Men, With Too Many Guns
And at the end I take a somewhat surprising turn, but I was mad last week and I didn't get a chance to write about it, so enjoy
With the ongoing bombardment of Iran, the United States is once again at war in the Middle East. After decades mired in Iraq and Afghanistan, resulting in the death of millions of people, worldwide destabilization, and untold damage to our own democracy, the Trump regime has dropped us right back in it, only this time with the curtain peeled all the way back. Unlike his predecessors, Trump did not make his case to Congress, the United Nations, or the American people; nations across the world urged restraint and deescalation instead of offering unwavering support; and a majority of Americans do not support the war. This is American imperialism laid bare, the last vestiges of purported legitimacy stripped away. And what is left? Men, with too many guns.
There’s a lot to be concerned with in this new war. The Trump regime has offered at best incoherent, conflicting reasons for attacking Iran, and an incoherent and conflicting picture of what victory might look like or when we’ll have achieved it. There is also, of course, the question that lies at the heart of every war - how could adding more death, more violence, more destruction ever really improve anything? The former, concerns that civilized heads of state must address in this world we’ve built; the latter, a question every one of us must ask if we’re ever going to build something better. That the Trump regime has neither answered nor answered these concerns is merely a prelude to what I find most disconcerting, however. And that is their sheer delight in the violence they unleashed.
Reid Cherlin summed it up well in Crooked Media’s Open Tabs newsletter last week:
“What’s striking here isn’t just the focus on deadliness, or as Hegseth and company so often call it, “lethality,” but how much fun they think this is. By afternoon, the White House had released a hype video mixing actual strike footage from Iran with animations from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. At the podium, Hegseth gleefully read a roll call of American aircraft involved in the strikes—“B-2s, B-52s, B-1s, Predator drones, fighters controlling the skies”—many of which are decades-old platforms that generally sit around at Midwestern bases with nothing to do. It’s a good old-fashioned hootenanny, and everybody’s getting in on the action.”
The Trump regime’s delight in their own warmongering is remarkably unsurprising. What else could one expect from the regime that put out a “deportation ASMR” video, that lined the lawn of the White House with mugshot-style posters of the immigrants they arrested, that posed for photoshoots in front of people locked away in immigration detention, or gleefully sold merch for Alligator Alcatraz. And now, as our bombs kill school children and civilians, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showcases an America unleashed, freed from the constraints of such petty concerns as respect for human lives and honoring human dignity and self-determination. As he reminded us in a briefing on Monday, March 2, this war will be “All on our terms with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives.”
In other words, we have no concern for civilians or children, we have no concern for the future of the nations we’re destroying. We don’t care about democracy or self-determination or human rights. We care about our own power, and we will not rest until we are secure in our dominion. It’s toxic masculinity armed with torpedoes, the first fired in combat since WWII.
I don’t want to reduce this entire conflict to a singular social, cultural force. Racism, colonialization, and the pursuit of wealth are significant driving forces in the war on Iran. We also can’t ignore the domestic political forces at work (a regime up against the ropes as low approval ratings, bad economic news, and the Epstein files collide with the midterms) or the machinations of history. But I don’t think we can ignore that an administration that so readily turns to violence is also overrun with men who are primarily concerned with their own power, who relish their own cruelty, and who feel such gleeful vindication against the forces of social justice, progress towards equality, and the push to honor innate human dignity.
Plus, Trump desperately wants to cement his place in history, not by shepherding legislation that improves lives, nor by scientific innovation and exploration, but as a conquering emperor, remaking the world. And we can’t ignore that either.
The Iran war is toxic masculinity’s endstage, a summit reached through the accumulation of power and enough might to make right. It is a capstone project for men who feel insecure about their place in the world, and who feel that with enough force and brash confidence in their own superiority, they can push everyone else out of it. But toxic masculinity does not begin there.
It begins on the playground, when pulling pigtails and pushing other kids is excused - “oh it’s because he likes you.” It starts in school when bad behavior is buried beneath sports prowess or fraternity membership. It happens every time we say the words “boys will be boys.” It leads to school shootings, when the conversation circles and then dismisses how the shooters treated the women in their lives, or every time there’s an op-ed that suggests that to solve the male loneliness epidemic, women should lower their standards. It happens every time an assault victim is asked what they were wearing. It happens when we tell men and boys to stop crying, to man up, to take a joke. And it happens in locker rooms when the president calls, makes fun of the US women’s hockey team, and all the men in the room laugh.
There was a lot of talk, after that moment, about whether or not it mattered, about whether or not it was fair to hold athletes accountable for the politics and behavior of their government, whether it was fair to ask them to turn down the state of the union, whether it was just a dumb joke. And of course, in the grand scheme of things, it was just a dumb joke. And while I do think that there is no level of sports prowess that absolves you of knowing what’s going on in your country and using that knowledge to make decisions you can stand by, I’m not focusing on the fact that the US men’s hockey team went to the state of the union. If they want to watch a deranged, violent lunatic give a boring speech for two hours, I am certainly going to think less of them, but it was not the moment that enraged me. That belongs to the delight in that locker room when the president called, the raucous laughter at a joke belittling the accomplishments of their teammates, the way not one single person in that room had the wherewithal or the experience to push back. That shows me what kind of locker rooms those guys are usually in, and it’s not a room I’d ever feel good in.
Toxic masculinity delights in violence, and it delights in bullying and punching down. It enjoys making people feel small, encourages you to laugh, asks why you can’t just take a joke. It amasses power this way, making rooms unsafe for different opinions or perspectives or ways of being by belittling those who share them, letting laughter and jokes mask the true feelings that prop them up. Toxic masculinity is so convinced of its own superiority that it does not want to hear other opinions or other ideas. It just wants to watch others cower before it. And it starts on the playground, and in locker rooms, but it doesn’t end there. Because when we all keep just laughing at the joke, just cheering at the rally, when we’re too tired or put down to call it out, when we’re drowned out, what starts on the playground and in the locker room ends up on private islands and at the White House.
Take Action This Week
Believe it or not, Congress is actually supposed to have the power to make war, not the White House. Congress is supposed to authorize the use of military force, and Congress is supposed to authorize the funding. Our Congress, led by Republicans, has abdicated this responsibility, and we should give them hell for it. Plus, there are opportunities to deny this administration supplemental funding for their illegal war that has absolutely no foundation in self-defense. Indivisible has a script and action you can take here.