Can I Have Just One
Real Man, Please
A real man drives a pickup truck with trump 2024 banners and obnoxiously loud exhausts, a real man taunts gay and transgendered people, a real man treats women like objects and hits them when a hitting is called for, a real man is a real man with a real wife, a real man drinks coffee and never latte, a real man is an Evangelical Christian, a real man never objects to removing a statue of Robert E. Lee, a real man will fight and die for his country and never question his leaders, a real man wants America to whiten itself once and for all, a real man blames Democrats for all that is bad, a real man is no egghead, a real man is no snowflake, a real man listens mostly to country and western music, preferably songs about whiskey and women and what other kinds are there; a real man refuses to get the COVID-19 vaccine and definitely will not wear one of those faggy masks, a real man doesn’t get divorced more than four times, a real man is against any controls on his guns even limiting magazines to under 100 rounds, a real man will not tolerate his sons being anything but real men, a real man drinks and curses a lot, a real man buys into any of a number of crazy conspiracy theories, a real man blames everybody else for his own failings, a real man has no idols unless it is spelled trump, a real man knows that Biden is a corrupt incompetent, a real man knows that blaming white people for racism is baloney, a real man hasn’t read a book in many years, a real man knows there are only black and white and anyone claiming there are shades is probably a communist, real men don’t eat quiche, real men don’t cry, real men don’t wear earrings in both ears, real men don’t order drinks that come with paper umbrellas, or ask for directions, they prefer to get lost, waste fuel and swear and real men understand that locker room talk is not wrong and patting a girl on the butt is not wrong and that men are under fire in the vacuous me two movement because as real men know, women ask for what they get.
If you agree with most of these statements, then you are a real man. So I guess I am a sniveling loser because the only masculine things I agreed with was not ordering drinks that come with paper umbrellas, or asking for directions.
If you don’t believe me, ask Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who is unrepentant in his unwavering fealty to trump, excuses the Jan. 6 attacks and insists trump won the 2020 election. And he is on a campaign to tell us all how to be real men and to stop the evil, liberal, putrid, Democratic culture that wants to destroy masculinity once and for all. Really.
You remember Hawley, he was the esteemed member of Congress, in his tailored, buttoned down suit and finely coiffed coif, who was photographed raising a clenched fist to encourage Trump supporters not long before they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. That night, Hawley joined Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in vociferously objecting to certifying the Electoral College results on Trump’s behalf.
In a keynote address at the recent National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Fla., the trump loving Hawley cursed the left’s “attack” on American men.
“Can we be surprised,” he said, “that after years of being told … that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness, and pornography and video games?” He said that the country needs a “revival of strong and healthy manhood,” and more men who will marry, father children and “shoulder responsibility.”
I would be careful about putting down pornography because it seems the last national figure to criticize porn was either a priest who was arrested for diddling young boys or a trump campaign chair who was arrested for sexually assaulting young boys or maybe a Boy Scout leader or an evangelical minister.
I would imagine Hawley is one of those people who get haircuts every week and looks at the 1960s as the watershed years when long hair became the rage, it became fashionable to question authority and the country began its tilt to rack and ruin.
One thing a real man is, however, is violent and it’s always been as American as white bread but it’s getting worse all the time. Look at the wares sold outside Trump rallies, with the rich, old, corpulent, wannabe dictator’s face on T-shirts and posters, shown as a shining, muscle-bound warrior wielding a rifle or photoshopped onto the sweaty, brilliant torso of Sylvester Stallone circa 1985, who rides a velociraptor while firing a gun.
So let’s start at the point where the fish starts to rot, that would be the head, i.e.trump. In new audio released by Jonathan Karl of ABC News, Trump is asked about his supporters chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” on Jan. 6 as they rampaged through the Capitol in search of the vice president. Trump said he thought Pence was “well-protected” and that the protesters were justified in their rage to keep trump president because Pence had refused to invalidate the electoral college results, which he was constitutionally bound to validate.
Then there is Rep. Paul A. Gosar. R-Ariz., who recently tweeted an animated video in which he is depicted killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and attacking Biden. Not one Republican complained, nada, zilch, zero. And I am fairly certain that there are a lot of real men cheering on Kyle Rittenhouse, who became a hero of the right after he went to a protest with an AR-15-style rifle and killed two people in Kenosha, Wis.
And then there are those pesky death threats called in to Republican members of Congress who voted for Biden’s infrastructure plan and whose names and phone numbers were tweeted by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., yecchh.
School board members and public health officials have faced a wave of threats, prompting hundreds to leave their posts. A recent investigation by Reuters documented nearly 800 intimidating messages to election officials in 12 states. Capitol police reported that threats against members of Congress have jumped by 107 percent compared with the same period in 2020 as lawmakers have been harassed at airports, targeted at their homes and had family members threatened. Some have spent tens of thousands on personal security.
Man up, it’s not too late.