Big Boys Don’t Cry, Part III

Reflections from the Burning House

So heartened to see so many people out marching for No Kings today!

Yes, we now face fascism in America . . . and elsewhere. Not rising, but already here; not an exaggeration, but a reality. Yet when “We the People” show up and push back, like the 2500 to 3000 folks we walked with through the small town of Poulsbo, Washington (population 13,000), that’s the real parade happening all over this country.

No King’s Protest today, June 14th, Poulsbo, WA

Fascists, take note. Thirty-one Nobel Prize winners, and 400 academics (including experts in the history of fascism) have now called you out in an open letter commemorating the same public act by intellectuals against the Mussolini regime a century ago.

War, fascism, and hegemonic masculinity have always been close associates. In 1922, the Italian fascist monthly, Gerarchia, called its emergent brutal authoritarian ideology, “the child of war.” The glorification and normalizing of militarism stands out in the fascist game plan as clearly as the $16 million grind of Washington, DC streets left behind by $45 million in armor and shock troops parading before His Majesty. We see it; we know what it is; we’ve seen it before and ain’t nothing patriotic about it.

Consider too the uninvited Marines deployed by a centralized, autocracy to “benevolently liberate” Los Angeles by trumping (sorry) state sovereignty. The embedded macho symbolism is nostalgic in the extreme. During WWI, “Marines promoted a style of manliness . . . [emphasizing] honor, courage, selflessness, self-control, hard work, and strength,” a doctoral researcher at U of Alabama notes. See now how these values are completely perverted by the twisted, self-glorifying emotional hunger of an insatiable narcissist who will never be satisfied.

His Kingship refers to Los Angeles protesters as “animals,” “a foreign enemy,” from which the city must be “liberated,” so as to “make it free, clean, and safe again.” An interesting concept in which a dirty, corrupt, lying, felonious, misogynist takes on the task of cleaning anything up. Meanwhile, morale sucks among the soldiers, many of whom feel manipulated and politically exploited. Experts and veterans alike express deep concern about this erosion of posse comitatus, the restrictions of the U.S. military from acting in domestic matters. And there are signs soldiers inside the ranks get it and are questioning whether their activation and deployment constitutes an “unlawful order” they have an obligation to resist and defy in order to protect the U.S. Constitution.

And we have to see this entry into the streets, this “unrest,” and “destabilization” as encouraging. Awareness and resistance is growing; those who’d extinguish the fire in our burning house are coming forward.

However, we have to remain highly vigilant, persistent, and very brave for this to really go anywhere. Those signs are front and center too.

Vigilant because only two days ago a U.S. senator, duly-elected and representing the People (Alex Padilla, D, California), was slammed to the ground, handcuffed, and removed from a Homeland Security press conference simply for asking a question.

Vigilant because this very morning Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were murdered by an assassin dressed as a police officer, who then shot and gravely wounded State senator John Hoffman, a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, who are now hopefully moving into the clear after emergency surgery.

Notice that this man wore a vest, carried a taser, and drove a “police-type vehicle” with flashers. He made sure he was fully militarized, and I can only conclude he had to be an enraged, hegemonic masculine guy. I’d like to say he’s just some madman who totally lost his shit, but my friends, what if he’s at the point of a spear?

Inside his car was a list that included other Democrats such as Minnesota governor Tim Walz, U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar, U.S. Senator Tina Smith and state Attorney General Keith Ellison. He clearly wanted to kill many people. He had No Kings flyers in his car.

According to NPR, authorities cautioned the public in Minnesota about attending No Kings marches like we had today. There’s another more crucial logic, however, which says keep marching despite such fears because cowering and remaining silent right now will create even greater dangers. It’ll say violence and intimidation works.

Right here, in today’s vicious killings in Minnesota, we taste the bitter fruit of tolerating the militarization of hegemonic masculinity.

“The militarization of any nationalist movement occurs through the gendered workings of power,” wrote political theorist and feminist writer Cynthia Enloe in 1993. . . .and these prescient words are now fully activated before our eyes.

Even some women are caught up in enacting this militarist masculinity: “Masculinities are prized in political and military leadership, even when that leadership is performed by women,” Enloe wrote in 2010.

Then in 2018, this same distinguished feminist researcher asked a compelling question we need to bring to everyone’s attention right now:

“To what extent are anxieties about masculinities simply being vacuumed up into a right-wing movement . . . ? Or, to what extent are they not just vacuumed up, if you will, but fueling it—at the beginning, in the middle, and at the later stages?” (emphasis mine)

Having briefed you in Parts I and II of Big Boys Don’t Cry on my early boyhood bedwetting and the painful events of my 14th year - I hope you’ll now note the same bullshit version of “maleness” from which I and so many others have suffered permeating not only the motives of people sending armed Marines to Los Angeles to intimidate but also certain protesters throwing stones and burning the flag to antagonize them. Both polarities are toxic to the cause of restoring freedom and democracy and taking back power from U.S. fascists.

To close this three-part series, I’ll invite you once more into personal history, in fact, right back to the very same shitstorm of my age 14 era. One glimmer in that same dark year was having enough sense to walk out of school - alongside four million other students in colleges, universities, and high schools - to participate in the 1970 Nationwide Student Strike Against the Vietnam War.

There are some things that happened back then that you need to know about.

Richard Nixon had lied boldface and publicly about his promised drawdown of U.S. forces and been publicly exposed for his secret invasion of Cambodia. Forty-seven out of 50 states still had the “age of majority” at 21 years old, but an older teenage boy could nonetheless fret very much about being drafted at age 18, 19 or 20 and forced to burn down Vietnamese villages or execute innocent people. We couldn’t vote about a war we might be forced to fight despite personal opposition. The choice was between prison or illegally emigrating to Canada. Thank you, Canada.

The only other route a young man had against this injustice was to “hit the streets” . . . much like today.

Wiki Commons

The National Student Strike took place from May 1st to May 8th, 1970. In that spread lies a critical and tragic moment in U.S. history (May 4th) when four unarmed Kent State University protesters were murdered by National Guardsmen. Like so many others back then, I was horrified, outraged, and longed to protest this act of heinous, militarized violence against fellow citizens.

The assassinations in Minnesota today remind me of that time.

Our local march took place along Woodward Avenue and Maple Road on May 6th in Birmingham, Michigan at the very height of tensions over the war and the Kent State murders. The same day, a small protest at the nearby Royal Oak draft board became violent and five protesters were arrested. A cop and three protesters were injured.

While we marched, we were warned to cover our faces from photographers, and I didn’t understand why. I was told the march was being actively surveilled by the “Red Squad,” a Michigan State Police and Detroit Police collaboration to monitor dissidents and protesters that continued until 1976 when the scheme was exposed by the American Civil Liberties Union and shut down in the courts.

By then, Detroit Police had recorded the names of 1.4 million potential “subversives,” and MI State Police had 50,000 case files. Even more shocking is the sharing of this information with local car manufacturers as a means of harassing and blocking the careers of their employees.

Are you a subversive? Are you a dissident to be monitored and sanctioned for protesting this government we have now? Are you a person with the kind of belief system or look or ethnicity or gender or sexuality requiring a U.S. military presence to keep you in line?

This is a long time before the internet and today’s digital surveillance. But it’s a way of demonstrating that this shit is still with us right now. This is not new. And I never learned if I made the cut with the Red Squad but have always hoped so.

Ann Arbor Sun, March 11, 1976

Local “unrest” (as it was also called then) grew as more angry youth from these two affluent suburbs began gathering at Memorial Park at 13 Mile Road and Woodward. In August 1970, the Memorial Park Riot of 2000 young people resulted in the arrest of 754.

Here’s what’s different now:

I foresee militarized violence as inevitably and purposely aimed at sparking protester violence. This administration clearly intends to provoke public resistance in order to attack it, whereas police back in 1970 were instead using covert surveillance, career sabotage, and harassment. This is because overt militarized violence against protesters - as had happened throughout the Civil Rights struggle as well as the recent 1968 police riot at the Democratic Convention in Chicago - was condemned by the majority of American society.

Today, the public’s guard has gone down. Now there’s an obvious empowerment of cops and soldiers toward violence as a legitimized response to protester provocation. This is why I, like many others, believe those in power in the U.S. hope to purposely stimulate protester violence so as to crush resistance.

We need to turn the Tao of resistance to this strategy into water instead of fire. Water quenches. Water moves around threat and wears it down.

Permitting hegemonic masculine violence by protesters will only throw more gasoline on our burning house.

I too feel my own desire to “fight” as a lizard-brain response, but we humans are blessed with the capacity to reason, plan, and consider our choices morally and pragmatically.

I remain very concerned about people who feel that provoking or taunting of thuggish cops or soldiers represents a viable strategy for dealing with people sanctioned by the state to knock the shit out of you and yours and are armed to the teeth to do so. These folks are just as much a threat to the cause of restoring freedom and democracy as any paid provocateur.

Please heed this warning: violence towards cops or military or provocateurs or even one another plays right into the hands of the corrupt - who have very already schemed to create this very scenario.

Wiki Commons

Let’s briefly discuss the reactivity we wish to calm and subdue in ourselves. The very presence of an overbearing, weight-trained cop or soldier sheathed in protective gear, mace, baton, taser, and weapon should make anyone edgy - it’s supposed to do so.

Heart rate escalates, breathing shortens, we secrete norepinephrine (adrenalin), and we are prepped to fight or run. Now add to the mix this radioactive sociocultural toxicity - hegemonic masculinity - and there are people wanting to fight back, either protectively or aggressively. I’m not distinguishing here between Anti-Fa and Proud Boys any more than a peaceful left-leaning protester or a peaceful right-leaning cop. I’m saying this algebra for violence is in place, locked, and loaded in all of us, and we all need to be aware and working preventatively, or we’re going to have the long hot summer of 1967 all over again and then some. For the record, I’d say “women are different, especially feminists,” except the suffragettes bombed, the Weathermen had Weatherwomen, and there are Anti-Fa ladies who’d love to knock out Mothers for Liberty.

As soon as circumstances come to trading blows, we all lose. I’m prepared to fall down like a dead weight on the ground and get dragged away rather than hit or injure anybody. Or get the hell back and away. But I’m not going to fight or provoke cops, soldiers, or assholes, especially those who’d love to be provoked.

You see, I was at Kent State campus for its 30th anniversary commemoration of the murder of those four students in 2000. I’d come to the annual conference of the Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research (SIETAR). By far, this was the rock star of all professional conferences I was ever privileged to attend, and there’s been many. It’s no exaggeration to say that those three days changed my life in positive ways.

I’m sure many of you might stop reading here, but if I’m fortunate enough to have you with me to this point, this is where this post really begins as I reach out to share with you some wisdom I received in my heart from three inspiring speakers at that conference.

Each of them was a living example of being incredibly vigilant, persistent, and very brave - without being violent. Together, they represent a pathway toward how to live as an antidote to hegemonic masculinity.

I hope you’ll click the links on their names, take the time to ponder their teachings, and share them with others.

Arun Ghandi (1934-2023), grandson of Mahatma Ghandi, and South African activist against apartheid. You could’ve heard a pin drop when he spoke. He told of growing up in South Africa and getting beaten up continually for being “too brown for the white kids, and too white for the black kids.” His misbehavior and defiance led to his overwhelmed parents sending him to live as a teen with his grandfather for two years - who mentored him in the path of non-violence, Ahimsa.

Giandomenico Picco (1948-2024), Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, who I believe was a married new father when he permitted himself to be repeatedly abducted and kidnapped so as to negotiate the release of eleven hostages held by terrorists in Lebanon, including Anglican reverend Terry Waite and journalist Terry Anderson.

I’m most grateful for getting to sit and have a soft drink and rich conversation with a woman who witnessed her own father’s assassination and suffered so greatly in her life from violence yet chose to dedicate herself to the cause of peace, justice and intercultural understanding, Camelia Anwar Sadat (1945-2019).

Just her and me sat together for about an hour - and it only happened because we were the only ones in the break room, and she invited me to sit down. Within two years of this impromptu meetup, this marvel of a human being would go through a terrible decline, one that reminds me now of the very dark side of the American immigrant story and what we stand to lose as this administration deepens its racist savagery in all directions.

Contemplating the lives and teachings of these three people, each of who experienced extremes of violence and chose to live differently, is one small way I can remind myself and others how to live vigilantly, persistently, and very bravely - but without violence - as we band together to defeat American fascism.