The Thomas Chronicles

They’re being fired from their jobs, that’s where.

One of my favorite blogs to read, Bookworm Room, has an ongoing commentary about men in the modern world. I find her insights into our society usually penetrating, but unlike many similar commentaries, she treats most of her subject matters with a light touch— neither overbearing nor heavy-handed.

However, on the topic of manhood, she expressed bafflement.

…I think the way young suburban men (age about 16 -24 ) dress is infantile. They wear unlaced shoes, baggy pants that fall down, oversized t-shirts, and have their caps on backwards. It’s bizarre watching a bearded slacker wearing precisely the same clothes my son wore when he was 2 (minus the diaper, of course, unless the guy’s an astronaut). I wasn’t too surprised, therefore, to hear on that same Prager show the observation that young women complain that men in their own age group are exceptionally immature.

…

You’ll notice that I’m just pointing things out, but I’m not going anywhere. The fact is, I don’t have anywhere to go. Are the above types of American guys just three strands in a huge modern society, strands that don’t intersect, and that really don’t portend anything? Are they the difference between red state and blue state? Are Marines the past, with the Peter Pans and the Girly Boys the future? I’d like to tie everything into a neat package, wrap a bow around it and draw a wonderful conclusion about male maturity in America, but I’m not sure I can. Do any of you have any ideas?

I responded with this commentary:

I think one of the reasons we don’t see men of the caliber of a John Wayne or a Gary Cooper or a Spencer Tracy is because the law does not allow us to behave in a certain way any longer.

When John Wayne saw injustice, he couldn’t abide it and would end it… right then and there.

You can’t do that in today’s world. You’d be sued until you owned nothing but the clothes on your back. Bystanders would gangbang you by calling you intolerant in the name of tolerance. Then, if things go badly, you’d get arrested for disturbing the peace.

This is ubiquitous to police work nowadays in domestic disturbance calls: They’d come into situations where the man is beating the wife. She was the one who called the police. They came. They’d pull the man aside slap handcuffs on him. Then the woman would attack the police for arresting him!

What a world…

So when I heard the news off the Drudge Report today that a man was fired from his job for protecting a woman, sadly, I wasn’t too surprised.

When a neighbor screamed she’d been shot, Colin Bruley grabbed his shotgun, found the victim and began treating her bloodied right leg.

Tonnetta Lee survived Tuesday’s pre-dawn shooting at her Jacksonville apartment, and her sister and a neighbor praised Bruley’s actions. But his employers, the same people who own the Arlington complex where Bruley lives, reacted differently. They fired him.

Bruley, a leasing agent at the Oaks at Mill Creek, said he lost his job after being told that brandishing the weapon was a workplace violation, as was failing to notify supervisors after the incident occurred. He’d worked at the Monument Road complex since December and for the owner, Village Green Cos., since 2005.

Bruley said he was too shaken to call his supervisor immediately after the incident, which occurred just before 2 a.m., but planned to eventually do so. He also said he was acting as a citizen, not an employee, and shouldn’t have been punished for trying to protect himself and others. He never fired the shotgun.

“I was expecting work to give me some kind of commendation,” said Bruley, 24. “I was totally blown back. It was a crisis that most people don’t go through.”

Andrea Roebker, the company’s director of public relations, said “We’re not in a position to discuss any employment issues outside of [with] the employee.

She declined to comment further, citing confidentiality rules.

We should be very mindful what kind of men we are raising and mindful of how we are conditioning them to act. It seems to me that we are emasculating our protectors on all levels of society.

What a world, indeed.

***Update Below***

I’m republishing my comment on Bookworm’s post today titled, “Fighting back“.

Bookworm,

I think there are many, many reasons why we live in an emasculated society. For starters, for two decades we have been indoctrinated with the ideology of victimhood. In virtually all circumstances, we have taught our kids and each other that it would be more profitable for a person to be the victims rather than the man standing in the path of the juggernaut… and get stomped.

There is always a price for standing in the path of evil, and usually that price is paid in blood, either yours or the evildoer. It is much easier to turn and run and give into emotive hysteria, to take some anti-depressants and to receive the sympathy of all your compadres for going through such an ordeal. Hell, you might even get monetary compensation for suffering such “emotional trauma”.

Secondly, feminists have ingrained two whole generations through our education system that manhood is a joke. You see it in commercials where the wife is always the virtuous, savvy one and the husband is this bumbling buffoon. Honor— who really sees honor in today’s world? We are taught that such silly grand narratives are really the tool of dead white men to oppress women and minorities to an evil powerful patriarchal society. I know for a fact this is what is taught in school because this is exactly what was indoctrinated in me until reality slapped it out of me.

Thirdly, we live in a highly concentrated urban society, and we’re all lawsuit happy. We refrain from acting decisively to protect others because decisive actions will land us in jail or leave us bankrupt. Living like sardines in a concrete can is much different than living out in the country. People living in concrete cans (cities) settle things through litigations, not proactive protective measures.

“What, threaten me? I’ll sue!”

“Your tree is coming over my little yard. I’ll sue you if you don’t cut it!”

“Don’t look at me that way. I’ll accuse you of sexual harassment and sue you!”

The dangers in a city is ubiquitous and manifold, and cities can’t really afford men to “take the law into your own hands.” Society is putting manhood into a Catch 22. Case after case, men were slapped down for acting to protect someone because they acted outside the law. We are supposed to call the police.

Then there are also other cases where men are denigrated and belittled because they did call the police and didn’t act. Many even held the man there as morally culpable because he didn’t act.

The bottom line is that our society has lost a virile code of honor and loyalty that relies upon individual responsibility. What we have in its place are legal protocols to follow.

Why are we surprised when we suddenly look around and find many of our would-be protectors standing out in the hallway… and doing nothing to stop the evil next door? Society has seen to it that if you are a masculine bull of man, a protector, it would be best if you just kept your head down where no one can see you.

Update:

In the Virginia Tech Massacre this past Monday, there were a few who did stand up to the gunmen, and they paid the price for it in blood. Liviu Librescu’s heroic act that day, giving his own life to save the lives of his students, speaks for itself. I cannot think of a better exit from this life and a better entry into the next.

My comment above is perhaps premature after the this tragedy, but I also think it accurate. I don’t know if I would’ve been one of the ones to run and hide, or been one of the ones to stand in the pathway of this madman. I just don’t know.

I don’t think we will find anyone who will admit this, but what probably tipped this madman into action was that the system did catch the “Warning Signs”. They shoved him into counciling and therapy, and they tried to force him to take drugs, antidepressants. That’s probably what set him off down the road of this massacre. He wrote that they painted him into the corner and that they’re forcing his hand in this and that he’s not going to just sit and take it.

Would this man have gone haywire had a virile code of honor been imbued in our society, in every interaction of civil discourse? Or would he have gone there anyway?

Update II:

Orson Scott Card wrote an article earlier this month about honor. I think it ties in very nicely with what I’ve been writing here. Here’s an excerpt:

Honor

Duty. Honor. Country.

Once these words could inspire the hearts of patriots. Now, in our benighted era, the elite in our nation sneer at the words and at those who still believe in them.

But there is such a thing as honor, and whether we name it by its right name or not, we depend on it.

Honor is akin to the word “honest.” We say a person is honest if he tells the truth about what he has done and seen in the past.

But when he gives his word about what he will do in the future, and then keeps it, we say that he has honor.

These days, we are judged by the mathematical formulae of credit ratings. We are given points according to how regular and timely our repayments are; it is an attempt to assess honor by keeping a history of how we have performed before.

But credit ratings only touch the surface of honor.

It is honor that causes a football player at the bottom of a heap of players to refrain from pushing the ball just those couple of inches that would make it seem that it had broken the plane of the goal line.

It is honor, in a game of pickup basketball, that makes a player say, “I traveled,” when no one noticed it but himself.

It is honor that keeps a married man from flirting with a woman who is not his wife. It is honor that holds parents to their responsibility to their children, sacrificing much so their children can thrive. It is honor that makes adult children care for their aging parents to the grave.

It is honor that makes a child assume the debts of his parents, or a brother to pay the debts of his sibling.

It is honor that makes it possible for us to trust the word of other people, for we know that they would rather keep their word than bear the shame of breaking it.

But … who acts that way anymore?

The Death of Individual Honor

We teach our athletes today that what the ref doesn’t see didn’t happen. Lie and win, we tell them.

As we also tell our businessmen: Cheat and win. If your company has so many lawyers that no one can afford to sue you, then you can violate your contracts and steal what you want, because no one has the power to make you stop. And when you’ve done it often enough, you’ll be so rich that Time calls you Man of the Year and people treat you as if you were somebody.

As we tell our politicians: It’s all right to accept a bribe that comes to you in the form of faked-up “trades” in cattle futures — the press is on your side; they’ll let it go. And what the press doesn’t speak about didn’t happen.

The shame of shattered honor is only enforced when we don’t like the person who fails to keep his word. “Read my lips: No new taxes,” he said, and then we pressed and pushed until he broke us word. Then we had him. For the people who voted for him actually cared about honor, and it cost him votes. While his opponent, who had no honor, was supported by people who did not care about it, and were in fact counting on him to break his word.

Honor means you can be trusted. Dishonor means you can’t.

The Honor of Parties

We had an election a few months ago. The Democratic Party achieved majorities in both houses of Congress, but it did not do so by promising to impose a deadline on a war that must be won no matter the length or cost. On the contrary, that majority was achieved only by running Democratic candidates who sounded as Republican as possible in districts that would never have voted for a Nancy Pelosi.

But now in the Congress, the Democrats are enforcing party discipline, so that even if any of those moderate-seeming Democrats were sincere before, they are required to vote against their promises. The Democrats can do this because the press likes the outcome of this breaking-of-word, and the Democrats believe they will pay no political price for being caught breaking promises.

They believe this because it has been true for fifteen years. Honor is something Republicans believe in, so it can be used to destroy them. But because the elitists who run the Democratic Party don’t care about honor, it costs the Democrats nothing to break their word.

As an embarrassed Democrat, I am ashamed of my party, because I know that at the grass roots level there are plenty of Democrats who care about honor and wish their party had any. But as long as the press remains silent about Democratic dishonor while harping on any trumped-up charge they can lay against Republicans, it’s hard for many people to believe that the dishonor really happened, or that anybody cares that it did.

That’s why Clinton could fire all the U.S. Attorneys, but Bush can’t fire eight of them. That’s why Clinton could scoff at Congressional subpoenas and pretend they had “lost” files they didn’t want to hand over, while Bush is pummeled for refusing to respect Congressional demands for things no Congress has ever claimed a right to have.

That’s why the politically correct are the main censors and suppressors of free speech in our country today, the deniers of diversity and the elitist enemies of democratic process — and yet are able to claim credit for their tolerance and love of freedom, and the media, which they control, does not expose their shame.

Because they have no shame.

That’s the sorry state of honor in America today. It is regarded as a relic that only matters to those dunderheads who still believe in God and morality and fairness and decency and all those other outmoded concepts. You know. Regular people. Not the cool, elite, smart people who all have identical — and completely unexamined — opinions.

So why is it any surprise that our nation is also on the verge of losing its honor?

You can read the rest of it here.

Bookworm yesterday had an interesting post that made observations about three different types of men in today’s modern landscape.

She delineated the differences between the Marines (the manly man’s man), the Peter Pans (little boys who just don’t grow up) and metrosexuals (men who are straight in their orientation but behave similar to women).

My friends and I have discussions along these lines every once in a while, mainly in the aftermath of watching a movie where the man emotes with all these heartrending soulful looks…

In our jaded cynicism, we describe all the emoting and posturing of the men in movies in terms of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; that is, watching them is like having our lower bowls reach up through our bodies and throttle our brains. (Yes, we do have some curious conversations in my house.)

But back to Bookworm. Let me approach this subject obliquely.

Gluttony

A minister told me once the original definition of Gluttony. It is defined as: Any undue concern with the body and it’s processes.

Given this definition Gluttony it has little to do with overzealous eating. This definition allows for a much broader application of this deadly sin than just the narrow avenue of over eating.

One of its little known application is “delicate gluttony”. This term can be applied to food in the case of a man/ woman who wants his palate satiated just so— that infamous finicky eater who will turn away a plate and demand the waiter to come back with all his specifications met.

However, one of the most common forms of “delicate gluttony” is how people are obsessed about the way they physically look. A couple of years ago, I was privy to a conversation between friends that illustrates this point. They talked excitedly about the techniques one of them used to build his biceps into a more rounded shape.

This went on for hours… and hours. It didn’t end on biceps. They advanced to triceps, pectoral muscles, abs of steel and… You get the picture.

As they were talking, I could just picture them lovingly kissing themselves in the mirror as they hoisted a hundred-seventy pound bar over their heads.

A couple of generations back, this would have been viewed as, prima facie, indulged gluttony— and effeminacy on top of that. Take two steps and look at it: A man dancing in front of a mirror trying to shape his body into something he thinks is beautiful.

Yeah… ahem… very manly.

The fact that his arms are about as large as my head does not detract from this view (although it’ll probably not be prudent to say this in front of a 300-lbs stack of walking muscles…). It is fallacious thinking which would suggest that manhood would be equated with brute physical strength and a generous capacity for violence. The fact that a 300-lbs built gorilla of a man can tear my head from my shoulders with a swing of his arm does not denote his manhood but rather his cowardice.

This vanity, I think, is very feminine, and this particular vanity could be found in all three categories— the Marine, the Peter Pan and the Metrosexual— but it doesn’t comprise the whole of each category.

Don’t get me wrong. Good exercise is wonderful for good health. There is a difference, however, in obsessively working out to chisel your body into Spartan form and working out to maintain your health and feel good.

Peter Pan?

For over 30 years, feminists have told society that fatherhood is not needed to produce healthy, fully human men.

Today, we see men (fathers, particularly) turned into buffoons on TV ads, movies and TV shows, as though it is just a given that they are dumb, socially retarded and deserving of contempt.

It has gotten to the point where men are a distinct minority on college campuses. This is no small thing since a college degree is the gateway into middle class incomes…

Furthermore, a major portion of these Peter Pans grew up in single mother households. Unlike women, young men need other mature men to force them into maturity. The dynamic that I’ve witnessed time and again is how a savage young man befriends a mature male adult in a mentoring relationship. Over time, the young man grows and emulates the older man, thereby, emotionally maturing.

Monkey see. Monkey do.

This used to happen between father and son, and single-mother homes are not conducive to this kind of child-rearing. As a result, well, these mentoring relationships happen occasionally between teacher and student, or, as in the case of Marines, between a Seargent and a private.

Is it surprising that men are behaving like children?

Left to their own devices, how are savage little boys to learn of honor and duty, that the first article of manhood is to protect women and children— how are they to learn that if there aren’t men around to teach them?

“Girly Men”

“Birds don’t fly because they have wings. They have wings because they can fly.”

This quote illustrates the difference between materialism and spirituality. It is the difference in believing that spirit follows form, i.e. that a bird can soar through the air because it was born with wings that enables it to fly; or form following spirit, i.e. that when God created birds, it’s spirit demanded that it should fly, and thus, God granted it with wings.

Bookworm thinks this entire category of men might be a “chimera”, but I don’t think so.

She writes:

My last puzzle piece is the metrosexual. Actually, I don’t know if that’s a real piece at all, or just a chimera. As you may recall, last year (or maybe two years ago) the New York Times did a big article about metrosexuals — men who claim to be straight, but who preen like women. Yes, I know that’s nasty, but these are men who are pretty boys (what Ah-nuld calls “girly men”). As someone who has her haircare and make-up routine down to 10 frenzied minutes, I have my doubts about the pleasure I’d get out of a male company who likes luxuriating about with a cucumber face peel, clear nail polish, and eyelash dye. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but my instant response is “ick.”

I’m a fan of old classic movies, and watch them regularly on TCM (Turner Classic Movies. I highly recommend it.) cable station. I can tell you I see metrosexuals almost as often in those old movies as I do in the street. Of course, the conformed to the mores of their time, which makes them less apparent as metrosexuals, but they are there nonetheless.

I think they’ve always been with us, but life in a megalopolis makes it more apparent. Every need can be met here. Strenuous physical labor is not required. Society is more or less indifferent to peculiarities that couldn’t be overly noticeable within a 5 second glance. All these factors and more make the metrosexual more visible.

But I think they are just what they are supposed to be, and I don’t think it’s a matter of nurture gone awry. I think it’s more of a matter of that’s what they intrinsically are in spirit.

I’ve known some women that finds this attractive.

My take is: Some will. Some won’t. So what? (eh… shrug)

One Last Point

I think one of the reasons we don’t see men of the caliber of a John Wayne or a Gary Cooper or a Spencer Tracy is because the law does not allow us to behave in a certain way any longer.

When John Wayne saw injustice, he couldn’t abide it and would end it… right then and there.

You can’t do that in today’s world. You’d be sued until you owned nothing but the clothes on your back. Bystanders would gangbang you by calling you intolerant in the name of tolerance. Then, if things go badly, you’d get arrested for disturbing the peace.

This is ubiquitous to police work nowadays in domestic disturbance calls: They’d come into situations where the man is beating the wife. She was the one who called the police. They came. They’d pull the man aside slap handcuffs on him. Then the woman would attack the police for arresting him!

What a world…

But is it the chicken or the egg here? Does the lack of manhood lead to such a world as ours? Or does such a world as ours suppress manhood from appearing?

I dunno.

Summation

You might realize by now that I haven’t discussed much about Marines. Well, I think Miss Bookworm has that covered pretty well, and I wanted to discuss dysfunctions more than healthy maturity.

At the end of her post, Bookworm muses:

Are the above types of American guys just three strands in a huge modern society, strands that don’t intersect, and that really don’t portend anything? Are they the difference between red state and blue state? Are Marines the past, with the Peter Pans and the Girly Boys the future?

No, I don’t think “Marines” are the past. Far from it.

Since the Baby Boom generation, there has been a serious uptick in feminine men, a trend which crested in Generation X, the youngest member of which should be in his late twenties at this point.

In the young Millennial Generation that I see everywhere on my walks, are chocked full of masculine “war-walkers” (as you can see, my friends and I use very colorful language.) If anything, in the coming decade or so, we will see radical shift in the nature and behavior of men, and it come about so steadily, insidiously that it’ll suddenly be all around you before you know it.