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</font></div><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">see macho male</span></div><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">
</span></div><div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><b>According to Reich, Trump and the GOP have embraced the following:</b></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Rejection of democracy in favor of a strong<b>man</b> depends on galvanizing popular rage.</span></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Popular rage draws on a nationalism based on a supposed superior race or ethnicity.</span></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That superior race or ethnicity is justified by social Darwinist <b>strength and violence, as exemplified by heroic warriors.</b></span></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Strength, violence and the heroic warrior are centered on <b>male power</b>.</span></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Those tenets, Reich concluded, "are not the elements of authoritarianism. They are the essential elements of fascism."</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 5 23</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">se</font><span style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">n. Josh Hawley's new book,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> "Manhood: The Masculine</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Virtues America Needs</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">," did nothing to impress one book reviewer who dismissed his arguments about the state of manhood in America with a dismissive, "</span></span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/13/manhood-review-josh-hawley-book-tucker-carlson" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Whatever.</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">"</span></div><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In a review for the Guardian, Lloyd Green noted that the controversial Missouri Republican -- most famous for <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/josh-hawley-running/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">his clenched-fist tribute to the Jan 6 insurrectionists</a> -- went out of his way to cherry-pick the philosophers he needed to make his point and the end result shows that he can best be described as "a neo-Confederate at war with modernity."</p><div id="story_page_incontent_p2_target" style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-5155643920455169" data-ad-slot="6339868799" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 20px; display: block;" /></div><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As the reviewer notes, <b>Hawley selectively picked his targets and studiously avoided mentioning the toxicity of Donald <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/trump-news/?utm_campaign=SmartLinks" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Trump</a> whose re-election he supports, with Green writing, "Hawley is a plutocrat-populist as well as a hectoring moralist," before adding, "For all his smut-bashing, the latest developments affecting Trump have left him profoundly unmoved."</b></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"He has nothing to say about Trump: the man who said, and has defended saying, 'When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pssy. You can do anything,'" Green elaborated. "Hawley blames 'Epicurean liberals' for the failures of American men. 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity' is liberalism’s credo, he claims. Maybe yes, maybe no. Whatever."</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"Hawley is also selective – surprise – about his philosophers. He is critical of Rousseau and Marx but delivers a bouquet to Burke. For what it’s worth, Burke cared about British plunder of India. These days, Hawley is at best agnostic about Ukraine." Green continued. "He ignores Bentham and Mill, the intellectual fathers of 19th-century English liberalism and utilitarianism. It is as if – surprise! – Hawley wishes time and progress would stop.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Green went on to note that, after Jan 6, Hawley's book was dropped by his publisher he found a new home, with the reviewer adding, "Hawley got himself published anyway, by </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Regnery</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, a conservative imprint. He’s doing fine. He seems to believe, however, that he possesses a God-given right to be heard."</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">You can <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/13/manhood-review-josh-hawley-book-tucker-carlson" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">read more here</a>.</p><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; 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" color="#000000">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/internet-misogynist-and-alleged-rapist-andrew-tate-no-stranger-climate-change">https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/internet-misogynist-and-alleged-rapist-andrew-tate-no-stranger-climate-change</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">no lnx twt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" /><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" 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" color="#000000">Internet misogynist and alleged rapist Andrew Tate is no stranger to climate change conspiracy theories</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>Tate’s recent attacks on Greta Thunberg track with his anti-science and anti-woman views</div><div>
</div><div>Special PROGRAMS</div><div>CLIMATE & ENERGY</div><div>
</div><div>WRITTEN BY ILANA BERGER</div><div>
</div><div>PUBLISHED 01/09/23 </div><div>
</div><div><b>On December 27, just a month after returning to Twitter following a five-year ban, misogynist influencer Andrew Tate attempted to pick a fight with Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. Her response is now one of the most-liked tweets ever.</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Two days later, after an incoherent response video from Tate, he and his brother were arrested in Romania for charges of sex trafficking and rape — reportedly at least his second arrest for alleged rape since 2015.</b> The latest arrest and the online feud are not related, despite initial speculation, but the entire exchange left many people wondering about Tate’s background and what may have been behind his outburst at the climate activist. </div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In addition to spreading narrow-minded and often violent ideas about masculinity, Tate has a history of buying into climate conspiracy theories and has made contradictory statements about climate change, sometimes altogether denying its impacts. He has also repeatedly targeted Thunberg in his content.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Andrew Tate has adopted right-wing rhetoric about climate change policy and solutions</div><div>
</div><div><b>Both Tate and his brother have rambled about the climate crisis and “the green agenda” during interviews, livestreams, and in their own content. Tate calls climate action a creation of “the matrix,” which has long been an important cultural reference for the online far right.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> For Tate, climate policy is seemingly a tool for people behind “the new world order” who “want more control” and aim to enslave the public. This is strikingly similar to the globalist cabal at the center of the <b>Great Reset</b> conspiracy theory often discussed by other right-wing media influencers and climate deniers</span>. </div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Tate has gone back and forth between whether he thinks climate change is a legitimate issue. In a 2019 interview with 21 Studios, a media company dedicated to “abolishing the feminist establishment,” he said, “I don’t care about global warming. Is it happening? Maybe, don’t give a shit.” Last July, he insisted, “I’m not saying climate change isn’t real, I’m not saying that climate isn’t important, I’m not saying the world is not important.” But regardless of how much Tate truly cares about climate change, he has repeatedly and publicly attacked and mischaracterized any viable solutions.</span> </div><div>
</div><div><b>Tate has parroted misinformation sparked by big government paranoia and promoted by the likes of Fox News</b>. In an October 2022 interview, he falsely claimed that lithium batteries for electric cars are “doing more damage to the environment than a fucking petrol engine could ever do,” and said that “the people who are in charge of the world” will force the masses to adopt electric vehicles in order to control them. During the same interview, he also claimed that environmental policies are being used as a “Trojan horse” that will force people to stop eating meat. </div><div>
</div><div><b>The matrix is often central to Tate’s climate commentary.</b> “All of these things that the matrix purports, it’s all fucking bullshit because the people who are actually fucking involved and purporting it are not concerned by it on any level,” he insisted last October. In a June interview, Tate claimed that “every single multimillion- and billionaire buy a house on the beach” despite supposedly rising sea levels because “this green agenda they’re pushing has nothing to do with the environment. … It’s all to do with control.” Climate adaptation and mitigation efforts, Tate claims, would turn people into “peasants” or “slaves.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Over the summer of 2022, Tate commented on protests that occurred in the Netherlands over emissions cuts. During a livestream with other YouTubers, he contended that “the matrix” was bankrupting farmers in order to buy up all of their land.</b> “Every single movement on the planet to some degree has been corrupted by the people who are in charge of the world aiming to get more and more power from the populace,” he said. In the same livestream, Tate claimed that “the matrix sits there and decides we want Greta all over the news now, because we want to talk about the climate, and then what we want to do is put taxes up because of the climate.” Moving to outright climate denial, he concluded that “no one’s going to give a shit because we know the sea level ain’t going to rise. … ‘Climate change’ is new world order bullshit.” </div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">Not only has Tate been a source of climate change misinformation, he has fantasized about violence against climate protesters at a time those engaging in nonviolent direct action are facing increased threats and governments are attempting to suppress peaceful protest over the climate crisis. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">In a TikTok video posted in June 2022, Tate described a hypothetical scenario and suggested he would run over Extinction Rebellion protesters in his Aston Martin, saying: “Yeah, I’ll show you an extinction.” </span></div><div>
</div><div>His brother, Tristan Tate, has echoed the sentiment about Just Stop Oil activists. “Hope I’m not at the front of that line … and close enough to see you stuck in my car,” he said in a video. “And I feel like everyone in England should adopt the exact same attitude.”</div><div>
</div><div>Tate is just the latest right-wing media influencer targeting Greta Thunberg</div><div>
</div><div>Since her rise to fame in 2019, Thunberg’s activism has attracted the ire of angry men and right-wing media figures who accused her of being both a Marxist pawn, a propagandist, and a victim of child abuse. Fox News blamed Thunberg for Europe’s energy crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. <b>YouTuber Dave Rubin and Dinesh D’Souza have even likened her to a Nazi. Other right-wing media influencers have mocked her autism diagnosis, called her psychotic and mentally ill, and even advocated for violence against her. </b></div><div>
</div><div>She has also been the target of sexual harassment. In 2020, when Thunberg was 17, employees at a Canadian oil company created and circulated a cartoon sticker of her being sexually assaulted. </div><div>
</div><div>It’s no surprise that Tate has been triggered by an influential young woman who is outspoken about the climate crisis and its intersection with gender inequality, has demanded change and accountability from world leaders, and has inspired other women and girls to become involved in issues they care about. For his part, Tate has repeatedly insisted that women are generally incompetent, that they are property, and that society will function successfully only if they are confined to the roles of wife and mother. Tate’s content often features his sports cars and his grift, Hustler University, claims to help young men get rich and “escape the matrix,” while Thunberg has supported an overall shift away from gas-powered cars toward electric vehicles and alternative transportation options and highlighted the ecological consequences of capitalism, consumerism, and unfettered economic growth.</div><div>
</div><div>Climate denial will continue to attract more niche right-wing influencers like Tate</div><div>
</div><div>Andrew Tate is yet another example of a right-wing culture warrior foraying into climate change denial in order to fully immerse followers in a paranoid and cynical worldview that is detached from nuance and reality. If Tate felt that taking up the issue publicly would benefit his influence over the far-right online fever swamps, even though it arguably backfired this time, others who share his views will continue to emulate him.</div></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 1 23</font></div><div><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>During the Cold War, nothing angered right-wing Republicans more than seeing a red Soviet flag. But these days, Russian President Vladimir Putin is admired by many Republicans in the United States’ far-right MAGA movement — including incels</b>. Washington, D.C.-based journalist Natalia Antonova, in an <a href="https://www.thebulwark.com/why-incels-love-putin/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">article published by the conservative website The Bulwark</a> on January 5, lays out some </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">reasons why Putin is so appealing to anti-feminist American incels.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The anti-feminist movement, which calls itself “the manosphere” online, contains a variety of rival factions. And those factions really hate one another. The PUAs (pick-up artists) favor an in-your-face form of patriarchy and believe that men should totally dominate women sexually, and they have a very low opinion of MGTOWs in the “manosphere.” MGTOW stands for Men Going Their Own Way, and MGTOWs are male separatists who have given up on women. As MGTOWs see it, feminism has made relationships a bad deal for men.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The PUA ideology was exemplified by an alt-right website called Return of Kings, which was operated by former PUA proponent Roosh Valizadeh. Since undergoing a religious conversion, Valizadeh has discontinued Return of Kings and disavowed the PUA beliefs he once championed. When Return of Kings was still operating, Valizadeh often expressed his contempt for MGTOWs. Valizadeh viewed MGTOWs as quitters and defeatists and argued that their problem was that they had no “game.”</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>READ MORE:</strong> <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/misogynists-who-hate-misogynists-the-bizarre-ways-rival-women-hating-groups-detest-each-other" target="self" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><strong>Misogynists who hate misogynists: The bizarre ways rival anti-women groups feud with each other</strong></a></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But as much animosity as there is between PUAs and MGTOWs, they have a mutual disdain for incels — who are extreme even by the standards of other “manosphere” factions. PUAs and MGTOWs are fond of saying that they have “taken the red pill”; when incels say that they have “taken the black pill,” that’s their way of setting themselves apart from PUAs and MGTOWs and taking their misogyny to a whole other level of bitterness.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">Incel stands for “involuntarily celibate.” As incels see it, celibacy has been forced upon them by feminism. And they are extremely bitter about it.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">Putin is far from an incel, and he is admired by many PUAs. But as the Ukraine-born Antonova emphasizes, the Russian president really resonates with incels.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Although he is losing his genocidal war against Ukraine and experiencing increasing economic turmoil at home, Russian President Vladimir Putin has one thing going for him: The genocidal dictator has children, palaces, and many rumored mistresses — the power-hungry alpha male’s dream</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">,” Antonova explains. “Why, then, is he so admired by prominent ‘incels’ — i.e., men who refer to themselves as ‘involuntarily celibate,’ mostly because they are transparent misogynists who are rightfully spurned by women?”</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>READ MORE: </strong><a href="https://www.alternet.org/nick-fuentes-2659009391/" target="self" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><strong>Trump’s bigoted dinner guest Nick Fuentes favors burning women alive</strong></a></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Antonova adds, “The Book of Matthew warns of false prophets: ‘You will know them by their fruits.’ Today, you will also know them by their fans. And in western society, where nobody is really forced to like Putin, some of his most ardent fans are deeply troubled people.”</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One “deeply troubled” individual Antonova discusses in her article is white nationalist and Holocaust denier </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">Nick Fuentes,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> who is both a </span><a href="https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/57607/1/who-is-nick-fuentes-a-guide-to-kanye-west-new-far-right-friend" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">self-described “incel”</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> and a Putin admirer. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Fuentes is openly fascist in his views, declaring that democracy needs to be abolished in the U.S. And he has called for the U.S. to have a government similar to the Taliban’s regime in Afghanistan, but with a </span><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/nick-fuentes-and-the-illiberal-right-are-americas-homegrown-jihadists" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">severe form of Catholicism</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> rather than radical Islam and Shariah law.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Antonova describes Fuentes as “one of the most prominent and most troubled of Putin’s western boosters,” noting that he “doesn’t hold back on his admiration for Putin’s war in Ukraine, and considers (Putin) to be a beacon of hope for the white race.”</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Earlier this year, before he was fanning the flames of Kanye ‘I like Hitler’ West’s anti-Semitic meltdown, Fuentes made comments about sex with women that eerily echo the ideology of the Kremlin,” Antonova observes. “Fuentes also refers to himself as an incel, although he also states that he deliberately stays away from women, because he is heterosexual. One might think this makes him voluntarily celibate, but Fuentes explains: ‘The only really straight heterosexual position is actually ‘incel’…. What’s gayer than being, ‘I like cuddles, I need kisses?’”</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Antonova continues, “It’s not that Fuentes is opposed to sex with women per se. He is opposed to asking for affection. Incels frequently complain that, as women have been given more choice over their personal lives, men must now woo them rather than dragging them off to a cave. <b>Viewing all sexual contact as inherently transactional,</b> incels decry the fact that they don’t have the upper hand in the transaction. Genuine affection doesn’t figure into their calculus, so it makes sense that people like Fuentes refer to sex with women as ‘gay.’ In their language, ‘gay’ = ‘weak.’ And the officially homophobic Russian regime would readily agree.”</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to Antonova, “modern-day Russian fascism” shares the “misogynist” outlook of incels even though Putin is hardly an “incel.”</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Affection can make you vulnerable,” Antonova argues, “and vulnerability is anathema to Putinism, which first rose out of an aggrieved, anti-western revanchism and a feeling of failure that over time turned into seething resentment…. Just like Putin, members of the American far-right, sensing that they are losing the culture wars, have painted themselves as outsiders, misunderstood and downright reviled…. Putin is fragile. The best way to disband his cult among the American right is to prove it for all to see by supporting his unequivocal defeat in Ukraine.”</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>READ MORE: </strong><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/nick-fuentes-2658796317" target="self" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><strong>Conservative details what 'Holocaust denier' Nick Fuentes has in common with 'radical Islamists'</strong></a></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">kos an 12 22</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">When you look around America these days, it’s hard to feel like there hasn’t been some kind of Invasion of the Body Snatchers event. So many people seem not just anxious, but <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/12/5/2140219/-Armed-neofascist-thugs-are-making-their-presence-at-LGBTQ-drag-events-a-regular-occurrence" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">genuinely militant</a> in their desire to bend back the arc of history. So many seem to be willing to work against their own best interests only because it brings other people pain.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">People have looked for explanations, from prolonged exposure to Fox News to frustration over the slow decline of rural America, to a whole swath of isms: racism, sexism, etc. Watching people frothing at a Donald Trump rally, or beating police on the steps of the Capitol, or carrying an assault rifle to the grocery store, or screaming at their local school board, it all seems so … irrational. And, has long been noted, no amount of facts or reasoning seems to work in getting someone back once they have boarded the Q-train or decided that vaccines are the work of interstellar lizard people.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But what if the problem behind these seemingly irrational actions isn’t just caused by listening to AM radio and feeling resentful about that girl who turn you down in high school? What if it’s a disease caused by a genuine brain-eating parasite?</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In November, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-04122-0" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" title="" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Communications Biology</a> included a paper from researchers looking at the behavior of grey wolves in Yellowstone National Park. They identified a series of “risk-taking” behaviors in these wolves, including leaving their pack, fighting to achieve dominance in the pack, and approaching people or cars. These behaviors all came with the risk of increased death, either at the teeth of other wolves or from the vehicles and guns of humans in and around the park.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">What they found was simply amazing.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">While male wolves who were infected with a single-celled parasite called Toxoplasma gondii were no more likely to approach humans than uninfected wolves, they were 3.5 times more likely to leave their pack than uninfected wolves, and an absolutely astounding 46 times more likely to become pack leaders than uninfected wolves. In general, these wolves were more dominant, more aggressive, and less predictable.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">At the conclusion of the study the researchers noted that T. gondii infections are possible in almost all mammals, and: “Infection with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii has been linked to increased risk-taking in rodents, chimpanzees, hyenas, and now gray wolves.”</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That leads directly to the question … what about people?</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" title="" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) </a>notes, toxoplasmosis is common in the United States and is “considered to be a leading cause of death attributed to foodborne illness.” However, the relative number of those considered to show serious effects of T. gondii is quite low, generally less than 200 in any given year. According to the CDC, that’s because even though large numbers are infected with the parasite, “very few have symptoms because the immune system usually keeps the parasite from causing illness.”</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But does it? Just because it doesn’t get reported as generating symptoms, that doesn’t mean the parasite isn’t having some effect. In fact, back in 2007, the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526142/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">National Institutes of Health</a> published a paper compiling several studies looking into how toxoplasmosis affects human behavior.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-left: 20px;">Until recently, latent infections in humans were assumed to be asymptomatic. Results of animal studies and recent studies of personality profiles, behavior, and psychomotor performance, however, have led to a reconsideration of this assumption.
</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As in other mammals, the effects of infection by T. gondii are very different between males and females. But here’s what happens to men infected by this tiny, single-celled organism:</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-left: 20px;">… the personality of infected men showed lower superego strength and higher vigilance. Thus, the men were more likely to disregard rules and were more expedient, suspicious, jealous, and dogmatic.
</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Suspicious. Jealous. Quicker to make an immediate judgment. Less willing to listen to others. Guys who were ready to break the rules if it helped them personally. Sound familiar? Other factors, such as self-control and even “clothes tidiness” were found to be decreased by infection. Here’s another one: Infected men scored significantly lower than uninfected men when it came to establishing relationships with women.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It is very hard not to draw a line between these results and guys like Nick Fuentes screaming about “replacement theory” and fretting over declining sperm counts while claiming that relationships between men and women “are gay.”</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">If you think this behavior only manifests at the polls, or in the desire to throw on a white hood, think again. One study showed that “Toxoplasma-infected subjects have a 2.65 times higher risk of traffic accidents than Toxoplasma-free subjects.” It would be extremely interesting to have results of these tests on people involved in mass shootings. While they’re at it, they could test corporate CEOs.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">What did T. gondii infection do to women? Almost the opposite.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-left: 20px;">The personality of infected women, by contrast, showed higher warmth and higher superego strength, suggesting that they were more warm hearted, outgoing, conscientious, persistent, and moralistic.
</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The “gender gap” in recent elections has been fairly extreme, but in trying to test against the current voting season, it’s difficult to disentangle gender-related results from concern over immediate issues, such as access to abortion. However, here are a few few polls from Civiqs on more general topics. When asked about Black Lives Matter, 53% of men were opposed compared to 36% of women. When asked about how the United States should deal with immigrants living in the country without documentation, 47% of men wanted those immigrants deported, while only 33% of women agreed. When asked about whether the government should do more to protect the environment, 46% of men said no. Only 32% of women agreed.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sadly, both men and women infected by T. gondii showed decreased levels of curiosity and “low levels of novelty seeking.” So the disease could make everyone effected just … duller than they might otherwise have been. And while it’s easy to read the effects listed for women and conclude they’re mostly positive, that doesn’t mean they have a welcome or beneficial effect on their lives.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Unlike many diseases, toxoplasmosis isn’t spread person to person. Instead, it comes from consuming food infected by the parasite—generally undercooked meat—or from contact with animal waste. In this case, animal waste translates almost entirely into “cat poop.” The threat of miscarriage represented by toxoplasmosis is why women are advised to not clean the litter box while pregnant. Cats get this disease by eating infected rodents and birds. If your cat is an outdoor cat, infection is almost certain (infection of the cat, not necessarily the people). A cat that stays indoors is much less likely to be infected. People can also be infected by other means, such working in a garden and failing to wash infected dirt from their hands before eating.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Toxoplasmosis can be treated, but except for those regarded as at high risk from the more visible effects of the disease—chiefly pregnant women, newborns, and those with damaged immune systems—prescribed treatment is rare.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Is “toxic masculinity” really “toxo masculinity?” Without more testing and treatment, it’s difficult to tell. Certainly all these traits seem to exist in uninfected men. It’s just the infection simply makes things worse.</p></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">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>// alt rt</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/musk-trump/">https://www.alternet.org/musk-trump/</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">an 12 22</font></div><div><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">no lnx twt pix</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);">It was too laughable not to share it: On his Twitter knockoff site Truth Social, Donald Trump posted on Wednesday about a "MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT tomorrow," which included a video of him dressed as a superhero shooting lasers out of his eyes.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It's what the kids online call "cringe" — and oh man, it couldn't have been more perfect for the online churn of public mockery. I'm on a Twitter diet, but I totally sent this dumb image to my friends, so we could join in the hilarity. So many questions! Is Trump really so delusional about his physical form that he thinks he looks like Superman? How can his fans not perceive that he does not, in fact, look like that? The lasers-out-of-the-eyes thing is directly out of the "Dark Brandon" meme liberals use to celebrate Joe Biden's accomplishments. Does Trump not know how desperate he looks, trying to bite Dark Brandon's style? How dumb is he anyway?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Trump has not returned to Twitter, even though Elon Musk reinstated his account and publicly begged him to come back. </b>But he managed to dominate Twitter on Wednesday anyway, as one liberal hater after another retweeted screenshots of the superhero meme, making sure that every Beltway journalist was well aware of Thursday's "MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT." The silliness of it guaranteed much more coverage than if Trump had tweeted out a vaguely normal picture of himself.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Unsurprisingly, the actual announcement was not just underwhelming but an even higher degree of self-pantsing:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But here's the part we cannot ignore: Trump is going to sell a lot of those dopey digital trading cards. As viral marketing campaigns go, this one was a solid win. Not only did all that liberal dunking garner news coverage and dramatic social media spread, b</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ut he also conveyed an important message to his supporters: Those liberal elites are laughing at you. And the way to strike back, proving that you're in on the joke and</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> making the liberals cry</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, is to buy this worthless crap and send Donald Trump more of your money.</span></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Since my book "Troll Nation: How the Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set on Rat-Fcking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself" was published in 2018, its central thesis — that the modern right is motivated by an obsessive desire to troll the left — has become a lot more widely accepted.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Just this week, Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent pointed out that Musk has gotten into the troll business because he understands that "for large swaths of the right-wing media ecosystem, the Triggering of the Libs has become an end in itself." By tweeting repulsive things and drawing liberal outrage and condemnation, </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Musk can get more engagement while sucking in more fans who</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> love how angry he makes their perceived enemies.</span></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>But what is too often overlooked in these discussions is how much this empire of trolling relies on the right's inferiority complex. At the root of the trolling mindset is defensiveness.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Conservatives perceive, not always incorrectly, that liberals are laughing at them for being a bunch of tasteless rubes with boring sex lives and expanding beer guts. This perception does not motivate a desire toward self-improvement, but instead a longing for revenge, mostly in the form of imposing their grossness on the supposedly more refined existence of those they despise.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>This inferiority complex is why the term "elite" has become common currency on Fox News. They don't use it accurately — say, to describe those who hold excessive wealth and power, but as a swipe at the perceived progressive values of college-educate cultural tastemakers in coastal cities</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> It explains how Musk, who until very recently was ranked as the richest man in the world, can get away with styling himself as a populist hero. Childish as it may be, Musk and his fanboys are still agitated about their perceived rejection by the Cool Kids.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The slavish fandom that people like Musk and Trump attract is generally confusing to folks on the left, because those two guys are such embarrassing losers. Trump's superhero meme has its brother in Musk's recent bout of social media thirst:</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 was already pathetic enough that Musk has been reduced to begging right-wing douchebags to like him. The items in that image make it worse, creating a virtual bingo card of terminal dweebness: Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. A painting of George Washington that was uncool when our grandparents were kids. A fake gun. In order to get the women of Tinder to swipe left faster, all you'd need would be a pet iguana and a decorative sword. (Arguably, the vajra on the table of a non-Buddhist counts for the latter.)</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But it's a mistake to conclude that Musk's fans simply fail to understand how uncool the Tesla CEO has revealed himself to be. He's created a cult of dork solidarity around him, one committed to a "Revenge of the Nerds"-style fantasy of ruining Twitter for all those blue-checked people who make them feel bad about themselves. That doesn't just appeal to those who already identify as conservative, either. <b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Musk's cult is part of a larger ecosystem that seeks to redirect angry young men toward fascist politics</span>. Musk may be running Twitter into the ground financially, but as a right-wing political project, his takeover of the company is going great: He's adding 200,000 new followers a day.</b></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);">In his recent book "Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind," journalist Robert Draper explains that, in his many conversations with Trump voters, it became clear that they were not confused about the actual nature of Donald Trump's personality. In fact, he writes,<b> "the MAGA faithful adored their emperor without clothes." As he told Salon, "everything that we would ordinarily view as a vice they found to be to be virtuous," often precisely because it pisses off liberals so much.</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">you see this all the time on social media, when conservatives make jokes about how liberals hate the "bad orange man." In making that joke, they're indicating that they know Trump is a weird-looking guy who wears orange makeup every day and also that, by any reasonable standard, he sucks. But none of that detracts from his allure in the slightest. He's basically a human pile of dog poop they get to rub liberal noses in, an animated and <b>endlessly whiny punishment they can inflict on those who make them feel insecure.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Shame is an odd emotion. It can sometimes motivate a person to slow down or stop behaviors that cause it. Just as often, however, it can backfire, creating a defensive reaction that causes the person to <b>double down. Trump's dumb superhero meme is a good example of the latter tendency in action. Liberals have mocked conservatives for years for their hero worship of Trump. But rather backing down, they just go at it harder — admittedly, with a bit of ironic distance — by churning out cartoonish images that reimagine Trump as Superman or Elvis or Rocky or some other masculine icon.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Of course these folks are still suckers. They may think they're sticking it to the liberals, but as usual Trump is just squeezing them for cash. But as long as they keep <b>nursing their grievance </b>over real or imagined liberal mockery, Trump fans will never quite be able to see how much the bad orange man has been using them all along.</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style="font-size: small;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-size: small;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mma misinfo yr 2022 tucker</font></div><div style="font-size: small;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small;"><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><b>  Masculinity</b><span style="white-space: pre;"><b> </b> </span></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Carlson blamed a departure from “traditional masculinity” for society’s various supposed crises, from</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Democratic leadership to reduced sperm counts, often invoking this rhetoric to criticize an increased emphasis</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">on diversity and inclusiveness. The culmination of Carlson’s foray into studying the perceived absence of</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">masculinity was a Fox Nation-produced Tucker Carlson Original called The End of Men. The special was an</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">incoherent collection of pseudoscientific ideas about modern day men having lower testosterone levels and</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">sperm counts among modern men and the “bro scientists” movement that’s fixing the problem.</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">       •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>   Carlson complained that one of the things “that really matter” but was not getting enough attention</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            was the “unprecedented drop in testosterone levels that scientists have measured repeatedly.” [Fox</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 1/4/22]</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">       •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>   Carlson claimed that “traditional masculine virtues” are “now illegal.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            Tonight, 6/10/22]</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">       •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>   Carlson claimed the FDA ban on Juul was meant to lower testosterone levels and make people “more</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            passive and easier to control.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 6/22/22]</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">       •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>   Amid his vaccine lies, Carlson paid special emphasis to claims that vaccines lower sperm counts</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            in men. Though there is no evidence of COVID-19 vaccines causing problems with male fertility, he</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            would repeat this lie throughout the year. [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 6/23/22, 7/6/22, 8/25/22,</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            9/21/22, 10/25/22]</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">       •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>   Carlson blamed women “lecturing” men for mass shootings. [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight,</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            7/5/22]</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">       •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>   Carlson praised farmers in the Netherlands for having enough “testosterone” to protest government</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            regulations on nitrogen fertilizer pollution. [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 7/7/22]</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">       •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>   Carlson complained, “We’ve never, I don’t think at any point in American history, ever, had, sort of,</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            all segments of elite culture united in their contempt for — loathing of, really — white men.” [Media</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            Matters, 7/25/22]</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">       •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>   Carlson blamed the increase in crime on absent fathers: “There’s no one in charge with a normal</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            testosterone level who’s willing to just say, ‘No, you’re not allowed to do this. I’m sorry, you can’t do</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            that. That’s against the law. This is a country of laws.’” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 9/13/22]</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">       •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>   Carlson claimed vaccine mandates are part of a plot to rid the workforce of people with “high</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Media Matters for America                                                                                         15</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            testosterone levels.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 9/15/22]</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">       •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>   Carlson claimed the world was facing “Spermpocalypse”: “Men will not be able to have children in say</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            another 50 years” because of decreased sperm counts. [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 12/1/22]</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">       •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>   In his Fox Nation-produced Tucker Carlson Original called The End of Men, Carlson aired many</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            ludicrous claims. The special featured a “right-wing bro scientist” who goes by the name Benjamin</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            Braddock on Twitter (most likely a reference to the character played by Dustin Hoffman in the 1967</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            film The Graduate). Braddock encouraged men to use red light therapy to tan their testes, even</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            though experts warn against the therapy. The special also featured previous Infowars guest “Raw</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            Egg Nationalist,” who described the “enemy” as “soy globalism,” which he said seeks to control</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            communities by “sickening them through food.” He encouraged viewers to consume raw eggs to</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            counter the effort. Carlson also claimed that “man boobs” would “threaten to doom our civilization.”</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            [Fox Nation, Tucker Carlson Original, 10/5/22]</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Guests</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">       •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>   Carlson aired a clip from Tucker Carlson Today in which guest Jason Whitlock said: “There is no toxic</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            masculinity. Masculinity is a good thing. That’s how we became number one. That’s how America</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            became great.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 2/2/22]</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">       •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>   Oli London, a “British internet celebrity” who detransitioned, claimed that schools are “eroding the</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">            alpha male.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 11/11/22]</div></div><div style="font-size: small;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kaiyuan Dynasty Trump Flag Tank Donald Flag 1pc 3x5 Feet with Grommets</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mma 9 22 no vid</font></div><div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Fox News star Tucker Carlson <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/26/tucker-carlson-hells-angels-ralph-sonny-barger" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">eulogized</a> Ralph “Sonny” Barger over the weekend, effusively praising the founder of the vigilante Hells Angels just one month after <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/crime-and-criminal-justice/fox-news-fearmongers-about-americas-crime-crisis-promote-more-police" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">telling</a> Republicans to run on crime policies. Barger spent <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/hells-angels-leader-sonny-barger-dies-83-2022-06-30/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">around 13 years in prison</a> following convictions for assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping, among other charges.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Carlson celebrated Barger in his remarks, presenting him as the type of person Carlson aspires to be. “Stand tall, stay loyal, remain free, and always value honor,” Carlson said in a clip shared to Twitter by right-wing conspiracy theorist <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/jack-posobiec" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">Jack Posobiec</a>.</span> Quoting Barger’s supposed philosophy, Carlson remarked, “If there is a phrase that sums up more perfectly what I want to be, what I aspire to be, and the kind of man I respect, I can’t think of a phrase.”[poso twt]</font></p></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--twitter-tweet paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="field field--name-field-twitter-tweet field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><figure class="social-media social-media--twitter_tweet" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; justify-content: center;"><div class="field field--name-field-media-twitter field--type-string field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; width: 500px; display: flex; max-width: 550px; margin-right: auto !important; margin-left: auto !important;" /></div></figure></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden fielditem" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>the Department of Justice <a href="https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ocgs/gallery/outlaw-motorcycle-gangs-omgs" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">considers</a> the Hells Angels to be linked to organized criminal activities, including cross-border drug smuggling, as well as “assault, extortion, [and] homicide.”</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Barger himself had a long history of criminal charges and convictions stemming from drug distribution and violence. In 1988, he and another member “were convicted of conspiracy to transport and receive explosives in interstate commerce with intent to kill and damage buildings” belonging to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/30/us/sonny-barger-dead-hells-angels.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">rival</a> motorcycle club, The Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/article/7118c4aee9d01e00f171570f5102d7ea" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">reported</a> at the time. He was charged in 2002 with aggravated assault after allegedly breaking his wife’s ribs and lacerating her spleen, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=pg28hmWc_4wC&dq=chuck+zito+wife+2002&pg=PA51#v=onepage&q=chuck%20zito%20wife%202002&f=false" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">according</a> to Tom Barker, a professor and expert on outlaw motorcycle gangs.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Carlson’s kind words for Barger come just weeks after he hyped a supposed increase in crime nationwide and <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-told-republicans-focus-crime-theyre-listening" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">instructed</a> Republicans to campaign on it. </b>“If every Republican office-seeker, every Republican candidate in the United States focused on law and order and equality under the law, there would be a red wave” in the November midterms, Carlson <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-republicans-focused-law-order-red-wave" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">said</a> in his August 19 monologue. The next day, Carlson stated that “suddenly, there is a huge amount of stealing in the United States. It’s everywhere.” He offered no evidence for his claim.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">vid] carlson’s simultaneous endorsement of Barger and the Hells Angels on the one hand, and propagandizing about a supposed crime wave on the other, is obviously superficially hypocritical. But beneath the hypocrisy lies a consistent political ideology. For reactionaries like Carlson, criminal activity isn’t — and can’t be — an objective, neutrally applied description of behavior.</font></p></div></div><div class="paragraph paragraph--type--stories-text paragraph--view-mode--editorial" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="fancy-elems-wrapper field field--name-field-stories-text-formatted field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field__item" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The classical music composer Frank Wilhoit offered a pithy summary of conservatism that aptly resolves Carlson’s seemingly contradictory positions. “<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect,” Wilhoit <a href="https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservatives-frank-wilhoit.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">wrote</a> in 2018.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>For Carlson, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-republicans-focused-law-order-red-wave" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">shoplifting</a> is a crime, but <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-lists-trumps-coup-plotters-who-he-says-should-never-be-punished" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">conspiring</a> to overturn the 2020 election and engaging in an attempted fascist insurrection isn’t. </b>In his analysis, whether someone counts as a criminal is a post hoc determination based on the identity of the person in question. <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-blames-homeless-mass-violence-america" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">Poor people</a>, <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/black-lives-matter/tucker-carlsons-racist-and-extreme-descriptions-black-lives-matter-movement" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">Black people</a>, and <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-calls-immigrants-chaos-and-filth-and-crime-growing-all-around-us-and" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">immigrants</a> can all be criminals, whereas conservatives who rioted on January 6 are being persecuted by a tyrannical government for their political beliefs.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>For all of his supposed outlaw status, Barger had an alternately antagonistic and cooperative relationship with law enforcement, which typifies the <a href="https://prospect.org/justice/police-and-racist-vigilantes-even-worse-than-you-think/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">symbiotic relationship</a> between vigilante gangs and cops throughout the 20th century in the United States. </b>In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, Barger regularly served as an informant to Oakland police, offering tips about weapons caches in exchange for leniency for arrested Angels, according to testimony Sgt. Ted Hilliard offered at the time. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Mr. Barger would load them in the back of my car—automatic rifles and dynamite, for example,” Hilliard said, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1973/03/18/archives/jail-terms-deplete-ranks-of-hells-angels-police-let-angels-in-girl.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">according</a> to The New York Times. The Oakland police preferred to work with the Angels and “let the Angels operate,” as Rolling Stone <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/angels-in-court-the-strange-tale-of-baby-huey-113651/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">reported</a> at the time, rather than risk the weapons falling into the hands of leftist groups like the Weathermen or the Black Panth</span>ers.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That’s the history that Carlson was embracing at Barger’s service. While the hypocrisy on the surface is glaring, the underlying belief structure is entirely coherent. The law is a tool to punish out-groups that have been criminalized, while vigilante gangs that reinforce the dominant social order — whether Hells Angels or the <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-repeatedly-hosted-oath-keeper-charged-seditious-conspiracy" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: box-shadow 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgba(25, 118, 210, 0.5) 0px -1px 0px inset;">Oathkeepers</a> — must be celebrated and defended. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“I’m honored to be here,” Carlson concluded his weekend remarks. “Thank you for having me.” The applause from the assembled Hells Angels made clear that the admiration was mutu</b>al.</font></p></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></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">anti-macho? an 922 married to Pilsbury dough boy?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Political commentator and author Mercedes Schlapp along with her husband, Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC) Chairman Matt Schlapp, are frequent guests on right-wing media outlets such as Real America's Voice.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Sunday, the couple appeared on Steven Bannon's War Room and claimed to the show's namesake host that President Joe Biden's signature aviator sunglasses are left-wing "propaganda" props designed to make Biden seem tough.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"First, don't listen to the mainstream media because what they're trying to do is sell the propaganda that the Democrats are on the rise again," Schlapp said. "You'd know that when you see Joe Biden put on his aviator sunglasses and they give him this look of strength. And it's so – it's such a lie and so it’s so critical to just not let that get you down.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ MORE: The president strikes back: MAGA 'an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Schlapp's allegation follow's Biden's Thursday speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in which he warned of the imminent and existential dangers that former President Donald Trump's Make America Great Again movement poses to the democratic future of the United States.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CPAC selected Hungary's authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to be the keynote speaker at its conference on August 4th.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watch below or at this link.</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">salon an 8 22 kirk s</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/prostrating-themselves-before-donald-trump/ why do people who attack the gender identities and romantic and sexual affiliations of others often seem so twisted up? I suppose history tells us that it pretty much goes without saying. But we need to speak plainly about it because we are all now hyper-aware of the serious damage that damaged people can do to others — and to society.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republican Party long ago slipped under the sheets with the religious right to become bedfellows in the culture wars, encouraging bigots, misogynists and Christian zealots to insist that others live by their morals (or < https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-brief-report/2020/dec/maternal-mortality-united-states-primer"  maternal mortality rate that ranks last among all industrialized nations, these religious and political grifters have created  that make health care professionals hesitate to address dire childbirth situations and even delay urgent treatment because they need to consult with lawyers.< This hyper-focus on anything and everything sexual extends to the right's self-proclaimed tough guys, the seeming adults who so much enjoy . When five members of the Proud Boys were indicted on charges of seditious conspiracy for their role in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, we were reminded in various news stories that members of their "fraternity" are told to masturbate no more than once "in a calendar month." (Is that part of the bylaws? Is there an actual calendar with titillating monthly photos of white guys carrying tiki torches, or manly images of Confederate heroes?)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of that rule limiting self-pleasuring, Stephen Colbert : "That's going to make those 20 years in prison seem pretty long. But I do understand why they are so angry." He went on to ponder, "I don't get once a month. I get none. That makes sense. But once a month?"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina claimed he was invited to </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Madison Cawthorn claimed he was invited to orgies by other House Republicans. Unlike all the false and outrageous things Trump has said, that got him literally canceled.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Look, if longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone — who, as we know, was present at the Willard hotel on Jan. 5, 2021, proudly being "protected" by those white-supremacist boys — considers himself a "trysexual" (because he says he's willing to try everything) or Cawthorn enjoys a bit of frat-boy-style cross-dressing while drinking with his bros, that's none of my business.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which is exactly the point.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For all Tucker Carlson's bluster about masculinity (including his risible special "The End of Men" whose promo included a fair amount of plausibly-homoerotic imagery), a more accurate tagline for his Fox News show program might be a variation on Teddy Roosevelt's famous saying: Speak hysterically — and fret about carrying a tiny stick.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among those most vocal about the supposed crisis of masculinity, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley's much-publicized scamper away from his own insurrectionist supporters inside the Capitol building on Jan. 6 wasn't much of a revelation, though it was objectively hilarious.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It bears repeating that creating fear about the "state of manhood" is a key move in the authoritarian playbook (and abstention from masturbation was, by the way, a Nazi rule.) As historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat noted in an essay last November for the Atlantic:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Illiberal political solutions tend to take hold when increased gender equity and emancipation spark anxieties about male authority and status. A conquest-without-consequences masculinity, posing as a 'return to traditional values,' tracks with authoritarianism's rise and parallels the discarding of the rule of law and accountability in politics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These days, boys will adamantly be boys, and this means they don't expect to be held accountable. For anything. The more loutish among them long for the days when they could easily slide from responsibility for their actions. That's why many Republicans, including a distressingly large number of obedient Republican women, are willing to support men who face multiple allegations of sexual abuse, or who have been accused with domestic violence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Insecure young men are not being taught how to be better persons in their relationships with young women; they are being taught to hate by misogynistic grifters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the Trumpian right, flip a coin — heads is racism; tails is misogyny and homophobia. Heads they win, tails you lose.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, as Republicans rant about fantasy pedophiles and LGBTQ "groomers" and call others (and often each other) "cucks," school children and ordinary citizens are being cut down by young men with legally purchased assault-style weapons. Survivors get "thoughts and prayers"; families are left to figure out how to carry on after the lights of their lives have forever been extinguished.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gun fetishes, closeted sexuality, talk of "pssy" and rape, sadistic name-calling and general hate-mongering, worship of power and that telling focus on "manliness" — anyone else feel like we're back in a really bad high school locker room? That stink isn't coming from healthy athletics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I agree that there is a masculinity crisis in this country, but it is most obviously found among the cohort of Republican politicians and their supporters who have prostrated themselves before Donald Trump. I would add fathers who refuse to teach their sons about sexuality and healthy, nurturing relationships but are all too eager to teach them that their guns and their jobs should define who they are as men.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is a masculinity crisis in our country — most obviously found among the spineless Republican men who spent six years prostrating themselves before Donald Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Boys and girls both desperately need our help. They need to feel safe at home and at school. They need to grow up in a reasonably clean environment. They need to learn from their parents and teachers to treat one another respectfully. They need to build a strong sense of community, and to know they can get an affordable education (and/or job training) and find a decent job at a living wage, with benefits. They should be able to find a comfortable and affordable place to live, and be able to start a family of their own, if such is their choice. They should be able to find affordable health care throughout their working lives and into retirement. All of that, in fact, should be considered the bare minimum, the starting point.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Furthermore, children and young adults need to be educated broadly, so they can find something more in life than a cycle of consumption, acquisition and constant work-related striving. They should feel psychologically safe to love who they choose to love. (Our younger daughter just introduced me to the sad phrase "compulsory heterosexuality," which I'd somehow missed but which makes sense in this patriarchal, still-puritanical country.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But as the younger people in our society wait for adults to do positive things that may help them move forward in life, they are, by force, living in a country with more guns than people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Does anyone genuinely believe that Republicans in Congress or the mean-spirited, small-minded Trumpians who have taken over so many state legislatures are even the slightest bit interested in elevating the lives of young people? Even so-called moderate Republicans don't care a whit about, say, the concept of a living wage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So-called conservatives dehumanize liberals with horrifying and hateful epithets, calling them "cucks," cannibals, "groomers" and pedophiles — again, tellingly sexual insults — while leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the country, have a massive, far-reaching sex scandal to face up to.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his seminal 1964 essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics — which famously begins, "American politics has often been an arena for angry minds" — Richard Hofstadter noted that sexual obsessions are frequently projected on one's political opponents, to build a case that they are inhuman or unacceptable:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[T]he sexual freedom often attributed to the enemy, his lack of moral inhibition, his possession of especially effective techniques for fulfilling his desires, give exponents of the paranoid style an opportunity to project and express unacknowledged aspects of their own psychological concerns.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We all knew mistreated or abused boys in school who felt they had to play "yes men" to the local bully, no matter how badly he treated them — or, more likely, because of how badly he treated them. I can easily imagine the young Lindsey Graham or Sean Hannity or Marco Rubio or Tucker Carlson or Kevin McCarthy — really, any of the spineless, fawning, unprincipled Republicans who failed to stand up to Trump at any point during his rise or reign, playing that part in their youth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the face of all the grim, twisted, hateful and self-hating moralism from the right, liberals and progressives must reclaim their mojo as celebrants of the beauty and joy of life, as Salon's Amanda Marcotte argued a few months ago. Masculinity and femininity need not be prisons or traps or destinies. Those supposed poles, and all points in between, are available to all of us as we go through life figuring out who we are. Isn't that wonderful?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A former pilot for the U.S. Navy has publicly criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for his new campaign advertisement inspired by the 1986 classic film, "Top Gun."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to HuffPost, the campaign ad featured the Republican governor who "donned aviator shades and a bomber jacket and plopped into what appeared to be the pilot’s seat of a fighter jet as he talked about taking on the 'corporate media.'”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At one point during the ad, he described himself as the "Top Gov." in the ad, and Ken Harbaugh is not pleased. “It’s not just cringy,” said Ken Harbaugh. “It’s literally Navy pilot cosplay.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ MORE: ‘Blowhard jerk’ Ron DeSantis is the GOP’s best chance to ‘move on from Trump’: conservative</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Harbaugh, a former member of the U.S. Navy who now hosts the “Burn the Boats” podcast, was featured in a new clip posted to social media by MediasTouch.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the clip, he displayed his jacket with authentic pilot wings as he offered a comparison of both their roles in the maritime service branch. “Now, unlike Ron DeSantis, I didn’t pick this jacket up at Party City,” Harbaugh said. “These are actual pilot wings.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He also noted that while DeSantis did serve in the U.S. Navy, he did so as an attorney. While Harbaugh also acknowledged that there is "nothing wrong with that," he did criticize the governor for appearing to embellish his role.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Nothing wrong with that,” Harbaugh said of DeSantis' work in the Navy. “Until you start strutting around the flight line wearing aviator shades and pretending to be a badass.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ MORE: Top Florida faith adviser dismissed after sexual assault history revealed</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Harbaugh went on to offer a critical assessment of the political ad and the persona DeSantis attempted to portray.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This tough guy act is pathetic, especially from someone like Ron DeSantis. This campaign ad from Ron DeSantis is just one more example of a Republican politician appropriating the honor of others because he has none.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To view Harbaugh's full reaction, watch below or at this link.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 8 22</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Countless right-wing media outlets have been jumping to former President Donald Trump’s defense since the FBI, on Monday, August 8, executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in South Florida. Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon is no exception.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On his “War Room” podcast, the far-right MAGA Republican, conspiracy theorist and Trump ally angrily railed against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon told viewers, “DOJ is lying. The FBI is lying. All of them are lying. And we’re going to hold them all accountable. And I’m not going to sit there and listen to Merrick Garland…. Well, listen, pipsqueak, you can come out again and start crying at the mic, because ‘War Room’ is not going to back off. We smoked you out.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ MORE: Fox News guest calls Mar-a-Lago search 'a preemptive coup'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The “War Room” host continued, “Other conservative media smoked you out of your cave…. We’re not going to back off. You’re a lawless scumbag. How about that? Suck on that. The FBI is a bunch of lawless Gestapo.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Washington Post sources, the documents the FBI agents were searching for at Mar-a-Lago included “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Attorney Ron Filipkowski, posting Bannon’s rant on Twitter, noted how badly he was “melting down.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watch the video below or at this link:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ MORE: FBI Director details the 'deplorable' threats he’s received since Mar-a-Lago search</font></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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/conservative-media-outlets-are-embracing-alex-jones-more-ever</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mma 8 22</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conservative pundits are increasingly embracing far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, even as his financial losses mount and his professional future remains uncertain following a high-profile lawsuit. Right-wing outlets have not only adopted many of the fringe host’s conspiratorial affects and theories, but several have also provided Jones with a platform to spread his extremist brand of paranoid quackery.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The decision to give Jones an opportunity to find new audiences — or to tap into his own — is especially fraught right now, given that he was just found liable for defamation and forced to pay more than $45 million in damages to parents of a 6-year-old child killed in the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. Jones now faces another defamation suit in Connecticut, also related to comments he made about Sandy Hook, which the talk show host and vitamin supplement salesman referred to as “a giant hoax.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although Jones has long been legitimized and defended by the right, conservative media’s increasingly open celebration of him appears to signal a new phase of their relationship with the serial fabulist. Conservatives are bringing him in from the fringe under the guise of free speech and fighting back against the supposed Big Tech censorship, using his deplatforming in 2018 and subsequent court-ordered payments in the Sandy Hook trial to transform him into a First Amendment martyr. And following the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s residence at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, several right-wing hosts interviewed Jones as though he were a Casandra-like figure whose long history of alarmist warnings of government tyranny had finally come to pass.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fox News’ top star Tucker Carlson reportedly regularly texts with Jones and has praised him in various venues repeatedly. In July, Carlson once again told his audience that the antisemitic Great Replacement conspiracy theory was real, but mainstream outlets wouldn’t acknowledge it for fear of being categorized alongside Alex Jones. Earlier this year, Carlson said Jones is “a lot more talented than I am” and generally endorsed his conspiracy theories about liberal philanthropist George Soros. Carlson has been a guest on Infowars and wrote a blurb for Jones’ new book.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Steve Bannon, the host of the War Room podcast and a former Trump chief strategist, appeared on an episode of Jones’ Infowars following the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago. He heaped accolades on Jones, recognizing Infowars as “one of the major news sources out there for the MAGA movement.” Along with Jones, Bannon proceeded to lay out wild, completely speculative conspiracy theories. [vid]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I do not think it's beyond this administrative state and their deep state apparatus to actually try to work on the assassination of President Trump,” Bannon said, providing no evidence to support the claim.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon then suggested that the FBI may have “planted stuff” — that is, incriminating evidence — during the search.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Exactly. How do we know a hundred agents in there with their long history of planting things, didn't plant something classified,” Jones echoed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“You're absolutely right,” Bannon responded. (That theory has since been adopted by Fox News hosts and Republican Sen. Rand Paul.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One day earlier, Bannon hosted Jones on his own War Room podcast to praise the serial liar as the leading edge of conservative thought, using a string of military metaphors to make his point.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If you think of military, you've always been like force recon. Or you've been like LRP, long-range patrol,” Bannon said. “You've been out ahead of, cutting, you know, cutting through, bushwhacking through and laying out the tracks and the trails for where the narrative, then the big narrative engine comes in back of it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon also positioned Jones as a warrior and martyr that left-wing activists and tech companies are trying to silence. “They're trying to break you as a man and they're trying to break your incredible organization,” Bannon added.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk also interviewed Jones the day after the Mar-a-Lago search, introducing him as “the most canceled man in America” and framing the interview as a defense of the principle of free speech. Kirk then proceeded to give Jones a platform to obfuscate and justify his long, well-documented history of Sandy Hook denial. Kirk then asked Jones to give his listeners advice on how to “keep on going — how do I push on through if people try to cancel me.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kirk later characterized Jones as a brave truth-teller, freeing his listeners from the blinders that had been placed on them. “How do you break people out of the comfort of the lies they live in?” Kirk asked Jones. “Because that’s what you do for a living.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jones eventually responded with an unhinged rant about who makes the best resistance fighters against what he believes is a demonic globalist cabal. “Because men haven’t been alpha males and stood up for Western civilization and the empowerment of the future and a pro-human future, we’ve allowed sick, degenerate alpha males to come in and threaten the women, and children, and men to get in line with them,” Jones explained.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Alex Jones, he’s not crazy, he’s just early. He’s ahead of the curve,” Kirk said to close out the segment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The previous day, Kirk had praised Jones as someone who was “not wrong a lot of the time,” even as he acknowledged that “he is not right a lot of the time.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Elijah Schaffer, a reporter at The Blaze and host of Slightly Offensve, also interviewed Jones in August after the conclusion of his Sandy Hook defamation trial. Like Kirk and Bannon, Schaffer framed the discussion as a defense of free speech against those who are trying to “silence the truth.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Failing Fox News competitor One America News Network interviewed Jones’ colleague Owen Shroyer, currently facing charges in the January 6 riot, following the conclusion of the Sandy Hook trial.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We are increasingly seeing, you know, here at one American News, we haven't been banned quite as hard as you guys, but we got taken off FiOS with Verizon,” host Addison Smith said. “We got taken off Comcast TV, you know, you name it. And that's because for very similar reasons, we have a commitment to reporting the truth as we see it and reporting the facts as we see it.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shroyer responded by praising Alex Jones’ “almost prophetic-like foresight of geopolitical developments and political developments.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The two continued their mutual admiration the following night, when Shroyer invited Smith on his show to discuss the Mar-a-Lago search.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A host at Newsmax, an OAN rival, defended Jones’ defamatory comments on the grounds that “this is America and you can say what you want.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it’s not just backwater, fledgling right-wing networks and podcasts that endorse Jones. His reach extends to the highest echelons of right-wing media. Reactionary podcast megastar Joe Rogan has long been a supporter of Jones, and the two appeared together on a stream of the bafflingly popular Timcast IRL. Hard-right politicians like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and, of course, Trump, are also long-time champions of him as well.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, there seems to have been a notable difference in the reaction to Jones over the last several weeks. When he was roundly deplatformed in 2018, many conservatives came to his defense on free speech grounds while at least nominally distancing themselves from his content and arguments. Following the Mar-a-Lago search and his liability in the Sandy Hook lawsuit, conservative pundits appear to be following his lead.</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cruz slams cowboy boot w/ come and take it</font></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">cpac once has legit policy presented?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/cpac-speakers/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to a report from Rolling Stone, the speeches thus far at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas have been larded with "dark" threats of coming violence as the speakers brushed aside any discussion about the Jan 6 Capitol riot.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With Donald Trump --who instigated the Capitol insurrection -- taking the stage on Saturday, Tim Dickinson wrote that in many cases the speeches, "...menaced America with what seemed to be thinly veiled calls for violence."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Case in point, he notes, was a speech given by recently convicted former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon who proclaimed to the crowd, "We are at war."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Repeating the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, Bannon insisted that Joe Biden is an 'illegitimate imposter.' Calling on Republicans to send 'shock troops' to Washington, Bannon promised the crowd they had an opportunity to 'shatter the Democratic party as a national political institution'." he wrote. "He alleged that the party has been overrun by 'radical, cultural Marxists' and 'groomers' who 'want to destroy the Republic.' Bannon insisted the GOP must pursue absolute victory over 'power-mad and lawless' Democrats, asserting: 'There can be no half measures anymore'."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) doubled down on Bannon's heated rhetoric, exhorting the crowd with the claim, "It’s like the old Roman Colosseum where you slam on a breastplate and you grab a battle axe and you go fight the barbarians. As they say in the military world, it is a target-rich environment.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The rhetoric of revolution and frontline confrontation went hand-in-hand with other speakers and presenters who cast the American left as demonic, evil, and destructive — in other words the kind of enemies who deserve to be dealt with harshly," the report states before adding, "CPAC has long been a political circus, a relatively harmless sideshow. But its latest incarnation has become manifestly dangerous — more fascist than farce. It is holding up alleged perpetrators of political violence as martyrs. It is demonizing its domestic political opponents as diabolical 'enemies within.' And it is giving MAGA supporters a militaristic frame for their charge to the 'front lines' of America’s culture wars."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"In short it is playing with fire. But it’s the rest of us who may get burned." Rolling Stones' Dickinson concluded.</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an raw 8 22</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former President Donald Trump spoke for nearly two hours in his closing address at the CPAC summit in Dallas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Trump's view, America has been destroyed in the 18 months since he left office, with out-of-control crime, inflation, and oddly enough unemployment, which Trump estimates to be three times the official number.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump took the stage to the song "God Bless the USA" and began by thanking the "proud patriots" in attendance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump said he was proud to be joined by Rep. Ronnie Jackson (R-TX), who was his White House surgeon.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"He was an admiral, a doctor, and now he's a congressman," Trump noted, saying he asked him which was the best.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"And he sort of indicated doctor, because he loved to look at my body. It was so strong and powerful," Trump said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump then introduced Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This is no time for complacency," Trump warned. "We have to seize this opportunity to deal with the radical left socialist lunatic fascists. We have to hit them very, very hard. It has to be a crippling defeat."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He went on to complain about Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) for supporting the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed a procedural vote after Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote while Trump was speaking, resulting in harsh words for GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"But McConnell is the most unpopular politician in the country, even more so than crazy Nancy Pelosi, and something has to be done," Trump urged.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump said Biden "surrendered our strength and our everything [in Afghanistan], they surrendered our dignity."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael Hardy, senior editor at the Texas Monthly, was one of the local journalists covering the speech. He said that line had "echoes of the Nazi 'stab in the back theory' of losing WW1."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump then described crime in "Democrat-run (sic) cities" in very dark terms.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The streets of our Democrat-run cities are drenched in the blood of innocent victims," Trump claimed. "Bullets are killing little beautiful little children who never had a chance. Car jackers lay in wait like predators."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hardy described that as "some literal blood-and-soil rhetoric."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And Trump went on saying "we need to courage to say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done," which Hardy said "is a rallying cry for street violence and worse."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump went on to call for a military takeover of San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Portland.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Trump's rhetoric is significantly more extreme than even a few years ago," Hardy said. "This might be most frightening speech I've ever heard. Full-on, unapologetic fascism. Trump has either been reading Mein Kampf or having someone read it to him."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump repeated his lies about election fraud and teased a 2024 presidential comeback.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former RNC official Tim Miller said, "I know everyone in the DC GOP is just hoping Trump will die but it’s impossible to watch this CPAC speech and not come to the conclusion that he’s going to run and be very hard to beat in a primary. Sorry to be the bearer of bad weekend news."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After his speech, Trump danced on stage to the song "Hold On I'm Coming" by Sam and Dave.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Don't you ever feel sad; lean on me when times are bad," Sam and Dave sang. "Then the day comes and you're down; in a river of trouble and about to drown. Just hold on, I'm coming. Hold on, I'm coming."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You can watch his speech here.</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the conv</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/american-gun-culture-frontier-mythology/</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-tells-bizarre-lie-traditional-masculine-virtues-are-now-illegal</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 6 22 no lnx pix twt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MAGA's ‘King of Toxic Masculinity’ faces police raid in Romania in human trafficking investigation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Romanian police in 2015, Wikimedia Commons</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alex Henderson April 22, 2022</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">   </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In one of his YouTube videos, American expatriate Andrew Tate — a professional kickboxer and far-right Donald Trump supporter known as “the King of Toxic Masculinity” — stated that “40%” of the reason he moved to Romania was because Romanian law enforcement are less likely to pursue sexual assault allegations. But on April 10, according to Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer, Tate’s home was raided by Romanian police as part of a human trafficking investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Video from the raid shows police officers armed with rifles milling among the Tates’ sports cars, with a neon ‘TATE’ logo on a wall in the background,” Sommer explains. “Another video showed Tate and his brother, (Tristan Tate), being shoved into vans by police officers before being driven away from their homes.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Romanian publication Gândul, according to Sommer, “reported that the raid was sparked over reports that an American woman was being held captive at the Tate house. Police found both the American and a Romanian woman in the building during the raid, according to the report.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Andrew Tate was dubbed “the King of Toxic Masculinity” by one of his admirers. The term “toxic masculinity” has a very negative connotation among feminists, but to Tate’s admirers, it’s a badge of honor — and in the video discussing his decision to move to Romania, Tate angrily railed against the #MeToo movement. Romania, as the MAGA kickboxer saw it, wasn’t as #MeToo-friendly as the United States, the U.K. or Germany.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In that video, Tate told viewers, “People say, ‘Why do you live in Romania?,’ and I explain my five reasons. One of them is the #MeToo era…. This #MeToo era bullshit has not protected women. It’s just destroyed the safety of men.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Daily Beast discussed Andrew Tate’s case with Romanian police. According to Sommer, “In a statement provided to the Daily Beast, Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism said the raid on the Tates’ house was part of an investigation that began after a woman was reported to be held at the house against her will. As the probe continued, it escalated to include ‘crimes of human trafficking and rape.’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sommer reports that “in a statement on the raid to the Daily Beast, a U.S. State Department spokesperson alluded to a reported abduction of an American citizen but declined to comment further.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That spokesperson told the Beast, “We are aware of reports of a U.S. citizen held against their will in Romania. Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tate, Sommer notes, has often been a guest on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars show and has “links with the stars of the Trumpian right.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In 2019,” Sommer observes, “Tate palled around Washington, D.C. with prominent online Trump activists and conspiracy theorists. He shared a meal with far-right cable news commentator Jack Posobiec and Infowars host Paul Joseph Watkins, and appeared multiple times on Infowars shows. In Trump’s Washington hotel, Tate posed for a picture with Brexit advocate Nigel Farage, and sat in a group in the Trump hotel lobby with the likes of Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich and future January 6, (2021) protest organizer Ali Alexander.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">coal roller killed mult bicyclists?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha is // to xian flawed vessel?  derives from apprentice failure to execute boss vision thus not his fault?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump’s supporters think of him as the ultimate alpha male, but a scathing op-ed in The Atlantic makes the case that he’s “the least masculine man” to be elected president in modern history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tom Nichols, a conservative professor at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The most damning aspect of Trump, writes Nichols, is his utter refusal to take any responsibility for his actions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read the whole editorial here.</font></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">pussies submit to tyrants:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ggl</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">INSANE: NYT Essay Praised Sky-High Inflation Because It’ll Make Our Diets Climate-Conscious</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joseph Vazquez</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">June 9th, 2022 </font></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">The New York Times had the gall to publish an essay that tried to paint skyrocketing consumer prices as a good thing because it will make Americans’ diets more eco-friendly.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Journalist Annaliese Griffin praised in a June 2 write-up for The Times how “Inflation has the potential to drive welcome change for the planet if Americans think differently about the way they eat.” Griffin spun the skyrocketing prices of meat, poultry, fish and eggs as a positive because they’re allegedly pushing Americans into vegan and vegetarian diets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While ironically admitting that “hunger and food insecurity are a very real problem in the United States and globally,” she still spun that “middle- and upper-class Americans still have more choices at the grocery store than perhaps any food shoppers in history.” This is what happens when the left attempts a hot take: babbling nonsense.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Griffin even mourned that climate change in itself wasn’t doing enough to spur change in people’s eating habits. “Climate change has motivated some to eat less resource-intensive meat and more vegetables, grains and legumes, but this movement has not reached the scale necessary to bring needed change — yet.” Looks like inflation, according to Griffin’s bizarre logic, may do the trick and bring the “needed change” she clamored for in her essay.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it got worse. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Griffin continued fawning over how “[i]nflation resulting from the cost of fuel and feed, coupled with supply chain slowdowns, may make meat substitutes more affordable relative to traditional, factory-farmed meats.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Griffin couldn’t stop. She went as far as spinning the atrocious 1970s stagflation era as a case study on the benefits of an inflation-plagued economy: “The 1970s brought us brown rice, granola, exciting vegetables like eggplant and zucchini, and every conceivable way to prepare a lentil.” </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate Depot founder Marc Morano slammed Griffin’s absurd argument in exclusive comments to MRC Business: “The New York Times seems bent on updating Gordon Gekko's phrase from the 1987 film Wall Street: Chaos, for lack of a better word, is GOOD,” Morano wrote “Climate activists in academia, the Biden admin. and the media seem to think the more humans suffer, the more the planet will benefit.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Morano noted Griffin’s argument “is more evidence that economic calamity, debt, inflation, supply chain issues, and skyrocketing meat and energy costs are not the unintended consequences of the climate agenda.” In Morano’s view, the skyrocketing costs of necessities such as meat are “the INTENDED consequences,” as he noted, “Chaos conditions the public to accept more centralized control of their lives.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Morano was on point. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Griffin continued, trying to convince readers to set their eyes on the “culinary legacy” the near-40-year-high inflation crisis will bring to America's dietary habits: “Freed from having meat in every meal and with a world of recipes at our fingertips, what will the delicious culinary legacy of this inflationary period be?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conservatives are under attack. Contact The New York Times at 1-800-698-4637 and demand it quit publishing content that tries to spin the 40-year-high inflation crisis as a positive development.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe Biden</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Marc Morano</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Business</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New York Times</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global Warming</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pollution</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Environment</font></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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">arrest romania</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/maga-king-of-toxic-masculinity/</font></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">no lnx</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/pro-putin-anti-gay-qanon-supporter-lauren-witzke-continues-to-be-delawares-most-embarrassing-republican/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pro-Putin, anti-gay and QAnon: Meet Delaware’s most embarrassing Republican</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Lauren Witzke, from Facebook]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alex Henderson March 04, 2022</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Delaware, the most famous Democrat is President Joe Biden, who commutes between the White House and his home in that heavily Democratic state. Delaware’s most famous — or infamous — Republican, meanwhile, is far-right Christian nationalist and QAnon supporter Lauren Witzke, who drew widespread condemnation in late February when she praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a symbol of Christian piety. But Witzke’s praise of Putin is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to her extremism and her ability to embarrass the state of Delaware.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During an appearance on the Christian Right program “Cross Talk,” the 34-year-old native of Delmar, Delaware — who suffered a landslide defeat when she ran against Sen. Chris Coons in Delaware’s 2020 U.S. Senate race — made it clear that she supports Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The QAnon Republican said, “Russia is a Christian nationalist nation…. I actually support Putin’s right to protect his people and always put his people first, but also, protect our Christian values. I identify more with Putin's Christian values than I do with Joe Biden.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Witzke went on to say, “Christian nationalist countries also are a threat to the global regime — like, the Luciferian regime that wants to mash everything together. But Putin takes care of his people. He looks out for his people.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Witzke’s comments were slammed by everyone from Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison to Rep. Eric Swalwell of California to Mother Jones’ David Corn, who pointed out that the Delaware GOP “fully supported” her.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, Delaware Republicans passionately rallied around Witzke when she received the GOP nomination in the state’s 2020 U.S. Senate race. Democrats had their share of disappointments in 2020, losing U.S. Senate races in Maine, Iowa and North Carolina. But Coons, running against Witzke, was reelected by 22%. Nominating someone as extreme as Witzke did not serve Delaware Republicans well.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Witzke gave Coons’ reelection campaign a wealth of material to use against her. She happily accepted the endorsement of White nationalist Nick Fuentes, praised the violent Proud Boys as examples of “patriotic masculinity,” called for a ten-year ban on all immigration to the United States, described Black Lives Matter as “violent terrorists,” proudly said she was a “Christian nationalist,” and called Coons a “Christian-hating baby killer.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Witzke is vehemently anti-gay and anti-trans, and she has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory — which claims that the United States’ federal government has been taken over by an international cabal of pedophiles, child sex traffickers, Satanists and cannibals and that Donald Trump was elected in 2016 to fight the cabal. QAnon also believes that R&B superstar Beyoncé isn’t really Black, but is only pretending to be Black and is really an Italian woman named Ann Marie Lastrassi who works for billionaire Democrat George Soros.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Delaware Republicans had options other than Witzke in 2020, when she ran against former U.S. Marine James DeMartino in the state’s GOP U.S. Senate primary. But Witzke slammed the conservative DeMartino as a RINO (Republican In Name Only). Although the Delaware GOP endorsed DeMartino during the primary, Delaware Republicans gave Witzke the nomination and got behind her in the general election — which wasn’t enough to save her from losing badly to Coons.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2022, Witzke continues to make the Delaware Republican Party look bad every chance she gets — and when she praised Putin during its invasion of Ukraine, Witzke did exactly that.</font></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">=</font></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">2 22 an nath </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During my time as a boy attending an evangelical church and then later, when I attended an evangelical seminary, it was hard not to notice an underlying misogyny that seemed consistently present. As a man, I would be the head of the household. I was like Christ to my future wife. In fact, I once heard a sermon by prominent evangelical minister Tony Evans where he declared that wives must refer to their husbands as "Lord." In my church youth groups, we were separated by sex and the boys had bizarre discussions on the type of men we should become. There was a strong emphasis on being what they considered to be manly and tough, whereas young girls, of course, were encouraged to be nurturing, submissive and, most important, sexually pure.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When contemporary evangelical leaders push a message around Christian nationalism, I can promise you it always refers back to a time when the "traditional" roles of American households held fast. Making America "great again" is truly about bringing back a time when women were subject to their husbands' wills and whims, and the husbands were lords of the house.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Someone recently wrote to me, in response to one of my previous articles, wondering why so many evangelicals chose Donald Trump, a vulgar misogynist who shows no understanding of any element of the Christian faith, over other candidates who were much closer to the evangelical movement. The difficult answer is that most evangelical men long for the days when misogyny was cool, when women were under the thumb of their husbands and sexual harassment was almost universally accepted. Trump exemplified that approach — and a great many evangelicals loved him for it. Trump remains the favorite of the evangelicals not because any commitment to Christ or the Christian way of life — since he has none — but because of the widespread desire among evangelicals to take back control over their lives, and their wives. One of the major ways this has been expressed lately is through the ideology known as Christian nationalism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As I understand it, Christian nationalism is an idea now widely accepted within the evangelical church that the U.S. is a Christian nation founded upon Christian principles — no matter what it may say in the Constitution. This commitment to the Christian faith, as a nation, is the reason God blessed the U.S. as the greatest nation that ever existed. God will only continue to bless this nation, however, as long as it remains a Christian nation. As America becomes more progressive and increasingly secular in terms of politics, culture and faith, then in this view God will remove his blessing and protection and great evils will befall our nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This remarkable theory has no connection to any of the teachings of Jesus Christ or his followers, and is completely irrelevant to the Christian faith. I will certainly admit that I have a heart for American idealism. I have officiated at numerous Veterans Day and Memorial Day services, and I have felt the love of country enormously, on those days and all the days in between. None of that, however, has anything to do with Christianity. God does not play favorites when it comes to nations, people or cultures. That entire idea is morally and theologically absurd.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In truth, Christian nationalism is based not in the Bible or the teachings of Jesus Christ, but on the idea of the traditional American family. As roles for women have changed, as divorce becomes more common, as same-sex marriage gains a firmer footing, and now with the movement for transgender rights and visibility becoming more public, the panic of the Christian nationalists becomes ever more desperate. This is where all that rage among evangelicals is coming from. Understand, most people are motivated politically based on how they perceive policy decisions affecting their day-to-day life. Nothing affects our lives more than what is happening to our families. When things fall apart at home, it can feel helpful — even if it's not healthy — to blame someone or something besides ourselves. For myself, I know that all my personal failures are mine alone. I can't blame MTV or Eminem or the LGBTQI population, the evangelical church, Trump, Biden, Obama, my mom, my dad or anyone else. The problem is in the mirror, as it is for everyone. Any effort to pass that blame along to others is quite human, and quite wrong.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My final point on Christian nationalism is around all the macho tough-guy stuff that seems to be on the lips of every right-wing leader. Being "tough" seems to be the only thing conservative commentators and evangelical leaders care about. Trump is supposedly the epitome of that and his little posse loves him for it. I won't pretend to understand it. After I graduated middle school, being tough just didn't seem that important. But for people like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jerry Falwell Jr. (before his fall) and of course Trump himself, it's important to keep pretending that they are a bunch of tough guys, even though they also claim to stand with Jesus Christ, a humble, meek and homeless teacher.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I'm no tough guy but I am happy to offer a challenge to any of these fake tough guys. Debate me anywhere, anytime. I am truly blue-collar, a member of the American working class. I am a Bible-believing minister and a flaming liberal. I believe that the Christian nationalist message comes from the devil himself. I am trying to save the name of the Christian faith and to stand up for American idealism. I oppose every part of the hypocritical, fake-populist agenda of the Christian nationalists and their enablers. I double-dog dare any of them, here and now, to stand up and take me on in public debate. Odds are they never will.</font></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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 2 22 bill blum</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...The political scientist Robert Paxton, one of the world’s leading authorities on fascism, has identified five stages of fascism:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1. The initial creation of movements;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2. The rooting of the movements in a political system;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3. The acquisition of power;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4. The exercise of power; and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5. Radicalization or entropy, the stage at which movements reach their most extreme heights, or exhaust themselves and fizzle.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We are well beyond the first two phases. We flirted with the third and fourth during Trump’s first term, but our democratic institutions—weak and tattered as they are—were able to resist.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The election of Joe Biden offered only a temporary reprieve. Now, with Biden’s coalition fraying, the GOP and Trump have another opportunity to impose their will and vision, and deal a death blow to what remains of our diminished democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As I have written before, fascism is a loaded term, but if used correctly, it aptly applies to Trumpism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his seminal study, “The Anatomy of Fascism” (Harvard University Press, 2004), Paxton offers an instructive definition:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump and Trumpism similarly embody the 14 common factors of fascism identified by the great Italian writer Umberto Eco in his 1995 essay, Ur Fascism:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A cult of traditionalism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A rejection of modernism (cultural, rather than technological).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A cult of action for its own sake and a distrust of intellectualism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A framing of disagreement or opposition as treasonous.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A fear of difference. … Fascism is racist by definition.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An appeal to a frustrated middle class—either due to economic or political pressures from both above and below.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An obsession with the plots and machinations of the movement’s identified enemies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A requirement that said enemies be simultaneously seen as omnipotent and weak, conniving and cowardly.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A rejection of pacifism. Life is permanent warfare.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Contempt for weakness.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A cult of heroism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hypermasculinity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A selective populism, relying on chauvinist definitions of “the people” that it claims to speak for.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A heavy usage of Newspeak—impoverished vocabulary, elementary syntax and a resistance to complex and critical reasoning.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the current situation demonstrates, fascism is by no means a foreign phenomenon restricted to South American banana republics or failed European states. As University of London professor Sarah Churchwell explained in a June 22, 2020 essay published in the New York Review of Books, fascism has deep roots in the United States, spanning the decades from the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s to the rise of the German-American Bund in the 1930s, the ascendance of Depression-era demagogues like Huey Long, and the election of Trump in 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Churchwell’s article is aptly titled, “American Fascism: It Has Happened Here.” In it, she offers another working definition of fascism, noting that while fascist movements differ from nation to nation, they are united by “conspicuous features [that] are recognizably shared.” These include:</font></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">
</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1 22</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meat and masculinity: Why some men just can’t stomach plant-based food</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">selective focus photography of man holding eaten burger</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Photo by Oliver Sjöström on Unsplash</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Conversation January 27, 2022</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meat alternatives are suddenly everywhere, from burger joints to supermarket shelves to restaurant-grade food.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One problem? For men, in particular, there is often a visceral attachment to slaughter-derived meat. This could pose a stumbling block for an industry worth an estimated $A9.4 billion globally in 2020 and seeing significant growth, with grocery sales in Australia up by 46% in 2020.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our new research is based on interviews with 36 men who recently went to vegan restaurants in Sydney and tried a plant-based burger. We found none of these men, who usually eat animal meat four to five times a week or more, were likely to include plant-based alternatives in their diets permanently.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But why? That’s the interesting part. Many of our interviewees made a strong link between animal meat and their own masculinity. “I don’t want to end up with my friends laughing at me over a plant-based burger,” one said. Another told us plant-based burgers were “ruining [his] reputation as a man”. A third said he felt guilty choosing plant-based burgers: “I was feeling I was sacrificing my manhood, my masculinity. It’s even worse when you are kind of forced to do it as everyone around is doing it. There is no other option.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why do some men react so strongly to meat alternatives?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We interviewed men aged 18-40, as these are the generations most likely to embrace flexitarianism (meat-reduction) and include more plant-based foods. That’s why it was surprising to see the strength of their negativity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We believe two psychological responses are at work:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The men we interviewed saw the idea of a vegan-only menu as a blow to their freedom to choose, regardless of whether they enjoyed the burger. They were determined to restore their freedom. This is in line with the idea of psychological reactance, which suggests people will react very strongly to perceived loss of freedoms</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">on the other hand, the men we interviewed wanted to impress or please their girlfriends or partners who had taken them to the restaurant. This is linked to impression management theory, which describes how we strive to be in control of how others see us. Earlier research has shown men, in particular, can buy into eating larger and unhealthy meals as part of impression management. Our interviewees had to juggle how their partner saw them as well as how their friends and other men would see their choices.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Plant-based burgers are hitting the mainstream – but are they meaty enough for some men?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What happens when these two theories collide? You get themes emerging like these:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">focusing on the novelty of a vegan restaurant. One 18 year old told us: “You don’t need to be a vegan to go and try a veggie burger. I am not a vegan, but everyone is talking about [these burgers]. I am not even kidding, they are so popular.” A 29 year old said: “We used to go out and eat steaks and burgers in pubs and steakhouses […] now we are mingling with the veggie burger eaters. Strange world!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">protecting masculinity through food choice. A 22 year old told us: “Friends nowadays can trace you everywhere. I don’t want to end up with my friends laughing at me over a plant-based burger,” while a 19 year old said he had to “guard what [my girlfriend] is saying in front of my male friends. I think she is smart enough and understands the implications of this. We do have a vegan friend, and everybody is constantly fooling him and it’s very annoying to think that I can get in his place with my vegetarian burger”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">scepticism over the taste of the plant-based burgers. One 32 year old told us it was “tasteless for me […] not even close to real meat. You could have it once but that’s it”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">concerns over the health of plant-based burgers. A 21 year old told us plant-based burgers were not better for health compared to meat. “They are ultra-processed imitations,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why does this matter?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The emergence of this new industry is a clear response to urgent calls to change our current food systems due to the heavy environmental footprint of animals bred for meat, destruction of pristine habitat to create more fields, as well as animal welfare concerns. Our reliance on meat also affects our health, both on an individual and population level. New alternatives to animal-sourced meat represent the start of the transition to more sustainable food choices.</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clearing land for meat animals is a major source of biodiversity and wilderness loss.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unfortunately, plant-based alternatives can only help us tackle our overlapping environmental crises of climate change, extinctions, wilderness loss and pollution if people actually want to eat them in preference to animal muscle. This may mean improving the ingredients used in some alternative products and reducing the processing to boost how healthy they are.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Forcing people to abandon animal meat is a non-starter, given how strongly we react to perceived loss of freedoms. That means we need to go after the psychological reasons some men, in particular, have such a strong attachment to animal meat.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How can we do that? Social marketing would be a good start, given the successes of previous common-good campaigns around making tobacco use less popular, uptake of sunscreen and COVID vaccinations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our study shows any marketing messages to encourage men to take up plant-based alternatives will need to be tailored very carefully. These could include:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">describing plant-based foods as a deliberate choice to make to improve nutrition, reduce health risks and improve the environment. This approach would be likely to suppress the reactance backlash</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">presenting new forms of male identity focused on food to describe a masculinity centred around caring for themselves and for wilderness to create a positive impression management.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even with reluctant or avoidant eaters, the plant-based sector is still expected to grow strongly, adding $3 billion to the Australian economy by 2030.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just imagine if we could bring everyone along – even self-described carnivores.The Conversation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dora Marinova, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University; Christopher Bryant, Research associate, University of Bath, and Diana Bogueva, Team Manager/ Adjunct Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Sydney</font></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">This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.</font></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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha alt right event [scientology? back to parents basements"] was about manifesting indiv grievance // 1/6?  reality TV taken to next level/step?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1 22 cdv</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...Consider the fascinating and, at times, undeniably entertaining characters of TrumpWorld. Donald Trump himself is a reality TV star and pro wrestling "heel" who somehow became president. He has surrounded himself with other characters straight from central casting, including corrupt consigliere Roger Stone and "America's mayor" Rudy Giuliani, now a grossly incompetent go-between and a legal adviser of dubious skill and wisdom.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's easy to laugh, but we cannot overlook those smart and very dangerous foes of democracy such as Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Stephen Miller, John Eastman, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and numerous others. There are also the lesser-known true believers and ideologues who lurk in the shadows of think tanks, interest groups, academia, business and finance, the news media, right-wing evangelical churches, paramilitaries and "tactical culture," military and veterans groups, and elsewhere in the private sector and the world of public policy and consulting.</font></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">an 12 21</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush was running for president in 2000, he often described himself as a “compassionate conservative” — which was Bush’s way of trying to win over swing voters, moderates and suburban soccer moms and convince them to vote for him instead of then-Vice President Al Gore. But the MAGA movement has angrily rejected such messaging, opting instead to project a fake machismo. Never Trump conservative David French discusses that “toughness” in an article published by The Atlantic this week, explaining why he finds it so troubling.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">French opens his article by citing attorney Josh Hammer as an example of someone who is promoting “toughness” and a “less libertarian American right.” At the recent National Conservatism conference, French notes, Hammer railed against “fusionism” as “inherently effete, limp” as well as “unmasculine.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the right, the term “fusionism” refers to President Ronald Reagan’s fragile coalition of the early 1980s, when a variety of right-wingers — including libertarians, fiscal conservatives, evangelical Christian fundamentalist social conservatives and neocons — rallied around Reagan. There was plenty of infighting within that coalition; although Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona and the Moral Majority’s Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr. were both Reagan supporters, they couldn’t stand one another. Goldwater, in fact, believed that Falwell and others of his ilk were terrible for the GOP and terrible for the conservative movement. But Goldwater and Falwell were both glad to see Reagan in the White House.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Hillsdale College’s David Azerrad, the MAGA right views Trump as “manly” because he forcefully speaks his mind — which French finds peculiar.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ: The real history of US anti-abortion politics began in 1662 — and is bound to the legacy of slavery]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is a curious definition of manliness,” French writes. “Saying what you think or what others seem afraid to say isn’t inherently ‘manly.’ Speaking your mind isn’t even inherently virtuous, much less inherently masculine. Trump has said many false and harmful things, and the fact that other people might whisper them does not mean that they should be shouted from the presidential bully pulpit.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The MAGA cult of “toughness,” according to French, manifests itself in the form of “the increased prevalence of open-carried AR-15s at public protests, the increased number of unlawful threats hurled at political opponents, and outbreaks of actual political violence, including the large-scale violence of January 6.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">French writes, “The author and academic Freddie deBoer has compiled a depressing list of articles, essays and interviews in prominent publications excusing and justifying violent civil unrest. The right-wing cult of toughness, in its distinctly Trumpist version, is no exception to this trend. When it is drained of limiting principles and tied to a man who would rather seek to upend our nation’s constitutional order than relinquish power, then the threat to the republic is plain. That threat will remain until the supposedly weak classical liberals on the left and the right do what they’ve always done at their best: rally in defense of liberty, the rule of law, and the American order itself.”</font></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">=</font></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">kyle kinda blubbery on verdict?</font></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">an 11 21</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">on Friday, November 19, teenage vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted on charges of homicide and attempted homicide by a jury in Kenosha, Wisconsin — where, in August 2020, he shot three protesters (two of them fatally) during a racial justice demonstration. Countless right-wing media pundits, along with MAGA politicians like Rep. Matt Gaetz and Rep. Madison Cawthorn, have been celebrating the verdict. But Never Trump conservative Tim Miller, in a humorous but biting video posted by The Bulwark, lays out some reasons why he finds this reaction so problematic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The right wants to make Rittenhouse a hero, a freedom fighter," Miller explains. "Ann Coulter says she wants Rittenhouse for president. He's been called a (patriot) and also a (good Samaritan)…. In their delusion, he's being wrongly persecuted by the woke state…. In this narrative, Kyle is a righteous vigilante battling against the real enemy, Antifa, and the BLM looters who are roaming free."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Miller goes on to show clips of "Hillbilly Elegy" author J.D. Vance (who is running for the U.S. Senate seat in Ohio) and Fox News' Greg Gutfeld praising Rittenhouse and mocks both of them as "soy boys." On the right, "soy boy" is a major insult. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his colleagues at Infowars have long been claiming that soy-based food products are a leftist "deep state" plot designed to reduce testosterone and make American men more feminine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Miller says of Vance and Gutfeld, "Let's just take a moment to entertain this as a serious position rather than a performative tough-guy act. Is this really the society that these soft-handed soy boys want? One where a 17-year-old can self-deputize, marching through town with his gun drawn, making citizen's arrests if he doesn't feel like the government is doing a good enough job? That's a path to chaos, not justice."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Never Trumper continues, "Now, we know the Fox hosts and Ivy League Republican politicians don't want this type of society because: (1) you can't even imagine these rich assholes sending their own teenagers into a riot armed with a weapon — and (2) there's no way we would've seen this same hero narrative on Fox if the righteous teen had been Black and he'd self-deputized to the Mall on January 6, killing two insurrectionists."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But as vehemently as Miller slams the MAGA far right in his video, he also criticizes some liberals and progressives for their comments on Rittenhouse — including Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, who described him as a "White supremacist domestic terrorist." Miller strongly disagrees that Rittenhouse fits the definition of a terrorist, but rather, considers him a "stupid kid in a shit situation."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Miller argues, "There's no evidence this kid is a White supremacist…[hang w proud boys hand gest oK?]. When it comes to Rittenhouse, here's the bottom line: He's not a martyr. Or a hero. Or an evil enemy. He's an 18-year-old with underdeveloped frontal lobes who got in way over his head."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watch the video below:</font></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">an 11 21</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">on Friday, November 19, teenage vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted on charges of homicide and attempted homicide by a jury in Kenosha, Wisconsin — where, in August 2020, he shot three protesters (two of them fatally) during a racial justice demonstration. Countless right-wing media pundits, along with MAGA politicians like Rep. Matt Gaetz and Rep. Madison Cawthorn, have been celebrating the verdict. But Never Trump conservative Tim Miller, in a humorous but biting video posted by The Bulwark, lays out some reasons why he finds this reaction so problematic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The right wants to make Rittenhouse a hero, a freedom fighter," Miller explains. "Ann Coulter says she wants Rittenhouse for president. He's been called a (patriot) and also a (good Samaritan)…. In their delusion, he's being wrongly persecuted by the woke state…. In this narrative, Kyle is a righteous vigilante battling against the real enemy, Antifa, and the BLM looters who are roaming free."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Miller goes on to show clips of "Hillbilly Elegy" author J.D. Vance (who is running for the U.S. Senate seat in Ohio) and Fox News' Greg Gutfeld praising Rittenhouse and mocks both of them as "soy boys." On the right, "soy boy" is a major insult. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his colleagues at Infowars have long been claiming that soy-based food products are a leftist "deep state" plot designed to reduce testosterone and make American men more feminine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Miller says of Vance and Gutfeld, "Let's just take a moment to entertain this as a serious position rather than a performative tough-guy act. Is this really the society that these soft-handed soy boys want? One where a 17-year-old can self-deputize, marching through town with his gun drawn, making citizen's arrests if he doesn't feel like the government is doing a good enough job? That's a path to chaos, not justice."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Never Trumper continues, "Now, we know the Fox hosts and Ivy League Republican politicians don't want this type of society because: (1) you can't even imagine these rich assholes sending their own teenagers into a riot armed with a weapon — and (2) there's no way we would've seen this same hero narrative on Fox if the righteous teen had been Black and he'd self-deputized to the Mall on January 6, killing two insurrectionists."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But as vehemently as Miller slams the MAGA far right in his video, he also criticizes some liberals and progressives for their comments on Rittenhouse — including Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, who described him as a "White supremacist domestic terrorist." Miller strongly disagrees that Rittenhouse fits the definition of a terrorist, but rather, considers him a "stupid kid in a shit situation."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Miller argues, "There's no evidence this kid is a White supremacist…[hang w proud boys hand gest oK?]. When it comes to Rittenhouse, here's the bottom line: He's not a martyr. Or a hero. Or an evil enemy. He's an 18-year-old with underdeveloped frontal lobes who got in way over his head."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watch the video below:</font></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"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">guns of course muy macho, kyle said he picked the AR15 b/c it looked cool = manly, warrior, lethal = power</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">pudgey white suburban so gets invite/summons to  man up and go help the good guy cops who are besiged by black thugs [dylann r radicalized by blk on wht crime]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha anti commie, fag and semite:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omfg parasite = cockroaches = exterminate  vermin carry disease dirty</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/rittenhouse-2655770737/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx pix req</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rittenhouse verdict championed on right-wing social media as green light for killing protesters</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Charlottesville "Unite the Right" Rally. Far-right Oath Keepers patrol Emancipation Park. Credit: Anthony Crider] </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Neiwert and Daily Kos November 21, 2021</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">   </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The exultation on right-wing social media following Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal has been sickeningly predictable: Mainstream conservatives loudly valorize Rittenhouse as a "hero," while more extremist voices, applying the same logic, demand that more Americans follow his footsteps—urging the likeminded to take to the street now to begin using guns to "be like Kyle." They have even appropriated his name for their future plans, voiced in numerous celebratory threads: Any leftist protester shot by a right-wing "patriot" henceforth will have been "Rittenhoused."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As we forecasted, the acquittal is now a beacon-like green light granting permission to violent right-wing extremists to openly wage the kind of "civil war" against "the left"—which ranges from liberal Democrats like Joe Biden to the "antifa" bogeyman they have concocted—that they have been fantasizing about for the past decade. In the words of Charlie Kirk's interlocutor, it's the signal that now they "get to use the guns."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The bloodlust has been palpable. Online trolls celebrated that "it's Open Season on pedo-commies" and boasted that the verdict means "there's nothing you can do about it." A neo-Nazi channel on Twitter urged readers to "let this win fuel your rage." A fan of pseudo-journalist Andy Ngo commented in a retweet: "Every one of these anarchist criminal thugs should be shot in the street like the worthless dogs they are."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Far-right maven Ann Coulter posted a meme showing a gantlet of [marvel nazi nerd wet dr]  comic-book superheroes bowing to Rittenhouse. On Facebook, Ben Shapiro framed any future violence as being left-wing: "The Left accepting the verdict in a peaceable manner remains the sizable elephant in the room."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The white-nationalist site VDare also extolled Rittenhouse's heroism:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This much is true: Kyle Rittenhouse is the hero we've been waiting for throughout the turbulent summer of 2020, where a Black Lives Matter/Antifa/Bolshevik revolution has our country on the brink of total chaos.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Coulter-RittenhouseMeme.jpeg]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire blamed the media for there even having been a trial:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The verdict is right and just but Kyle Rittenhouse never should have been on trial at all. Now the media will go to work, like the demons they are, to ensure that Kenosha burns because they did not get their blood sacrifice.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Walsh then added:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I hope Rittenhouse bankrupts all of you dirtbags in media who smeared him as a white supremacist. [sue for libel based on verdict? // charlottesville ~ KKK case finished ] I hope he ruins your life. I want you to suffer. It's what you deserve. It's justice.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Idaho legislator Tammy Nichols, a Republican, posted a meme featuring the Gadsden-flag "Don't Tread On Me" design, but with a graphic of Rittenhouse firing from a seated position as he did in Kenosha.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Gun Owners of America (GOA)—a gun-rights extremist group headed by far-right militia figure Larry Pratt—joined in the celebration by announcing it was giving Rittenhouse a new gun.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alert: GOA will be awarding Kyle Rittenhouse with an AR-15 for his defense of gun rights in America. Join us in saying THANK YOU to Kyle Rittenhouse for being a warrior for gun rights and self defense rights across the country!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other "Patriot" Movement extremists saw the verdict as vindication for vigilantism and militia organizing. The "Washougal Moms," a militia-friendly group from eastern Washington state, opined:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today the jury and legal system has reaffirmed our rights as citizens. The second amendment in all aspects, to form a well regulated militia, the right to bear arms in self defense, and against enemies both foreign and domestic!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kurt Schlichter, the right-wing troll with over 380,000 followers, taunted MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan, who had expressed concern about the double racial standard that the verdict reflects, on Twitter.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Your pain delights me. Kyle Rittenhouse killed two leftist catspaws and bisected the bicep of another and there's nothing you can do about it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A white-nationalist Twitter account called "Based Teutonic" celebrated the verdict by posting a fantasy that Rittenhouse would now embark on an action-hero-like mission—with the help of Judge Bruce Schroeder, who oversaw the trial in markedly biased fashion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">About to exit court room</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Judge yells from behind:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rittenhouse turns around</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You forgot this</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tosses him his AR15</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Credits roll, Eye of the Tiger plays</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Based Teutonic" wasn't alone in celebrating Schroeder's role in the verdict. On Telegram, a commenter in a Proud Boys channel observed:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kyle's case shows how important is to have your guys in power on a local level. One vaguely conservative boomer judge made all of the difference in a monumental trial.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other Proud Boys were more focused on their long-anticipated civil war. "There's still a chance for this country," wrote one. Another wrote: "The left wont stop until their bodies get stacked up like cord wood."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights monitored a number of far-right chat forums (particularly Telegram) following the verdict, and found an outpouring of extremist bile, much of it anticipating the ability to inflict lethal violence on "leftists," as well as Black "parasites" and, of course, Jewish people. A user called The Western Chauvinist commented: "The parasites are planning multiple 'protests' across the United States."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One user calling himself "Proud Boy To Fascist Pipeline" replied to one of these comments mocking Black leaders protesting the verdict as "parasites": "Your 17 year olds are already armed and terrorizing our neighborhoods, n----er."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fittingly, Charlie Kirk fans—following the example of his Idaho audience member—were focused on the violence: "Arm up and tell them fcking bring it!" one replied to predictions of leftist protests after the verdict. "Shoot these phukers," commented another.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nick Fuentes' "Groypers" were also unbridled in their anticipation of gunning down their opponents. "The most American thing you can do is Killing Commies," opined one on the white-nationalist forum Gab.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another Gab user exulted with a meme showing Joaquin Phoenix as The Joker, dancing: "When you find out it's officially Open Season on pedo-commies." Mocking "wannabe street thugs upset with the verdict," another Gab user replied, "you're gonna get Rittenhouse'd. Bitch."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gab-OpenSeason.png</font></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">"Getting Rittenhoused" became a popular way of threatening leftists. After Ngo posted a handful of tweets from leftists angry about the verdict, hundreds of his fans piled on, making threats of violence against them. "Someone will Rittenhouse them too," one responded. Another replied: "I came here to say that!"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Antisemitism also was a common theme. Right-wing troll Keith Woods, who has 23,500 followers on Twitter, declared after the verdict: "Huge L for the Jews." His followers piled on; one responded with a GIF meme of Gollum and the text, "Curse you goyim." Another replied, "hopefully they take an L in Charlottsville trial too. WHITE BOY WINTER!"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">White nationalist Eric Striker was more explicitly antisemitic, as well as strategic, in his commentary:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Beating the Jews to the narrative as incidents unfold is more important than anything that happens in court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Once you frame a story with the facts (and the facts have to be 100% accurate) and disseminate it with an effective propaganda network, Jews will struggle to challenge it once it's cemented.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Notorious white nationalist and antisemite Mike "Enoch" Peinovich put out a statement through his National Justice Party: "This victory for Kyle Rittenhouse over the cosmopolitan elite forces that plague the nation isn't only a victory for the young man himself, it's a victory for justice and for all White people who take a stand," Peinovich said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Telegram, a white nationalist commented: "The victory of Kyle Rittenhouse over the jewish forces that plague the nation isn't just a victory for the man himself, it's a victory for justice, and for the masses of disenfranchised White people which populate the globe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The neo-Nazi group White Lives Matter had this advice for its white-supremacist followers:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Don't let this one victory lull you back to sleep. That's what they want. They know small "victories" can placate the angry masses more than anything else. Instead let this win fuel your rage. Never forget the simple fact that this clear-cut self-defense should never have gone to trial in the first place. Muslim, Hispanic, and African invaders have raped millions of our women, WHITE women. Their time of terrorizing our People with 0 consequences is coming to an end. The Rittenhouse verdict is a single tick in the scoreboard on our side. Our enemy doesn't have a scoreboard big enough for their victories. Fight harder, stronger, fiercer, and with the same remorse they have shown us. None. Get going, White man.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This might be interpreted across the far right as a type of permission slip to do this kind of thing or to seek out altercations in this way, believing that there is a potential that they won't face serious consequences for it," Jared Holt of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council told NPR. "I worry that that might end up being interpreted by some people as a proof of concept of this idea that you can actually go out and seek a 'self-defense situation,' and you'll be cheered as a hero for it."</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://newrepublic.com/article/154879/misogyny-climate-deniers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></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">Martin Gelin/August 28, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Misogyny of Climate Deniers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why do right-wing men hate Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez so much? Researchers have some troubling answers to that question.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Teenage activist Greta Thunberg (Kirsty Wigglesworth/AFP/Getty Images)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate skeptic Bjørn Lomborg has built his global brand on keeping his cool. “Cool it,” his best-selling book told those worried about the warming planet. For some reason, however, he seems to have difficulty sticking to the blasé tone when it comes to a 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lomborg has repeatedly mocked and criticized Greta Thunberg, the prominent young activist who has been sailing across the Atlantic to attend the UN’s Youth Climate Summit and other meetings in the U.S. In June, he tweeted out a cartoon that implied Greta was only useful to climate activists because being young made her unassailable—in four years, it joked, she’d be replaced with someone younger still. Earlier in the year, he’d asked why the World Economic Forum was listening to her at all, and approvingly shared a Quillette article which called Thunberg a fanatic and “absolutist” and which argued adults had a duty to correct her childlike naiveté.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And Lomborg’s on the more civil end of Thunberg’s critics. In April, while tweeting that her policies were “unrealistic” and “costly,” he added that, “of course, she should be treated respectfully, just like all participants in the climate debate.” Several of his followers didn’t seem to care for the caveat, attacking Thunberg with comments about her age and mental health in replies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Thunberg approached America, she was followed by a tsunami of male rage. On her first day of sailing, a multi-millionaire Brexit activist tweeted that he wished a freak accident would destroy her boat. A conservative Australian columnist called her a “deeply disturbed messiah of the global warming movement,” while the British far-right activist David Vance attacked the “sheer petulance of this arrogant child.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the U.S., former Trump staffer Steve Milloy recently called Thunberg a “teenage puppet,” and claimed that “the world laughs at this Greta charade,” while a widely shared far-right meme showed Trump tipping The Statue of Liberty to crush her boat. We can expect a surge of similar attacks in the U.S. as she arrives in New York this week.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While these examples might feel like mere coincidence to some, the idea that white men would lead the attacks on Greta Thunberg is consistent with a growing body of research linking gender reactionaries to climate-denialism—some of the research coming from Thunberg’s own country. Researchers at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology, which recently launched the world’s first academic research center to study climate denialism, have for years been examining a link between climate deniers and the anti-feminist far-right.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2014, Jonas Anshelm and Martin Hultman of Chalmers published a paper analyzing the language of a focus group of climate skeptics. The common themes in the group, they said, were striking: “for climate skeptics … it was not the environment that was threatened, it was a certain kind of modern industrial society built and dominated by their form of masculinity.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The connection has to do with a sense of group identity under threat, Hultman told me—an identity they perceive to be under threat from all sides. Besieged, as they see it, both by developing gender equality—Hultman pointed specifically to the shock some men felt at the #MeToo movement—and now climate activism’s challenge to their way of life, male reactionaries motivated by right-wing nationalism, anti-feminism, and climate denialism increasingly overlap, the three reactions feeding off of one another.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate science, for skeptics, becomes feminized—or viewed as “oppositional to assumed entitlements of masculine primacy.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There is a package of values and behaviors connected to a form of masculinity that I call ‘industrial breadwinner masculinity.’ They see the world as separated between humans and nature. They believe humans are obliged to use nature and its resources to make products out of them. And they have a risk perception that nature will tolerate all types of waste. It’s a risk perception that doesn’t think of nature as vulnerable and as something that is possible to be destroyed. For them, economic growth is more important than the environment” Hultman told Deutsche Welle last year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The corollary to this is that climate science, for skeptics, becomes feminized—or viewed as “oppositional to assumed entitlements of masculine primacy,” Hultman and fellow researcher Paul Pulé wrote in another paper.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These findings align with similar ones in the United States, where there is a massive gender gap in views on climate change, and many men perceive climate activism as inherently feminine, according to research published in 2017. “In one experiment, participants of both sexes described an individual who brought a reusable canvas bag to the grocery store as more feminine than someone who used a plastic bag—regardless of whether the shopper was a male or female,” marketing professors Aaron R. Brough and James E.B. Wilkie explained at Scientific American. “In another experiment, participants perceived themselves to be more feminine after recalling a time when they did something good versus bad for the environment,” they write.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the past year, young women such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the U.S. and Thunberg in Europe have become the global faces of climate activism, often with tremendous political impact. In the United States, Ocasio-Cortez has helped transform what was once considered a bit of fringe rhetoric—the Green New Deal—into a topic of regular conversation. Across the Atlantic Ocean, in a recent poll, one out of three Germans said that Thunberg has changed their views on climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The rise of Thunberg and Ocasio-Cortez has generated a predictable backlash among conservative men. In the U.S., Ocasio-Cortez has become an obsession on right-wing media. Fox News mentioned her an average of 76 times a day during her first month in Congress. Now, Greta Thunberg is becoming a similar target for European nationalists. In Germany, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party seems to have coordinated their attacks on Thunberg with the right-wing European Institute for Climate and Energy think tank.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate change used to be a bipartisan concern, the first Bush senior presidency famously promising to tackle global warming. But as conservative male mockery of Thunberg and others shows, climate politics has quickly become the next big battle in the culture war—on a global scale.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As conservative parties become increasingly tied to nationalism, and misogynist rhetoric dominates the far-right, Hultman and his fellow researchers at Chalmers University worry that the ties between climate skeptics and misogyny will strengthen. What was once a practical problem, with general agreement on the facts, has become a matter of identity. And fear of change is powerful motivation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article has been updated with specifics on Lomborg’s writings on Thunberg, as well as the removal of a reference to an April 24 tweet by Lomborg. The tweet referred to the author of an article defending Thunberg—not to Thunberg herself, as this story originally stated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Martin Gelin @M_Gelin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Martin Gelin is a journalist based in New York.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/former-reagan-white-house-staffer-defends-pete-buttigieg-against-maga-republicans-and-the-vilest-form-of-masculinity/</font></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">https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/qanon/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Lost sheep': Conspiracy theory expert says QAnon believers are being swallowed by 'mass radicalization'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jacob Chansley, dubbed 'The QAnon Shaman'/Channel 4 News screenshot]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Chauncey DeVega and Salon November 03, 2021</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">   </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">America's mainstream news media has a short attention span [cits have /voters have of golden retriever], which has certainly played to the advantage of the long-running Republican-fascist assault on democracy (and on reality). Of late, the media has grown bored with QAnon, the antisemitic and racist conspiracy cult which claims to believes that a secret cabal of pedophile Democrats and other members of the "deep state" run the world — and gain superpowers from kidnapping and killing children and then ingesting their vital essence. In this demented worldview, only Donald Trump and other "patriots" can save America and the world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It appears that QAnon followers played a significant role in the attack on the Capitol and coup attempt on Jan. 6. No leaders of that coup plot have been apprehended or punished, and most of the foot soldiers have received relatively lenient punishment to this point. President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland appear reluctant to apply the full power of the law to punish Donald Trump, along with his allies, operatives and followers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">QAnon followers are also attempting to undermine American democracy and civil society by infiltrating such "vulnerable" sites as local school boards, library committees and other ground-level institutions of local and state government. Their purported goal may be to ban the teaching of "critical race theory" (which is not taught in public schools), but the real goal is larger: to enforce punishment of "unpatriotic" thoughtcrimes, and to mainstream right-wing conspiracy theories and other lies about American history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">QAnon followers are also seeking to become election officials, where they are planning to use the fervor around Trump's Big Lie and other conspiracy theories to rig election results, overthrow multiracial democracy and replace it with one-party Republican rule.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an article posted last June, the National Education Association explored the QAnon-fueled "radicalization" of school boards in communities all over America:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a small town in Washington State, the newly elected mayor calls QAnon, "a truth movement," and recently fired the town's skeptical city manager. In coastal San Luis Obispo, California, a school board trustee's Facebook posts include a QAnon video, misinformation about COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter, and promotion of the ex-gay, conversion movement. She won, says the town's mayor, who is calling for her resignation, because "people had no idea this was going on," and didn't have the "bandwidth to research the school board election," reports the local newspaper, the Tribune.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, in Florida, a newly elected county sheriff is now explaining why he posed for photos last year with a supporter in a "We are Q" t-shirt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Across the county, conspiracy theorists and proponents of fake news are winning local elections. And their new positions give them a powerful voice in everything from local law enforcement to libraries, trash pickup to textbook purchases.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">QAnon followers are also gaining influence and power within white Christian evangelical churches and other faith communities. This is integral to the worsening radicalization of white Christianity and the threat of a right-wing "holy war" against Democrats, liberals, progressives, Black and brown people and anyone else who believes in the separation of church and state, or who holds values and beliefs deemed "un-American" or "anti-Christian."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Public opinion polls and other research show that a large percentage of Republicans and Trump followers say they believe in at least portions of the outlandish QAnon fantasy and — not coincidentally — are also willing to support right-wing political violence to protect their "traditional way of life" and "save the country." This includes removing President Joe Biden from office by violent means if deemed necessary.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matthew Rozsa of Salon summarized these findings this week:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New public opinion research from the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute, part of its 12th annual American Values Survey, has returned alarming findings.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Close to one-third of Republicans in the survey, or 30%, agreed with the statement that "true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country." That was more than the combined total of Democrats and independents who say the same thing (at 11% and 17%, respectively).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PRRI CEO and founder Robert Jones said the large proportion of Republicans who appear ready to endorse political violence is "a direct result of former President Trump calling into question the election." Jones noted that according to the same survey, more than two-thirds of Republicans (68%) claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, as opposed to only 26% of independents and 6% of Democrats.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The study also found that 39% of those who believed that Trump had won the 2020 election endorsed potential violence, compared to only 10% of those who rejected election misinformation. There were also signs of a split based on media consumption, with 40% of Republicans who trust far-right news sources agreeing that violence could be necessary, compared to 32% of those who trust Fox News and 22% among those who trust mainstream outlets. In addition, respondents who said violence may be necessary are more likely to report feeling like strangers in their country, to say American culture has mostly worsened since the 1950s and to believe that God has granted America a special role in human history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sophia Moskalenko is a social psychologist and expert on conspiracy theories, radicalization and extremism. She is currently a research fellow at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (NC-START) and is the author of several books, including "Friction: How Radicalization Happens to Them and Us" and "The Marvel of Martyrdom: The Power of Self-Sacrifice in the Selfish World." Her new book, with co-author Mia Bloom, is "Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In this conversation Moskalenko discusses the dangers QAnon poses to American democracy and national security. She explains that QAnon is a community where overwhelmingly white and often socially alienated followers find fellowship and meaning as they are radicalized into extremism and other potentially dangerous antisocial behavior. In her view, QAnon functions as a space that nurtures and satisfies white fantasies of right-wing masculinity, femininity, violence and heroism about "protecting" children and reasserting "traditional values".</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Toward the end of this conversation, Moskalenko explains what she would tell Joe Biden and other senior members of the administration about the threats posed by right-wing terrorism, as well as about the ways hostile foreign powers are using disinformation and other forms of propaganda to weaken American democracy and society.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You are an expert on terrorism and other forms of political extremism. You are also an expert on propaganda and disinformation. How are you feeling right now, given America's democracy crisis?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I've been feeling a little bit like Cassandra, the woman in Troy who was yelling as loud as he could about the city falling to ruin, and everybody was laughing at her. Then of course her warnings came true. It doesn't feel good. There was so much attention being paid to Islamic terrorism after 9/11. Unfortunately, there was not enough attention being paid to the trends right here in the United States domestically. This was all very alarming for somebody such as me who is an expert on terrorism and radicalization. These trends pointed to how right-wing groups were attracting more people and carrying out more and more lethal attacks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There were people in positions of power and influence here in the United States who were beginning to pander increasingly to these groups. And of course, Trump's presidency was a type of pinnacle for that behavior. Those appeals to right-wing extremist groups are now crystallized in congressional representatives who are outspoken supporters of QAnon conspiracy theories.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There was also Trump's line after the riots in Charlottesville about "good people on both sides," which implies that maybe Nazis aren't so bad. This problem has been developing for a long time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When you looked at the events of Jan. 6, what did you see? What jumped out at you?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I'm a psychologist, so I focused on the emotions that I observed in the faces, the screams and the actions of the Trump followers who were there that day at the Capitol.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was just striking to me how angry and violent and ready to inflict serious damage a lot of those people were. On Jan. 6, I saw a huge crowd of people who look just like my neighbors but who were acting in a very threatening and menacing way. It was disturbing. I also, of course, saw many QAnon symbols and antisemitic symbols and other references to hate groups.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I was also struck by the composition of the people at the Capitol on Jan. 6. They were very diverse in terms of age and gender. From the Arab Spring to images from the Ukrainian revolution or Georgian revolution, we mostly see men carrying out these mass radical actions. But on Jan. 6 at the Capitol, we saw a lot of women. There were many young people and also people in their 60s and 70s. That is very unusual, in many ways, as far as radical movements go.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There were various right-wing extremist groups and other forces involved in the events of Jan. 6. What role did QAnon conspiracy believers play?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We know that between 10% and 20% of people present at the Jan. 6 insurrection were members of right-wing militia groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and Three Percenters. A sizable proportion of those groups also consisted of active-duty military or veterans. Those militia groups also include active or retired police.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As for QAnon members, after Jan. 6 when the prophecy about Trump's return was unfulfilled, a number of QAnon followers became disenchanted. They went back online looking for answers, like they did before they found QAnon. Now they are looking for something else.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There was a concerted effort by the right-wing extremist groups to bring them in, because they were like lost sheep. The way these groups and individuals talk about the QAnon types is very dismissive. They call them idiots. They call the QAnon prophecy nonsense. But they felt this was an opportunity to recruit a bunch of disenchanted QAnoners into their ranks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We know that both QAnon and the right-wingers I am discussing here are very antisemitic and racist. Whatever they may say about it, we know from the data we have collected from their own materials that they express clearly antisemitic and racist attitudes. In that aspect there is an overlap, at least psychologically, between QAnon and these right-wing extremists.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I am Q." We see that language everywhere among the QAnon believers. What is the meaning?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Q" is a mysterious person, or likely several people. This person or persons has "Q-level" government clearance, which indicates they are supposedly quite high in America's intelligence hierarchy. So while a given person may claim to be "Q," another way of thinking about the meaning of "Q" is that it is an expression of a larger identity. We are in the era of identity politics. Wearing some clothing that announces that one believes in QAnon is a way of projecting that membership and identity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wearing that symbol is also a way to connect to other QAnon followers. Because again, especially at these mass rallies or events, people come there for many different reasons, including a shared emotional experience, whether it's rage or hope or even fear. That is the attraction of being together with all these other people who are experiencing the same emotions – even if they are negative emotions. It's a way of establishing your tribe. In a rapidly changing world where we often do not know who our neighbors are, it can be very isolating and very unsettling to not have a tribe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Carrying something like a big letter "Q" on your chest or over your head is likely an attempt to feel connected with other people who believe similar things.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One key aspect of QAnon is how it is a space for white male fantasies of power, home and family, and about using violence to "protect" children, women, faith and community. QAnon is also a space for fantasies about a particular type of white womanhood and femininity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Much of QAnon behavior and beliefs are rooted in entertainment. In fact, they borrowed many of their tropes from traditional folklore, like vampires and witches, and also from Hollywood movies. Experimental research has shown that people are compelled to conspiracy theories because they are a lot better at eliciting strong emotions. Some people seek out conspiracy theories because they offer a chance to feel fear, like a horror movie, or anger, such as in a revenge movie.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the same time, QAnon fills a void that was created when single-earner households where the dad goes to work and the mom stays home in her white little apron were increasingly not viable for most Americans. Such an idea, that a lot of white middle-class men and women grew up with, is no longer available to them. What is left behind are feelings of disillusionment, anger, grievance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, many of these grievances are then redirected by these QAnon or right-wing narratives more broadly towards immigrants who are supposedly taking the good jobs or taking money out of the economy that would have been enough to make the American dream possible for "real" Americans. Channeling that anger into a hatred toward minorities or immigrants is one way to make sense of their new reality.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">QAnon is also a fantasy of action and about the ability of individuals to have agency in their own lives — albeit in delusional, dangerous and unhealthy ways. For example, this deranged belief that children are being held hostage by evil forces who drink their blood is likely to encourage people to get their weapons and go save them. How do these QAnon fantasies play out on the individual level?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">QAnon really grew in power and popularity when the George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter protests were also becoming more prominent. For a lot of women, it was an uncomfortable political conversation that they did not feel ready to have. This idea about saving children then became a safe political alternative for white suburban women to discuss. In their minds, who wouldn't want to save the children?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These QAnon "save the children" ads often portray white children who are being held roughly or muzzled by dark hands. It's a man of color holding this child. This is in contrast to the real Save the Children charity's posters, which overwhelmingly depict children from African and Asian countries who are smiling and laughing in the pictures. By comparison, the QAnon pictures show horrified, abused and generally unkempt kids who elicit sympathy and distress by their appearance alone.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These QAnon "save the children" ads are just a kind of placeholder, I believe, to project their racial discomfort and political beliefs with people who feel the same way — and to do without really calling things by their actual name.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How do you assess the Republican Party and the larger right-wing movement's use of stochastic terrorism? Are we at a tipping point where that stochastic terrorism could become direct encouragements to violence against "the enemy"?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I believe that we are past the tipping point. Hate speech has been increasing for a number of years. I published a book in 2018 where I traced trends for hate speech online, including on Facebook and Twitter. There was a very sizable increase since before the 2016 election, with hate speech becoming more and more prevalent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, the rise of Nazism involved the use of dehumanizing language and other propaganda comparing Jewish people and others to vermin and cockroaches. Jews were depicted as being less than human, which makes it easier to call on people to exterminate them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The language used by the Nazis might sound familiar in the present because it's also what we hear from places like OAN or Fox News about immigrants, especially in the context of COVID. As seen with the increasing number of attacks against the Asian and Asian American communities, we can see how such hate speech has an impact.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The question is now whether we will see more mass events such as the Jan. 6 insurrection, which require coordination, movement across the country, money and other resources. I am really hoping that the authorities who are tasked with preventing another such event are doing their jobs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump and his spokespeople and other agents have created a martyrs out of his follower who was killed by law enforcement in the Capitol on Jan. 6. The Trumpists and right-wing propaganda media are now referring to members of Trump's attack force as "political prisoners," who are by implication innocent and heroic. How do you explain to the public the importance of this narrative and the political work it is doing?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is a classic move. We saw it in Nazi Germany. We also saw it in the Soviet Union. Mythologized martyrdoms manufactured sometimes literally out of nothing. In Nazi Germany before World War II, they created a fake martyr out of a man named Horst Wessel. He became a huge martyr, and it was completely fabricated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Martyrdoms in general are a hugely potent mass radicalization weapon. A martyr always inspires followers who will make self-sacrifices of their own. And it always challenges opponents to prove that their values are not morally bankrupt and that they too can pay the cost in blood to support the cause they believe in. There is always conflict in the wake of a martyrdom, including a fake martyrdom.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What Donald Trump and his spokespeople are doing is capitalizing on the potential of right-wing martyrdom. Whether or not this is going to catch on like Horst Wessel's did depends on how ready the public is to carry the banner of fake martyrdom. Because any martyrdom is always a symphony between the individual and the public, even a true martyr will not inspire followers if they are not ready to make sacrifices in the name of the cause.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A fake martyr, on the other hand, can appeal to millions, as in Nazi Germany or in Soviet Union, if they are ready to jump on the bandwagon and express their rage in the name of the martyr.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What are you most concerned about in this crisis and going forward?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I am most concerned about mass radicalization and the related hatred and intolerance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What advice would you give President Biden and other senior leadership?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Try not to pay attention to red herrings. Things like QAnon are a red herring. Try to not lose the forest for the trees. We have a massive right-wing radicalization problem in the United States where the followers are mobilized and armed and actively training. They have military or police training. They are also actively recruiting from those ranks. The resources should be going to confront that problem.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Do not discount the influence of malicious foreign actors, such as Russia and China. They are a lot more experienced with the weaponization of information and concocting propaganda narratives that are going to spread like wildfire and sow discord and mobilize people. The United States needs to catch up with their capabilities in that regard, and to protect ourselves in a way that we are not doing right now.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We need to do better with the social media giants about holding them accountable for what is taking place on their platforms. That means we need to demand that they become a lot more transparent, such as by sharing how they use algorithms and who they allow to dominate the discourse. At the moment, it's a complete black box. We need to hold those huge business entities responsible. They're like a type of public square — they need to be regulated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 11 21</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has prompted a social media firestorm with controversial argument suggesting Democrats are making an "attempt to give us a world beyond men."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During an appearance at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Fla., the Republican senator insisted "manhood" was "under attack" as he urged men embrace tradionally masculine positions, reports The Guardian.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The left want to define traditional masculinity as toxic," he said. "They want to define the traditional masculine virtues – things like courage, and independence, and assertiveness – as a danger to society."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hawley also discuss a seemingly baseless claim about the connection between males and pornography.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Can we be surprised that after years of being told that they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness and pornography and video games?" Hawley said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"While the left may celebrate this decline of men, I for one cannot join them. No one should."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to his claims about pornography, Hawley attempted to connect toxic masculinity to a number of other issues.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"For centuries, lovers of liberty have praised these qualities as the highest standard of manhood. That's not to say that women don't possess them. But it is to say that these virtues are the bright side of the aggression and competitiveness and independence that psychologists, no less than philosophers, have long observed in men." he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Assertiveness and independence are strengths when used to protect and empower others."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hawley's remarks quickly led to blowback on Twitter as many users dismantled his arguments and his claims about the characteristics of manhood.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"In the good old days, uncriticized American men fucked real top-heavy silicone queens and machine-gunned their way through actual space aliens on a daily basis," David Simon tweeted. "Also, don't shake the junior Missouri senator's hand until you see him wash it.</font></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">someone said on chris hayes that pix of ripped B43 before trump as rambo</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">red pill BS?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Madison Cawthorn urges mothers of young boys to ‘raise them to be a monster’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement October 19, 2021</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn is urging parents to turn their young children into monsters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The North Carolina Republican Congressman lamented that American "culture is trying to completely...[emasculate, refs testosterone levels but sidesteps why]</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a real man, a real am will stand up erect to fight tyrant, not bend knee or bend over 1776 minute man story 1</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bully // tyrant oppressor</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">10-21 an ME</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Florida county is facing a multi-million dollar fine for requiring its government employees to get vaccinated for COVID-19. According to The Daily Beast, the Florida Department of Health issued a fine of $3.57 million to Leon County, Fla.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The county, which houses Florida's state capital Tallahassee, is accused of "'blatant violation' of Florida's controversial 'vaccine passport' law that prohibits governments and businesses from requiring residents to show proof they were vaccinated against the coronavirus."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the health agency, the county has violated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' (R) order prohibiting vaccine mandates a total of 714 times by requiring employees to provide proof of vaccination. So far, 14 government employees have been terminated for failure to meet vaccination requirements.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, the Republican governor has released a statement criticizing the county for its mandate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It is unacceptable that Leon County violated Florida law, infringed on current and former employees' medical privacy, and fired loyal public servants because of their personal health decisions," DeSantis said in a statement announcing the fines. "We will continue fighting for Floridians' rights and the Florida Department of Health will continue to enforce the law. We're going to stand up for Floridians' jobs, stand up for Floridians' livelihoods, and stand up for freedom."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the wake of DeSantis' announcement of the fine, some Florida officials have released statements expressing concern and outrage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Unbelievable!" Sen. Loranne Ausley (D-Tallahassee, Fla.) said in a statement. "We don't need the State bullying our communities or private businesses who are simply trying to serve the people and get on the other side of this pandemic. It's going to take all of us standing together to make this happen."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, officials are not the only people angered by the fine. Describing DeSantis' action as "political posturing," Christopher Link, of Tallahassee, Fla., explained how the imposed fine will impact residents.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It's all just political posturing," Christopher Link, a Tallahassee resident, told the publication on Tuesday. " t makes no sense and only hurts the taxpayer. The fact that the better good for the health of the state is so wrongly politicized is insane. The crazies have taken over, really."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He added, "This pandemic has been going on for over a year, and I've never really felt like the priority in Florida was about saving lives. Just careers."</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha omg vax is everywhere basically = neg?!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">radicalization, polarization --> civil war</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">diaper on your face nanny state</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">not southwest airlines PILOT union vaxxers; also some cops and firefighters?  prison guards?! MALE dom.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">perfect storm of gop / koch anti-gubmint BS erodes trust in inst/norms that trump fascists must erode/coopt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">kochs did not want to shrink govt to drownd it just samll enough to dereg and small enough to buy/control it, trump delivered</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">tucker is mainstreaming gt replacement theory, bad trinity in on big lie and anti-vax</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see black flag </font></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"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see alrt rt EUR</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Krange, O. Kaltenborn, B.& Hultman, M. (2018). “Cool Dudes in Norway: Climate Change denial among conservative Norwegian Men”, Environmental Sociology.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McCright, A., Dunlap, R (2011). "Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States", Global Environmental Change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In their article ‘Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States’ the authors state: ‘Clearly the extent to which the conservative white male effect on climate change denial exists outside the US is a topic deserving investigation.’ Following this recommendation, we report results from a study in Norway. McCright and Dunlap argue that climate change denial can be understood as an expression of protecting group identity and justifying a societal system that provides desired benefits. Our findings resemble those in the US study. A total of 63 per cent of conservative males in Norway do not believe in anthropogenic climate change, as opposed to 36 per cent among the rest of the population who deny climate change and global warming. Expanding on the US study, we investigate whether conservative males more often hold what we term xenosceptic views, and if that adds to the ‘cool dude-effect’.1 Multivariate logistic regression models reveal strong effects from a variable measuring ‘xenosceptic cool dudes’. Interpreting xenoscepticism as a rough proxy for right leaning views, climate change denial in Norway seems to merge with broader patterns of right-wing nationalism.</font></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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rww 921</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a night of canvasing begins with a group of angry, white men.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dressed in matching T-shirts and hoodies emblazoned with the phrase “Active Club,” the masked white nationalists wield a starter pack of extremist paraphernalia: stickers that read “FCK ANTIFA” and “Defend the White Race,” posters promoting a “nationalist lifestyle,” stencils etched with racist slogans, and black spray paint. They disperse, plastering stickers on lamp posts, billboards, and the occasional statue. They replace Black Lives Matter slogans with smatterings of hate messages and promises to “reclaim America.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among the scattered propaganda is a blue poster imploring readers to start their own active clubs—spaces for white men to train in combat while openly embracing white nationalism through street activism and publicity stunts.  “Now is all we have,” read the poster. “Join the fight.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Various videos and photos posted online by the group show this scene play out over and over again. You might even have seen these posters across small-town USA: Seymour, Indiana; Coeur d’Alene Idaho; Cheyenne, Wyoming—or even across cities like Denver and Philadelphia. These calls to actions are not the work of misguided teenagers but the persistent effort of infamous white nationalists like Robert Rundo, who spent years sowing the seeds of hate while building a global following for his neo-Nazi fight-club initiatives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By using combat sports as a medium to recruit, radicalize, and discipline white nationalists disenfranchised by mainstream conservative politics, Rundo is able to create physical and digital spaces where extreme right political ideologies can flourish. He also joined forces with like-minded white nationalist groups such as Patriot Front and Revolt Against Tradition, which has allowed Rundo to rapidly expand his network and spread his active club ideology across North America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Rise of Active Clubs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The chaos that took place in Berkeley on April 15, 2017, was among the worst the city had seen in years. For approximately three hours, protesters for and against then President Donald Trump brawled at a “Patriot Rally” on the streets surrounding Civic Center Park, armed with pepper spray, smoke bombs, sticks, and wooden dowels. Seven attendees were hospitalized with injuries while 20 people were arrested, according to Berkeley police.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among those arrested was Rundo, who arrived in Berkeley with members of his Rise Above Movement white nationalist group, and was later taken into custody on suspicion of battery on a police officer and for resisting a police officer. The charges were dropped after an Alameda County deputy district attorney determined that there was not “enough evidence to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.” It took more than a year for the Department of Justice to bring federal charges against Rundo and three other RAM members for their alleged involvement in political rallies across California, claiming that they “violently attacked counter-protesters, journalists and a police officer.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the complaint filed by federal officials in October 2018, Rundo and three other RAM members were allegedly involved in “violent attacks” at the Berkeley rally, which included Rundo punching a defenseless person and a police officer. The complaint also noted that RAM members celebrated the assaults in Berkeley, which prosecutors say included one member posting photos of himself attacking people and of other RAM members assaulting counterprotesters with their combat sports training.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 2018 federal complaint followed the filing of an indictment in federal court that led to the arrest of four other RAM members on rioting charges related to their participation at the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 at which a counterprotester was murdered. The four men, including RAM co-founder Ben Daley and UCLA doctoral student Michael Miselis, pleaded guilty and were sentenced for their crimes. The RAM defendants in California were luckier. While many expected Rundo and the three other defendants to face jail time—one RAM member even pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge—a district judge dismissed the charges against them in 2019, claiming that the federal statute used to prosecute the members infringed upon their First Amendment rights to free speech.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prior to the string of arrests, the California-based RAM boasted more than 50 members who trained in various combat sports such as mixed martial arts and boxing, which they later applied during street fights and protests. The group rose to prominence in 2017, when they began attending political rallies and targeting anti-fascist activists. They infiltrated protests and disrupted proceedings by fighting with those opposing their ultra-nationalist ideology. They concealed their identities using skull face masks and goggles, and went into rallies with their hands wrapped in tape in preparation for physical altercations. They then glorified their antics in propaganda videos posted on social media.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rapeugees"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RAM members at an “anti-Sharia law” protest in San Bernardino, California.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RAM’s penchant for MMA and underground fight clubs is one of the main things that distinguishes it from various other white supremacist groups in the United States. It has also helped RAM expand beyond the borders of the U.S., recruit new members, and network with other neo-Nazi groups dabbling in MMA around the world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While four of RAM’s most prominent members remain in jail since being indicted on Charlottesville rioting charges, Rundo left the United States after having his case dismissed in California and has spent the last few years trying to further his white nationalist agenda and rebuild the fighting community that had been diminished by federal prosecution. After moving to Eastern Europe, Rundo founded a far-right propaganda outfit known as the International Conservative Community, which boasts a network of neo-Nazis around the world, with groups in Greece, Poland, Sweden, Hungary, Russia and Canada. The ICC is behind the propaganda campaign for Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old charged with the fatal shooting of two protesters during an anti-racism demonstration in Kenosha, Wisconsin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rundo’s campaign included spreading artwork depicting Rittenhouse with the caption, “Kyle was Right.” The ICC has planted stickers, large-scale graffiti work, and banners emblazoned with Rittenhouse’s image across Europe and North America. In Serbia, where Rundo was living in 2020, the group painted a picture of an armed Rittenhouse standing proud with a Schwarze Sonne (German for Black Sun) as his backdrop; the symbol, also known as a sonnerad, is used by a number of with far-right groups that traffic in neo-Nazi ideologies. The painting in Serbia was featured alongside a Confederate flag and a picture of a deranged-looking Homer Simpson cartoon character aiming a gun, with the caption “KILL YOUR LOCAL ANTIFA SCUM.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was around this time that Rundo began encouraging his followers to form their own “Active Clubs,” which he defined as a “small group of comrades who share our values of identity.” The aim of such groups is to “focus on physical fitness” and “create displays of defiance that show your community that our culture will not be erased.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The active club is not so much a structural organization as it is a lifestyle for those willing to work, risk and sweat to embody our ideals for themselves and to promote them to others,” Rundo wrote on his Active Club Telegram channel. “The active lifestyle is the counter to the left’s culture of apathy, addiction, and vice. Get active today in your area and be the change you want to see.”</font></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">Members of Colorado’s “Front Range Active Club” training in combat sports. Credit: Front Range Telegram</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rundo later started the “Active Club Podcast” with Denis Nikitin, a Russian neo-Nazi considered to be the godfather of the extreme-right MMA scene, where they teach fellow nationalists how to form their own hate groups. Nikitin, who rose to infamy after launching the neo-Nazi MMA organization and clothing brand known as White Rex, has also been banned from entering any Schengen-area European countries. However, while Rundo boasted on the podcast about the “perks” of living in Eastern Europe, the extremist was expelled from Serbia after Bellingcat outed his location in Serbia. The Serbian daily Blic reported that on Feb. 11, 2021, Serbian police escorted Rundo to the Trbušnica-Šepak border pass, which connects Serbia to Bosnia and Herzegovina.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rundo’s luck in avoiding prosecution, however, may soon come to an end. On 4 March, 2021, the LA Times reported that a US Federal Appeals Court had reinstated rioting charges against Rundo and three accomplices from RAM, ruling that they could be tried for their roles in riots in California in 2017. Despite facing potential arrest, Rundo remains active on Telegram, the social media platform popular among the extreme right, where continues to espouse his vision for the evolution of white supremacy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“White Nationalism 3.0”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a December 2020 essay entitled “The Idea Behind ‘Active Club,’” Robert Rundo laid out his argument for why his fellow angry white men should start their own neighborhood fight clubs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“As most institutions give little or no regard for white youth today, Active Clubs’ role will fill that gap,” Rundo wrote, adding that active clubs promote camaraderie, identity formation, and “awaken racial bonds between kin” as they engage in fitness activities, combat sports training, and the “thrill and excitement” of spreading right-wing propaganda in the form of flyers, stickers, and graffiti. Rundo theorized that by spreading their message through propaganda posters and stickers, it will serve as a “critical revelation,” letting “our own know the fight is not over.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rundo also dictated that the clubs must remain small and local, explaining that it will make it more difficult for the media and law enforcement officials to shut down the entire operation. “Even if the system and their dogs manage to put out one fire, it will lead to minimal results,” he wrote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rundo’s guidelines suggest he has learned from his mistakes with RAM. Initially, the white nationalist group, the first prominent example of an active club in North America, had 50 members and was active on mainstream social media, which made it easy for researchers to identify its members. The modern iteration of the active club, which Rundo sometimes refers to as “white nationalism 3.0,” is different. The groups are local, self-contained, and are careful about the images they publish online. They take part in fitness activities together and focus on local activism—spreading stickers, posters, and banner drops—instead of taking part in rallies and demonstrations where they may be identified.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rundo also launched a media outlet called Media2Rise, which he claimed would “counter” liberal narratives. Over the past few months, the former MMA fighter has used this platform to publish “Sons of the Founders,” described as a “documentary” about Patriot Front—an offshoot of the white supremacist Vanguard group that trains in “hand-to-hand combat.” The propaganda film, which follows Patriot Front members during their demonstrations held this year on the Fourth of July in Pennsylvania, underscores the growing (and highly concerning) ties between like-minded extremists such as Rundo and Patriot Front.</font></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">Patriot Front members holding up an ‘Active Club’ banner</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To date, Rundo’s active clubs have formed across the United States, including in Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. An active club has even launched in Quebec and Ontario, the latter of which was recently renamed to “Action 14,” a reference to the 14-word neo-Nazi slogan “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The rebranding leaves no doubt that the group is more than a fitness club for like-minded individuals but rather a white nationalist propaganda outfit that indoctrinates white men into the nationalist cause.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When prospective members questioned Action 14’s decision to rebrand in the public chat, arguing that it was “setting up the group to be targeted,” the club’s leadership shrugged off the concerns. “The name gives us a new look, and a clear signal to those on our side as to what we are about. It allows us to go national without splintering into 13 different groups, one for each province. We are a National Active Club now. Action 14 is the banner we all organize under,” the administrator said. However, the group eventually rebranded to “Active Club Canada” after what the administrator said was a “detailed discussion” among the founders.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Tell your friends, wherever they are in Canada, that we are organizing workouts near them! If we don’t have one set up already in your area, you can rest assured that we will soon! This is the place to reach out to us. If you are a White man, looking to meet other Pro-White Brothers in a fitness setting, Active Club Canada is the place for you!” the group’s administrator posted on Telegram.</font></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">‘Active Club Canada’ aka ‘Action 14’ members posing during a workout session in Ontario.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Rundo would likely disagree with the Ontario active club’s decision to go national, he is no doubt delighted to know that his propaganda outfit masquerading as a fitness and martial arts counter culture group is spreading. The extremist organizer had previously written about the importance of combat sports as a “weapon” for white supremacists, as well as a way of building a community of like-minded individuals. “The nationalist movement was never built on idle talk but on those with iron will who didn’t back down,” he wrote in a 2020 essay. “In a time of weak men it only takes some effort to rise above all. Combat sports is that way up.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, MMA and combat sports’ idolization of hypermasculinity, its penchant for violence, and its emphasis on wellness based lifestyles is well suited to far-right groups whose members object to progressive society’s supposed decadence and degeneration. Many white nationalist and far-right groups espouse “straight-edge” lifestyles focused on clean eating, a disciplined physical fitness regimen, and abstention from drugs and alcohol. Many such groups lionize white, muscular, male bodies, using them as models for future generations. MMA’s training regimen is also appealing to members of far-right groups because it offers them structured tutelage that they believe is necessary to defend their homeland.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Writing in her acclaimed book “Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right,” Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss stated that “MMA becomes a powerful incubator for the far right when these ideas of masculinity—the notion that being a man is achieved through violent confrontation, domination, and physical intimidation of opponents—are layered onto far-right ideology about immigrant invasions and defense of the nation.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is exactly what Rundo hopes to achieve with his active club initiative. And as his fascist fight clubs continue to spread across the United States, so does his message of hate.</font></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">
</font></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">someone says freeDUMB just assertion of white male xian priviledge</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rand Paul tells vaccinated Americans to 'mind your own business'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement  August 05, 2021</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">U.S. Senator Rand Paul blasted millions of Americans who are fully vaccinated, telling them to "mind your own business" after complaining about those who say they don't want to eat in restaurants where everyone...</font></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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 821</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the men's fellowship was told to bring guns. "They call it Shootin' with the Savior," my friend said. "I'm 70 years old! And I am not going to march into the woods with a Bible and a gun, and line up for target practice. It's pure nonsense is what it is."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I've stopped in the parking lot to chat with Bob.  Bob belongs to one of the biggest churches in town. This last year, he has been attending services remotely on Facebook. Though he has been an active member for decades, he's unsure whether he will go back. His pastor, he said, never took the covid seriously. "Remember that church shooting they had down in Texas a few years back?" Bob said as we stepped aside for two women to pass. "It wasn't two weeks 'til we had the whole church strung up with security cameras and men carrying guns inside and outside Sunday service. But the virus? The one that could actually kill me and my wife? Our pastor hardly mentions it."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bob is an anti-Trump conservative and I am an outspoken liberal, both political outcasts here in rural Anderson County, Kentucky, population 23,000, where the disgraced former president won more than 70 percent of the vote in 2016 and 2020.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is normal for us to see men carrying guns of all sizes whether at Walmart or the State Capitol 15 miles up the road. It is normal to see armed Three Percenters guarding the confederate statue on the courthouse lawn or standing outside the Judge Executive's office before a public meeting, having a laugh with the locals. And it is normal to see and hear the constant, unwavering refusal, in person and online, of these men refusing to wear masks or take the vaccine. Is that a diaper on your face?! Don't be a sheep! Fauci is a phony! Whether it is the national obsession with guns or the refusal of a free, lifesaving vaccine, either way, performative masculinity is literally killing us.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My own brother remains unvaccinated. In one of his Facebook profile photos, he appears fully decked out in his National Guard gear with AR-15 style rifles stacked on the ground in a circle around him. Photo title: "Me and my bitches." When I asked our (vaccinated) dad why my brother is not vaccinated, he told me that in the beginning it was politics. Now it's just chest-thumping stubbornness.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"He can't get vaccinated now," he said, "because then you'll be right."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"If I'm right that makes him a pussy?" I said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Exactly."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">United States Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas—where the over-12 vaccination rate is 41.45 percent—recently spoke at the Third Annual Machine Gun Shoot in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire. Cotton can be seen on camera, smiling and chatting with a crowd of men at the range while shooting large, heavy, rapid-fire guns.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Does anyone believe these men are vaccinated? And why is a senator from Arkansas wasting his time on a shooting range in New Hampshire? Because it is no longer enough to prove your presidential manhood by riding a horse (Ronald Reagan) or clearing brush (George W. Bush). You have to be filmed firing the biggest, loudest firearm you can. That or getting on Fox primetime to rant about how masks and vaccine requirements, like proposed gun laws, infringe on American freedoms.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">United States Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts wrote in her 2014 book, A Fighting Chance, that the country loses eight kids and teens to gun violence every day. "If a mysterious virus suddenly started killing eight of our children every day, America would mobilize teams of doctors and public health officials," the Democrat wrote. "We would move heaven and earth until we found a way to protect our children."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We did not move heaven and earth, nor will we.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We can't get 30 percent to take a free vaccine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The population of Kentucky is about the same as the population of Los Angeles, yet we rank 15th in the nation in gun suicides. Our junior United States Senator Rand Paul touts gun rights anytime someone hands him a microphone. Mass, preventable death does not move him. So it was no surprise this past year, as Americans were dying daily by the thousands, when Paul made himself infamous for publicly berating Dr. Anthony Fauci and for being on the Senate floor sans-mask throughout the covid pandemic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What does it matter if 610,000 Americans are dead from a virus. Is that a diaper on your face?! Don't be a sheep! Fauci is a phony! Like Tom Cotton on the shooting range, performative masculinity is the drug Rand Paul's voting base is jonesing for. And who has time to move heaven and earth when there are elections to think about?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like Bob, I missed Shootin' with the Savior, but I did go to an outdoor range during the pandemic where, with the help of firearms experts, I learned to shoot nine guns ranging in size from the AR-15 to a pistol I can fit in my pocket. I hadn't shot a gun in 40 years and wanted to see what all the Proud Boy hoopla was about. What I learned is the AR-15 is easy to shoot. Too easy. I did not mug for a camera crew to prove it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our health director here in Anderson County tells me that he's booking around 40 vaccine appointments a week, of which 30 might show up. Because school starts next week, on Saturday, he held a special clinic. Only 37 people came. Today, I asked him, "What's it going to take to get people's attention? The death of someone's child?"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He did not answer, nor did I expect him to.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Men have been gunning down children at schools since Columbine. Their stories are a blip in the news cycle. School kids dying from the virus will be one more blip.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How Performative Masculinity Leads Men to Soul-Death | by The ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Performative Masculinity: A New Theory on Masculinity Susan L. Pitt ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why some American men won't wear masks - Vox ›</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/tucker-carlson-2653475417/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">salon</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The American people live in the same country. That does not mean they share a common reality. This inability to agree upon basic empirical facts and the nature of the truth is undermining the country's democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Moreover, a type of collective malignant narcissism, in which entire communities of people believe that their opinions supersede empirical reality and scientific fact, is undermining America's present and future prosperity, stability and freedom, not to mention the basic health of our society.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To wit: A majority of Republicans apparently believe the Big Lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that it was somehow "stolen" from him and his followers by Joe Biden and the Democrats.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roughly 30 percent of Republicans claim to believe that Trump will be reinstated as president this year, something that is not possible under current U.S. law. In addition, 50 percent of Republican voters have convinced themselves that Donald Trump is still the "real" president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Approximately one in four Republican voters believes in significant portions of the interlocking antisemitic conspiracy theories of the QAnon fictional universe, with its claims about a "deep state" that controls American society and the world through Satanic rituals and human sacrifice. Of course, in the QAnon universe Donald Trump is imagined as a great hero and leader who will defeat this evil plot and restore American "greatness," not-so-subtly understood as a privileged state for white people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a season of death during which the coronavirus pandemic has killed at least 600,000 Americans, a new CBS/YouGov poll shows that 29 percent of Republicans will refuse the lifesaving vaccines. They have made this decision largely because of Trump and the right-wing media's disinformation and outright lies about the coronavirus pandemic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This crisis is far greater than what historian and political scientist Richard Hofstadter warned about in his seminal 1964 Harper's essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." In a moment when a proto-fascist white supremacist Republican Party is waging a war on democracy and the truth, the white right's conspiracist thinking represents an existential threat to the safety and security of the United States.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a recent conversation with Salon about Trump and his followers, psychiatrist Dr. Lance Dodes offered this warning:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It certainly is a public mental health emergency, and one that has occurred many times in human history. Followers adopt the belief system of a populist tyrant which becomes the new permitted reality, spreading to others who are swept up by their need to be included. That belief system, however fantastical or delusional, remains accepted truth until it is finally shown to be false. Those who have been conned into believing the tyrant's lies find comfort in their conviction that they know the truth, enabling them to feel superior to doubters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Jan. 6, right-wing conspiracy theories and other delusional ideas came together in a type of synergistic disaster in the form of the Trump regime's attempted coup and the attack on the U.S. Capitol, as a mass of white supremacists, Christian fascists, right-wing paramilitaries and QAnon believers attempted to nullify the results of the 2020 Election. These groups and ideas are not altogether distinct; there is considerable overlap of ideas and believers between them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those outside of the right-wing conspiracy community are likely unaware of the other fantastical beliefs and delusions that played a role in the events of Jan. 6.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jason Colavito is a professional skeptic, researcher and author whose essays have been featured at The New Republic and Slate. He has also appeared on the History Channel and the American Heroes Channel. Colavito is the author of several books, including "The Mound Builder Myth," "Jason and the Argonauts Through the Ages" and the forthcoming "The Legends of the Pyramids: Myths and Misconceptions about Ancient Egypt."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In this conversation, Colavito places these "new" conspiracy theories about QAnon and the Big Lie about the 2020 election — as well as the decades-long popular obsession with UFOs — in a larger context of fear and anxiety about social change in America, arguing that a particular version of insecure white masculinity (and white supremacy more generally) is central to many of today's most widely believed conspiracy theories.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Colavito also details how right-wing extremists are using UFOs, "ancient aliens" and other supposedly "fun" conspiracy theories to radicalize and recruit new members, and discusses how figures like Rudy Giuliani and Tucker Carlson as well as the "Stop the Steal" plotters figure in that dynamic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the end of this conversation, Jason Colavito shares his thoughts about the soon-to-be-released Pentagon report on UFOs — which will almost certainly not report that the Earth is being visited by extraterrestrials.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">QAnon, the "Deep State," Donald Trump's Big Lie and and now a report by the U.S. government on UFOs. How do you explain this confluence of events?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First, it's important to understand that all these conspiracy theories are interrelated. It's not like QAnon is completely separate from UFOs and that is completely separate from a conspiracy about Jewish bankers taking over the world — as Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested, by using "Jewish space lasers." These conspiracies are all connected by this idea of rejected knowledge — that there is a secret body of knowledge that can tell a person how the world really works, and is being hidden away from the public by elites.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">People who believe in conspiracy theories are searching for a means to understand a complex and changing world in a simple way, one that flatters their own particular prejudices, particular beliefs and feelings that they should be the ones at the center of the historical narrative.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the foundational issues involved in all of these conspiracy theories is white supremacy. It doesn't always seem obvious. In many cases, some of the people who believe in one particular variety of conspiracy or another are not themselves motivated primarily by white supremacy, and may not even be aware of the connections to white supremacy. But at their core, many of these conspiracy theories revolve around ideas about the way things were in a semi-idealized past, whether that semi-idealized past was Donald Trump's presidency, the 1950s, the 19th century or some other period. These were times when white people were at the center of the historical narrative in America and the West. In this worldview, everything was great and good and wonderful.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What we see in the United States are demographic trends which are causing a deep disconnect and deep concern among many white people who believe that they are losing economic power, losing status and losing their privileged social position. Of course this is not necessarily true in reality, because white people still control the overwhelming amount of political and economic power in the United States. However, they do see themselves as losing that power because in large measure the actual elites — the people who are running the economy, running politics and so on — have created a situation where the middle-class lifestyle of my generation's parents and grandparents simply does not exist anymore unless you have multiple incomes and the kind of education that requires enormous amounts of debt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are all these different societal changes going on and conspiracy theories are a way to try to explain it that lets a person feel as though they are still in control of the narrative. When you look at conspiracy theories in the aggregate, that is the underlying motive behind all of the different expressions of weird and extreme ideas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How do we explain these waves of conspiracy theories in a larger context?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is something that we see in United States history over and over again. In the wake of social change people turn toward extreme ideas such as the supernatural and the paranormal and toward conspiracy theories.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Much of what we see today is very similar to what was going on in the 1950s and the 1960s. There was a confluence of paranormal and political conspiracies at the same time. The UFO panic emerged in the late 1940s through the 1960s and did not occur in isolation. It was happening at the same time that McCarthyism and the second Red Scare was burning through the country. People were seeing communists behind every bush and trying to use the power of government to destroy what they perceived to be communist infiltration of the country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe McCarthy had stoked nativism, nationalism and many forms of bigotry in order to gin up a vast conspiracy theory that there was massive communist infiltration. McCarthy, incidentally, didn't limit his hatred just to communists. He assumed that communists, being deviants, were close allies of the homosexuals and therefore he and his allies created a massive purge of gay people from government, leading to decades of oppression and some of the strictest anti-gay laws that the country has ever had. But while he's doing this, the UFO panic is happening outside of Washington and eventually in D.C. itself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That isn't entirely a coincidence, because in both cases, what you're seeing is that beneath the placid surface of what should have been the most prosperous, peaceful time in American history there is also a deep anxiety because World War II had shaken the foundations of the American Dream. While it was patched together with suburbia and sitcoms and all of those things that conservatives love to hold up as the idealized post-war world, in reality it was a Band-Aid over massive amounts of social change, particularly in terms of the role of women. Women had experienced great liberation during the war years because the men were off fighting abroad.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the war, men tried to force women back into those pre-war gender roles. The postwar years also saw a growth in the African American civil rights movement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This comes together with how these social tensions and changes manifest in almost a spiritual way when people look up into the sky and see saviors or demons flying in the heavens. UFOs, right from the beginning, were identified not just as space aliens. Some people thought they were angels harboring the end times of revelation. Others thought that UFOs were secret communist technology infiltrating our skies. This is an example of tensions and ideas that are percolating through politics and society being remixed in symbolic form and ascribed to a supernatural cause. What we're seeing today, I believe, is closely related to that same process, that social tensions are driving a symbolic expression of tension as various conspiracies and supernatural occurrences.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How do we apply those questions of identity and agency to these current conspiracy theories?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is important to recognize that many of the conspiracy theories are driven by people who are looking for ways to express control over the historical narrative. Most of what later became QAnon was already in circulation on the internet and on cable television years before it came together as a pro-Trump conspiracy theory. QAnon reaches all the way from "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" straight through to UFO conspiracy theories, and draws in the Satanic panic and related ideas</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These are narratives that we already found circulating on programs like "Ancient Aliens" or "America Unearthed" and other History Channel shows and cable TV series years before. This happened because the cable TV networks understood that their audience is primarily older and white, and in the case of the History Channel largely male, and they program towards that demographic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To qualify my point: I do not think that cable TV networks were purposely planning to have white nationalist programming or anything like that. We are talking about TV networks staffed by hundreds of people using production companies around the world to produce content. But you have media all over the world driving toward the same ends because they're chasing the same audience. And once you start trying to flatter your audience into thinking that they are empowered and that they are the dynamic drivers of history, you end up in the same place every time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What did you see in the events of Jan 6. when Trump's followers attacked the U.S. Capitol? In particular, what did you make of the "QAnon shaman," who is a known figure in the right-wing conspiracy world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The QAnon shaman — who goes by a couple of different names, by the way — represented not just the neo-pagan theme in the QAnon movement and the white nationalist-adjacent conspiracies, but he was appropriating, to himself, other themes and ideas as well. The QAnon shaman has a series of videos that he put up on YouTube and other video-sharing platforms prior to the Jan. 6 attack in which he talked about a vast number of bizarre conspiracy theories.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There he cites people who had appeared on the History Channel by name, discussing a conspiracy theory that was popular among the ancient aliens crowd about "the secret space program." This is the idea that there is a secret space program in which the United States is engaged in warfare with one group of space aliens with the help of another group of space aliens. There is a spiritual component as well, which involves psychic powers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The secret space program conspiracy theory has been circulating for years. But the QAnon shaman, in his videos, claimed to believe that he had been recruited, apparently against his will, into the secret space program because of his great psychic powers. He also claims that he was using those powers to combat space aliens on behalf of the U.S. government by traveling to another dimension.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yes, it is easy to make fun of such claims, but such conspiracies played a role among the people at the Capitol rioting on Jan. 6. Incidentally, at least one of the Capitol rioters was wearing an "Ancient Aliens" sweatshirt with Giorgio Tsoukalos' face on it. [Tsoukalos is a ufologist who has frequently appeared on "Ancient Aliens."] I do not believe that was entirely a coincidence, because it is the same set of conspiracy theories about the "deep state," space aliens, secret cults and how elites are hiding things from the public that animate both the ancient conspiracy theories and the QAnon conspiracy theories. There is significant overlap, where some QAnon beliefs are derived directly from beliefs that also appear on "Ancient Aliens."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the huge failures of the mainstream news media is that they are not paying attention to what people are actually consuming. Among the most extreme fringes of American political and social life there is see a very deep and abiding interest in these conspiracy theories, and we don't see the U.S. mainstream media engaging with that enough — especially not before the 2016 election, and not even fully until after the Jan. 6 riot.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is easy to say we're not going to take this seriously, but something can be both ridiculous and dangerous at the same time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, QAnon is an antisemitic conspiracy theory. It is also a white male power fantasy. More generally, how are these right-wing fantasies a space for a particular type of white masculinity?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The History Channel adventure mystery shows tend to have the same aesthetic. They feature very big blocky fonts, lots of dramatic music. These shows also feature middle-aged white men in either Indiana Jones cosplay or in tactical military gear marching around, having adventures and bonding in brotherhood over historical mysteries that flatter their own prejudices, mysteries that just happened to find that white men were here before Columbus and built this country from scratch even before Native Americans had come to the Americas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The aesthetic is laughable, but it is also one that's desirable for a certain demographic in the United States. There is also an important overlap between these shows and their political consequences. A man named J. Hutton Pulitzer, who also goes by Jovan Pulitzer and a couple of other names, appeared on "The Curse of Oak Island" and some other ancient mystery-style shows, described as a treasure hunter, a historian and many other titles. On "Curse of Oak Island" they went looking for the Ark of the Covenant. Pulitzer's persona at the time was "the treasure force commander," who was supposedly leading a "crack team of historical investigators as they hunted history's greatest artifacts."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Where did he go next? Rudy Giuliani and the Donald Trump campaign used his ideas about ballot fraud to help create the recounts that we see in Arizona and the ongoing efforts to do the same in Georgia. In both instances, Pulitzer is being paid as a consultant to find evidence of ballot fraud through his amazing technology of looking for bamboo in the ballots to prove they came from China. This also involves looking for creases in what Pulitzer calls the "origami ballots" to "prove" that they were folded up by Asian people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This guy went right from the History Channel straight to a Trump conspiracy world. While he might be the most direct line between History Channel conspiracies and the extreme right-wing pro-Trump community, he's not the only one. Just the other day, Nick Pope, one of the ancient-astronauts theorists from the "Ancient Aliens" show, appeared on Rudy Giuliani's podcast. There you have the former lawyer for Donald Trump talking UFOs with a guy from "Ancient Aliens." Tucker Carlson was also on "Ancient Aliens" talking to Nick Pope. Carlson has UFO theorists from the History Channel on his show.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What is Tucker Carlson's relationship to the UFO and ancient aliens conspiracy world?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a speech that Tucker Carlson gave a while ago, he said that after the 2016 election, he was so completely dumbfounded by the unlikely probability of Donald Trump winning that he started to think that other improbable things might be true. As a result he developed an interest in UFOs and flying saucers. But in a more practical sense, Carlson has been all in on pushing flying-saucer conspiracy theories, in large measure because flying-saucer conspiracy theories have long been associated with right-wing extremism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, that is not to say that everyone who is interested in UFOs and flying saucers is a right-wing conspiracy theorist — but right-wing extremist groups have made a concerted effort to infiltrate flying saucer and UFO communities in order to use that belief in conspiracy theory as a wedge issue to draw more people into that type of conspiratorial thinking.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What happens is that UFO and flying saucer beliefs become a wedge issue that draws people into more extreme beliefs, because once you feel that one conspiracy theory may be true, it becomes easier to believe that the next conspiracy theory may be true. When you see Tucker Carlson going all in on UFOs and flying saucers, he is creating a situation where people can embrace one conspiracy theory and be led to another.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How have you been processing this new hysteria about UFOs (which are now described by the U.S. government as "UAPs") and the soon-to-be-released Pentagon report?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What we can do is emphasize what we know, what we don't know and what needs to be investigated. Many of these videos of UFOs can be explained in conventional terms. Now, that doesn't mean that they are necessarily conventional, but if you can explain it that way, that is a very strong indication that we shouldn't be looking at space aliens.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the case of claims that we have wreckage of flying saucers and other alien artifacts, you need to listen to what the experts, the involved parties, are actually saying. [Former Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid has repeatedly said that he keeps getting misquoted. He does not in fact believe that there is any wreckage. Moreover, all of the supposed alien metal that has ever been seen in public and tested turned out not to have extraterrestrial composition. The only tests that were made publicly available indicated that the alleged alien metals were in fact industrial waste. This has happened several times over the decades, going all the way back to 1947.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What we need to do as science educators, journalists and historians is to educate the public — not necessarily on the specifics of each and every case but on the rules of evidence, the burden of proof and how experts come to an understanding of what something is or what it could be. That's a difficult task. It's a lot easier to say, "Could be aliens," or "Maybe not aliens," than to say, "There are a range of possibilities. Some are more likely than others. We base our conclusions on a preponderance of evidence and so on." That is complicated and hard, and it does not fit in a 30-second soundbite.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Pentagon report on UFOs is probably going to be sufficiently vague. People are going to see what they want to see in it. What do you do with that moment when you read the same report and conclude that there is no proof of alien visitations, and true believers conclude the opposite? In essence, true believers will default to the script that lack of sufficient evidence is in fact proof of the conspiracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I wish there were a good answer for that. But unfortunately, what you suggest is likely going to be the outcome. People will see in the report what they want to see, and it will just move on to the next stage of the conspiracy. This is what happened with all previous government reports that found no evidence of space aliens and no UFO threat. The UFO community will take that as more fuel for their belief system. They'll look for ways to spin it into a focus for a new round of conspiracy theories, a new round of demands for disclosure and research, and a new round of accusations that the government is hiding the truth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perhaps the most devastating answer of all is that the government doesn't actually have the truth, because government is made up of people, and people have many different belief systems and ideas. You will find people in government who believe that flying saucers and UFOs are alien spacecraft. You will find people in government who think that they're Satan's minions and could provoke the forces of hell. You will find people who believe that flying saucers are nothing but optical illusions and misidentified drones and weather phenomena. Just because the government says something does not give it the weight of holy writ. The government and its reports are the work of people, and as such are fallible.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The New York Times preview of the report's content seems to suggest that the government will say that they don't know in some cases — but that's been the case for the last 70-some years. Each and every report has said that there are a number of UFO cases that cannot be explained. Being unexplained doesn't mean they're unexplainable, it means that we don't have the knowledge or the information to make a determination right now, and maybe not ever.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sometimes you have to live in the ambiguity and to understand that the preponderance of evidence is sometimes the best that we can do. Science, after all, isn't a complete description of the entirety of existence. It is the best description we have at any one time, and sometimes you just have to live with the fact that there are going to be some things that don't quite fit in, some things that it may take years or lifetimes to fully investigate and understand.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So far, we haven't had any evidence that indicates space aliens. Until one of those space aliens decides to let us see a flying saucer and the aliens waving inside, we're going to have to go with the best evidence that we have and the preponderance of evidence and what it indicates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></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">rhet</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/is-trump-a-fascist/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 "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 full of fascist themes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Ryan Goodman (@Ryan Goodman)1612445788.0</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fascism, according to Stanley, "is a patriarchal cult of the leader, 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."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"In it, Trump is repeatedly represented as the nation's father figure," Stanley notes. "It is laced through with images of masculinity, and mournful loss at the hands of traitors, clearly justifying a violent restoration of recent glory."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></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">https://theconversation.com/tweets-reveal-trumps-and-bidens-competing-views-of-masculinity-what-that-will-mean-for-presidential-leadership-149686</font></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">https://6abc.com/philadelphia-attack-pennsylvania-convention-center-plot-pa-election/7689932/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">silv and blk hummer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx [ix vid</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Armed men arrested near Pennsylvania Convention Center identified</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Bob Brooks and Corey Davis</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Police received a tip that individuals, armed with firearms, were on their way to the Convention Center area in a silver Hummer truck.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- Two armed men have been charged after being found near the Philadelphia convention center where an ongoing vote count could decide the presidential election, officials said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, Joshua Macias, 42, and Antonio Lamotta, 61, both of Chesapeake, Va., have been charged with Concealed Firearm Without a License, a third-degree felony, and Carrying a Firearm on Public Streets or Public Property, a first-degree misdemeanor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A woman was also with them, but she was not placed under arrest, officials said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Antonio Lamotta, 61 (left) and Joshua Macias, 42 (right)</font></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">On Thursday, the Philadelphia Police Department received a tip that individuals, armed with firearms, were on their way to the Convention Center area in a silver Hummer truck.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The tip involved a group, possibly a family, who drove up from Virginia, intent on "straightening things out" during the vote count at the Convention Center.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At 10:20 p.m., officers spotted an unoccupied silver Hummer truck parked at 230 North 13th Street and alerted that over police radio.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Minutes later, police said, two bicycle patrol officers discovered Macias and Lamotta.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Macias had a .40-caliber Beretta handgun inside his jacket, LaMotta had a 9mm Beretta in a holster and an AR-style rifle and ammunition were found inside the vehicle, Outlaw said. Authorities initially said that the rifle did not have a serial number but later said that it did.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Police said neither had a valid Pennsylvania permit to carry and were both placed under arrest.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to authorities, the men said the Hummer was their vehicle.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An additional gun was recovered from the inside the Hummer, police said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Philadelphia Police Department investigation is ongoing between the PPD and FBI. No injuries were reported.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Friday, the Hummer was still on 13th Street near Vine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The vehicle had a window sticker and a hat with the logo for the internet group QAnon, which is known for spreading conspiracy theories. The FBI has labeled them a domestic terror threat.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At least 24 congressional candidates in this current election have endorsed or given credit to conspiracy theories promoted by the group.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"At this time we do not have indication that the story is bigger than two individuals," Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said Friday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The men are expected in court late Friday or Saturday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SEE ALSO: Dueling protests in Philadelphia as vote counting continues in presidential election</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Biden and Trump supporters are gathering in Philadelphia on Thursday as votes continue to be counted in Pennsylvania.</font></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">Inside the Convention Center, workers have been tallying hundreds of thousands of votes cast by Philadelphia residents.</font></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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 1020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">how hypermasculine narratives in Cold War men's magazines set the stage for fear of America's 'pussification'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gregory A. Daddis History News Network</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of all the responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States—ranging from debates over mask wearing to school closings— perhaps the most bizarre is the suggestion that this deadly disease can be avoided simply through manliness.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nowhere was this made more explicit than when former US...</font></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">https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/how-toxic-masculinity-became-a-threat-to-public-health/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How toxic masculinity became a threat to public health</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Nicole Karlis and Salon October 18, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">   </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As if the first two waves of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States weren't enough to inspire serious political changes to stop the coronavirus, health experts have sounded the alarm that a third wave is underway. Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are rising across the nation, specifically in the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Montana, as the seasons change and the election nears.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's certainly taken a lot of resilience and strength to persevere through this pandemic — particularly given the backdrop of political chaos, uncertainty and immense change in our daily lives. Yet perhaps it is this attitude of "staying strong," and acting stoically — which is rooted in a culture that favors and thrives off toxic masculinity — that has hurt and continues to hurt us the most.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Toxic masculinity, which has become a household phrase over the last few years, is when the archetypal image of masculinity, like displaying strength, becomes harmful to oneself. In 2005, in a study of men in prison, psychiatrist Terry Kupers defined toxic masculinity as "the constellation of socially regressive male traits that serve to foster domination, the devaluation of women, homophobia, and wanton violence." The phrase is used to describe the issues men face or sometimes, wrongfully, justify them. Certainly, in a patriarchal society, toxic masculinity not only defines people but politics — as its mores trickle into our entertainment, discourse and politics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Notably, the pandemic response is being led by the most psychologically compromised, toxic men in America. As I wrote last weekend, President Donald Trump's insistence on depicting himself as so strong as to be able to "work through" his COVID-19 illness is deeply harmful, and apt to put Americans' lives at risk who mimic his behavior — either by working while sick or hiding symptoms.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, Trump's re-election campaign has tried to frame Trump as a "warrior" — masculine, strong and void of emotion. The administration's individualistic, pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps rhetoric personifies toxic masculinity, and trickles down to Trump's underlings, too. In June, Vice President Mike Pence wrote an op-ed essay in The Wall Street Journal claiming there was no second wave of COVID-19, despite all the evidence to the contrary. "We are winning the fight against the invisible enemy," Pence wrote then, adding "our greatest strength is the resilience of the American people."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet as psychologists will warn, there is a dark side to resilience.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"There is no doubt that resilience is a useful and highly adaptive trait, especially in the face of traumatic events," psychologists Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Derek Lusk wrote in Harvard Business Review. "However, when taken too far, it may focus individuals on impossible goals and make them unnecessarily tolerant of unpleasant or counterproductive circumstances." In other words, self-sufficiency is not always a show of strength; humans, as social creatures, rely on others for society to function and to remain healthy. Denying that means hurting ourselves, either by delaying care or eschewing guidance that may help us or save others.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I've often wondered how much my so-called "resilience" in all of this is just making me numb and tolerant, in an unhealthy way. When looking at which countries have the pandemic somewhat under control, we look and judge their leaders. It's interesting to do this through a gendered lens. For example, New Zealand has some of the lowest coronavirus numbers in the world under Prime Minister Jacinda Adern's leadership. That's partly because she never advertised grandiose ideas about being above or stronger than the coronavirus. As I've previously written, the strengths—such as empathy and compassion— Ardern has brought throughout her tenure are the very same traits that have been used against women seeking leadership positions in the workplace and in the public sector. When male leaders display traditionally feminine qualities, they can also be maligned as weak — former House Speaker John Boehner, for example, used to shed tears in public; Politico's response was to ask, "Why Does John Boehner Cry So Much?"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's obvious the Trump administration is terrified of appearing "weak" during the pandemic. But where has that gotten us? Prioritizing the economy over our health. Over 8 million infections, and 218,000 Americans dead. And the politicizing of wearing masks, as though wearing them were a sign of weakness — something Trump mocked his opponent Joe Biden for at their first and so far only debate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As much as toxic masculinity's social repercussion are harmful to our physical health, it is also taking a toll on our mental health. A study published in JAMA Network Open in September showed that three times as many Americans met criteria for a depression diagnosis during the pandemic compared to before it. According to an analysis of Google Trends, symptoms of anxiety increased too.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why? In part, it could be a result of having to power through these extraordinarily abnormal times without seeking help — that "bootstraps" mentality innate to toxic masculinity. One's attempts to hold it together can devolve into emotional suppression, which in return can cause more emotional distress. In July 2018, Penn State researchers found that women tried to suppress their fears about the Zika virus reported higher levels of fear later. "It turns out that not only is suppression ineffective at handling fear, but it's counter-productive," one researcher said. "It creates a cycle of fear — and it's a vicious cycle."</font></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">As a society, many of us — particularly men — haven't been authorized to express sadness publicly, and these studies reflect that. With over 200,000 Americans dead of coronavirus, their loved ones are grieving. Seven months later, we've yet to have a moment of national reflection to mourn.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As it is with the death of a loved one, grief isn't lessened by ignoring one's uncomfortable emotions. Instead, it requires collective vulnerability, compassion and patience. As author David Kessler told HBR:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Emotions need motion. It's important we acknowledge what we go through. [...] We tell ourselves things like, I feel sad, but I shouldn't feel that; other people have it worse. We can — we should — stop at the first feeling. I feel sad. Let me go for five minutes to feel sad. Your work is to feel your sadness and fear and anger whether or not someone else is feeling something. Fighting it doesn't help because your body is producing the feeling. If we allow the feelings to happen, they'll happen in an orderly way, and it empowers us. Then we're not victims.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As we try to stay strong through this pandemic, the strength we seek to feel will come from falling apart and allowing ourselves to feel the loss and the chaos—physically and emotionally. By persevering through that, still standing in so much unknown, we can experience real strength. In other words, the non-toxic kind.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Authoritarian white masculinity is Trump and Pence’s political debate strategy: communications expert</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Conversation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Karrin Vasby Anderson, Colorado State University</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the debate between Sen. Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence, commentators contrasted Pence's reserved demeanor with the belligerence President Donald</font></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">https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/submissive-fearful-and-l/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has tapped into a wellspring of authoritarianism running beneath the American electorate, according to a new book, and those voters aren't going away if he loses.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Psychology professor Bob Altemeyer and former Nixon White House lawyer John Dean explore that anti-democratic dynamic in their new book, "Authoritarian Nightmare," and found that many Republican voters prefer strong authoritarian leadership, reported the Washington Post.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"[Many Trump supporters] are submissive, fearful, and longing for a mighty leader who will protect them from life's threats," the authors write. "They divide the world into friend and foe, with the latter greatly outnumbering the former."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The authors measure authoritarianism using the right-wing authoritarian (RWA) scale Altemeyer developed in the early 1980s, which identifies authoritarian tendencies on a sliding scale, and surveyed 990 American voters in fall 2019 with help from the Monmouth University Polling Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"They found a striking linear relationship between support for Trump and an authoritarian mind-set," the Post reported. "The stronger a person supported Trump, the higher he or she scored on the RWA scale. People saying they strongly disapproved of Trump, for instance, had an average RWA score of 54. Those indicating complete support of the president, on the other hand, had an average score of 119, more than twice as authoritarian as Trump opponents."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many experts from a variety of fields agree that Trump displays authoritarian tendencies and poses a threat to U.S. democracy, but he needs his supporters to impose his will on American institutions and traditions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Even if Donald Trump disappeared tomorrow," Altemeyer and Dean write, "the millions of people who made him president would be ready to make someone else similar president instead."</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1st debate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">dominance, power, force, louder mansplain [2nd debate ben s? womaspLaIN"];  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">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trumps-debate-performance-showcased-the-only-thing-his-cult-cares-about/</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GUK</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://yyy.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/23/oregon-portland-pro-trump-protests-violence-texts</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revealed: pro-Trump activists plotted violence ahead of Portland rallies</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Patriots Coalition members suggested political assassinations and said ‘laws will be broken, people will get hurt’, leaked chats show</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[pix Far-right organizers clashed with counter-protesters at the Justice Center in Portland, Oregon, 22 August.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jason Wilson and Robert Evans</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@jason_a_w</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wed 23 Sep 2020 </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Leaked chat logs show Portland-area pro-Trump activists planning and training for violence, sourcing arms and ammunition and even suggesting political assassinations ahead of a series of contentious rallies in the Oregon city, including one scheduled for this weekend.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The chats on the GroupMe app, shared with the Guardian by the antifascist group Eugene Antifa, show conversations between Oregon members of the Patriots Coalition growing more extreme as they discuss armed confrontations with leftwing Portland activists, and consume a steady diet of online disinformation about protests and wildfires.</font></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">[Facebook removes Patriot Prayer pages in bid to halt 'violent social militias'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read more]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At times, rightwing activists discuss acts of violence at recent, contentious protests, which in some cases they were recorded carrying out. At one point, David Willis, a felon currently being sued for his alleged role in an earlier episode of political violence, joins a discussion about the use of paintballs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Where other members had previously suggested freezing the paintballs for maximum damage, Willis wrote: “They make glass breaker balls that are rubber coated metal. They also have pepper balls but they are about 3 dollars a ball. Don’t freeze paintballs it makes them wildly inaccurate” [sic.]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Willis did not immediately respond to voice and text messages sent to his listed cellphone number.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another prolific poster is Mark Melchi, a 41-year-old Dallas, Oregon-based car restorer who claims to have served as a captain in the US army.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Melchi has been recorded leading an armed pro-Trump militia, “1776 2.0” into downtown confrontations in Portland, including on 22 August. At several points in the chat he proposes violence in advance of those confrontations, and appears to confess to prior acts committed in the company of his paramilitary group.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Rightwing demonstrators chase a Black Lives Matter protester after a pro-Trump caravan rally at the Oregon state capitol on 7 September 2020 in Salem.]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In advance of the 22 August protest, Melchi wrote: “It’s going to be bloody and most likely shooting, they’re definitely armed… so let’s make sure we have an organized direction of movement and direction of clearing or other Patriots will be caught in the possible cross fire. When shit hits the fan.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He advised other members to ignore weapons statutes, writing, “I saw someone say bats, mace, and stun guns are illegal downtown. If you’re going to play by the books tomorrow night, we already lost. We are here to make a change, laws will be broken, people will get hurt… It’s lawlessness downtown, and people need to be prepared for bad things.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Following these comments, several rightwing demonstrators were recorded using gas and bats on 22 August, where Melchi and his militia were also present.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other remarks ahead of the day, Melchi draws on what he claims is his group’s history of traveling to multiple states to engage in violence at protests.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“My Group 1776 2.0. Has been fighting Antifa in Seattle, Portland, for months”, Melchi writes, adding “this won’t be a simple fist fight. People will get shot, stabbed and beat.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He also claims police cooperation in interstate violence, writing “Yes, going after them at night is the solution… Like we do in other states, tactical ambushes at night while backing up the police are key. You get the leaders and the violent ones and the police are happy to shut their mouths and cameras.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Melchi nevertheless recommends that members disguise themselves to avoid the consequences of homicide.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We must be ready to defend with lethal response… Suggest wearing mask and nothing to identify you on Camera…to prevent any future prosecution.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[We are here to make a change, laws will be broken, people will get hurt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mark Melchi]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response to detailed questions about these contributions, Melchi responded with an email that falsely suggested his comments might have been photoshopped, and concluded with direct threats.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Melchi wrote: “I suggest you don’t threaten combat veterans sweetheart, might get a little uncomfortable for ya big guy!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Melchi’s sentiments in the chat logs were in keeping with fantasies of, and plans for, violence, which are constantly discussed by group members.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although some members are connected with extremist groups or militias, on the whole they describe themselves as “patriots”, and they express no clear ideology beyond a hatred of the left, and a preparedness to use violence. The shared allegiances expressed in the group are mostly to the police, the United States and Donald Trump, a person whom some say they are prepared to kill for.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ahead of 22 August, a user “Paige” says “I’m waiting for the presidential go to start open firing”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Melchi, the militia leader, responds, “Well Saturday may be that go lol”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alex Newhouse, the digital research lead at the Center for Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute, said of the group that “the main mechanism that makes these communities so dangerous is the incessant desensitization to the idea of political violence”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Newhouse said that the ideas expressed in the group were entrenched in “extreme nationalism – that a few strong men with guns can together take out an evil that is at once imagined as an existential threat, and pathetically weak”. Newhouse added that the group’s discussions “fit within a broader trend of rightwing extremists becoming more accelerationist over time”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Rightwing and leftwing protesters battle with mace, paint balls and rocks near Justice Center in downtown Portland Saturday, 22 August 2020.]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The chatlogs became fractious at the peak of Oregon’s recent wildfire emergency. While some members said they had gone to rural areas to “hunt” imagined antifa arsonists, others became concerned about the dangers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As early as 9 September, the baseless idea that the fires were a coordinated arson attack was treated as settled fact, with Melchi writing: “People have officially died from these Antifa Fires. I’d shoot them on site” [sic], and another user, Dub, responding: “Yes sir if I see them they are getting dropped where they stand.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When adverse consequences of vigilantism became evident, leadership attempted to bring the group back under control. After a member of the group reported that an associate had been arrested in Lane county for “holding [someone] at gunpoint”, the group’s administrator, who used the user name Patriot Coalition, wrote “STOP HOLDING PEOPLE AT GUN POINT- STOP PULLING YOUR WEAPONS… VIDEO- TAKE PICTURES AND CALL 911.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mary McCord is the legal director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law School, which on Wednesday released a series of fact sheets on anti-paramilitary laws in all 50 states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Given details of the content of the chats, McCord said that “this is the kind of thing that might allow authorities to take action”, and that members of the group may “already be in violation of Oregon’s anti-paramilitary laws”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The group also talked about coordinating at the rally with the Proud Boys, an extreme rightwing group. One user, identified as Bravo91 and a part of the group’s leadership, spoke of phone calls with the Proud Boys.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Along with antifascist demonstrators, Democratic politicians are also the target of violent fantasies in the chats. In particular, Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, is demonized and nominated as a possible target for assassination by the group.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On 24 August, a user identified as “Trent-Medford” writes, “Fuck wheeler… guess what soon as we are done with these punks. He’s next freakin coward !!!!!!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">User T Durden went further. In response to news that an alleged arsonist had been released on bail, and without encountering disagreement, they wrote: “Maybe we need to start taking care of the justice ourselves!”, adding, “Start with justice on our DA and then move on to the governor. Maybe by the time we get to the first judge, they will have changed their tunes.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">stand down" --> stand back and stand by  --> new logo  sir we're ready to deal w/ antifa b/c x won't? chris picolini says calls to arms/violence DN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/watch-fox-news-host-grills-trump-spokesman-on-his-proud-boys-remark-and-tells-her-theyre-celebrating-it/</font></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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-is-using-the-tricks-of-reality-tv-against-a-and-its-not-going-well/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">it’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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unfortunately, it was a lesson we are all paying the price for now.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Thursday evening, the New York Times published an exposé about how the Trump White House forced the CDC to publish dangerously misleading coronavirus testing recommendations on its website.  the 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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. Trump has made clear from the beginning of this pandemic 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, the U.S. also has more than 20% of the world’s deaths, 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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 used CDC resources to prop up this insinuation that the big vaccine reveal is coming, right in the nick of time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“You could have a very big surprise coming up,” Trump said in a press conference last week.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We’re going to have a vaccine very soon, maybe even before a very special date. You know what date I’m talking about,” he added. Gee, I have no idea. What date could he possibly mean?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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, and told the obvious truth that 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 an eff-you personally directed at him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump, as usual, reacted poorly to someone trying to pierce his poorly constructed illusion of competent leadership. He responded by claiming that Redfield had “made a mistake” and offered “incorrect information.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What we did, that was a scam,” Bill Pruitt, a former producer on “The Apprentice,” said in the Netflix documentary “The Confidence Man,” which explored how the people behind that show used TV magic to make Trump seem smart and accomplished.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Most of us knew he was a fake,” Jonathan Braun, another producer, told The New Yorker. “But we made him out to be the most important person in the world. It was like making the court jester the king.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a 2017 essay about “The Apprentice,” 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; Trump’s combative streak is alchemized into Daddy’s tough love.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 Trump loves to believe he’s doing that. 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 do anything about it. He just wants someone to come in and edit reality to make it look like he’s doing something.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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, with a fake one where he’s declared the winner.</font></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">
</font></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">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/mass-delusion-why-trumps-followers-believe-their-leader-has-given-their-lives-meaning/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">within the next few days, we will pass a grisly benchmark: more than 200,000 Americans dead from the coronavirus. Public health experts predict that number may rise to 400,000 by the end of the year. 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why then do so many Americans refuse to wear masks during this pandemic?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Social scientists and other researchers have reached several preliminary conclusions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">People with lower cognitive abilities find it difficult to follow directions about when to wear a mask 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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) are also more likely not to wear masks as compared to others.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among men, a refusal to wear a mask is connected to a sense of fragile and embattled masculinity, in which masks are viewed as being “weak” and “feminine” and “not cool.” 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Scientific American, Emily Willingham suggests that masks are also viewed as a “condom of the face” by men who are afflicted with “toxic masculinity”:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></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">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Such thinking and behavior also reflect the fact that 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” crafted by liberals and intended to hurt the Trump administration. 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 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 — 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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, right-wing Christian fundamentalism, a disregard for truth and empirical reality, and contempt for expert knowledge.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 death cult where the followers will willingly sacrifice themselves for the greatness of the Leader. Trump’s followers, as their predecessors did in Germany, Italy and elsewhere, are prepared to kill or die for their leader.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Writing at the Metta Center for Nonviolence, UC Berkeley professor emeritus Michael Nagler explains this:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Strangely no one seemed to be asking this obvious question.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. … 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the Wire, cultural theorist Sibaji Bandyopadhyay explained the role of collective narcissism and sadism in attracting profoundly damaged people to neofascist movements and political cult leaders like Trump:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But, this is not all.</font></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">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Journalist Carl Bernstein 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To those outside the Trump cult such behavior makes no sense and is just further proof that Trump’s followers are human “deplorables” – in this example fulfilling their role as human bioweapons for Trumpism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. 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></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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/evangelical-explains-how-the-movement-swooned-for-donald-trump-and-betrayed-its-own-ideal-of-masculinity/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rea salon</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Four 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. They 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He, 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2003, philosopher Daniel Dennett wrote an op-ed in The New York Times 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. For the dominant narrative among evangelicals is just the opposite: Christians are persecuted; 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">i wrote a public post on Facebook 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 from fellow Christians, some signed with phrases like “In the truth of Christ.” Several minor news outlets wrote about the incident. Conservative columnist Rod Dreher wrote an article condemning me. Evangelical leader Al Mohler condemned my remarks on his weekly podcast.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How could such a frankly anodyne expression of regret and concern for others provoke such anger, especially within a Christian 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 perfectly OK 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In her recent book, “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation,” Calvin University historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez argues compellingly for the conclusion that 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 man of a certain sort — a political strongman whose brash and swaggering demeanor made it clear not only that, but how he would wield power on their behalf.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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, without concern for the usual norms 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, 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 before 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A cuck, 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 all 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a 2012 address entitled “The Frank and Manly Mr. Ryle,” 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 masculine feel in any of the contemporary senses of that term.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 white 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 evangelicals themselves, and their 19th-century predecessors, have given American Christianity that feel.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Jesus and John Wayne” 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 current scandal involving Jerry Falwell Jr. 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 support, much less admire, 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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” 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 the 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 losing 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What then can be done? What critique could possibly be offered that might actually speak 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So I give you “the bitch.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As most of us know from film rather than actual prison experience, to make someone your bitch is to co-opt them as an ally and active supporter by way of a certain kind of oppression, usually sexual domination. 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 and respect 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 responds 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 bitch — 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Importantly, there is no particular value system that goes along with being an alpha; nor, indeed, is there even any particular demeanor or personality disposition that goes along with it. 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2016, evangelical leaders became Trump’s bitch. They have remained so to this day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 man, 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Du Mez points out, there are some values evangelical leaders did not 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 did compromise in submission to Trump. In doing so, they became Trump’s bitch.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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. They, rather than those who suffer persecution for taking a stand for LGBTQ rights or for the rights of women, they, 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, they, 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 callously fired by the Ohio National Guard against peaceful anti-war kids at Kent State University.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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 John Lewis and Rosa Parks, who sat holding only her purse on a segregated Alabama bus.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">as MSNBC commentator Steve Schmidt tweeted, “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.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wannabe Stormtroopers</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 Donald Trump has so blatantly encouraged. His goal is to stoke enough fear among undecided swing voters to win another term this November.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guns have also surfaced most horribly, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where a 17-year-old white Trump supporter from Illinois, Kyle Rittenhouse, allegedly murdered two innocent protestors with a Smith & Wesson AR-15 style .223 rifle, a gun he had no legal right to own.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">president Trump, never one to miss a moment to cleave Americans further apart, defended the arrested murderer, “They very violently attacked him…I guess he was in very big trouble, he probably would have been killed.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s Rethoric</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Also worth noting is the shift in Trump’s rhetoric. In the aftermath of the 2017 Charlottesville white power rally, when tiki-carrying racists chanted, “Jews will not replace us!” Trump employed a moral equivalency between the neo-Nazis and the counter-demonstrators. He said there were “very fine people on both sides.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 wear masks, or people of color demanding equal treatment from law enforcement and justice from the courts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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: around two million, roughly, sadly, the same amount as were purchased in the wake of the Sandy Hook murders and President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2008.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fuming Macho Men</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 Tim McVeigh nutcase to go off at one of these rallies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Someone like Kyle Rittenhouse.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These fuming macho men 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></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"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trumps-church-of-white-masculinity/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the 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 feminists were coming for the unborn, the LBGTQIA community was coming for our children and racial minorities were coming for the rest of us. Furthermore, the RNC paraded women and speakers of color to state that President Trump was not racist, he was right —and those who refused to convert were deviants seeking the destruction of the nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This altar call is not much different from Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” or D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The disciples harken back to a perceived golden age of America, when the racial and gender power structure were correctly set, before the chaos caused by the recognition of the rights of racial minorities, women and the LBGTQIA community. This threat to white masculinity has intensified 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 questioning the manhood of any white people who criticize them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A 2016 PRRI/Atlantic survey finds a quarter of whites (24.9%) believe that diversity has come at their expense and that society has become too soft and feminine.Further, 93.1% of whites who agree with both of those statements reported voting for Trump. 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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%). 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%).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Kristin Kobes Du Mez argues in her recent book, “Jesus and John Wayne,” white evangelical culture has focused on the declining sanctity of white manhood. This is why Donald Trump captured 78% of the white evangelical vote in the face of numerous claims of sexual misconduct and racism. And, in the 2017 Alabama Senate race, former judge Roy Moore, who had also been accused of sexual misconduct, received 80% of the white evangelical vote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 dispatching federal officers and troops to stop peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park for a photo-op in front of St. John’s Church. 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 masculinity of those who take precautions against the virus.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></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">boogaloo bomb and gun attacks; worries spec ops hyper-masc radicalized by qanon?!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">alex h</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">during the 2020 Republican National Convention last week, it was painfully clear that President Donald Trump was emphasizing white grievance along with fear-mongering. 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 David Ignatius, in his Washington Post column, stresses that Trumpism continues to be a very bitter and angry ideology.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans, Ignatius writes, “dressed up their rage in prettier colors at this year’s convention.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“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.’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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. And he warns that Trumpian rage is as strong now as it was four years ago.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"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, according to the Pew Research Center. The best account of this white collapse is ‘Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism,’ published this year by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“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%, write Case and Deaton…. 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.</font></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">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/donald-trump-and-americas-cartoon-masculinity-is-a-desperate-attempt-to-cling-to-a-fading-ideal-author/</font></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><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 professional journalist in a serious publication, Vox, on the unique resistance many American men have against wearing face coverings in public during a pandemic involving an airborne virus:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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, 20 percent of men never wear masks — but only 8 percent of women. 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.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump is the ultimate symbol of the sad state of American manhood.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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, “Love and War: How Militarism Shapes Sexuality and Romance,” identifies this largely obsolete conception of manhood as “warrior masculinity.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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, but also to readily inflict such harm on others. 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 175,000 deaths — and he refuses even to simulate empathy and sensitivity, much less demonstrate the leadership skills necessary to help the people he supposedly serves.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It also summarizes the “warrior masculinity” ethos.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s “cartoonish masculinity,” Digby believes, offers a vicarious thrill to men who wrestle with similar kinds of insecurities:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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 notion of masculinity that is dear to them, but about which they must continually fight off doubts, of three kinds. First, there are doubts about their own ability to fulfill the ideals that are implicit in those notions of masculinity. 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, perhaps on an even more subconscious level, men are increasingly aware of what I describe in “Love and War” as the inherently sacrificial nature of masculinity. 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe Biden presents a different model of male leadership, exemplified in his selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as running mate. 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Security and humility are essential to a healthy presidency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his fascinating study of gender issues and the political career of John F. Kennedy, “JFK and the Masculine Mystique: Sex and Power on the New Frontier,” 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://theconversation.com/heres-what-itll-take-to-clean-up-esports-toxic-culture-143520</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">reminds me a bit of book on honor duels</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.thedailybeast.com/mens-rights-activists-roy-den-hollander-and-marc-angelucci-are-dead-and-the-movement-is-freaking-out</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Members of the so-called “men’s rights” movement want to get one thing straight: while a prominent member allegedly killed a judge’s son, seriously wounded her husband, and was implicated in the killing of another activist, it should not reflect badly on their community.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Den Hollander, who was later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, is also being eyed in the recent killing of Marc Angelucci, a rival men’s rights crusader and vice-president of the group National Coalition for Men in California. 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. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The slew of shootings are the latest in a pattern of violence to emerge from the “manosphere,” a sprawling misogynist movement, 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></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"></font></div><div><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 soft dems/fems </font></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">male is active, indep, fem is passive/dependent (thus must be obedient, submit to dominion of strict father, king of castle, breadwinner)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@realDonaldTrump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Interesting how ANTIFA and other Far Left militant groups can take over a city without barely a wimpier from soft Do Nothing Democrat leadership,  yet thesesame weak leaders become RADICAL when it comes to shutting down a state or city and its hard working, tax paying citizens!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ok he was there, but a week before?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx pix twt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">fox News removes ‘unethical’ digitally altered images of police brutality protests in Seattle</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Royalty-free stock photo ID: 1288386304 Tallinn, Estonia - 01/18/2019: Fox News website homepage. Fox News channel logo visible through a magnifying glass.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Roger Sollenberger / Salon June 16, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The original photo, from Getty Images, shows the armed man in front of a car.</font></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">He was digitally placed in front of the entrance sign.</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“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.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The mayor told the president, “Make us all safe. Go back to your bunker.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The photo was unaltered, but it was an AP photo taken May 30 in St. Paul, Minn. Fox News later removed it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The network also reported an anecdotal claim from Seattle Assistant Chief of Police Deanna Nollette.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“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.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Police Chief Carmen Best later corrected that statement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We haven’t had any formal reports of this occurring,” she said, indicating the reports had come from rumors spread on social media.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump called demonstrators “domestic terrorists” 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.</font></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">Donald J. Trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@realDonaldTrump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Interesting how ANTIFA and other Far Left militant groups can take over a city without barely a wimpier from soft Do Nothing Democrat leadership,  yet thesesame weak leaders become RADICAL when it comes to shutting down a state or city and its hard working, tax paying citizens!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">256K</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1:47 PM - Jun 14, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">121K people are talking about this</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“City officials have not interacted with ‘armed antifa militants’ at this site,” a city spokesperson told CNN.</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an intercept cdv</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...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?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is empowering. It flatters their masculine power. Nationalism and fascism are always masculine political projects. 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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">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.</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><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">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-uses-his-weird-grip-on-republicans-to-stoke-a-nihilistic-culture-war/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx pix</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">trump uses his weird grip on Republicans to stoke a nihilistic culture war</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon May 29, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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. He has taken the already polarized Republican Party and turned it into a cult of personality. His influence over the 40 to 45% of the population who seem to idolize him is immense.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. Trump’s allies on Fox News have pushed it hard among the faithful (with the unexpected exception of Sean Hannity.)</font></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">Acyn Torabi</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@Acyn</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Laura’s war against masks continues</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Embedded video</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All of this comes as he’s also implying it’s somehow weak, unmanly and un-American to wear one. In fact, he’s seized upon this as a new attack line against Joe Biden:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Judd Legum</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@JuddLegum</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Trump ads on Facebook mock Biden for wearing a mask</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">View image on Twitter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If we’re only allowed to be at 25 percent capacity, I want them to be the 25 percent of people that aren’t p—–, that aren’t sheep,” Smith told The Washington Post. “Being scared all the time isn’t good for your health. It suppresses your immune system.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump posted this tweet yesterday, cutely pretending that he was just making an observation:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald J. Trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@realDonaldTrump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So many different viewpoints! https://twitter.com/leesmithdc/status/1265629746450358273 …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lee Smith</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@LeeSmithDC</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Terrific ?@molmccann? piece in ?@FDRLST? — masks aren’t about public health but social control. Image of Biden in black mask endorses culture of silence, slavery, and social death.  https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/27/mandatory-masks-arent-about-safety-theyre-about-social-control/ …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">39.6K</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5:16 AM - May 28, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">20.7K people are talking about this</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Imagine a world where, instead of behaving so foolishly, Trump modeled sensible behavior by wearing a mask and social distancing and encouraging businesses to open up responsibly? His followers would buy red MAGA masks by the truckload and turn social distancing into the mark of macho American individualism. But he can’t do that, of course, because stoking the culture war is literally his last hope of winning re-election.</font></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">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 COVID-19 approached 100,000 — a milestone that will surely be passd on Tuesday or Wednesday — and the actual death toll is likely much higher. The weekend kicked off with new reports of soaring unemployment, 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><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the weekend, Trump, who isn’t exactly svelte himself, retweeted a conservative pundit mocking rising Democratic star Stacey Abrams for her weight. 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 pathetic men try to cover for their own inadequacies. 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.</font></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"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">HNN 4520 see confed</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...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.  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.  Those who voiced heterodox views could readily find their businesses shunned and their standing in society ruined.  “Vigilance committees” filled with men itching to prove their masculinity sprang into action at rumors 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....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald Trump’s supporters think of him as the ultimate alpha male, but a scathing op-ed in The Atlantic makes the case that he’s “the least masculine man” to be elected president in modern history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tom Nichols, a conservative professor at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The most damning aspect of Trump, writes Nichols, is his utter refusal to take any responsibility for his actions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read the whole editorial here.</font></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"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">520</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha: see zinn on sacrifice, // austerity (= tough, discipline, rational, male)  see shapiro</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> free mkt FUNDAMENTALISM: = METAPHOR // STORY  WORLDVIEW</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/its-time-to-reject-the-gods-of-commerce-america-is-a-society-not-an-economy/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">david m</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The “economy” does not exist. Human beings do. 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. 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 — died from the coronavirus infection she contracted 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans have less than $500 in savings. They simply do not experience the same “economy” as Rep. Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana, 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 reporter for the Wall Street Journal, once wrote, “America is not a nation … America is a market.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Millman was making a neutral, analytical observation, but a similar thesis has guided America’s long succession of disastrous policy decisions that treat the “economy” — meaning profits for corporations and their owners or shareholders — as sacred. An entire set of religious assumptions follow, most significantly that people like Jordan are martyrs for the God of profit. Their deaths are acceptable losses in the name of God and country, which mutate together into the bloodless idol of commerce.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Human sacrifices at the altar of the idol have become almost commonplace. Millions of children of color in the inner cities develop asthma and suffer from other respiratory problems because they breathe heavily polluted air; 26,000 Americans die every year because they lack health insurance; public health experts have concluded that poverty — and the lack of robust social services — causes tens of thousands of deaths a year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the United States to confront its market-based theology. 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></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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">420 an</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">n o  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">Why Trump is so eager to bring back professional sports</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Robert Lipsyte / TomDispatch April 23, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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 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.</font></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">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/taylor-swift-takes-on-toxic-masculinity-as-the-man/</font></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">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/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha trump boys mantly men who kill endangered species, hunters, // coal rolling?!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha 2: the opposite of virtue signalling?  just "different" virtues?</font></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"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">why Trump’s embrace of Eddie Gallagher is so dangerous</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 1219</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why Trump’s embrace of Eddie Gallagher is so dangerous</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 December 30, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.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. Mrs. Gallagher reportedly gushed, “God bless the Trump family and all they are doing for this country!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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 still shocking that he’s openly embracing accused war criminals, calling Gallagher “one of the ultimate fighters” and a “very tough guy.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. “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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. 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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><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">congress to Vote on $22 Billion Defense Increase One Week After Trump Slashed Food Stamps</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alex Emmons</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders and California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna called the defense bill an example of “astonishing moral cowardice.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ MORE →</font></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"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">impeach gop yellers:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"i am not yielding’: Watch Rep. Pramila Jayapal shut down Jim Jordan’s attempt to hijack impeachment hearing</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Edwards / Raw S</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">thanos ultra masc</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-campaign-tweets-video-of-president-as-murderous-comic-book-villain-who-loses-in-the-end/</font></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">1219</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">forced sonogram, must view</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Supreme Court’s newest move on abortion approves torture for pregnant people</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Common Dreams</font></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">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-brings-pardoned-us-war-criminals-onstage-at-florida-republican-fundraiser/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0305829818775817</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cara Daggett</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First Published June 20, 2018 Research Article</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829818775817</font></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">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">driver on trump seal pardon? war crimes 2x called them warriors ~ deep state?! (rudy is a warrior, not acting on my djt behalf, indep go-getter)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">, U.S. Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer (no relation to the white nationalist of the same name) was forced out 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 reportedly continued even after Trump tweeted his disapproval of the move.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Following several attacks from Hegseth on Spencer and the Navy during the course of Sunday morning’s Fox & Friends broadcast, Trump announced his displeasure with the Navy and Spencer’s termination on Twitter.</font></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">aha: Rambo do we get to win this time, wimpy spineless bureaucrats prevented MANly am fighting men to beat primitive PJ comies:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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/</font></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">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><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></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">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trump-used-money-raised-for-vets-as-campaign-slush-fund-that-should-end-his-political-career</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">teflon --> kevlar?</font></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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">male pattern boldness?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hearing audience groans as GOP’s Matt Gaetz rants about ‘low-T’ impeachment inquiry</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/trump-fan-rep-matt-gaetz-is-now-under-investigation-for-potentially-trying-to-threaten-michael-cohen/</font></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"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-represents-the-gops-warped-view-of-masculinity-and-what-comes-next-could-be-even-worse</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump represents the GOP’s warped view of masculinity — and what comes next could be even worse</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Common Dreams September 6, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Donald McCarthy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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 tough guy presidential persona. 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><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, 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.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see beran something awful</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://medium.com/@DaleBeran/4chan-the-skeleton-key-to-the-rise-of-trump-624e7cb798cb</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">very good and funny talk</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.c-span.org/video/?463096-1/it-awful</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JULY 30, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It Came From Something Awful</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dale Beran talked about his book, It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office, in which he profiled the counterculture online hub 4chan.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">black pill is nihilistic embrace of loserdom, suicide = hero "I'm going in"</font></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">never again jewish protestors hit by big black truck; charlottesville faux dodge muscle car; canada?</font></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">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/revealed-leaked-memo-shows-the-republican-partys-vile-strategy-to-respond-to-mass-shootings-with-lies/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revealed: Leaked memo shows the Republican Party’s vile strategy to respond to mass shootings with lies</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Walter Einenkel / Daily Kos August 16, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If asked, the memo suggests that the first thing to do is to “steer the conversation away from white nationalism 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 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.</font></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">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CBS News</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@CBSNews</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> 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 </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Embedded video</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/24/americas/toronto-van-investigation/index.html</font></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">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.</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">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">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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/misogyny-and-white-supremacy-its-time-to-fight-these-closely-linked-sources-of-violence/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Misogyny and white supremacy: It’s time to fight these closely-linked sources of violence</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">“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">Obviously a leftist can also be a violent misogynist, but left-wing politics doesn’t feature misogyny as part and parcel of its ideology. 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.” 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">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">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><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">Gun violence reporter says misogyny is the ‘clear link’ between many mass shootings</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Amy Goodman, Democracy NowAugust 6, 2019</font></div><div><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></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">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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><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.’ Future federal judges of America.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McConnell’s spokesman said in a statement 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But as HuffPost reported, “Some of the same men also appeared in a photo 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.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 HuffPost. “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: ‘The Grim Reaper of Socialism.'” [posted hours after mass shooting]</font></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">
</font></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">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.</font></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"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha based on brazil fail tip pt: // ecosystem health and indig cult heath/ languages; indig and native Am ppl is EJ intensified; 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 berta C]. 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 missing native women around man camps, a throwback to wild west gold rush? toxic masculinity, low density of women].</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/democratic-2020-strategy-must-be-gloves-off-and-abandon-all-subtletytrump-will-kill-your-dog/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democratic 2020 strategy must be gloves off and abandon all subtlety: ‘Trump will kill your dog!’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Lucian K. Truscott IV / Salon July 27, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here’s why Republicans are pushing the lie that Trump is a tough guy. Because it works. 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. “Toughness is a core primary value,” 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.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. The contrast between the serious, taciturn Mueller and such bellowing “bomb throwers” as Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio couldn’t have been starker.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Take health care as just one example. 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. Meanwhile, Republicans have spent the last several decades firing potshots at Democrats and proposing no plan of their own.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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....</font></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">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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“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">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><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">amash</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The lone one, the Maytag repairman of Republicans,” Maher said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></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">
</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">People are asking why the shooter in Virginia Beach used a gun to settle his workplace score. The answer is probably pretty simple.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></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">As a result of this male aggression provoked in part by handling guns, in America guns are the second leading cause of death (just behind car crashes) among children between 1 and 19 years old.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For men who feel that they’ve lost control of their lives, or who feel dismissed or disrespected by others, this is pure catnip.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></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">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Required liability insurance, by the way, is the most Republican/conservative of all gun control measures; it’s a “free market solution.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></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">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">keane salon</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his 2017 book about the campaign and American rage, “The People Will Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore,” 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 he wrote for the New York Times in October 2016, after the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape leaked, he recognized the power of Trump’s messaging immediately:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the book that rose out of that op-ed, “The Man They Wanted Me To Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making” (Counterpoint Press, out now), Sexton (an occasional Salon contributor) 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s been a week for men already. There was the Harper’s Bazaar article recently about how men don’t have friends, and of course women are paying the price for that, and then Darcy Lockman’s piece in the New York Times pegged to her new book “All the Rage” about how men don’t pull their weight when it comes to home and kids and don’t really seem to care, either. Those are women writing about the side effects of toxic masculinity. 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?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They just instinctually fall back on them in times of trouble.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. It’s this backlash that is very coded in harmlessness: we’re just having fun, it’s just another party. 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?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s really an act of cultural self-harm. It’s like cultural self-immolation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I’m glad you said that about self-harm. 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 — a man doesn’t complain, a man doesn’t go to the doctor — was killing him. His attitude toward himself remained really unkind and really punishing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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 this ambient level of self-criticism and self-loathing happening at all times.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This sounds almost cliché, but I needed this book when I was little.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The question of “how did you get out?” is interesting. The idea there, I suppose, is that there’s an inand there’s an out, right? But is a highly-educated national media personality who turns out to be a sexual harasser or abuser in or out? 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I think the idea that we can’t — I think that’s really, really damaging.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. 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. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></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">Pastor who criticized 'gun-free zones' shot woman in the head after she refused sex with him: report</font></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">https://www.alternet.org/traumatic-vision-masculinity-lies-root-resentful-incel-movement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When I read that Scott Paul Beierle, 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") Elliot Rodger, I was, sadly, unsurprised.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 infamously shot up a California sorority in 2014 because he believed women were unjustly uninterested in him romantically; earlier this year, Alek Minassian drove a van into a pedestrian area of Toronto to target women because of his own sexual frustration; back in 2009, George Sodini 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In all these cases, the men in question were victim to the American conception of masculinity that made them feel deeply inadequate. 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A study 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></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">
</font></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">==</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/trump-and-mans-man-heres-how-democrats-struggle-over-masculinity-50-years-ago-still-playing-out</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...During 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 “The Men and the Moment,” 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.</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is a story with lasting implications for the Democratic Party.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘He cries too much’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1968, presidential politics was still a man’s world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As scholars such as Robert Dean and K.A. Cuordileone 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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, linking sexuality with subversion. Liberals were “soft” by association.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 “Johnson Treatment” combined cajoling, vulgar analogies, veiled threats and physical force. He used it in the service of passing “Great Society”legislation that included the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, and dozens of other initiatives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Johnson famously reflected to biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He considered Humphrey, his vice president, one of those weak men.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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, burying his presidential bid. He cried at the sight of wounded American soldiers in Vietnam hospitals.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Humphrey was authentically emotional and empathetic. As a senator from Minnesota, 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 privately advocated a peace settlement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 sold the war to Congress and the public with trademark fervor. By 1968, Humphrey had curried favor with the Democratic establishment, but destroyed his progressive reputation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democratic fracture</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[pix]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 Johnson shot down those suggestions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 brutal policemen in downtown Chicago. Humphrey’s campaign soon hit rock-bottom.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 The New York Times called Humphrey “a burnt-out case who left his political manhood somewhere in the dark places of the Johnson administration.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No regrets</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Nov. 5, Richard Nixon won the election. 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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LBJ had no regrets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Modern manhood</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What does this mean for today’s Democratic Party?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 enacted reforms 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 Hillary Clinton for president. Many of its brightest stars are women.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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 huge majority of men consider masculinity as part of their identity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><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></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Check out The Conversation US’ podcast “Heat and Light,” a seven-episode series hosted by award-winning journalist Phillip Martin, looking at pivotal moments from 1968.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Aram Goudsouzian, Professor of History, University of Memphis</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.</font></div>