Republican Party leaders have been acting as if they just got some bailout money and are all trembling in their offices waiting to be called to testify in front of the dweaded Fwank Committee for having given themselves a bonus.
     Who knew that the solution to all the GOP's problems would come down to a single word?

     When William Shakespeare put into King Hal's mouth "...when gentlemen in England now a-bed...will hold their manhoods cheap..." he was bouncing his punch line off a verity, a widely accepted truth, just as Thomas Jefferson was when he wrote "...we hold these truths to be self-evident..." The operative understanding, of course, was that gentlemen do not hold their manhoods cheap.
      That no longer seems to be the case, for gentlemen (especially) in America scarcely think about their manhood at all these days. Maybe that's the problem.
      I can't say what day it was in 1968 that mothers began un-teaching manhood...while fathers simply turned away...but it was sometime that year. Maybe it was the war. Or Bobby Kennedy. Maybe it was Hal 9000. Who knows? But suddenly, becoming a man in the classic sense of the word became, well, declasse. Mothers, for the most part, didn't just decide to amend the rites of passage a boy had to go through to become a man, they downright repealed them.
      So it figures that a lot has changed since 1968. Johnny no longer comes home with a bloody nose because someone called him a "bas***d", in part because, in all likelihood, he is. In 2007's bumper baby crop, 40% were, which deprives the term of any sting whatsoever. And the same for "son of a b**ch". Forget any bruised knuckles over defending mother's virtue...unless Dad's still lives at home, which by the time Johnny is 10 or 12, is less and less likely. Today, nearly 50% of all kids under 30 were raised in their formative years by mother alone....so Mom has "known" other men.
      Besides, if Johnny came home with a bloody nose it would be in a squad car, toting an arrest warrant for assault.
     Yeppers, times have changed.
      And so has the idea of manhood. In the over-50 crowd, (and why I even bother to write this) it still exists in memories of a time when a boy would stake out a piece of ground with a pike upon which was hung a banner, with ribbons attached for, let's see, Mother, Truth, Honor, Dignity, Self-Respect, maybe even Betsy Lou. In his own mind, every kid, no matter how humble, had that spot, that sacred piece of ground, which he would not yield...lest he be known as a coward. In those times we were taught these "little" things by the men in our lives, and told if we defended them we were "growing up like men" which we knew to be just next to nobility, which was itself just next to sainthood. And since mothers in those days were the keepers of the religious flame of the House, attached to our banner were all kinds of ribbons we got from her; Reverence, Kindness and a general fear of all those transgressions laid out in the Ten Commandments. Some of those ribbons on our banner sewn by Mom we didn't dare yield out of a specific fear of disappointing or embarrassing her, and a general fear of going to Hell.
     We carried the knowledge that as we got older, we would attach even higher-sounding ribbons to that banner, so we carried it around like breast armor. Everyone I knew had one. It was a hidden shield you knew not to invade or you'd have a fight on your hands....and sure enough just as sure as we'd all had to defend our own shield once or twice, most of us grabbed the shirt of another kid once or twice  just to make sure the lessons we were taught was true. They were.
      That's the way the world once worked, and it was a good way. Sadly, I think the under-50 crowd missed most of  that. For you see, they ran smack dab into 1968.
      Oh, manhood is still out there, only it is almost invisible among those of today's "gentler condition", which in Shakespeare's day carried an altogether different understanding than it does now. For one, "gentleman" of classical times did not mean "without a standard", lest we forget the origin of the word. Indeed, to be a gentleman was much sought-after because of that higher standard it represented. But all men, all but the lowest sort at least, carried some sort of banner, and we all knew and respected one another because of it.
      Today, manhood has been demoted, classed down, sort of like broken old boxers who can't get a fight. Instead of a sitting in a noble perch, it has been used to define the sort of kids who go around extorting other kids' lunch money, rather then a kid's refusal to give it up...without a fight. It has come to mean aggression, not defenders of the peace who stand their ground shielding the innocent. So it's only natural that it has come to mean what the lesser folk do, such as what farm boys learn when they join the Marines...you know, C-students...and not what better raised, "gentler" boys already know...you know, A-students and law school material. To "man up" is what a fellow must do when he gets a girl pregnant, then gets a dull job, but hangs with it, and her, for forty years. Pretty dreary, huh? In short, since the late '60s, manhood has become that coat of varnish brushed on a coarse, unrefined rube your mother would never let you hang out with...after 1968.
      As has been said about my generation, the "best and the brightest", when the Vietnam War came along, for the most part the best went one way, the brightest the other.
     
      There has always been an American rub to this Elizabethan theme of manhood and gentlemen, for here in America it was allowed that ordinarily-educated men could form their own business, then turn their small companies into very successful ones (because of a natural talent college-training could never really create, only magnify), where they could build that big house on the hill, own two SUV's, a Dodge truck, buy a bass boat and send the daughter off to Julliard...or maybe just the Midwest Music Academy in Lawrence. Still they are things neither Shakespeare nor Queen Bess ever imagined for free farmers.
     Still others built those companies into giants, then handpicked the men who would make them even more successful, thus bringing an even more heroic meaning to the term "man", for it took real men to build those companies. Henry Ford was such a builder. Jack Welch, in a direct line from Edison, was such a hand-picked successor. Can you ever imagine, in any nightmare, Lee Iacocca being frog-marched into a hearing in front of Barney Frank, then leaving with boot polish on his lips?     
      The corporate world has been watching since the late 70s and early 80s, when these children of '68 began to eschew the dirty hands of engineering and the hard mental exercise of medicine and science, and instead choose the fast tracks of law, administrative management, and in the corporate world especially, finance and marketing, seeking position and rewards that did not require any particular knowledge in the product being produced, and godferbid, long hours on the shop room floor. They skulked around in dark corners in the front office muttering under their breath about those dinosaur "manufacturers" (always used as an epithet) who had actually built the company, waiting for them to die or retire so they could pass over the mantle of management onto this new generation...and all knowledge of leadership into the dustbin of memory. By the early 90's, in big business, this was a fait accompli, the builders-of-companies' time nearing an end...except out here in the hustings, where all those left behind to suffer the rites of passage were still drilling for, and finding gold.
      Still, by 2000, in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, the state capitals, there were few if any surviving "gentlemen" would could still build a highway or a bridge while tying a four-in-hand knot with one hand and squishing a U S senator under his thumb with the other. Their scent was gone from America's boardrooms...and its legislatures.
      Since the 1990s most corporations have belonged to the finance and brand managers. Their thesis: You can train a monkey to build or assemble the damned things...and a zoo keeper to keep the monkeys in line. Just manage the cash flow and debt, make the books show a profit, and keep the brand alive. In hindsight it was a train wreck everyone saw coming years ago...when beta males began running corporate America and the alphas were encouraged to go open a auto repair shop or join the Marines...in a cultural process that began around fourth grade. Ritallin has probably helped almost as much as fatherless homes.
      And what about the brand? Brand does to a corporation what apparently the GOP has done to the Constitution. Just look what they did to Ben Franklin, signing the national philosopher to a multi-year contract doing public relations, while forever barring him from the board room where he would annoyingly remind everyone from time to time why they were supposed to be there. You can't carry a banner for 150 years without having a house philosopher, a keeper of the flame. The Constitution is one of those banners, and its language always assumed it would have its standard-bearers, both in and out of government.
      So when a brand sinks, it usually goes down with all hands.
 
      I know, this was supposed to about the Republican Party, and in two thousand words I have prattled on about cultural rites of passage. But in doing so I not only have defined the current GOP, but the entire Washington political structure, and the about-to-be-fascistly-co-opted corporate world in the United States.
      Of course, it would slander the idea of manhood if I said only rednecks who own an all-night wrecker service are men. The concept has evolved. For one, there are as many women nowadays who exhibit the traits of noble manhood. Margaret Thatcher comes to mind, who was every bit the man Ronald Reagan was, and who certainly bears no resemblance to either of Cinderella's ugly half sisters, Hillary and Nancy. Lady Liberty, left breast safely back in her blouse, will re-emerge once again to lead much of this counter-revolution, once again carrying that banner.
      America universalized the "gentle class" which the Brits just never could get around to doing, at the same time undoing the collar Karl Marx tried to hang around "capitalists". The Shakespearean idea of manhood was that a gentlemen hoisted a nobler banner than say a common farmer. Only he said nothing unkind about the latter, only that he was more coarse ("...be he ne'er so vile, gentler will his condition be..."). True enough. But this is not the same as a fellow who is a "smart sunavabitch" (Skilling, Fastow), or fast talker, smooth operator, clever manipulator (Bill Clinton, almost the entire United States Congress and American Bar Association). These tell me nothing of the banners they hold...and in the end we are defined by our banners.
      What's been missing from these profiles of manhood, as they have been redefined based on class since the 1960s, and which mothers missed altogether in re-directing their little Johnny's, is that everyone involved know otherwise. It's as if they wanted to create an alternative universe for themselves and everyone would just turn the other way. Even if the GOP will do that alas, Russia and China will not, so why not man up now?
       Trust me, betas know when they are in the presence of alphas, which explains why they are generally barred from Congressional hearings. What Mom in 1968 may have forgotten to plan for was that certain natural laws always come into play when alphas and betas meet. I hate using any phrase that may be the least bit suggestive when mentioning Barney Frank, but the operative natural law is best expressed when, as in a parade and Old Glory marches by, all other flags just naturally are dipped (droop) honoring the higher banner. Did I imply "limply"? I've been in Officer's clubs where desk-bound colonels would drink and boast...until a captain wearing a CIB (Combat Infantryman's Badge) will belly up for a beer...and a kind of referential quiet descended on the place. Talk will continue, but loud boasting about how that colonel stood chin-to-chin with an insubordinate GS-3 file clerk seems to fade into insignificance. No one ever called the likes of Iacocca or Welch, or even Ronald Reagan a "smart sunavabitch" as way to define them...unless to diminish them, which is just what the fast talking, smooth operating, clever manipulator will try to do. Try to imagine Congressperson Frank berating Jethro Gibbs, then Gibbs slowly rises, straightens his jacket, then walks slowly toward the congressperson, jaw rigid, gaze fixed forward. Frank yells, then orders the marshals forward, but everyone is frozen. Frank talks even more quickly, at first threatening, then cajoling, not noticing that he is very close to hitting high C with his protests. He shuffles, about to get up and run. He may even pee in his pants before Gibbs finally stops, right in front of him, then reaches down to the floor and picks up a dime, and handing it to the Fair Barney, saying "I thought you might have dropped this, Congressman", then returns to his chair.
     This is why alphas aren't asked to visit Congress.

      You can make your own list of what ribbons once belonged on the banner of the Republican Party. I visited their site and they still have a platform of principles, but somehow I think they confuse the difference between "policies" (low taxes, fiscal responsbility) which only sit atop the philosophical principles (according to the Constitution, it's the people's money, not the government's, goddamit!). Somewhere in the past the GOP had strong, unbreakable ones, (read George William Curtis', a GOP founder's, orations) all dangling under that of the Constitution's ribbon...at least until Ben Franklin, or maybe Curtis, was banned from the boardroom. I'll only include a few of those things that went with the ideal of manhood taught to me, pre-'68; Integrity, Honor, Resolve, Unflinching devotion to certain ideals, (these were all personal attributes, mind you) as well as America's good name and virtue (just like Mom's before), the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, The Rule of Law, the Liberty of Man...and a whole host of things that go a way beyond being able to change the spark plugs on a '72 Monza without a hoist.
      In a word, manhood meant first, having a banner, and then, steadfastly representing and defending it. That was the common culture's "brand" that the Founders attempted to put into words both in 1776 and 1787. Most of my life that was also the brand of the Republican Party, especially as defined by Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, William Buckley...and my father, to name a few.
      Once you understand the origin and nature of that brand, you can easily see why some people have always wanted to kill it. And you can also see why some people in society were always so willing to oblige. Take my own mother for instance. The first time I crossed the line and ran smack into another person's banner, and his right cross, he laid my nose across my ear. I had lied and unknown to me he had an intolerance for lying. Worse, he was in the position to be judge, jury and hangman...all inside five seconds. There wasn't even time for one of those Bill Clinton rebuttals, and I decided right then and there, at age 12, I would not even try to be a liar like that "fast talking sonuvabitch" growing up in Arkansas. In five seconds, and not a word uttered, Mick Hensley hung Honesty and Humility on my banner, where it remains today.
      But had I told my mother where I got that bloody, broken nose that day, Mick would have been in reform school within a month. And I would have come away with nothing to sew onto my banner...except a large "B", for whiny, snitch Beta.
      How manhood and the banners it supports were eased out of politics I can't say. But I suspect it was generational. 1968. Law schools helped, where once upon a time, so many members of their classes of  '39-'43, instead of asking leading questions died leading infantry platoons. So much for gratitude.
      The GOP has lost its brand because it very clearly has no banner any longer, at least nothing men would rally around. When the brand and not the banner become the "reason for the season" this is what happens. As a brandless beta, the GOP simply cannot project to any reasonable segment of the population that they are better at anything than the other, more experienced and dirtier-dealing betas already in power. In the rough and tumble world of cat-scratching and back stabbing, the GOP will always be inexperienced pikers, standing in the shadow of masters. Trying to become "better" than they are is not a quest any real man would ever consider.

      And so, as it began in Europe in the 1870s, the revenge of the betas has finally found a permanent nest in America. Marx, in his deepest soul, was always about getting even...but not on behalf of the worker, as he protested, but rather because those who could, did, and those who could not only wrote about the unfairness of it all. He appealed to that very same class of academic layabouts who believed it was all so very unfair that they should not receive the acclaim...and the compensation...and the power of those who were clearly their intellectual lessers (but who did seem to work oh, so very much harder). The envious and bitter will always have armies to lead, and their own facsimile of a banner to wave.
      We will never see any alpha intentionally marched before Congress, for Congress doesn't want any surprises...or embarrassing stains on their trouser legs. No American citizen will be invited to speak, or be questioned who is already carrying a true standard. The scent is too pervasive, and C-SPAN cameras never lie. The only chance of seeing alphas in the halls of government is if, and when, the GOP grows a pair. Then the scent  alone will drive the other side batty. It will be palpable.
     
        Time is moving quickly. But even at this late stage of life the banners of the Constitution and manhood can still be taught, in part because inside us all (even Democrat's) is the desire to stand up an be counted, defending and fighting under a banner of purity and honor.
        So, to the GOP: Out here in the world, ordinary citizens are always looking for those little things that can signal to others you have that banner even when the place and time won't allow you to be overly noisy or profane about it. Only the GOP can carry the banners of integrity and honor back into the halls of Congress...and when you do, all other banners will dip in honor. It's that simple.
        It's your dead silence that probably annoys us most. But, just mentioning the Constitution is one signal we want to see, especially as it is now being used to identify with the snot-eyed inbred militia types (been watching "24"?). Another is mentioning the "shoulders we all stand on", the gratitude principle, which, in my time was one of the first ribbons to be sewn onto our banner...by my father.
       I understand your reticence to come out before a microphone and rant "like a Democrat" (we've written about this a lot on this site), but still, you need to be a little more provocative than you are now. The entire Obama economic recovery plan is based on ingratitude, worse, a glorification of it...representing a generation that is ungrateful for the sacrifices of the last 230 years...and a willingness to gut the very document that guarantees man's freedom everywhere, all for the sake of a political gain that simply cannot endure more than what, 40-50 years, before it all comes tumbling down. Forget ordinary politics, this is an End-of-Civilization type of politics being offered up by the Democrats. Is it your thinking after all the "unintended consequences" that brought us to this brink that suddenly they would step back and see what they are doing, and where they are going, and once they see the "Bridge is Out" sign they will stop...or even slow down?
      They can't stop. That is the beauty of self-destruction. Ask any drug addict.
      You don't have to take out 527 ads to pitch your case. Just mention the Constitution and Gratitude and try to come up with some other "manhood" themes every time you find a mic. Start smelling, start speading scent. They are sure to strike a chord with us out here.
      Man up.
      But first you have to get a banner, for right now the GOP brand is no more.
     Vassar Bushmills