Among other things, Strausbaugh rants "about our pampered, lazy, end-of-empire and not-think, our craven consumerist conformism, our confusion about masculinity and sex, our culture of constant anxiety and manufactured panic, and the inherent stoopitness of groups all contributing to our Sissification" (105).
He calls both liberals and conservatives to "buck up" and reject the sissification of society. He berates those who use "conversation-stopping Sissy tactics" of calling conversations "offensive" (liberals) or "politically correct" (conservatives) so that "neither has to think about what the other is saying. Neither is put in the embarrassing position of actually having to answer the other, to counter, to engage in actual debate" (20).
Contrary to conventional wisdom, right-wingers are not the only "fundamentalists." Left-wingers can be just as fundamentalist in their thinking - rejecting debate through absolute certainty. They are "True Believers for whom politics or social issues are belief systems, matters of unquestioned and unshakable faith" (22). He offers PETA as one example among many: "PETA people are, obviously, fundamentalists. Their incredibly self-righteous zealotry about 'kindness to animals' gives them all sorts of license to be unkind to people. They've forgotten that people are animals, too" (22).
Like good Sissies, we are afraid of everything. And yet, Strausbaugh proves that many of our fears never come to fruition (remember the Ebola scare, SARS, or the bird flu, anyone?). And yet we continue to cower in fear. "It's precisely because we're so safe and secure that we're so easily frightened. Citizens of the greatest superpower in the history of mankind, insulated from the big, bad world here inside Fundadome, we're more frightened of the world than ever. A handful of guys armed with box cutters can reduce the mightiest nation in history to cowering Sissitude. Facing few legitimate dangers in our daily lives, we act as though everything were dangerous. Having banished disease and death to the far corners of Fundadome, we're morbidly fascinated with death and wimpily neurotic about our health. Safer than ever, we're obsessively safety-conscious" (93-94).
Our fascination with The Secret is not "positive thinking" but "wishful thinking" - a devolution "from Protestant Work Ethic to Pseudo-Protestant Get-Rich-Quick-'N'-Easy scheme to Nondenominational Consumerist Sissy Get-Rich-Quick-'N'-Easy Scheme" (100). "There's a big difference between a positive attitude and idiotic optimism" (100).
When the Founding Fathers wrote that "all men are created equal" they meant we have "equal rights" - not that we are "all the same" (109-110). The "democratic despotism" and its obsession with sameness is producing what Frenchmen Alexic de Tocqueville feared when he wrote in Democracy in America (1835) that democracy may reduce the "nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd" (110). In our current Sissy culture with its victimization, quick-to-be-offended, politically correct lingo, one would think the Bill of Rights guaranteed "freedom from discomfort, embarrassment, or hurt feelings" (124).
Strausbaugh calls us to a "fulfilled life" rather than a "life merely filled with junk" (159). "You can't whine, wish, or buy your way to "happiness," whatever that is. We all know this in our hearts, we've been told it a million times, but we ignore it. If God exists, he's not our slave, and the Universe for sure isn't a giant mail-order catalogue. It's craven Sissitude to simply expect and demand to be made happy, then get all mopey and reach for the corn chips or Zoloft when God or the Universe disappoints you again" (159).
Strausbaugh calls us to gratefulness: "To start with, maybe we should be grateful to live in conditions where we have the luxury even to think about living 'a fulfilled life,' when so many people in the world have to focus all their efforts on staying alive, period. We're the luckiest humans who ever drew breath. Maybe we should be doing more with that air than just whining and carping and blabbing endlessly about ourselves on our cells. Maybe we should be taking advantage of our unique and privileged situation to do something useful, instead of just growing fatter, softer, lazier, more fearful, disengaged, selfish, Stoopit, and Sissy" (163).
This book is bound to offend everyone at some point. Perhaps that is why it is so prophetic. Sissy behavior cannot be exposed through Sissy talk.
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