The Pathetic Masculine Heroics of Today’s Right-Wing
Watching Missouri Senator Josh Hawley skedaddle as fast as he could out of the US Capitol as the insurrectionists he had previously inspired with his famous raised fist (displayed while safe behind the lines of protection that Capital police provided him) began destroying anyone and anything in their way, was to witness an iconic moment. It surely represented all those radical right-wing politicians who regularly send others into battles but as so-called “Chicken Hawks” are the first to flee any chance of personal or career harm by claiming, let’s say, “bone spurs.” But it also symbolized the type of heroes that the current radical right-wing listens to in their renewed call to return to a hyper-masculinity, a toxic patriarchal mix that they’ve latched onto again as the crucial cause of everything that’s wrong with our planet. Refusing to admit that their own policies are the root of the problem, they’ve calculated that preaching everywhere they can that masculinity itself is und...