In his Axios interview, Hawley said that “A man is a husband. A man is somebody who takes responsibility.” In his national conservatism speech, Hawley celebrated the virtue of “courage.” Do any of those traits define the current leader of the American political right? Trump, a serial liar, used alleged bone spurs to escape service in war. He’s a husband who’s also been a husband to two other wives.

And speaking of pornography, Trump not only famously slept with a porn star and paid her hush money; he also appeared in a Playboy soft-core porn movie called Playmate 2000: Bernaola Twins. But there was Hawley, going to the mat in the Senate to save his presidency.

Why harp on these actions when Hawley has properly identified a number of cultural maladies? Because it’s a perfect representation of the cultural dysfunction of the new American right. It is perfectly capable of pointing to multiple, very real cultural problems, yet its populist cure suffers from fatal flaws.

If you spend any time in right-wing political circles, you’ll immediately note a rather profound shift in masculine cultural mores since the rise of Trump. Right-wingers are imitating their cultural avatar, and they’re doing so in a way that privileges populist conformity and raw aggression and often mocks commitments to truth and even moral courage itself.