Caffeinated Politics

This was an awful weekend with unleashed violence across the nation and the most boorish behavior on parade. To top it off, Sunday evening the nation watched a 60 Minutes segment that underscored what is happening in the nation and how we got to the place we now find ourselves.

I was truly surprised that a golf tournament was turned upside down by white male rage. GOLF! A sport of calm and quiet allowing for the precision of the strokes to awe those of us who never land one on the green without far too many attempts. The golf story was eclipsed by masculine rage when a church turned into the scene of a battlefield as a former marine and a Trump supporter drove his truck with large American flags in the bed into the building, then opening fire with an assault weapon before setting the church ablaze. Before either of those stories landed, we learned of another white male and former marine who turned a bar into a deadly crime scene in North Carolina.

Each of these three incidents, though seemingly unrelated, reveals a deeper cultural rot. Hypermasculinity, once cloaked in stoicism and military service and so-called ‘strength’ now parades itself in vulgar chants, assault rifles, and using a pickup truck for violence. It is not just a crisis of behavior that we are witnessing. It is a manufactured crisis of identity.

At the Ryder Cup on Sunday, Rory McIlroy, and I need not define him as one of golf’s most serious-minded players on the greens, was subjected to a torrent of abuse from the American crowd at Bethpage Black. Those men hurled insults, squeaked rubber ducks mid-swing, and even threw a beer at his wife, Erica. The vulgarity wasn’t just juvenile, it was performative. This wasn’t sportsmanship. It was a mob flexing its American entitlement, mistaking crass behavior and absolute cruelty for some perverse view about nationalism.

In Michigan, Thomas Jacob Sanford, a 40-year-old ex-Marine drove his truck into a Mormon church, opened fire, and set the building ablaze. Four dead. Eight wounded. (As of the writing of this column.) The truck bore American flags. Sanford had served in Iraq. He wore a camouflage Trump shirt that read “Make Liberals Cry Again”. The FBI called it “targeted violence.” News reports showed that he hated Mormons. But what he really hated, perhaps, was irrelevance. He had been told repeatedly by conservative media that white males are abused and are now even less than second-class citizens. Add in a sick culture that valorizes deadly aggression, and he found a grotesque way to be seen.

On Saturday night in North Carolina, Nigel Edge, 40, another Marine, unleashed another gruesome eruption of insanity. This time it was at a bar. The assault weapon was used by a male who once was trained to defend his country. This weekend, however, he turned the gun on his fellow citizens.

The longest running newsmagazine on television, 60 Minutes, reported a truly troubling trend in the nation. Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White was featured. He defended the “unapologetically masculine” attitude of his way to make money. It was revealing how young men are conned into this behavior. The toll this hyper-masculinity and dangerous attitude has on the nation is clear for all to see.

What we witnessed this weekend is a battlefield where male anger has landed. From a golf course to a church to a place where food and drinks are served. What ties these incidents together is not just violence, but a particular kind of white masculine fury. It needs to be stated in this column that the reason I write about the ethnicity of these males is that while Brown people are labeled derisively by the Donald Trump Administration, the bloodshed and mayhem that makes for bold headlines comes from white males. Might I add what we are seeing more and more of is increasingly unhinged males.

It seems to me that the anger is stoked by grievances and resentments, all too often amplified by conservative Republicans for partisan purposes and also by social media. We live at a time when it seems being belligerent is rewarded. That is so sad. Trump, now unbound by electoral constraints, continues to showcase caustic masculinity with his insult-driven, dominance-obsessed behavior. His rhetoric doesn’t just embolden, but I argue it is also instructive to younger men. Be loud. Be cruel. Be unapologetic.

This is not to say all white men are angry or violent as that is not at all my intention. But there is a growing subset, and we have to be aware of it who are alienated, becoming radicalized, and desperate for meaning in their lives and as a result of aligning themselves with other troubled men of their kind, see violence as some form of validation.

When I was a kid Evel Knievel was the epitome of being masculine. I was never a fan of war movies, always disliked John Wayne, and never found sense in beer-chucking. I thought men in power who were diplomats at heart, like those who secured the Camp David Peace Accords when I was a teenager, were more worthy of praise than someone paid on Sunday to catch a football. (Yes, I grew up to a different type of kid.) So, this weekend when a veteran kills parishioners and burns down a church or another one shoots to kill from a boat I see male anger ripping at the seams of civility.

I am not at all thinking the nation will have a discussion about what we are teaching the boys of this nation. Or how we unsoundly reward the most bombastic and absurd male behavior coming from the top office in the land. Or will talk to the youth of the country about what real masculinity looks like, or acts like in society.

What we know with far too much evidence heaped up is that the current version of masculinity is broken and dangerous. But we will not talk about that, either.