Men's Groups, Proud Boys, & Demented Warmongers

I'm rereading the article on the extreme men's group.  A few excerpts:

Most men suffer in silence, Keuilian wrote, because they feel disconnected from their larger purpose in life. They gorge themselves on distraction: TV, social media, food, booze, pornography. These vices lead men further astray, jeopardizing their income, marriage, family, and sense of self-worth....  Schmidt is a work in progress, he knows that. Thanks to The Project, he’s trying. But if not for meeting these men, he swears, he’d still be shuffling through life like a zombie, rotting away, dead inside and out. Now he acts like a real man, driven, strong, family-oriented, just like The Project leaders he admires....   Earlier this year, British researchers analyzed data from the 2018 BBC Loneliness Experiment, a survey of 55,000 people around the globe, and discovered that young men living in individualistic cultures were those most vulnerable to loneliness. Likewise, a 2017 study reported that young men aged 18 to 30 from the US, UK, and Mexico said that ideally they’d like to spend most of their time with friends or a romantic partner, but in actuality, the majority spent their free time on their own. When feeling sad or depressed, men from the study most often sought help from their mother or romantic partner...  Suddenly, I understood what Keith Schmidt and all the other Project graduates kept telling me about brotherhood.

“True masculinity is showing love, showing compassion, showing all these things that are traditionally not spoken of as masculinity,” Schmidt told me. “And I think that scares some people.” 

So this seems healthy (if overly expensive).  I'd worry more if the men were finding community via the demonization of others.  

I don't know much about Proud Boys -- All the articles on the web seem to be warning that they are bad.  I can't find anything from the Proud Boys themselves.  They seem to be thoroughly marginalized in our culture. From the NYTimes 9/25/2021:

 As scores of Proud Boys made their way, chanting and shouting, toward the Capitol on Jan. 6, one member of the far-right group was busy texting a real-time account of the march.

The recipient was his F.B.I. handler...  As more and more Proud Boys have been arrested in connection with the attack, the group has been increasingly plunged into an atmosphere of suspicion about the presence of informants in their ranks.  The dark mood started three weeks after the riot when it suddenly emerged that Enrique Tarrio, the group’s leader, had himself worked as a F.B.I. informant well before he joined the Proud Boys.

 

So I think we can rest easy about the possibility of groups like Proud Boys taking over our government.

I do worry about a bi-partisan propaganda campaign aimed at demonizing Russia. My view is that the same group that led us into the disaster in Iraq in 2003 (and Vietnam, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iran, etc.) is calling the shots and demonizing anyone who speaks out against their latest demented warmongering.  We're rushing headlong into another losing war.  I'm trying to figure out how I should deal with this unpleasant situation, but haven't yet had time to write down my thoughts.