I read this story, about some troglodyte running for county executive in Pennsylvania, and I fold it in with the Madison Cawthorn story from yesterday and the innumerable cases of dipshit White guys playing soldier or freaking out over masks and...WTF, White guys?
America's endless fetish with massive pickup trucks, guns and "tactical" gear bespeaks a fragility in the male ego that is kind of nuts. True, for decades White guys had close to carte blanche for the sort of low-key aggression of "it was just a joke" or being secure as the primary breadwinner. The rise of women in the workplace culminated in the 2008 economic crisis that hit blue collar White guys especially hard. Add in the temerity of non-White people asking to be treated with respect and something broke in a certain segment of White guy. Oh, and his girlfriend/wife.
My son just saw his barber driving down the street in a huge black pickup truck, smoking a cigarette and talking on his phone. His barbershop is like a petri dish for a sort of throwback, swaggering idea of manhood that will ultimately curdle into something pathological in some men.
There is a certain fragile masculinity at hold in Black people as well, it's not solely a White thing. The rap culture of conspicuous excess and casual misogyny is a good example of this dynamic.
When did men become so delicate and fragile that they need to threaten school board members over public health measures like wearing masks in school? It's so fundamentally stupid that it befuddles people. Of course, it's not about the mask per se. Some of it is a recklessness confused with bravery, but most of it is the casual Oppositional Defiance Disorder that characterizes modern boys and boys over the age of 18 who never grew out of it.
If we don't start creating more empathetic and compassionate men, we are so fucking doomed.
No comments:
Post a Comment