11/11/2003

The DuToitification of the Western Conservative

Until now I've refrained from commenting on the misogynistic essay of Kim duToit lamenting the "pussification" of the American male. Now, "Winston Smith" of The Philosoraptor blog has made any such effort on my part utterly obsolete.

I rarely post a single link and say go read this right now in full. But sometimes you come across an argument so awe-inspiriringly bad ass that you can only shake your head in mute appreciative silence.

Go read this right now in full.

I can't resist excerpting, but go read it in full right now. Seriously.

What duToit�s essay proves is that the more important problem we face is the duToitification of the Western conservative. Conservatism is currently the Colossus of American politics. Extremist conservatives control the Presidency and both houses of Congress, and conservatives exercise virtually unchallenged control of the political agenda; conservatives control their own massive network of media outlets (talk radio, Fox news, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, etc.); they have convinced most other media outlets to shift their message to the right by relentlessly repeating the �liberal bias� mantra; they have established a massive and incredibly well-funded network of think-tanks and institutions to develop, distribute, and defend their message; and they have underway a long-term plan to take control of the judiciary. Never in my lifetime has one end of the political spectrum so dominated American public life. And yet, even given their almost unchallenged hegemony, they just can�t seem to stop their damn whining. To make this all even more insufferable, their whining often has a bizarre, self-reflexive nature. What they whine about is the fact that they are too masculine, too stoical, too heroic for this imagined age of liberalism. Picture one of those movies in which, through time-lapse photography, a character seems to physically regress farther and farther through less and less highly-evolved forms�but in this case, the character simultaneously becomes emotionally more dainty and easily offended until what remains is a kind of effete caveman. A Neanderthal crybaby. This process of political devolution and moral sissification is the duToitification of the Western conservative.

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