You might refrain from finding Douthat odious, but I won't.
Your action-hero excursion is very useful—perhaps I over-simplify, but I think one would lose count if one attempted to enumerate all the times the invocation of 'decadence' were no more than excuse to sing that 1920s hit "Masculine Women and Feminine Men'. https://youtu.be/-tQH79p5Ulk
(…and one hardly need mention how often that discourse, to an even greater extent than that cloaked with 'decadence', is racialised, from fear of the feminised yet dangerous Jew or 'Chinaman' to 'protecting [White ]Southern Womanhood' from the notionally hypermasculine.)
Why bother with Douthat indeed
You might refrain from finding Douthat odious, but I won't.
Your action-hero excursion is very useful—perhaps I over-simplify, but I think one would lose count if one attempted to enumerate all the times the invocation of 'decadence' were no more than excuse to sing that 1920s hit "Masculine Women and Feminine Men'. https://youtu.be/-tQH79p5Ulk
(…and one hardly need mention how often that discourse, to an even greater extent than that cloaked with 'decadence', is racialised, from fear of the feminised yet dangerous Jew or 'Chinaman' to 'protecting [White ]Southern Womanhood' from the notionally hypermasculine.)