{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "You understand that it is comically obvious that your affection for the NRA derives entirely from your desperate attempt to...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/176693653693/", "html": "<div class=\"question\"><strong>Anonymous</strong> asked: You understand that it is comically obvious that your affection for the NRA derives entirely from your desperate attempt to convince yourself that you are actually a masculine bad-ass and not a chubby, aging, effete fail-son yuppie, right? Similar to your nostalgia for your adult karate class, your brief period of motorcycle ownership and that phase you went through were you insisted that the only reason you didn't join the Army was because it wasn't cool enough anymore. </div>\n<p>Yeah dude, while I\u2019ll defend the merits of all those in their own right, I\u2019m well aware that I seek out subcultures and experiences of aggressive masculine competition (pinball too!) specifically in reaction against being born into an enervating bourgeois role! That\u2019s not a rare dynamic! It perfectly fits with the rest of my performed identity! And I know my extensive explorations of my self in a public forum result in readers well-knowing said self, that\u2019s the point! Jeez Louise. </p>\n\n<p>(It\u2019s also the dynamic behind my periodic performative outbursts against my mother and desire that my childhood and childhood in general included more violence and dog-eat-dog exploitation.)</p>\n\n<p>Though you get at something in trying to josh on me for not joining the Army - I\u2019d been around to see my peers who went that path and eh, it didn\u2019t deliver the goods anyway. And I can\u2019t really kick myself for not jumping on any of the other masculine paths and digging in, doing the hard work, etc. because similarly I see it\u2019s not like the guys who did ended up with a life of macho adventure.</p>\n\n<p>Whatever their virtues, today\u2019s techbro founders aren\u2019t the Promethean heroes of \u201890s legend; \u201chip media type\u201d sure doesn\u2019t mean what it used to; the guys who embrace fatherhood as an identity don\u2019t impress me even if you factored out my skepticism towards emotion-bound childraisers as seen above.</p>\n\n<p>Was starting to get into being just one more pillar of quirky Portland, and I guess I still got the \u201cfixing up the house/garden with hand tools\u201d (shoulda dinged me for that!) that culture\u2019s dying and the one replacing it I don\u2019t know that I care for. Maybe I\u2019d be better suited to big fish/small pond, and I suspect at some level my thought to find a failing town and repurpose it as an arts colony/tourist retreat/wevs. is accepting my role as a puffed-up provincial on the arrogant presumption that I start at the top.</p>\n\n<p>I dunno, you seem to have a lot of close interest in my relationship to contemporary masculine ways of being, insult anon, you have any recommendations or thoughts?</p>"}