolete conception of manhood as “warrior masculinity.”</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When I asked Digby about Trump and the increasingly bizarre outbursts of his supporters, he responded that it’s impossible to comprehend this president without considering the desperation of attempting to maintain a rapidly fading masculine ideal.</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: none !important;"><p style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Donald’s masculinity is a cartoon version of masculinity – it is all bluster. Donald is all about bravado; he never demonstrates actual bravery. From his reliance on fake bone spurs to avoid the Vietnam War to his present attempt to escape political defeat by sabotaging the Postal Service, Donald has consistently demonstrated a total absence of courage.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The notion of masculinity that prevails in the U.S. derives from the warrior ideal. Above all, the warrior needs not only to demonstrate courage by risking death or injury,<b> but also to readily inflict such harm on others.</b> The warrior must be able to manage the capacity to care about his or her suffering, as well as the suffering of others. The part of warrior masculinity that Donald gets right is not caring about the suffering of others. He actually seems to delight in inflicting harm on other people.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But Donald is an utter failure regarding the other side of the coin of warrior masculinity. Indeed, instead of playing the warrior, he plays the perennial victim.</b> He continually whines about how he is treated by the press and political opponents. He thus consistently fails a core expectation of warrior masculinity — that one must always be ready to risk harm, and to endure suffering. Indeed, Donald routinely lies and cheats to fend off what he perceives as harm to himself (even straightforward reporting of what he has said or tweeted).</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>As for that other aspect of warrior masculinity, the suppression of caring about the suffering of others, one need not be playing the warrior role to do that. One can be a sociopath, as Donald appears to be. For Donald, disregarding the suffering of others is easy. It is automatic.</b></font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The evidence of Trump’s pathological inability to acknowledge the pain of his fellow human beings is on gruesome display every hour as the COVID-19 death count rises — this weekend we passed another dreadful milestone, at <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">175,000 deaths</a> — and he refuses even to simulate empathy and sensitivity, much less demonstrate the leadership skills necessary to help the people he supposedly serves.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It is what it is,” Trump said in a recent interview when reacting to reporter Jonathan Swan’s reminder that roughly 1,000 Americans are dying every day of this pandemic, while most European and Asian nations have daily death counts at less than one-tenth of that number. The statement encapsulates Trump’s solipsistic disregard for lives other than his own — from the children in cages at the Mexican border due to his own immigration policies to the coronavirus patients taking their final, labored breaths alone in hospitals and nursing homes across the country.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It also summarizes the “warrior masculinity” ethos.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This kind of calculation is contemptible, but one can understand that Trump, as an incumbent president seeking re-election, benefits from minimizing the danger of covid-19. It is more perplexing to consider why legions of “proud American” men identify with Trump, especially given who he actually is — a whiny trust-fund baby from New York City who perennially complains that life is unfair to him. In the abstract, he’s someone they would despise if they somehow met him in a bar.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump’s “cartoonish masculinity,” Digby believes, offers a vicarious thrill to men who wrestle with similar kinds of insecurities:</b></font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: none !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">Many men respond positively to Donald’s cartoonish masculinity. They presumably also experience adrenaline rushes when playing violent video games. And presumably they are thrilled by fictional warrior masculinity in action movies. In all three of these cases, a projected fake masculinity offers some men a kind of reassurance about a </span><b style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">notion of masculinity that is dear to them, but about which they must continually fight off doubts, of three kinds. First</b><span style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">, there are doubts about their own ability to fulfill the ideals that are implicit in those notions of masculinity.</span><b style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);"> Second, there are doubts rooted in criticisms they hear of “toxic masculinity,” which can’t be separated from their awareness of actual, real-life examples of violence and abuse by men. Third,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);"> perhaps on an even more subconscious level,</span><b style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);"> men are increasingly aware of what I describe in “Love and War” as the inherently sacrificial nature of masculinity. </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At its core, warrior masculinity requires a willingness to sacrifice one’s own life, health and emotional well-being. I explain this sacrificial masculinity fully in the book, but in short, we can see it in two facts: Men are far more likely than women to commit suicide, and men are far less likely than women to seek medical care.</span></font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The pathetic attempt to project a Herculean image by forgoing medical care has reached its apotheosis in the anti-mask crusade. There is a tragicomic disconnect between the way these men believe they look, and the way that reasonable people perceive them. As they struggle to show strength, they expose their weakness and insecurity.</b> A recent video from a grocery store showed a man screaming at an employee about the mask mandate. The confrontation ended with the imbecile’s adult son, visibly embarrassed, lifting him up from behind and carrying him out the front door. Someone suffering a neurotic breakdown over a store’s mask policy does not exactly resemble the stoical protagonist of a story by Ernest Hemingway, who famously defined courage as “grace under pressure.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Digby explains that a coalescence of cultural, economic and political changes have drained the meaning out of “warrior masculinity,” rendering the men who have heavily invested in its ideology of manhood feeling desperate, lost and confused.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is no longer a great need for militarism in the average American family or community. Women, in many households, have established themselves as breadwinners, erasing the distinctions between men and women in familial and career roles. Digby likens warrior masculinity to the “butcher block table” that his mother owned when he was a child. “The table must have weighed 100 pounds, and it seemed indestructible,” he recalls, “Nonetheless, eventually that butcher block table was hauled away with a bunch of other stuff nobody wanted anymore.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">No matter their hysterical denials, many men sense that the butcher-block table is on its way out the door. The insecurity attendant to that knowledge creates an intense bond with Donald Trump. As Digby says, “With all his power — both actual and imagined — Donald seems to offer a cultural refuge for men who were brought up to think that they are supposed to be dominant over women and other men. … He seems like the last hope for a role model, no matter how corrupt, deceitful, anxious and hateful his behavior. Whenever attention is called to his flaws, those men respond with desperate anger at what they perceive as attacks on themselves.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Joe Biden presents a different model of male leadership, exemplified in his selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as running mate.</b> More than any of his other competitors in the Democratic primary, Harris scored a knockdown against Biden in an early debate, when she challenged him on his record related to school busing in the 1970s. The confidence necessary to choose Harris after she had embarrassed him — to say nothing of the fact that she is clearly the more charismatic politician — demonstrates what Digby calls a “masculinity quotient.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Try to imagine Donald campaigning in 2016 with Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio as his VP candidate, both of whom had attacked Donald mercilessly in the primary,” Digby offers by way of contrast. “That would have destabilized him. He needed Mike Pence, the ultimate beta male sycophant.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The policy prescriptions of the Biden campaign have underwhelmed many progressives, but voters of all ideologies would do well to remember that Americans do not elect a political robot as president, who functions according to doctrinal programming, to the presidency. We elect a human being, a point that Sen. Bernie Sanders, among others, made clear at the recently-concluded Democratic convention. Along with his cruel and destructive worldview, Donald Trump has proven that he is morally, intellectually and emotionally unfit to perform even the mundane tasks of public leadership.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Security and humility are essential to a healthy presidency.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In his fascinating study of gender issues and the political career of John F. Kennedy, “<a href="https://bookshop.org/a/2464/9781250049988" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">JFK and the Masculine Mystique: Sex and Power on the New Frontier</a>,” historian Steven Watts writes that Kennedy’s “physical vigor, decisive action, personal heroism, individual initiative, tough-mindedness, and abundant sex appeal” enabled him to signal a regeneration of masculine ideals when American culture was lamenting the diminishment of purpose and courage in manhood following World War II and amid a new era of middle-class professionalism.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Nothing tested Kennedy as president quite like the Cuban missile crisis, when for 13 days in October 1962 the world danced along the edge of a nuclear holocaust. Kennedy’s clearheaded, intelligent and disciplined leadership prevented an unspeakable disaster. As his military advisers pressured him to launch a first strike against the Soviet Union — which could have led not just to World War III but to the destruction of human civilization — Kennedy showed resolve and pursued the path of peace. Following the crisis, members of his political team encouraged him to go public with the story, certain that it would guarantee his re-election. Kennedy rejected their recommendation, believing that any humiliation of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev would risk another conflict.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watts argues that the Cuban missile crisis “shone a spotlight on Kennedy as the masculine ideal of the New Frontier who embraced neither wild-eyed military bombast nor weak-kneed capitulation but calm, pragmatic, valiant discernment. It enhanced the popular image of Kennedy as a man who had been under fire and could handle the most enormous pressure imaginable with grace, shrewdness, and a sense of proportion.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Anyone looking for an incurable case of insomnia, or who requires further motivation to vote for Joe Biden, should imagine Donald Trump in a situation similar to the Cuban missile crisis.</font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-what-itll-take-to-clean-up-esports-toxic-culture-143520">https://theconversation.com/heres-what-itll-take-to-clean-up-esports-toxic-culture-143520</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">reminds me a bit of book on honor duels</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/mens-rights-activists-roy-den-hollander-and-marc-angelucci-are-dead-and-the-movement-is-freaking-out"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.thedailybeast.com/mens-rights-activists-roy-den-hollander-and-marc-angelucci-are-dead-and-the-movement-is-freaking-out</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">M<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">embers of the so-called</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a class="TrackingLink LinkWrapper" href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-mens-rights-movement-now-has-their-own-law-firm" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">“men’s rights” movement</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">want to get one thing straight:<b> while a prominent member allegedly killed a judge’s son, seriously wounded her husband, and was</b></span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a class="TrackingLink LinkWrapper" href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/did-anti-feminist-lawyer-roy-den-hollander-also-kill-rival-attorney-marc-angelucci" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">implicated in the killing of another activist,</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">it should not reflect badly on their community.</span></font></div><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In fact, the most deranged strand of the insular crowd’s alternately panicked and dismissive reaction to a bizarre internal beef spilling out into spectacular murders was the idea that all the shootings were a conspiracy to make men’s rights activists look bad. </font></p><div class="teads-adCall" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div id="x33x15293340684162997" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: sticky;"><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roy Den Hollander, 72, is accused of targeting the family of a judge who was presiding over one of his many “anti-feminist” legal crusades. Den Hollander, who raged against U.S. District Judge Esther Salas in online screeds, allegedly visited Salas’ house Sunday evening, fatally shooting her son and leaving her husband in critical condition. </font></p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Den</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Hollander, who was later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, is also being eyed in the <a class="TrackingLink LinkWrapper" href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/anti-feminist-lawyer-roy-den-hollander-was-in-california-when-rival-marc-angelucci-was-murdered" style="transition: color 0.15s ease 0s;">recent killing of Marc Angelucci, a rival men’s rights crusader and vice-president of the group National Coalition for Men in California</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. As The Daily Beast first reported, Den Hollander was placed in the state at the time of Angelucci’s death, with the FBI later confirming he had been linked to the slaying. </span></font></p><p style="line-height: 31px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px calc(32px + ((100% - 176px) / 12) * 2); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The slew of shootings are the latest in a pattern of violence to emerge from the “manosphere,” a sprawling misogynist movement, </b>and it would be a stretch to expect much actual soul-searching from Den Hollander’s fellow travelers. Still, conversations with observers of the misogynist community—and a trawl of its forums, videos, and publications—painted a picture of a subculture in turmoil....</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha: do nothing congress was an actual thing, commented on (repeatedly?) by Maddow in comparison on recent GOP led senate (recall mtg right after BO where (openly vs leaked?) declared we will pass nothing even if we favor it); so lack of any gov't action that could help ppl is blamed on dems;  plus a MAN of action will get it done whatever it takes, HARD vs <b>soft</b> dems/fems </font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">male is active, indep, fem is passive/dependent (thus must be obedient, submit to dominion of strict father, king of castle, breadwinner)</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>@realDonaldTrump</b></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Interesting how </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">ANTIFA</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> and other </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Far Left militant groups</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> can </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">take over</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> a city</span></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102); font-weight: bold;"> without barely a wimpier from soft Do Nothing Democrat leadership</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">,  yet thesesame weak leaders become RADICAL when it comes to shutting down a state or city and its hard working, tax paying citizens!</b></div></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/fox-news-removes-unethical-digitally-altered-images-of-police-brutality-protests-in-seattle"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/fox-news-removes-unethical-digitally-altered-images-of-police-brutality-protests-in-seattle</font></a></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ok he was there, but a week before?</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx pix twt</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">fox News removes ‘unethical’ digitally altered images of police brutality protests in Seattle</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Royalty-free stock photo ID: 1288386304 Tallinn, Estonia - 01/18/2019: Fox News website homepage. Fox News channel logo visible through a magnifying glass.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Written by Roger Sollenberger / Salon June 16, 2020</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Fox News over the weekend removed misleading images from stories about protests against police brutality in Seattle from its website after it was revealed they had been digitally altered in a manner which made the scene appear dangerous.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Seattle Times published a report Friday calling out multiple images from Fox News coverage of the police-free “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ) in the city.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One photo illustration appearing on the Fox News homepage showed a masked man with an assault rifle and tactical vest standing in front of a sign reading, “You are now entering Free Cap Hill.” The outlet did not originally disclose that the photo of the scene and the photo of the armed man had been spliced together using two different photos, which were taken more than a week apart.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The original photo, from Getty Images, shows the armed man in front of a car.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">He was digitally placed in front of the entrance sign.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The same image of the man appeared in at least one other image on Fox News’ website, in front of a smashed retail storefront. According to The Times, it was also a combination of multiple images.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“It is definitely Photoshopped,” freelance photographer David Ryder, who took the original photo and published it through Getty images, told the outlet. “To use a photo out of context in a journalistic setting like that seems unethical.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Conservatives, including President Donald Trump, have attempted to sculpt the CHAZ storyline into a political flashpoint. Protesters converted the area into a street festival after police, who teargassed demonstrators, left the precinct in an effort to de-escalate tensions.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trump tweeted Thursday that “Radical Left Governor [J]ay Inslee and the Mayor of Seattle are being taunted and played at a level that our great Country has never seen before. Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game. These ugly Anarchists must be stooped [sic] IMMEDIATELY. MOVE FAST!”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The mayor told the president, “Make us all safe. Go back to your bunker.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Fox News on Friday used a photo of a man running through an urban inferno as a banner image for a group of stories about Seattle under the headline, “CRAZY TOWN || Seattle helpless as armed guards patrol anarchists’ autonomous zone, shake down businesses: cops.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The photo was unaltered, but it was an AP photo taken May 30 in St. Paul, Minn. Fox News later removed it.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The articles did not notify readers that the photos were altered, and it remains unclear who was responsible for the decision to do so. A Fox News spokesperson did not immediately respond to Salon’s request for comment.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In an emailed statement, a Fox News spokeswoman told The Times: “We have replaced our photo illustration with the clearly delineated images of a gunman and a shattered storefront, both of which were taken this week in Seattle’s autonomous zone.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>However, that statement itself was inaccurate. While the gunman was photographed that week — June 10 — the smashed storefront images were first published by Getty on May 30.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Fox News fully apologized Saturday in an editor’s note accompanying its CHAZ coverage, acknowledging that it “did not clearly delineate” the photo illustrations, which it labeled a “collage.” The site also apologized for falsely attributing the shot of the Minneapolis fire. “Fox News regrets these errors,” the note said.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Talent at the conservative network have attempted to use the Seattle protests as a political wedge issue. For example, primetime host Tucker Carlson accused the people in the zone of advocating segregation.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The network also reported an anecdotal claim from Seattle Assistant Chief of Police Deanna Nollette.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“We’ve heard, anecdotally, reports of citizens and businesses being asked to pay a fee to operate within this area,” Nollette said. “This is the crime of extortion.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Police Chief Carmen Best later corrected that statement.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“We haven’t had any formal reports of this occurring,” she said, indicating the reports had come from rumors spread on social media.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Though the Seattle protests have at times been home to contentious scenes of unrest — including a cop filmed forcibly removing his partner’s knee from someone’s neck and a man filmed driving into a crowd of protesters and shooting a black man — the CHAZ street scene has been almost entirely peaceful, featuring musical and visual artists, free street food, concerts and movies.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Best said she did not think the officers should have abandoned the precinct, a move which she claims has led to longer 911 response times.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);"><b>Trump called demonstrators “domestic terrorists</b>” over the weekend and threatened federal action unless local officials “take back” the area. He also falsely claimed that antifa forces had taken over the city.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Donald J. Trump</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>@realDonaldTrump</b></div><div><span style="font-weight: bold; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Interesting how ANTIFA and other Far Left militant groups can take over a city</span><span style="font-weight: bold; background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);"> without barely a wimpier from soft Do Nothing Democrat leadership</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>,  yet thesesame weak leaders become RADICAL when it comes to shutting down a state or city and its hard working, tax paying citizens!</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>256K</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">1:47 PM - Jun 14, 2020</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>121K people are talking about this</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“City officials have not interacted with ‘armed antifa militants’ at this site,” a city spokesperson told CNN.</div></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">---</font></span></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">an intercept cdv</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font color="#000000">...</font><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">You have written about the ethnic conflict and civil war in Yugoslavia and your fears of how such a thing is now on the horizon in the United States. How are people — especially young men — seduced and radicalized into committing such acts of violence?</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It is empowering. It flatters their </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">masculine power. Nationalism and fascism are always masculine political projects</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This is why misogyny is always an aspect of any kind of nationalism. Fascism and nationalism also empowers old men. And in the context of white male supremacy, the advances of people of color and women were imagined as somehow disempowering white men. These white men became disgruntled. They lost jobs. But the problem with that white male anger is that it ignores that black and brown people lost their jobs too from deindustrialization, neoliberalism, globalization and related forces. The anger and sense of loss and feeling that they do not have agency was compensated for by uniting behind Donald Trump.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>I always took Trump seriously. He was always capable of reaching this point. It’s not that he’s exceptional. It is rather that the conditions were right for Trump to win the presidency because he embodies this vulgar, blatant misogyny, sexism and arrogance. His psychopathic characteristics exactly match the fantasies of fascism.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There is another aspect of Donald Trump’s popularity among his followers. There is something terribly reassuring to a certain type of person that one can be stupid and lazy and so openly unpleasant and still become president of the United States. By comparison Barack Obama had to be a saint. He had to be perfect, Harvard-educated and wise. But Trump’s white supporters hated him intensely. Trump restores a certain type of faith in white supremacy for his supporters because someone as stupid and bad and lazy and evil as Trump can become president of the United States. Trump’s supporters now know that the worst of them can still be president. That must be terribly reassuring.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Donald Trump’s narcissism and other mental pathologies exactly match the collective pathology of white nationalists. Trump is a natural-born white supremacist because in any other context he is an idiot and a psychopath.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You are one of the co-writers of “The Matrix 4.” The Age of Trump, and now this pandemic and associated economic collapse is a surreal living nightmare. Could you have sat down and made up such a story? Would it even be believable?...</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha: this has existed for a while as dirty tricks tactic (us vs them enemies; dirty germy foreigners; we are victims? amplifty and acclerate by trump and soc med echo escalator post truth; bktv 5/20 re-imagine capitalism says inequality acknowledged by all, even ceo; increases social instability and will --> left or rt populism and you won't like either, ceo's [lipton tea, aetna min wage]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-uses-his-weird-grip-on-republicans-to-stoke-a-nihilistic-culture-war/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-uses-his-weird-grip-on-republicans-to-stoke-a-nihilistic-culture-war/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx pix</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>trump uses his weird grip on Republicans to stoke a nihilistic culture war</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald J. Trump holding a rally in Panama City Beach, Florida, on May 8, 2019 // Office of the President of the United States/Donald J. Trump</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon May 29, 2020</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I don’t think there’s ever been a U.S. president with more influence with his political base that Donald Trump. All presidents are defended by those who support them, of course. Even the most unpopular failures have diehard fans who stick with them to the bitter end.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Trump is unusual in that he has only ever attempted to govern on behalf of the people who support him and has no feeling of responsibility toward any other citizens. <b>He has taken the already polarized Republican Party and turned it into a cult of personality.</b> His influence over the 40 to 45% of the population who seem to idolize him is immense.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Perhaps it’s because Trump was a celebrity with a TV show long before he entered politics that makes his fans love him so unconditionally. Whatever it is, Trump and his supporters have an unusually personal and almost intimate bond. It’s clear after three and a half tumultuous years that they will follow his lead no matter what.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The political implications of this are profound. This weird relationship between president and base now completely dominates the Republican Party, apparently making it impossible for any prominent national figure in the party to allow even the smallest daylight between himself or herself and Trump. (Frankly, very few even seem to be trying.)</font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The red MAGA hat serves as an official symbol of Trump loyalty, and there is a certain part of his following that uses it as a tool of intimidation. Even more disturbing, there has been a spate of mass shootings and other acts of violence by people who have named Trump or his ideas as motivation.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In order to maintain his supporters’ devotion, Trump has stoked the culture wars at every turn, ruthlessly dividing the country in order to keep his fans engaged. They receive such hypocritical gestures of solidarity as his newfound “pro-life” zealotry with enthusiastic gratitude — but what they really love are his brutal assaults on those they consider their political and cultural enemies. In that, Trump and his base are one.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">So it should come as no surprise that when Trump faced the first crisis of his presidency that was not of his own making — and failed to meet the challenge — he would reflexively fall back on culture-war tactics to reinforce his base.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> His response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been abysmal, with the death toll now over 100,000 and the economy in dire straits. After bungling the response so badly that it will be studied by historians for centuries as an example of poor leadership, Trump is returning to his original instinct, which was simply to deny that the whole thing mattered, or was even happening.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His supporters have eagerly followed his lead, defying public health guidelines and demanding that their governors “reopen” immediately (or in Trump’s own words of incitement, that they “liberate” their states.) Trump clearly believes that he can wish away the virus — or at least people’s concern about the virus — by pretending that the crisis is over and that we can go back to normal.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As we speak, he’s arguing with the state government of North Carolina about the Republican National Convention, which is scheduled for late August in Charlotte. Republican officials had reportedly been discussing how they could stage the event while observing CDC social distancing guidelines, and everything had been going smoothly. Trump, however, wants his big party, and wants it to be crammed with people screaming ecstatically at his every word. What he doesn’t want is anyone wearing masks.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In fact, wearing a mask, or rather not wearing one, is fast becoming as much of a symbol of Trump fealty as those red MAGA hats</b>. Trump’s allies on Fox News have pushed it hard among the faithful (with the unexpected exception of Sean Hannity.)</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Acyn Torabi</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@Acyn</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Laura’s war against masks continues</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Embedded video</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Salon’s Igor Derysh reports, studies show that people who watch Fox are far more inclined to defy public health guidelines. But really, it’s Trump himself who has turned masks into a culture-war symbol by ostentatiously refusing to wear one.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This makes little sense, of course, if he genuinely wants to reopen the country in a way that allows workers and consumers to feel safe going about their business. Masks and social distancing are common-sense ways to begin doing that, and normalizing that behavior will bring back the economy more quickly. But Trump has decided to pretend that the crisis is over, as I said earlier, and mask-wearing and social distancing don’t exactly send that message.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I also suspect that his resistance is largely due to vanity. The man truly believes that wearing one will make him look foolish (which can only be described as amazing) and he may also have concerns about the mask rubbing off his thick orange makeup.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><b style="">All of this comes as he’s also implying it’s somehow weak, unmanly and un-American to wear one.</b> In fact, he’s seized upon this as a new attack line against Joe Biden:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Judd Legum</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@JuddLegum</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">New Trump ads on Facebook mock Biden for wearing a mask</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">View image on Twitter</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some Republicans are actually pushing back on this, notably state governors who will have to deal with the resurgence of cases if people follow Trump’s dangerous example. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has urged people to wear them. It’s hard to know why these dissenters are stepping up now, but maybe it’s because they see something really dark and ugly taking hold among the Trump faithful.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For instance, Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature who have been railing against public health measures turned out to have concealed the fact that one of their own members had contracted the virus. They quarantined themselves but never told their Democratic colleagues, allowing them to potentially expose their family members and loved ones without knowing it.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to the Washington Post, there are businesses in various parts of the country now barring customers from wearing masks in their establishments. This was from an interview with Kevin Smith, proprietor of the Liberty Tree Tavern in Elgin, Texas:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“If we’re only allowed to be at 25 percent capacity, I want them to be the 25 percent of </font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">people that aren’t p—–,</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> that aren’t sheep,” Smith told The Washington Post. <b>“Being scared all the time isn’t good for your health. It suppresses your immune system.”</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump posted this tweet yesterday, cutely pretending that he was just making an observation:</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Donald J. Trump</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>@realDonaldTrump</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>So many different viewpoints!</b> https://twitter.com/leesmithdc/status/1265629746450358273 …</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lee Smith</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@LeeSmithDC</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Terrific ?@molmccann? piece in ?@</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">FDRLST? — masks aren’t about public health but social control</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Image of Biden in black mask endorses culture of silence, slavery, and social death.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">  https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/27/mandatory-masks-arent-about-safety-theyre-about-social-control/ …</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">39.6K</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5:16 AM - May 28, 2020</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">20.7K people are talking about this</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The science is clear on this: Masks work. If everyone wore them when they were out in public it would make a significant difference in slowing the transmission of the virus. These people are pretending to be tough, but in reality they’re just following the example of the president and living in denial.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Imagine a world where</b>, instead of behaving so foolishly, Trump modeled sensible behavior by wearing a mask and social distancing and encouraging businesses to open up responsibly? </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">His followers would buy red MAGA masks by the truckload and turn social distancing into the mark of <b>macho American individualism. </b>But he can’t do that, of course, because stoking the culture war is literally his last hope of winning re-election.</span></font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div></div><div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-trolls-the-libs-with-100000-dead-and-39-million-out-of-work-and-his-fanboys-love-it/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-trolls-the-libs-with-100000-dead-and-39-million-out-of-work-and-his-fanboys-love-it/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">memorial Day weekend will likely be remembered by history as one marked by unimaginable tragedy. The official count of people dead from <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/05/23/as-the-us-mourns-100000-dead-from-covid-19-trump-gets-back-to-golfing_partner/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">COVID-19 approached 100,000</a> — a milestone that will surely be passd on Tuesday or Wednesday — and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/opinion/coronavirus-death-toll.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">actual death toll is likely much higher</a>. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/21/unemployment-claims-coronavirus/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">weekend kicked off with new reports</a> of <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/05/20/with-36-million-out-of-work-trump-signals-willingness-to-let-expanded-unemployment-benefits-expire_partner/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">soaring unemployment</a>, putting the number of Americans who have filed benefit claims at 38.6 million, nearly one of every four workers in the United States.</font></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump, who currently occupies the White House despite losing the 2016 popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million, could not care less about all this suffering among the people he is purportedly there to serve. We know this, because he spent his weekend ranting on Twitter about pretty much anything — including obviously false conspiracy theories about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough — except the crisis he prefers to pretend isn’t happening at all.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What’s equally upsetting is the soul-deadening knowledge that Trump’s voters, who could well hand him another electoral victory even in the face of a near-certain popular vote defeat, also don’t appear to care about his sociopathic behavior. On the contrary, many of them seem to relish the fact that Trump continues to “trigger the liberals,” even as the nation falls apart around him.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Over the weekend, Trump, who isn’t exactly svelte himself,<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/25/donald-trump-twitter-coronavirus-golfing" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"> retweeted a conservative pundit mocking rising Democratic star Stacey Abrams for her weight</a>. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Trump also retweeted the same man calling Hillary Clinton a “skank” and claiming that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is ugly. Sexualized harassment of women, of course, is easy to psychoanalyze away with the entirely correct assertion that<b> pathetic men try to cover for their own inadequacies</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Trump is the supposed president of the United States, however, which puts the lie to long-standing but always untrue claims that ignoring such harassment robs it of its power.</span></font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">HNN 4520 see confed</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...<span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Believing themselves to be sitting atop a social volcano, Southern leaders sought order by isolating the region’s people from the culture of what they considered to be a decadent North and indeed from a decadent Western civilization in general. </span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"> Psychological, economic, and physical bullying upheld the closed nature of the South, as did the forceful exclusion of antislavery newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets—backed by the federal government’s acquiescence in banning the distribution of supposedly incendiary works through the mail in Southern states.  </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Editors-Make-War-newspapers-secession/dp/0826511643/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=donald+reynolds+editors+make+war&qid=1588396549&sr=8-1" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">Those</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"> </span><a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001263317" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">who</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"> </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Militant-South-1800-1861-John-Franklin/dp/0252070690/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=john+hope+franklin+the+militant+south&qid=1588396884&sr=8-1" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">voiced</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> heterodox views could readily find their businesses shunned and their standing in society ruined. </span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“Vigilance committees” filled with men itching to prove their masculinity sprang into action at rumors </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">about whites advocating abolition and rumors that slaves may be planning to revolt.  Many were forcefully exiled from the region, beaten up, or hanged as a result....</span></b></span></font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-pegged-as-the-least-masculine-president-in-modern-times-by-naval-war-college-professor-in-scathing-op-ed"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-pegged-as-the-least-masculine-president-in-modern-times-by-naval-war-college-professor-in-scathing-op-ed</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">President Donald Trump’s supporters think of him as the ultimate alpha male, but <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/donald-trump-the-most-unmanly-president/612031/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">a scathing op-ed in <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Atlantic</em></a> makes the case that he’s “the least masculine man” to be elected president in modern history.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tom Nichols, a conservative professor at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">writes that he is baffled that blue-collar white men continue to support Trump even as the president has whiny tantrums about being treated unfairly in the media.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Courage, honesty, respect, an economy of words, a bit of modesty, and a willingness to take responsibility are all virtues prized by the self-identified class of hard-working men, the stand-up guys, among whom I was raised,” he writes. “And yet, many of these same men expect none of those characteristics from Trump, who is a vain, cowardly, lying, vulgar, jabbering blowhard.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The most damning aspect of Trump, writes Nichols, is his utter refusal to take any responsibility for his actions.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"In this category, he exhibits one of the most unmanly of behaviors: He’s a blamer,” Nichols writes. “Nothing is ever his fault. In the midst of disaster, he praises himself while turning on even his most loyal supporters without a moment’s hesitation. Men across America who were socialized by team sports, whose lives are predicated on the principle of showing up and doing the job, continually excuse a man who continually excuses himself.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/donald-trump-the-most-unmanly-president/612031/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Read the whole editorial here</a>.</font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">520</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha: see zinn on sacrifice, //<b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> austerity (= tough, discipline, rational, male)  see shapiro</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> free mkt FUNDAMENTALISM: = METAPHOR // STORY  WORLDVIEW</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/its-time-to-reject-the-gods-of-commerce-america-is-a-society-not-an-economy/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/its-time-to-reject-the-gods-of-commerce-america-is-a-society-not-an-economy/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">david m</font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The “economy” does not exist. Human beings do.</b> What nearly everyone understands, except Republican officials and economists on television, is that there is no singular, shared experience within one large-scale economic system. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Leilani Jordan, a 27-year-old woman with a developmental disability, who worked as a grocery clerk at a satellite store of Giant Food — a chain throughout three states — <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8217469/Grocery-clerk-died-COVID-19-continued-going-work-20-64-final-paycheck.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">died from the coronavirus infection she contracted</a> when earning her final paycheck. That check was for $20.64. She worked without a facial mask, and lived in an entirely different universe than Nick Bertram, Giant’s CEO, who collects a salary in the high six figures.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans have less than $500 in savings. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">They simply do not experience the same “economy” as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/politics/trey-hollingsworth-coronavirus/index.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Rep. Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana</a>, a Republican who described Americans dying as a result of “opening the economy” as the “lesser of two evils.” Hollingsworth is the 12th-richest member of Congress, with a net worth of $50.1 million, most of it coming from his father — the “silent partner” in Hollingsworth’s investment firm.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Americans as disparate as Trey Hollingsworth and Leilani Jordan, whose death the congressman would presumably regard as collateral damage, might not share an economy in any substantive sense, but they do share a society.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ideological disease that cripples the United States is the belief that society does not exist beyond its commercial activity. President Calvin Coolidge famously remarked that “the business of America is business,” while Joel Millman, a former<b> reporter for the Wall Street Journal, once wrote, “America is not a nation … America is a market.”</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Millman was making a neutral, analytical observation, but a similar thesis has guided America’s long succession of disastrous policy decisions that</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> <b>treat the “economy” — meaning profits for corporations and their owners or shareholders — as sacred.</b> </span>An entire set of religious assumptions follow, most significantly that people like Jordan are martyrs for the God of profit. <b>Their deaths are acceptable losses in the name of God and country, which mutate together into the bloodless idol of commerce.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Human sacrifices at the altar of the idol have become almost commonplace.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pollution-poverty-people-color-asthma-inner-city/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Millions of children of color in the inner cities develop asthma</a> and suffer from other respiratory problems because they breathe heavily polluted air; 26,000 Americans die every year <a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/newsletter-article/health-care-advocates-say-thousands-die-due-lack-insurance" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">because they lack health insurance</a>; public health experts have concluded that poverty — and the lack of robust social services — <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/poverty-kills-better-poli_b_908795" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">causes tens of thousands of deaths a year</a>.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fatalities caused by environmental injustice, denial of health care and outright deprivation never provoke widespread scrutiny because, unlike the daily stock market report or reports of marginal GDP growth rates, they are largely out of sight and out of mind.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the United States to confront its market-based theology.</span> Americans now must consider whether their country is anything more than an engine of commerce, and whether human life has value separate from a financial calculus. For the first time in most of our lifetimes, the question of priorities is direct and implicates almost everyone....</font></p></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">420 an</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">n o  lnx</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Why Trump is so eager to bring back professional sports</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">President Donald J. Trump waves to the crowd after participating in pre-game ceremonies Saturday, Dec. 8, 2018, at the Army-Navy NCAA College football game at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)]</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Written by Robert Lipsyte / TomDispatch April 23, 2020</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">As controversies about the “reopening” of America loom over our lives, nothing seems as intrinsically irrelevant — yet possibly as critically important — as how soon major spectator sports return.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>If sports don’t trump religion as the opiate of the masses, they have, until recently, been at least the background music of most of our lives</b>. So here’s my bet on one possible side effect of the Covid-19 pandemic to put in your scorebook: if the National Football League plays regular season games this fall, President Trump stands a good chance of winning reelection for returning America to business as usual — or, at least, to his twisted version of the same.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That’s why he announced at a recent daily coronavirus briefing-cum-rally his eagerness to bring professional sports back quickly. Though it was Major League Baseball that he mentioned — “We have to get our sports back. I’m tired of watching baseball games that are 14 years old” — the<b> sport that truly matters to him is football, the only major mass entertainment (other than Trumpism) that endorses tribalism and toxic masculinity so flagrantly and keeps violence in vogue. Football supports Trump in its promotion of racial division, the crushing of dissent, and the spread of misinformation, inequality, and brutality.</b></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/taylor-swift-takes-on-toxic-masculinity-as-the-man/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/taylor-swift-takes-on-toxic-masculinity-as-the-man/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/don-jr-posts-photos-of-his-assault-rifle-bearing-ancient-symbol-of-war-with-islam-now-used-by-white-supremacists-experts/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/don-jr-posts-photos-of-his-assault-rifle-bearing-ancient-symbol-of-war-with-islam-now-used-by-white-supremacists-experts/</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha trump boys mantly men who kill endangered species, hunters, // coal rolling?!</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha 2: the opposite of virtue signalling?  just "different" virtues?</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">w<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/why-trumps-embrace-of-eddie-gallagher-is-so-dangerous/" rel="bookmark" title="Why Trump’s embrace of Eddie Gallagher is so dangerous" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" font-weight="font-weight" display="display" inline="inline" important="important" color="color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.4;">hy Trump’s embrace of Eddie Gallagher is so dangerous</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 1219</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Why Trump’s embrace of Eddie Gallagher is so dangerous</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Heather <b>Digby Parton / Salon </b>December 30, 2019</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Judging by his Twitter feed and a few appearances before the cameras, President Trump doesn’t seem to be enjoying his holiday break down at Mar-a-Lago.  In fact,  his tweeting is so obsessive and downright strange it even has some of his staunchest allies telling him he should put the phone down for a while. It’s obvious that the standoff between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is driving him to distraction. If that was part of Pelosi’s plan, it’s working.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Nonetheless, as I noted last week, this hasn’t stopped the merriment at Trump’s commercial resort property. Despite his assertion during the annual Christmas Day phone call to the troops that he works constantly when he’s at “the winter White House,” he’s been playing golf, hosting parties and hobnobbing with pals and paying guests</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">.Among those honored guests was Eddie Gallagher, the former Navy SEAL who was accused of war crimes. The Daily Mail reported on the festivities in detail, including pictures of Gallagher and his wife with the president and first lady as well as Donald Trump Jr. <b>Mrs. Gallagher reportedly gushed, “God bless the Trump family and all they are doing for this country!”</b></span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As you probably know, Gallagher was acquitted of murdering an injured ISIS fighter in a controversial military trial. After hearing about the case from Fox News commentator Pete Hegseth and former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik — a convicted felon and buddy of Rudy Giuliani — Trump took the nearly unprecedented step of interfering in the military justice system and ordering Gallagher released from pre-trial confinement. Despite Gallagher’s conviction on a lesser charge, Trump countermanded Navy commanders and restored him to his previous rank, allowing him to keep his SEAL pin, which resulted in the dismissal of Navy Secretary Richard Spencer.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has also pardoned two other members of the military accused or convicted of war crimes, even bringing them up on stage with him at a recent fundraiser. He has reportedly told allies he wants those men to campaign with him next year. We will almost certainly see them at the Republican convention. They are MAGA heroes.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Although Trump campaigned in 2016 by endorsing torture, atrocities and mass executions, even going so far as to proclaim that it was important to “take out the families,” it’s </span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">still shocking that he’s </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">openly embracing accused war criminals, calling Gallagher “one of the ultimate fighters” and a “very tough guy.”</span></b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the New York Times’ explosive story on Gallagher last Friday, in which we saw the original testimony of his fellow SEALs and footage of the moments before the killing of the sedated ISIS fighter, it’s almost impossible to wrap your mind around the idea that this man was feted at the “winter White House” just last week.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Times reported, this was “the first opportunity outside the courtroom to hear directly from the men of Alpha platoon, SEAL Team 7,”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">whose blistering testimony about their platoon chief was dismissed by President Trump when he upended the military code of justice to protect Chief Gallagher from the punishment. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The guy is freaking evil,” Special Operator Miller told investigators. “The guy was toxic,” Special Operator First Class Joshua Vriens, a sniper, said in a separate interview. “You could tell he was perfectly O.K. with killing anybody that was moving,” Special Operator First Class Corey Scott, a medic in the platoon, told the investigators.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The culture of the special forces requires a deep sense of loyalty and code of silence. It’s clear that the decision to come forward was very difficult, but what they had witnessed had obviously caused them great anguish</b>. Gallagher says these SEALs accused him of all these crimes because they are cowards who were failing in their duties, and he has instructed his lawyer to sue the New York Times reporter who wrote the story. (You can see why he and Trump have formed such a bond.)</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These anecdotes are overwhelming and disturbing. Seeing the text messages and the video of the witnesses makes it even more disturbing that Gallagher is still walking the streets, particularly since there is no dispute that he stabbed the sedated teenager:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Gallagher initially tended to the boy. Then according to seven members of the platoon, he stabbed him. One of them, Craig Miller, said he saw blood gush from the boy’s jugular, a stream of liquid like the kind that one sees when a baby is “throwing up.” Gallagher later texted his friends a photo of the dead boy: “Good story behind this,” he wrote. “Got him with my hunting knife.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>He was acquitted when one of the accusers, a medic who had been given immunity, explained that he was the one who had actually killed the stabbed teenager by cutting off his air-supply to end his suffering.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nobody knows exactly what happened, but what with all the high-profile presidential interference and an apparently mishandled prosecution, Gallagher got off the hook. Perhaps that was the correct outcome. The state — in this case, the military — has to prove the case it brings and apparently failed to bring the right one.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it’s impossible to see those videos and read those texts and come away believing that justice was done. Perhaps even more importantly, you can’t read that story and believe society is safe with Eddie Gallagher walking free, much less being treated as a hero by the most powerful man on earth.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The military itself has suffered a great wound as well. It would have been bad enough for Gallagher to be acquitted due to poor lawyering. But that’s how the system works, and sometimes guilty people get away with murder. But Trump’s interference has disrupted a delicate constitutional balance, in which the nonpartisan military is commanded by the civilian president and regulated by the U.S. Congress. As law professor Deborah Pearlstein wrote in the Atlantic:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Watching the president of the United States reward the violation of the most fundamental laws of war, inflaming America’s enemies and alienating America’s allies, was bad enough. But the president’s action appeared to be an intervention in otherwise semi-independent legal and disciplinary processes inside the military — an intervention for the purpose of currying favor with his political base. The pardons — driven by Fox News and reinforced by political rallies — added to the appearance, and reality, that the president regards the military as a tool of partisan politics, not as an institution whose unique constitutional position he has a duty to protect.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The military was the last government institution his ignorance and solipsism hadn’t managed to compromise. But he has finally gotten to that as well.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">c<strong style="font-family: Arial, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=2f35f21b60&e=613b87ca24" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ongress to Vote on $22 Billion Defense Increase One Week After Trump Slashed Food Stamps</a></strong></font></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-family: Arial, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" font-size="font-size" px="px">Alex Emmons</span><span style="" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" sans-serif="sans-serif" line-height="line-height" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders and California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna called the defense bill an example of “astonishing moral cowardice.”</p><p style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" sans-serif="sans-serif" line-height="line-height" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=c1cf2ccb18&e=613b87ca24" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.6px;">READ MORE →</a></p><div></div></span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">impeach gop yellers:</font></div><div><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/i-am-not-yielding-watch-rep-pramila-jayapal-shut-down-jim-jordans-attempt-to-hijack-impeachment-hearing/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">"i am not yielding’: Watch Rep. Pramila Jayapal shut down Jim Jordan’s attempt to hijack impeachment hearing</font></a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/i-am-not-yielding-watch-rep-pramila-jayapal-shut-down-jim-jordans-attempt-to-hijack-impeachment-hearing/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" /></a><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/david-edwards/" title="Posts by David Edwards" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-align: right; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">David Edwards</a><span style="text-align: right;"> </span><span style="text-align: right;">/</span><span style="text-align: right;"> </span><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/raw-story/" title="Posts by Raw Story" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-align: right; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Raw S</a></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></h3></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">silivia f? jobs open to (low income, ppl of color) req violence: security guard, gangsta, military [ucsc ortiz AA ltnx bremerton all men in mil]</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">thanos ultra masc</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-campaign-tweets-video-of-president-as-murderous-comic-book-villain-who-loses-in-the-end/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-campaign-tweets-video-of-president-as-murderous-comic-book-villain-who-loses-in-the-end/</font></a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1219</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">forced sonogram, must view</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/supreme-courts-newest-move-on-abortion-approves-torture-for-pregnant-people/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Supreme Court’s newest move on abortion approves torture for pregnant people</font></a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/supreme-courts-newest-move-on-abortion-approves-torture-for-pregnant-people/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/supreme-courts-newest-move-on-abortion-approves-torture-for-pregnant-people/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></a><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/common-dreams/" title="Posts by Common Dreams" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-align: right; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Common Dream</a><span style="text-align: right;">s</span></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></h3></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></font></font></div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-brings-pardoned-us-war-criminals-onstage-at-florida-republican-fundraiser/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-brings-pardoned-us-war-criminals-onstage-at-florida-republican-fundraiser/</font></a></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha-let hedges said  poor wht go for trump b/c he is strong enough to defeat big force(s) they face; thus we need strong guys rogue cop who does not play by the rules</font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">=</font></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0305829818775817"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0305829818775817</font></a></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></div><div><div class="hlFld-Title" style="line-height: 1.5; font-weight: 700; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="publicationContentTitle" style="margin-bottom: 0px; position: relative; width: 750.906px;"><h1 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire</font></font></font></font></h1></div></div><div class="copyrightStatement" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="articleMetaDrop publicationContentDropZone" data-pb-dropzone="articleMetaDropZone" style="margin-bottom: 4px; margin-top: 2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="publicationContentAuthors" style="margin-bottom: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="author-container js__articleAuthorContainer" data-max-authors="5" data-authorname-selector=".contribDegrees "><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font><div class="authors"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></font></font><div class="hlFld-ContribAuthor"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times 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Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="contribDegrees" style="position: relative; padding-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a class="entryAuthor" href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0305829818775817" aria-label="Open contributor information pop-up for Cara Daggett" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Cara Daggett</a></font></span></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div></div></div></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="publicationContentEpubDate dates" style="margin-bottom: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">First Published June 20, 2018 </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="ArticleType" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 10px; margin-left: 5px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Research Article</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /></span></font></font></font><div class="articleMetaDrop publicationContentDropZone publicationContentDropZone1" data-pb-dropzone="articleMetaDropZone1" style="margin-bottom: 4px; margin-top: 2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></font><div class="widget doiWidget none widget-none widget-compact-all" id="66028d4c-d8fb-4855-92bd-8d3e954d6d44" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New 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face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="doiWidgetLabel"><a class="doiWidgetLink" href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0305829818775817" style="text-decoration-line: none;">https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829818775817</a></span></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(242, 242, 242);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the planet warms, new authoritarian movements in the West are embracing a toxic combination of climate denial, racism and misogyny. Rather than consider these resentments separately, this article interrogates their relationship through the concept of petro-masculinity, which appreciates the historic role of fossil fuel systems in buttressing white patriarchal rule. Petro-masculinity is helpful to understanding how the anxieties aroused by the Anthropocene can augment desires for authoritarianism. The concept of petro-masculinity suggests that fossil fuels mean more than profit; fossil fuels also contribute to making identities, which poses risks for post-carbon energy politics. Moreover, through a psycho-political reading of authoritarianism, I show how fossil fuel use can function as a violent compensatory practice in reaction to gender and climate trouble.</font></span></font></font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 5px 0px; padding: 5px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">driver on trump seal pardon? war crimes 2x called them <b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">warriors ~ deep state?</span>! (rudy is a warrior, not acting on my djt behalf, indep go-getter)</b></font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">, U.S. Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer (no relation to the white nationalist of the same name) <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=7bd00616b8a3b0624f73f4ffe85deba856dfd53d2fa76b78e9ab3119ed9ef04b7421f32d5b5e2e5a1a75c34873821f99754bda00ce390eed" title="was forced out" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">was forced out </a>after losing a power struggle with Fox News host Pete Hegseth. Hegseth has been aggressively lobbying the Trump administration to intervene in the cases of multiple convicted war criminals, including Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who had been accused of war crimes during a 2017 deployment to Iraq. Hegseth devoted numerous Fox & Friends segments to their causes, repeatedly hosted their family members and lawyers to ask the president for pardons, and privately urged the president to do so.⁠</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gallagher was acquitted in July on charges related to the murder of a teenage prisoner of war, but was demoted after being convicted of posing for photos with the body. While Trump pardoned the Navy SEAL and restored his rank, Navy officials subsequently sought to convene a review board to remove Gallagher from his elite unit and strip him of his Trident pin. This process <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=7bd00616b8a3b062b4cb8a01c526608085bfdd4116fa7ea7aa7cba037d323f93ea5e21e679d33c91fc97810e950d3a628ab428e6b1a90fca" title="reportedly continued" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">reportedly continued</a> even after Trump tweeted his disapproval of the move.</font></font></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Following several attacks from Hegseth on Spencer and the Navy during the course of Sunday morning’s <i>Fox & Friends</i> broadcast, Trump announced his displeasure with the Navy and Spencer’s termination on Twitter.</font></font></font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">aha:<b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> Rambo </b>do we get to win this time,<b> wimpy spineless bureaucrats prevented MANly am fighting men to beat primitive PJ comies:</b></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/new-york-times-reporters-stand-by-story-revealing-navy-secretary-spencer-threatened-to-resign-over-trump-plan-to-reverse-seals-punishment/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/new-york-times-reporters-stand-by-story-revealing-navy-secretary-spencer-threatened-to-resign-over-trump-plan-to-reverse-seals-punishment/</a></font></font></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha: military has far and away best rep of any gov't agy tho ME wars not popular; trump sees himself as a tough guy and likes to surround himself, appear to ally w/ them eg rally on aircraft carrier; // nixon claimed/used support from hardhats, called football coahes to give advice [RR the Gipper]; djt uses mil and cops as scenery; cf uber aha on Fem</font></font></font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trump-used-money-raised-for-vets-as-campaign-slush-fund-that-should-end-his-political-career"><font size="4" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trump-used-money-raised-for-vets-as-campaign-slush-fund-that-should-end-his-political-career</font></a></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">teflon --> kevlar?</font></font></font></p></div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">male pattern boldness?</font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/watch-hearing-audience-groans-as-gops-matt-gaetz-rants-about-low-t-impeachment-inquiry/" rel="bookmark" title="Watch: Hearing audience groans as GOP’s Matt Gaetz rants about ‘low-T’ impeachment inquiry" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" font-weight="font-weight" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" color="color" important="important" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.4; display: block;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Hearing audience groans as GOP’s Matt Gaetz rants about ‘low-T’ impeachment inquiry</font></a></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/trump-fan-rep-matt-gaetz-is-now-under-investigation-for-potentially-trying-to-threaten-michael-cohen/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/trump-fan-rep-matt-gaetz-is-now-under-investigation-for-potentially-trying-to-threaten-michael-cohen/</font></a></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-represents-the-gops-warped-view-of-masculinity-and-what-comes-next-could-be-even-worse"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-represents-the-gops-warped-view-of-masculinity-and-what-comes-next-could-be-even-worse</font></a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump represents the GOP’s warped view of masculinity — and what comes next could be even worse</b></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Common Dreams<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>September 6, 2019</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Donald McCarthy</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Numerous Democrats have quoted Ronald Reagan, trying to show how far the Republican Party has fallen under Trump, yet there is much in Reagan’s approach that Trump has taken and elaborated on: specifically, the <b>tough guy presidential persona.</b> It is easy to look at Ronald Reagan and ask what has happened to the Republican Party, but there is a clear line of descent, and it started in 1980, during Reagan’s first election, when the Republicans attempted to rewrite the desirable traits of a president to focus less on policy and more on masculine presentation.</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reagan’s campaign played up the image of him as a cowboy, a whitewashed view of the white man at the head of the American frontier. There is even a children’s book about Reagan titled The Remarkable Ronald Reagan: Cowboy and Commander in Chief. This cowboy mystique was a positive for him at the time. He was presented to the public as a swaggering man who had no time for political correctness, a tough guy that would not be roughed up by the Soviet Union, and an all-American figure, one that reminded Americans of the country’s past glories. Or, at least, reminded them of the cowboys they watched on television and in film as children, cowboys who inhabited a fictionalized version of America’s past. Reagan’s past playing cowboys in film certainly helped him sell this image.</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Ronald Reagan tried to inhabit the boorish yet endearing version of the cowboy in order to win votes, Donald Trump embraced The Searchers’ Ethan Edwards, an angry racist, lashing out at everyone around him. The road from Reagan’s persona to Trump’s is not a long one, and the space in between was paved by George W. Bush. Reagan played a cowboy in film,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> but Bush tried to be a real-life cowboy, right down to the way he dressed. He wore the hat, he had the accent, he hunted, and he had the plain, tough guy talk of an American western figure. Terrorists want to attack American soldiers in Iraq? “Bring it on.”</span></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, of course, they did, but Bush’s tough guy image worked magic in both of his elections, so no one pointed out the danger of his toxically masculine rhetoric. In fact, the Democrats tried to best the Republicans on this, forcing John Kerry to come out at the Democratic convention in 2004 by announcing he was “reporting for duty.” This was the opposite of who Kerry had been (previously, he was a remarkable voice against the war in Vietnam), but the alpha male approach worked for Bush so why not for Kerry, too? Probably because since 1980, the Republicans had made sure to adopt this approach and were not about to be beaten in it after 24 years of experience. Their only misstep was George H.W. Bush, who could not quite pull it off. He was a one-term president, you may recall.</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Once done with Bush, there was little room to go further with the rugged cowboy image without risking becoming a satire. Luckily, Donald Trump existed, and he was more than up for the task. Trump was better than a cowboy; he was an alpha male, able to fit into any masculine character one wanted: cowboy, fighter, gangster, capitalist.</span> And anyone against him? They’re beta males (or females), unable to compete. He’s the toughest of the tough guys out of a 1930s gangster film, not afraid to put women, minorities, and the poor in their place. Recently, in response to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s plan to do away with the electoral college, Trump remarked: “This is our country, not theirs.” One can easily hear a mobster sneering this at his rival.</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This trend is not worth noting merely because it explains a way that Republicans have been able to enchant some voters with a warped view of masculinity; it is also a warning. If Trump is the current iteration of the tough guy president, then what would the next iteration be? Some would have you believe it cannot be any worse than Trump. Those people would be wrong.</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>The Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte </b>regularly brags of killing criminal suspects to combat drug crime. He “joked” about how he should have been allowed to be the first person to rape a woman who was gang raped before her death. He even doubts his own daughter’s claims of sexual abuse. Duterte’s entire presidency rests upon the belief that the Philippines needs a tough leader, and he endorses, and possibly commits, rape and murder in order to live up to that image.</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We’ve seen what past tough guy presidents can do. It’s worth noting what type of person will come next now that the door is open if being tough continues to be desirable.</font></font></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></font></font></div><div><div class="GGD0W3FBKT" aria-hidden="false" style="float: left; top: 3px; left: 5px; margin-right: 110px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see beran something awful</font></font></font></div><div style="clear: both; position: relative;"><div class="GGD0W3FBKS" aria-hidden="false" style="float: left;"><div style="clear: both;"><div class="gwt-HTML" aria-hidden="false"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://medium.com/@DaleBeran/4chan-the-skeleton-key-to-the-rise-of-trump-624e7cb798cb" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" style="">https://medium.com/@DaleBeran/4chan-the-skeleton-key-to-the-rise-of-trump-624e7cb798cb</font></a></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">very good and funny talk</font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?463096-1/it-awful" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.c-span.org/video/?463096-1/it-awful</font></a></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="time" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-weight: 600; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: uppercase; display: block; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;"><time style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JULY 30, 2019</font></time></span></font></font><h1 class="video-page-title" itemprop="name" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 2px 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It Came From Something Awful</font></span></font></font></h1><div class="initial" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.c-span.org/person/?121861" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s ease 0s;">Dale Beran </a><span style="font-style: inherit;">talked about his book, </span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">It Came from Something Awful: How a <a href="https://www.c-span.org/person/?donaldtrump" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: color 0.35s ease 0s;">Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump </a>into Office</span>, <span style="font-style: inherit;">in which he profiled the counterculture online hub 4chan.</span></font></p></div><div class="initial" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-style: inherit;">black pill is nihilistic embrace of loserdom, suicide = hero "I'm going in"</span></font></p></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-style: inherit;">
</span></font></p></div></div></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">never again jewish protestors hit by big black truck; charlottesville faux dodge muscle car; canada?</font></font></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/revealed-leaked-memo-shows-the-republican-partys-vile-strategy-to-respond-to-mass-shootings-with-lies/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/revealed-leaked-memo-shows-the-republican-partys-vile-strategy-to-respond-to-mass-shootings-with-lies/</font></a></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" 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</b></div><div><b>Revealed: Leaked memo shows the Republican Party’s vile strategy to respond to mass shootings with lies</b></div><div>
</div><div>Written by Walter Einenkel / Daily Kos<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>August 16, 2019</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the wake of the most recent mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, congressional Republicans have been circulating a “memo,” on how to discuss gun violence. The Tampa Bay Times obtained this memo and report that while not shocking to most people here, the depth of cynicism and craven hypocrisy on the part of Republicans knows no bottom. According to the Times, the memo discusses the general rhetorical tricks of handling questions about closing existing gun law loopholes instead of creating more robust gun laws. But it also discusses how to very specifically move the conversations away from white supremacy and the role that right-wing propaganda seems to be playing in most domestic terrorist scenarios like the recent El Paso shootings, where the gunman told authorities that he wanted to kill Mexicans.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>If asked, the memo suggests that the first thing to do is to “steer the conversation away from white nationalism</b> to an argument that implies both sides are to blame.” Subsequently, Republicans are directed to point out, falsely, that many of the mass shootings in recent years were<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> carried out by “left-leaning” individuals. They specifically point to “El Paso shooter, the recent Colorado shooters, the Congressional baseball shooter, Congresswoman Giffords’ shooter and Antifa.” The El Paso mention is a classic right-wing typo, they meant the Dayton shooting—the right wing in our country does have a level of incompetence that one might call its brand.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> </span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Did you know that all of those shooters were “left leaning?” I bet you didn’t. Cause they weren’t. The man that shot Arizona’s Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and a dozen other people January of 2011, while registered as a Democrat, showed motives all over the map, referencing everyone from Hillary Clinton to Adolf Hitler, and according to people around him, a general obsession with Giffords herself. The Colorado shooters seem to have been motivated, more than anything, by anger over bullying and a perverse sense of revenge.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The most recent Dayton, Ohio, shooting has been the big news story for the right wing of this country because Donald Trump tweeted and told reporters that the shooter was a “fan” of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.</div><div>
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</div><div>CBS News</div><div>?</div><div>@CBSNews</div><div> President Trump on Dayton shooter: "He was a fan of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, nothing to do with Trump. Nobody ever mentions that." https://cbsn.ws/2Ky1ZZO </div><div>
</div><div> Embedded video</div><div>
</div><div>However, while the Dayton shooter may have had left “leanings,” politically, he also had a very specific history of violent fantasy not at all connected to one political ideology or another. Either way, the fact remains that domestic white nationalist terrorism is still the biggest problem when it comes to mass shooting gun violence in our country. As FBI Director Christopher McKay told a Senate Judiciary Committee last month, the majority of 2019’s domestic terrorist arrests were “motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence.” The need for the Republican Party to sit on their hands to protect their gun money, dovetails nicely with their need to appeal almost exclusively to white nationalists and the people who hate being called white nationalists, but espouse most of the same positions and beliefs of white nationalists.</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/24/americas/toronto-van-investigation/index.html"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.cnn.com<b>/2018/04</b>/24/americas/toronto-van-investigation/index.html</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">toronto (CNN)Toronto police have their suspect -- but they're still looking for a motive.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Alek Minassian, the man accused of plowing into pedestrians with a rented van on Monday, was charged Tuesday with 10 counts of first-degree murder.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 25-year-old is also charged with 13 counts of attempted murder. Authorities said another count of attempted murder likely will be added.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Investigators are still trying to determine the motive behind the attack, which left 10 people dead and 14 hurt. One aspect they will look at is his social media posts and what a man who killed six people with a vehicle in 2014 meant to Minassian.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Minassian, who was wearing a white jumpsuit with his hands cuffed behind him, appeared attentive during the brief hearing. His next court appearance will be a bail hearing on May 10.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alek Minassian is charged with a total of 23 counts for Monday's van plowing attack. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alek Minassian is charged with a total of 23 counts for Monday's van plowing attack.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Obviously all Canadians continue and will continue to have questions about why this happened, what could possibly be the motive behind it," Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So far, officials aren't calling the attack an act of terrorism. "There would appear to be no national security connection," Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Van strikes pedestrians in Toronto</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Photos: Van strikes pedestrians in Toronto</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders said, "It's very clear just from a general perspective to say that the actions definitely look deliberate."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The van sped down a busy street Monday with reckless abandon, swerving into the wrong lanes of traffic and careening onto a sidewalk.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clue emerges from Facebook</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Minassian on Monday posted a cryptic message to Facebook minutes before setting off in his rented vehicle, Sgt. Graham Gibson, a homicide detective with the Toronto police, said Tuesday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Investigators found a Facebook account they believe belongs to Minassian, CNN law enforcement analyst Josh Campbell said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What we know about the Toronto van suspect</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A message posted on the account earlier Monday read: "All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Campbell said investigators believe the post refers to the man who killed six and injured 14 in a drive-by shooting and vehicle ramming attack near the University of California Santa Barbara campus in 2014. Rodger later died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Investigators said Rodger was motivated to carry out his attack by a personal grievance related to his immersion in the extremist ideological subculture of men's rights activists, who believe women don't actually want gender equality and have been brainwashed by feminist propaganda....</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/misogyny-and-white-supremacy-its-time-to-fight-these-closely-linked-sources-of-violence/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/misogyny-and-white-supremacy-its-time-to-fight-these-closely-linked-sources-of-violence/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Misogyny and white supremacy: It’s time to fight these closely-linked sources of violence</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon August 12, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s been a little over a week since the deadly shootings in El Paso and Dayton and, as usual, the nation’s attention is already turning to other things. In the Trump era, there’s always something horrible happening. The Democratic presidential candidates have put gun safety policies at the top of their agenda and perhaps it will stay there. But Mitch McConnell is still in Kentucky vaguely waving his hands about some kind of legislation, clearly assuming the country will have moved on by the time Congress reconvenes next month. This ritual response to mass murder is sadly predictable.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But before we leave this latest episode of horrific violence behind, it’s important to note that a new understanding has come out of these events about the nature of the threat we face. It’s not only from easy access to guns but about the ideology that’s driving some of these recent incidents. The mainstreaming of white supremacist language by conservative media — and by President Trump’s rhetoric — have been recognized as a contributing factor in the growing white power movement in the United States. That’s an important step to gaining an understanding of this phenomenon.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The threat of white supremacist violence has been with us for a long time, of course. But it has picked up in recent years and the government has been lax in confronting it, mainly because Republican politicians have a fit any time the topic is raised. (This should have sounded some alarm bells about the mainstreaming of this ideology long ago.) Law enforcement has long been aware that the advent of the internet has created fertile ground for recruitment and conversion and that the movement was spreading, but wasn’t given the resources to deal with it. Perhaps that will change, although it’s hard to see that happening any time soon when the president himself insists the threat does not exist:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Asked if he thinks white nationalism is a rising threat, Trump says, “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump goes on to say he thinks it’s too early to draw conclusions about what motivated New Zealand mosque shooter. pic.twitter.com/maTx55ruCb</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 15, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the El Paso massacre by a white supremacist wasn’t the only deadly violence on that awful weekend in America. In Dayton, Ohio, a 24-year-old man killed nine people in another mass shooting, and his motivation is murkier. Apparently, the accused shooter’s social media accounts showed that he identified with progressive politics, expressing admiration for Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. But that may be less important than the apparent fact that he also had a fetish for guns and held crude and violent misogynistic beliefs. Although law enforcement officials have drawn no public conclusions about the shooter’s motive, ABC News reported on Sunday that they believed the shooter had “demonstrated a misogyny that was far more extreme than any of his political leanings.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Extreme” doesn’t really cover it. This man had been expelled from school for writing a “rape list” and was reportedly a singer in a “pornogrind” band — a tiny heavy metal subculture that celebrates extreme violence against women. (Although this musical genre is intentionally disgusting, it’s been around for years and has not previously been implicated in any acts of violence.) It appears the authorities believe the shooter’s motives weren’t explicitly political but rather tied somehow to his hatred of women.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Obviously a leftist can also be a violent misogynist, but left-wing politics doesn’t feature misogyny as part and parcel of its ideology</b>. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Generally speaking, the left rejects sexism and is open to a feminist critique of gender-based violence. In that regard, the Dayton shooter seems to have had more in common with the white supremacists than anyone on the left.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Anti-Defamation League issued a report last year titled “When Women are the Enemy: The Intersection of Misogyny and White Supremacy,” finding that hatred of women is often “a gateway into the white supremacist world.</b>” That report found that cultural changes and the focus on gender equality in progressive politics inspire some men to turn to far-right, white supremacist movements that see women in highly traditional gender roles. Among “white power” and neo-Nazi groups, whose explicit aim is to repopulate the white race (so that black and brown people do no “replace” them), women are encouraged to bear as many children as possible. (In that they are echoed by mainstream white nationalists such as Tucker Carlson of Fox News.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jessica Reeve, the author of the ADL report, told the Independent:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There’s a profoundly anti-woman undercurrent to many white supremacist/alt right online exchanges, and that can easily veer from disrespect into the full-on promotion of violence, including rape. This is even more evident if you visit incel and MRA boards, where anger towards and hatred of women is the primary focus — and participants celebrate and encourage misogynist violence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other words, there seems to be a strong correlation between the people who believe they are being robbed of their rightful status by people of color and those who believe they are being robbed of their status by women. These overlapping forms of resentment and anger can all too easily lead to violence. Sometimes this is limited to “ordinary” domestic abuse, which remains widespread in America. Sometimes it results in lethal horror such as Dayton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A recent New York Times article explored the issue of misogyny in these mass shootings. Much as the white supremacists of 8chan and similar forums have celebrated the mass killings of Jews, Mexicans and Muslims, online groups of “incels” have also celebrated the killing of women, especially the infamous case of Elliot Rodger, the young man who  killed six people in 2014 in Isla Vista, California, a day after posting an online video vowing revenge on women who had declined his advances. The Times cited a more recent example: “Alek Minassian, who drove a van onto a sidewalk in Toronto in 2018, killing 10 people, had posted a message on Facebook minutes before the attack praising Mr. Rodger.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It appears that the demographic and personality profile that can lead to white supremacist violence is not much different the demographic and personality profile that leads to misogynist violence. In fact, these killers often seem irrationally angry with everyone who isn’t a white male.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I hardly think it’s necessary to point out that our president is right in the middle of this phenomenon as well. The ADL paper reports that after Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape was released during the 2016 campaign, notorious neo-Nazi Richard Spencer defended the then-candidate, saying that “at some part of every woman’s soul, they want to be taken by a strong man.” Trump’s overt racism isn’t the only reason these extremists love the guy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Much has been made of the fact that authorities have been starved of resources to combat this white supremacist threat. There is now some hope that will change. As important as that is, it’s time to put some resources — and some serious thought — into combatting misogynist violence as well.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></div><div><div class="header-list-style" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 class="entry-title grid-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/gun-violence-reporter-says-misogyny-is-the-clear-link-between-many-mass-shootings/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; letter-spacing: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Gun violence reporter says misogyny is the ‘clear link’ between many mass shootings</font></a></h2><div class="grid-post-box-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 12px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/amy-goodman/" title="Posts by Amy Goodman" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Amy Goodman</a>, <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/democracy-now/" title="Posts by Democracy Now" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Democracy Now</a></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">August 6, 2019</span></font></div></div><div class="item-content entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 18px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senator Bernie Sanders and other Democratic leaders are calling on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to hold a special session of the Senate to vote on two gun safety bills recently passed in the House.</font></p></div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">nb this a couple weeks after pvt border patorl FB with photoshop rape of AOC, high rank woamn? member of that gp?)</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/ocasio-cortez-responds-to-photo-of-mcconnell-supporters-groping-cutout-is-this-just-standard-culture-of-team-mitch" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/ocasio-cortez-responds-to-photo-of-mcconnell-supporters-groping-cutout-is-this-just-standard-culture-of-team-mitch</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...“Just wanted to clarify: are you paying for young men to practice groping and choking members of Congress with your payroll, or is this just the standard culture of #TeamMitch? Thanks.” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Monday evening.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Pictured: seven young white men in ‘Team Mitch’ t-shirts, gathered round a distressed looking cardboard AOC, groping and kissing her,” she wrote. “The caption, ‘break me off a piece of that<b>.’ Future federal judges of America.”</b></font></p><div class="p11_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McConnell’s spokesman said in a <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/aoc-choking-team-mitch-kentucky-picnic_n_5d48b3a5e4b01ae816c7416c" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">statement</a> that the Kentucky Republican “in no way condones any aggressive, suggestive, or demeaning act toward life-sized cardboard cutouts of any gender” and said the young men are not officially affiliated with McConnell’s Senate campaign.</font></p><div class="p12_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But as <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">HuffPost</em> <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/aoc-choking-team-mitch-kentucky-picnic_n_5d48b3a5e4b01ae816c7416c" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reported</a>, “<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Some of the same men also <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B0uHpQDlrR5/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">appeared in a photo</a> on the official ‘Team Mitch’ Instagram account for the Fancy Farm picnic, holding aloft cutout faces of Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.”</span></font></p><div class="p13_18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The photo was the second controversial image to come out of Team Mitch’s participation at the Fancy Farm picnic,” according to <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">HuffPost</em>. “Another photo showed cardboard gravestones, including one with the name of the Kentucky senator’s Democratic challenger in 2020, Amy McGrath. The campaign tweeted the image under the headline: ‘<b>The Grim Reaper of Socialism.'</b>” [posted hours after mass shooting]</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">nuclear power: there's a weird nerdy techo-optimist mansplaining aspect to this? if you irrational girly treehuggers would just man up, we could solve all our energy problems.
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">aha based on brazil fail tip pt: // ecosystem health and indig cult heath/ languages;</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> indig and native Am ppl is EJ intensified;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> colonialism; they are the poorest, least educated but/and thus pay largest price in terms of toxic load; hit 1st and worst by AGW, but had the least to do with causing and the MOST to do with PROTECTING (defenders killed at high rates eg</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> berta C</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">]. killed at high rates b/c the CAN be: racism plus greed: those ppl do not know the true value of assets; they are block progress and prosperity. who will miss a murdered defender?  if police on take and courts corrupt, no justice for them, and no incentive to stop killing them.[NB</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> missing native women around <b>man camps</b>,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> a throwback to wild west gold rush?</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> toxic masculinity</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">low density of women].</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></p></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New 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</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div><b>Democratic 2020 strategy must be gloves off and abandon all subtlety: ‘Trump will kill your dog!’</b></div><div> </div><div>Written by Lucian K. Truscott IV / Salon July 27, 2019</div><div>When he’s finished putting down your dog, Trump is going to take away your health care, raise your taxes, eliminate your job, take away your right to an abortion, limit your right to vote, turn your air and water brown, cut your Social Security and Medicare, and tell you if you don’t like it, you can leave.</div><div>
</div><div>It doesn’t matter who’s the nominee. This is the message Democrats have to carry to the country in 2020. Is it an exaggeration? A scare tactic? Are you kidding? We already know all this stuff is true, and we don’t need “facts” to surmise that if given half a chance Trump and his minions will find some way to make euthanizing shelter animals easier and more profitable. For Donald Trump and the Republican Party he leads, money and cruelty is who they are. It’s what they do.</div><div> </div><div>Democrats had better wake up to the fact that the 2020 campaign, on every level from the presidential race on down, is going to take place in the gutter. It’s long past time to take the gloves off. Republicans never put them on. They’ve been out there stealing, lying and cheating their way into office for decades. They don’t have a concept of playing fair. They play dirty. They play to win. They’ll do anything it takes to do it.</div><div>
</div><div>They’ve already gerrymandered electoral districts so that Democrats get a majority of the vote and a minority of House seats like they do in states like Wisconsin and North Carolina. They’ve passed laws restricting the right to vote in 25 states since 2010, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks voting laws. Fifteen states have more restrictive voter ID requirements, and ten have passed laws making it harder for citizens to register to vote. Every state with new voting restrictions is controlled by Republicans, and a Republican-backed lawsuit succeeded in defenestrating the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. And I hardly need to go into what they’ve done to campaign finance laws. Mitt Romney’s cri de coeur in 2012, “Corporations are people too!” is all you need to know.</div><div>
</div><div>Now they’re floating shit like this: all Democrats are Socialists. That whiny little Trump-pilot-fish Lindsey Graham recently asserted that AOC and the rest of the “Squad” are communists. Every other time Trump opens his mouth he’s chirping that Democrats are for “open borders.” They’re out there daily pushing the lie that Democrats want to come right into your homes and take away your guns. And don’t you know that they’ll get around to some bullshit about how Democrats want ISIS to win in Syria and Iraq and then they’ll turn Afghanistan over to the Taliban.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Do you think Republicans care if it’s all complete bullshit? Hell no. They’re going to run on this crap, and anything else they can think up over the next 15 months, and they’re going to laugh all the way to the ballot box.</b> You want to know what else Trump and his lily-livered bunch of chicken hawks are going to do? They’re going to sell the idea that Donald Trump, who had five draft deferments, skipped out of Vietnam with his bone spurs, capitulated to Vladimir Putin at Helsinki, writes “love letters” to Kim Jung Un, ripped babies out their mothers arms along the southern border, and has been charged by multiple women with rape as well as sexual assault  is a tough guy.</div><div>
</div><div>I’ll wait for you to reach down and pick your jaw up from the floor on that one. You okay now? Is your jaw reattached?</div><div>
</div><div><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Here’s why </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Republicans are pushing the lie that Trump is a tough guy. Because it works</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. Historian Rick Perlstein, author of a series of books on the rise of Republican conservatism, was interviewed in The New Yorker last week and said something I think the Democratic Party has forgotten over the last decade or so. “</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Toughness is a core primary value</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">,” Perlstein said, referring to red states that Democrats have failed to carry in recent elections. “All of us remember 2004, when George W. Bush won reelection explicitly on this rationale of saying we know people disagree with his issue positions, but we are going to position him as the guy who sticks with his gut no matter what.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>Sound familiar? Bush, who famously avoided Vietnam by joining the Air Force National Guard and then failed to show up for duty during the war years, was sold as “tough.” Ronald Reagan was awarded the Bronze Star for Toughness when he yelled out that he “paid for this microphone” at some long-forgotten debate in New Hampshire in 1980. And now we’ve got Donald Trump, whose boasting about grabbing women “by the pussy” on the infamous Access Hollywood tape is what passes for Republican toughness today.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The appearance by a real-life tough guy on Capitol Hill got me thinking about what the Democrats’ problem has been when it comes to this “toughness” thing. Robert Mueller, a Marine veteran of Vietnam who earned a Bronze Star medal and a Purple Heart, has been roundly criticized for his halting and seemingly imprecise testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees this week. <b>The contrast between the serious, taciturn Mueller and such bellowing “bomb throwers” as Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio couldn’t have been starker.</b></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mueller’s problem on Wednesday is the same as the problem Democrats have when they run for office. Mueller was careful, nuanced, and he stuck to the facts. His testimony, when it came right down to it, was imperfect in the way that any sane person must be if he or she is bound by a sense of duty, propriety, and an urge to abide by accepted norms. He came across as a somewhat reluctant, hesitant witness, while if you read his testimony, he was anything but. He was measured, he was accurate, and he was truthful.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Republicans on the two committees were almost uniformly the opposite. Their speechifying and questioning was impertinent, premised on lies, and intended to distract from the truth. In short, they conducted themselves at the Mueller hearings in the manner that they run for office.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There is a lesson Democrats running for office can learn from the Mueller hearings. It does you little good to stick to the rules of good order and behavior when the other side has abandoned both. I’m not saying that Democrats should adopt Republican ways by joining them in lying, cheating and stealing. But I am saying that Democrats can learn something from Republican imprecision.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Take health care as just one example. </b>Ever since the debates over Obamacare, Democrats have been lost in a blizzard of confusing and often contradictory details about how to handle the nation’s healthcare crisis. Obamacare was an imperfect compromise, and now they’re torn between defending a muddled status quo or going for one variation or another on Medicare for all, and nobody really understands one plan from another. <b>Meanwhile, Republicans have spent the last several decades firing potshots at Democrats and proposing no plan of their own.</b></div><div>
</div><div>How about this: what if Democrats took a page out of the Republican playbook and simply said, “Don’t worry, you can trust us. We’re going to take care of your health care.” That’s the plan, the whole thing. It would have the advantage of being both simple and true. They could apply this approach across the board. Here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to lower your taxes, raise your pay, protect your jobs, reduce your student loan payments, protect Social Security and Medicare, maintain your right to an abortion, reform the immigration laws, and protect the southern border. And we’re going to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.</div><div>
</div><div><b>What plan do we have for all of this? You know us, we’re on your side, and we’re going to do what we say..</b>..</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">toxic masculine outbreak border patrol FB page djt force oral sex AOC? seal gallagher acquitted, border water guy retried?!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Earlier this year, President Donald Trump gave an interview to Breitbart News, boasting about the “toughness” of his supporters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Critics worried that the President was sending coded signals that might inspire violence among his supporters. A week later, nearly 50 people died after a shooter attacked two Mosques in New Zealand.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">amash</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s sad when a Republican like Justin Amash is making a more principled case for impeachment than the Democratic Party,” conservative Charlie Sykes argued.</font></p><div class="p3_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The lone one, the Maytag repairman of Republicans,” Maher said.</font></p><div class="p4_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“He’s getting called a cuck by all people who are the ‘originalists’ and the constitutional conservatives,” Bari Weiss noted. “It’s their favorite insult.”</font></b></p></div><div style=""><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">thom h</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 619</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" 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size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">People are asking why the shooter in Virginia Beach used a gun to settle his workplace score. The answer is probably pretty simple.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div><b>When a man has a gun, he literally holds the power of life and death in his hand. That kind of power is extraordinarily seductive.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">With a gun in his hand, a man can look around a room, a building, or a public area and specifically identify who will instantaneously die and whom he will allow to live. It’s a power that traditionally has only been held by doctors, priests, police and soldiers.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The power over life and death is greater and more intoxicating than any other power; it’s one of the reasons why some men are specifically drawn to these professions and historically have tried to regulate them to be male-only.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">If you are not male and have never carried a gun in public, it’s only an imaginary experiment, but science shows that simply handling a gun alters men’s levels of testosterone and measurably increases their aggressive behavior.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This is largely a male problem because men commit 85.3 percent of all homicides and 97 percent of all homicides where the shooter and victim don’t know each other. In the case of school and workplace shootings, the shooters are also more than 97 percent male.</span></div><div>
</div><div> </div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As a result of this male aggression provoked in part by handling guns<b>, in America guns are the second leading cause of death (just behind car crashes) among children between 1 and 19 years old.</b></span></div><div>
</div><div>We honor our soldiers who are willing to face gunfire; they can even board airplanes before anybody else, and TV commentators reflexively say, “Thank you for your service.” We honor our cops for their willingness to face gunfire; when one dies, the funeral typically is a major, citywide event.</div><div>
</div><div>Yet more children die from firearms in the United States every year than all the police and American military deaths worldwide combined. No gate attendant, though, is saying to airplane passengers, “Children under 19 may board first because we thank you for your sacrifice of dying in your homes and schools to give men thrills and keep the gun industry profits high.”</div><div>
</div><div>This goes way beyond the joke of the Small Penis Gun Club or its Facebook site. Men, it turns out, are actually hardwired by evolution and biology to react to having power over others with a boost in testosterone and an increase in aggression.</div><div>
</div><div>A 2006 study published in Psychological Science by Klinesmith, Kasser and McAndrew found that men who simply handled a gun were significantly more likely to give other men a higher dose of hot sauce (a commonly used research measure of aggression) right after handling the gun than were men who handled a child’s toy.</div><div>
</div><div>For men who feel that they’ve lost control of their lives, or who feel dismissed or disrespected by others, this is pure catnip.</div><div>
</div><div>Firing a gun, in addition to raising testosterone levels like simply handling one does, actually produces a feeling similar to intoxication. As UCLA Law professor Adam Winkler points out, shooting guns triggers higher levels of adrenaline and endorphins, producing a high like riding a roller coaster.</div><div>
</div><div>In this regard, guns can be thought of as a drug—an intoxicating, mind-altering, power-conferring drug that leads to aggression and, in the United States, to around 40,000 deaths a year.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Driving a car at high speed can produce a “high” similar to shooting a gun, and large, powerful cars can cause testosterone levels to increase. We already figured out how to deal with this.</div><div>
</div><div>In 1920 you could buy and drive a car without a driver’s license in most states. We figured out the downsides of such a libertarian policy, and regulated cars; the result was a rapid reduction in deaths and morbidity.</div><div>
</div><div>If, to define a chain of ownership and thus responsibility, a car must be registered with the state annually from the time it’s manufactured to the time it’s destroyed, why not the same for a gun?</div><div>
</div><div>If, to make sure the people controlling 2,000 pounds of steel and glass flying down the freeway at 65 mph know what they’re doing, we require a driver’s license—acquired by proving both knowledge and competence—why not the same for a gun owner/user?</div><div>
</div><div>If a driver must carry liability insurance because his car could kill somebody, why not a gun owner? Why is it that if the Newtown or Parkland kids had been killed by a drunk or even malicious driver, their survivors would have gotten a million bucks each from Geico, but the families of kids killed with guns don’t?</div><div>
</div><div>Required liability insurance, by the way, is the most Republican/conservative of all gun control measures; it’s a “free market solution.”</div><div>
</div><div>Just as no insurance company will cheaply write insurance for a driver with a few DWIs, so, too, would they restrict people with domestic violence charges, etc. No government involvement necessary for this one, other than the simple requirement to have the policy so long as one owns a gun.</div><div>
</div><div>There are many reasonable ways to reduce gun violence in the United States without outlawing guns. It’s time we started a real conversation about how to enact them.</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></div><div style=""><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/the-paradox-of-toxic-masculinity-why-gender-norms-are-set-up-to-privilege-straight-white-men-who-in-turn-are-eating-themselves-alive/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/the-paradox-of-toxic-masculinity-why-gender-norms-are-set-up-to-privilege-straight-white-men-who-in-turn-are-eating-themselves-alive/</font></a></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">keane salon</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Novelist Jared Yates Sexton catapulted onto the national media radar in 2016 when his dispatches from Donald Trump presidential campaign rallies — prompting me to ask him once, “how does a nice creative writing professor end up covering the presidential election?” — revealed a cultural insider’s perspective on the rise of Trump. He avoided the press pen and moved among Trump’s rowdiest supporters, where he was able to observe up close the toxic levels of white-male rage directed at Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and their supporters, which Trump exploited all the way to the White House.</font></p><div class="p1_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his 2017 book about the campaign and American rage, “<a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/08/12/our-festering-american-rage-why-it-doesnt-matter-if-trump-lies/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The People Will Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore</a>,” Sexton wrote about how he could walk among Trump supporters and witness their unguarded responses and conversations because he knew how to blend in; he grew up in a white working-class Christian family in rural Indiana, and as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/opinion/donald-trumps-toxic-masculinity.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">he wrote for the New York Times in October 2016</a>, after the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape leaked, he recognized the power of Trump’s messaging immediately:</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">Donald J. Trump, especially the Donald J. Trump we heard last week on tape, is nothing new to me. His macho-isms, his penchant for dividing the world into losers and winners, his lack of empathy for anyone but himself — it all reminds me of home, and the sense I had, even as a boy, of a system of privilege that has ailed this country since its beginnings, but now seems to be, and sees itself, fading away.</font></p><div class="p3_87" style="font-style: italic; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></blockquote><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the book that rose out of that op-ed, “The Man They Wanted Me To Be: <b>Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making</b>” (Counterpoint Press, out now), Sexton (<a href="https://www.salon.com/writer/jared_yates_sexton" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">an occasional Salon contributor</a>) dives deep into his personal history with working-class white American patriarchal culture, weaving memoir with historical and sociological research and cultural analysis to explore how the constructs of traditional masculinity harm not only women, children and vulnerable people but also the straight white working-class men these strictures are supposed to privilege.</font></p><div class="p4_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His honest and heartbreaking account of never quite being able to shed the damaging gender demands he was raised with, along with the cultural and historical context that he provides, provides a blueprint for how men can confront the harm that toxic masculinity has brought them. I don’t consider it critical hyperbole to say that a book like this can save lives.</font></p><div class="p5_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Raised in a working class community in rural Indiana, Sexton absorbed the cultural messages around him that he — sensitive, imaginative, asthmatic — was not the kind of boy who grew up to be a real man who had value in his community. That was reinforced at every turn, beginning with his alcoholic, dangerously unpredictable and emotionally remote father, and continuing through his violently abusive stepfather and the bullying boys acting out at school the oppressive strictures they learned from the men in their own homes. As a result of social anxiety and depression, he first contemplated suicide in first grade.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Once Sexton left home for college and then graduate school, he thought he had left all of that behind. But the lessons of his childhood followed him, as they tend to do, into adulthood. He dealt with the confidence issues so common in graduate school by reverting back to the hyper-masculinity he learned to value in his youth in order to counteract his insecurity, haunting bars and abusing his body through both binge drinking and extreme dieting and exercise. He put up an impenetrable wall between himself and romantic partners, destroying relationships in the process. All of this he did in the pursuit of appearing strong, and the events he writes about as a result of these impulses clearly show that it could have killed him.</font></p><div class="p7_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is one of the dangers of toxic masculinity,” he writes in the book. “I had my identity as a man disputed, and so I fell back into the masculine role I’d learned as a child and then performed as an insecure young adult.”</font></p><div class="p8_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When he and his father begin to repair their relationship — as, unbeknownst to him, his father was gravely ill — Sexton also starts the very difficult work of detaching himself from the influences of his youth, which, because toxic masculinity is not just a condition found in white rural working-class communities, proved much more difficult in practice than theory.</font></p><div class="p9_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Like an addict who gets their addiction under control,” he writes, “I learned to view masculinity as a chronic problem I could never be totally cured of. Every day was a new struggle, as there was no such thing as conquering it.”</font></p><div class="p10_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sexton and I spoke earlier this week by phone about his book, how toxic masculinity hurts the men it ostensibly privileges and what healthy masculinity can look like</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><div class="p11_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">It’s been a week for men already. There was the Harper’s Bazaar article recently about <a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a27259689/toxic-masculinity-male-friendships-emotional-labor-men-rely-on-women/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">how men don’t have friends, and of course women are paying the price for that</a>, and then Darcy Lockman’s piece in the New York Times pegged to her new book “All the Rage” about how <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/opinion/sunday/men-parenting.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">men don’t pull their weight when it comes to home and kids and don’t really seem to care</a>, either. </strong><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Those are women writing about the side effects of toxic masculinity. </strong><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">And a lot of the discussions around these topics still primarily seem to originate with women. Do you think men talk about these issues already, or is there a real need for you guys to get in there and start figuring this out?</strong></font></p><div class="p12_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I think the brunt of this problem relies on men taking the lead on it, because one of the things about masculinity is that men who are socialized with traditional patriarchal masculinity are basically taught that they have to project to the world that they are at all times strong and invincible and that weakness is basically a betrayal to their gender and society.</font></p><div class="p13_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And as a result, men, a lot of times, have these superficial relationships where they don’t enjoy intimacy, they’re not able to communicate their feelings, they’re not able to talk about their problems, and the catch-22 of that is because they don’t have that intimacy or that outlet with each other, they don’t hold each other accountable for toxic masculinity.</font></p><div class="p14_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And the more alone you are, and the more that you feel like you have to protect yourself and exert the persona of invincibility and strength, the worse that the behavior becomes. And so men, left and right, unwittingly, are reinforcing these old stereotypes by not being able to communicate with each other.</font></p><div class="p15_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I think it’s really important for men to not just communicate with each other, but to communicate well and thoughtfully. The moment that men start talking to one another, start talking to the people around them, about who they actually are and how they actually feel, their insecurities and their weaknesses and their fears, all of a sudden you feel like you’re not alone anymore.</font></p><div class="p16_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When you feel like you’re not the only one that’s going though that, I think that’s when the antidote to masculinity can come about. That’s one of the few ways that men can start to crawl out from behind that façade.</font></p><div class="p17_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Your book is very rooted in the culture that you grew up in — rural Indiana, patriarchal, working class, still holding onto a lot of those traditional cultural values. I come from a similar area. I also see many of the same issues being reflected in stories about men who maybe do not think of themselves as steeped in the traditional patriarchal culture. They might even call themselves feminists — at least, pretty liberal — and yet still these same issues are . . . they’re not even hiding in plain sight, they’re just dressed differently. Do you see that as well?</font></strong></p><div class="p18_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Absolutely. When I was doing research on my book, I came to a conclusion that there are different types of what you would call toxic masculinity. There are men who have no idea what the word patriarchy means, they embody it and live it, and it’s just the “natural state of being.” There are other men who are in that culture and are suspicious of it. That’s what I was when I was younger. I was around all these men who were toxically masculine and part of the patriarchy. I knew that I didn’t feel comfortable with it and that something was wrong with it, but I was so surrounded by it that I didn’t understand that it wasn’t a natural thing. I felt like it was about me and for whatever reason I wasn’t living up to some sort of expectation.</font></p><div class="p19_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then there are other people who’ve grown up, whether or not they’ve had feminist brothers or feminist fathers, people around them. They know what the patriarchy is, they’ve read literature and all that stuff. When I was an undergrad at Indiana State, I studied a lot that stuff. I was taking a lot of liberal arts classes, I actually joined the feminist group on campus, I talked constantly with feminists, I was very, very active in that community. But one of the mistakes that I made, and I think this is one of those things our culture is reeling from: I thought because I knew about it, that meant that I was cured of it.</font></p><div class="p20_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was this idea like, I can name the patriarchy and I can name these sexist things, so as a result there’s no way that I’m going to behave in a toxically masculine way. But it turns out that when we’re exposed to these things, and a lot of the people I’ve talked to and a lot of the literature I’ve read, it’s a lot more like a chronic illness, or it’s like trying to overcome alcoholism. You’ll hear people say, “I’m still an alcoholic even if I’m not drinking.” Men who grew up around the patriarchy or even if they’re aware of it, they still can lapse into those things.</font></p><div class="p21_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a lot of ways, men who are aware of it are only as good as their own mental health and well-being at the moment.</font></p><div class="p22_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A lot of what’s happening in culture right now, especially with changing demographics and the changing economy, we’re seeing a lot of people who are reacting to, whether it’s economic, or career stress, or social stress, or political stress, they’re falling back on these old behaviors that are just automatically generated to make them feel more “powerful.”</font></p><div class="p23_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They just instinctually fall back on them in times of trouble.</font></p><div class="p24_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If toxic masculinity is, you just said, and as you write in the book, like a chronic illness and once we’re infected we always carry it with us, what is the treatment for that?</font></strong></p><div class="p25_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s just constant vigilance. Of course we’re going back to traditional ideas of gender, but you have a lot of instances where women are taught to be very cognizant of how they’re making people feel, how they appear in public, how they interact with people, censoring themselves, changing who they are, how they speak. Men have to be aware of what they’re dealing with. They have to be aware that there’s an automatic societal privilege toward being a male. Part of that privilege is never having to actually speak about what you’re doing and what you’re saying because society is yours, so to speak.</font></p><div class="p26_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I think that men constantly have to be aware of this stuff. This is one of the reasons why mental health is such an important thing, and communication is such an important thing. Men need to be able to talk to one another and tell each other that these behaviors, whether or not they’re hurting themselves, or they’re hurting others, or they’re projecting rape culture, or any number of misogynistic ideas, they have to be able to talk to one another and keep each other in check. Otherwise, you can lapse into these old, bad behaviors.</font></p><div class="p27_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I think it’s about vigilance and I think it’s about constantly checking in with other people, communicating with other people, and taking self-inventories about who you are, and where you are, and whether or not you’re living up to your priorities and principles.</font></p><div class="p28_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You were a sensitive kid and your mom honored that, yet as you grew up you ended up mired in those same destructive patterns as the men who modeled them for you. I’m interested in this idea that adult men can’t be fixed, but we can focus on the kids, raising them to be more aware. </font></strong></p><div class="p29_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There’s this idea that the youth will save us, that young people have more expansive ideas about gender, that they believe in equality, and everything will be better once they’re older and have more power. Yet the patterns show us that can start to collapse when it comes to actually working through adult life.</font></strong></p><div class="p30_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How do we set up boys, once they grow up and become men, to understand how to take care of this for themselves?</font></strong></p><div class="p31_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is one of those things where, when writing the book, I was trying to find the silver bullet, right? The thing that would fix it, the antidote, the solution that would finally set everyone free. The thing that makes all of this so hard is how large and complicated, but also how intertwined it is with the things about society and culture that we never ever question, we just take for granted.</font></p><div class="p32_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I think the best solution for it, is not just working against it, but defining it. Which is, I think, one of the most dangerous parts about this whole deal. We believe traditional masculinity is somehow ordained by nature or it’s a biological function.</font></p><div class="p33_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I think men know deep down that it’s not real. I’ve firmly come to believe that from conversations with other men that other men are constantly in a state of anxiety or fear because they’re not living up to the things that they believe is natural and expected of them.</font></p><div class="p34_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We as Americans spend so much time thinking we’re the “captains of our own destiny” or we’re rugged individualists. As a result, we pretend these things don’t affect us and that we’re not acting in the preordained roles that society has created. I think on all fronts, you can raise children, like you said, to do their fair share, or to respect women, obviously, not to perpetuate rape culture and misogyny, but you also have to continually talk about these larger societal constructs and to define them as such.</font></p><div class="p35_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They’re obviously artificial in nature. But it’s the easiest thing in the world to turn your back on them and accept them as part of your reality, as something that is organic. I think the more we move away from accepting that, the better this whole situation will get.</font></p><div class="p36_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">It starts in utero now. The gender reveal party is such a thing: this big documented party in which you fire a cannon or slice into a cake and the theme is something like “Pistols or Pearls?” I noticed they started to uptick around the time we started talking in a broader cultural sense about gender not being a binary and transgender issues were becoming part of the mainstream conversation. <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/07/04/its-a-boy-its-a-girl-its-not-a-gender-reveal-party/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">It’s this backlash that is very coded in harmlessness</a>: <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">we’re just having fun, it’s just another party</em>. </strong><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I wanted a whole chapter on this phenomenon. [Laughs.] Then I realized you’re a guy — how much of a role do gender reveal parties even have to play in your life?</strong></font></p><div class="p37_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I’m fascinated by them. A lot of it goes back to the backlash that is Trump-ism and the rise of Donald Trump. As you said there, “this is all in good fun.” You’ll notice that when Donald Trump says those really insulting things, there are these moments where he’s like, “no one can take a joke anymore.” Or —</font></p><div class="p38_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yeah. He’ll say, “oh, I’m kidding, folks, I’m kidding.” But then you get a look that says, “I’m really not.”</font></strong></p><div class="p39_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right. It’s these really abusive, damaging behaviors, which is part of the backlash. The criticism of a book like mine is going to be, “why does everything have to be dissected? Why do you have to do all this?” Transgender people and gender-fluid people are being killed and or being bullied to the point of suicide. There are other people who have never felt comfortable within the rigid confines of the patriarchy or traditional masculinity, who spend their lives with unbelievable amounts of trauma and substance abuse.</font></p><div class="p40_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now we have this moment that frustrates me to no end. You see it, sadly, almost everyday now. There’s some insecure, young, white man who picks up a gun, which we have been taught as a culture is a symbol of power, and because they don’t have “power,” they go into these public places and kill tons of people because they’ve been radicalized. This is a major, major crisis that somehow or another has been hidden behind all these niceties and good fun. I don’t think people understand the rigidity they’re forcing, not just their children into, but their culture into.</font></p><div class="p41_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s really an act of cultural self-harm. It’s like cultural self-immolation.</font></p><div class="p42_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I’m glad you said that about self-harm. </strong><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The story of your father is so apt. He was abusive when you were young, he was steeped in all those patriarchal norms himself and did not process them in any kind of productive way, but then over the years he changed his attitudes toward others. I thought you documented that really well: he stops driving the gas-guzzler and starts driving a Prius, he starts to say, “hey, if someone’s gay that doesn’t have anything to do with me.” He becomes very invested in climate change and radically shifts his politics and his viewpoint. It was all very outward-focused. And yet at the same time that personal stoicism — <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">a man doesn’t complain, a man doesn’t go to the doctor</em> — was killing him. </strong><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">His attitude toward himself remained really unkind and really punishing.</strong></font></p><div class="p43_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I think about that, about how self-compassion isn’t a trait that we foster as a culture. It ends up manifesting itself differently in how we talk about it, men and women, but overall Americans are suspicious of it. We equate it with selfishness or narcissism. When we talk about the principles of how patriarchy limits, how gender norms harm other people, I feel like we also don’t talk enough about how much they harm the people that they’re set up, ostensibly, to honor, and to protect.</font></strong></p><div class="p44_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Especially with men. A large part of the reason we have the gender roles we do are as a result of labor. My family is a working class, factory, mining, hard laboring family. At family gatherings sometimes, my male relatives — and these are the men who pressured me to accept my place in the masculine structure, who would give me such a hard time for being sensitive or pursuing artistic means or intellectual means — you hear them talk about their injuries and their health and they’ll say these really tragic things like, “well, when I die just throw me in a hole and move on.”</font></p><div class="p45_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You’ll see them say these things as their bodies are starting to decline. I have a lot of miners in my family. This is an occupation that doesn’t necessarily have to exist anymore, and is, in a large part, being perpetuated because of the persona that it creates and the political capital that’s being used to manipulate them.</font></p><div class="p46_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their bodies are being broken down and they’re saying, “oh I don’t care about me, if I die by the time I’m 50 it’s fine.” Then you look around the room and you see their children, you see their wives, you see their loved ones. They don’t necessarily understand that talking that way about themselves, and degrading who they are as people, and using themselves as an expendable resource, they’re creating tons of trauma for everyone outside of themselves. In the meantime, what they’re expressing, without maybe even fully understanding it, is a self-loathing that goes beyond almost anything imaginable.</font></p><div class="p47_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s not just suicidal ideation, it’s the idea that you as an individual have no worth beyond the labor that you can produce. That kind of thought leads to so many terrible things not just personally, but culturally. I think a large reason why we haven’t been able to move beyond things like fossil fuel or manufacturing. It’s so huge, and dangerous, and awful. I don’t think men can necessarily wrap their heads around that.</font></p><div class="p48_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">It’s like a paradox. The rigid masculine gender norms, which are set up to privilege straight white men over everyone else, yet at the same time those men are eating themselves alive on the inside with t</strong><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">his ambient level of self-criticism and self-loathing happening at all times.</strong></font></p><div class="p49_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That’s difficult to see, I think, and it’s probably difficult for those men to see themselves as privileged in any way if what they really think of themselves is, “just throw me in the hole after I die.”</font></strong></p><div class="p50_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How do we break through that culturally? It’s a paradox and I think it is difficult to understand. It’s difficult for me to understand.</font></strong></p><div class="p51_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When I started researching this book, this was a thing that I didn’t necessarily understand before.  I always thought that the perpetual nature of the patriarchy, and men buy into it, was like, here’s a one-up for me that is going to give me privilege and economic power.</font></p><div class="p52_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But I started to realize in my research that men are actually hindering themselves economically. They’re doing so by insisting to continue these industries and roles that are going away. Manufacturing is going away. This emphasis on physical labor is going away. The things that men have always been allergic to, so to speak — communication, empathy, all these things that this new economy focuses on — are things that they’ve been taught not to value.</font></p><div class="p53_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What I started to notice was, there’s this unconscious bargain that’s being made. Which is, yes, this is where the economy and the future of society is going and I’m not going to succeed there. I’m not going to succeed here, but out of spite, I’ll go ahead and continue doing this even if it takes everyone else down with me. It’s almost this idea of, “I may not get mine, but as long as other people don’t get theirs maybe I’ll maintain a certain amount of privilege or power.”</font></p><div class="p54_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There’s been this weird thing that’s happened where men are making sure that they’re continuing in jobs that, by the way, they hate.</font></p><div class="p55_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right.</font></strong></p><div class="p56_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They hate those jobs. They hate them. I wrote this in the book, the men in my family are hobbled. They’ve lost hands and fingers. They’ve suffered these major injuries to their backs where they can barely get out of bed in the morning. They’ve always been miserable in these jobs, but that misery has somehow or another become a societal marker. You can say, “I hate this job and it’s killing me, but I still clock in and do it.” Which has become the marker for a man’s worth.</font></p><div class="p57_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So in writing this book, you did open yourself up to a lot of criticism. Not only are you critiquing an entire culture of masculinity, but this is also your first memoir. What made you decide to go in a personal route with this book?</font></strong></p><div class="p58_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I lived a very odd life. My childhood was horrific. I’ve always spent a good amount of time trying to figure out if I was going to tell this story and if I did, how I was going to do it. My mom and I endured a lot of abuse, I saw a childhood friend of mine murdered, I saw all this stuff happen and I never put it all together until I was watching the Donald Trump campaign.</font></p><div class="p59_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As I was reporting on that, I started to realize there’s this thread at the heart of it that particularly happened with the “Access Hollywood” tape and the fallout from it. I started to realize that what I’d gone through as a kid, in my community and in my family, was playing itself out on a much larger scale socially and politically. I would go to these events to talk about that phenomenon that I grew up with and how it was now ballooning up the Donald Trump campaign.</font></p><div class="p60_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A lot of people would ask me, after I talked about my family and I talked about my upbringing, they would ask me this one question that I struggled with for a while: “How did you get out? How did you grow up and not be like this?”</font></p><div class="p61_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The answer to that question, that I wrestled with for a long time, was I’m not exactly sure. And maybe I didn’t get completely out. Because again, this is a chronic thing that you constantly have to fight against and be aware of. So I started retracing those steps with a political and social view of what had happened when I was younger and I realized one day — with a lot of horror — if I’m going to be honest, I’m going to have to tell my story.</font></p><div class="p62_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To do that I started figuring out how to tell my story, plus also talk about the socialization and the psychological and sociological aspects of this stuff.</font></p><div class="p63_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Memoir writing is still, I think, coded pretty female in our culture as well. There’s an additional layer of that.</font></strong></p><div class="p64_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This sounds almost cliché, but I needed this book when I was little.</font></p><div class="p65_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I think a lot of writers write and read because they’re lonely and they feel isolated in their own experience. It’s through books and other writers that you start to realize that you’re not alone. I didn’t have this as a kid. I never read about masculinity, I never read about feminism until I got into college.</font></p><div class="p66_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I was thinking about how different I was, and the possibility of killing myself because I didn’t live up to masculine expectations, as early as first grade. I was like seven years old. I needed a book that talked about this stuff and that’s one of the reasons I decided to go ahead and write it because I don’t see a lot of them out there. I know for me, it was a really frightening book to write. I assume for a lot of men, it’s a really frightening thing to talk about.</font></p><div class="p67_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I thought maybe there’s one kid in rural Indiana, in a small coal mining town, who right now is growing up very, very afraid, and very insecure, who hates himself, he doesn’t know what’s going on. And if he can make it to his library, or somebody could give it to him as a birthday gift, or Christmas gift, maybe it might help. That’s why I was able to, I guess, swallow down [the fear].</font></p><div class="p68_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The question of “how did you get out?” is interesting. The idea there, I suppose, is that there’s an <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">in</em>and there’s an <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">out</em>, right? But is a highly-educated national media personality who turns out to be a sexual harasser or abuser in or out? </strong><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This idea that the problems caused by toxic masculinity are a problem exclusive to the working class and therefore a problem to be finger-wagged at or bemoaned, not necessarily something that exists and is reinforced from the highest levels of culture on down. It’s frustrating.</strong></font></p><div class="p69_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the biggest problems of our culture is this idea that there’s us and there’s them. Us, the in group, is this group that is infallible, we’ve got no role in this stuff.</font></p><div class="p70_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When you look at things like rural America, [the idea is] those people are lost, they’re unredeemable, there’s nothing they can do and to get out is to escape this orbit and gravity of ignorance and evil. But even the people who are perpetuating these things, they know deep down that it’s wrong. When they’re alone and when the lights are out they know that this is a persona and they are overcompensating and they’re putting a character out in front of the world.</font></p><div class="p71_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I think when you start to look at these things as behaviors that can be changed, and if we can start to understand it and wrap our heads around it, all of a sudden there’s not going to be us and them. Those things that exist to push us apart are only there because of the things that we don’t talk about.</font></p><div class="p72_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If we can start unraveling this knot of misogyny and racism and nationalism and these economic issues that divide everybody, if we could start talking about those things, life can get better. I think it’s a fatalistic thing to look at a group of people and say that they are uniquely suffering from this thing and for whatever reason it’s like a genetic disease. It’s not. It’s nurture, it’s environment, and these are the things that we can do to start working against it and ultimately start healing in some way shape or form.</font></p><div class="p73_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I think the idea that we can’t — I think that’s really, really damaging.</font></p><div class="p74_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">That idea of division is also clear when we think about what is a male problem versus what is a female problem. I was really struck by the part of your book where you write about when your disordered eating starting in college. It made me think about the recent profile of Jack Dorsey where he talks about his very restricted eating regimen. When men do this it’s presented like a productivity lifehack. </strong><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Women recognize a story about disordered eating. As a culture though wee’re perpetuating the idea that when men self-harm they are doing it for productivity reasons, which are coded as masculine reasons, and when women do it they’re weak and damaged and sick. </strong></font></p><div class="p75_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s everything from the personal to the political. It’s all inextricably linked. We look at female politicians and we’re like, “Is she likable?”</font></p><div class="p76_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If she’s ambitious, she’s somehow or another betraying her gender, and as a result you don’t want her in power. Men who are aggressive is a positive. All these things work the exact same way and to the point where, and this again goes to what you were talking about, I had severe anorexia and bouts of bulimia and I didn’t think that I had an eating disorder because I was a man.</font></p><div class="p77_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I was restricting myself to under a thousand calories a day and going on these multiple trips to a gym to work out to the point where I was passing out. I did permanent damage to myself. I never, ever even considered for a second that I had disordered eating until years later when I read an article that said men could have eating disorders. It blew my mind, the idea that I could have suffered from that.</font></p><div class="p78_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since then, it’s a constant struggle with these chronic conditions. It’s still a thing where I have to keep track of my eating or else I can fall into these old ideas. Even though I know about it, even though I’ve studied it, even though I’ve now written a book about it, I still can forget that a man can have an eating disorder.</font></p><div class="p79_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Men] never want to admit that we have body issues. If a man controls his body or he controls his environment or he controls his politics, then he’s the master of all these things. If a woman even considers any of this, she’s weak because she’s a gender traitor. I mean, that does everything from keep women from being able to fulfill their careers and their desires, to determining presidential elections. It’s their biggest thing.</font></p><div class="p80_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I have found that when we’re critiquing toxic masculinity, often — whether disingenuously or not — it gets heard as masculinity is toxic. Is there a working definition of healthy masculinity? If so what do you think that looks like? </font></strong></p><div class="p81_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Absolutely. I am expressly gendered masculine. I’m into boots and jeans. I express myself in a masculine way. That’s how I approach the world and that’s how I express myself. You can chop wood all day to your heart’s content, you can mow the yard, you can do all the expressly gendered things that you think you’re supposed to do.</font></p><div class="p82_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The problem is when the unrealistic expectations set in and you don’t question them, and because of your frustration and because of the way you learn how to conduct yourself you become violent, you become dismissive, you become prejudiced, you subjugate women, because of what you’ve been taught about gender roles and expectations. Those things are all make-believe. They are just as unreal as anything. Men can behave in a masculine manner and can adopt the role of protector if they want. Part of being protective is to accept your own limitations and to look out for other people.</font></p><div class="p83_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When you look at how toxic masculinity works, all of the behaviors and all of the actions are explicitly in contrast to what masculinity is supposed to be.</font></p><div class="p84_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If men are supposed to be perfectly masculine, then they’re never afraid and they’re always in control. Well, we watched Brett Kavanaugh basically cry in and scream [in his confirmation hearings]. All of that is about being afraid and being insecure.</font></p><div class="p85_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Men can be “men” if they wan to be and they can express themselves in masculine ways, but it’s those other things, it’s the damaging behaviors where they hurt themselves, they hurt their loved ones, they hurt women, they hurt vulnerable populations, and they do it all because of fear and insecurity, which is not what being a man is supposed to be about. Traditionally, anyway.</font></p><div class="p86_87" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Absolutely, we can still have masculinity, but we need to get rid of the insecurity and the [negative] actions that happen because of the insecurity. The sooner we do that, I think, the better for culture in general.</font></p></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></div><div style=""><h2 class="no-coverage frontpage_dedup" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/pastor-who-criticized-gun-free-zones-shot-woman-head-after-she-refused-sex-him-report" style="text-decoration-line: none; border: 0px; padding: 0px; margin: 10px 0px; line-height: 20px; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: right;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Pastor who criticized 'gun-free zones' shot woman in the head after she refused sex with him: report</font></a></h2></div><div style=""><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/traumatic-vision-masculinity-lies-root-resentful-incel-movement">https://www.alternet.org/traumatic-vision-masculinity-lies-root-resentful-incel-movement</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AN</font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When I read that <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/florida-yoga-studio-gunman-likened-himself-incel-killer-elliott-rodger-1200452" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Scott Paul Beierle</a>, the 40-year-old man who murdered two women and injured five other people at a yoga studio in Florida, identified with the self-proclaimed "incel" (shorthand for "involuntary celibate") <a href="https://www.salon.com/2015/05/22/we_fostered_something_chaotic_and_irresponsible_elliot_rodger_isla_vista_the_echoes_of_a_tragedy/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Elliot Rodger</a>, I was, sadly, unsurprised.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This isn't the first time that a mass shooter was revealed to have been motivated by hatred of women. Rodger <a href="https://www.salon.com/2015/05/22/we_fostered_something_chaotic_and_irresponsible_elliot_rodger_isla_vista_the_echoes_of_a_tragedy/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">infamously</a> shot up a California sorority in 2014 because he believed women were unjustly uninterested in him romantically; earlier this year, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43883052" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Alek Minassian</a> drove a van into a pedestrian area of Toronto to target women because of his own sexual frustration; back in 2009, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=8258001&page=1" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">George Sodini</a> went on a killing spree at a fitness center in Pennsylvania because of his struggles finding a girlfriend and having sex. And even when these frustrated men don't engage in literal violence, there are countless women who can report being harassed online or in person by individuals who feel bitter about a sexual world that seems to reject them.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In all these cases, the men in question were victim to the American conception of masculinity that made them feel deeply inadequate</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Conservatives mock the phrase “toxic masculinity,” and yet it is a useful turn of phrase to describe the set of feelings, normalized in our culture, that define our conception of what it means to be a man. When men cannot achieve the masculine ideal, they often self-shame, feel they are losers or mocked by society and doomed to die alone. Many more men feel this way who do not turn to violence; in all cases, shaming men for not adhering to this horrid masculine ideal only makes inadequate feelings worse.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs40806-018-0163-7" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">study</a> published recently in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science offered some insight into the ways in which men deeply internalize said feelings.  Though it relied on qualitative data, specifically culled from Reddit comments, the paper — titled “Why Men Stay Single? Evidence from Reddit”— offered some startling insights into the problems that seem to afflict men who complain on the popular online forum and aggregator site about being single, many of whom identified with the term "incel." It helped me learn more about the type of man who goes to an online forum to find solace for the problems in his personal life and to see, at least based on anecdotal evidence, how their plight can seem unshakeable.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">...</font></p></div></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">==</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><a href="https://www.alternet.org/trump-and-mans-man-heres-how-democrats-struggle-over-masculinity-50-years-ago-still-playing-out">https://www.alternet.org/trump-and-mans-man-heres-how-democrats-struggle-over-masculinity-50-years-ago-still-playing-out</a></font><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...D<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">uring an election that took place exactly 50 years ago, however, ideas about manhood played a central role for the Democrats. As I describe in my forthcoming book “</span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Men-Moment-Election-Partisan-Politics/dp/1469651092/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Men and the Moment</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">,” the Democratic Party was grappling with its identity in 1968. Its struggle was on display in the personal dynamic between its two most significant figures: party leaders Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey.</span></font></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Both men were giants of American liberalism. But Johnson did not trust Humphrey as president, because he did not respect Humphrey as a man. That friction led to one of the most extraordinary and underappreciated tales in modern American political history: President Johnson kept undercutting the presidential campaign of Humphrey, his own vice president.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is a story with lasting implications for the Democratic Party.</font></p><h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘He cries too much’</font></h2><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1968, presidential politics was still a man’s world.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The modern women’s movement was in its infancy. Washington D.C. was the province of powerful white men.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As scholars such as <a href="https://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/imperial-brotherhood" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Robert Dean</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Manhood-American-Political-Culture-Cold/dp/0415926009" style="text-decoration-line: none;">K.A. Cuordileone</a> have shown, Cold War Democrats such as President John F. Kennedy held an ideal of manly, vigorous toughness that shaped their vision of honorable leadership during the Cold War. It also drew them into the military morass of Vietnam.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Liberals – with their nurturing, optimistic ethic – were vulnerable to accusations of weak manhood. In the 1950s, while carrying out his Red Scare witch hunts, Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy purged homosexuals from federal agencies, <a href="https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/summer/lavender.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">linking sexuality with subversion</a>. Liberals were “soft” by association.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Kennedy’s successor as president, Lyndon Johnson of Texas, was a big, macho man who applied his earthy masculinity to progressive ends. The notorious <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/johncoleman/2018/07/30/the-johnson-treatment-pushing-and-persuading-like-lbj/#9522ba342013" style="text-decoration-line: none;">“Johnson Treatment”</a> combined cajoling, vulgar analogies, veiled threats and physical force. He used it in the service of passing <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/whats-great-about-the-great-society" style="text-decoration-line: none;">“Great Society”</a>legislation that included the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, and dozens of other initiatives.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Johnson famously reflected to biographer <a href="https://openroadmedia.com/ebook/lyndon-johnson-and-the-american-dream/9781497683853" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Doris Kearns Goodwin</a> that the Great Society was “the woman I really loved” and Vietnam was “that bitch of a war.” The military struggle, in his mind, demanded strong male traits such as toughness and sacrifice. He worried that if Vietnam fell to communism, then he would get labeled “a coward. An unmanly man. A man without a spine.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He considered Humphrey, his vice president, one of those weak men.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“He cries too much,” Johnson snapped to the press in the summer of 1968, explaining his big problem with Humphrey. “That’s it – he cries too much.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Humphrey did cry a lot. He cried during speeches when he got too wound up. He cried after JFK crushed him in the 1960 West Virginia primary, <a href="https://www.wvpublic.org/post/may-10-1960-kennedy-wins-west-virginia-primary-0#stream/0" style="text-decoration-line: none;">burying his presidential bid</a>. He cried at the sight of wounded <a href="https://www.stripes.com/news/despite-the-heat-a-fast-paced-tour-of-saigon-for-humphrey-1.20996" style="text-decoration-line: none;">American soldiers in Vietnam hospitals</a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Humphrey was authentically emotional and empathetic. As a <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_Hubert_Humphrey.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none;">senator from Minnesota</a>, he established a reputation as an energetic, sincere and pragmatic spokesman for liberal values. In early 1965, prior to the massive military escalation in Vietnam, Humphrey <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1976/05/09/archives/humphrey-in-memo-to-johnson-in-1965-warned-of-vietnam.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">privately advocated a peace settlement</a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Johnson demanded Humphrey’s loyalty, and Humphrey succumbed to Johnson’s domination. To appease the president, Humphrey <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/vietnam-hubert-humphrey.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">sold the war to Congress and the public</a> with trademark fervor. By 1968, Humphrey had curried favor with the Democratic establishment, but destroyed his progressive reputation.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In the eyes of many of his old allies,” suggested Philip D. Carter in the Atlantic magazine, “the new Hubert is but a vestige, morally and ideologically diminished by his years of faithful service to the Great Emasculator.”</font></p><h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democratic fracture</font></h2><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Once Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election in 1968, Humphrey became the heir to the Democratic nomination. But as the anti-war movement escalated, he also became an icon of national malaise.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[pix]</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rior to the Democratic National Convention that August, Humphrey sought a compromise position that opened the possibility of a bombing halt in North Vietnam, which could kickstart the peace process. But <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=wzGabQcvDvcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=hubert+humphrey+biography&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwifl--3krHeAhVIqlkKHeJHC6sQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=johnson%20chicago&f=false" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Johnson shot down those suggestions</a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Humphrey looked like the president’s puppet, while the Democratic coalition fractured over Vietnam. The convention featured gory scenes of alienated anti-war activists clashing with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/07/18/what-happened-in-chicago-in-1968-and-why-is-everyone-talking-about-it-now/?utm_term=.7305608f0c62" style="text-decoration-line: none;">brutal policemen in downtown Chicago</a>. Humphrey’s campaign <a href="https://www.minnpost.com/arts-culture/2018/09/new-biography-points-up-central-challenge-hhh-faced-in-1968-race/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">soon hit rock-bottom</a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Anti-war protests kept plaguing his rallies. Other Democratic candidates treated him like a contagious disease. In September 1968, a Gallup poll gave him only 28 percent of the vote. Tom Wicker of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=qahWKgSkTSYC&pg=PA203&dq=a+burnt-out+case+who+left+his+political+manhood+somewhere+in+the+dark+places+of+the+Johnson+administration&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj91Ya3jZDeAhUL1lkKHZPeAscQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=a%20burnt-out%20case%20who%20left%20his%20political%20manhood%20somewhere%20in%20the%20dark%20places%20of%20the%20Johnson%20administration&f=false" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The New York Times</a> called Humphrey “a burnt-out case who left his political manhood somewhere in the dark places of the Johnson administration.”</font></p><h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No regrets</font></h2><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Nov. 5, <a href="https://www.270towin.com/1968_Election/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Richard Nixon won the election</a>. While third-party candidate George Wallace bled five southern states from the Republicans, Nixon took 301 Electoral College votes and 43.4 percent of the popular vote, while Humphrey finished with 191 electors and 42.7 percent.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nixon capitalized on the conservative backlash against an ineffective war, rampant social protest, race riots and high taxes – political forces that further animated the populist third-party campaign of Alabama’s George Wallace.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But what if Lyndon Johnson had presented his vice president as the man to deliver peace in Vietnam? Could it have swung the election?</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LBJ had no regrets.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I often think it’s a good thing that Hubert Humphrey never got to be President – for his own good and the good of the country,” he told a former aide while retired on his Texas ranch. Humphrey, he said, “hasn’t got much more spine than a small girl.” A real man, to Johnson, stands up for himself – even if it meant challenging his boss, the President of the United States.</font></p><h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Modern manhood</font></h2><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1968, strong leadership was cast in traditional masculine terms – for both good and ill. At his best, Johnson championed a muscular and wide-armed vision of American progress, while Humphrey personified an authentic, empathetic liberalism. They were doomed, together, by Johnson’s compulsion to dominate and Humphrey’s tendency to crumple, leading to a tragic war and failed election.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What does this mean for today’s Democratic Party?</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I believe that it would be absurd for this more inclusive, progressive party to adopt the masculine clichés of the past. Since 1968, the party has <a href="https://time.com/4414685/1968-democratic-convention-reform-geoffrey-cowan/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">enacted reforms</a> and crafted appeals that have opened more room for women, racial minorities and youth. Women’s rights are a core value for the party. It ran <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/hillary-clinton-election-president-loss" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Hillary Clinton</a> for president. Many of its brightest stars are women.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet if the Democratic Party ever plans on rebuilding a legitimate coalition that captures the broad middle swath of Americans, it needs men of many stripes – and a <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-do-men-think-it-means-to-be-a-man/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">huge majority of men consider masculinity as part of their identity</a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Liberal politicians can trumpet a vision of manhood that includes respecting women, asserting independence and wielding power for the common good. In other words, they can take the best from both Johnson and Humphrey, while discarding the worst.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Check out The Conversation US’ podcast “<a href="https://heatandlightpod.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Heat and Light</a>,” a seven-episode series hosted by award-winning journalist Phillip Martin, looking at pivotal moments from 1968.<img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104688/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" width="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0px !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0px !important; text-shadow: none !important;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/aram-goudsouzian-568407" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Aram Goudsouzian</a>, Professor of History, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-memphis-2147" style="text-decoration-line: none;">University of Memphis</a></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" style="" face="Times New Roman">This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/democrats-struggle-over-masculinity-in-an-election-50-years-ago-is-still-playing-out-today-104688" style="text-decoration-line: none;">original article</a>.</font></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>