Readers of George Orwell will often get into Orwell’s 1984 (aka Nineteen Eighty-Four) idea of doublespeak, or the redefinition of words to at least fool other people, and often to cause them to act in a way beneficial to those in authority, as a fascinating insight into current society, whether current society is today, thirty years ago, or the year 1984 was published.
HealthCarewatcher on political progressives site Daily Kos has an observation that, well, flips the 1984 script:
If you don’t pay close attention, it’s hard to notice exactly what Tim Walz is doing. The result has been left behind Democratic consultants trashing Tim Walz at every opportunity. But if you pay attention, you’d find that Tim Walz is effectively redefining masculinity and creating a permission structure for men (especially young men) to vote for the nation’s first woman President. He’s so good at it that the Russians are running smear campaigns against him.
Walz Instagram account, previously a sleepy corner of social media, has ballooned to 2 million followers. I’m an avid runner and yesterday a non political friend from the running club posted an interview Walz did with Kate Mackz while on a run in Central Park. I watched the interview and realized something: they are attacking Walz with baseless lies because he’s creating something that’s extremely dangerous to Trumpism: a positive, optimistic take on masculinity.
And masculinity?
Masculinity (also called manhood or manliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles associated with men and boys. [Wikipedia]
In a very old-fashioned sense, masculinity is a teaching tool. That is, it says Here is the ideal man, the man that others will look up to. Achieve this set of skills, goals, attitudes, etc, and you are a man.
The trick, then, is to control which skill, goals, attitudes, etcetera., are considered desirable by society. By doing so, the majority of boys and young men, who are most susceptible to the evolutionary urge to compete for social standing, will engage in those behaviors. The easiest way is by embodying them.
Trump tries to be the imperious No rules for me! type. It’s a glorification of individualism, isn’t it? He’s very transactional, not understanding that past behavior can be indicative of future behavior, because that’s too hard to envision and goes against the grain; he takes anything he can and wants, because that fits his fantasy of being a man; he disregards the rules, even the very existence of society, proof of which lives in our legal systems and the thousand and more suits against him for not paying up on delivery of goods and services; he is sexually promiscuous, regardless of marital status. He doesn’t evaluate potential actions on his part against the metric of how they’ll contribute to society, but only how they’ll gratify him.
Walz? Everyone is becoming familiar with Coach, Teacher, Sergeant, Representative, Governor, and DIY-er Walz, aren’t they? He’s the everyday guy who contributes to society in a dozen ways. He’s the guy that, well, Trump parasitizes. Trump, in his high and mightiness, brings his personal selfishness to his job, believing it to be his job – such are the results of prosperity theology. Walz, in contrast, has made improving society Job #1. And for those readers who think politicians are parasites, keep in mind that a politician can be a parasite, but the job of governance is extremely important, and the competent politician is a treasure.
By displaying Walz’s lifelong behaviors, what he considers to be masculinity is emphasized: volunteerism, jobs that contribute to social stability (see above), all those good things that don’t smack of a lamprey (see right, and imagine that attached to your flank, slowly liquidating you), like Trump, but of someone you can depend on.
In this we see the doublespeak flip of Orwell, itself flipped on its head. The Harris campaign’s goal has been to replace the vain, narcissistic, and useless vision of Trump’s masculinity, of rapine and plunder and lack of self-control, with the vision of men as, well, contributors to society.
No wonder the Russians are trying to slime him.
Which one do you want? And, for those who perceive the superiority of the new & old masculinity, who will receive their votes?
