I’ve had a fortuitous convergence of input and ideas in the preceding week. I’ve been reading the Personal Memoirs of Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant and The Ayn Rand Column (which surprisingly enough, is a compilation of columns Ayn Rand wrote for the LA Times in the early ‘60s. Who’d’a thunk it).
While that’s going on, I happened across a clip of Jordan Peterson discussing “toxic” masculinity. An old favorite. And though some Boomers and the next two generations believe that history started the day they reached puberty, they may want to listen to Peterson, Grant and Rand to expand their knowledge and thinking about manhood.
The drivel about the “sensitive” male is not new. The InstaGram dorks spouting this garbage today did not invent a new, revolutionary concept. The idea of the “toxic” male, the “domineering” male, the mansplainer…are all phony, meaningless contrivances weak men in every generation invent to look down upon. I’ve seen iterations of it in the 1960’s, then the late 80’s and early 90’s, then it reemerged again as fashionable around 2015. Sadly, with the dumbing down effect of social media, the idea is a bit stickier this time around. I think the gibberish about “toxic” masculinity this time around is amplified by the immergence of hard-core gender bending. Before society gets to dealing with the subtle differences between “strong” and “bad” men, we will have to squash the bugs who want bearded lady circus freaks sharing the restroom with our teenage daughters. But that is for another show.
I worry whether we’ve gone so far around the bend this time that we might not find a path back.
Sometimes it’s women who conflate the behavior of psychotic or insecure men with whom they’ve interacted, with the idea of a strong man. These men had, or pursued, perverse power over the lives of some women. The women rightfully resented it. But, in their minds, and because of the mistreatment, all strong men become sexual predators. It’s like the lunatics we see frequently saying that all white people are racist by virtue of their being white, an equally stupid concept.
Also, with varying degrees of success, celebrity weaklings of various levels of fame, have succeeded in convincing at least a part of their generation that REAL men are bad. Sunken-chested weaklings are the pillars of society. The whole mess can be far more nuanced than I can possibly account for here. It runs the gambit from women who think their power derives from demeaning men in the workplace to males emulating weak fathers, or obsessed with their mothers, to cuckoldry. But there is no valid reason to denigrate the role of strong healthy men in society. When societies throughout history did that, they damaged themselves.
We’ll start with Peterson and expand out.
One of the points he tends to hammer home is the difference between men who are a danger to society - violent men, bad men - and men who are capable of violence – capable of being dangerous – but not at all cruel or violent by default.
The former is not such because he suffers from being male. Most people, not just men, who are violent, are the way they are because they have failed in some other area of life, or because influential figures in their life failed them. In the case of men, it can at least be said that someone, by word or deed, taught them a warped view of life and how to interact with others. I suspect there are often psychological disorders involved.
These types of people, especially men are dangerous and behave in a dangerous way. They tend to be violent or at least mindlessly aggressive by default.
I won’t get into how we deal with these people now. But I am not terribly sympathetic toward adults who have come of age and not learned the error in their ways or not realized they had a problem and tried to combat it.
All this contrasts with the strong man. Men who live a healthy life and have people and interests to protect. Is it not best that these men be at least capable of violence? Should his home be invaded, is it not the highest good that he be capable of putting a bullet in the skull of the invader rather than seeing his family harmed? If someone enters his place of business, attacking customers or destroying his property, is it not correct that he causes that to stop, by violent means if necessary?
On this subject, Peterson makes an excellent point. A man with the capacity to be dangerous, who would only employ that propensity, when necessary, is not a bad man. Conversely, the man who is not dangerous because he is weak, is not automatically a good man. One might argue that if he remained weak in all situations, he is a bad man. This despite that he might be a very pleasant person to talk to.
It's ironic that the people best known to espouse the views of the weakest in our culture (I emphasize “espouse” because it is not genuine) are Hollywood showfolk. They tend to advance the weakest and most socially denigrating ideas in public, then go on to glorify the mindless or vindictive violence we are speaking of here, in their work. In many cases they venerate or make excuses for the worst kinds of violence that go beyond protecting lives and homes. Their flicks often put gratuitous violence front and center.
My take is this: It is by allowing those with a twisted proclivity for dangerous and violent behavior to roam the streets, and by holding up the weak as good, we coarsen society. By respecting strong men who behave respectfully and by teaching our boys to become such men, we improve society immeasurably.
There will be a button, with the others, below the audio line and text, for a video. There you can see Peterson’s views firsthand.
Ayn Rand’s take on manliness
As I said earlier, there is nothing new in this conflict of ideas. With the least exception, a straight line runs from the political Left, those who wish to control our lives and be obeyed, and the people who seek to denigrate personal strength and free thought. You won’t find too many people, men or women on the Right, for example, who care a lick about your “personal” pronouns. Nor will you find many there who wish to raise weak, docile men.
In one of Ayn Rand’s columns, she spoke of the media’s reaction to the TV series, The Untouchables. As you might expect, in the context of this post, the media elites were panning the very qualities in the main character and storyline, that this post endorses. The writers and producers intentionally created Elliot Ness with a morals-based sense of purpose. He was intensely focused, slow to anger, but quick to destroy that which would destroy the society he protects.
Here's how Rand sees Robert Stack’s “Ness”:
By the austere, unsmiling grimness of his manner, the total self-confidence even in moments of temporary defeat, so total that it can afford to be unstressed, the controlled intensity, the quiet absolute dedication to the moral justice of his task, Stack conveys the integrity of a truly untouchable man – a man whom evil cannot tempt, because it has nothing to offer him. By the faint, occasional hints of a bitterly patient weariness, he projects that fighting evil is not a lark or a glamorous adventure, but a grim job and deadly battle.
As Rand points out, it was these very traits the softies in the media attacked in their reviews of the series. If the term “toxic masculinity” existed in the 60’s, the triggered reviewers of The Untouchables would have ALL used it. They did not then, as the InstaGram knuckleheads do not now, understand the actual qualities that make men, real men, men who strengthen society.
The cyclical concept of weak or primarily sensitive men being superior is a contrivance. It is the creation of weak men and insecure women lashing out against qualities they lack, and perhaps wish they possessed. But they don’t – so they try to belittle the men who do.
Ulysses S. Grant
I included Grant in this discussion because I happened to have his and Rand’s books open at the time and because he demonstrates the concept of the type of man I advocate for on a macro level.
Look at the military left us by General Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Chris Plante, radio personality, likes to call him “thoroughly Modern Milley. Milley was the very essence of the post-Vietnam yes-man, an empty uniform, a man devoid of personal conviction or the true vision of a leader. His Chairmanship was marred, by his own hand, with faddish obsessions. He had men dressed as women making drag recruiting videos. Then, coward that he is, deflected responsibility for it. He became the military king of the diversity hire. Not only was that a disservice to the uniform, but it was also a disservice to those brought up based on skin color or genitalia. Their peers, or worse subordinates, will always put a mental asterisk next to their names, wondering if they were really qualified or if their promotion just checked a Milley “woke” box.
Rather than build a military intended to break all enemies of their ability to resist our will (his only fucking job), he built one ONLY to please his transient betters in DoD, congress and the White House. As a result, of the 30% of our teenage/young adult population physically qualified to serve in the armed forces, few wish to. These kids aren’t stupid. They see the trends. And normal kids don’t want to salute a dude in a woman’s uniform.
The philosophy of the modern military is to be risk averse. To avoid battle at all costs, and when battle finds us, to creep into it with a primary goal of not losing. I didn’t say winning, I said “not losing”. That’s why we wasted 125,000+ lives from 1950 – 2021, while fighting, in most cases, ridiculously inferior forces.
Also, as we discovered during Vietnam, if the casualty numbers are low, per week, we can extend a fiasco almost indefinitely. But as George Patton taught us, it is better to take the big lumps quick and early with the intention of annihilating the enemy, thereby taking fewer casualties over time AND winning.
War is an ugly business; best fought by the MEN I speak of in this post.
So how does Grant figure? Think large-scale.
As you read his amazing tome, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, you get to see him learn how to use and move his forces as men learn to be men and muster their personal strength, only using those strengths violently when the situation requires it of him. As an aside, you also see him evolve in his thinking about of the Civil War and race and slavery.
As a junior officer, when the outcome of a major battle did not rest on HIS shoulders, Grant was a textbook guy. He fulfilled his obligations as a cog in a bigger wheel. Except for a bit of adrenaline, he said he never felt trepidation when approaching the enemy.
That would change. And it is in the change and the lessons learned, lessons which the man MUST see in order TO learn (that’s called growing up), we see Grant learn as we would wish our men - and now, sadly, some of our women – to learn.
Approaching Florida Parishes in Mississippi, Grant noticed the absence of man and beast along the march. Everything pointed to real trouble. Grant, now in command of a substantial army, the onus of victory on him, felt real fear. He says:
“As we approached the brow of the hill from which it was expected we could see Harris’ camp, and possibly find his men ready formed to meet us, my heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me it was in my throat. I would have given anything to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do; I kept right on.”
But Harris and his troops had bailed from their position as Grant’s forces approached. The camps were empty. Grant said his heart returned to its normal place. Grant assesses thus:
“It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him. This was the view of the question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot afterwards. From that event to the close of the war, I never felt trepidation upon meeting the enemy…”
This doesn’t mean Grant never felt ANY anxiety, his concerns were detailed and monumental in every campaign. But his realization that his enemy were NOT supermen and had traits to be exploited gave him a significant advantage.
By contrast, characters like “thoroughly modern Milley” climbed the ranks in an era when all generals were expected to be like George McClellan, take the field with bravado and then hunker down. Don’t fight unless you already know the risks have been minimized or eliminated. Then speak of your engagements like they were all Antietam or the Battle of the Bulge, even though they were just a few hooches or an ammo dump. A Mark Milley could never have taken the mantle of responsibility so completely onboard as Grant did in Mississippi and after.
It worth noting the obvious. NO general prior to the Obama administration would have allowed men in his ranks to don dresses either.
Being a MAN, whether as commander of an army, or a CEO, or a floor manager, or just living your own best life, is a matter of priorities and guts. Get them right and you are a man. And there is nothing - absolutely NOTHING – wrong with that.
I am mired in information these days.
During the preparation of this show I watched an episode of the podcast Modern/Wisdom. I’ll link it as a button so as not to distract from this post. But it was an incredibly interesting conversation. And as of this moment I haven’t gotten through all of it.
But there was something presented that really hit home with me. It regarded “audience capture” and a new term (for me anyway) “criticism capture” (about 1:13:00 in the video). The subject on M/W was physics and argument surrounding string theory. It seems physics guys can be brutal and petty, quite the showmen at times. But the criticism capture theory immediately made me reflect on my work, politically, socially and economically; it’s what I do. I won’t pretend to be operating on the level of those guys on M/W. But in response to how they defined and demonstrated their terms, I will say the following.
When I criticize, even in brash terms, it is always my aim to be speaking truth, even satirical truth (Tampon Tim pops to mind). If I ever give inaccurate information - I don’t believe it happens often - I NEVER do that or anything else with the goal of deceiving.
But the job of the critic is always the easy one, isn’t it. Done right, it requires work, but the critic rarely suffers the slings and arrows. He launches them. So, if you catch me short on a subject, or even think you do, I truly want you to call me out. While I believe in spanking someone in private and praising them in public, my work is already out there. So don’t be afraid to ding me in the comments.
I will address such concerns with clarification or possibly a change of position if the comments provide new facts for me to consider.
Thank You, The Management
The big “debate”
I am convinced 90% of the people who tune into the upcoming debate between Orange Man and the Cacklin’ Hyena will be looking for a repeat, one way or the other, of the previous debate. They tuned into that one to see a big NASCAR crash. And they got it.
Some folks are hoping that Trump take a pit stop at the wrong time. Others are hoping Kammy hits the wall and spins into the infield. My gut says that if you’re hoping for a fiery wreck of any kind, you won’t be disappointed.
The Dem party and the Cabal want us to believe that Kammy is hugely popular. She is so popular, in fact, she had to bus in staffers from all over New England to attend a “rally” in Boston. If she was worth a bucket of warm spit to rank and file Dems, they should have been turning people away. But she’s not.
Further, she is supposed be a great prosecutor, DA and AG from California. Not only is she joyful (and likes school busses and Venn diagrams), but she’s brilliant. So ACCOMPLISHED! And yet she still needs 5 days of back-to-back debate sessions to memorize a laundry list of responses to questions she is not supposed to know – nor is her staff.
No matter.
Trump on the other hand is vulgar, an upstart. He never amounted to anything (aside from tens of billions of dollars’ worth of real estate that didn’t exist, or had fallen to ruin, before he came along). We already know what his debate style is: say any goddamn thing he wants to say. And that is what makes him dangerous.
Count on one of two outcomes on Tuesday.
1) Trump uses his free-wheeling style to mentally derail Kammy from her pre-packaged program, in which case you will watch her campaign melt on the spot.
OR
2) Kammy stays inside her handlers’ guardrails and the numbers remain as they are. There’s no way a Communist is going to shake a single vote from DJT. He could shit on the stage and that wouldn’t happen.
I’m calling it a 52/48 shot in favor of the Donald. That isn’t a reflection of relative popularity. That would be an 80/20 for Trump. I just think the moderators will carry Kammy when she gets into trouble. She’ll have to screw up badly to make that impossible. But it would warm the heart to see the meltdown.
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Strength and the CAPABILITY of Violence