Being Aware of the Models of Masculinity and Humanity, We Favor, and the Pain They Can Cause: Who Do We Want to Lead This Nation and Model to the World What It Means To Be A Human Being?

The world today is certainly screwy and frightening. I keep getting shocked, so many people keep getting shocked, and asking ourselves, “what is going on here beyond the obvious?” What is going on in me? What more can I do to make things better?  It would be easy to just dull the shock of this administration’s politics of hate, cruelty, and corruption and lose ourselves in games, streaming shows, or whatever. But many of us honestly can’t do that. And the models of humanity provided by the men leading the nation today, of what it is to be a male human being, are malignant, frightening, painful to listen to. And insulting.

 

On 9/30 Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave a State of the Force speech at the Pentagon. If you didn’t hear it, or didn’t hear quotes from it, he spoke about how he’s transforming the military. “We are no longer the woke department, or the weak department. Simple translation of that, no fanny—no fatties, no trannies, no beardoes, no weirdoes, no wimps, no radicals, just warriors… The war Department is color-blind, gender-neutral, and merit-based. The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in with testosterone testing on top.” Is he looking in the mirror when he speaks about “ideological clowns”?

 

As Nicolle Wallace pointed out on MSNBC Deadline White House, he announced a 20% cut in senior military officers, including generals and admirals, when we’re in a war that drags on and on. And which he, and his boss, Mr. DT, started with no clear, justifiable reason or plan, and have no idea how to end. He’s cutting the very people who might have the true expertise to get us out of the crisis, and it seems advised them never to get into it.

 

What also stood out from the speech was not just the disturbing content; it was the beauty pageant that he demanded for his audience. According to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, not the home of radicals of the progressive sort, the troops nominated to attend the speech had to meet certain “physical standards” including “waist-to-height ratios, [and] be impeccably groomed…” —so, as Wallace said, the ones who didn’t measure up, “literally, the less attractive or fit ones stay on the battlefield” to fight the war without end while, according to Hegseth’s standards, the more fit perform for the media?

 

And earlier, on September 18th, near the time that Pete Hegseth was calling for the shaping of a MAGA, male beauty pageant of a military, a lawsuit was filed in Ithaca, NY, detailing allegations from 2024 of a gang rape of a woman by fraternity brothers. As reported by the Cornell Sun, a woman described being raped by seven men after being coerced into consuming drugs at a Chi Phi frat house on the Cornell University campus. She is suing the University, several Chi Phi fraternity organizations, sorority organizations, the men who allegedly raped her, etc. The defendants deny the allegations.

 

The plaintiff reported the rape to Cornell Police almost 3 weeks after it occurred. She was later deeply disappointed in the initial lack of support by the student community. The local district attorney declined to file charges, saying there wasn’t sufficient evidence to do so. Cornell’s Office of Civil Rights and Student Conduct and Community Standards held a title IX investigation. They suspended the Chi Phi fraternity chapter and expelled two students, suspended others. That’s it.

 

What do we do with these events? Especially viewed through the lens of the Epstein files and a president continuously talking in demeaning, dismissive, even predatory ways about women? A president talking, in the Hollywood tapes, about “grab[bing] them by the pussie.” A secretary of the Defense Department who was investigated for sexual assault in California.

 

There’s been a great outcry against Hegseth and Cornell and the Ithaca District Attorney.  But will the outcries result in any real and substantive action? Will the demonstrations and outcry about the Rape at Cornell and lack of an appropriate, just, and compassionate response lead to change? Change not just at Cornell, but nationally, and at the ballot booths? We need changes in how institutions treat rape, change in national leadership, and changes in models of and understanding of how we should be with each other.

 

The New York Times published an article detailing how Jane Doe went from a shamed victim to a powerful, courageous actor. What will we do? What will we learn from these events?

 

Sometimes, a negative model can be helpful, if it’s short term….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

Don’t Believe the Make Believe: Listen Critically, Feel What We Feel, But Watch Carefully What He Does

One of the best articles I read recently about DT’s attempts to shred our lives and the Constitution was an opinion piece by Ezra Klein in the NYT titled “Don’t Believe Him.”  DT wants us to mistake him for someone in command, someone with a sense of inner power and utter strength. He wants us to “believe he is already king,” so we will let him govern as a king.  Don’t believe his hype. He’s trying to attack so quickly and chaotically to shock us, so we don’t see who he really is⎼ a man in a political position of tremendous power and responsibility, but who is vindictive, frightened, power hungry, and too weak to hear opposing views or to work step by step with others.

 

Just open a news feed. Today mine began with a Reuters article about DT negotiating with Russia about how to end the war with Ukraine, calling the Ukrainian leader, who has led one of the smartest, strongest, and bravest counterattacks against an immoral and violent invader, “a dictator without elections.” “Zelensky better move fast,” said DT, “or he is not going to have a country left.” DT, seemingly acting in the interests of dictator Putin, basically blamed the Ukrainians for the Russian assault on their own lives and freedom.

 

DT, with Musk’s help, has been moving chaotically and at incredible speed to devastate our federal workforce. His executive orders and mass firings will affect every aspect of our lives. People who are losing their jobs and income are those who hire, manage and fight devastating fires, rescue us from floods and assist our recovery from disasters. They send out Social Security checks and tax returns, approve surgeries, doctor visits, and medicines for the elderly, provide childcare and healthcare information to educate and protect children, and defend us all from foreign and domestic criminals and terrorists. Those fired were given little notice and no justification. Just imagine all the pain this is causing in thousands or millions of lives!

 

In the meantime, our personal information once securely held by the IRS and other government agencies has been or is intended to be made accessible to agents of Musk and DT. According to a suit by labor and tax payer organizations, the information is being exposed in an “arbitrary and capricious manner,” and without compliance to Privacy Act requirements and IRS policies and procedures, to agents without the training, and commitment to security and the law that the career employees had. Imagine what DT could do with this information to take revenge on those who oppose him, or to rip away power and money from the great majority of us and give it to the tiny minority of ultra-rich.

 

All this is supposedly to look for fraud and waste. But such an investigation takes time and sophisticated investigations. DT said these cuts would also bring down the deficit. But according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, his policies would substantially add to the deficit. His goal to cut taxes on the rich and corporations, as well as Social Security, etc. could add $5 trillion to the deficit, while undermining the future of SSI, for example, or undermine the future of our nation.

 

Another article provided the latest example of the spitefulness, smallness, and vindictiveness of DT’s administration. Three migrants from Venezuela, with no criminal records, brought a suit against the government’s attempt to imprison them at Guantanamo Bay. They won the suit one day; and on the next, they were immediately taken to a plane and deported to Venezuela.

 

DT continues to devastate workers throughout the government. For example, he capped NIH funding at 15%, which means firing the people who support the scientists engaged in medical research into diseases, medicines & other treatments, including cancer, viruses, etc. This could totally wipe out life-saving treatments we all need.

 

One of DT’s executive orders stopped 13 operating divisions of HHS from sharing external communications. On Nicolle Wallace, on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House,  informed us that the flu has led to a “serious condition called acute necrotizing encephalitis,” but DT ordered the CDC to hide information on this and other illnesses. This temporarily interfered with the media sharing information to inform parents about the effect of the flu on children’s brains. And then there’s the bird flu. Among those fired (and later re-hired) were those from the Department of Agriculture who had been working to respond to the bird flu outbreak.

 

In Texas, the Health Service alerted the public to a measles outbreak amongst unvaccinated children happening now in Gaines County, Texas. After all the cuts to Federal health officials and RFK, Jr.’s approval as Secretary of Health, would this information even be shared with the public?  ….

 

*To read the whole article and the light in the middle of the dark, please go to The Good Men Project.

Should the Name of the GOP Be Changed to the DTP, the Domestic Terrorism Party? Or is Creating the Sense of a Nation Divided in Two the Biggest Threat?

No political party in any democracy should make domestic terrorism or undermining democracy a large part of its governing method, but that just might be the best description of what we’re experiencing now. On the other hand, maybe the country is less polarized than we’ve been led to believe we are, by DJT, the GOP, etc. and the way different media have been covering violent events and politics?

 

According to Reuters, the level of political violence has been drastically on the rise since DJT’s run for President in 2016. Some of these threats were subtle and not recognized for what they were. Others were grossly obvious, like Jan 6, when DJT worked the crowd with statements like, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Maybe the rhetoric of DJT, and several other members of the GOP, that has inspired violence should be considered a form of domestic terrorism?

 

The latest example are his threats against judges, probable witnesses, and possible jury members in the Jack Smith Jan 6 case, which have led to a request for a narrow gag order to stop “inflammatory” and “intimidating” comments. DJT also said, in another of the cases he now faces for alleged crimes against the nation, “If you go after me, I will go after you.” He has a history of threatening judges, threatening the rule of law, democracy itself, over and over again.

 

What fueled his power was pushing hate, fear, and grievance. Creating in our nation a sense that everything was about to tip over. Or that there were two sides, his and the sinners against him. And these “others,” mostly non-white, non-Christian people, or “left-wing extremists,” must be stopped at any cost.

 

He added to this by making extreme, shocking statements that were either untrue or exaggerated. Ones that fit his purposes and narrow perspective in that moment, to promote himself above all others. According to Slate, lying about the actual threat posed by COVID, not so much to protect us from panicking but more to avoid rattling the stock market. Suggesting injecting bleach might be a helpful treatment for COVID. Lying that “caravans of immigrants” of hardened criminals were invading our nation, when no such thing was happening. He continuously lied about and attacked President Obama.

 

This shock doctrine activity is a threat to all of us. On 9/11/2023 I was listening to MSNBC Deadline Whitehouse. This program was frightening in making this threat clear. The host, Nicole Wallace, posed the question, “If 9/11 happened today, would the nation come together as it did back in 2001? Are we capable of national unity today?”

 

The guests on MSNBC talked about the May DHS bulletin saying the US remains in a heightened threat environment, and that threat is not from foreign terrorists but domestic ones. News analyst Mary McCord discussed how 9/11 was an attack on national infrastructure to sow fear and discord. And the political violence happening today has this same goal. To increase the fear and division, to increase doubts about the government and ourselves, and democracy.

 

Politico reports 60 incidents of attacks on major grid infrastructure happened just this year. And these attacks are mostly inspired by hate and politics. For example, the recent attacks on the power grid in Baltimore, a majority black population, were carried out by people aiming their virulence at black people. How do we deal with this threat?…

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

**Photo from Museum of Natural History in New York City.