Extreme Masculinity in America

Like human beings themselves, nations have a male and female side to their sense of being. Healthy nations keep a balance between the two aspects, but sometimes a country gets out of balance because of external forces or internal malaise. Some are naturally or constitutionally (make-up, not parchment) oriented more one way or the other, but most cultures make their masculine and feminine sides evident in some healthy proportion.
After World War II, the United States essentially forced Japan and Germany to emphasize their feminine sides, having had enough of the hyper-masculine version of Japanese and German cultures in the form of Pearl Harbor attacks, death marches, blitzkriegs, and concentration camps. The reconstruction of both Japan and much of Germany was done mostly under the direction of a fatherly western alliance that ensured no hyper-masculine recrudescence occurred in either country for at least a generation.
Today in America we are witnessing the stern father side of our masculine-feminine continuum attempt to grab hold of dominance in the form of the Tea Party politics and impose a masculine order on what the Tea Party sees as a cultural morass of self-indulgence, spend-thrift behavior, loose morals, and irresponsibility all marinated in a cauldron of “feminine” entitlements that date back to the New Deal.
This “disciplinary action” taken by the Tea Party and their chosen Zombies, the regular Republican Party, is not unexpected. It is all part of the “correction” to the perceived imbalance between masculine and feminine elements in American culture as seen from a neo-conservative perspective. The problem is, they have it mostly wrong.
America has always been one of the most masculine nations on the planet from the outset. It has celebrated hyper-masculine men in the form of single combat warriors: Daniel Boone, Davey Crockett, and their fictional equivalents The Lone Ranger and Dirty Harry; in the form of self-made men: Abe Lincoln, Ben Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Warren Buffett; and in terms of physical giants: Paul Bunyan (fictional) as well as the entire panoply of players in the NFL and NBA.
America’s women have followed suit in producing and celebrating great athletes, space pioneers, star CEOs, and great writers. No flower arranger would ever make the top ten in America culture. In short, even America’s women are measured in terms of masculine success.
Like it or not, America is a highly masculine culture. It makes no attempt to balance traditional masculine-feminine elements. It continues to become the most workaholic, achievement-driven, wealth accumulating, body-sculpting, competitive country on the planet.
In fact, women may be winning the race to pure masculinity. They represent 60 percent of all college graduates; they are gradually closing the income gap; they are choosing to remain single in greater numbers in order to not be held back by relationships or child-bearing; they are gradually replacing men in all but the most physical arenas.
How healthy is this evolution or final frontier conquering for American culture? Will it mean that the former purely masculine spheres of American culture will be feminized and that all of this masculine hustle on the part of women is merely a means to an end? And will stay-at-home dads bring masculinity to home-keeping, cooking, diaper-changing, and Tupperware parties? Will a new synthesis emerge such that the balance of female and male will be found in the individual and the culture as a whole and not rigidly reflected in or expected from gender groups?
No telling how this will play out. Meanwhile, the Tea Party in name and concept is at least triply ironic in its mission, its make-up, and its name. It wants to remind America of and return America to a mythical golden age when the masculine discipline of individual responsibility was king. No more of this feminine social welfare crap that puts cooperation over competition or common welfare over individual achievement.
What the Tea Party will have to continue to ignore is the fact that corporations want to destroy competition and gain oligarchic if not monopolistic control of both markets and resources. The only possible defense against such control is government. Better to reform government than weaken it enough to drown it in a bathtub, as Grover Norquist wishes. The alternative to better government, which gun sales would indicate is growing in popularity, is a different kind of social security, one that produces questionable security and little sleep: a Smith and Wesson nestled under your pillow. Question: Does that mean we all become our own “head dick+” or merely dick-heads?
Today our popular culture reinforces hyper-masculine absurdity in the form of endless football games on television, grandiose, gratuitous violence passing for action movies, and Animal House behavior dominating male-oriented advertizing. Just watch any football game on television and try to find positive male role models among the ads.
America’s hyper-masculinity is so pervasive, so multi-faceted, we cannot see it for what it is: a dangerous condition that is affecting our whole culture. It is high time to bring some balance not only to our lives but to our cultural milieu. It’s going to take more than a course in flower-arranging to move us toward greater balance.

+ slang nickname for detective

Time to Remove the Conservative Appendix

The conservative perspective is like an appendix, and I don’t mean the one at the end of a scholarly book. It serves no purpose now that we walk fully erect; it can only cause trouble when irritated; and it can bring down the house if it is not removed in time. In short, it’s an old organ associated with ancient times when survival was the threshold of nobility and getting enough fiber in our diet was the least of our problems.
Conservatism is a lean and mean ethos applied by fat cats to the weak and frail. It says that success comes when you try hard enough; failure is a sign of laziness; and rich people deserve all they have. It concentrates power and wealth in the hands of the few and blames the many for their failure to achieve similar success. Its catch-all refrain, when all else fails to explain, is life is not fair, so just live with that fact.
There is a sociopathic dimension to this primitive perspective. It pins any notion of progress on survival of gauntlets, never on trying to make the gauntlet less severe. In fact, it celebrates the severity of gauntlets as opportunities to earn badges of courage. It says “I made it on my own;” therefore, you can too if you try hard enough. It’s as if the meaning of life necessitates an enormous struggle, an overcoming of great difficulties, and a self-confidence that is proclaimed to have existed only after the success is achieved. It is easy to say this when you stand atop the mountain. It’s patronizing and cruel to say it to those who will never get there even with your help.
The conservative’s notion of a stimulus package is a whip. That’s what reductions in services will feel like if conservatives have their way. By cutting aid to the poor and disadvantaged, the conservatives hope to balance the federal and state budgets without costing themselves a dime more in taxes. If you think that is fair, by all means vote Republican. If not, be sure to do whatever it takes to keep conservatives from wreaking havoc with America ever again.
Conservatives say mutual aid through organized communal action should always be local. Never mind that resources may be unevenly distributed from community to community. If you are not on your own, your community is. Take what you have and do the best you can. Never mind the fact that you don’t have the tools and wherewithal to do it.
Meanwhile, the myth of equal opportunity is promoted as if it actually exists. Beneath that myth is the game-fixing structure that keeps poor neighborhoods poor, poor schools poor and poor people poor. The poor start the race with cement shoes even if they wear ill-afforded Nikes like the rich kids. But life is not fair. That’s the way it is, says the conservative perspective.
I, for one, am sick and tired of the conservative perspective. We need to cut it out of the body politic like the useless appendix to civilization it is. We can best do that at the voting booth next November. Just pay attention to who mouths the conservative perspective and be ready to remove him or her from office or from ever holding office in the first place. It is the only hope America has at this point.