US Authoritarianism

Cont'd:

Shellenberger: And it’s interesting what was left out of that identity. People on the Left often leave American-ness out of their identity. They’re ashamed or embarrassed to be American. I do think the Left has gotten better about it. The antiwar movement this time did a better job of attaching itself to patriotic symbols. But as long as we’re not presenting a vision for the future, we’re swimming against the stream of America’s populist culture of aspiration."

MRAs, for the most part, also refuse to emphasize that their cause isn't just a fight to help men, but part of the larger struggle to make America a more free and prosperous land for everyone. And as long as we're not presenting a marketable vision for the future, we're also swimming against the tide

"Let’s define what we like about being American. There’s a lot that I’m very proud of. I can get a business license from the El Cerrito Financial Services Department, and I don’t have to bribe anybody. I can ride my bike with my son to the library, and, at least for now, my librarian won’t call the FBI and tell them what I’ve checked out. I don’t worry about going to jail for saying the things I’m saying to you right now. There are many things that I cherish about being an American, but progressives don’t talk much about those things because we have such a complaint-based culture."

The MRM has also been mostly complaint driven, with very little talk of all the things we love about being citizens of The US. Ex. The most prominent members of The MRM are all professional content creators on YouTube, who enjoy upper-middle class existences, funded by producing YouTube videos and E-Begging. This is only possible in a society that's attained the astounding heights of technological development that The US has. Folks in El Salvador and Somalia have no such opportunities. Hell, as recently as The 2000s, making a living as a professional content creator on social media wasn't even possible in The US!!!

"Polonsky: And that gives the Right fuel to say, “If you don’t like it here, leave.”

This disparity between the fairly rich lives most MRAs themselves enjoy, and the woe-is-me portraits they paint in their public rhetoric gives skeptics fuel to say "You're just a bunch of fucking crybabies" Shellenberger: At some point in the sixties, the Left bought into the big lie that its values were not American values. We actually believed people when they said that about us. I don’t know why it happened, but it did."

From The MRM's beginnings in The 2010s, the movement's leaders took the view that it's values aren't American values. This sort of thinking stems from their core belief that our entire civilization was founded on so-called Gynocentrism, and that to achieve progress, we need to overthrow "The System", and replace it with a Red Pill Theocracy, with Paul Elam serving as The Grand Ayatollah

"Too many figures on the Left, from Noam Chomsky to Michael Moore to Ralph Nader, focus on the negative. I think there’s something hard-wired into humans that attracts us to the positive. John Edwards has had a huge amount of appeal among voters because he describes what he loves about America and then talks about what we have to fix — in that order."

Pretty much every prominent MRA(Paul Elam, Karen Straughn, Tom Golden, Brian Martinez, Alison Tieman, Hannah Wallen, Warren Farrell)focuses on the negative. That's effective in the short term for attracting attention, but leaves everyone demoralized and sapped of invigoration long term. We're going to attract much more support if we enumerate all the things we love about The US, and then discuss the revisions we believe would be beneficial to everyone, male AND female alike

"Apollo does the same thing. The story we tell at Apollo is “America is a great country, and here’s why.” Once we establish that context, corporate greed, pollution, and global warming can then be seen as un-American. That’s a central part of our strategy."

Once we also start telling the story "The US is a great nation, here's why", we establish a context in which things like dysfunctional family courts, Title IX Star Chambers, The Drug War, and a dearth of easily accessible vocational training are exposed as being un-American. This is central to the The Post-MRM's strategy

"Polonsky: All those left-wing figures you named provide an important perspective, though, don’t you agree?"

In the interest of fairness, the intellectual founders of The MRM(Warren Farrell, Erin Pizzey), and the movement's most prominent figures(Paul Elam, Tom Golden, Karen Straughn, Alison Tieman)have provided fascinating perspectives

Shellenberger: Sure, but if you read a book by Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky, it emphasizes just one side of America. People have suffered in America; there’s no question about it. There’s been genocide. There was slavery. We’ve decimated our native forests. All of that is true."

MRA screeds also emphasize 1/4 of American history. Yeah, we have launched wars which were poorly thought out and which wasted the lives of many, quite a few of whom were male. Our businesses and corporations have visited all sorts of maltreatment on their employees, and men have often(though certainly not always)borne the brunt of that maltreatment

"But it’s also true that America has allowed people to worship whatever god they choose, that it offers an unprecedented amount of personal freedom, and that, compared to most of the world, we have achieved a freedom from want that our great-grandparents couldn’t even dream of in their day."

While it may be true that "traditional masculinity" is more abundant in parts of the world where industrialization has yet to take place, these are also societies devoid of democracy and civil liberty. In America, we're free to adhere to any politcal or religious ideology we choose, and to adopt whatever form of masculinity or feminity we prefer: We're free to model ourselves after Harvey Specter, Jonah Hill, or Jay Z. The days of the factories employing millions of Americans are gone, nonetheless the transition to a service economy has drastically reduced the number of work place deaths per year, and provided us with a diversity of opportunities for economic advancement which were inconceivable to those who were coming of age in The 1970s, to say nothing of all decades prior

"Obviously there’s a huge amount of suffering in the world, but is there more now than before? For most of human history we’ve had low life expectancies and high infant- and maternal-mortality rates. My grandparents, who were born at the end of the nineteenth century, had terribly hard lives. My grandmother, with no access to birth control, had nine kids. She didn’t even want to have the last child, my mother, because her life was already so goddamn hard."

Goes without saying, most men in days past didn't want that many kids either

"We enjoy a quality of life in this country that the majority of the world longs to have. For all our missteps along the way, and for all the problems we still have left to solve, our history is a story of progress. That’s why I think the label progressive is a good one for liberals and the Left generally. We have an inspiring story to tell. Let’s get out there and start telling it."

Loudly as leading MRAs like Paul Elam and Aly Tieman doth insist that our entire civilization is built on Gynocentrism, fact is we enjoy a quality of life far richer than 98% of the rest of the planet enjoys. For all blunders we've made, and for all the flaws in our society, the American story is one of progress. The Post-MRM thus has an inspiring story to tell, by aligning ourselves with this particular narrative. Therefore, it's imperative to go out into our neighborhoods and communities, and attract the public to our side by communicating to them that we're agitating not just for improving the lives of men, but making America a saner and more gainful place for everyone