UK should get real on Trump ‘praise’ for Prince William
The British press has been talking up Donald Trump’s plain vanilla comment in Paris about Prince William being a “good man” who’s doing a “fantastic job”. It’s the sort of meaningless praise more suited to a milquetoast than Trump, a politician who routinely expresses admiration for strongmen. For, in Trump world, red meat rules. On policy and in the culture wars. Excerpts from This Week, Those Books. Sign up at https://thisweekthosebooks.substack.com/ and get the post and podcast the day it drops
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The Big Story:
America’s incoming Trump administration has triggered a conversation about red meat issues — literally and metaphorically — which revolve around the international political order, culture and gender.
Hours after Donald Trump’s November 5 election win, France’s president recommended Europe junk its “herbivore” preferences or “the carnivores will win”.
…ascendant in the US is the manly-man worldview of influential members of Trump’s inner circle, which includes podcast bros, crypto bros, tech bros and the bro of bros, Elon Musk. According to Janice Min, editor in chief of a “hit Hollywood newsletter”, a new-Trump-era in entertainment is dawning with sports and “white guy with a gun” shows.
This Week, Those Books:
A passionate argument in favour of eating meat.
A scholar argues that meat is macho.
A Nobel Prize-winning writer on one woman’s vegan battle.
The Backstory:
Trump’s oldest son, Don Jr, as well as private-sector entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, all champion so-called red meat policy positions and language.
Musk funds a political action committee that leaned into sexist attacks during the election campaign. He has amplified a social media post that suggested only “high status males” should run the government.6 And he told a podcast popular with young men that “animals will not make any difference to global warming…Eat as much meat as you want”.
Ramaswamy, a strict vegetarian, espouses a tough worldview sans “the poison of wokeism and climatism and transgenderism”…
Don Jr’s three-year-old hunting- and outdoors-focused lifestyle media brand Field Ethos is targeted at “the unapologetic man” aged between 25 and 55…
This Week’s Books:
The Shameless Carnivore: A Manifesto for Meat Lovers
By: Scott Gold
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Year: 2008
This “call to arms” against woke-ism is in tune with the current moment. Scott Gold, who really loves all kinds of meat, argues that its consumption is “a very natural, instinctual, beneficial, even spiritual human act”. While acknowledging that human beings are omnivores rather than carnivores technically speaking, he says meat-eating may be a civilising influence…
Choice quote:
“…glorious trifecta of the American male id: sexy girls, fast cars, and, of course, red meat”.
The Sexual Politics of Meat
By: Carol J Adams
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Year: 1990
When first published, this book was in line for an award for the most ludicrous title. Decades later, it could be seen as the harbinger of a movement…
Adams makes a powerful case for unpicking traditional notions that equate meat consumption with virility, dominance and power…
Choice quote:
…“As Susan Faludi shows in The Terror Dream, after 9/11 the media hyped John Wayne-like masculinity, Superman-like male powers, and the hypervirility of rescuers and politicians…
The Vegetarian
By: Han Kang
Publisher: Portobello Books
Year: 2015
Nobel literature laureate Han Kang’s novel is about one woman’s struggle to break free of the cycle of violence — within and without. It puts the concept of vegetarianism through its paces. Is it a madness, an obsession, an extreme attack on tradition? Or is it a justified resistance against patriarchy?…This novel links the two themes of the week’s other books. That eating meat is a necessary good. And that vegetarianism can be an act of resistance against violence.
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Originally published at This Week, Those Books
