In recent years, and more dramatically in recent months, global politics has seen a notable shift toward ‘masculinized’ messaging —brash, combative, performative, and increasingly authoritarian. This isn’t just a narrative shift away from an equitable, egalitarian, and respectful tone or about who holds office, although that greatly determines political course. It is a dangerous drift of how leadership is enacted: power over empathy, dominance over cooperation.
Nowhere has this shift been more visible, or more influential, than in the United States, where the state is employing war language against migrants at home while funding wars abroad. This political tone, set by the U.S., is currently echoing far beyond its borders, reshaping the language and posture of power around the world. And make no mistake: I can personally bear witness that this tone of toxic leadership, where intimidating posture trumps respect of human dignity, is shaping behaviors of institutions and their thralls also in the country of my birth down to the tiers of basic agents, people like you and me.
I am writing this from the US, where I am visiting my family for the first time in two years and where evidence of this shift in political tone was on display at JFK airport. Upon arrival, my family of five (only one of whom is not a US-citizen) were instructed to stand in the border control line for non-citizens. When we reached the desk, my Lebanese husband was instructed to take our children to collect our luggage while I was taken aside because my “passport needed to be verified.” I was brought to another room and after a 15-minute wait, I was questioned for 30 minutes. I was asked about my family members and my husband’s family members: their places of residence and their occupations. I was asked about my life in Lebanon: my home, work, my children, and why I lived there. I was asked about why I came to Lebanon in the first place and why I wanted to come to Lebanon: my motivation for pursuing a masters degree, my relationship with my husband. I was asked about all the trips I had taken in the last several years.
In the same room, an American student from Columbia University, also in questioning, asked why he had been selected for interrogation and was also told that his passport needed to be verified. Another man traveling with his elderly mother from Jordan (citizenship unclear to me) explained that he had accompanied her to help her while she visited family members. He was told flatly that he should have stayed home—she didn’t need help. I don’t know what purpose this use of resources and information gathering served—but I do know that those of us in that room were treated like suspects by virtue of—as far as I could tell—the countries we travelled from or universities we attended.
Across continents, leaders have either borrowed from or attempted to shirk this style of vilifying opponents and reducing policy to tweets and threats. In this new arena, space for complexity shrinks and democracy becomes a game of chest-beating rather than service.
One of the most devastating outcomes of this shift has been the sidelining of the care economy. In the U.S., investment in education, healthcare, humanitarian work, and environmental care has withered –ostensibly to decrease public debt, though the Trump administration’s ‘one big beautiful bill’ (the chest thumping resounds) which increases national debt by upwards of four trillion makes a lie of that priority. While budgets for care have been gutted, billions continue to flow into the military-industrial complex. Trump’s proposed budget –yet to pass in the senate—would bring military spending to over $1 trillion in the coming year.
American-made and U.S.-funded bombs still drop on Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and now Iran, even as that same region is cut off from American humanitarian aid. The most hopeful development in this scenario came after two weeks of mutual aggression: further escalation is in nobody’s interest. But despite of this loudly proclaimed win of voluntary restraint of masculine power politics at the brink of the abyss of total war, the geopolitical lessons from the first half of this year have been clear: aggression will not be thwarted but acclaimed; destruction is funded; dignity is not. Reversing this course means redefining leadership as responsibility first and foremost, and it means restoring the moral balance between what we build and what we break.
