It’s amazing how being a school teacher has prepared me to understand the mindset and behaviors of the American right and its loudmouth psychotic performance artists.
In fact, istening to them gives me more flashbacks to teaching middle school than talking to my own son does… https://t.co/1YjBaL3fra— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) November 20, 2021
Jennifer Rubin, for the Washington Post, “Republicans define themselves by misogyny and violence”:
When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, Never Trumpers (now largely ex-Republicans) warned that he would corrupt the party in every way imaginable. His misogyny would morph in the party’s toxic masculinity and degradation of women, they cautioned. His infatuation with brutality and violence (boasting he would kill terrorists’ families, exhorting his supporters to slug protesters) would metastasize to the party as a whole. Boy, did those predictions pan out…
Threats and portrayals of violence against women have turned into a badge of honor for a party in which traditional notions about gender (back to the 1950s!) have become a key predictor of Republican support. Casting men (even a Supreme Court nominee) as victims of aggressive, “nasty” or unhinged women accusing them of wrongdoing has become standard fare in the Trump party…
Toxic masculinity now increasingly manifests in an infatuation with violence against both men and women. “From congressional offices to community meeting rooms, threats of violence are becoming commonplace among a significant segment of the Republican Party,” the New York Times reported this month. “Ten months after rioters attacked the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, and after four years of a president who often spoke in violent terms about his adversaries, right-wing Republicans are talking more openly and frequently about the use of force as justifiable in opposition to those who dislodged him from power.”…
We saw on Jan. 6 how MAGA fanatics took calls to “stop the steal” literally, launching a violent assault on the electoral vote-counting process. In short, if anyone thinks casual, incessant talk of violence and overt misogyny will not impact the rabid Trump base, think again. (Recall that in the wake of Trump mocking the “Asian flu” or “China flu,” we saw a spate of violent attacks on Asian Americans.) As Jones says, “Today, for an alarming number of white conservative Christians, the mark of Christian faithfulness is not a love that inspires them to lay down their lives for their friends, but a defensiveness that lures them to take the lives of their fellow citizens.”…
For example, any middle school teacher will tell you that one of the biggest challenges with controlling preteens is that they do not consider consequences as adults do.
It’s not even that they don’t understand the relationship between cause and effect. It’s that they don’t care.— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) November 20, 2021
To wit, “I know that throwing pencils at Jenni and Emma will get me into trouble. On the other hand, it will make my friends laugh and get Jenni and Emma mad. So, really, a no-brainer! Pencils go whizz-whizz!”
Delighting buddies and upsetting those you hate is Priority 1. Always.— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) November 20, 2021
Open Thread: The GOP, Party of Senescent Middle SchoolersPost + Comments (97)