Don’t forget to invite me to the revolution

Progressives: banish the male, pale, and stale vote at your peril

Civil War (USA, 2024)

This is a movie of paradoxes. Some of the scenes felt cheap and CGI’d; some felt so real that I was wondering if they’d had a $500 million budget. (It was $50 million.) The dialogue felt too “written” and stilted, yet much of the action felt gritty and authentic. The movie showed us something huge (a modern-day American Civil War), but did it have anything to say (other than that war is terrible and war photographers are badass)?

At the end of the day, it was a visually thrilling “what could happen” if America descended into civil war. Even though the film was sort of about nothing, I admire the film for its ballsiness and ruthlessness — especially as the film makes its way to a satisfying and shocking finale. B.

I can’t end this critique without reflecting on the film’s racial and gender politics, which are present throughout the movie, though seldom spoken of. Our four heroes are a white woman, a young woman, an old black man, and a Latino man. There are also some “good guy” side characters including three Asian-ethnic war photographers and a black female commando officer.

Pretty much every white guy in the movie is a villain. The message is implicit: the white men are backwards and on their way out of political power. And it’s the women and persons of color who are making their way into the White House.

I probably shouldn’t moan too much. White men have been (and still are) well-represented in heroic roles (Avengers, Superman, Batman, etc.). Look at lists of popular movies from 1980 to 2010. Women have endured, for decades, small and insignificant roles. Some minorities barely got written into screenplays. It gets worse the further back you go.

So, change is good, but, as a progressive white man, sometimes you can’t help but feel left out by your own political tribe. That’s because the messaging isn’t just present in a movie like Civil War. It’s for too long been a message in leftist politics, whether it’s Elizabeth Warren insinuating men are homophobes at a CNN town hall or Hilary Clinton claiming “the future is female.” (Wasn’t the past and isn’t the present female, too?) The Democratic Party platform, on its “Who We Serve” page, says the party serves African Americans, Latinos, the LGBTQ+ community, and women—basically everybody except men.

In the wake of the Harris announcement, Michael Moore issued a self-flaggelatory screed against men: “This Country Is Female, Young and Not-So-White Anymore.” He goes on to say America is no longer “the exclusive club for the gender missing its second X chromosome, which then makes you prone to war, violent outbursts, something called ‘mansplaining,’ harassing the other gender, dying on average 6 years before that other gender.”

With language and cultural messaging like this, it’s no wonder why politically homeless men flock to the Republican Party and the right-leaning manosphere, where men get accepted as they are.

The exclusionary messaging — for a movement or political party — is self-defeating. Progressive politicians will always have my vote, but other men are less firm in their ideological associations. White men may be weakening as a demographic, but one should think twice before banishing the 80 million white, male, over-40 vote.

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