HE-MAN WOMAN HATERS' CLUB:

The allure of strongman nationalist government -- Vladimir Putin's Russia, Xi Jinping's China, Viktor Orbán's Hungary, the America that Donald Trump and his acolytes dream of -- has always been the promise of power. You can take the word of the foreign caudillos themselves or listen to the slavering of their American admirers -- the story is always the same: While liberal societies slide into softness and decadence, illiberal societies have the resolve to spurn cheap gratification, particularly in the form of consumerism and sexual license, in order to secure the genuine common good.

That this line of analysis is almost invariably framed in sexual terms -- the masculine patriarchal nationalist vs. the effeminate liberal globalist -- says more about the psychology of the authoritarian follower than it does about the actual issues of political economy in question.

But the more important thing to know is that the promise of autocratic power is a lie.

Does Russia look strong today? Vladimir Putin's thugs are pretty tough guys when the contest is, say, a five-on-one fight against an unarmed female journalist (Anna Politkovskaya) or when they're quietly poisoning his critics with polonium-210 (Alexander Litvinenko), but they aren't much in a real fight with Ukrainian patriots. Instead, they have been reduced to vulgar terrorism, bombing hospitals and residential buildings in an attempt to use atrocity as a substitute for victory. Meanwhile, Ukrainian farmers are towing abandoned Russian tanks around with tractors, taunting the cowards who left them behind.

The nations of the free world bicker among themselves, and they have plenty of fierce internal disagreements. But the purportedly soft and undisciplined West put Russia on its ass in about five minutes when push came to shove. Putin's right-wing fanboys are transfixed in rapt homoerotic admiration to see him half naked on horseback, but he doesn't look so tough getting pushed around by materteral bureaucrats such as Christine Lagarde, Ursula von der Leyen, and Janet Yellen.

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