he best way to understand the US position on Iran is machismo. There’s no point looking for a strategic calculation – you won’t find it. Donald Trump and his officials have tried several explanations: regime change, nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and an upcoming attack on Israel. None of them last more than a couple of days. None of them are real.
Machismo offers the only compelling explanation for what is happening here. The Trump administration, like all hard-right governments throughout history, operates on an old idea of masculinity as power. The things it likes – from executive authority to fossil fuel – are male-coded. It demands that men and women adopt traditional gender roles. It has eroded the rights of transgender people, gay men and lesbians. It worships strength and despises weakness.
No one encapsulates this vision better than “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, the pituitary moron who has unfathomably been put in charge of the armed forces. He has no qualities to speak of. He is perhaps the least complex individual ever given high office. And he therefore provides the best example of the administration’s gender anxiety. He represents the male personality when it is extracted from anything meaningful or decent and reduced to its crudest, most insecure form.
I am not posting this because I anything to say about what the US is doing, but I am intrigued by main stream media characterising armed aggression in terms that many feminists use in response to this type of confrontation. That behind all the big words and supposed political values etc., it is just a dick contest.
Although likely I suppose that msm is just using the arguement to say Trump and his henchmen are just not proper politicians.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/hegseths-fragile-masculinity-doomed-us-4285066
also at https://archive.is/KGDRS
(In case anyone is interested the title is not generated by MN AI as this seems to have now disappeared, but is the title in the printed paper version of the i Paper, but online they have changed toxic to fragile. ???)
Edited to add (and really peed off) the stupid MN AI has put in a title I did NOT ask for.
The title should have been so please use this as the reference point as it shows what the i Paper is actually doing not some misunderstood AI fudge:
Toxic Masculinity Shows US Secretary of War is Not a Serious Figure
FFS mnhq, I dont know whether to ask you to delete the thread or change the title.
This stupid intervention is just a wind up.