11-14-2022, 03:32 PM
(11-13-2022, 01:36 AM)JasonBlack Wrote:(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.
As I see it, yes we need strength, and our culture has, yes, become weak, and other countries do laugh at us.
The mainstream of US American (and I always avoid simply referring to the US or its people as "Americans" since the term applies to two continents and all their people) culture is weak in virtue and sensitivity. It is driven by money-dominated commercial interests and not by the highest cultural aspirations and traditions. The opening to something better in the 1960s has been largely forgotten in favor of mass-produced fare of all kinds and media, and by horrific "alternative" screeching and screaming sounds.
But being "guilt-ridden" is our strength, such as it is; our weakness is found among those who resist the culture warriors' scam to hide our history and its still-unlearned lessons in the name of children learning to love their country. Such rot is indeed making our culture weak. The 1960s featured the cry of youth "don't trust anyone over 30". I still hold to the ideal of looking and sounding young (maybe not THAT young). But not because of what commercials or peers say, but because of what I want. What is making our culture weak is not so much the traditions lost from before the 60s, but also in-part the traditions lost that were created since then. Other countries do indeed laugh at our culture war and our needless and deadly ammosexuality.
Patriarchy and other traditions outdated since the "woke" 1960s do not hold society together; they are used by culture warriors like DeSantis to tear our country apart. Other developed countries are not so held back (although superstitious countries in the Middle East are) by these outdated suppressions of human growth and development.