Halfway through Sen. Josh Hawley’s new book, “ — The Masculine Virtues America Needs,†he describes those virtues by way of an old family story about a teenage boy who helped capture an “outlaw†who was threatening his home. It is, Hawley writes, “the story of a young man becoming something every man is called to be — a warrior — by choosing to face the darkness, choosing to take up responsibility and the risk that comes with it.â€
And how has Hawley himself stood up when faced with the darkness of this especially dark political era? You »å´Ç²Ô’t have to spend a week you’ll never get back reading Hawley’s glowering, Bible-thumping, retrograde treatise, as I just did, for the answer. Just review his recent history. The Missouri Republican has, many times in the past few years, faced real-life political versions of that young man’s challenge. And his response has generally been: Outlaw? What outlaw?
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It’s easy to guffaw at Hawley, of all people, writing a testosterone-forward book about manhood. This is, after all, the senator famous for sprinting out of the U.S. Capitol in terror on Jan. 6, 2021, ahead of an insurrection he helped foment.
It’s also easy to condemn the very notion that more than a century after women secured the right to vote, a sitting senator would continue to suggest that political leadership is man’s work. “Every man is meant to be a king,†Hawley writes. “That is the mission of manhood.†Women, stick to your sewing circles.
But reading what is, in some weird way, a self-help book, I repeatedly paused at another problem with it. It’s not just that this is a regressive message from the worst of messengers. It’s that, even taken on its own terms, Hawley’s definitions of masculine virtues — honesty, courage, the fortitude to do what’s right in the face of adversity — very much »å´Ç²Ô’t define his own political life.
The most glaring example of this revolves, as so much does in these political times, around a certain past (and possibly future) president.
“Every man who has been in a locker room recognizes the type. The fake bravado, the endless boasting,†Hawley writes, in damning reference to … some pop-culture loudmouth named Andrew Tate, who I’d never previously heard of.
Wait, you thought that was about Donald Trump? No, no, no. Unless I missed it, the former president — who, whatever you think of him, is undeniably the black hole at the center of today’s political galaxy — appears nowhere in this book about confronting darkness.
How can Hawley repeatedly imply that the entire concept of toxic masculinity is a poisonous myth without addressing the walking definition of it in Donald grab them by the you-know-what Trump? How can Hawley declare, correctly, that “narcissism joined to power is dangerous,†without even a passing word about the former narcissist-in-chief (for whom Hawley still )?
Outlaw? What outlaw?
Similarly, how do you write an entire book about masculine power and its place in today’s socio-political environment without addressing one of the most significant demonstrations of political aggression in America’s domestic history? Especially if you happen to have played a key role in it?
It wasn’t just his infamous fist raised in solidarity with the Jan. 6 mob. Hawley was the first senator to announce he would officially object to the 2020 election results, thus guaranteeing there would be a floor vote for the mob to target that day. In a subsequent essay attempting to defend that indefensible stunt, Hawley explained that “many citizens in Missouri have deep concerns about election integrity†and it was his duty to give them a voice — never mind that he and his party had fostered those baseless concerns by timidly refusing to counter Trump’s post-election lies. It was exactly the kind of mealy-mouthed excuse-making that Hawley’s vision of manhood rejects.
Hawley writes that the world needs “strong men to protect the garden of civilization,†yet he has become among the most prominent voices undermining U.S. support for Ukraine against its brutal Russian invaders, and last year he cast the sole Senate vote against allowing Finland and Sweden to enter NATO. He writes of the duty of fathers to be protectors of families yet, as Missouri’s attorney general, he sued in an attempt to yank health care coverage from families across his state. His book focuses heavily on the moral imperative of hard work, but his past support for anti-union “right to work†policies and opposition to minimum-wage hikes speak more forcefully than his current, empty pro-labor rhetoric.
“No menace to this nation is greater than the collapse of American manhood,†writes Hawley, apparently forgetting a big one: the (almost entirely male) menace of gun violence in America, which he and his party continue to enable by refusing to even consider reasonable gun restrictions. As with all the other times Hawley has had the chance to “face the darkness,†he hides in it. Call that whatever you want, but »å´Ç²Ô’t call it manhood.
Kevin McDermott is a Post-Dispatch columnist and Editorial Board member. On Twitter: @kevinmcdermott. Email: kmcdermott@post-dispatch.com
