Tuesday
You live by toxic masculinity, you die by toxic masculinity. This was my thought when reading a recent column by Never-Trump conservative Matt Lewis about the current GOP. For years we watched politicians like former House Speaker Paul Ryan waving Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in the air as they heaped scorn on people who can’t pull themselves up by their own bootstraps but rely on government services. These moochers want to use the social safety net as a hammock, Ryan sneered as he aspired to be a John Galt, a Nietzchean Ubermensch, an alpha male.
When people like Ryan encounter someone who is even more alpha, however, they invariably crumple like a cheap suit (to use an analogy that shows up frequently in hardboiled detective novels). Ryan thought he was a master of the universe until he encountered a man who boasted about grabbing women by the pussies. Then, when he objected that this was going too far, Trump cut him off at the knees, and that was the beginning of the end for Paul Ryan.
According to Lewis, the current Republican Party is full of Paul Ryans:
The Republican Party says it wants to be a working man’s party, but this feels more like wine than beer to me. The only John Wayne they have left is Donald Trump. He’s the alpha male, and the betas all cower before him. What we’re left with is a GOP full of neutered opportunists—snowflakes paying their dues, biting their tongues, and hoping to retire with a gold watch.
Lewis singles out Ted Cruz, who now pals around with Trump “despite Trump implying Cruz’s wife is ugly—and alleging that Cruz’s father was involved in the JFK assassination.” Cuz thinks he can reclaim his manhood by degrading others, most recently America’s “woke and emasculated” military, whom he said Democrats are trying to turn into “pansies.”
By lashing out at others while sheltering under Trump’s umbrella, Cruz reminds me of various toadies in literature. Tolkien’s Wormtongue comes to mind, as do Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, the two bullies who follow in Draco Malfoy’s wake in the Harry Potter books. And of course, Malfoy himself folds like our cheap suit when Voldemort turns against his family. Being a bully is a losing proposition.
Crabbe provides an object lesson. Having discovered Harry, Hermione and Ron in the Chamber of Secrets, he thinks he can destroy them with a curse, only to discover a curse can backfire:
A roaring, billowing noise behind [Harry] gave him a moment’s warning. He turned and saw both Ron and Crabbe running as hard as they could up the aisle toward them.
“Like it hot, scum?” roared Crabbe as he ran.
But he seemed to have no control over what he had done. Flames of abnormal size were pursuing them, licking up the sides of the junk bulwarks, which were crumbling to soot at their touch.
Crabbe perishes in flames he himself has unleashed. Take heed, Sen. Cruz.
The alternative to toxic masculinity is seeing society as interdependent, with each of us contributing our gifts to the whole. That means respecting others and being tolerant of human frailty. This is also the best way to govern a country, as it turns out. Unfortunately, it not in the GOP’s current playbook.
