John Wayne Vs. Jesus

The rise of the post-religious masculine right.

I’m a dude, but not a super masculine one. I work out (periodically), I make money (same), and I generally have a nice, OK life. But am I some kind of warrior? No. Now, I do write about masculinity a lot, with different measures of success — such as whether we need a new definition for it, toxic masculinity at work and at home, and how much modern masculinity can sometimes suck. Just a couple of days ago, actually, I wrote about “the assumptive masculinity box.”

This is all a long, link-moderately-heavy way of saying I think about this stuff a lot, even if I don’t live it as a warrior day-to-day, so this article from The Daily Beast was interesting to me. It’s about bringing muscle to school board meetings, which is a notably 2021 thing to even have to type. The article mentions this February 2016 — pre Trump even winning the Presidency — tweet from Ross D. of The New York Times, and wow, has this thing held up well: