Let’s dispense with the obvious.

When most people think of Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), if they think of him at all, they probably conjure up images of two moments, both of which took place on one of the worst days in American history.

That, of course, was January 6, 2021, when the US Capitol was stormed by a mob of election deniers who wanted Joe Biden’s certification as

the

46th President of the United States. Many of those insurgents now face prison terms for sedition and other crimes.

In the first memorable photo, a fist-pumping Hawley walks past the insurgents on their way to vote against the result of the 2020 presidential election.

you guys are awesome

says his body language.

I’m with you all the way.

The second image is a clip of Hawley fleeing from that same mob after it breached the Capitol. In it, he also pumps with his arms, but that’s because he runs away at a fast pace. When it was shown during

one of the

House committee hearing on January 6

S

onlookers burst into laughter.

Now I’m not suggesting that Hawley was wrong to run, but in doing so he revealed himself to be a coward, a hypocrite and a phony. Not to mention shameless.

On Tuesday, Hawley’s book Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs was released by conservative publisher Regnery to coincide with his 2024 reelection campaign. On Wednesday, Hawley tweeted that his book left triggered, so get your copy now.

Hawley posing as an expert on courage is just as believable as Donald Trump posing as an expert on marital fidelity.

One of the many deplorable things about Hawley’s book is his non-ironic use of the metaphor of running when describing how to act like a man:

Running from the monsters of your life takes courage.

Run into the darkness that threatens your family.

When your life revolves relentlessly around you, you will never run into danger.

“Masculinity,”

which reads like a Sunday sermon, is an extended diatribe about how American men need to rediscover their masculinity by modeling themselves on biblical figures

search like

Adam and Abraham. Since, according to Hawley, we are witnessing the collapse of American masculinity, the blame must be assigned. A culprit must be found.

Aaaaand, no surprise here, it’s the wake on the left! that turns men into mush. Not to mention the liberal elite, the educated elite, the cultural elite and all that

by

the other godless people who control corporate America, academia, the media, and Hollywood.

To a remarkable, historically unusual degree, Hawley writes, America’s cultural institutions are now dominated by a small, homogeneous class of individuals who graduated from the same coterie of elite schools and share the same Epicurean, mostly atheistic worldview they learned there.

I think intellectual dishonesty is to be expected from a man who masquerades as a working-class hero but doesn’t bother to mention in biographical passages that his father was a banker, or that he went to private school, Stanford University, and Yale Law. ; clerk for Chief Justice John of the Supreme Court

G.

Roberts

Jr

; taught constitutional law; worked as Attorney General; and has, in fact, been privileged all his life. (In college, he writes, I started rowing.

Source surprise!

)

I can’t really explain Hawley’s bizarre and frequent use of the word bon vivant as a synonym for liberals or progressives, except that he may think it makes him sound like an intellectual. (By the way, Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who taught that the purpose of life was to attain pleasure. He is associated with hedonism, the opposite of stoicism, which emphasizes virtue as its own reward.)

Anyway, writes Hawley, who was raised Methodist and now attends an evangelical Presbyterian church, America is a Christian nation, founded on biblical principles that were somehow lost when American men were told their masculinity is poisonous, have turned into silly mama’s boys who exercise no agency and have no ambition.

Well, he doesn’t use those exact words, but that’s pretty much what he means when he writes, “Much of today’s left seems to welcome men who are passive and tame, who will do as they are told and fit into their boxes. sit, eyes glued to their screen (Where, he supposes, they are

watching pornography instead of getting married, working and raising children.)

This is a shockingly weak analysis of America’s longstanding social problems.

In Hawleys America, there is no systemic racism or sexism, no mass incarceration, no educational inequality

other

not income inequality that could be at the root of some of the seemingly intractable problems we face.

In Hawley’s America, every social problem is due to the lack of masculine men. After being brainwashed by liberals, excuse me, hedonists men instead seek pleasure and avoid responsibility.

I’m sorry, but there isn’t a man in America who needs a sermon from

jos

Hawley.

Especially not courage.

@robinkabcarian