Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
This must account, at least in part, for the post-election hysteria among the social justice folk and their mentors at the Prog end of politics, especially those bent on suppressing or eliminating men. Of course, it’s only been the last year or so that their long-running animus became explicit, their writ against white men in particular. Before, it was all sub rosa, really just a byproduct of the campaign to uplift women, people-of-color, and the many theoretical gender categories vying for supremacy of the moral high ground. Hillary was expected to drive the final wooden stake through masculinity’s demonic heart… but something went wrong… and she was disarmed… and now this cheeto-headed monster in a red necktie is the president-elect. There must have been a clerical error.
Donald Trump was about as far from my sense of the male ideal as anything short of the Golem. His accomplishments in life — developing hotels that look like bowling trophies and producing moronic TV shows — seem as flimsy as the plastic golden heraldry plastered on his casinos. His knowledge of the world appears to be on the level of a fifth grader. He can barely string together two coherent sentences off-teleprompter. I was as astonished as anyone by the disclosure of his “grab them by the pussy” courtship advice to little Billy Bush. In my experience, it seemed a very poor strategy for scoring some action, to say the least. In a better world — perhaps even the America he imagines to have been great once — Donald Trump would be a kind of freak among men, a joke, a parody of masculinity.
But then consider the freak show that American culture has become in our time and it shouldn’t be surprising that a cartoon nation has ended up with a cartoon of a man as head-of-state. In fact, I doubt that there even is any remaining collective idea of what it means to be a man here in terms of the ancient virtues. Honor? Dignity? Patience? Prudence? Fuhgeddabowdit. The cultural memory of all that has been erased. The apotheosis of Trump may remind a few people of all that has been lost, but we’re starting from nearly zero in the recovery of it.
Consider also the caliber of the male persons who stepped into the arena last spring when the election spectacle kicked off. Only Bernie Sanders came close to representing honorable manhood — in the form of your irascible old “socialist” uncle from Brooklyn — while the rest of them acted like Elmer Fudd, Mighty Mouse, and Woody Woodpecker. And then when the primary elections ended, Bernie drove a wooden stake into his own heart in a bizarre act of political hara-kiri.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign was engineered from the get-go to complete the demolition of American manhood in what turned out to be a reckless miscalculation. “I’m with her (and against him).” Too much in recent American history has been against “him” and a great many of the hims out there began to notice that they were being squeezed out of the nation’s life like watermelon seeds. Most particularly, men were no longer considered necessary in whatever remained of the family unit. This went against the truth of the matter, of course, because nothing has been more harmful to everyday life than the absence of fathers. And this was connected to the secondary calamity of men losing their roles in the workplace — and the loss of self-respect connected with that. So the election awakened some sleeping notion that life was wildly out of balance in America. And being so out of balance, it swung wildly in the other direction.
The corrective to all this awaits a fiery passage through the coming tribulation that is about to start in the realm of money. You can be sure that many of the current popular assumptions about how the world works are about to change. It will present opportunities for men to start acting like men again — for instance, being on the side of the truth instead of reflexive mendacity. Some real men could emerge from the smoldering rubble and begin a from-the-ground-up reassembly of the male spirit. Trump may end up being little more than a broken monument amid the rubble, a sort of golden calf the people constructed in desperation as they sought a way out of the wilderness.
But the blow-up in banking and finance could represent a final detonation of manhood, since so much testosterone is sequestered in the dark corners of Wall Street and the money centers like it. And when that happens men might be in disrepute for a thousand years.
“hotels that look like bowling trophies”
And
“plastic golden heraldry plastered on his casinos”
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No matter what your opinion of JK’s perspectives – he sure is an entertaining writer and when he insults or disparages someone, he does so in original ways.
Ya but when he’s on he’s on.
“So the election awakened some sleeping notion that life was wildly out of balance in America. And being so out of balance, it swung wildly in the other direction…. It will present opportunities for men to start acting like men again — for instance, being on the side of the truth instead of reflexive mendacity. Some real men could emerge from the smoldering rubble and begin a from-the-ground-up reassembly of the male spirit. Trump may end up being little more than a broken monument amid the rubble, a sort of golden calf the people constructed in desperation as they sought a way out of the wilderness.”
This is a great paragraph.
The pendulum got pushed too hard too fast in one direction. The correction will be equally as swift to the other side. It is brewing now, the US election being just the opening act.
For many men Trump will represent a rallying point. He is far from perfect for sure (who among us isn’t?) but he has a spine and that’s as a good a place to start as any.
Millennial men are an interesting group, as the recent political winds favor their eradication almost entirely. Oh, the Left want your productivity, your strength of back, and your insights, but they want to keep this while changing everything else about you.
Still, in a post-Trumpening world, it appears that the sexless childlike minnie men are starting to slowly pull their heads out of the sand and look around to see what kind of world they are creating for themselves. These poor bastards are questioning everything they’ve ever been told, and don’t like the answers they find. Some dive face first into their shallow pools of cognitive dissonance, too afraid to face a reality so at odds with their own chosen paradigm. Some become outraged, and swing so far in the opposite direction that they embrace the most insane and illogical of conspiracies. However, the vast majority of them are rocked back on their heels, unsure of what to do next. They find the left end of the spectrum appalling, and the conspiracy-riddled far right to be pure lunacy. They are in a holding pattern, looking for a symbol of hope.
So what then for these?
Leadership. And not the faux leadership of the left, which claims that they have a divine mandate from the Hermaphrodite Gods of yore, nor the faux leadership of the far right, a world in which anarchy is frequently pushed.
I was at the bar the other day, and an elderly gentleman I had not seen before was there enjoying a Jim Beam on ice. I should have known I would like him based on drink choice alone, thats my old man’s first, second, and third drink choice. My wife approached the bar to buy our table another bottle of wine, and she struck up conversation with the man, as she is wont to do with anyone with two ears and a generous helping of time. As they spoke eventually the man asked:
“So you are a millennial right?” To which my wife nodded, smirking.
“Well, you seem to have your head screwed on straight for someone your age! Tell me, I work with Millennials all the time, how in the world can I get them to work?”
Please let it be known that my wife looks like an utter creampuff. Long blonde hair, stylish glasses, pin-up style makeup, and a custom dress. So when she marched over to the book-shelf and pulled out the bar’s only copy of Strauss and Howe’s The Fourth Turning the man look truly stunned.
“You want to know about my generation?” she said, “Then read this! It will tell you everything you need to know about my generation, your generation, and the next one as well!”
The man looked shocked. My wife is a former hooter’s waitress, turned housewife. The last person you would expect to recommend a high-brow piece of work like 4T theory.
He perused the back cover and the interior, remarking on the pithy nature of the volume.
Again with that (sometimes infuriating) smirk, my wife replied, “Oh you will have to read it more than once. There is no way you can get through it once and still retain it all.”
So he goes back to flipping through the pages and then asked “Well, this is great at a generational level, but what about my current problems?”
My wife pointed in my direction, “For that you’ll need my husband. He is a Millennial who manages Millennials.”
I waved at the table, and the man called out to me “So what do you say then? How do you lead a Millennial?”
I hollered back, “Kick ’em in the ass early and often until they get moving. After that, only kick their asses a little.”
He barked a surprise laugh, “So the same as everyone else then?”
“Yup,” I confirmed, “the same as everyone else.”
The rules surrounding simple, effective leadership never change. These Millennial men rarely had fathers of the caliber needed to guide a young man into adulthood, and the focus on the state and later on globalism has completely destroyed the community of masculine leaders they would normally have been able to look up to. But now these kids are waking up and their frame of mind is ripe for some good ole fashioned leadership.
In a world made needlessly complex by technology and politicians some questions really do have the simplest of answers.
I love when a brilliant comment is better than the article. Posted as a stand alone piece.
Wow, thanks Jim!
Also, 90% of my contribution to this site has been thanks to bar conversation.
I should drink more!
Sage advice for all of us.
TPC
I have to say a great piece! You painted the scene. The picture told the story. A great read!
If the master performs the mentoring correctly, the student will outperform the master.
Good read! TPC! But you make some assumptions that I fully haven’t resolved let alone accepted.
Perhaps Kunstler is right, about all the GOP candidates being Elmer Fudds. Still to a one they were each, and all, a far better alternative to the Clinton/Soros cabal, so in the end I voted not Hillary, which meant a vote for Trump.
…
However I do wish my Elmer Fudd candidate, in the persona of Rand Paul, had won.
He’s talking about Trump not being the man? Well, JHK is not man enough to hold Trump’s jockstrap. Oh, the irony.
He says, ” Only Bernie Sanders came close to representing honorable manhood —”. Shouldn’t you have immediately stopped reading?
“Shouldn’t you have immediately stopped reading”?——Stucky
I did.
Yep, I almost stopped reading at that point also but decided to carry on with the article. The rest was pretty good.
Stucky–close is still close–It’s no cigar, tho! Did Uncle Bernie come close??? Maybe more so than all the Republican rivals? Perhaps, Kunstler is denigrating the Repubs unfairly. Of course, I thought most of them were wusses with the exception of Ben Carson, who has more than proved himself with his talent and manhood. I expected a crying room for Rubio, Cruz, and Bush with a comfort puppy, to boot.
Now, Trump! One can certainly say with a high degree of confidence that he’s not a wuss.
The reason I knew that Trump would win was two fold–the crowds that he attracted compared to HiLIARy, and that Trump is an Alpha male. He would get the women’s vote. Women are biologically attracted to Alpha males. They may say differently, but when push comes to shove, they choose an Alpha male almost every time. They fantasize about Sean Connery as ‘007’, a women’s man and a man’s man. Biology trumps philosophy.
Women have been led astray by the Fem movement. Women who have bought into the Fem movement feel betrayed. Many are business oriented, older, many husbandless and childless, wondering what happened. Where have all the men gone, they lament.
They crushed them with their criticism and unfeminine behavior and constant complaining. There is a reason that men are men and women are women. It just out works better that way.
One thing I learned in life is that women don’t know what they want. I didn’t learn that, but was told that by a woman. WAS that a revelation!
This is why the Progressive Liberal Democrats are always telling women what they want and much of what they say is just plain hogwash.
“His knowledge of the world appears to be on the level of a fifth grader. He can barely string together two coherent sentences off-teleprompter.”
Sour grapes from JK the loser.
Trumps main theme is corruption. The corruption is obvious: our jobs shipped to China, Mexico – and we’re told this must be done. He’s already gotten Ford to continue making cars in the US, and he’s working on Carrier, to stay in the US. And then these ‘trade deals’ where the US gives everything, in return for nothing.
I’m in the IT industry. Probably the worst decision ever (happened about 25 years ago), was to give the Red Chinese (our enemy) the tools and knowledge to make integrated circuits. We gave all that away – I don’t fucking believe it. Another example of the corruption.
Someone is making a lot of fucking money on immigration – both legal (migrants) and illegal. And all these years, we just couldn’t build a wall. We couldn’t build a visa entry / exit system. We couldn’t enforce E-Verify. Duh – this is one big ‘rope a dope’, and the American citizens are getting butt fucked every day this shit continues.
We don’t need Einstein, we need someone with common sense that will get these things done.
Dutch, He only claimed he got Ford to keep a division here, they were not intending to move it abroad.
Yeah, I know that. But it’s more than any other politician has ever done (AFAIK). And he isn’t even president yet!
Where the hell was Kunstler’s hand-wringing during the Oreo Years?
Ding….Ding……Ding……Ding!
Give Rdawg a prize, that is a very good question. The answer is, Kuntsler is a joo and Oreo was the golden man-boy.
This moron is always wrong, no different this time. Remember he voted twice for the current monkey in chief and also voted for clinton. I for one am tired of his ramblings here on TBP.
Everything else was good, but calling Bernie a good example of a man was just… sigh.
Settling for an earlier model of the problem doesn’t cure the problem.
So Bernie is honorable, a man who has never added to society’s wealth, but is pretty sure he should be running things, and managed to get a nice expensive lake house. How convenient.
I laugh at the idea that Kuntsler likely thinks that he is “manly” and has a rats ass chance of survival in an actual tough dog eat dog world.
Does he think people in his described future made by hand will trade him grain, shelter and clothing for his musings???
Almost tragic delusion..m
TPC’s comment was great. I don’t think I have ever been in a bar that featured a copy of S&H, but I don’t get out much these days.
Your wife sounds like a younger version of my own- her beauty and elan often fool people into thinking she hasn’t got the intellectual chops to keep up, but she is often the first to solve a problem or deduce what’s wrong in the first place. That is a rare combination in a woman, makes for great children and a happy life.
I just want you all to know that I suggested my son’s boss during his summer internship at JHUAPL in Baltimore/D.C area read a couple TBP articles. I told her it might give her insight on the people who supported Trump and the reasons the establishment (where she exists) is so hated.
She informed me you are all a bunch of racists and can’t understand why I read articles here.
My son doesn’t want to work there again, anyway. He says the atmosphere is too political. He has some idea there might be a more casual place to work. He’s a millennial who is just beginning to wake up. I’m seeing big changes in him and the young people around him at college.
All a bunch of Racists. That word has be thrown around so much that it has lost all meaning. What does the word racist mean anymore? But if she wants to characterize me and everyone else with the “R” word then I suppose the best thing I can do is embrace it. Be like Black men calling themselves Nigga in Rap songs.
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So I’m a gonna do a rap
Some bitch called me a racist
I think she’s a whore
I’ll take that label
I won’t fall into that trap
Bet she don’t come back for more
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If that woman loses her job being a boss she can always write inspiring slogans for the Khmer Rouge or Kim Sung One. I wouldn’t have to cast a guess too far to say that she sounds like a ill gotten child of the Marxist hive.
Anyways I find that statement by her laughable seeing as she doesn’t really know anyone’s story. I suppose generalizations are useful if only to not tax the brains of weak minded liberals. Why bother opening eyes when one can walk thru life a virtue signalling zombie à la “Walking Dead”
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Hopefully she reads this post. My present from one of Favourite bands. Zed Zed Top! Writer of many a songs in praise of the modern woman.
You crack me up, but I doubt seriously she will return to this website, since she is very aware that her internet activity is probably monitored, due to her high clearance and access.
She is actually a pleasant person to sit beside at a going away dinner for interns, but I will certainly agree that the world in which she lives is very different from the one I inhabit. And, from her comment texted to me about the site after checking out TBP as suggested by one of her better interns’ mom (hey, a mom can brag), I don’t think she’ll be back. In fact, it might end up on a banned list at one or another agency.
I try to have a laugh or two..
I kind of figured that about your son’s boss. Send her my regards if you can. TBP is a very subversive place but no doubt she is a very pleasant person.
I posted that last bit Maggie.
I have been doing some writing these past months. Fleshing out my message. It will change some more but I think I have the basis of a premise. Some of the stuff if read between lines is here on TBP. I think it is evident now. To me at least.
Proving I am right is not the most pressing and urgent thing anyone.
I really think the mistake for me was getting caught up in the victim industry that pervades and oozes from every pore of this liberal dominated society I live in. It is easy to cast yourself a victim. It makes it easy to place blame elsewhere for bad decisions made of one’s own free will. I found out the hard way that drinking from this cup will never quench my thirst. Drains the soul, a zero sum game, that can pull one into that black hole of victim-hood so many sadly embrace unquestioned.
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Racism exists for sure but rhetoric put forth by Left has to be met head on. Identity politics is a destroyer of worlds. So the sooner Personal Responsibility becomes the driving force once again the better. For everyone..
Delighted to read that RiNS! Writing things down clarifies things for many of us in ways that discussing or thinking about it never does. Gets you closer but never offers the clarity that seeing our thoughts in black and white on either paper or screen illuminates for us.
I have come face to face with almost that exact sentiment these past couple of weeks. My young cousin (31) died suddenly and unexpected last week. Since I had been “mentoring” his wife in preserving food with a dehydrator and pressure canner, I had become accustomed to seeing him around his place while she and I played with jams, jellies, bunnies and her little toddler, adorably named Huck. Once in a while, the older boy might be with Dad, tagging along with him to the field as 9-year-old country boys still do. His mother, a skilled nurse recently retired early at age 60, found him when he didn’t come pick up the truck for his day’s field work and she walked the quarter mile to his house to get him up. (All live close to the matriarch of the family, the widow of my uncle who built the successful multi-generational family-owned business.)
His death has hit me hard, with the generational connection to my own son, as well as his being the child of my favorite cousin.
I’m not going to over-dramatize it for fear of getting mocked by the monkeys here, but the sad greeting from my 85-year-old aunt when I rushed to her home upon hearing the news bears repeating.
“My grandson is gone. He won’t be coming by for lunch anymore. Terrible things just happen. I don’t know why.”
I don’t know why either.
Writing things down does clarify things! That’s why I love this place. I never thought of myself as a writer but here I can test out threads and thoughts. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t. A lot like life. Written word is the greatest gift. It gives permanence to thoughts before they dissipate into the ether.
Sorry to hear about your cousin. Your Aunt sounds like a very wise Lady. Please her my regards. Maybe with some more aging I can be just a wise as her. I don’t know why terrible things happen either. Like she said they just happen.
My sympathies for your loss; our days are numbered without our knowing. Perhaps there is some purpose or need for this, but mercy and blessings on his family in this dark time.