Washington (CNN) While walking with the NATO leaders
during his visit to the alliance's headquarters Thursday,
President Donald Trump pushed aside Dusko Markovic,
the prime minister of Montenegro,
as he moved to the front of a group of the leaders.
Ignoring the sort of behavioral problems that can go with mental problems that go with his increasing language problems over time — What we've got with President Trump's bulvon behavior is also an idea of manliness that would work for a big-city street punk ... but only when dealing with other punks. That military school his family sent him off to should have taught him better, or watching a few minutes of President Obama's Chicago style for a man of power (beautifully parodied by Joe Mantegna's over-controlled, over-correct Fat Tony D'Amico on THE SIMPSONS).
Mr. Trump's popularity with significant demographics in pop culture and politics points at widespread juvenilization of ideas of masculinity shoved to my attention when I had to explain to my overly-polite, mostly-good-Catholic Miami University (Oxford, OH) students that Michael Biehn's quiet but strong Kyle Reese and Cpl. Dwayne Hicks were the male role models in TERMINATOR and ALIENS and not Bill Paxton's motor-mouth punks, nor Jenette Goldstein's macha (sic) Pvt. Vasquez, nor the Terminator: the ultimate macho-man as no man at all but an unfeeling killer robot.
A friend of mine and I used to jokingly throw out the line, "Ah, I fear for the Republic!" I'm feeling that line as increasingly less of a joke. "Swaggering Strong Man" is more than just a style, and its dangers have been obvious and harped upon since (at least) old King Hrothgar sermonized on the subject at length to the young Beowulf. The swaggerer commanding the most lethal military on the planet in 2017 has character flaws that would disqualify him for leadership of a proto-Viking war band in the European Dark Ages.
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