Dick Pollman
Ladies and gentleman, here is your United States Senate, then and now:
Sen. Daniel Webster on March 7, 1850: “It is fortunate that there is a Senate of the United States (with) a just sense of its own dignity, and its own high responsibilities, and a body to which the country looks with confidence for wise, moderate, patriotic, and healing counsels.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin on Nov. 14, 2023: “I’m not afraid of biting. I will bite. I’ll bite 100 percent. In a fight, I’m gonna bite. I’ll do anything. I’m not above it. And I don’t care where I’ll bite by the way.”
Scientists have long told us that we humans evolved from apes. Maybe now we’re going backward.
This week, the “honorable” Mr. Mullin – a meathead Oklahoma Republican with a martial-arts body who now inhabits what was once known as The World’s Most Deliberative Body – put on quite a show.
At a Senate hearing Mullin got mad at witness Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters union, because O’Brien had hurt his feelings in a string of mean tweets. O’Brien had challenged him to a confrontation “Anyplace, Anytime.” Senators had long ignored such silly taunts, but hey, was a manly man of real manhood supposed to just let a taunt like that go unanswered? Of course not!
“Sir,” he sneered at O’Brien, “this is a time, this is a place. We can do it right here…Stand your butt up then,” whereupon he rose from his seat and started to twist off his wedding ring to maximize his punching power because I guess what real men do in bars down near the tractor pull. Then came this classic admonishment from the committee’s chairman, Bernie Sanders: “Oh stop it! Sit down, you’re a United States senator!”
Mullin is just the latest manifestation of machismo inspired by faux manly man Donald Trump, who set the tone in 2016 when he said, “You’re not allowed to punch back anymore. I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher.”
Mullin subsequently doubled down on a podcast about fighting-biting: “This is not anything new,” because “Andrew Jackson had nine duels while he was president and finished all nine of ’em.”
That is absolute nonsense. Jackson dueled a lot in his younger days, but never as president. And I question whether it’s wise to justify one’s behavior by invoking a genocidal slaveowner who liked to duel.
Mullin’s self-advertised lust for fisticuffs – and, on the same day, Kevin McCarthy’s playground move, elbowing a Republican rival in the kidney – has prompted me to ponder why guys like that seem so compelled to assert their (toxic) masculinity. Forgive me if this sounds like dime-store psychology, but it would appear they feel threatened by our 21st century culture (gender equity, empowered sexual minorities), all of which have stoked their resentments and fears of appearing “soft” and “weak.”
The local news folks in Mullin’s Oklahoma don’t seem impressed, either. They put him on the air and asked: “Senator, we tell our kids so often, ‘Do not resort to violence.’ You challenged someone you disagreed with to a fight. How do you justify that?” Well, Mullin put those snowflakes in their place: “Fights happen. Boys are boys.”
I’ll side with Bernie Sanders on this one. When Mullin rose up, Bernie exclaimed, “God knows, the American people have enough contempt for Congress, let’s not make it worse!” But this is what happens when MAGA meatheads confuse muscle with governance.