UFC 309. Jon Jones drops Stipe Miocic with a devastating liver kick. He does the Trump dance, is congratulated by Joe Rogan, then jumps the Octagon, hands his belt to President-elect Donald Trump, and shares a bro moment with him.
Something significant happened here. In the modern-day coliseum, shortly after the greatest heavyweight fighter in UFC history fell to the greatest fighter of all time, the victor handed the most prestigious belt in combat sports to the incoming president. This president, who had just achieved a historic electoral victory, entered the coliseum to a deafening roar of testosterone. He was flanked by his crew: the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, and the symbolic heir to American royalty, RFK Jr.
Whoa. What a scene. After Trump’s reelection, the “most dangerous philosopher in the world,”
, declared this movement the bro-revolution1.
Arguably, the bros won this election for Trump, whose strategy included going on a podcast tour full of bros, culminating in a conversation with the apex bro, Joe Rogan. Headlines about winning the “bro vote” proliferated throughout the election…
The Bro Vote: Trump and Harris Duel Over What It Means to Be a Man in America - USA Today
How Barron Trump and the “Bro Vote” Helped Sway the US Election - Vice
Trump won the bro vote, and now the bros are shaping the political landscape. This was not what the prophets of good opinion had predicted. In 2012, two books about the fate of men were released, which I read back-to-back. The first one was by feminist Hanna Rosin, titled The End of Men: And the Rise of Women.
The book painted a grim predicament for men: women have overtaken men in the workplace, holding more middle management roles, outnumbering men in college enrollments and completion, and earning more master's and doctoral degrees. Rosin argues that modern institutions, such as the office and academia, better suit women’s temperaments. As
recently claimed, academia has now become women’s work. Men have fallen behind in many areas that imbue societal status.Moreover, the supposed privileged class of men is 3 to 4 times more likely to commit suicide, represents over 90% of incarcerated individuals, and accounts for over 90% of workplace fatalities. They make up the bulk of the worldwide homeless population, have lower life expectancy, higher rates of substance abuse, lose the vast majority of custody cases, and are the main cannon fodder for war. The claim that the average bro is privileged today is laughable and amounts to gaslighting.
Yet, the messaging from the mainstream media since the “Great Awokening”—when woke messaging became the assumed good opinion in mainstream media around 2010—has been that bros are privileged, and:
Problematic
Misinformation spreaders
Conspiracy theorists
Science deniers
Toxically masculine
Sexist, racist, fascist
NAZI
Blahblahblahblahblahblahblah
The bros don’t care anymore.
They don’t care about being perceived as a bad person or appearing like a good person. They don’t care about being seen as intelligent or being thought of as stupid. They don’t care about empty status markers…the bros just wanted to be left alone.
But they were not left alone. The Culture War Left overplayed their hand—they went after their games, their beer, their cars—and created a superbug, or rather, a superbro, who is now immune to all and any “thought-terminating clichés,” trite phrases meant to shut down thought. Words cannot stop them. The bros are now political. The bros are taking charge. It’s Mojo Dojo Casa House time, baby.
“Broscience” is slang for knowledge claims originating from the bodybuilding community, sharing practical advice not based on scientific consensus. It is usually looked down upon, but the positive framing is that it represents a goal-oriented empiricism grounded in trust networks. A political equivalent has now emerged: bropolitics.
This is where the masculine logic of getting things done predominates over stuffy academic pretentiousness. Signaling that one is a good or smart person is irrelevant; instead, flexing what one can achieve with efficiency is prioritized. The pinnacle of bropolitics, to date, is exemplified by Elon Musk’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
For better or worse, the bro-revolution is here, and I am here for it. I love my fellow bros. Sure, there are bad bros, unruly bros, and “boys will be boys” bros. But don’t be fooled—there are far more good ones than bad. Bros who love their mothers, wives, and daughters. Bros for Christ, for God, and for all things holy. And yes, bros who love their fellow bros.
The good bros who strive to be wise bros have their work cut out for them, as they’ll discover that the real holders of power are not their fellow bros, but the true “patriarchy”—neoliberal pathocrats2: sociopathic males, likely entity-possessed, who seek to trauma-bond the world. In fact, by passing the test of enduring the onslaught of gaslighting from the Culture War Left, the bros are now better equipped to see through the dark manipulations of these pathocrats.
It will not be easy. In this new age of bropolitics, the bros will need to embrace the practical wisdom found in the other book I read alongside Rosin’s in 2012: The Way of Men by Jack Donovan.
Forget reading Iron John, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, The Way of the Superior Man, or No More Mr. Nice Guy—the best book for men about men, detailing the ethos of men, is Donovan’s The Way of Men. His main argument is that the way of men is the way of the gang: that masculinity is amoral, and being a “good man” is different from being “good at being a man” (demonstrating deep competency at life). Without the latter, you’ll never truly achieve the former. The gangway of brotherhood is where many men choose to go to become good.
Bro culture is currently an ersatz brotherhood—containing the spirit of brotherhood but often falling short due to the simple hedonism that defines it. I predict that as bro consciousness and political consciousness intersect, the bros will turn to brotherhood in a deeper way. If power is not held with something sacred in the heart, it will deeply corrupt.
If the bro-revolution is to succeed, genuine brotherhoods need to return. To meet power and avoid being corrupted by it, neither hedonistic bonding nor political theories will suffice; only a deep spiritual love from one bro to another will provide the protection needed to confront what lies ahead.
If you have any questions, insights, feedback, or criticism on this entry or more generally, message me below (I read and respond on Saturdays) …