SUZY WEISS: My Takeaway from the WHCD? Dudes Rock.
When I got up soon after, I was shuffled to the front of the room to get to my sister, Bari, by a security guard who cleared a path for me through the confusion. Everyone was reeling, but the men were also another thing: They were activated. And I’m not talking here about the obvious heroes of the evening: the law enforcement professionals, and the Secret Service, one of whom was shot by the would-be assassin as he leaped toward the gunshots. Others, with guns at the ready, hustled officials out of the room. They acted nobly. But they weren’t the only ones.
The lobbyist David Urban was nearly glowing, telling us how he went to West Point, served in the 101st, and that he simply wasn’t about to let anything bad happen to us. I believed him. (And so did Bari, who was shielded by him at the front of the room like I was by Elliot in the back.)
Aaron MacLean—who was caught on camera during the pandemonium looking about as shaken as a person who really couldn’t decide if they wanted chicken or fish—was talking protocols, perimeters, and numbers with ease. How many seconds did it take for security to get Trump out of the building and to The Beast, the presidential limo? How many yards away was the shooter from the doors, and how long will it take to figure out what exactly happened?
Many of the men had hands on hips, surveying the room and counting tables, doors, and exits, nodding along to a distinctly male tune. Behind their eyes, you could glimpse the multiplication of tables by people per table, division by minutes, then seconds, accounting for escalator bottlenecks. MacLean was a Marine, and among many veterans in the room for whom, it seemed, a primal stopwatch had been started the second they saw, literally, that the big guns had come out. Immediately, they became situationally aware.
That’s the “toxic masculinity” the left keeps trying to suppress.
It’s a good piece from Weiss, and well worth giving up my email address to read the whole thing.
Related thoughts here from Sarah Anderson.