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Showing Original Post only (View all)Great insight, great read, Slate "The Year of the Old Boys" [View all]
Its hard to overstate the extent to which childish masculinity revealed itself in 2018 as the engine of power in America.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/12/old-boys-trump-kavanaugh-moonves-epstein-childish-masculinity.html
By LILI LOOFBOUROW
DEC 21, 20184:37 PM
Many of us have spent 2018 trying to wrap our heads around how, exactly, the country whose slightly priggish brand was once meritocracy, competence, and moral authority has turned out to have instead nourished and enriched an elaborate network of overripe, decadent, and not particularly clever criminals. Whats confusing about that isnt that the myth of our virtue was greatly exaggeratedthat much was clear to anyone with a passing knowledge of American history. No, whats confusing is the extent to which the fiction of decency (whether political, financial, or sexual) seems to have been unnecessary all along.
If Donald Trump has served a salutary function, its that he has stripped those fictions bare. 2018 has ended euphemisms and pretenses and politesse, and however much some claim to miss the countrys more decorous days, theres something to be said for having the outsides match the insides. The myth of the great male American leader has been as robust as its been ruinously incomplete. It needed to be exposed, and Trump did so with a beautiful absence of care. Hes not going to behave at a funeral. He wont sing the opening hymn or the national anthem or participate in a communal gesture unless it centers him. Hell wander off the stage hes sharing with the Argentine president, insult a dying senator, forget to sign things once hes gotten his applause, publicly praise men for not snitching on him. Hell use his Twitter account as a burn book, and what hes most grateful for at Thanksgiving is himself. The definition of American greatness he has embodied is as precise as any weve had.
What these powerful men share is arbitrary cruelty, pleasure in retribution, bullying, shouting, and an unusual dependence on golfthe traits of aging manchildren.
Understanding how a system broke requires taking the full measure of the leaders it produces and the qualities for which theyre embraced. Trump is valued, by his supporters, for much of the above. Thats not entirely new. In overvaluing a certain kind of masculine ethos, the United States has always glorified impoliteness; there have long been people who confuse boorishness with power and find courtesy effeminate. But whats interesting about Trumps conduct is that while its unmannerly, its not rude in that classic hard-nosed, stick-it-to-em, I-got-no-time-for-niceties way. His arent power moves that command respect. Rather, theyre puffy and decadentthe qualities associated with the kind of bratty, spoiled boy we met when the term affluenza was first used as a legal defense on the grounds that someone so ruined by financial privilege cant understand ethics or consequences. Trump isnt too busy for etiquette; he has nothing but time. He spent Barbara Bushs funeral on Twitter denying that he called Jeff Sessions Mr. Magoo and Rod Rosenstein Mr. Peepers. Theres a crusty entitlement to this species of maleness that makes it feel at least as geriatric as it is juvenile. Though Trumps petty malice puts him in (roughly) seventh grade, it has a doddering petulance, too. He is, in effect, an old boy. And when you step back and think about it, you realize America is full of them.
snip - long, much much more and explains so much.