A while back I listened to a podcast where a researcher said that the accepted reasons for the rise of the Nazis weren't sufficient, and that the fundamental attraction of the Nazis was violence. The German people were drawn to and intoxicated by the violence. It gave permission to be violent.
And so we see the same in the U.S. today. Maybe the dark draw to MAGA is violence. The execrable Musk has declared that empathy is a weakness, and it looks like this is a common and loudly proclaimed "value" of MAGA.
How pervasive is violence in the U.S.? How many revenge movies have become box office hits? How many "heroes" prove their heroism by beating up or killing the "bad guys". How many scenes in movies and TV have "peace loving good guys" been hectored by four or so bullying "bad guys" resulting in the "good guy" being more violent than the "bad guys" and beating the crap out of them. Yay! the "good guy" is more violent than the "bad guys".
There are more guns in the U.S. than there are people. Got to be prepared for... violence ... doncha know?
We have a Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who makes a very overt appeal to violence, wanting "his" military to be scary, brutal, violent "warriors'. And just to prove what a "man" he is he orders war crimes as proof. And now he wants to broadcast the death by firing squad of a convicted military criminal.
Our country is in a crisis of manhood. Males are confused about how to be a man. They don't know, so they take the quick shortcut - be scary, be muscular and big, be violent. This is not what a man is, this is what a young teenage boy thinks a man is. So we end up with Pete Hegseth and Robert F Kennedy Jr posing doing body building muscle videos. Indeed, Jr has changed the government recommended food pyramid from a healthy diet to a body builder's high protein diet - not a healthy longevity diet. Jr brags that his breakfast is two cheeseburgers and three eggs. Idiocy.
Manhood is more than scaring people and being violent. It is taking action and exerting willpower, indeed. And it is also learning and thinking and understanding. It is also embracing the feminine energies of imagination and feeling, perceiving and conceiving. It is protecting and providing. It is giving and caring. It is being a whole person, not a caricature cartoon version of a man based on movies about law breaking revenge criminals and mobsters. Actual men are balanced men, not out of balance violent overgrown adolescents.
