Death of the American Alpha Male

Okay, this is a subject that has been on my mind for quite some time. And it has to do with all of us, our kids, our future leaders, how we are seen on the world stage, and so much more. But before I get into the current pussification of our youth, I'd like to talk a little about my own youth, particularly the culture I grew up in. I imagine most men and women ages of 35-and-up will relate to what I'm about to say, at least to some degree, depending on where you grew up. I am personally about to turn 45 years-old, and when I was growing up, boys were boys. There was no such things as gay boys and girls. Parents weren't teaching their kids how to be gay, or that it is okay to want to act and dress like a girl if you're a boy. Boys were boys and girls were girls. Boys played sports and played rough with each other, establishing their alpha pecking order. Girls played with dolls, or did their makeup, or sprinkled glitter... Okay, I have NO idea what young girls did, but there was a certain social norm. I remember being outside all day long, playing from sun up till sun down. Baseball in the morning, basketball in the afternoon, maybe some tackle football before dinner. Girls... aw, forget it, I'm 45 and still don't know what girls do. But I CAN talk about boys. We roughhoused, we wrestled, we fished, we played sports, we built forts, we climbed tress, we swam in the lake, and we got in fights when we disagreed with each other. We were physical, and I can proudly say I was usually the most physical of all my friends. The only kids who could beat me up were three grades ahead of me and a foot taller. I loved to fight, and I had a temper like an angry bull. I was the personification of a testosterone-fueled alpha male. Think I'm joking? I was suspended three times in kindergarten for fighting. True story. When I reached my teens and entered high school, I quickly realized I was no longer the big dog, the alpha. There were bigger kids, older kids who were much tougher than me. I had to settle into a subservient role, one I was not comfortable with. Consequently, got kicked out of school after only 9 weeks, for fighting and generally being a jackass. Since all my friends were now playing organized sports in high school, I was unable to really continue playing sports. Which sucked because I was always a really good athlete. I ended up getting into lifting weights, mainly because I wanted girls to like me. YES! Back then girls liked guys who were buff and bold and brutish. Can you believe it??? Imagine that! What really inspired me was a neighborhood tough guy by the name of Gino Bianchette. Even though he was kind of a dick who threw his weight around, he was a handsome guy with big muscles, and all the girls fawned over him. Now, there were other handsome guys around, but the girls loved Gino for three reasons: (A) He was musclebound, (B) he liked to fight, and (C) he was musclebound. He was a typical alpha. I wanted to be like him, and through a strange series of events, which included me almost shooting him, we became friends and I started working out with him, hanging with him and his pack of alpha males. Soon I gained some muscle and edged my way up the pack hierarchy, mostly by fighting and proving I could kick asses. Girls who once looked through me like I was invisible, were suddenly flirting with me, feeling on my muscles, slipping me their number, whispering in my ear how they wanted me to meet them at their house after the party. And they would do it while my girlfriend was standing ten feet away, looking in the other direction. Oh, it was good to be an alpha male back then. Eventually, by the time I was 19, I was co-pack leader with Gino, as we were the two toughest in our crew. All my boys were alpha males in their own right, tough guys who loved to fight and brawl, guys who lifted weights by day and chased girls by night, but there was a pecking order for sure. And me and Gino stood firmly atop it. Now I am not saying that every male back then was an alpha male. Of course there were lesser "packs," so to speak, and even the nerds, but they all wanted to BE an alpha male. Guys from the lesser packs wanted to be part of our pack, our crew, because we were the true alpha males in the neighborhood. That's just how it was. When we walked into a party, all attention was on us. All the girls wanted handsome, musclebound guy to call their own, someone who looked tough and WAS tough, someone who would fight for them, a guy who looked like he could protect them. This is NOT the case today. My, times have changed! I spent last week down in the Detroit area. While we were in one particular restaurant having dinner, I glanced around and took in all the young males. Most were clad in ridiculous skinny jeans, showcasing their sickly frail legs. Most were skinny, pale, and had bad skin. Almost all of them were staring down at their phones, narrow shoulders slouched, as they ate their food or talked to their girlfriend or the other scrawny guys with them. At one point I looked over and saw two SUPER effeminate gay guys sitting across from each other. One was wearing a pink button-up and he had a perpetually scared look on his face, as if the air around him was simply terrifying. My ears tuned to their conversation and it sounded like two women talking. They were just bantering back and forth, gossiping like two teenage girls. I was waiting for one of them to pull out his purse and apply some makeup. When I went to use the restroom, I was lost because I came to two doors that said "Gender Neutral." WTF? So I can be standing there at the urinal, draining the main vein, and an old lady or young girl can just walk in? LOL As if their age matters. Every single day, more and more I think to myself, "Yo what and the hell happened to this world while I was in prison???" Today, young boys don't want to go outside and play sports, or go fishing, or ride their bikes. No, they can play video game sports right on their Xbox or PSwhatever. Fishing? Bike riding? Oh, I'm sure there is a game for that too. I see these little kids with their mothers at stores. Pale, grey-eyed little zombies who eat processed garbage and play video games all day. If they go outside in the sun, they might wither and die like a vampire. I saw one kid who had to be at least ten bump his arm on the corner of a shelf at the grocery store. He literally bust into a fit of crying, as if he had just broken a bone. I was like "Really, kid? I fell out of a tree from 20 feet up when I was your age. Bruised my body from head to toe. Had a two inch gash on my head that was leaking like a sieve. I literally stood up and started laughing. Then I walked a half mile home, where my dad stitched up the gash with no anesthetic because his cheap ass didn't want to pay the doctor bill." I think a lot of it has to do with two major factors: First, bad parenting. Parents, listen to me, take away their phones and devices. Encourage them to get outside and engage the REAL world. It will make all the difference when they grow up. Second, nutrition. Poor nutrition results in low hormone levels, which results in, well, the development of a pansy. Feed the kid some meat, some real fish, some chicken. Get rid of the chips and sugary cereals, the instant dinners and canned whatever. Have protein bars laying around instead of candy bars. Teach them to look up to people like football and basketball players, not professional gamers and gay talk show hosts. Encourage them to play real sports and exercise. Take them fishing. For the love of God, take them fishing!!!! I promise it will make them have a better future. There is nothing wrong with being an alpha male, even if this new era of pampered millennials like to project that it is. They liken being an alpha to being a sexist and male chauvinist. They are intimidated by a masculine man. This new culture seems to want everyone to be equal--men, woman, transwhatever. No, we will never be equal. There will always be alpha males, and they will always have an edge over the weaklings, the scrawny mush-brained zombies with weak jaws, narrow shoulders, and twig legs. I'm coming to realize that in this new world the alpha male is a dying breed. And I am a relic, a dinosaur left over from a bygone era, when packs of alphasaurs rex ruled the land and ate the weak, because it was the Darwinian way. So much has changed. Everything is so different. Up is down, right is left. But I am a time traveler. I went in one world and came out into this one 13 years later. "The Land of Confusion." <--My homage to Phil Collins and Genesis. But alas, all is not lost. I may be aging but I am still an alpha male. I can bench press almost 400 lbs and deadlift almost 600. I can whup any 5 skinny-jean-wearing millennials, and destroy them at their sport of choice. I can out fish them, out hike them, out bike them, out whatever them. And from time to time I will see another alpha. In a store, at a gas station, in the gym. Wherever. Our eyes will lock and we size each other up, as two alpha lions might do as they pass each other in the jungle. Sometimes we might offer a nod, a sad acknowledgement that we may be the last of our kind. When we are gone, there will be no more. The only thing left will be skinny jeans and dead-eyed phone zombies who subside off of soda and fast food. That is, unless we start right now teaching our boys, from a young age, that it is okay to be a tough, rough-housing, fighting, ass kicking male who eats the weak and smashes everything in his path till he stands at the top of the heap. Not all will get there, but it is the fight that counts. It will teach them character and ready them for the cold hard realities of the real world, where there are no participation trophies, and the toughest, smartest, and baddest badasses are the ones who will win the game of life. The alpha males.