So...where exactly is our leadership?

[JasonBlack]

(11-12-2022, 05:44 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Toxic masculinity ("he has balls") that societies once tolerated may have made sense when kings were leading armies in the field, but that is over. Victories often involve logistics and military technology. It is arguable that the British and Americans fared better than their German, Italian, and Japanese enemies because they fought in ways to reduce losses in the field. Much wartime death has been from communicable diseases and septic conditions; the British and Americans used antibiotics and field sanitation to reduce those. The human wave attacks of the sorts used by most armies in WWI or in the Iran-Iraq war are one way of ensuring that nearly all the soldiers at the front are green. The British and Americans had plenty of experienced, battle-hardened NCO's who made battlefield decisions that a junior officer in the German, Italian, or Japanese armies got stuck with because there were few NCO's.  

Say what you will about "toxic masculinity", but, while I am on board with being cautious about war and impulsive aggression, strength is necessary in every age. Just as development of synthetic vitamins did not make eating obsolete, modern technology and civil rights history have not made strength obsolete.

Right now, we do not have that. As a culture, we...are...weak. The main stream of American culture has become defeatist, guilt-ridden, and even self-hating. Personally I blame MTV and the neotonization or popular culture. When the ideal is to look and sound 16-25, it's no wonder people have become so depressed, narcissistic and self-destructive. None of our culture icons have any sense of dignity, of authority, of fortitude, and because of that, things are falling apart. 

Idealists (used in the colloquial sense, even though it does include many boomers) want to do away with all these "patriarchal" influences which hold society together, but other countries laugh at us for attempting to do this, because they know that, without the steady hand of older conservative men, they would have starved or been taken over long ago.