MAGA demagoguery about tariff pain: "Weak and stupid people!"

A wonderful essay by Amanda Marcotte that Salon published describes MAGA's propaganda strategy:

Fox News, desperate to defend Trump's tariffs, 

exploits MAGA's masculinity delusions

[Radical] right-wing social media has decided soaring inflation will somehow grant them all tradwives

With the stock market plunging and the threat of hyper-inflation bearing down, the propagandists at Fox News are in quite a pickle. Their job is to paint every dumb decision made by Donald Trump as the work of a secret genius [playing 6-dimensional chess] who is only pretending to be a half-literate idiot. But that's a tough sell, even to their delusional audiences, when Trump's tariffs are wiping out people's retirement accounts and threatening to raise the price of everything from groceries to cars. But Fox News knows there's one reliable way to get their audience to stop worrying about the real world and bury themselves even more deeply in fantasyland: make everything about MAGA's male insecurities.

Unable to deny the economic ruin Trump is inflicting on the nation, the Fox News spinsters have moved to reframing financial privation as a good thing, because it will supposedly restore Americans' lost masculinity. And, in the spirit of the "prosperity gospel" grifters that have cleaved themselves to Trump, Fox pundits are insisting that there will be a great reward for all this fiscal sacrifice: the restoration of male dominance over women. "Suffer now, but have faith in Trump, and he will bestow upon thee a tradwife" is the basic pitch.

"Could Trump's tariffs be the ultimate testosterone boost?" declared Greg Gutfeld on "The Five," immediately answering the question with a "yes." The propaganda team was boosted by a hamfisted chyron declaring that Trump's tariffs are "manly."

For those unclear on how paying way more for bananas and blue jeans will boost your testosterone, well, the tortured justification they offer isn't helpful. [Faux News blowhard] Jesse Watters tried to argue that tariffs will somehow magically result in millions of jobs doing physical labor, for which there is no evidence. (In reality, it will hurt existing manufacturing by raising prices on materials, and hurt agriculture by shutting down markets farmers depend on.) Watters went on to argue that these fictional jobs will restore manhood stolen from men who, like Watters, have desk jobs.

"When you sit behind a screen all day, it makes you a woman. Studies have shown this," said a still-male Watters as he sat behind the camera screen he stares at all day. This follows his lie from last week, when Watters promised tariffs would "turn the country into a place with thriving main streets and hometowns." This 1950s fantasy is the exact opposite of reality. The prosperity of the "Leave It To Beaver" era was kicked off because tariffs were dramatically lowered and taxes on the richest Americans reached historic highs — the opposite of Trump's economic plans.

Most right-wing propagandists aren't even trying to make argument-shaped pitches, but instead embracing the fascist method of portraying tariffs as a trial that will restore American manhood through pain. Sean Hannity scolded a caller who was angry about investment losses by telling him, "You don't have the stomach." MAGA influencer Benny Johnson mocked people worried about inflation by calling them "totally dependent and on our knees." He insisted losing money "builds quite a bit of character." Trump joined in by declaring Republican opponents of tariffs to be "Weak and Stupid people!"   

This is fascist rhetoric, in no small part because it's all emotion, no reason or logic. But it's feeding off a recent trend, fed by predatory social media influencers, that conflates masculinity with punishing self-discipline, the kind that rejects all pleasure and comfort as a feminizing — and thereby evil — force. This was most recently illustrated in a viral video by fitness influencer Ashton Hall, who unpersuasively insisted he rises before 4 AM for literal hours of working out and torturing himself with ice baths, while denouncing any form of self-indulgence. Eschewing sex and going to bed early is the key, he declares, to preventing "a weak mind, bad decisions or lack of productivity."

The "real men eschew comfort" mentality is quite convenient right now. Trump's actual reasons for imposing tariffs are a combination of off-the-charts stupidity and malice. But his fans cannot admit their hero-god is wreaking havoc on their pocketbooks for no good reason. Instead, this is being spun into a story not unlike Job's trials at the hands of God. But Trump-God isn't just testing their faith, but their manhood. And, to listen to Watters, if they hang in and prove their mettle, Trump will reward them with a 50s-era fantasy, complete with a submissive tradwife.

Well there we have it ladies 'n germs. If we don't like losing money, we're weak and stupid. 

Hm, I spend a lot of time with my computer screen. Have I turned into a woman?

Qs: Is it unfair or counterproductive to refer to Faux News instead of Fox, or does the reality of it all warrant the label? (It won't faze Faux viewers) Has Germaine morphed into a woman, human or otherwise?

Lizard woman - too much screen time 

used to be a lizard man