Put 'Em Up

On hitting people

Matt Walsh makes an excellent point in this video, if an unpalatable one. He cannot make it using the language his critics insist he use, however, because the point he is making is about the way he uses language.

Were Walsh to use the language of his critics, his argument might be summed up thus:

1. Insisting that others adjust their language to suit your preferences or sensibilities rather than addressing their argument is always an attempt to socially dominate them.

2. This is true regardless of whether the attempt to change their language is aimed at their words or their tone.

3. An attempt to socially dominate another person is an act of aggression, and it is appropriate to resist aggression.

Language and tone policing is a weapon predominantly deployed against men in our culture. It is a stick that has been wielded against masculinity for so long that the flinch response it induces is completely ingrained on a cultural level.

Women in particular have grown so accustomed to hitting men with the language stick with impunity that the feminine reaction to appropriate male aggression in response is one of affront. It is assumed that men will just sort of take correction of their language from women (and from effeminate men who have taken on the condescending tone used by women to remonstrate with “wayward” men), even women with whom they are not personally acquainted.

The specific social rule violation in this case is fairly subtle. The illustration below refers to Transactional Analysis, a theoretical psychological framework developed by psychologist Eric Berne and explicated in detail in his excellent book Games People Play.

The reason his critics keep calling Walsh “mean” is that they are crybullies.

Mechanically, crybullying works like this:

Crybullies use Child language to refer to their enemies as if they are “mean” Parents while simultaneously condescending to them by using the tone of a Parent to refer to their enemy as if he is a Child. The confusion this generates stems from the fact that the tone and language of a crybully are at odds with one another

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, and neither one is an Adult —> Adult transaction, which is a reasonable expectation in terms of tone and language to use when speaking to, with, or about another Adult.

Said another way, Walsh’s critics are engaging in a crossed transaction; they are speaking of (and indirectly to) him linguistically from the Parent postion to the Child position and tonally from the Child positon to the Parent position. Walsh is responding by speaking from the Adult position, occasionally lapsing into Parent —> Child himself, as an illustration

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The appropriate, Tonic response to that mismatched tone and language (neither of which are even slightly appropriate in context) is to call it out forcefully, and continue to do so until the conversation returns to the topic nominally being discussed. Know the social rules, insist that they be followed by all parties in the conversation, and don’t let up until they are. Backstop men who do this in your presence.

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Speaking only for myself, I don’t enjoy aggressive energy, and I didn’t enjoy watching this video. I’ve been vocal in my praise of a prestige-oriented system, which is based on building people and institutions of substance rather than taking that energy from others, and the energy that comes from an aggressive place doesn’t taste good to me.

However.

Whether I enjoy watching a smart, capable streetfighter ripping others to pieces in public is orthogonal to whether I believe it is appropriate to engage in aggressive self-defense. In point of fact, I am 100% on board the aggressive self-defense train. It is Tonically Masculine to be both capable of hitting and willing to hit the “GO” switch when it is warranted.

I don’t like watching Walsh do this, to be clear. The gentle, remonstrating tone he uses in the video contrasted with the calculated cruelty of his language makes me feel ill.

I do unreservedly have his back, and I would unreservedly have his back, one way or another, were he to do this in my presence IRL. What his opponents are doing is much, much worse than what he is doing, and it requires aggressive pushback as a corrective. It’s bad enough when the Left does it; that behavior doesn’t need to get normalized on the Right.

There are people I openly loathe for whom I’d take a bullet without a second thought, and there are people I like very much who I could leave to die in the wilderness without losing a moment’s sleep. The difference between the two groups is that everyone in the first group is principled and everyone in the second is unprincipled. Men who act on principle are entitled to my support, and they should be entitled to yours, too.

If you want men to be nice, use carrots, not sticks.

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1. Someone who intentionally introduces a dissonant element into conversation should prick your ears up; it is a red flag that may indicate you’re dealing with a comedian, but more often indicates you’re dealing with a bully. Deliberately inducing disharmony is an abuse tactic employed by abusers to dysregulate a victim’s system, and people who do it habitually bear watching.

Walsh does this a lot, which is why I don’t like watching him, but he deploys energetic dysregulation on a tactical level explicitly, at his ideological enemies. As such, while they would call him a bully, I believe he goes in a different box—he’s a first-rate technical fighter, and he’s engaged in urban combat with other combatants in the culture war. Unlike victims of bullying, they actually did sign on for this, and if they can’t fight back, that’s their lookout. The ones who are complaining are just salty because he’s better at it than they are.

2. PUAs and Red Pill types call what Walsh is doing maintaining frame. I call it “being a fucking grown-up.” This is because grown-ups do not allow children to dictate the terms of the conversation.