The contemporary “conservative” right is an expression of pathological patriarchy. This movement makes the most extreme case for subordinating women and feminine values to their supposedly manly way of life. But, and in a grim sort of way this is fascinating, they never walk their talk. Not on anything.
To give one of a great many examples: for many years their heroes have been Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (at least before he discovered ecology). What they most liked about these guys was the characters they played as actors. Reagan and Schwarzenegger’s movie personas won them California’s governorship, and in Reagan’s case, fueled his rise to the Presidency. Reagan, Wayne, and Schwarzenegger’s über-masculine personas were pretend, and very well paid pretend at that. Their über-masculinity was an act, their rugged standing up to danger a role. There is a reason for this strange selection of role models – no sane person can live up to such a one sided caricature of masculinity, and only people deeply out of touch with themselves and with reality in general would even try.
As today’s “conservatives” demonstrate, they also fail. And so they live a lie.
This past week a number of very sharp bloggers have also begun emphasizing the faux-masculinity of the conservative right, a bunch of poseurs if ever there were some. I heartily recommend Jeff Greenwald’s The right-wing cult of contrived masculinity, Digby’s Tarzan, Jane and Cheetah, The Daily-Howler’s Wikidowdia, and TRex’s Are There ANY Straight Republicans?
They shed a lot of light on the core irrationality behind what passes today as “conservatism.”