Conservative men are obsessed with penises (What will probably be a continuing series.)

Ned Ryun, my fellow Kansan, can't just make an argument. He has to call Brian Stetler a flouncing cuck:

This does make me wonder about the sincerity of his Christian faith, which his family parades pretty proudly before the world. Who would Jesus try to publicly emasculate? But Ryun is more Conservative than Christian, and conservatives are really, really obsessed with the status of their penises and making sure people know about their status relative to others. (I once wrote: "The GOP? That stands for the Grand Old Phallus.") It's one reason (along with racism) insults like "soy boy" "beta boy" and "cuck" are so prevalent among the online right. Ryun's version -- "simpering' "eunuch" -- is more of the same.

This kind of misogyny has real and terrible effects, as Jessica Valenti points out today:

Just this week, Roy Den Hollander, a lawyer and well-known misogynist, allegedly killed the son of a federal judge and wounded her husband in an attack at their New Jersey home.

Den Hollander once sued to end “ladies’ nights” at bars, tried to defund women’s studies departments in universities, and fantasized about the rape of another judge who presided over his divorce case. The lawyer was also active in online misogynist groups and had written for A Voice for Men, a men’s rights website tracked as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Ned Ryun isn't going to kill anybody, nor is he encouraging anybody to do so. But it's not hard to see how chauvinism easily morphs into something uglier. 

The challenge of writing about politics in the Age of Trump

I recently took a look back at my last few columns for THE WEEK and saw a pattern:

Now: I stand by each of those columns. But it felt like maybe I was getting into a rut. And within my capabilities, I greatly desire not to be a hack. So I tried to get out of it by reframing the questions I was looking at. Yes, Trump Sucks. But that's a given. What else is there to say about the issues that face us? Why not de-center the president?

So when I the federal government started kidnapping protesters and throwing them in unmarked cars in Portland, I tried to take a different look at the issue. And I came up with this:

Which I also stand by. But looking at it two days later, with the Trump Administration expanding its Portland efforts to other cities, I wonder if that was too small-bore. Maybe the real story here is Trump Sucking, Again and More.

Trying to find the balance is difficult. The problems we face are bigger than Trump, and have roots that precede him -- at least in many cases. But Trump is also the catalyst for elevating those problems to crisis level. He is the elephant in the room of almost any political topic I'll write about, whether I write about him or not. Focus on the Big Picture and maybe you miss something important about the now. Focus on the immediate threat, and maybe you lose something important about the Big Picture. I honestly don't know what the answer to this is -- at least in terms of writing stuff that both informs and advances the conversation we collectively have about our politics. I guess I'll keep trying as long as they let me.

Happiness is a warm gun

AP:

When it comes to states’ rights, President Donald Trump is all over the map.

To battle the coronavirus, he’s told states they’re largely on their own. But when it comes to stamping out protests in cities led by Democrats, Trump is sending in federal troops and agents — even when local leaders are begging him to butt out.

“After seeing Trump in the White House for three and a half years, anyone expecting to find classical ideological consistency is bound to be mistaken,” said Andrew J. Polsky, a political science professor at Hunter College. “All of this is done for partisan political purposes with an eye toward the election.”

This is true. Trump does whatever maximizes his authority while avoiding responsibility. 

But the other through-line in this is a characteristic Trump shares with a lot of conservatives: At his core, he believes the answer to most issues is being -- or, perhaps more precisely, being seen -- as tough.

The virus is very difficult to be "tough" against. It has no emotional response to anything. It just does what it does. That hasn't stopped the president from trying to out-tough it, by calling himself a "wartime president" and refusing to wear a mask until he wore one. Even the ramped-up tensions with China in the pandemic's wake can probably be seen not just as scapegoating -- though it is certainly that -- but as a function of the need to be seen "cracking down" on something in response to the crisis.

With protesters, though, it's pretty easy to be tough. Just lob tear gas and rubber bullets at them.

The problem, though, is that even where toughness produces something like results -- a change in the situation, kinetic displays -- it doesn't always, or even often, produce good results. Doesn't matter. Trump and his allies aren't concerned with effectiveness. It's showing the iron fist that matters. Federalism doesn't really matter to the question.

For the GOP, any woman will do

Interesting tidbit from Dave Weigel:

Adam Serwer recently noted Trump is struggling to make a culture war case against Joe Biden:

For the past few months, Trump and the conservative propaganda apparatus have struggled to make the old race-and-gender-baiting rhetoric stick to Biden. But voters don’t appear to believe that Biden is an avatar of the “radical left.” They don’t think Biden is going to lock up your manhood in a “testicle lockbox.”

 But Republicans can be relied on to use scare tactics when it comes to Democratic women. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez follows Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton as bogeywomen of the right. They'll keep doing it as long as they think it's successful.

Movie Night: A DRY WHITE SEASON

Some thoughts about A DRY WHITE SEASON, a Grishamesque legal thriller with a powerful conscience. Spoilers ahead:

* This movie came out in the late 1980s, as the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa neared its climax. The opening credits show a white child and a Black child playing together, joyfully. Before 15 minutes have passed, the Black child will be dead. This is not a movie that shies away from that violence -- the camera lingers on the faces of dead children, massacred for the crime of protesting. This is not a movie that will let you feel comfortable. Not even at the end. 

* The protagonist is played by Donald Sutherland - we'll talk more about that in a bit - a schoolteacher who comes to realize his own complicity in apartheid, the death, cruelties and injustice inflicted in its name that he has let himself ignore for the sake of living a comfortable life. "They must have had a reason," he says when his gardener's son is arrested. The costs of coming to terms with the that reality is not greeted warmly -- the authorities, his coworkers and even his wife and daughter variously warn and rage against his effort to seek justice. Being true to the cause of truth, this movie suggests, can cost you everything. Everything.

* One passage was startling to me in the echoes I hear in the current backlash against Black Lives Matter.

Ben du Toit: Jesus, Susan, this is not just about Gordon! This is about all of us!

Susan du Toit: No. It's about all of *them*. And I will be damned if I let them destroy my family. I don't want Gordon's ghost in my house! I don't want the one with the dark glasses, any of these kaffirs here ever again! I just want to go back to the way it was!

Ben du Toit: If you had come with me... if you had seen what was happening in that court, you would know that we can never go back to the way it was.

Susan du Toit: I *was* in the court.

Ben du Toit: What?

Susan du Toit: Listen to me, Ben. I heard what the police did, and I'm not saying it was right. But you think the blacks wouldn't do the same thing to us, and worse, if they had half the chance? Do you think they'll let us go on living our nice, quiet, peaceful lives if they win? They'll swallow us up! It's our country, Ben, we made every inch of it! Look at the rest of Africa, it's a mess... It's like in war. You have to choose sides. You are not one of them and they don't want you to be!

"You have to choose your own people," Susan concludes, "or you have no people."

"You have to choose truth," Ben responds.

Preach it, Ben.

* Given that Donald Sutherland is the protagonist and the marquee names -- Marlon Brando (who received an Oscar nomination for his performance), Jurgen Prochnow, Susan Surandon, Michael Gambon -- it would be easy to pass over this movie as a white savior flick. But it's important to note that this was the first Hollywood movie directed by a black woman, Euzhan Palcy, and the story of how she shepherded this movie into being -- and why she disappeared from Hollywood to France -- is fascinating.

* You can find this movie on Criterion Channel until the end of the month.

Morality then, morality now

I am reading David Blight's biography of Frederick Douglass -- with current arguments about monuments and Black Lives Matter very much in mind -- and I am freshly struck by how many slave-owners were rapists who treated their own children, their own flesh and blood, as property to be bought and sold. It was a terrible thing.

Not a new observation, of course. It's just hitting me anew again tonight. I don't think it's presentism to judge that behavior. Frederick Douglass, certainly, knew it was wrong at the time.

Movie Night: PATHS OF GLORY

Three thoughts about PATHS OF GLORY, coming up with spoilers...

* This is one of my favorite movies, about the awful absurdities of war and the deadly, inexorable illogic that results when scandalous "patriotism" and amoral careerism meet each other. Men who sit in gilded palaces order an impossible attack -- they know it from the beginning -- and then judge the troops who fail to succeed in that attack as cowards. Kirk Douglas is the hero here, but even he agrees to carry out the attack knowing it almost certainly won't succeed, rather than let somebody else take charge of his regiment. Three men are chosen to stand trial for cowardice -- as stand-ins for the entire regiment that failed -- and sentenced to death. The system is so relentless that even those who see the terrible, Kafka-esque qualities of it -- or those who should, like the regimental priest -- go along with it anyway. There are constant exhortations to courage from men who show none to men who have already demonstrated it -- but it is the latter group that suffers.

The movie is based on a true story.

* PATHS OF GLORY was made in 1957, and while it would still be subversive today, it's amazingly so for an era of Cold War-influenced filmmaking of movies like THE CAINE MUTINY and FORT APACHE whose ultimate messages were: "Sure, your leaders may be nuts and misguided, but you owe it to them to support them and carry out their orders anyway." Indeed, Wikipedia tells me the film wasn't shown in Francisco-era Spain until 1986, nor in Switzerland until 1970. In the US, it was banned at all military bases. On that basis alone, this is worth watching.

* It's also worth watching, not just for its themes, but for the performance by Kirk Douglas, a lion of a star at his absolute peak. Nobody did righteous fury like Douglas. It is something to behold.