When I was a young boy, my male friends and I built a clubhouse in my backyard from cast-off pieces of lumber. Our motto: “It’s a man’s world.” To drive home this point, we hung a sign on the door – “NO GIRLS ALLOWED!” And there, in our lair, we concocted secrets and developed a design of what the larger world should look like, how it should work. But our deliberations to remake the world were invariably foiled when our parents called us to supper, and then to bed, and we had to live to plot another day.
That was then, and this is now. What happened? We grew up. Which leads me to the problem – one of many – I have with extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Like my childhood club, they are male endeavors (the Oath Keepers will admit women, but projects a male face), and they have mottos – for the Proud Boys, “Stand Back and Stand By” (courtesy of Donald Trump), and “Not on Our Watch!” for the Oath Keepers; but, unlike my childhood club, their members never grew up. There persists among them a longing for eternal childhood, an imaginary woman-less (or “less women”) universe where any mayhem one commits will be excused because one is not a man, but a boy.
In my clubhouse, my friends and I imagined we were speaking some larger truth to the wider world, which would take us seriously and be delighted to comply. (One of those larger truths was that we should be able to skip school without consequences. For some reason, our parents weren’t on board with that one.) Which brings me to the second problem I have with right-wing extremist groups – they purport to be speaking for me. I voted in a free and fair presidential election, and the majority of Americans would agree. But the self-styled militias have presumed to decide, on my behalf, that the election was not free and fair. As such, they desire to overthrow a government that I and a majority of Americans elected.
In my clubhouse we had toy weapons of all stripes – rifles, pistols, machine guns, even a bazooka. But then, as we grew up and matured, we recognized them as the toys they were. They became the first things to go before the club itself lost its appeal and each of us began to groom young adult lives, tending to our educations and what we wanted to be “when we grow up.” But the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers still have their shoot-’em-ups, to which they cling with all the verve that I did with my toys. But I was 9 years old, for God’s sake. By the time I was 12 I had abandoned my playthings. I also learned to play by society’s rules. (The bigger problem here, of course, is that the Proud Boys’ toys are lethal.)
In my clubhouse, despite our grandiose chatterings about remaking the world in our image, there was always a sense of limits, of how far we could go in pressing our “arguments.” I recall that there was little if any shouting, no berating of any individuals, no violence and, perhaps most importantly, an agreement to abide by majority rule: A quick and simple hand vote always went uncontested. I compare this to the modus operandi of the extremist groups, who seem to view violence as a first resort and cavalierly talk of “civil war” with a childlike enthusiasm normally reserved for Christmas.
The upshot of all this is that the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and others of their ilk do not meet the standards of the 9-year-olds of my boyhood, much less men. My message to them is a simple one: Grow up, boys. Supper is on the table. And then, off to bed.
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