A joyful referendum on weak men

Living up to one’s responsibilities takes strength, which is why the median American woman does so *far more* than the median American man. This is the start of a periodic series.

What does it mean to be a man? I think it means this, generally:

1. Live up to whatever responsibility you take on — citizenship, marital, parental, professional, community, public.

2. Do not abuse power or people. Protect others from abuse, however you can.

3. Be honest. Don’t cheat. Don’t lie — especially about other people.

4. Accept consequences for your behavior or failures, rather than allow/force somebody else to clean them up or endure them for you.

Those are, more or less, the core tenets of aspirational, mythological manhood I learned by watching and listening to men and women I admire throughout my life. They demonstrated that manhood for me both through modeling and expectation.

I’m also fortunate to have many dear male friends — virtually all of whom MAGAs would call “libs” — who embody that sense of manhood; and we reinforce each other.

I have tried to live up to these expectations, from my loved ones and from myself. My many shortcomings aside, I feel pretty good about my record of responsibility and manhood to this point in my life. But you can decide for yourself if that’s merited.

And I know that real manhood never comes without real effort. It defines itself by what we do, day after day.

MAGA manhood — compare and contrast

Beyond the wide circle of people I know, love, and admire, I find that American women today embody the admirable personal characteristics of traditional, aspirational manhood far more than American men.

“Conservative” men — through the drug of MAGA, which far pre-dates MAGA — have abandoned them completely. They’ve gotten high on something very different than what their grandfathers would have at least preached.

In the same way “conservative” Christianity has raised Trump above Jesus, “conservative” men and their endless consumption of media have publicly elevated anti-social, anti-community, anti-family manhood values. I’d summarize them like this, in the voice of the men who live them:

1. Gratify me. Indulge me. Fear me. Pity me. F—- me.

2. Moral lines are for pussies. Nothing is on me. Take no responsibility. Never admit anything. Cheat. Whine. Lie. Duck.

3. Find the easiest person to dominate or humiliate — and dominate or humiliate them.

4. Look at my HGH/roid bicep, bro. I’m a man. Look at my big gun, bro. I’m a man. Look at my Facebook meme, bro. I’m a man.

All of this is weakness — plain and simple. It’s what causes a MAGA bro to blow off his child support. It’s what causes people to join a giant lynch mob if they don’t get their way in any given election — and publicly pout and announce themselves as weird anti-social neighbors with an upside-down flag. If I could represent this weakness with one recent Polk County political picture, it would be this:

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What hope do the young “conservative” men and boys of Polk County have when U.S. Rep. Scott Franklin genuflecting to Matt Gaetz is their public model of manhood?

Power is not strength. Vulnerability is not weakness.

I consider the weakness, deterioration, rank selfishness, and moral cowardice of American men — as embodied by MAGA, morally deadbeat father Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, Franklin, Uvalde men, etc. — the number one threat to the future of the country.

Yeah sure, big bros with ‘roided up biceps can probably physically overpower women, or men without big ‘roided up biceps. And certainly, as one weak man recently proved by shooting at another weak man in a crowd, an AR-15 is a temporary source of power for any weak man.

Then what?

When the bleeding is over, the weakness remains with the men who brought it, not the people who absorbed it.

The wild confluence of events that elevated Kamala Harris to presidential nominee has, I think, isolated manhood as the key issue in American life. It kicked off a joyful referendum on weak manhood that will last well beyond Trump and this November’s election. Voting will only be a small part of it. But this excellent political ad captures that sense of happy moral referendum well.

When women most embody the manly virtues

Constructive, loving, unselfish order, rather than snarling, incompetent, selfish chaos, has been the touchstone of the “manly” virtues as long as I’ve been aware of them — from fairy tales onward. I am quite content to fight out the future of America on those battle lines. I find serene joy in being right, whatever the outcome.

To be clear, plenty of women live on the wrong side of this referendum. Many women behave in gross selfish “weird” ways towards each other, their communities, or toward the men in their lives. Stipulated.

As an example, Jennifer Canady, the House sponsor of Florida’s 6-week forced birth law, certainly behaves like the prototypical weak man. She lied about forced birth, is abusing other people with it, and then running away from it to let other people endure its literal consequences and its political consequences. And just look at her beam at one of the weakest, weirdest men in America before she tried to pretend she was never there.

But, Canadys aside, in my observation, in 2024: the median American woman is far more of a man than the median American man.

And weak men know it.

That’s why they’ve been throwing a collective tantrum for years —rather than looking in the mirror and doing their part as citizens. And there’s a lot of money to be made sustaining the denial and entitlement of weak men and boys with whining wails, as Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson can tell you.

Only men can fix themselves

America can and should adopt policies and attitudes and economic models that help men and boys correct their trajectory. We certainly need to be considering them as a country — and focusing on building conditions that encourage constructive manhood. Boys and men alike need other men as models. Indeed, the Biden-Harris manufacturing and working class economic focus has probably done more to strengthen economic dignity for men who work with their hands than any political administration of my lifetime. But men of all kinds need positive affirmation and work — of all kinds — that promotes dignity and purpose and self-worth. (So do women. We all do.)

But power politics and policy can only do so much — even though they are the catalysts for the clarity of the referendum on weak men today.

Ultimately, individual American men have to prove themselves worthy of individual American women with their behavior and strength and responsibility. As a group, we’re losing ground.

This ongoing referendum on weak manhood will be the story of America for a long time to come. It will play out in voting and marriage and birth rate and abortion rate. There are good reasons Florida Woman doesn’t want to have Florida Bro’s child.

Indeed, American men can only “win” this referendum over time by checking themselves, gaining self-control, and reversing the rot. Men can only win by proving themselves the worthy moral and civic partners of women in actual life.

They only real alternative for weak men is to violently impose themselves on women (and the men who do not struggle with chronically weak manhood) at massive scale. But even that doesn’t deliver “victory” for weak men, because they’re too weak to even have solidarity and common gross purpose with each other.

Remember the first rule of weak men: Gratify me. Indulge me. Fear me. Pity me. F—- me. You can’t build a sustained movement — even a hideous one — around me. You can temporarily destroy good things with disorder and grifting. But you can’t replace them with something more manly.

And you can’t bully, rape or kill anyone into respecting you, which is all these weak MAGA men really seem to want — some empty expression of undeserved personal respect for their non-existent strength.

The lens for almost everything

I started thinking about creating this periodic series when I read about the Polk Florida House candidate complaints against Anthony Pedicini.

Pedicini is the lame fake MAGA bro political “consultant,” whose buddies manage to coerce lots of Polk GOP candidates into acting as his personal ATM machines — purportedly with Jennifer Canady’s mean girl guidance, according to my various sources.

I have no truck for Pedicini. He’s a political welfare prince, who collects money from powerful private interests and launders it on mailers that any GenAI program could create in the service of nothing but Legislative club membership. Then he calls himself a genius. LOL.

Polk School Board Member Lisa Miller — the most manly politician currently serving in Polk County, by far — smoked Pedicini in 2022, at the supposed peak of his power. His firm got smoked again in Lake Wales municipal elections recently. He is far from unbeatable — because he’s lazy.

But Pedicini isn’t what got me thinking about this.

It was the weak men whining to a state without any rules that Pedicini is breaking them. Welcome to the lame machine you meekly helped Kelli Stargel meekly help more powerful people build, Chad Davis. You wanted to be part of this gross fraternity for soooo long. Why you crying now?

Rather than beg the refs who don’t exist to make Pedicini behave, Davis and the rest of these guys could actually try to compete — like men.

They could make the public case for their own election, based on their approach to wielding power, based on actual issues in Polk County and beyond: Leo Schofield. The corrupt farce of Florida Poly. The DeSantis veto of funding for arts organizations. The endless grifting of vouchers. 15-week versus 6-week forced birth. There are endless points around which to construct a campaign rather than a country club application.

All of those issues, and more, as we’ll explore in future installments, hinge on a lack of manhood — a refusal to do what is necessary, right, honorable, and honest. The refusal to center them in a political campaign also reflects a lack of manhood.

Maybe addressing actual issues publicly beats Pedicini’s gross, cynical, secondhand money. Maybe not. But real men aren’t afraid to lose, either way. Real men compete for what they think is right and necessary.

And make no mistake, taking forceful public positions on important public matters requires acting like men, not useless fraternity pledges. Absent that, we’re left with the spectacle of Polk’s 2024 pledges complaining that Brother Pedicini is spanking them too hard with the hazing paddle.

Thoughts and prayers, weak men.