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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThomas Zimmer: "Patriots" embrace the implication that America is uniquely evil
Link to tweet
Tweet text:
Thomas Zimmer
@tzimmer_history
What stands out here is not only the eagerness with which these patriots embrace the implication that America is uniquely evil. Its also the fact that using violence against the vulnerable - and their own kids! - is so naturally part of their preferred solution.
Robert J. O'Neill ©
@mchooyah
It's not the gun. It's the evil. Raise
your damn kids. Take them to church.
Spank them when they deserve it. Be
good to your neighbors. Throw this
woke shit out of the window. Fire the
blue-haired school teachers. Get in
the room when the babies need you
Man up.
18:44 30.05.22 Twitter for iPhone
10:58 AM · Jun 5, 2022
Thomas Zimmer
@tzimmer_history
What stands out here is not only the eagerness with which these patriots embrace the implication that America is uniquely evil. Its also the fact that using violence against the vulnerable - and their own kids! - is so naturally part of their preferred solution.
Robert J. O'Neill ©
@mchooyah
It's not the gun. It's the evil. Raise
your damn kids. Take them to church.
Spank them when they deserve it. Be
good to your neighbors. Throw this
woke shit out of the window. Fire the
blue-haired school teachers. Get in
the room when the babies need you
Man up.
18:44 30.05.22 Twitter for iPhone
10:58 AM · Jun 5, 2022
Unrolled thread here
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1533508483278053378.html
What stands out here is not only the eagerness with which these patriots embrace the implication that America is uniquely evil. Its also the fact that using violence against the vulnerable - and their own kids! - is so naturally part of their preferred solution.
Image
I simply do not know how these people could be any clearer about who they really are and what kind of society they want. The rule of the white Christian patriarch - who gets to use violence and dole out punishment whenever he deems it necessary - is the only order theyll accept.
This statement is telling because it fuses all these different realms - public policy, the public square, the private, the family, the church, the school - into one grand tale of what really ails America: The woke assault on traditional authority. The solution: More authority.
Its a diagnosis widespread among the wealthy and powerful, as it calls for the maintaining of hierarchies, which keeps them at the top. But its also attractive for everyone who believes the assault on traditional forms of authority in all spheres of life has gone too far.
This has always been one version of the American promise, the one the Right is determined to uphold: That this would be a land of and for white Christians, where the white Christian patriarch gets to dominate and use whatever force necessary to subdue the land and the people.
Its an inherently authoritarian, violent vision - one that is always presented in religious and moral terms, as divinely ordained and morally superior. I do this because I must, because Im good, because Im upholding order, the patriarch mumbles as he rules and subdues.
These people are not interested in empirical evidence (on gun violence, the effects of corporal punishment, etc), they are not looking for actual solutions. They have all the answers they need, the ones that satisfy their desire for power and upholding their dominating status.
Much of Donald Trumps attractiveness to conservative men (predominantly, but not exclusively white men) stemmed from the fact that he promised to elevate this kind of toxic patriarchal alphaness and made its defense against woke assaults a centerpiece of his agenda.
Just like with Trumps overt racism, it was precisely the fact that he was so unabashedly alpha (in this particularly ridiculous, toxic way), so openly sexist, so unabashedly misogynistic that endeared him to these kinds of men: Finally someone who would fight back!
Trumps promise, in this perspective, was the restoration of (white) Christian patriarchal glory - his rise to the presidency an unmistakable signal that there would be no more holding back, that real men could finally reassert their dominance, restore order.
The fact that Trump himself was unhealthy, unfit, immoral didnt matter; what mattered was the political promise, the promise to lash out against the enemies of patriarchal rule - the Libs, those annoying feminists, the beta males. They voted for the Trump of MAGA iconography.
This perceived assault on manliness is at the core of whats happening on the Right. Listen to any rightwing pundit or activist for more than five minutes and theyre sure to rage against all those woke forces who are out to persecute real manly men.
Unroll available on Thread Reader
This isnt just a fringe obsession, but one of the key grievances that animates the Right. Just listen to Josh Hawley raging against the attack on manhood, bemoaning the crisis of American men in his speech at last years National Conservatism Conference
Opinion | Josh Hawley and the Republican Obsession With Manliness
The Missouri senator is tapping into something real a widespread, politically potent anxiety about young men that is already helping the right.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/04/opinion/josh-hawley-republican-manliness.html?referringSource=articleShare
It is this woke assault on what the Right perceives to be the natural and/or divinely ordained order for real America - the racial, religious, and gender hierarchy that puts white Christian men at the top - that fuels the multi-level reactionary counter-mobilization.
Their vision for the country is one of 1950s-style white Christian patriarchal dominance - a vision that goes beyond the political institutions and encompasses all spheres of American life: the public square, the workplace, the family. Thats the overriding political project.
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Thomas Zimmer: "Patriots" embrace the implication that America is uniquely evil (Original Post)
Nevilledog
Jun 2022
OP
kimbutgar
(21,148 posts)1. And ironically they are the evil ones with their policies and attitudes.
Celerity
(43,359 posts)2. The model they yearn for is Gilead from The Handmaid's Tale, full stop.
Minus the too expensive racial inclusion (in the tyranny, at least at lower thug/muscle levels) of the telly show.