Toxic masculinity shows US Secretary of War is not a serious figure

[IwantToRetire]

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.

And now Trump says they may continue to bomb Kharg Island “just for

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/ckg1w1jp8kjt

see 23:57

That should read “just for fun”

Indeed - the ethnic cleansing of parts of Ireland, including the catastrophic plantation of Ulster with loyal English and Scottish settlers, the effects of which are still being felt today, flourished in the reign of Elizabeth I.

I think she personally had a more nuanced and less racist view of the Irish than the Hesgeth-like figures who surrounded her, who were hell-bent on subduing the sub-human Irish 'rug-headed kerns' by any genocidal means necessary.
Perhaps a king wouldn't have had any level of empathy at all.

But ultimately the buck for the massacres, scorched earth policy, displacement, famines, etc deployed to crush the Irish stopped with the Queen.

Pete Hegseth is an absolute psychopath and has committed war crimes in the past. He has now been put in a position to authorise war crimes. Please read the whole Wiki page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Hegseth

Related, but mabye more about having Trump's view of the world put into practice.

I was only half listening but a US advisor on the war was being interviewed. And he in all seriousness was saying what the US was doing was right. And once they have stopped bombing everything then the Iranian people should just get on with it and put in place a new regime.

Starting from the fact that many parts of the infrastructure of the country no longer work, and without access to the internet how is anyone going to know that that point has arrived, what to they think "the people" can do.

He came over as a sort of Dr Strangelove figure.

Or maybe just like Trump has no idea how politics actually works.

Not even, although it would be rejected, saying the UN could send in peace keepers whilst the country holds elections or forms a coaltion government.

As though the new Ayatollah and those who put him in place would just give up the power they have.

But also the arrogance.

Its this complete lack of understanding that 9 times out of 10 it is the reaction to the US (and other parts of the west) that create the situations the west then says isn't too their liking.

Earlier in the week I saw an interview with the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraqi Kurdistan on C4 news. And given his position has no love for Iran.

And the interviewer asked some innane question about whether the current Ayatollah would agree to work with the US or some such.

And this man just looked at the interviewer as though he was just a tiny bit deranged and asked him would you work with the people who had killed your father, you wife and children (and I think a brother).

Even C4 news that obviously thinks its more advanced in its thinking seems to accept the narrative that the west can just go and dabble in other countries problems and they will all be grateful.

Look at the mess the US has left in Libya, Iraq and however many other places.

So although Trump is so overtly I am right even when I am wrong there is no doubt that the western lens that looks at events just does not for a second doubt that despite deaths and terrible destruction it will be better for those who are losing loved one, their homes and their businesses.