This is a foundational text of American Bro Culture: two large men shooting the shit about lifting weights, working in references from everything to guns to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to football in the process.
I appreciate this piece immensely. I’ve had similar nagging feelings during the pandemic. The “aversion to self reflection” line is so spot on. I did every manual labor job under the sun to pay for college. I have a white collar job now and I worry about the disconnect I feel growing with friends who still have blue collar jobs or are cops. The emphasis is always on tough talk and often entails diminishing the accomplishments of people who aren’t straight white dudes because they’re protected or uplifted. Joking about the kicker for Vanderbilt who played in a D-1 college game for instance. The older I get the more I think true masculinity is just doing your job and trying to be the most honorable and compassionate version of yourself.
This piece makes me feel seen! I've spent 20 years on MMA mats, back when it was called Vale Tudo and we all wore sweat pants, and if I look at the masculine heroes I've had through my youth, it has always been some version of the "Warrior Scholar," from my first MMA coach to Bruce Lee to Henry Rollins. I've always appreciated the discipline and self-mastery; it's something I've aspired to.
These guys have always been outsiders, but something has changed. The paranoia, the conspiracies, this tactical readiness silliness... I remember sitting on a mat with Eddie Bravo and a bunch of high-level fighters talking about some deep-state, absurd conspiracy and I'm like, "What am I doing here?" It's sad to me, because so many of these guys are so solid, help-you-move-with-their-truck solid, and it's refreshing to have conversations not reflexively filtered through the woke-identarian lens as happens so much in my life. Maybe I'm just getting more sensitive to it, but it's not as fun to shadowbox alone in the park, as I do these days...
I'm a bit older than the normal cohort, but I sense this frustration in them, as if they're aching for some life test, some Rubicon to pass, but the only thing there is to do is roll, cash the unemployment check, and wear a mask to the grocery store.
I’ve seen this type of sentence used more and more recently but would you be able to expand on what you mean by the - filtered through the woke-identarian lens as happens so much in my life - sentence? I feel like in my years within the culture he is writing about, the non-woke version tends to lean towards being in conversations with casual homophobic or misogynistic language thrown around. I’ve honestly been looking for a better explanation of the woke lens. Maybe you have one.
Hey Isaac, I wasn't really referring to Patrick's writing, but my own experience. I work in tech -- education, specifically -- and pretty much every conversation about larger society today has to address any issue through an identarian lens, sort of like how every discussion on a college campus in the 80s had to look at any issue through post-modernism.
It's not the *worst* thing in the world -- there are some valuable ideas in post-modernism, CRT, intersectionality, etc. -- but when it's obligatory and oppressive, it's nice to be on an MMA mat and talk about the world in a way that most people live through it. There is, of course, homophobia and misogyny laced across many fighters' worldviews, but I think it's a lot less than advertised (especially where I live in SoCal).
Yea, I think that makes a lot of sense. And I completely agree that there are few things in the world better than being in a group athletic experience after a hard workout or match. It’s not quite the same as a solo sport but I found rugby later in life and fell in love for similar reasons. I think the reason the woke thing gets my hackles up is just that it most of the time feels like a lazy way of saying you don’t want to take the time to be a good person (not you specifically). Like just say the correct pronoun. Or just take the extra two seconds to not be a dick. Even when we all grew up with the homophobia jokes and it’s sometimes easier to just not think about it.
I think the "woke" movement holds a little more danger than you do, maybe. I am biased, having taught on a college campus for a decade and seen the change in classroom after classroom. But what I see is how performative so much of it is. I wish it were as basic as "Just use this person's pronoun, c'mon," but I see it as a movement that is inherently exclusionary, that winds up attacking the folks it purports to protect, a contest to use as much 99¢ jargon as possible to say, "can you just use the pronoun I prefer?"
I look back on the extraordinarily successful campaign to improve views of the LGBT community that started in the mid-90s. Moving from the very academic, polemic tactics of the AIDS era, LGBT leaders made conscious campaigns, basically saying, "I am your son. I'm your neighbor, etc." The change in views over that 15 year period is astonishing.
I think there are models of communication that will resonate with my mat friends, though I don't think they're well represented in the current climate. Sorry...we're getting kind of far afield from the OP!
Hey Isaac, I wasn't really referring to Patrick's writing, but my own experience. I work in tech -- education, specifically -- and pretty much every conversation about larger society today has to address any issue through an identarian lens, sort of like how every discussion on a college campus in the 80s had to look at any issue through post-modernism.
It's not the *worst* thing in the world -- there are some valuable ideas in post-modernism, CRT, intersectionality, etc. -- but when it's obligatory and oppressive, it's nice to be on an MMA mat and talk about the world in a way that most people live through it. There is, of course, homophobia and misogyny laced across many fighters' worldviews, but I think it's a lot less than advertised (especially where I live in SoCal).
Loved this article! I was having a convo about this yesterday, and as someone who has transitioned genders but still loves fights, lifting, BBQ and a lot of stereotypical 'Bro' stuff - the way that Bro culture offers a sense of meaning really can't be underestimated especially in a where even being a successful member of the professional-managerial class can feel like a dehumanizing slog.
I just wish there was SOMETHING non-toxic we could offer young boys as a way to live honorably and honestly - a way to attain self-worth that wasn't wrapped up in consuming the right product or being conservative politically, but rather being emotionally honest, accepting, and striving.
Loved this article as well. Can you say more about offering something non-toxic? Maybe I’m just getting defensive as a POC woman but I feel like young boys, especially white young boys, still have far more privilege and pathways to success than the rest of us. As a non-white woman, I think it takes a huge toll on me and my friends to find self-worth and external credibility. I guess I have very little sympathy for these young boys who blame external factors for their shortcomings and lack of empathy.
I get exactly where you’re coming from since I’m a Nigerian immigrant on top of being trans.
I guess I see a gap that I’ve noticed between where problems are acknowledged for white boys (but even Black or Latinx men), and where they decide to hinge their lives as a response.
Especially since I transitioned there’s been a pretty straight line arrow for me between my social status and then what I should do in response to that - help out folks like me, so I went to grad school to study online harassment of Black women and trans folks broadly.
If you’re a white dude and you realize that modern capitalism is exploitative and American society as is isn’t working due to racism, etc - your options are ignore it or even lean into it, or work against it but know you’re perpetually suspect.
And I think ... not empathy for white men or men in general ... but sorta where I think humans generally fall down is that it’s just really hard for anyone to rig their life around service to others with only theoretical gains for themselves and people like them. So men, esp. white men, turn their back on that.
If I were to toss out potential solutions - I think labor unions + the trades is a potential area for a lot ground to be gained here. Everyone hates their boss and wants better working conditions so if you have broadly inclusive labor and trade unions then the balance shifts - everyone is helping everyone else because as a collective they all benefit. There’s also a nice progression system based on community standing and years of service. There will still be issues of race, gender, etc but that framework moves things from asking for empathy into asking for mutually beneficial partnership.
Part of this entire weird set of feelings of mine also comes from the whole “I got mine” phenomenon among some marginalized folks - so
I think everyone who isn’t really, materially getting something from a movement is less likely to hitch their wagon to it
Please come up with something soon, I can't hold out much longer!! I'm lost and confused and I've been thinking about subscribing to spotify and ordering Jordan Peterson's book.
Something to consider: the prickly sense of honor and emphasis on physical combat - prowess - to preserve it, as seen in the stereotypical 19th century American South, in 17th century Scotland, etc. I'd like to suggest that while the particular channels of transmission of Bro Culture may be new, the core message and the larger social consequences are themselves very old, and pretty well-understood.
I think this is a key insight -- Bro Culture as a modern manifestation of the honour culture of the past, but without a clear sense of what kind of honour they are trying to preserve or perpetuate.
Considering many 19th century southern Americans were decendants of 17th Century Scots, this checks out. Fischer's "Albion's Seed" does a great job of going into this. It's a favorite of mine, and Patrick recommends it.
I think a significant number of guys in the Bro Culture are of Scots-Irish, or Anglo Borderer, descent, mixed in with Tidewater Virginia and Deep South settlers. All of these cultures emphasized honor, martial prowess, etc
If you’re interested in this topic I’d highly recommend “Black Liberals and White Rednecks” by Thomas Sowell (back when he was a serious social commentator and wasn’t just raging against university elites). It’s the main essay in an honestly fascinating book about sociology and history. Basically, he argues that maladaptive behavior in lower-class black communities (bro culture?) was likewise inherited from the non-elite whites they encountered in Southern US—the vast majority of whom were descended from the tough, poor, honor-obsessed Scots-Irish who left Ulster Plantation to “settle” the New World.
I thoroughly enjoyed this essay and have reflected on this topic myself for a long time. Being a child of immigrants (Egyptian), I take a different perspective specifically on American masculinity but arrive around the same conclusions. The two strains that I see largely unaddressed around American masculinity are gun culture and anti-intellectualism. Both are uniquely American and I would love to hear people’s thoughts around these two issues.
The first area is gun culture. Prior to guns, the primary weapons used were bladed weapons aka swords and the bow and arrow. Archers rarely captured the public’s imagination (the only exception I can think of being Robin Hood), while swordsmen were widely respected. Entire warrior classes sprung up around the idea of mastering the sword, notably the samurai in Japan and the knights of medieval Rome. While Americans hold the idea of nobility as men who were effete or feminine, other nations see them as otherwise due to the sword (and its subsequent mastery) as entirely the province of nobles since they were the only ones with the means and the time to dedicate to it. Naturally this meant they held the higher positions in any military hierarchy because they would be trained from birth to master first and foremost the arts of war. I’ll explore this further in the discussion about anti-intellectualism so please bear with me. With swords, men respected the idea of someone being better/superior/stronger/etc. when faced in a one-on one situation. There was no more important idea in competition as a sword fight was for the ultimate stakes, a life-or-death struggle.
This continued unabated for thousands of years until the development of guns beginning with the musket. But muskets were inaccurate weapons with complicated reloading mechanisms. At first they were largely a sidearm to the infinitely more useful sword since swords could not run out of ammunition nor need to be reloaded. In The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, the classic tome about swordsmanship, he dedicates only a few lines to muskets and spends the rest of the book speaking of the way of the sword. As technology advanced, the musket evolved into the repeating rifle, when the world received a rude shock in World War I that swords and horses have been displaced by guns, automobiles, and artillery.
One has to consider the fact that the United States, as founded in 1776, did not have this long tradition of battling with only swords or any sort of established nobility. The Revolutionary War was fought with muskets which had a significantly lower barrier to mastery than the sword and more effective at defeating (ie killing) enemies. This was enshrined in the 2nd Amendment as the right to bear arms. A citizenry with muskets would assumedly outnumber any standing army or at least be able to put up a punishing resistance that would at least make any government fearful of exerting tyranny (or at least this is what the Founders had expected).
Tying this in to modern American masculinity, the gun represents a significant issue when determining male superiority. For example, think about all the great mano-e-mano fights ever shown in Hollywood or on tv, how many of them involve guns? Martial arts movies show hand to hand combat. Even Star Wars, a futuristic sci-fi series, uses lightsabers. Gun fights simply do not provide the same answer to the shift modern American masculinity has gone from “protector” to “predator”. That is because we generally believe that anyone can be lucky with a gun. Even children can wield guns with enough effectiveness to kill someone. We know this to be true from African child soldiers to modern day high schools. They don’t even need to be well-trained in any sense of the word to accomplish the killing of another. How can we determine if a man is the apex predator if he cannot challenge a man to life-or-death combat, kill him, and confidently claim his superiority?
The solution presented is precisely the one you mention in your essay as “tactical” training. This is performed largely at the elite level of the military (the pinnacle of “bro” masculinity like the Navy SEALs). Fast reloads, fast draws, oakley sunglasses, and the whole getup have largely caught fire as distinguishing these people who wish to classify themselves as “warriors”. We also know that even though special operators can perform physical feats that 99.9% of the population can only dream of, they are still vulnerable to errant bullet as anyone else. An idiot with a gun has a fool’s chance of felling a Navy SEAL in combat. We know this because special forces operators have died in combat (whether through a bullet fired by an enemy combatant or other means). Yet no one would ever claim that the reason that operator died was that he was in some way inferior to that specific enemy combatant. All of us are aware of the intense training and filtering at these elite levels. So then the gun and gun culture cannot be the arbiter of male superiority, no matter how hard anyone tries. But this incongruence is a problem, so people will work harder and harder to prove superiority by dedication to gun culture and ever more outlandish feats regardless of its relevance to actual battlefield use.
This was a lot longer than I had intended it to be so I’ll address the anti-intellectualism portion in another post if this one garners a thoughtful discussion.
Very interesting. Thanks. I wonder though, if your analysis doesn't extend further into history than you suspect. Hunter-gatherers were all armed and deadly with their bows and arrows and spears. This had an equalizing effect on the struggle for status among men (see Hierarchy in the Forest, by Christopher Boehm for more on this). Point being, bigger stronger dudes haven't really had much of an advantage in lethal combat for hundreds of thousands of years.
Here's something I wrote years ago that seems pertinent.
“The intel on this wasn’t 100 percent.” Those were the words of Edgar Maddison Welch after his arrest in Washington DC for assault with a dangerous weapon at a local pizza parlor. Mr. Welch was there to rescue children that Hillary Clinton was keeping in the basement of the pizza parlor for purposes of sex trafficking. But, as Mr. Welch discovered, the “intel” was off. There were no children. There was no basement. And so, Mr. Welch, whose motivations were sterling, was not the hero he imagined himself to be but just another goofy warrior.
Mr. Welch is not alone. Members of the scary fringes of right wing politics, from the Bundys to the Oathkeepers have assumed, with appropriate gravitas, the role of protector. Protector of what? The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the imaginary children in the basement. In a grotesque parody of the benevolent but world-weary father figure, these men have fashioned a role for themselves that the real world has denied them. They will save the children. They will be the good fathers.
Another would-be protector, Jon Eric Ritzheimer, made a youtube splash with his heartfelt address to his family about the oath he took to defend the Constitution. Widely parodied, Mr. Ritzheimer’s address cannot be faulted for its lack of sincerity. Tearfully, he tells his family that he must assume the heavy burden that others have shirked. He does so with great reluctance but a man has to do what a man has to do.
And herein lies the problem. Working class American men have seen their roles as breadwinners, caretakers, protectors of their families diminished by market forces beyond their control. For some these roles were at the heart of their identity. They provided a positive expression of masculinity. A positive expression of masculinity seems like an odd phrase these days. Oxymoronic for some. But I would argue that unless we recognize this deficit, the marketplace itself will fill this void with decidedly negative expressions of masculinity.
Take SWAT magazine for example. Available at your local newsstand, SWAT and its counterparts in the masculinity marketplace are charting a course for these heroes. It’s a course that includes, guns, ammo and plenty of “tactical” gear. In other words, the trappings of masculinity, the costume that goes along with the role of protector. To be clear, the articles in SWAT are not about hunting. They are about armed combat, mano a mano. Written in the no-nonsense humorless prose of the weary but aware warrior the articles cover things like “Tactical Sleep,” “Protecting your Stash,” and plenty of product reviews of weaponry. Reading between the lines, one can see the fears that are being stoked here are not unique. The apocalyptic landscape they limn is the stuff of our current Hollywood obsession with civilization’s crack up.
What’s new in this mix is the role that is being fashioned from the shards of masculinity that more mundane and invisible enemies have left behind. The marketplace has broken up the old roles but it’s also happy to provide a new role, a role that warped young men like Mr. Welch can cleave to: Saving the children in the basement of the pizza parlor.
It’s a role that stands to make some people a lot of money even as it unravels the fraying fabric of our Republic. And this is the real problem: Capitalism cannot resist opportunities to make money even in enterprises that are corrosive to the spirit of democracy itself.
Marxism of a certain revolutionary mindset has always appealed to intellectuals because the assumption is that, come the Revolution, things will finally be set to right and they will assume their rightful roles, at last, they will be in charge of things, the guy holding the clipboard getting ready to make a report down at Party Headquarters.
Tactical Bro Culture seems to have similar fantasies about becoming Mad Max.
Patrick -- thank you so much for this essay! It inspired my friend and I (who have been in and out of MMA and lifting gyms) to do a podcast: https://anchor.fm/wwdtm
This wonderful, world-expanding essay has stuck with me for several days. So has the video itself of Echo and Jocko's conversation. The conversation surprised me actually, in ways that didn't entirely mesh with the direction your essay took. As a skinny, progressive, feminist guy, I've never identified with the warrior ethos, the macho camaraderie, or the bulging physique of these two men. When I pressed play, I was fully ready to recoil from a couple repressed totems of toxic masculinity. Instead I found them disarming and sweet. I thought they were kind of tender with each other! They were vulnerable. They poked fun but it was within a zone of trust. In conventional gender language, these two extraordinarily powerful and imposing men were actually kind of... feminine with each other.
Granted, I could have been reading everything wrong; I don't actually speak the code; so maybe, if I walked into that room, with my willowy frame, they would grimace, roar, and rip my head off. But I don't think so.
So: the video had the opposite effect on me from your essay. The essay confirmed a rising fear about a kind of desperately insecure, dominationist masculinity that threatens to blow up the country. But these two guys? I felt reassured. I felt like I could sit down and talk with them. In fact, if macho culture could look like this, I would be a little more hopeful. And in that hope, lies a question: is there any chance that gym culture, or bro culture more generally, contains within it more tender possibilities for the future, than the toxic violent strains your essay describes?
Very thoughtful. Having hung out with some of the people mentioned in the essay, I can say that your insights reflect my own impressions of them. Rogan, for example, is very kind, generous, and agreed with me when I told him that I thought gay men are examples of masculine qualities like integrity, strength, honestly ... for having gone through the process of coming out in a hostile environment. There is a vulnerability and tenderness among these guys. When can men hug each other? When their team scores or their unit survives an attack.
The poem used to exemplify chivalry seems to be written of an observer of the battle, not a participant. Were the knights terrified, killing their foes out of desperation, kept in line by their commander? Were they drunk, having had to steel themselves before the battle? If they had to choose between saving themselves and their fellow knight that day, what did they choose? In a mass - to an observer - sure the knights ahorse look heroic. Chivalrous. But it is simply a romanticization of battle to induct future knights.
That's what modern "bro culture" is -- young men who listen to these podcasters/marketers who define their own "battle" narratives (whether they served or are just training for ultra-marathons) in the same broad strokes as the poet did. Do these podcasters/marketers actually embody "manhood"? Were they war criminals? Do they run their ultra-marathons cleanly, fairly? I'd argue that it's impossible to know as audiences are simply being served a narrative. Yet their listeners are being indoctrinated the same was as the poet's audience was. Sometimes it might be good. Some listeners might be inspired to join a gym and get healthy. But other times it's less beneficial. (And I'm not just talking about the rubes who spend 35 bucks to buy a podcast t-shirt.)
Take what's happening right now. People are dying by the thousands in America. A New York Times article a few months back said, “Some experts who study masculinity and public health say the perception that wearing masks and following social distancing guidelines are unmanly has carried a destructive coast. The virus has infected more men than women and killed far more of them.”
So, I think, if we have to measure "masculinity" by strength, then it's time to measure "strength" by flexibility, not rigidness. And these men seem to be working against that.
The explanation of chivalry made me think of 1800's honor duels. Again you have a system of organized violence that men, mostly white, participated in at all levels of society. Especially in the South, where the plantation class set up their own version of feudal Europe with slaves at the very bottom... and class-anxious poor whites seeking to affirm their place in the middle.
Yeah I think there is a lot about this that comes across as antebellum. There are roots earlier than that but print/literacy is important to it I think.
Agreed on all of this, and I think an additional factor not mentioned here is the greater recognition and acceptance of LGBTQ+ Americans over the last 10-20 years, and manly hetero Bro Culture "rising to oppose it". That's not to say that everyone who lifts weights or does MMA is homophobic, but there are certainly Bro Culture advocates who feel their ideas of gender norms and identity being threatened and who feel a need to reassert how they think manliness "should" be defined.
I actually think this an area where Bro Culture is at odds with larger conservative trends, but it speaks to how the different parts of Bro Culture interact and express themselves in different ways.
Guys I went to high school with in West Texas and who engage with Bro Culture via Barstool podcasts and CrossFit have pretty noxious views toward all marginalized groups (especially women), but they're also largely the ex/suburban Boater Americans in well-paid professional jobs in blue collar industries that Patrick wrote about a while back.
By contrast, the people at my Muay Thai gym in Los Angeles (plenty of whom wear black rifle gear and listen to Rogan) don't share those prejudices.
I don't know if this is a product of environment or that if you're doing actual combat sports in a co-ed setting, then you see first hand how those stereotypes are inaccurate, but ideas of personal identity seem less rigid to me in Bro Culture than in overall Conservative Culture. After all, the principles of self-improvement through discipline can be adhered to by anyone.
Also, a day or two after reading this article I walked by a gym in my neighborhood that rebranded. Their new slogan is "Fit Or Die" and their new logo is a skull and crossbones, with barbells as the "crossbones". I think this article willed that rebrand into existence, heh.
I've thankfully found that the endurance athletics community is much more tolerant and more open minded. This probably has to do with the fact that we're all a bunch of weirdos anyway.
High school football all-state in the midwest followed by undergraduate at a near-Ivy school. Avid crossfitter. "Bro" culture is pretty much my only remaining link to my blue collar upbringing. And I'm deeply, deeply ambivalent about it. Thanks for articulating this so well.
The picture was taken when he was out on bail, "the young man who shot three protesters with an AR-15 in Kenosha last August" was a clause separated by commas because it was contextualizing who Kyle Rittenhouse is. Like how if I said "this is a picture of Ronald Reagan, who starred in Dunston Checks In, imploring Mister Gorbachev to tear down this wall", I would not be suggesting that the imploring in question happened during the runtime or shooting schedule of Dunston Checks In.
That’s Kyle Rittenhouse the young man who shot three protesters with an AR-15 in Kenosha last August. The picture was taken following his release on bail.
It's weird that you were able to parse the sentence correctly (or else your absolutely cutting remark about doing too much with sentences wouldn't make much sense!) but then pivoted to insisting that the author was trying to say Rittenhouse shot someone while he was out on bail. Why bother communicating at all if you're just going to speak for both participants?
It's crazy that we've gotten to a point where he plausibly didn't do anything wrong (according to the law). This guy drove to another state with an assault rifle to get into a confrontation and he'll probably get off. Logical evolution from George Zimmerman I guess.
For black citizens, this is nothing new. We've been complaining about all white juries not convicting white-on-black murders for over a century. There is a museum in Montgomery, Alabama for the thousands of known lynching victims that lack justice.
We're not surprised by Rittenhouse. We're waiting for America to catch up us recognizing the problem.
I am half Japanese, my mother was born in an American Concentration camp during World War II. My father was born in a Polish concentration camp and refused to speak it name, although he bore the tattoo. I was raised in Oakland, California. I was one of about 5 students from the first the freshman to the last senior of my class who was not African-American. I can appreciate your point of view. Yet, I would emplore you not to use words like "complain". Complaints are dissmissed by the complacent.
Speaking from the Judiciary, I assure you, your families past and mine are on my mind everyday. It is what motivated me to take up the robe and gavel, and piece by piece effect change.
I would further like to assure that Mr.Sobchak is what we in the legal profession, refer to as an asshole. It is not lost on me, the way
Mr.Sobchak chose to attempt not just to relieve Mr.Rittenhouse of guilt, but later himself, when his ego was confronted by others who did not accept his opening remark. Had he truly meant to suggest that one should not speculate on how a jury may decide, he would have stated so. Lawyers are trained to make their point clearly the first time, and appeals are a long way away. Retraction happens when people attempt an argument but are surprised when it isn't acceptable. I do not accept his retraction.
What I have learned through all of my years on the bench, dealing with plaintiffs, defendants, victims, witnesses and politicians is this. Choose your words carefully, and never complain.
Speak. Speak with passion. Speak with purpose. Speak with the intensity and vigor of a person who has lived through injustice, and will not tolerate it anymore. Curse if you have to, but never complain.
45 years since you graduated neither means you practice or are successful.
"Trying to do too much in single sentence oiften causes problems."
Do you see the irony yet, councilor?
Let me help you out.
Trying to do too much in a single sentence, often causes problems.
I am a superior court judge. If you had submitted a motion or filed a suit with as many of those kinds of mistakes to me, I would have thrown it out and made you submit or file again.
I appreciate this piece immensely. I’ve had similar nagging feelings during the pandemic. The “aversion to self reflection” line is so spot on. I did every manual labor job under the sun to pay for college. I have a white collar job now and I worry about the disconnect I feel growing with friends who still have blue collar jobs or are cops. The emphasis is always on tough talk and often entails diminishing the accomplishments of people who aren’t straight white dudes because they’re protected or uplifted. Joking about the kicker for Vanderbilt who played in a D-1 college game for instance. The older I get the more I think true masculinity is just doing your job and trying to be the most honorable and compassionate version of yourself.
This piece makes me feel seen! I've spent 20 years on MMA mats, back when it was called Vale Tudo and we all wore sweat pants, and if I look at the masculine heroes I've had through my youth, it has always been some version of the "Warrior Scholar," from my first MMA coach to Bruce Lee to Henry Rollins. I've always appreciated the discipline and self-mastery; it's something I've aspired to.
These guys have always been outsiders, but something has changed. The paranoia, the conspiracies, this tactical readiness silliness... I remember sitting on a mat with Eddie Bravo and a bunch of high-level fighters talking about some deep-state, absurd conspiracy and I'm like, "What am I doing here?" It's sad to me, because so many of these guys are so solid, help-you-move-with-their-truck solid, and it's refreshing to have conversations not reflexively filtered through the woke-identarian lens as happens so much in my life. Maybe I'm just getting more sensitive to it, but it's not as fun to shadowbox alone in the park, as I do these days...
I'm a bit older than the normal cohort, but I sense this frustration in them, as if they're aching for some life test, some Rubicon to pass, but the only thing there is to do is roll, cash the unemployment check, and wear a mask to the grocery store.
Thanks for writing this.
I’ve seen this type of sentence used more and more recently but would you be able to expand on what you mean by the - filtered through the woke-identarian lens as happens so much in my life - sentence? I feel like in my years within the culture he is writing about, the non-woke version tends to lean towards being in conversations with casual homophobic or misogynistic language thrown around. I’ve honestly been looking for a better explanation of the woke lens. Maybe you have one.
Hey Isaac, I wasn't really referring to Patrick's writing, but my own experience. I work in tech -- education, specifically -- and pretty much every conversation about larger society today has to address any issue through an identarian lens, sort of like how every discussion on a college campus in the 80s had to look at any issue through post-modernism.
It's not the *worst* thing in the world -- there are some valuable ideas in post-modernism, CRT, intersectionality, etc. -- but when it's obligatory and oppressive, it's nice to be on an MMA mat and talk about the world in a way that most people live through it. There is, of course, homophobia and misogyny laced across many fighters' worldviews, but I think it's a lot less than advertised (especially where I live in SoCal).
Yea, I think that makes a lot of sense. And I completely agree that there are few things in the world better than being in a group athletic experience after a hard workout or match. It’s not quite the same as a solo sport but I found rugby later in life and fell in love for similar reasons. I think the reason the woke thing gets my hackles up is just that it most of the time feels like a lazy way of saying you don’t want to take the time to be a good person (not you specifically). Like just say the correct pronoun. Or just take the extra two seconds to not be a dick. Even when we all grew up with the homophobia jokes and it’s sometimes easier to just not think about it.
I think the "woke" movement holds a little more danger than you do, maybe. I am biased, having taught on a college campus for a decade and seen the change in classroom after classroom. But what I see is how performative so much of it is. I wish it were as basic as "Just use this person's pronoun, c'mon," but I see it as a movement that is inherently exclusionary, that winds up attacking the folks it purports to protect, a contest to use as much 99¢ jargon as possible to say, "can you just use the pronoun I prefer?"
I look back on the extraordinarily successful campaign to improve views of the LGBT community that started in the mid-90s. Moving from the very academic, polemic tactics of the AIDS era, LGBT leaders made conscious campaigns, basically saying, "I am your son. I'm your neighbor, etc." The change in views over that 15 year period is astonishing.
I think there are models of communication that will resonate with my mat friends, though I don't think they're well represented in the current climate. Sorry...we're getting kind of far afield from the OP!
Haha! Yea, I guess Patrick needs to write more newsletters specifically dedicated to exploring the comment section.
Hey Isaac, I wasn't really referring to Patrick's writing, but my own experience. I work in tech -- education, specifically -- and pretty much every conversation about larger society today has to address any issue through an identarian lens, sort of like how every discussion on a college campus in the 80s had to look at any issue through post-modernism.
It's not the *worst* thing in the world -- there are some valuable ideas in post-modernism, CRT, intersectionality, etc. -- but when it's obligatory and oppressive, it's nice to be on an MMA mat and talk about the world in a way that most people live through it. There is, of course, homophobia and misogyny laced across many fighters' worldviews, but I think it's a lot less than advertised (especially where I live in SoCal).
Loved this article! I was having a convo about this yesterday, and as someone who has transitioned genders but still loves fights, lifting, BBQ and a lot of stereotypical 'Bro' stuff - the way that Bro culture offers a sense of meaning really can't be underestimated especially in a where even being a successful member of the professional-managerial class can feel like a dehumanizing slog.
I just wish there was SOMETHING non-toxic we could offer young boys as a way to live honorably and honestly - a way to attain self-worth that wasn't wrapped up in consuming the right product or being conservative politically, but rather being emotionally honest, accepting, and striving.
Loved this article as well. Can you say more about offering something non-toxic? Maybe I’m just getting defensive as a POC woman but I feel like young boys, especially white young boys, still have far more privilege and pathways to success than the rest of us. As a non-white woman, I think it takes a huge toll on me and my friends to find self-worth and external credibility. I guess I have very little sympathy for these young boys who blame external factors for their shortcomings and lack of empathy.
I get exactly where you’re coming from since I’m a Nigerian immigrant on top of being trans.
I guess I see a gap that I’ve noticed between where problems are acknowledged for white boys (but even Black or Latinx men), and where they decide to hinge their lives as a response.
Especially since I transitioned there’s been a pretty straight line arrow for me between my social status and then what I should do in response to that - help out folks like me, so I went to grad school to study online harassment of Black women and trans folks broadly.
If you’re a white dude and you realize that modern capitalism is exploitative and American society as is isn’t working due to racism, etc - your options are ignore it or even lean into it, or work against it but know you’re perpetually suspect.
And I think ... not empathy for white men or men in general ... but sorta where I think humans generally fall down is that it’s just really hard for anyone to rig their life around service to others with only theoretical gains for themselves and people like them. So men, esp. white men, turn their back on that.
If I were to toss out potential solutions - I think labor unions + the trades is a potential area for a lot ground to be gained here. Everyone hates their boss and wants better working conditions so if you have broadly inclusive labor and trade unions then the balance shifts - everyone is helping everyone else because as a collective they all benefit. There’s also a nice progression system based on community standing and years of service. There will still be issues of race, gender, etc but that framework moves things from asking for empathy into asking for mutually beneficial partnership.
Part of this entire weird set of feelings of mine also comes from the whole “I got mine” phenomenon among some marginalized folks - so
I think everyone who isn’t really, materially getting something from a movement is less likely to hitch their wagon to it
Please come up with something soon, I can't hold out much longer!! I'm lost and confused and I've been thinking about subscribing to spotify and ordering Jordan Peterson's book.
Something to consider: the prickly sense of honor and emphasis on physical combat - prowess - to preserve it, as seen in the stereotypical 19th century American South, in 17th century Scotland, etc. I'd like to suggest that while the particular channels of transmission of Bro Culture may be new, the core message and the larger social consequences are themselves very old, and pretty well-understood.
I think this is a key insight -- Bro Culture as a modern manifestation of the honour culture of the past, but without a clear sense of what kind of honour they are trying to preserve or perpetuate.
Considering many 19th century southern Americans were decendants of 17th Century Scots, this checks out. Fischer's "Albion's Seed" does a great job of going into this. It's a favorite of mine, and Patrick recommends it.
I think a significant number of guys in the Bro Culture are of Scots-Irish, or Anglo Borderer, descent, mixed in with Tidewater Virginia and Deep South settlers. All of these cultures emphasized honor, martial prowess, etc
If you’re interested in this topic I’d highly recommend “Black Liberals and White Rednecks” by Thomas Sowell (back when he was a serious social commentator and wasn’t just raging against university elites). It’s the main essay in an honestly fascinating book about sociology and history. Basically, he argues that maladaptive behavior in lower-class black communities (bro culture?) was likewise inherited from the non-elite whites they encountered in Southern US—the vast majority of whom were descended from the tough, poor, honor-obsessed Scots-Irish who left Ulster Plantation to “settle” the New World.
I thoroughly enjoyed this essay and have reflected on this topic myself for a long time. Being a child of immigrants (Egyptian), I take a different perspective specifically on American masculinity but arrive around the same conclusions. The two strains that I see largely unaddressed around American masculinity are gun culture and anti-intellectualism. Both are uniquely American and I would love to hear people’s thoughts around these two issues.
The first area is gun culture. Prior to guns, the primary weapons used were bladed weapons aka swords and the bow and arrow. Archers rarely captured the public’s imagination (the only exception I can think of being Robin Hood), while swordsmen were widely respected. Entire warrior classes sprung up around the idea of mastering the sword, notably the samurai in Japan and the knights of medieval Rome. While Americans hold the idea of nobility as men who were effete or feminine, other nations see them as otherwise due to the sword (and its subsequent mastery) as entirely the province of nobles since they were the only ones with the means and the time to dedicate to it. Naturally this meant they held the higher positions in any military hierarchy because they would be trained from birth to master first and foremost the arts of war. I’ll explore this further in the discussion about anti-intellectualism so please bear with me. With swords, men respected the idea of someone being better/superior/stronger/etc. when faced in a one-on one situation. There was no more important idea in competition as a sword fight was for the ultimate stakes, a life-or-death struggle.
This continued unabated for thousands of years until the development of guns beginning with the musket. But muskets were inaccurate weapons with complicated reloading mechanisms. At first they were largely a sidearm to the infinitely more useful sword since swords could not run out of ammunition nor need to be reloaded. In The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, the classic tome about swordsmanship, he dedicates only a few lines to muskets and spends the rest of the book speaking of the way of the sword. As technology advanced, the musket evolved into the repeating rifle, when the world received a rude shock in World War I that swords and horses have been displaced by guns, automobiles, and artillery.
One has to consider the fact that the United States, as founded in 1776, did not have this long tradition of battling with only swords or any sort of established nobility. The Revolutionary War was fought with muskets which had a significantly lower barrier to mastery than the sword and more effective at defeating (ie killing) enemies. This was enshrined in the 2nd Amendment as the right to bear arms. A citizenry with muskets would assumedly outnumber any standing army or at least be able to put up a punishing resistance that would at least make any government fearful of exerting tyranny (or at least this is what the Founders had expected).
Tying this in to modern American masculinity, the gun represents a significant issue when determining male superiority. For example, think about all the great mano-e-mano fights ever shown in Hollywood or on tv, how many of them involve guns? Martial arts movies show hand to hand combat. Even Star Wars, a futuristic sci-fi series, uses lightsabers. Gun fights simply do not provide the same answer to the shift modern American masculinity has gone from “protector” to “predator”. That is because we generally believe that anyone can be lucky with a gun. Even children can wield guns with enough effectiveness to kill someone. We know this to be true from African child soldiers to modern day high schools. They don’t even need to be well-trained in any sense of the word to accomplish the killing of another. How can we determine if a man is the apex predator if he cannot challenge a man to life-or-death combat, kill him, and confidently claim his superiority?
The solution presented is precisely the one you mention in your essay as “tactical” training. This is performed largely at the elite level of the military (the pinnacle of “bro” masculinity like the Navy SEALs). Fast reloads, fast draws, oakley sunglasses, and the whole getup have largely caught fire as distinguishing these people who wish to classify themselves as “warriors”. We also know that even though special operators can perform physical feats that 99.9% of the population can only dream of, they are still vulnerable to errant bullet as anyone else. An idiot with a gun has a fool’s chance of felling a Navy SEAL in combat. We know this because special forces operators have died in combat (whether through a bullet fired by an enemy combatant or other means). Yet no one would ever claim that the reason that operator died was that he was in some way inferior to that specific enemy combatant. All of us are aware of the intense training and filtering at these elite levels. So then the gun and gun culture cannot be the arbiter of male superiority, no matter how hard anyone tries. But this incongruence is a problem, so people will work harder and harder to prove superiority by dedication to gun culture and ever more outlandish feats regardless of its relevance to actual battlefield use.
This was a lot longer than I had intended it to be so I’ll address the anti-intellectualism portion in another post if this one garners a thoughtful discussion.
Very interesting. Thanks. I wonder though, if your analysis doesn't extend further into history than you suspect. Hunter-gatherers were all armed and deadly with their bows and arrows and spears. This had an equalizing effect on the struggle for status among men (see Hierarchy in the Forest, by Christopher Boehm for more on this). Point being, bigger stronger dudes haven't really had much of an advantage in lethal combat for hundreds of thousands of years.
Here's something I wrote years ago that seems pertinent.
“The intel on this wasn’t 100 percent.” Those were the words of Edgar Maddison Welch after his arrest in Washington DC for assault with a dangerous weapon at a local pizza parlor. Mr. Welch was there to rescue children that Hillary Clinton was keeping in the basement of the pizza parlor for purposes of sex trafficking. But, as Mr. Welch discovered, the “intel” was off. There were no children. There was no basement. And so, Mr. Welch, whose motivations were sterling, was not the hero he imagined himself to be but just another goofy warrior.
Mr. Welch is not alone. Members of the scary fringes of right wing politics, from the Bundys to the Oathkeepers have assumed, with appropriate gravitas, the role of protector. Protector of what? The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the imaginary children in the basement. In a grotesque parody of the benevolent but world-weary father figure, these men have fashioned a role for themselves that the real world has denied them. They will save the children. They will be the good fathers.
Another would-be protector, Jon Eric Ritzheimer, made a youtube splash with his heartfelt address to his family about the oath he took to defend the Constitution. Widely parodied, Mr. Ritzheimer’s address cannot be faulted for its lack of sincerity. Tearfully, he tells his family that he must assume the heavy burden that others have shirked. He does so with great reluctance but a man has to do what a man has to do.
And herein lies the problem. Working class American men have seen their roles as breadwinners, caretakers, protectors of their families diminished by market forces beyond their control. For some these roles were at the heart of their identity. They provided a positive expression of masculinity. A positive expression of masculinity seems like an odd phrase these days. Oxymoronic for some. But I would argue that unless we recognize this deficit, the marketplace itself will fill this void with decidedly negative expressions of masculinity.
Take SWAT magazine for example. Available at your local newsstand, SWAT and its counterparts in the masculinity marketplace are charting a course for these heroes. It’s a course that includes, guns, ammo and plenty of “tactical” gear. In other words, the trappings of masculinity, the costume that goes along with the role of protector. To be clear, the articles in SWAT are not about hunting. They are about armed combat, mano a mano. Written in the no-nonsense humorless prose of the weary but aware warrior the articles cover things like “Tactical Sleep,” “Protecting your Stash,” and plenty of product reviews of weaponry. Reading between the lines, one can see the fears that are being stoked here are not unique. The apocalyptic landscape they limn is the stuff of our current Hollywood obsession with civilization’s crack up.
What’s new in this mix is the role that is being fashioned from the shards of masculinity that more mundane and invisible enemies have left behind. The marketplace has broken up the old roles but it’s also happy to provide a new role, a role that warped young men like Mr. Welch can cleave to: Saving the children in the basement of the pizza parlor.
It’s a role that stands to make some people a lot of money even as it unravels the fraying fabric of our Republic. And this is the real problem: Capitalism cannot resist opportunities to make money even in enterprises that are corrosive to the spirit of democracy itself.
Marxism of a certain revolutionary mindset has always appealed to intellectuals because the assumption is that, come the Revolution, things will finally be set to right and they will assume their rightful roles, at last, they will be in charge of things, the guy holding the clipboard getting ready to make a report down at Party Headquarters.
Tactical Bro Culture seems to have similar fantasies about becoming Mad Max.
Patrick -- thank you so much for this essay! It inspired my friend and I (who have been in and out of MMA and lifting gyms) to do a podcast: https://anchor.fm/wwdtm
Thank you for reading, and good luck with your podcast!!!
This wonderful, world-expanding essay has stuck with me for several days. So has the video itself of Echo and Jocko's conversation. The conversation surprised me actually, in ways that didn't entirely mesh with the direction your essay took. As a skinny, progressive, feminist guy, I've never identified with the warrior ethos, the macho camaraderie, or the bulging physique of these two men. When I pressed play, I was fully ready to recoil from a couple repressed totems of toxic masculinity. Instead I found them disarming and sweet. I thought they were kind of tender with each other! They were vulnerable. They poked fun but it was within a zone of trust. In conventional gender language, these two extraordinarily powerful and imposing men were actually kind of... feminine with each other.
Granted, I could have been reading everything wrong; I don't actually speak the code; so maybe, if I walked into that room, with my willowy frame, they would grimace, roar, and rip my head off. But I don't think so.
So: the video had the opposite effect on me from your essay. The essay confirmed a rising fear about a kind of desperately insecure, dominationist masculinity that threatens to blow up the country. But these two guys? I felt reassured. I felt like I could sit down and talk with them. In fact, if macho culture could look like this, I would be a little more hopeful. And in that hope, lies a question: is there any chance that gym culture, or bro culture more generally, contains within it more tender possibilities for the future, than the toxic violent strains your essay describes?
Very thoughtful. Having hung out with some of the people mentioned in the essay, I can say that your insights reflect my own impressions of them. Rogan, for example, is very kind, generous, and agreed with me when I told him that I thought gay men are examples of masculine qualities like integrity, strength, honestly ... for having gone through the process of coming out in a hostile environment. There is a vulnerability and tenderness among these guys. When can men hug each other? When their team scores or their unit survives an attack.
The poem used to exemplify chivalry seems to be written of an observer of the battle, not a participant. Were the knights terrified, killing their foes out of desperation, kept in line by their commander? Were they drunk, having had to steel themselves before the battle? If they had to choose between saving themselves and their fellow knight that day, what did they choose? In a mass - to an observer - sure the knights ahorse look heroic. Chivalrous. But it is simply a romanticization of battle to induct future knights.
That's what modern "bro culture" is -- young men who listen to these podcasters/marketers who define their own "battle" narratives (whether they served or are just training for ultra-marathons) in the same broad strokes as the poet did. Do these podcasters/marketers actually embody "manhood"? Were they war criminals? Do they run their ultra-marathons cleanly, fairly? I'd argue that it's impossible to know as audiences are simply being served a narrative. Yet their listeners are being indoctrinated the same was as the poet's audience was. Sometimes it might be good. Some listeners might be inspired to join a gym and get healthy. But other times it's less beneficial. (And I'm not just talking about the rubes who spend 35 bucks to buy a podcast t-shirt.)
Take what's happening right now. People are dying by the thousands in America. A New York Times article a few months back said, “Some experts who study masculinity and public health say the perception that wearing masks and following social distancing guidelines are unmanly has carried a destructive coast. The virus has infected more men than women and killed far more of them.”
So, I think, if we have to measure "masculinity" by strength, then it's time to measure "strength" by flexibility, not rigidness. And these men seem to be working against that.
The explanation of chivalry made me think of 1800's honor duels. Again you have a system of organized violence that men, mostly white, participated in at all levels of society. Especially in the South, where the plantation class set up their own version of feudal Europe with slaves at the very bottom... and class-anxious poor whites seeking to affirm their place in the middle.
Yeah I think there is a lot about this that comes across as antebellum. There are roots earlier than that but print/literacy is important to it I think.
Agreed on all of this, and I think an additional factor not mentioned here is the greater recognition and acceptance of LGBTQ+ Americans over the last 10-20 years, and manly hetero Bro Culture "rising to oppose it". That's not to say that everyone who lifts weights or does MMA is homophobic, but there are certainly Bro Culture advocates who feel their ideas of gender norms and identity being threatened and who feel a need to reassert how they think manliness "should" be defined.
I actually think this an area where Bro Culture is at odds with larger conservative trends, but it speaks to how the different parts of Bro Culture interact and express themselves in different ways.
Guys I went to high school with in West Texas and who engage with Bro Culture via Barstool podcasts and CrossFit have pretty noxious views toward all marginalized groups (especially women), but they're also largely the ex/suburban Boater Americans in well-paid professional jobs in blue collar industries that Patrick wrote about a while back.
By contrast, the people at my Muay Thai gym in Los Angeles (plenty of whom wear black rifle gear and listen to Rogan) don't share those prejudices.
I don't know if this is a product of environment or that if you're doing actual combat sports in a co-ed setting, then you see first hand how those stereotypes are inaccurate, but ideas of personal identity seem less rigid to me in Bro Culture than in overall Conservative Culture. After all, the principles of self-improvement through discipline can be adhered to by anyone.
Also, a day or two after reading this article I walked by a gym in my neighborhood that rebranded. Their new slogan is "Fit Or Die" and their new logo is a skull and crossbones, with barbells as the "crossbones". I think this article willed that rebrand into existence, heh.
Just men who never grew up. So bizarre. Great piece.
I've thankfully found that the endurance athletics community is much more tolerant and more open minded. This probably has to do with the fact that we're all a bunch of weirdos anyway.
High school football all-state in the midwest followed by undergraduate at a near-Ivy school. Avid crossfitter. "Bro" culture is pretty much my only remaining link to my blue collar upbringing. And I'm deeply, deeply ambivalent about it. Thanks for articulating this so well.
"That’s Kyle Rittenhouse, the young man who shot three protesters with an AR-15 in Kenosha last August, following his release on bail."
I am pretty sure Mr. Rittenhouse did not shoot anyone after he was released on bail.
Trying to do too much in single sentence oiften causes problems.
BTW: don't be very sure about his guilt in the matter for which he was arrested. He may have plausible defenses.
If you can't figure out a dependent clause I can't help you, buddy
OK, he did shoot someone when he was out on bail.
The picture was taken when he was out on bail, "the young man who shot three protesters with an AR-15 in Kenosha last August" was a clause separated by commas because it was contextualizing who Kyle Rittenhouse is. Like how if I said "this is a picture of Ronald Reagan, who starred in Dunston Checks In, imploring Mister Gorbachev to tear down this wall", I would not be suggesting that the imploring in question happened during the runtime or shooting schedule of Dunston Checks In.
Thank you for doing this yeoman's work
Guaranteed Joe Rogan listener. Confident and assured in his incorrectness.
That’s Kyle Rittenhouse the young man who shot three protesters with an AR-15 in Kenosha last August. The picture was taken following his release on bail.
That's two sentences and sounds shit.
It's weird that you were able to parse the sentence correctly (or else your absolutely cutting remark about doing too much with sentences wouldn't make much sense!) but then pivoted to insisting that the author was trying to say Rittenhouse shot someone while he was out on bail. Why bother communicating at all if you're just going to speak for both participants?
It's crazy that we've gotten to a point where he plausibly didn't do anything wrong (according to the law). This guy drove to another state with an assault rifle to get into a confrontation and he'll probably get off. Logical evolution from George Zimmerman I guess.
For black citizens, this is nothing new. We've been complaining about all white juries not convicting white-on-black murders for over a century. There is a museum in Montgomery, Alabama for the thousands of known lynching victims that lack justice.
We're not surprised by Rittenhouse. We're waiting for America to catch up us recognizing the problem.
I am half Japanese, my mother was born in an American Concentration camp during World War II. My father was born in a Polish concentration camp and refused to speak it name, although he bore the tattoo. I was raised in Oakland, California. I was one of about 5 students from the first the freshman to the last senior of my class who was not African-American. I can appreciate your point of view. Yet, I would emplore you not to use words like "complain". Complaints are dissmissed by the complacent.
Speaking from the Judiciary, I assure you, your families past and mine are on my mind everyday. It is what motivated me to take up the robe and gavel, and piece by piece effect change.
I would further like to assure that Mr.Sobchak is what we in the legal profession, refer to as an asshole. It is not lost on me, the way
Mr.Sobchak chose to attempt not just to relieve Mr.Rittenhouse of guilt, but later himself, when his ego was confronted by others who did not accept his opening remark. Had he truly meant to suggest that one should not speculate on how a jury may decide, he would have stated so. Lawyers are trained to make their point clearly the first time, and appeals are a long way away. Retraction happens when people attempt an argument but are surprised when it isn't acceptable. I do not accept his retraction.
What I have learned through all of my years on the bench, dealing with plaintiffs, defendants, victims, witnesses and politicians is this. Choose your words carefully, and never complain.
Speak. Speak with passion. Speak with purpose. Speak with the intensity and vigor of a person who has lived through injustice, and will not tolerate it anymore. Curse if you have to, but never complain.
go fish. keep spreading misinfo tho
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/kyle-rittenhouse-cleared-of-gun-charges-in-illinois-gun-never-left-the-state-of-wisconsin
Sorry. He had someone make a straw purchase for a minor, then drove to another state to get in a confrontation with rioters.
Find somewhere else to comment
I said may. One thing I have learned in the 45 years since I graduated from law school is to never predict what a jury is going to do.
"Trying to do too much in single sentence oiften causes problems."
Doing too little in A single, grammatically incorrect, and poorly spelled sentence OFTEN causes more significant problems.
But I totally appreciate your dedication to obeying the spirit and the letter of Muphry's law.
45 years since you graduated neither means you practice or are successful.
"Trying to do too much in single sentence oiften causes problems."
Do you see the irony yet, councilor?
Let me help you out.
Trying to do too much in a single sentence, often causes problems.
I am a superior court judge. If you had submitted a motion or filed a suit with as many of those kinds of mistakes to me, I would have thrown it out and made you submit or file again.
"oiften". So does typing too fast.