MAGA Masculinity: These Clowns Are Übermenschen? Please.

Real men are unpretentious, honest, confident, intelligent, competent, brave, and calm. From Trump on down, these men aren’t close to that.

Republicans are about to inflict a rather strange vision of masculinity on America, one that is less the Triumph of the Will that they wanted, and more Idiocracy. The political messaging to their audience is simple: Democratic men are all gay transgender tofu-eating double-Communist weenies, and you don’t want to be that, do you?

It’s been heading in this direction for a long time, but it came into stark relief when White House aide Stephen Miller accused Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico of being transgender. “He’s clearly transitioning into a female,” Miller said. “When Talarico goes in for a blood test, when he gets a physical, blood doesn’t come out. Soy milk comes out.” This followed attacks on Talarico by his opponent, Ken Paxton, who called him “Six-Gender Jimmy” and “James Tala-freak-o.” Fox host Jesse Watters called him a “gay vegan.”

To set the record straight, Talarico isn’t transgender, he isn’t gay, and he’s not even a vegan. Also, unlike Paxton, he isn’t a scandal-plagued attorney general who narrowly avoided indictments for securities fraud and bribery. Paxton let a child predator off with one day in jail and no sex offender registration because he was an influential Republican. Paxton has been involved in multiple cheating scandals, but to Republican strategists, the fact that Talarico once ate a meatless breakfast wrap and doesn’t promise to eradicate transgender people makes him less of man.

Accusing Democratic politicians of being transgender or transgender allies has deep historical parallels with Nazi Germany. Nazis routinely accused political opponents of being Jews,........

© New Republic