8 responses to “TGI Tabs!”

1. 

   Jay L Gischer

   March 21, 2025 at 3:26 pm

   I so very, very much love this paragraph from Toby Buckle:

   The revealed preference however is that most men don’t want these vocations. The Army aggressively recruits; really any young man at any point can join. The vast majority don’t. Men fantasise about being in combat scenarios but, by and large, don’t seek them out. This is one reason why conservatives (and fellow travelers like Arnade) hate liberalism so much: free choice disproves their biological essentialism. Rather than abandon the narrative (all men gravitate towards certain roles), they abandon reality. Men aren’t choosing non-’heroic’ roles, liberalism is (somehow) stopping them.

   Yes. Men have the choice now to not be warriors, and lots of men are choosing that. How dare they!

   More seriously, I think warfare, and the call to be involved in warfare, has been part of human existence for the last 10,000 years or so. I think it had a powerful effect on what males are like, even through a process of natural selection that seemed to happen those 10K years ago.

   And now we are in a condition where that might no longer be true. Of course it’s threatening as hell. What is my meaning, a man might ask, if not to be part of war?

   Of course, war is often ruinous to its participants, even the ones who are celebrated as heroes.

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2. 

   Jay L Gischer

   March 21, 2025 at 3:32 pm

   The other thing I have to say about that Toby Buckle piece is that his description of Chris Arnade’s writing leaves me with the impression that Chris Arnade doesn’t know much of anything about the kind of working-class man I grew up with. Especially if all he knows comes from what they say in dive bars at night.

   Did he have them come to their 8th birthday party? I don’t think so. KF doesn’t fight because he wants to be a hero. He fights because he likes fighting. He always has. He really kind of loves violence. But he doesn’t even see himself as a hero, even though he might strut around.

   There are lots of men out there like KF who just like fighting. This is a very useful quality if you are in a war. That’s probably why we have so many of them. But wow, is it a bad idea to give them the ability to decide whether the rest of us have to fight.

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3. 

   just nutha

   March 21, 2025 at 3:58 pm

   It’s surprising to me that neither Newsmax nor the spoke model competitor embraced Ford’s definition: “High crimes and misdemeanors are whatever Congress says they are.”

   It’s clean, it’s easily defined, it has that Judge Dredd “I AM the law” feel fascism needs.

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4. 

   just nutha

   March 21, 2025 at 4:07 pm

   @Jay L Gischer: I suspect that there are not as many as you imagined. The first US conscription (for the Civil War) probably happened when the generals discovered they already had all the “just like fighting”s available and it wasn’t going to be enough. (And they still provided a way for the rich to buy out. Fancy that… Some times, the old ways–with the rich financing the war and leading the army–are better.)

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5. 

   Jay L Gischer

   March 21, 2025 at 4:20 pm

   @just nutha: Oh, I completely agree that there haven’t been enough “just like fightin’s” available, so everyone else has to as well.

   The Civil War is a go-to example for me, for among Confederate soldiers the saying was, “Rich man’s war, poor man’s fight”. A serious abuse of humanity, if you ask me. And many of them were pulled into it via masculinity shaming – “if you don’t fight, you don’t deserve to be called a man” – that sort of thing. If that stops working, it terrifies some people.

   Thing is, the modern battlefield doesn’t need as many people, and they don’t all have to be big, strapping men, either. That’s just not how it works.

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6. 

   Jay L Gischer

   March 21, 2025 at 5:15 pm

   As regards what House Republicans tell Politico reporters, I am reminded that “It’s not what you say, it’s what you do” that one should evaluate a politician. Trump’s bad faith is staining them unless and until they take active measures to distance themselves. Saying so anonymously to Politico is the opposite of that.

   They can go warrior culture themselves.

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7. 

   Just nutha ignint cracker

   March 21, 2025 at 5:24 pm

   @Jay L Gischer: The essentiality of “big strapping men” pretty much went out with the demise of hand to hand combat and the advent of weapons that could kill at a distance. The sociopathy is the part that has never diminished. The ability to kill for…
   … ‘reasons, that’s why we kill, reasons” is always the key. With conscripts, the “reason” becomes “to get the hell outta here, that’s why.” That’s what makes them even better than the “just like fighting”s.

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8. 

   steve

   March 21, 2025 at 7:18 pm

   The hero piece was better than I expected. I have found this whole white males are victims, we are being forcibly feminized to be a bunch of BS. It has always struck me that they are looking back to earlier days when women weren’t allowed to work at most jobs and neither were minorities of any race. That made you special if you were a white male. You could come home and the wife would have dinner ready. But now, according to the author at the Free Press, men need to be regarded as heroes.

   If you really want to feel like a hero there are jobs where you can have that experience as the author points out. However, most men avoid those. It’s very noticeable that most of those guys in camo running around with their ARs were never in the military or any kind of job that really puts them at risk. However, even if you do take one of those jobs and even if you are a true hero life goes on. You dont really get to have your wife become subservient just because you did something wonderful.

   I also agree strongly with his point about caretakers. There are millions of people who give of their time, foregoing personal pleasure, income even important relationships to care for people in need, usually older relatives but sometimes disabled kids or spouses. It would be all too easy to walk away. But this is coded as female activity so it’s not seen as heroic. It all strikes me that these guys need to stop whining and grow up.

   Steve

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