12 Comments
Dec 6, 2021Liked by Michelangelo Signorile

It takes a monster to raise a monster.

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author

Very succinct and well put.

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Dec 6, 2021Liked by Michelangelo Signorile

My neighbor now flies the “ Don’t Tread On Me Flag” in front of their home. I really want to ask them who is treading on them, but we are selling our house, so I don’t think I will. They are nice people and we were quite friendly at one point, but Trump changed that.

I just think it is a sad state of affairs that this country has become so violent. Let’s face it, history tells us that we have always had a Macho Man mentality. There is a culture in this country of men who are truly afraid of the “Others” taking a seat next to them. The only way to solve that, in their minds, is to use the Macho Man solution of using firearms to suppress those they feel are trying to take their superiority away. What surprised me the most about the Trump phenomenon was the women that worship him. All I can say is children learn by what they see and hear at home.

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author

Right, who is it they are so threatened by?

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Dec 6, 2021Liked by Michelangelo Signorile

Sorry Michelangelo, you will never convince me that she was "pro-choice and pro-LGTBQ"....EVER!!!

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author

Ha, well, she claims to have been. But yes, how could you be if you let your racism throw it all out the window?

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Exactly....this is who she really is....of course, she probably let her husband bully her into it....gotta save and support the white male patriarchy....they did it in 2016 and tries again in 2020....

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Dec 7, 2021Liked by Michelangelo Signorile

What a pathetic country we have become. It seems to me that education while in the background of these shootings happening at schools is still at the root of the problem. When Reagan became governor of California, the UC college system was free at any campus for state residents. He eliminated that and said "we don't want people to be educated because they would never vote Republican". We need to get people educated, especially about THIS Republican party which espouses hatred and bigotry as a way of swaying public opinion.

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They going intifada...Using their children to do their dirty work against a society they no fully longer control.

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author

This is a very scary and appropriate comparison.

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A man who knows, @luisjrodriguez, on gangs:“a community of young men trying to find intensity, meaning, a path to the outer world (outside of home) that most tribal groupings addressed with rituals, rites of passage, initiation ceremonies.We’ve lost this knowledge as a culture.”

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Cawthorn and Hawley both some have valid points.

Today, women constitute over 60% of the graduating class. Thus, it is reasonable that women carry over 60% of the college debt -- an issue specifically decried in the Chronicle of Higher Education (which claims gender is behind the debt).

Yet, we focus on financing solutions to ensure women EXIT college with no debt, and we spend nothing to help boy ENTER college.

With the gender health care disparity (50 years ago, we did not control for gender and we experimented on soldiers and prisoners), the on-the-job death rate inequality and the homelessness, poverty and suicides (much greater in men), men have valid concerns.

I think that Cawthorn and Hawley are opportunistic and arrogant and self-serving. I think they do not give a damn about men’s issues (I will agree to that), but the fact remains they are talking about it. At least they are discussing it.

And it would do Democrats well to recognize this growing concern.

We can cluck all we want, but drip, drip, drip, men are leaving the Democratic party (just google the phrase and use: black, white, Hispanic-- they are leaving) and this is not the time to show disdain for the views of men – or to write it off as “toxic masculinity.”

It is time to stop the dripping of men from the party – the race in 2022 is too close.

Even you do not propose to address the issues they raised – you only mock them. What good does that do?

In fact, even if you disagree with the issue that men are not doing well, is it really too much to ask to, say, light the white house blue during prostate cancer awareness month and show a sign of concern?

Is it so wrong to establish a National Committee on the welfare of men and boys (just as we have one for women)?

As for these parents: the Crumbleys. I do not excuse them, and they should be punished. However, I note that unlike Green and Gobart or Beobert, they cried—they KNOW, in their core, that something went wrong in their lives. They are in pain, too.

We would do better as a society, if we understood more, where this anger comes from.

As my wife and I watch DopeSick, I sometimes wonder how much of Trump’s support came from the anger in that section of the country as people saw their worlds fall a part due to the Sacklers (and Reagan having gutted the FDA).

Here in Norway, after the man used the bow and arrows to kill a few people, a commission was started to find ways to help these men, yes men, who are disaffected. For the first time in history, there are more men on this planet than women (fewer word wars and better neonatal health care). These men have no jobs, no education, no future, but are told masculinity is toxic, the future is female and they watch the US and UN propose so many funding opportunities for women. Here in Norway, they recognize that the issue is NOT to be right, but to fix the problem. They give as many points to help men enter nursing as they give to women entering engineering (the US only helps women). And Norway has now had two female prime ministers.

The Norwegians went from having men as Viking pillaging Europe to men walking strollers and voting for women. They also think American feminists have gone way too far and they think about both sides of the issues.

It seems that in the US, the goal is not to fix a problem, but to focus on word choice (raise them to be monsters) and think we are better than everyone else, and not get to the core of what is happening.

I am not saying we must agree with Cawthorn (I despise him and recognize there are elements of misogyny in his objections). But we could do well to listen and listen deeply and act in a better way.

One more thing...

The feminists I work with (I teach here), agree with some of what Hawley said. You should know that. They have told me (my wife, her friends, my friends), over coffee, discussions, that they do NOT want an American style feminism here. And they have elected two female prime ministers already.

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