Thursday, December 09, 2021

Pine-Eleven - Never Fir-get!


Fox News Contributor Compares Christmas Tree Fire to Pearl Harbor

Fox's "tree" is not a tree. It's a metal cone (and likely made in China).

Ali Alexander Planned Jan. 6 Insurrection With Republicans Paul Gosar, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs





Why don't the president's supporters hold him to their own standard of masculinity?
Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, May 25, 2020

Why do working-class white men—the most reliable component of Donald Trump's base—support someone who is, by their own standards, the least masculine man ever to hold the modern presidency? The question is not whether Trump fails to meet some archaic or idealized version of masculinity. . . . Rather, the question is why so many of Trump's working-class white male voters refuse to hold Trump to their own standards of masculinity—why they support a man who behaves more like a little boy.

I am a son of the working class, and I know these cultural standards. The men I grew up with think of themselves as pretty tough guys, and most of them are. They are not the products of elite universities and cosmopolitan living. These are men whose fathers and grandfathers came from a culture that looks down upon lying, cheating, and bragging, especially about sex or courage. . . .

They are, as an American Psychological Association feature describes them, men who adhere to norms such as "toughness, dominance, self-reliance, heterosexual behaviors, restriction of emotional expression and the avoidance of traditionally feminine attitudes and behaviors." But I didn't need an expert study to tell me this; they are men like my late father and his friends, who understood that a man's word is his bond and that a handshake means something. . . .

In order to think about why these men support Trump, one must first grasp how deeply they are betraying their own definition of masculinity by looking more closely at the flaws they should, in principle, find revolting.

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