No Mercy / No Malice: The Manosphere & Robert Mueller

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I'm Scott Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice.

Robert Mueller's life was a masterclass in masculinity.

But that's not the real story here.

Donald Trump's reaction to Mueller's passing is a case study and how not to be a man.

The Manusphere and Robert Mueller.

As read by George Hahn.

I think about masculinity a lot.

I have two sons and the market for good public male role models is experiencing a supply shock.

In his new Netflix documentary Inside the Manusphere, filmmaker Lewis Thoreau chronicles influencers

who cause play as alpha males displaying their fitness and wealth

while vomiting misogynistic garbage regarding men dominating women.

Spoiler alert.

These guys will die alone and forgotten.

They're also painfully boring.

After watching the film Jessica Gross wrote,

the only way for them to maintain the attention of their audiences is to ramp up their behavior.

They go beyond slurs and conspiracy theories to filming sex acts and beating strangers in the streets.

These influencers aren't providing a template for a virtuous life.

They are shills for an attention economy grift.

Tragically, there's never been anyone so adept at grifting the Manusphere than Donald Trump.

He claims to be concerned with the plight of young men, an admirable aim of the Manusphere,

but pedals a loud, crass and ultimately bogus version of masculinity in service of his own enrichment

at the expense of his marks.

In my book Notes on Being a Man, I offer a vision of masculinity that emphasizes the roles

men can play as providers, protectors and pro creators.

Some people have pushed back arguing that my framing overlooks men who don't fit

easily into those categories. Fair. Here's a simpler framework.

Men should add surplus value.

Give more than they take. Leave rooms, relationships and institutions,

better than they found them. That's the whole shooting match.

Try to absorb more complaints than they levy, deescalate conflict, and notice people's lives

without needing to draw attention to their own. Another takeaway from Thoreau's work

calm and intellect, trump physicality and aggression.

The documentarian is slight awkward and owns the room. His honest, unafraid queries

are never mean-spirited, and when his subjects turn on him, he just takes it, see above.

As he knows, he's right. I wish I'd learned earlier in life that being a Man

means occasionally absorbing a blow without responding to restore some fucked-up sense of

equilibrium to the universe.

Final takeaway. Ideology isn't what's driving the Manosphere.

The icons of this realm are grifters. There's always a supplement, a crypto course,

or a trading platform that drains boys, these are boys, economically, in exchange for

an illusory sense of self. Their followers engage because they have a desperate need for community.

The Manosphere, for all its flaws, is a community of men. The left should take notice.

It celebrates and funds almost every special interest group except the one that's fallen

faster than any other group in the last 50 years, young men.

If you're a young man trying to figure out what surplus value looks like in practice,

here's a filter. Are you optimizing for attention or service?

Attention offers a dope a hit that evaporates into the ether, sending you chasing after things

that will never merit mention in your best man's wedding speech. The story your partner tells

about why they chose you or the eulogy your children give. Optimizing for service compounds value

over a lifetime. Last Friday, we lost a great American. Rather than sharing condolences,

or reflecting on Robert Mueller's decades of service, or simply demonstrating some grace,

President Trump wrote, good, I'm glad he's dead. With just five words, Trump personified the

antithesis of masculinity. In contrast, Mueller's life was a case study in what it means to be a man.

He optimized for service. As a Marine Infantry Officer,

prosecutor, FBI director, and finally, special counsel. In addition to a bronze star and

purple heart, he was awarded two invaluable titles, husband and father.

Sociologist Robert Merton coined the term role model in 1957 while studying the socialization

of medical students. He found that we learned scripts from role models teaching us how to behave

in a specific status, doctor, leader, parent, etc. Mueller likely had dozens of great role models,

but it was David Hackett, a classmate and lacrosse teammate at Princeton who provided the leadership script.

After learning that his friend had been killed in combat while serving in Vietnam,

Mueller volunteered for the Marines. As a fortunate son, Mueller was reportedly a credence

clearwater revival fan. He could have sought deferments like Bill Clinton, asked a doctor to write a

note saying he had bone spurs like Trump or had his family pull strings to secure a national

guard spot like George W. Bush. Sociologist Alec Campbell quantified an uncomfortable truth about

the Vietnam War. Someone from the general population was three times to four times more likely

to die in combat than an Ivy League graduate. Mueller's decision to serve was out of step with

a socio-economic cohort, but very much in character. I had one of the finest role models I could have

asked for in an upperclassman by the name of David Hackett. Mueller recalled in a 2013 speech he gave

as FBI director. One would have thought that the life of a Marine and David's death in Vietnam

would argue strongly against following in his footsteps, but many of us saw in him the person

we wanted to be even before his death. Mueller went on. A number of his friends and teammates

joined the Marine Corps because of him, as did I. The Marines lived by a code,

Semper Fidelis, Latin for always faithful to the Constitution and the country, to the Corps,

to their fellow Marines and to the Mission. Mueller served three years on active duty before

attending law school. After a brief stint in private practice, he joined the Department of Justice.

Years later, reflecting on a lifetime of service, Mueller said,

I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many who did not,

and perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute.

Mueller's contributions read like a John Grisham novel. After rising through the ranks as a

prosecutor, he oversaw cases against Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, Gambino crime family boss

John Gotti, and the terrorists who bombed Panam Flight 103 over Lockerby, Scotland.

But it's the work Mueller did outside the spotlight that reveals his character.

In 1995, two years after leaving the DOJ for private practice, Mueller volunteered to return

in a lesser role as a line prosecutor. One day he called me out of the blue and asked if I could

use a homicide prosecutor in my office, recalled the chief federal prosecutor in Washington at the time,

Eric Holder, Jr., later Barack Obama's attorney general.

Our nation's capital was a city in great distress. We were called the murder capital of the United States.

For the next three years, Mueller prosecuted murder cases, helping to bring down the city's homicide

rate. His greatest contribution, however, was leading the FBI for 12 years in the aftermath of 9-11,

restoring public trust while reforming the Bureau to address the systemic failures that had

allowed the worst terrorist attack in American history. Feelty to his mission, sometimes put him at

odds with the Presidents he served. Mueller's counterterrorism agents blew the whistle on

abuses and torture at secret CIA interrogation sites. Later in 2004, Mueller, with his resignation

letter in hand, confronted President George W. Bush about a secret NSA program to spy on Americans.

In his memoir Bush wrote,

I had to make a big decision and fast. I thought about the Saturday Night Massacre. That was not a

historical crisis I was eager to replicate. Fearing others would follow Mueller's lead,

Bush backed down, agreeing to reforms that would narrow the spying program and place it on

more solid legal ground. A year later, Mueller's deputy, James Comey, told an NSA audience,

it takes far more than a sharp legal mind to say no when it matters most. It takes moral

character. It takes an ability to see the future. It takes an appreciation of the damage that will

flow from an unjustified yes. My sons are too young to remember when Trump didn't dominate America's

politics. In their eyes, bragging about grabbing women by the pussy, using your office to enrich

yourself and calling your efforts to avoid STDs, your own personal Vietnam, aren't disqualifying.

The manosphere is teaching their generation that masculinity is performative. Mueller's life

proves the opposite. Masculinity is a lifetime practice. Vietnam wasn't a punchline for Mueller,

but a moral proving ground. As he later said, you were scared to death of the unknown,

more afraid in some ways of failure than death, more afraid of being found wanting. That kind of

fear animates your unconscious. I want my boys to know that kind of fear, to understand that men

aren't measured by social media stats, body counts and bank statements, but by whether they do the

right thing even when it's hard and especially when nobody is looking. The grifters are busy counting

their followers, but real influence comes from planting trees whose shade you'll never sit under.

Should his family choose, Captain Robert Mueller will be laid to rest with full military honors,

a three rifle volley salute, folding of the flag, and taps. In attendance will be many of the 25

high school hockey players he captained, the 50 Marines he commanded, the thousands of colleagues

he served with, his two daughters, five grandchildren, and one wife of 60 years.

Captain Robert Mueller, United States Marine Corps, was 81.

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