This whole manly men of the right has just pissed me off all night, and I think it is something that just needs to be dealt with aggressively and unflinchingly. Masculinity and manliness is not about about hurting the week or underprivileged. Being a man is about taking care of those who can not take care of themselves. Being a man, or macho, or whatever bullshit you want to call it, is about taking care of those around you.
Perhaps the greatest thing to ever happen to me was this blog, where I could post my opinions and have people react to them. You can check the archives for all the embarrassing and stupid things I have said in the past, but this blog served as a corrective. People like Brad Reed and the Poorman and our own DougJ and how many countless others never gave up, and I learned a lot. Were it not for them, and their taunting and relentless (and fully deserved) abuse and mockery, I doubt I would ever have learned anything. I remember one day when Atrios called me the wanker of the day, and shortly afterwards, as everything came to a head with Schiavo and Graeme Frost, I realized that if being called a wanker bothered me so much, I should probably stop being such a fucking, well, wanker. Here is a coda I just posted to FB, but it kind of belongs here:
What’s on my mind, Facebook? I will tell you. For decades I was a Republican, but they lost their shit, and I left the party in 2005. I was always pro gay rights and pro-choice and anti death penalty as a Republican, but they decided I did not belong, so I left.
And now, I am happy to say I am a proud liberal who will stand up to right-wing douchebags who have decided that 2/3 of America doesn’t deserve the right to exist.
I support gay rights and the ability for gay people to marry.
I am pro-choice. Not pro-abortion, but pro-choice.
I am against the death penalty. This used to be a libertarian position, but they are so corrupted by right wing money that they no longer are worried about the state executing the citizenry. Because, you know, freedom.
I think marijuana should be legal and taxed. Obviously, alcoholics like Orange John Boehner think this is crazy as he leads the House with a BAC of .20 every day.
I think religion can be a good thing, but I think religious people should respect that many people do not share their faith nor need lists of commandments to understand they shouldn’t fuck their neighbor’s wife or murder or steal. Some of us kinda figured that shit out on our own.
I don’t think video games or movies make people kill people.
I do think easy access to guns makes it really easy to kill people.
I think gay people should be able to adopt. In fact, I think we should stop calling them gay people and just call them, well, people.
I don’t think taxes are a punishment. I think they are what gives us roads and part of a great societal pact; an obligation for all of us to fulfill so we can be so lucky to live in this country.
I don’t think people who are poor are evil, stupid, or lazy. I just think they have no money and could use some help from me.
I think that this world is basically lacking in human compassion and empathy, and that bothers me. “I got mine” seems to be a refrain that is repeated too often.
I could go on, but these are the basics.
I will never be remembered as a great man- I won’t write the modern equivalent of the Magna Carta or draw the Mona Lisa, and you know what, I am ok with that. I do, on the other hand, want to be remembered as a flawed man who worked really hard to be a good person who helped others and who took care of animals and basically, even in my misguided moments, tried to do the right thing and be right by my fellow citizens. It took some education and some patience by many of you readers and commenters, and I really am always going to be a foul mouthed drunken work in progress, but I think I am doing as good as I can with what the FSM gifted me.
I hope you do, too.
different-church-lady
Honestly, the only true flaw your makeup is using WordPress.
Jay in Oregon
SImilar to this, why is it that so many “alpha males” and “real men” and “pickup artists” such whiny, controllling, passive-aggressive assholes?
The more obsessed you are with where everyone is in the status hierarchy, the more likely it is that you’re not as high on the list as you think you are.
Spaghetti Lee
I didn’t know you were on Facebook. FRIENDSING TIEM
ellie
How am I not your friend on Facebook? That was awesome!
YellowJournalism
Just remember: You’re our drunken, foul-mouthed work-in-progress.
Villago Delenda Est
That’s a pretty good coda, John.
Jerzy Russian
Bravo! I stood up and saluted. Fortunately no one else in this household saw me do that.
master c
well! I love that. I wanna be your FB friend!
Poopyman
In fact, I think it was that Wanker of the Day post that first got me over here out of curiosity. And I stayed! Whyzzat?
Also too [1], I think taking care of people is more part of being a human, not just a man.
To quote a famous person:
[1] Has this gone the way of “First!”? I’ll stop using it now.
master c
@ellie: exactly!
master c
@ellie: exactly!
pokeyblow
The gender-specificity of the term “manliness” is problematic, but there isn’t a damned thing wrong with fighting for what you believe in, and fighting against those who would destroy it.
I wish democrats in office believed that.
Yatsuno
Hands up: who thought this was about geg6’s puppeh and JC just misspelled it?
Opie_jeanne
Bravo, John. Bravo.
Shortstop
I will never be your FB friend, because anonymity! But I am very glad I know you here. Very glad.
ruemara
It’s true.
Opie_jeanne
@Yatsuno:
Yutsy, is that you?
Yatsuno
@Opie_jeanne: It do be me. FYWP decided to curse my old nym for eternity, so I had to disemvowel myself. It seemed to fix the issue.
Suzanne
You’re a really great person, even when you act like an asshole. Thanks for this great community, and mostly for not being one of those people who decided to continue learning/evolving.
dance around in your bones
When I get depressed about humanity and then I read things like this – I feel better. Better than reading crap about politics.
Mind-blowing find, indeed!
eta: Noble gases, for the win.
Spaghetti Lee
I think so, so much pointless ink has been spilled over the last oh-I-don’t-know 50 years about the death of masculinity, the revival of masculinity, modern masculinity, postmodern masculity, masculinity vs. femininity, are men getting too feminine, are women getting too masculine, how do we save masculinity, on and on. It never settles anything, and 90% of the time is just a sounding board for the writer’s man issues/woman issues. I think people today are too cautious when it comes to self-expression and righteous anger. Would more self-expression be masculine? Who gives a shit?
Wag
Can I steal that I’m it’s entirety and post it on my FB page, too. That’s too much awesome not to share.
If one person posts it, they’ll think he’s crazy, and they won’t take him (seriously)
If two people post it, they’ll think they’re both faggots and the won’t take either of them (seriously)
If three people post it they might think its some kind of a movement.
Omnes Omnibus
The whole idea of manliness as violence or brutality is asinine. The idea that it is based on pure physical strength is equally dumb. It is, however, the idea that manliness is in any way the province of conservatives that is beyond belief.
Petorado
Taxes should be renamed “patriotic citizenship dues”, or maybe ‘freedom investments.” Maybe then people will flinch when the rich say they don’t want to invest in freedom at rates as high as the the poor do.
Sticking your neck out to say that the world should be a better place for everybody counts for more than you think. Especially in such a troll-laden world.
Rarely Posts
John,
You are awesome.
To be honest, the notion that political liberalism might correspond with lower upper body strength strikes a cord with me: I’m a guy who has a good deal of determination/”grit”/”toughness” but 0% of upper body strength or athletic ability. I’ve always been liberal, and I’ve always been physically weak. My physical weakness probably did make me more sensitive and aware of the challenges faced by other people, and it probably fed into my liberalism, though probably less so than my weirdness and innate sympathy.
I reject the idea that “might makes right.” Right is right, and our obligation is to do right. In today’s society, a smart, academic type such as myself can make a good salary, and that gives me “might.” The right thing is to do well by my fellow people, even those less fortunate than me. So that means paying my taxes, and working to ensure that means that money goes to people who are less fortunate, even if some of them are meatheads (grin) who have more trouble holding down work.
Also, one benefit to being a gay guy and a smart, eccentric guy: I don’t care if I’m “masculine” or “feminine,” “macho” or whatever. I am going to do what’s right, and otherwise I’m going to be who I am. Who I am can include camping, hiking, kayaking, etc. It can include gardening, flower arranging, showtunes, etc. I don’t care or need to please anyone about it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Petorado: “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., U.S. Supreme Court Justice
NotMax
Sometimes we get a Mr. Cole post wherein the whiskey or brew is talking, sometimes we get a Mr. Cole post wherein the lavender oil or chamomile is talking.
It’s all good.
Yatsuno
@NotMax: Sometimes it’s both. That’s when things get epic.
NotMax
@Yatsuno
Yowzah.
For those dichotomous occasions, turn to Nilsson.
SatanicPanic
John you’re a good man. I’m glad I found this blog- it’s a credit to you that there are so many interesting, intelligent and otherwise decent people here. And nice while otherwise not mincing words. I’m better for the handful of times I’ve been told off on this blog.
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
Nice piece, JC.
I wandered over here right around the time you switched sides. The courage of your new convictions kept me coming back for more. Or it was the animal pictures. Yeah…it was probably the animal pictures.
JCR
Love you, John!
There’s a similar confusion about what it means to be “alpha”; people think it’s about power, but in the wild it’s more about responsibility. The alpha male or female in the pack is the competent one that makes sure everyone gets taken care of. Not the “winner” who takes everything from the “losers.” A protector, not a predator.
Yatsuno
@HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist: We are all teh Tunch.
bad Jim
JCR: exactly
John Cole: bravo!
(It does sound a little like Bérubé’s “I used to be a Democrat, but since 9/11…” joke, but it reads more like, “I was always a liberal, but …)
Batocchio
I really enjoyed this post. Good on ya!
policomic
God–or whatever–bless you, Cole.
mclaren
I just find it really interesting that stand-up guys, real mensches, like John Cole, keep beating themselves up in public and admitting how wrong they were and calling themselves assholes for doing, basically, ordinary stuff that everyone does. You. Me. Everybody.
Whereas the punks and thugs and assholes like the drunk-driving C student who infested the Oval Office for 8 endless years between 2001 and 2009 and his torturer sidekick, these guys never admit they did a goddamn thing wrong. Nothing. Not once. You read excretions like Decision Points and you learn that Dubya was a superhero, a genius, a guy who never made a mistake.
I also find it interesting that there are a number of commenters on this forum who can never, ever admit they made a mistake. Burnspbesq, he was always right, no errors in his legal reasoning, anyone who disagrees that the president of the united states is acting completely within the law when he orders a U.S. citizen murder without charges or a trial, why, whoever disagrees is an asshole and ignorant and needs to learn the law. Mnemosyne belligerently argues in favor of total surveillance and turning America into an East-German-style police state and drone strikes on Pakistani children because AUMF, bitches! Everybody else is wrong. They’re ignorant and laughable.
Cole tells it like it is. Other people have admitted they were wrong and were jerks. Hell, I’ve been wrong plenty of times. I actually approved of that fucking 2003 Iraq Invasion — can you say “shit for brains”? That was me in 2003. I actually bought Colin Powell’s pathetic dog-and-pony show at the U.N. How stupid is that? I supported John Edwards for president, I’ve made plenty of mistakes. But I didn’t support the Iraq quagmire the instant it became clear there were no WMDs, which was about 3 days after we took Baghdad, and I bailed on Edwards after it became clear he was flake and a fraud. So everybody fucks up. The moral here is that some of us learn from the experience. Other people, like Dubya and his cohorts…they never learn.
The Democrats ain’t perfect, but at least they seem to learn something from their screwups. The Republicans? Not so much, nowadays.
I swear, it’s the Dunning-Kruger Effect in action.
Radio One
You seem to have a real gift for engaging with people with your opinions. I’ve been reading your blog since you were a die-hard Bush supporter in the early 2000s. And I’m still reading.
DaveInOz
I like it. I’m OK with all of it.
Steeplejack
@Yatsuno (if that’s your real name):
Stern language coming from someone who has been forced to misspell his own nym to avoid FYWP hell.
Steeplejack
@Suzanne:
Lolwut?!
Violet
You’re a good person, John. That was a great piece you wrote. Wonder if it’ll get a Reddit bomb like that other one and shut down the site?
Mustang Bobby
Very well put.
Debbie(aussie)
Another wonderful, from the heart, post. Thanks John for allowing us to join you on this ride through life.
Odie Hugh Manatee
You’re a good man Charlie Brown, we need more former Republicans like you. It’s said that the measure of a society can be made by noting how those who have the most treat those with the least. The same can be said about the way people who are ‘different’ are treated by those who think they are the living ideal.
In both measurements our nation’s score is abysmal and conservatives are leading the way to the bottom.
NotMax
@Odie Hugh Manatee
We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Odie Hugh Manatee
@NotMax:
That explains a lot about conservatives in our country.
Rich or poor, they’re stupid.
SteveAudio
You’re a good man, John Cole!
Ruckus
Like the man said, we mostly live lives of quiet desperation. We’d like some of our days not to be so quiet or desperate but that’s just the way it is. Most of us have lives that really don’t count or improve the world. That’s OK, but it would be nice if we balanced out some of the assholes who strive and succeed in making it worse. But we don’t do that often either. Some of us are not assholes nor space, these are the people who do good, whose gains are what sustain us all. There are little goodies and big goodies. Little goodies are those things we do that sometimes we don’t even know we are doing but they are positive for someone. Big goodies are those things we strive for, like Medicare or unemployment or the WPA or Social Security or whatever that help people beyond our wildest dreams. Big goodies may be one person’s idea but they take many people to see the vision and move it forward, step by step. Big goodies are seldom complete or finished, they require tweaks and hammering out direction and improvements along the way. But as they work they help people to survive and to grow, to maybe find some little or even big thing that will make life a little better or easier. Better homes, better food, better medicine and health, or just more people having some of these.
All of this takes effort and many times sacrifice. But sacrifice is not the goal, sacrifice is not better, it is just sacrifice. We are what we eat, we are who we act like, we are who we hate, we are who we fuck over, we are what we are. If we can be better, why are so many of us, assholes? What’s the up side for assholes? And how can we make the downside of being an asshole a lot more costly?
Fred
Good on ya, you drunken foul mouthed reprobate.
c u n d gulag
You’re a good man, “Charlie” Cole!
danielx
I commented to a Republican friend (yes, I still have a few) of mine recently that the reason Republicans keeps losing national elections is that their leaders are assholes, and if they want to win elections maybe they should stop acting like assholes.
I don’t want to make anything more costly for them (other than possibly taxes); I don’t want to punish them – that’s their particular form of amusement. I want them to stop acting like assholes. It’s not that hard.
If the cost of acting like assholes is losing elections, that’s enough for me.
danielx
Also, too – Cole, you’re a mensch.
Cathyish
Love you, John Cole and the community you’ve built here. Ya’ll kept me (mostly) sane through 2 presidential elections. I owe you.
Hawes
I’ve always agreed with your definition of what constitutes being a man: You use your strength – whatever that is – to help those with weaknesses overcome them. If you’re smart, you teach. If you’re strong, you pull your load. If you’re wise, you counsel.
Children can’t see beyond their own needs. Same with conservatives.
NorthLeft12
John, Thanks for helping to build this place where I can laugh, cry, be pissed off, and be amazed within a few screens worth of posts and comments.
Also thanks to mclaren who led me to this quote:
“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”
Reminds me of another of my favourite lines from Yeats;
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
Betty
Bravo, John! You speak for many who don’t seem to be heard in the mass media these days.
cvstoner
Good words.
gnomedad
And you shouldn’t have to to justify your existence — to me, that’s part of what “liberalism” is. I think a lot of teabaggers imagine they were all set to draw the next Mona Lisa when the Kenyan Muslim came along and ruined everything.
jefft452
“Being a man is about taking care of those who can not take care of themselves. Being a man, or macho, or whatever bullshit you want to call it, is about taking care of those around you”
When they were trying to make Romney look human, one of his sons told the story of how, at family gatherings, everybody had to wait while Mitt as “pater familias” finished getting his food
I don’t think I ever saw my dad take first choice of food, as “dad” his job was to make sure everybody’s plate was full
Skepticat
And that, as they say, is … that.
satby
Well done John. And thanks, because somehow you often express what a lot of us feel.
MC
Well said. It quantifies just about all of my feelings exactly. I used to be a Republican too-but now I can’t stand what the GOP has morphed into.
FDBrightly
Bravo
Roy Greene
2005 what took you so long to come to your senses. Not that you should be a democrat or independent but you lived through Nixon, Regan, Bush and Shrub before switched in 2005? Holey Toledo boy!!
I glad you finally walked back out of the rabbit hole. I admire your work with the animals, especially the dogs.
horatius
Panderer!!
John PM
I cannot believe there have been three posts on manliness and no one has posted Monty Python’s Lumberjack song.
LutherG
I’ve wandered across your previously innane blathering years ago and alway thought, “what a dickwad”. Then people I respected started linking to you and I thought “must be a different guy, cause that previous guy was a major douche”. Finally, I see you are the same but in 2005 you changed. What the hell? Why 05? Why not 2001-04? After all the disasters gwb and co put us through, what was the tipping point? Surely atrios calling you “douchbag of the day” couldn’t have had more impact than the weight of all the evil done in the name of politics by the republicans?
kindness
I’m proud of you John. You’re a good man.
RevRick
I read your coda several times and I could feel tears welling up. Thank you, John “Snow” Cole. You do know something!
Retr2327
@Skepticat:
Well, I first found my way here back in the days of your epic battle with “the Jane Hamshers of the left.”. At the time, I was reading Firedoglake, and thought you were a jerk. And I’ve kept reading you all the years, and you’re basically my favorite blog (and blogger).
Now, surely the evolution in your political views has helped; there just aren’t that many conservatives or Republicans with interesting things to say, although there are a few. But here’s the thing: I got sick of Jane and her lot a long time ago (although may TBogg post forever) so it’s not just politics. It’s basic humanity, decency, and reason, of which you have more than your share. So good on you, and may Tunch (and Lily) live forever!
Howlin Wolfe
Don’t know if anyone above said it this way: being a man is being secure and comfortable in being a man. It isn’t about this or that moral imperative, however virtuous that might be. If being secure and comfortable in your gender, either naturally bestowed or chosen, doesn’t incline you to, e.g., take care of others or beat the snot out of weaker beings, your still a man.
JWR
I remember years ago reading Markos, (he of the GOS), telling us to keep our eyes on this John Cole character, because even though he may strike most of us as an a-hole now, he’s got potential. (Plus, he’s actually intelligent!)
I’m glad I kept my eyes on you, John Cole, because today, yours is my favorite blog.
Dissatisfied Customer
John, as we used to say in the Marines, you’re my horse even if you never win a race.
mch
Great post.
What you’re saying: being a “good” or “real” man is no different from being a “good” or “real” woman.
kmj in mich
This is just a great blog post. I feel more hope after reading this than after most of the stuff on the internet. That should be good for something, even if you aren’t going to draw the Mona Lisa.
Keep it up!