Yes it’s an illogical and simplified response to the madness of world affairs, but on reflection it’s no less mad than burning down a thriving economy to make a statement about power and masculinity.
I’ve been a fan of the manbag for a long time.
Just as Mr Trump thinks “tariff” is the most beautiful word in the dictionary because it shows how tough he is, I think “manbag” is the most beautiful word in the male wardrobe because it shows how enlightened I am.
While most men of my vintage struggle along with trouser pockets bulging with wallets and card clips holding phones and car keys in their hands, I can jump fences and be first in line at the footy turnstile with my manbag over my shoulder jammed with tickets, car keys and even a gun or two.
Of course, wearing a manbag could potentially label you as a radical left lunatic who supports diversity, equity and inclusion or is even, God forbid, a bit woke.
But to me, a manbag makes sense because all my belongings are in one place, and I don’t waste time looking for things. It’s as simple as that.
But in blokesworld if something is simple then it must also be stupid and possibly effeminate, so blokes spend a lot of energy deliberately making simple things complicated so they look important. Ball games, cooking, Lego, gardening, conversation, wine — all these things are made to look difficult because it makes blokes look important and in control of complicated things.
You wouldn’t think the most powerful country in the world would need to make itself look important and in control, but it does because it’s run by blokes.
When the US government introduced its tariff shock to the world, it produced a terrifyingly complex Einsteinian formula to explain it.
But the formula used to decide on reciprocal tariffs for each country is relatively simple — the trade deficit for US goods with a particular country is divided by the total goods imported from that country and then divided by two.
If that wasn’t tortuous enough, the White House press people produced a formula with Greek symbols and other runes only meaningful to quantum physics experts and Lord of the Rings devotees.
To the rest of the reeling world, the formula was meant to convey serious man business: “We’ve done the research, and this is what you owe us”.
Here's a sentence and a half from the statement of the Executive Office of the President:
“Consider an environment in which the US levies a tariff rate of T_i on country i and D T_i reflects the change in tariff rate. Let e< 0 represent the elasticity of imports... ”
This could mean wow there’s some serious voodoo magic going on here, so these guys must really know what they’re doing.
On the other hand, it could simply mean this manosphere has disappeared up its own vanishing point.
If you need quantum physics to explain why you’re placing a higher tax on people, then something’s going seriously, and in this case comically, wrong.
What these people need to do is to stop acting like New York gangsters strutting the world stage pretending they know what they’re doing.
They need to talk in plain English, simplify their, and everyone else’s, lives and stop waving grand macho plans around in public for everyone to see and take note of.
They need manbags.
John Lewis is a former journalist at The News.
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