White, toxic masculinity has become a plague on America, and it’s about time white guys started speaking out about it, and putting it down.
The time to look away and ignore it as if it isn’t plainly in sight is long past, because it is quickly wrecking this country — again.
Too many of our noxious, white brothers are vile, rude, loud, and even very dangerous in today’s unsteady America. Worse yet, these guys somehow think they have a free pass to be just as gross as they want to be, because one of our very worst ascended to America’s most powerful office — twice.
- Graciousness in defeat has been replaced by sore losers.
- Good manners have been shoved to the floor to seat rudeness at the table.
- Truth has been replaced with lies, lies, and more lies.
- Thoughtfulness has gone the way of bombast.
- Right has been replaced with might.
Nothing is their fault.
We are in a terrible place thanks to these men, and they must be called out by the men who know better.
I’m dead serious about this, guys.
Somehow these grown boys who were born with a leg up solely because of their race and gender, believe everybody is against them, and mostly these uppity, educated women and people of color. They’ve ended up in the slow lane, while everybody else has passed them by, and now that needs to be everybody else’s fault except theirs.
Instead of taking accountability, they play the victim, and that’s just pathetic.
We saw them in Charlottesville, when they marched on that Virginia city in 2017 with their tiki torches at a “Unite the Right” rally, where that vile president they worship called them “very fine people.”
We saw them again at our nation’s capitol January 6th, 2021, when they violently attacked our country at behest of that outgoing white supremacist president, who spent the better part of three hours doing nothing except hoping they would succeed in destroying the results of an election he lost.
They gather at his ugly rallies, so they can be just as gross as they want to be while setting one helluva terrible example for our children.
Man, I am sick and tired of these guys.
This is a piece that has needed writing for years now, but I was finally spurred to action by a run-in with one of these dudes very early one morning this week.
We have a condo we frequent in North Carolina. That makes me luckier than hell, and there isn’t an hour of the day, I don’t know it. It’s on the beach, and every time I get here, I am reminded that things worked out better for me than they had a right to.
I have no trouble admitting that the color of my skin and gender, gave me a hand up. I never had to look over my shoulder, only straight ahead to the good that was coming if I worked hard enough.
We’re on the top floor of the building, which affords a nice view, but also means negotiating several flights of stairs. The place is pretty basic, because all you really need is the beach. There is no elevator, but there is a creaky lift for things like boxes, bags and groceries.
When the lift is on the fritz, as it has been since yesterday, the small things in life can be a little inconvenient.
As the sun was rising this morning, and I was rolling around in bed, I could hear the lift starting and stopping. Apparently, somebody had rolled in early with their boxes and bags, and got a rude welcoming from the grouchy lift.
After about 10 minutes of listening to the thing start and stop, I grumbled, rolled out of the rack, slapped on some shorts and a T-shirt and wandered out onto the corridor to break the news that didn't need breaking: “The lift isn’t working,” I said to a blonde woman about my age.
That’s when she turned around, and said “I know, but he said he is going to fix it.”
I looked down and saw “he.”
Gray, flabby Hercules was three flights down, shaking the lift, and moaning like a bear who got the bees, but not the honey.
You’ve seen the type, crewcut, stocky build, walrus goatee, red ball cap, muscular and fat at the same time, boots suffocating dirty white socks, shorts that go down to the shins, tattoos everywhere …
Look, I am not stereotyping here, because this is a genuine type, and you know it.
We’ve become overrun with ‘em in America. When they are not attacking this country, they’re likely the guys working for ICE, zip-tying kids, while wearing those masks they hated during a killer pandemic, but now cover their chicken-shit faces, because thankfully most Americans still don’t like women- and children-abusing bullies.
Did I mention that Hercules was driving a loud, black pickup truck? Again, not stereotyping here, just reporting a disturbing pattern …
And for all of Hercules’ unattractive features, it was his quiet wife I became concerned about. Because when she turned around and told me her husband was “Going to fix it,” I saw pretty clearly the fixer had already broken his wife — or “Baby” as he called her while he was screaming and bossing her around the joint.
“Baby” was to stand on the third floor and keep quiet while Hercules shook the lift and sweated buckets.
I shot her a knowing glance, turned around, and headed back to my place. But the nagging wasn’t going to let me get back to sleep.
I’ve seen women like this, and the trouble they live with.
My mother was one of those women, until she escaped my rotten dad when I was young. You never forget the look in their eyes, when they around the monsters …
That was many decades ago, but it seems like these men are being celebrated now, instead of condemned.
So I rolled out of bed, and returned to the scene of the crime, went down the stairs and starting carrying their crap up to their condo. Hercules told me it wasn’t necessary, even if it was. Then he said he couldn’t help because, “his knees hurt.”
I let that one go, because guys like Hercules generally carry guns to overcompensate for what little they were given underneath those baggy drawers.
When I finished, Hercules thanked me for the help, apologized for waking me up, and got back to pushing Baby and their life around.
Baby never said another thing. Her sad eyes were doing all the talking …
- (D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)
