My next door neighbor is a born-again fundamentalist Bush lover.  I can guarantee you he will not wake up to reality voluntarily.   He CHOSE to live his life according to how other people think he should, thinking about it is likely more work than he could bear up under.

by Roger (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 465 comments [22 recommended, 1 rejected]) on Friday, Oct 5, 2007 at 11:00:16 AM

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Unfortunately, "The White Man" has been programed to obey, be God loving, fearful, and knows no happy medium. It's all or nothing. The right has figured that out, and is using it to control him.  I think, they don't want to think, and it is easier for them to be fed like a baby bird than to have to hunt for their feed.  They need to feel that something is bigger than them, that they are not worthy or powerful enough to take on the big monster.

So, they will comply, obey, and be good little Christians, yet, in the mean time they will be miserable, and bigots towards anyone who dares step outside the box.  Lazy instead of stupid, maybe another good term to use for the white man.  Give them their IPOD, Computer, Cell phone, big screen TV ( to watch their football ), a six pack of beer, a bible and they are good to go.

by Mark Angelo Cummings (4 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 53 comments) on Friday, Oct 5, 2007 at 11:50:13 AM

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Rob's article and premise are exactly correct.

However, as Roger points out, and John Dean has been informatively instructing us for years, these "stupid white men" want to be told what to do and who to blame. They absolutely do not want to, or cannot, think for themselves and always need a scapegoat to blame their own inadequacies and shortcoming on. From Joe McCarthy to G. Gordon Liddy, to Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay, these "conservatives without conscience" suffer from a cognitive dissonance. George W. Bush is merely the most well-known because of his ascension to the presidency.

Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly are textbook examples of these "authoritarian mindsets" that compartmentalize their thinking to such a high degree they are incapable of seeing their own seething prejudices, blind ignorance or blatant hypocrisies as they continually decry that the white man is the victim in our society.

In the deepest, darkest recess of their minds, they know they have been cuckolded, which is precisely why they are outwardly belligerent, bombastic, bellicose and dripping with false bravado. They are immense cowards on the inside, xenophobes, homophobes, reactionaries and intransigent-thinkers who yearn for a return to an un-definable, former status quo.

Nuances and vagaries are troublesome and threatening to a mind that cannot process intellectually-based, independent-thinking, so in turn, they depend on someone else speaking and thinking for them.

Leo Strauss, who taught Irving Kristol's neoconservative theories to many of the current PNAC and AEI followers, known as the Straussian Philosophy, which theorizes the idea that an elitist strain is necessary in American politics. In turn, which must be linked to the ideas of fundamentalism and militarism, so it may be understood by the common man, and as a means to justify an aristocratic ruled and governed nation. Boiled down, this philosophy of deception preys on those who feel admonished or invalidated in life, "cuckolded", as a way to redemption, so long as you "just trust me" with unmitigated loyalty.

This is why so many otherwise seemingly sane people vote, time and time again, against their own interests and civil liberties. Roger's neighbor, I would submit, is a perfect example of this Machiavellian charade that he has been duped into believing.

by Frank J. Ranelli (66 articles, 143 quicklinks, 29 diaries, 383 comments) on Friday, Oct 5, 2007 at 12:26:25 PM

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This analysis is quite valid--but if stupid white men have been emasculated, and Bush/Cheney/Limbaugh's belligerent machismo is some sort of penis substitute to them, how can they ever accept to stop supporting those authoritarian creeps, thus being emasculated again, this time definitely?

Not likely...

by francine (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 385 comments) on Friday, Oct 5, 2007 at 1:51:51 PM

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Frank you hit the nail on the head, what more can be said.

by Mark Angelo Cummings (4 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 53 comments) on Saturday, Oct 6, 2007 at 8:49:21 AM

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I work with the highly educated and  professional people who have meaningful jobs( a very  lucky bunch). Unfortunately I see  that their education lacks any idea  of humanity- 90% of them are zombied down to  glassy eyes. They express very rudimentary feelings and  they are especially boring when they gather in big quantities. They love( if that can be claled that way) Bush and they hate..  whatever they want to hate because  their feelings are shallow and sometimes  they need to be even reminded on what they pledged to hate.

Shallowness of feelings  is the US disorder bigtime especially in men. Monyemaking does not make a man what he has to become.  Men do not mature  making money.  The brillant example is the " Mad Men' show where a bunch of adult-looking teenagers  behave like a coven of psychopats. Men in the US had lost their true purpose- to overcome, to create, to conquer. They are confused, scared, distracted. They are hurt.  White men are especially confused because the superiority foundation is ripped from under their feet and now Condi Rice ( not that I  do not know what an evil ignorant person she is) is in charge of thousands of white men who look at her and think that the world had gone topsy-turvy.  Folks, they want to go to sleep.Bush provides them with the sleeping pill.

by Mark Sashine (72 articles, 19 quicklinks, 269 diaries, 4101 comments [131 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Friday, Oct 5, 2007 at 2:33:51 PM

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They can't.

Dr. Robert Altemeyer, a pioneer in the field, has been studying authoritarians for decades and concluded their paradigm is likely a combination of genetics -- willingness to follow authority figures, thus yielding to that authority with uncritical loyalty, thereby undermining their own human individuality -- and environmental, such as upbringing.

Altemeyer believes that approx. 23% of the American population, largely men, but not wholly (see Ann Coulter), suffer from this cognitive dissonance and are unlikely to reconcile these conflicts once they reach adulthood.

The only recourse the other 77% of us have is to illuminate them and force them into the shadows, rather than into positions of power, which is where we stand today.

by Frank J. Ranelli (66 articles, 143 quicklinks, 29 diaries, 383 comments) on Friday, Oct 5, 2007 at 3:14:50 PM

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The latest scientific evidence points that today's men are carrying excess amounts of estrogen due to environmental pollutants. In other words there are very few macho men around, and their critical thinking capabilities have been diminished.  Here is a link worth perusing.

http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/article_325.shtml

by Mark Angelo Cummings (4 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 53 comments) on Saturday, Oct 6, 2007 at 8:55:54 AM

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As I detailed in my Daily Kos Diary: The Generation of Monsters the RWA pathology has many connections to life trauma, often forgotten in childhood.

George Lakoff has shown how the abusive father provides a template of family  that informs a Right Wing political outlook and Alice Miller detailed many examples of it in Nazi Holland both among those who were enablers and those who risked all to defy them.

Sara Robinson at Orcinus has many insights on how to break the spell, and indeed  David Brock and other notable defections show similar patterns.

Putting all this into a coherant program may be more than nonSDOs can manage, but what we do better is connect to reality, however there is much to learn to apply. Sam Smith laid out a good piece of the puzzle in "Reframing the Republican lie about wealth in America" that takes much learned from Lakoff  and lays out a good set of specifics.

I have also endevored to develop an answering frame to the Libertarian principles, that have been so well sold that even many liberals have fallen for the frame despite the giant logic flaw I have written about here The Great Libertarian Fallacy and several other posts on my blog.

The Gang Of Pirates publish a hymnal for all good wingers to sing off of, so that the same phrase come from dozens of pundits at a stretch. Again this is not a tool we can wield in that manner but we don't need to be the opposite either.

by Freedem (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 19 comments [5 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Oct 6, 2007 at 9:56:30 PM

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After being discriminated against by equal opportunity, which was unequal, being told that no, they can't form Future Irish Business Men's clubs at school because they are racist when any non-white group can form an exclusive non-white club, and forced to be understanding when called honkies and crackers, the white man is being forced to respond.

It's not easy being white these days. Non-whites are due to receive their share of enlightenment.

This racist article and the biggoted responses to it are an example of the rewards the white man has received after laboring to empower the less fortunate.

by Web Smith (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 28 comments) on Friday, Oct 5, 2007 at 5:59:08 PM

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Okay, I have to say (in my oh-so-very white, stupid AND angry male way) that the first thought that came to my mind after reading the article (and comments) was, "Jane, you ignorant slut." Oh my goodness! Perhaps there IS something to this sex-driven, Straussian-directed intellectual diarrhea of the little-dick male... Freaky. While I haven't read David Paul Kuhn's article, I think I prefer to stay in the "shadows" – perhaps un-wooed but certainly not alone. And as was implied in the discourse, there is safety (and power) in numbers. Given Rob Kall's use of the Kuhn article in corrupting – sorry, corroborating - his previous works on the same subject and portraying the GOE as essentially the essence of the white male, I believe any words I may have to say on the subject are DOA, having been emasculated - by the mere fact that I am a male - before even being uttered. "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." -- Mark Twain. P.S. And for the obviously over-educated and over-thinking who delight and keeping the masses ignorant, it's Ann (without an "e") Coulter.

by Tom Murphy (3 articles, 5 quicklinks, 16 diaries, 2103 comments [55 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Friday, Oct 5, 2007 at 6:02:05 PM

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Stupid White Men (SWM) do not support the Democratic party because the party does not and cannot support the issues of daily concern to SWM. Like any other interest group, SWM will support the party most likely to reform those laws that oppress or overburden that interest group. For the SWM, that is the Republicans. However, this need not be so, except for the fact that certain movements within the umbrella of the Democratic party have failed to deal with the reality of the issues near and dear to them. If Democrats would make these issues a priority, notwithstanding their base, they would quickly attract a large number of SWM. Here are a few examples.

First, modern family law places the husband's legal status hardly better than a slave father in the old south. With no fault divorce, an adulterous or merely unhappy wife can sue for divorce, obtain primary custody of the children, possession of the family home, and outrageous child support payments and can then withhold visitation generally without any legal ramifications. Additionally, being the primary custodian, she is most often allowed to leave the state of residence so that the father is even denied his two weekends a month, if she was letting him have those. Meanwhile, although the father has no visitation, and the mother may have a live-in boyfriend, the father will be immediately jailed for any failure to pay child support. Millions of SWM are in this situation, brought about by the women's movement and the Democratic party, as they see it, and which can only be remedied by the Republican party's emphasis on family values. But there is much more.

Any good family lawyer these days who has a wife come in as a client will begin by asking if she has ever been battered. Typically she will say no, until the lawyer explains that battery is defined as a non-consensual touching. The lawyer will then explain how if the wife can come up with two instances of non-consensual touching (depending upon the state) the wife can file for an injunction against the husband without notice to him (ex parte), asking that he not come within a certain distance of her, for the domestic residence, for temporary custody of the children, and for temporary child support and alimony. This injunction will be automatically granted and a hearing set for a month or so later when the husband can appear. Of course, the wife, hearing all of this, quickly finds two instances of non-consensual touching, and the husband finds that without notice he has lost his wife, home, children, and income. At the later hearing, the trial judge generally only asks if the situation is working; the wife says yes, and the trial court orders that it continue pending final resolution of the case. Under most states' laws, the entry of the injunction prohibits the alleged batterer from ever owning a firearm again. So a man who may have been a perfect husband to a wife who has committed serial adultery loses everything, including his Second Amendment rights, without even getting notice of the proceeding that takes it all away. Do you think he might feel alienated toward the party that has embraced the movement that has led to these one sided laws?

Because I handled a number of battered wife murder cases, I had the opportunity to study in detail various scholarly works on domestic battering. The untold story in all of the letters to the editor and the editorials and mass grants of clemency is that the wife is more apt to batter the husband than vice versa. Not only is the woman in a domestic partnership more likely to start the battering than the man, she if also more likely to pick up and use a weapon first: generally a dish, knife, or frying pan, etc.. However, once the fighting starts, because of the male's superior strength, the woman is more likely to get injured, but not by a weapon. The point is that until the women's movement admits this fact and faces it, there will be no significant decrease in spousal battering. No one can be expected to stand still and be the other spouse's punching bag. Both parties must stop throwing blows. Not just the men. You may notice that while it is anathema to show a man striking a woman on television, one commonly sees a woman striking a man. Now if the Democratic Party came out for equal treatment of the sexes by the judiciary, and recognized in its platform what has heretofore been happening, millions of SWM would be flocking to their ranks.

Next, let us take a look at the new way sex crimes are handled. First, the children. Under English common law, a child between the ages of seven and fourteen might be able to testify, but the court had to determine on a case by case basis if the child could understand the gravity of the proceedings and the importance and meaning of the oath. A child under seven simply could not testify. Such a child was deemed unable to understand the consequences of false testimony and the importance of the oath. Of course, under the U.S. Constitution the defendant has the right to face his accuser. When I began trying cases, there had already been a sea change in the trial of child molestation cases. Basically, a child of any age could testify, and the jury could take the testimony for what they thought it was worth. These cases usually arose within the context of custodial disputes. In every case I tried where the child was under seven, during cross-examination the fact came out either that some other relative of the mother had in fact molested the child and the mother had coached the child to transfer the allegation to the father, or that the mother had coached an unmolested child into making an allegation of abuse against the father. At this point under the law, however, the father was sitting at counsel's table. Nevertheless, I saw no fear in any of these children of their fathers. Rather, the father's presence seemed to emphasize the importance of the testimony. This is not to say all fathers were innocent. I did plea bargain on cases where the father agreed or the evidence of guilt was clear, or if I thought the molestation was a one time affair due to stress and/or drug use, and that the father could be rehabilitated and reintroduced into a relationship with the mother and/or the child.

But allowing four and three year olds to testify was not enough for those that believe all SWM are batterers and sex offenders. The law was changed so that notwithstanding the Constitution's guarantee, the accuser did not have to face the father; did not in fact even have to enter a courtroom. The law was changed so that the child could give a videotaped deposition which would then be played in the courtroom as her testimony, such that she would never even know that this testimony was affecting her father. In fact, the law was changed so much that if the alleged victim would not testify at all, a social worker could testify to what the victim told the social worker. It even got worse. If the alleged victim recanted, that became evidence that the abuse was real. Recantation became the best evidence that the abuse had actually occurred according to social workers. Hence, not only was there no right to face the accuser, there was now no right to even cross examine the accuser. Nor was there any purpose to cross examine. A single allegation, repeatedly recanted, was enough to send the father to prison for life. Suddenly, I started to watch as average SWM were carted off to do life sentences on a daily basis when I knew that most of them were probably innocent. To this day, and I am retired, I hear about locals getting life much to the surprise of their friends and employees. And, of course, they were going through a divorce when it happened. Do you think the SWM might like to see something done about these witch hunts?

Now, let us examine adult rape victims. There is still the stranger rape, which with DNA analysis isn't in question. However, the so-called date rape is another matter. Like everything else associated with progress in the women's movement, men are held to a different standard. First, there is the professional rape victim, which every criminal defense attorney practicing in a large area eventually encounters. This woman moves from jurisdiction to jurisdiction hunting at high class clubs for a nice young rich boy. Once found, she reveals that she is kind of kinky and wants to do it in a kind of public place. This will usually be a deserted beach, or a golf course, anywhere where she can claim she screamed but nobody heard her. They do the deed. She goes to the police and reports a rape. The boy is arrested. He says consent. Under modern law, his name is published, hers is not. She makes it known at some point to the defense attorney that she is hurting for cash for some reason. An affidavit is drawn up that states she can understand how the defendant might have thought he had consent, even though he did not. A wired investigator passes daddy's $25,000 to the alleged victim and she signs the affidavit. She moves on to another jurisdiction while the defense attorney files the affidavit with the court asking for dismissal of the charges. Everybody except dad is happy. Another SWM.

Then there are the inherently unequal charges. These are the ones such as where two fifteen year olds are caught having intercouse and the boy is arrested for statutory rape and put on the sex offenders list for life, while the girl receives no puninshment at all. Another such charge is where the two are of age and drink and take drugs and then have sex. For some reason, the female can be too drunk to consent, but the male cannot be too drunk to form the intent to have sex with a non-consenting partner because she's too drunk to consent. So he becomes a rapist and goes on the sexual offender's list, and she receives no punishment. And of course, as demonstrated by the Duke lacrosse players plight, even when false charges are found out, no punishment is meted out. I think SWM resent all of this inequality.

A smart father in America today would advise his sons to not get married, not have children, never be alone with a woman, and never be alone with a child. Only in this way can he be sure not to suffer some kind of terrible, Kafkaesque fate from an overzealous feminist movement that has sought, not equality, but domination, over stupid white men. Their war might not be won in America's corporate boardrooms, nor in the halls of Congress, but it certainly has in the working and middle class family. It is for that family to be reunited that the stupid white men yearn. It is that family for which they believe the Republicans stand. Until the Democrats are willing to take the SWMs off of the auction block, and give them some guarantee their sons and daughters won't be torn away from them on somebody's whim, some guarantee that they will have a semblance of equality in family and criminal court, they will continue to vote for the party that claims to stand for traditional family values.

by W.M.L. (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 537 comments [52 recommended, 1 rejected]) on Friday, Oct 5, 2007 at 6:38:29 PM

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Hi Rob,

Stupid White Men are mostly just very ignorant - and we all know that ignorance is dangerous.  I see old WWII Vets STWM flying the flag and refusing to see what is happening today.  I see young STWM wearing their Crusader Christian symbols on their jackets and driving SUVs with the flag waving.  Will they wake up?  I doubt it.  Oh, and the young ones usually have Stupid White Women with them.

 Keep on writing.  And thanks for the comments.  Keep on writing.

by Aimee (0 articles, 2 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 100 comments) on Friday, Oct 5, 2007 at 7:36:05 PM

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This is a nice series of articles on white men, Rob. 

The white male voter is indeed a problem for the Democrats, but candidates will just have to figure out how to get this demographic to make common cause with other groups.  Because that is central to the problem: the inability of white men as a group to identify with anyone but themselves: no one's misery is important -- except their own.

In my Canadian experience, I have found that white women often (not always) refuse to support an initiative that they see as unfair to aboriginal Canadians.  And often (not always) heterosexual women show far more sensitivity about gay issues than heterosexual men do.  There is probably more than one reason for this -- everything from abstract altruism to the feeling that there for the grace of god . . . etc. 

In short, differences are important but so are points of similarity and mutual identification.

It's very true that white men have had the farthest to fall over this past 30 years of attempts to level the race-gender playing-field.  But that's only a small part of it.  The playing-field is not a whole lot flatter than it was before women's lib and civil rights and aboriginal rights, etc. 

Economic advantages -- such as good jobs -- have not gone from white men to women, from white men to black men.  In the words of Jesse Jackson, those jobs have gone "from here to yonder."  The problem is much more one of class.  However, in the US, where there's still a pervasive mythology about the US as a classless society, the right-wing goes all hysterical every time some politician alludes to the war of the wealthy against the poor.

I think the first thing we have to do to understand white men is stop lumping them all together.  There's a big difference between the angry white Pat Buchanans, who go ballistic at the thought of Toni Morrison being read alongside Shakespear in American colleges, and the angry "white trash" that Joe Bageant writes about so evocatively.  

Indeed, as you imply in your "Little-Dick Syndrom" article, it's the Pat Buchanans of the world who have exploited their less fortunate white brothers and thus added to the already justified anger of angry "white trash."  But for reasons of that mysterious phenomenon we know as white machismo, white male victims of this exploitation never seem to catch on that maybe -- just maybe -- a woman or a black politician could provide a better answer.

If Hillary and Obama were as smart as the pundits imply, they would be figuring out how to honestly court the REAL white male victims -- the lower-middle- and working-class white men, not the Buchanan-class phonies.  Hillary and Obama might try getting these narrow little rednecks to understand that there are whole classes of "others" with some of the same justifiable complaints -- many blacks and many women -- with whom they could find common cause on a few issues. The trick is to get them to drop their macho posturing and understand that such self-absorbed posturing is not the way to win sympathy for their predicament.

In case readers haven't partaken of the literary delights of Joe Bageant, here's the link to all his beautiful/funny/angry/outrageous essays:

http://www.coldtype.net/joe.html

by delia (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 112 comments) on Saturday, Oct 6, 2007 at 3:32:32 AM

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I think that normal, intelligent people, including white males, would run away from a party that regards them as and calls them stupid, cuckolded, emasculated, neantherals, facists, and having small privates as fast as their SUVs and big pickup trucks would allow them.

The Democratic Party will only keep attracting those white males that are super intelligent, upright-walking, hybrid-car-driving, more masculine, and with large privates until they become more inclusive, less elitist, and quit calling white males degrading names. That will never happen so the Democrats should thoughtfully take this position about white males: who needs them. Both groups would be better off.

BTW: There are pscyhological reasons HC acts tough that any Psych 101 student could figure out.

by Mad Jayhawk (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 652 comments [56 recommended, 3 rejected]) on Wednesday, Oct 10, 2007 at 1:10:36 PM

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