Why can’t we get our rhetorical footing back?

 July 26, 2022

Why can't we get our rhetorical footing back?

The subject of the primary elections here in Michigan occasioned me to remember the case of Mallory McMorrow, who is a Michigan State Senator who earlier this year gave a much-publicized speech about being attacked by arch-conservative State Senator Lana Theis.

The attack email on Ms. Sen. McMorrow was clumsy, completely typo-ed in the most critical section, and demonstrably false. It was the standard hysteria from conservatives, especially those conservative moms and aunties out there, about "what are they teaching our kids these days?"

I won't dignify the belligerent email with much of a summary. But I will be very honest about what the motivation behind this conservative parental interventionism really is. The "problem" that these conservative parents really have inside with what their kids are doing in school, is, by and large, that the teachers are doing too good a job and the kids are doing too good a job as students, learning what they should be learning. The conservative parents, and by and large they are conservative parents who are complaining in this endless pile-on of grievances, are upset because compared to their kids, they no longer look educated or sophisticated in any way. Lana Theis and her belligerent email full of critical typographical errors is only channeling this tired old horse of parental ignorance and stupid, stupid grievances. 

Parents trying to delete parts of their child's education is the biggest problem in education today. Parents have a role in educating their children - my own parents added a lot of education to my schooling years, but they added it on as an addendum to what I learned in school; they didn't come in with an eraser trying to get rid of my education I got in the classroom. When they couldn't help me with my homework they told me flat-out that they couldn't and they told me that they were proud of me for getting to that point. And to this day I am proud of them for telling me when I was studying something so new and advanced that they weren't quite sure. 

The Lana Theis-type hysteria about kids "learning" about social issues "in school", is on its face absurd, because those kids are learning about those things from peers and the internet, and bringing those questions into school - because it's totally natural for a kid not to want to talk to their parents about this. 

Some of the civic education that kids are getting that is pissing off the parents is about social issues, but those are, first of all, about critical issues in social studies that also are making it easier to teach the kids who were for one reason or another "not getting it" before, and, secondly, these issues that students are getting from the curriculum are the minority of these social issues the hysterical suburban mom caucus is shouting and blaming and causing a ruckus about. Most of those social issues that are troubling the parents "about school" are coming from the kids themselves. That's how it was when I was in school too. That's how it always has been. These insane, hysterical, Republican women with tunnel vision on how their kid is affecting them more than how their kid is actually doing, as a human being in themselves; - they piss me of, and these Lana Theis types should piss you off too. 

The deserved response to these hysterical Republican types by the Mallory McMorrow types, who are by the way also moms, has been far too milquetoast than the situation has deserved. Lana Theis deserved far worse of a condemnation than she got from Ms. McMorrow. 

The deeper and more appropriate retribution for the Republican attack on Ms. McMorrow and schools, was to highlight what I see as the actual problem here. The problem is toxic masculinity. I see far too much of it in our public discourse. These Proud Boys motherfuckers posting their fucking signs around town, and these weak and clumsy, but also insane boys doing "training drills" in a field for the Patriot something-or-other "militia". Look, the American male is in the midst of a crisis of insecurity; this can't be denied. It's the same problem that was highlighted when it was revealed that the wives of middle-aged white men who went to Trump rallies like it when they got back from the rallies because Trump made them angry and horny and they could be like "it's like it was when we were dating!" and so on.

But among the younger crowd, it's a slightly different story. Sure, maybe they're in the midst of a crisis of confidence. Maybe. Maybe they were picked on as kids and never did anything about it, and since then they've wanted to get into a fight. Like, you know, "Now that I'm ready and trained for it, now I want to get into that fight." Kids don't fight it out these days when they're small and mostly harmless, even when they should. 

Now, now - I get that we should reduce bullying and violence in schools, but that repressed frustrated rage of the hormonal growing male is not best served by repressing it more. And sometimes a bully needs to get whooped and sometimes to get whooped twice. But let's not go about addressing this problem of toxic masculinity by treating all men like they really should be in the army. The toxic masculinity we're seeing right now is the confluence of two factors. The first is about how a lot of young men these days never got in a fight as kids when they should have but now hold onto some resentment about something as kids that they now want to have got into that fight about. The second is the effect of these exact people trying to structure social organization into something that makes them feel tough, even though they harbor that resentment about someone they wished they fought way back when but didn't, and they have a a deep insecurity about their masculinity as a consequence. 

Lana Theis's fundraising email is an extortion of those insecure conservative middle-aged white men who have a fight in their past that they didn't fight, who are deeply insecure about their masculinity as a consequence. And she's not alone in extorting insecure conservative men for money by exploiting their insecurity at not having stood up for themselves in the schoolyard as kids when they should have. These Tom Barrett and Madison Cawthorn-type motherfuckers know that extorting white middle-aged conservative male weakness for money and political donations is their bread and butter. 

Regardless of if Lana Theis's husband continues to be a conservative fundraiser (yep, I think he is right now) the fact remains that Ms. Theis continues to profit off of the insecurity of conservative audiences about their own masculinity, a social fact the rest of us think is kinda really gross. And if the crisis of confidence in the American male is something we actually care about, Lana Theis and her ilk is trash we should toss out.