Punching Mr. Rogers in the face

There is a strain in “conservative” thought that says that the world is harsh and that “grown up” societies face that honestly and refuse to premise their social hopes on the idea that people or institutions can be made “nice,” “safe” or “gentle.” This strain is a healthy corrective to the often naïve (or just foolish) utopian imaginings of some strains of “progressivism.” But this kind of conservatism claims to recognize – not promote – harshness or aggression.

What I feel like I’ve been seeing more of in public life in North America and Europe is the growth in a cultural attitude that the world should be meaner and harder; not just that it is meaner or harder than progressives want to imagine, but that it ought to be. In other words, that gentleness is weakness, and weakness is repulsive. 

I see this most in the appeal of certain politicians who seem to offer little to the public but spite, insults and demeaning characterizations of vulnerable people. But even on my neighbourhood Facebook groups I’ve seen some of my neighbours getting praised for refusing any compassion for unhoused people and egging one another on to ever more brutal ways of wishing harm and even death on people living with addiction in our neighbourhood. This isn’t just people regretfully reflecting on the harshness of life, but chasing the appeal of hardness.

Vanished ideals

I’m a Gen-Xer, and for many in my generation, Mr. Rogers is a crucial cultural touchstone, even a kind of secular saint. Mr. Rogers offered to us as children a vision of adulthood (even manhood) that was gentle, sympathetic, kind and receptive. Few of us are naïve enough to think that anyone could be that way all the time, but the characteristics he displayed still seemed to many of us as a kind of ideal to work toward.

But there’s an even longer tradition in western culture – now, I think, reasserting itself – that sees the likes of Mr Rogers not just as naïve, but as repulsive and contemptible. This tradition sees aggression, dominance and even cruelty not so much as morally ideal, but as aesthetically appealing or admirable. The virtues of Mr. Rogers, by contrast, are ugly and embarrassing (or, as the kids say, “cringe”). Mr. Rogers is, in this view, a weakling and therefore feminine; a real man insults his enemies, has no muffler on his raised truck, and gets in fights. This is the aesthetics of aggressive masculinity.

These aesthetics have had real-world social and political consequences. Part of the explanation for the cruelty exercised by “normal” people in fascist regimes is the way that those treated “hardness,” “ fanaticism” and “ruthlessness” as attributes to be admired and emulated, and then cultivated them in everything from clothing styles to architecture.

Christians should never forget the pervasive reality of sin in our world – it is not (yet) the City of God. So some of the kind of conservatism that asks us to face up to harshness is necessary. But we mustn’t allow ourselves to fall into the trap of being repulsed by meekness and vulnerability; after all, it’s not the angry and aggressive who shall inherit the earth.