Hypermasculinity is a psychological term for the exaggeration of malestereotypicalbehavior, such as an emphasis on physical strength, aggression, and sexuality. This term has been used ever since the research conducted by Donald L. Mosher and Mark Sirkin in 1984. Mosher and Sirkin operationally define hypermasculinity or the “macho personality” as consisting of three variables:
Callous sexual attitudes toward women
The belief that violence is manly
The experience of danger is exciting
They developed the Hypermasculinity Inventory (HMI) designed to measure the three components.[1] Research has found that hypermasculinity is associated with sexual and physical aggression towards women[2][3][4] and perceivedgay men.[2] Prisoners have higher hypermasculinity scores than control groups.[5]
While popular identification of hypermasculine traits tends to revolve around the outward physical aspects of violence, danger and sexual aggression, much less consideration is given to the emotive characteristics that define those men deemed “hypermasculine”. Hypermasculine attitudes can also include emotional self-control as a sign of toughness.[6] To be emotionally hardened or indifferent, especially toward women, is to display what Thomas Scheff calls “character” – composure and impassiveness in times of great stress or emotion.[7] Of this hypermasculine stoicism, Scheff observes, “it is masculine men that have ‘character’. A man with character who is under stress is not going to cry and blubber like a woman or child might.”
Self-imposed emotional monitoring by men has also greatly affected the conditions in which they communicate with women.[6] Ben-Zeev, Scharnetzki, Chan and Dennehy (2012) write of a recent study that has shown many men to deliberately avoid behaviours and attitudes such as compassion and emotional expression, deeming these traits feminine and thus rejecting them altogether. Scheff adds, “The hypermasculine pattern leads to competition, rather than connection between persons.”[7] In the context of intimate or emotional communication (especially confrontation) with women, the masculine male often withdraws emotionally, refusing to engage in what is termed affective communication (Scheff). In a similar study of affective communication behaviours, gender contrast – the deliberate or subconscious negation by one sex of the behaviours of the other – was far more evident within the young boys used as test subjects than of the girls.
Where this insistence on emotional indifference manifests in the physical definitions of hyper masculinity is discussed by Scheff: “Repressing love and the vulnerable emotions (grief, fear and shame, the latter as in feelings of rejection or disconnection) leads to either silence or withdrawal, on the one hand, or acting out anger (flagrant hostility), on the other. The composure and poise of hypermasculinity seems to be a recipe for silence and violence.“[7]
Ben-Zeev, Scharnetzki, Chang and Dennehy point toward images in the media as the most important factor influencing hypermasculine behaviour, stating “After all, media does not only reflect cultural norms but can and does transform social reality”.[6] This is based on the fact that physical and emotional elements of hypermasculine behaviour are manifested regularly in advertising, Hollywood film, and even in video games through the use of very strong imagery: muscular men overpowering women in advertisements, actors portraying staunch male characters who do not give in to the emotional appeals of their female counterparts and countless video games whose story lines are based strictly on violence. The constant availability of these images for every-day public viewing and use has indeed paved the way for the construction of a system of re-enactment (consciously or unconsciously) by both men and women, of the values they perpetuate (Ben-Zeev et al.).[6]
Brian Krans describes the results of a study in which advertisements in men’s magazines were analyzed for hypermasculine appeal: “The team found that at least one hypermasculinity variable appeared in 56 percent of the 527 advertisements they identified. Some magazines’ advertisements included hypermasculine messages a whopping 90 percent of the time.“[8] Krans reports that the researchers were concerned that such ads, which are generally aimed at young male audiences, are playing a very prominent role in shaping the still-developing attitudes toward gender of these young men.
In the gaming industry, hypermasculinity is experienced mainly through the fantastic and often violent situations presented in the gameplay, and as well by the typical design and character traits of the playable characters: often powerfully built, bold and full of bravado and usually armed. “The choice of female characters and actions within games leaves women with few realistic, non-sexualized options“, while female characters, like Lara Croft, are but illusions of female empowerment, and instead serve only to satisfy the gaze of men.[9]
Hypermasculine styles in gay male culture are prominent in gay disco groups of the 1970s such as Village People, and are reflected in the BDSM gay subculture depicted in the film Cruising (1980). The term “hypermasculine” also characterizes a style of erotic art in which male figure’s muscles and penis/testicles are portrayed as being unrealistically large and prominent. Gay artists who exploit hypermasculine types include Tom of Finland and Gengoroh Tagame.
An article titled “Marketing Manhood in a ‘Post-Feminist’ Age” by Kristen Barber and Tristan Bridges also highlights the existence of hypermasculine traits in advertising. Old Spice, a predominantly male hygiene brand, used an image of Isaiah Mustafa in a tub dressed as a cowboy with the slogan “Make Sure Your Man Smells Like a Man” to advertise for their products. Both Barber and Bridges find that the ad is problematic because of the subliminal support for the idea that a distinct so-called masculine scent exists and the fact that it seeks to perpetuate stereotypical male characteristics. The advertisement also strategically dresses Mustafa as a cowboy to represent a hardworking, rough man in an attempt to create a greater appeal towards men to look and smell like him.[10]
The media’s influence in creating gendered behaviours operates strongly upon women. In the same way that male consumers seek to conform to the physical and emotional characteristics predicated by stereotypes in visual media, so too do women tend to fall into the trap of conforming to the imagined social norms.[8] Only, the media encourages them to fulfill the roles of the submissive and subservient women depicted in advertisements and commercials; in other words, the system pressures women to assume their roles as the focal points of the violence and sexual callousness of men. “Advertisements depicting men as violent (particularly towards women) is disturbing, because gender portrayals in advertisements do more than sell products. They also perpetuate stereotypes and present behavioural norms for men and women.”[7]
Societal expectations have propagated the formation of gender roles between what is deemed masculine and feminine. However, these gender roles can have negative impacts of men and their mental wellbeing. If a man is unable to meet the designated masculine criteria, it can oftentimes lead to feelings of insecurity, inferiority, and overall psychological distress.[11] Some may also believe that an inability to live up to a certain gender role may jeopardize their social capital in their communities.
Scholars assert that colonizers’ perception of the colonial black subject as an uncivilized, primitive, “irrational nonsubject“[12] served as justification for the traumas inflicted on them, and that the legacy of such a perception is still evident in today’s society. As a means of resistance, black men project hyper-masculinity in order to combat the feelings of powerlessness that are imposed on them by an “abusive and repressive” society.[13] However, this merging of black identity and masculinity has “overdetermine[d] the identities black males are allowed to fashion for themselves”,[14]perpetuating negative stereotypes of all black men as inherently violent and dangerous.
This continued stereotype of aggression and hyper-masculinity is due to the environment in which young African American males are raised. Adolescents raised in distressed communities are more inclined to adhere to violence and this is due to the multiple factors that coerce violence in these communities.[15] These factors support the notion of community violence, being exposed continuously to the use of guns, knives, and drugs.[16] Research has shown that 45% and 96% of African American youth that live in urban areas have seen community violence from assault to murder.[17] This continuous exposure to violence brings a normality of the idea that aggression supports authority.[18] This sense of a need to hold authority is a crucial development that leads to hyper-masculinity in black men.
Other than the environment, another imperative factor to a child’s growth are the parents or adults that surround them. These relationships are a big variable in the growth and development of the youth.[19] They are measured by Social Capital which is the amount of time parents spend with their children, how close they are to each other, and anything that is given to the children that will increase their social development.[20] One main factor that decides a child’s relationship and view of authority is based on the parents’ strictness.[21] This strictness is shown by parents controlling their sons and enforcing an expectation of masculinity. For example, expecting them not to cry, to deal with problems themselves and even forcing them to play sports. Young black men that were raised in a strict environment tend to have done better in school and socially, but they also tend to believe they have more authority as they grow older, especially as a man.[22] It is a stereotype that African American families lean towards being more strict than others. This parenting strategy of being strict or harder on young African American boys causes them to suppress their emotions due to this misguided notion that this makes them more of a man.[23] For example, famous actor Will Smith raises his sons in an unorthodox way. He treats his children equally to any other adult which reduces the amount of authority they seek and the amount of masculinity his sons feel they need. A quote from the famous artist Donald Glover describes the anger that many black males hold for their own hyper-masculinity. He says “Black men struggle with masculinity so much. The idea that we must always be strong really presses us all down – it keeps us from growing.”
In his 2002 book Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic, Mark Anthony Neal states that black masculinity became synonymous with a unified black identity during the Civil Rights Movement. Neal claims that the hyper-masculinity translated as violence within the black community to protect from violence directed at the black community from white America. Black gays and women were sometimes censured outright in an effort to merge black identity with masculinity. Huey P. Newton, in an effort to improve ties, wrote an essay to advocate for a stronger alliance between black political organizations and the women and gay members of their community.[24] In it, he admitted that this popularity of hypermasculinity drives a tendency towards violence and silencing of women and gay men, which didn’t permit these marginalized members to become a part of the black identity.
From the president to stay-at-home protesters, a mask-less face has become a stand-in for manliness.
When reporter BrieAnna Frank showed up to a Honeywell plant last week in Arizona to cover President Donald Trump’s visit, she was sure to wear a mask.
Masks were the reason the president was there: The former aerospace plant in Phoenix has pivoted to producing them in recent months amid a nationwide shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE).
But the dozen or so people who had gathered outside the facility to cheer on the president were not there to support masks. They had their faces uncovered, Frank told Vox.
As she approached members of the crowd to interview them, the conversation quickly got heated. “They started to yell that me and the other journalists there were trying to incite fear and panic and paranoia” by wearing masks, said Frank, who works for the Arizona Republic.
One man in particular seemed to take issue with the male journalists wearing masks, she recalled. “It’s submission, it’s muzzling yourself, it looks weak,” he said, “especially for men.”
9:32 am – myself + other journalists here are being harassed for wearing masks.
One man says: “It’s submission, it’s muzzling yourself, it looks weak – especially for men.”
We’re being accused of fear-mongering, not knowing anything + being “pieces of shit.”
“I felt that it was a statement that people should know about,” said Frank, whose tweets about the encounter went viral. To the crowd in front of the factory, she said, “Masks clearly symbolized something beyond, ‘I am trying to protect my health.’”
They’re not alone. Trump himself declined to wear a mask while being photographed at the plant, though he claims he wore one “backstage.” Vice President Mike Pence was criticized for failing to wear a mask during a tour of the Mayo Clinic in April. And when armed protesters showed up at the Michigan statehouse on April 30 to protest stay-at-home orders amid the coronavirus pandemic, many were mask-free. One shouting, bare-faced man who was photographed at the rally later said he was “not at all” worried about the virus and would never wear a mask — “ever.”
Since the pandemic began, the issue of wearing masks has further exposed America’s racial and gender prejudices. Earlier on, wearing masks was associated with Asian countries and often dismissed because of racist assumptions about those countries. Then, as many cities began to require residents to wear masks, police began targeting black men for covering their faces, profiling them as criminals rather than as people trying to abide by health guidelines. And for a certain subset of mostly white, conservative men, not wearing a mask seems to have become a hallmark of manliness.
It’s not just men — Frank noticed many women among the unmasked Trump supporters gathered at the Honeywell plant. And, of course, many men are happy to follow the recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to cover their faces in public. Still, a narrative has emerged on the right that wearing a mask is weak and refusing to wear one is somehow strong. And that narrative could put everyone at risk.
“One thing about [being] macho is being fearless,” Melanye Price, a political science professor at Prairie View A&M University, told Vox. “But that fearlessness comes at a cost for every single person around you.”
The CDC recommends masks. Not everyone is listening.
Long before the pandemic hit, masks were common in East Asian countries, where they’re seen as a simple way to protect yourself (and others) from disease, as Refinery29’s Connie Wang wrote in March. Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus outbreak began, started requiring them in January. The US was much slower to recommend masks for the general public, but in early April — with confirmed coronavirus cases jumping by the day — the CDC recommended that everyone wear a cloth mask in certain public settings. Some cities, like New York and Los Angeles, began mandating the wearing of masks in certain settings as well.
Like much about the coronavirus, the impact of wearing masks on transmission isn’t entirely clear. But many experts believe that even cloth masks can offer some degree of protection for wearers — and perhaps greater protection for the people around them. The virus seems to spread “when germ-containing droplets make it into a person’s mouth, nose, or eyes,” as Vox’s German Lopez previously reported, and it’s true that “masks stop people from spreading their own droplets.” If everyone wears a mask — including those who are asymptomatic but may still be carrying the virus — it could help halt the spread of Covid-19.
Most Americans appear to be on board with the CDC’s recommendation. In a Morning Consult poll (conducted from April 7 to 9), 72 percent of respondents said they planned to start wearing a face mask in public places over the next two weeks.
Others, however, have chafed at the CDC’s advice. As people around the country protest their state’s shelter-in-place orders, many have appeared in public without masks. One example is the protesters in Michigan, which has become a hotbed of resistance to social distancing restrictions — a defiance Trump has encouraged via his tweets about “liberating” Michigan and other states. And on April 30, hundreds of protesters gathered at the state capitol in Lansing, some of them armed and many of them eschewing masks and standing close together in violation of social distancing guidelines, according to Reuters.
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One of the mask-less protesters was Brian Cash, who was photographed shouting during the event. He later told the Detroit Free Press he believes the coronavirus was “intentionally released” by the Chinese government and that the state’s stay-at-home order is useless because people still go to grocery stores and pharmacies. “So what is the point of staying at home?” he asked.
The resistance to masks has also found support within the Trump administration. Pence, the head of the federal government’s coronavirus response, said he did not wear a mask while touring the Mayo Clinic in April because he is tested for Covid-19 regularly. (He later backpedaled and said he “should have” worn one.) But a mask-less Pence attended two events in Iowa on May 8, the same day his press secretary tested positive for the virus, according to the Intercept. At one of those events, CEOs were reportedly asked to remove their masks before joining Pence onstage.
Trump, meanwhile, has consistently appeared in public without a mask. After he was photographed without one at the Honeywell plant in Arizona, he said he had worn one “backstage,” outside the view of cameras.
“But they said you didn’t need it, so, I didn’t need it,” he went on. “And by the way, if you noticed, nobody else had it on that was in the group.”
For Trump, not wearing a mask may be a way to project masculinity
The Trump administration’s behavior around masks has gendered overtones. For Trump and Pence, not wearing a mask may be a way to project a macho image, Metzl said, playing into “tropes of indestructibility.”
“Appearing to play it safe contradicts a core principle of masculinity: show no weakness,” wrote social sciences professor Peter Glick at Scientific American. “Defying experts’ warnings about personal danger signals ‘I’m a tough guy, bring it on.’”
Trump’s messaging has also helped promote the idea that ignoring the risks of coronavirus is the tough or strong thing to do. Despite warnings from public health experts about the dangers of reopening the country too early, he said at the Honeywell plant that “the people of our country should think of themselves as warriors” because “our country has to open.”
Trump’s militaristic, tough-guy messaging around wearing face masks may be encouraging people to minimize the risk of contracting and spreading coronavirus. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
Such militaristic, tough-guy messaging, along with Trump’s refusal to wear a mask, may encourage ordinary people — especially men — to minimize the risk of coronavirusfor the sake of appearing manly.
While the refusal to wear masks isn’t an exclusively male phenomenon — a Michigan woman was arrested last month after police said she attacked a grocery store employee who told her to leave because she wasn’t wearing a mask — there is some evidence that men may view mask recommendations with more skepticism than women. In the April Morning Consult poll, 76 percent of women said they planned to wear a face mask in public over the next two weeks, compared with 67 percent of men.
Though Trump’s narrative around the virus may be reinforcing gender stereotypes, the issue of masks is revealing Americans’ racial biases as well. While white men have been able to appear in public without masks — and with guns — as part of a protest, black men have been targeted by police, both for wearing and for not wearing masks. In Philadelphia, officers were caught on video forcibly removing a black man from a bus for not covering his face, just one day after the city began requiring it, Fabiola Cineas reported for Vox in April. And a police officer in Miami handcuffed and arrested Armen Henderson, a black doctor who tests homeless people for Covid-19, as he loaded equipment into a van in front of his home — while wearing a mask.
Black Americans often have to engage in “social signaling” to make white people feel comfortable in public spaces, said Price, the political science professor. “You say good morning first, you smile first,” she said. “None of that can be done with masks.”
White people often already perceive black people as dangerous or not belonging in public places, Price said. “But a black body with a mask is something that somehow expresses even more danger.”
Meanwhile, for white protesters like those in Michigan, not wearing a mask may signal a kind of immunity from danger — or at least a perceived immunity. As white Americans, they’re unlikely to encounter the same kind of police brutality that black people face when they engage in protest. “Imagine 10 black men and rifles walking up to any state capitol in the United States,” Price said. “They would be shot before they ever made it up the steps.”
But congregating in crowds without masks is also a statement of perceived immunity from the virus, Metzl said. The unmasked protesters seemed to be sending the message that “nothing’s going to happen to me because of my whiteness,” he explained. “If you thought you were really going to get the coronavirus, you wouldn’t act like that.”
The fact that black and Latinx Americans in many communities are disproportionately likely to become infected and die of Covid-19 may be influencing such attitudes. “I think for a lot of the country, people feel like this is something that’s happening to someone else,” Metzl said.
But people who refuse to wear masks may be putting others, not just themselves, at risk
Obviously, the feeling of invincibility that leads protesters to avoid masks could backfire if they get sick. Pence and Trump may also find themselves rethinking their stance in the coming days since White House officials tested positive — Pence himself is reportedly keeping his distance from Trump and other staffers to avoid potentially exposing them.
But the especially disturbing thing about refusing to wear a mask is that, while it may seem like an expression of toughness, it actually increases the risk to others more than yourself, Metzl said. While some may feel that not wearing a mask expresses their own invincibility, “You could also think about this in terms of all the other people you’re putting at risk by not wearing a mask,” he added — your family, friends, colleagues, the rest of society.The failure to wear one is “symbolic of a kind of loss of a bigger common sense of responsibility to each other.”
People protest Gov. Jay Inslee’s stay-at-home order outside the capitol building in Olympia, Washington, on May 9, 2020. Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images
Remedying that loss is not going to be as simple as sending the message that “tough guys wear masks,” Metzl said. (Washington Post humor columnist Alexandra Petri has suggested a tagline for a potential “Masks For Him” line of accessories: “We put the ‘mask’ in ‘toxic maskulinity.’”) Rather, the country has to look at what the current mask debate says about racism and other prejudices. “What we need is a much more concerted effort to address the bigger issues that are represented by masks,” Metzl said.
For the Arizona Republic’s Frank, the confrontation over masks outside the Honeywell plant is part of a wider narrative around the virus. She recalled another incident in which a female reporter was accosted, this time by a woman, for wearing a mask. “I do think that what happened to all of us out there in the field on Tuesday is indicative of a larger issue” with how masks are viewed in the US, Frank said.
But for her, wearing a mask is about one thing: public health. Frank lives with her mother, a nurse who treats Covid-19 patients. “I try to be really careful,” she told the people gathered outside the plant. “I try to protect myself and those around me.”
The embrace of a more fluid form of masculinity shows that many Chinese are frustrated with the traditional ideas pushed by the establishment.
Mr. Cai belongs to the tribe of “little fresh meat,” a nickname, coined by fans, for young, delicate-featured, makeup-clad male entertainers. These well-groomed celebrities star in blockbuster movies, and advertise for cosmetic brands and top music charts. Their rise has been one of the biggest cultural trends of the past decade. Their image — antithetical to the patriarchal and stoic qualities traditionally associated with Chinese men — is changing the face of masculinity in China.
Innocent as they may seem, the little fresh meat have powerful critics. The state news agency Xinhua denounces what it calls “niangpao,” or “sissy pants,” culture as “pathological” and said in an editorial last September that its popularity is eroding social order. The Beijing newspaper’s decision to include Mr. Cai in its profiles apparently prompted the Communist Youth League to release its own list of young icons: patriotic athletes and scientists, whom it called the “true embodiment” of the spirit of Communist youth.
The government attacks on this evolving idea of masculinity have triggered a strong counter-backlash from fans of the celebrities. And in online essays and posts, defenders of the young men make clear that their preference is more than a youthful countercultural fad. At its heart, the embrace of a more modern, less rigid form of masculinity represents frustration with traditional ideas of manhood.
“The ridiculous condemnation of ‘sissy pants’ men shows the gender ideology of a patriarchal society that equates toughness with men and fragility with women,” a journalist who goes by the name Wusi wrote in an online essay in September, voicing a widely shared opinion.
The official push of traditional masculinity — including reinvented school curriculums and the sponsorship of boys-only clubs — is motivated in part by worries that the decades-long one-child policy produced a generation of timid and self-centered male youth ill equipped to fulfill their social responsibilities.
And in the context of China’s increasing power, the establishment’s preoccupation with promoting old-fashioned, Hollywood-style manliness also has a political message. Just as patriotic intellectuals a century ago argued that national strength derives from the virile energy of the youth, present-day Chinese nationalists see their ambitions take the shape of a macho willingness to fight for righteous causes.
This vision is on display in the 2017 action thriller “Wolf Warrior 2.” The movie, featuring a former People’s Liberation Army soldier caught in an African civil war, showed him putting the lives of local civilians above his own while single-handedly beating American-led mercenaries. The goal of the story, said Wu Jing, its director and lead actor, in media interviews, is to “inspire men to be real men.” The movie went on to become China’s top-grossing film in history.
There is little question about who in real life is meant to best personify the masculine chauvinism characterizing the official line today: Take a stroll down a city street or switch on the television at news hour — and you are greeted by the face of President Xi Jinping with a perennial look of self-assurance and determination.
The Trumps have often been compared to a mob family. Certainly, in the White House, they have created a dark alternative universe with an inverted ethical code, where the main value is loyalty to the godfather above all else.
An anti-Trump group called Mad Dog PAC has a billboard reading: “MAGA, Mobsters Are Governing America.”
.. As Michael Daly noted in The Daily Beast, “Traditionally, rats begin wearing a wire after they get jammed up.”
.. In the taped call, Cohen tells Trump that he has talked to the mogul’s trusted money manager and “Apprentice” guest star, Allen Weisselberg, about how to set up a company to reimburse David Pecker, the National Enquirer owner, for buying off Trump goomah Karen McDougal. Federal investigators in Manhattan now want to interview Weisselberg.
“Long term, this could be the most damaging,” Trump biographer Tim O’Brien told me, “because it gets into Trump’s wallet.”
.. Cohen the Fixer claims Trump knew about the Russian meeting during the campaign with his son and Paul Manafort. The president hit the mattresses on Twitter, denying it all.
.. Rudy Giuliani has somersaulted from a RICO-happy prosecutor to a man acting like a Mafia lawyer, telling Chris Cuomo that Cohen is an “incredible liar” when only three months ago he pronounced him “an honest, honorable lawyer.”
.. If the White House seems more and more like “Goodfellas,” it is not an accident.
“Trump has a very cinematic sense of himself,” O’Brien said. Like many on social media, he is driven to be the star of his own movie. He even considered going to film school in L.A. before he settled into his father’s business.
.. O’Brien recalled that Trump told him that he thought Clint Eastwood was the greatest movie star. “He and Melania model their squints on Eastwood,” the biographer noted. Trump also remarked, while they were watching “Sunset Boulevard” on the Trump plane, that a particular scene was amazing: the one where Norma Desmond obsessively watches her silent films and cries: “Have they forgotten what a star looks like? I’ll show them!”
.. Trump is drawn to people who know how to dominate a room and exaggerated displays of macho, citing three of his top five movies as
“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,”
“Goodfellas” and
“The Godfather.”
.. As a young real estate developer, he would hang out at Yankee Stadium and study the larger-than-life figures in the V.I.P. box:
George Steinbrenner,
Lee Iacocca,
Frank Sinatra,
Roy Cohn,
Rupert Murdoch,
Cary Grant.
He was intent on learning how they grabbed the limelight.
.. “In his first big apartment project, Trump’s father had a partner connected to the Genovese and Gambino crime families,” said Michael D’Antonio, another Trump biographer. “He dealt with mobbed-up suppliers and union guys for decades.
.. “When Trump was a little boy, wandering around job sites with his dad — which was the only time he got to spend with him — he saw a lot of guys with broken noses and rough accents. And I think he is really enchanted by base male displays of strength. Think about ‘Goodfellas’ — people who prevail by cheating and fixing and lying. Trump doesn’t have the baseline intellect and experience to be proficient at governing. His proficiency is this mob style of bullying and tough-guy talk.”
As Steve Bannon noted approvingly, Trump has a Rat Pack air, and as O’Brien said, Trump was the sort of guy who kept gold bullion in his office.
.. Trump’s like a mobster, D’Antonio said, in the sense that he “does not believe that anyone is honest. He doesn’t believe that your motivations have anything to do with right and wrong and public service. It’s all about self-interest and a war of all against all. He’s turning America into Mulberry Street in the ’20s, where you meet your co-conspirators in the back of the candy store.”
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