Stop Being a Pussy: The Portrait of a Modern Day Roman MAN

I have a very, very disgusting thing to admit: I watched the Triggernometry podcast.

In my defense, it was only once and because, during a moment of weakness, I saw Dana White, the head of the UFC, was on and figured it would be interesting.

Turns out, it was interesting, but I still feel dirtied by that hour.

Dana receives a lot of flak, but whatever haters want to hate on him for, he is winning the war.

He and his crew took MMA from a fringe blood-sport banned in multiple states and unknown to the rest of the world to one of the most lucrative leagues in the world, currently ranked #13 by revenue.

Dana has long struck me as the archetypal Roman patriarch. Ambitious, thuggish, stern, uninterested in abstractions, pragmatic, ruthless, and with an irresistible will to create the magnificent.

The match-up is not perfect, but he’s one of the closest embodiments to that ancient ideal revived.

For reasons I’ve written elsewhere, Americans should pivot to this and look to it as their lodestar.

Dipping your toes into the interview for a few minutes is worth it just to get a taste of the patriarchal vibe radiating from Dana.

Two moments set in high relief the the screechy, overwrought, and effete online content creator sphere (to which I belong) and the enthusiastic, hard-nosed patrician.

Moment 1: Konstantin, the co-host and a genuine UFC fan, asked (paraphrasing), “Why is UFC becoming so popular right now? Do you think it has anything to do with the pussyfication, as you put it, of America? That people are so coddled and lead such desensitized and sanitized lives, that they long for the violence of the octagon?”

Dana’s first answer was no answer at all. Fighting, he waxed, was the first sport in human history and is one of the most unique sports because of the drama and excitement it captures. Everyone gets worked up when they see a fight. Even if it’s two strangers in a Walmart parking lot throwing hands, a crowd will gather around, cameras will be out, and the air will hum with adrenaline. If it’s two teenagers passing a football back and forth, though, no one will pay notice. The passion for fighting is hardwired in us.

Konstantin, dissatisfied with the answer, pushed it back at him, spending another minute proliferating about how degenerate and weak we've grown.

Dana chuckled and said, “Yea, well, that’s very deep, man. Maybe, I don’t know.”

A long pause followed.

The hosts, hoping for some further analysis or soliloquy on how pussified the world has become, waited.

Nothing.

I’m more like Konstantin than Dana. Dana is a working-class guy who clawed his way to the top—dealing with crime bosses, shady businessmen, and ruthless rivals in Boston and Vegas.

Konstantin is a self-made man, but like me, he suffers from over-education and a verve for getting mired in concepts.

Dana does not indulge in such abstractions. His eyes and mind roams not far from the world of the senses—responding to concrete issues rather than philosophical questions that have little bearing on the direction things will head.

Is it true that the turn towards fighting sports is because of the pussyfication of America? Perhaps, but it is such a broad question that, for the man of action, it holds little purchase. Dana responds to views, ad-revenue, and financial reports, not inquiries into the zeitgeist that can be more swiftly settled by moving fast and seeing what the market responds to.

The world belongs to men like Dana. It has always belonged to such men. Konstantin and I are the cerebral minstrels giving their actions a veneer of intellectual credibility (if they choose to indulge us).

Alexander did not storm through Asia because his philosophers were more culturally literate. He was, despite his stellar education, a barbarian from a barbarian tribe aping Greek culture. He won because he was more crafty, had better instincts, administrative acumen, and sharper sarissas. Not because he rightly decoded the shared myths of the Persians.

Moment 2: Konstantin asked Dana whether he pinches himself realizing how far he’s come, given his background, his struggles, everything he’s had to sacrifice and risk to stand atop the peak where he is today.

Dana, again, didn’t really answer the question. Not, I suspect, because he wasn’t paying attention. Dana was sharp. Rather, the inquiry did not compute. It’s like asking a San tribesman what they thought about modern aviation. The question came from such an alien world that all he could do was translate it into his own and take a stab at it.

He missed, but the response would make a patrician proud. He waxed about how successful the company has become, how he nearly lost everything in pursuit of his dream, and the need to grind to achieve. He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t rest. It’s work, work, work. And he loves it.

But he made no mention of stepping back and admiring his own accomplishments or measuring how far he’s come from his days dodging loan sharks in Boston.

Konstantin pushed back, hoping to drag an answer out of the UFC boss.

Dana didn’t bite. He couldn’t. He replied that he’s always looking forward—looking at what needs to be done, what needs to be improved, what should be sidelined, what needs a rethink, who needs to be pushed more into the spotlight and who shuffled off the stage.

“I’m never finished, and I never look back. I’m always just looking at what’s next.”

The malencholic artist, the self-indulgent, sensitive introvert, the man infatuated with his emotional world, the monk on his prayer stool singing to the gods would wail at these responses. But Dana's sternness and enthusiasm—with an obvious sense of joy in the task he’s set for himself—is quintessentially Roman. Perhaps a bit too eager and too happy, bearing the mark of his American upbringing, but it is the Roman attitude distilled.

Do. Do. Do. Don’t look back. Don’t hanker after the past. Don’t indulge in navel-gazing or luxuriate in your sorrow. Build, grind, conquer, push, and pursue glory above all else.

Cato the Elder would have been proud of this specimen—strong, gritty, energetic, and devoted to the pursuit of greatness.

If America had a hundred thousand Danas rather than podcasters or substack writers elaborating on the reactionary philosophy of Rosseau or the pagan subtext of The Lord of the Rings, we would be a nation of giants once again.

But Dana does not fit the Roman mold completely.

First, despite being in the fight business, Dana is not in the war business. And Rome was in the war business. Martial glory was the reason de etre of a Roman man’s existence, whether it be as a general sallying his men from a besieged fortress or as a footsoldier driving his gladius into a barbarian’s spleen, all in a show of dominance, to extend the borders of the empire, and fatten the coffers of state and self alike.

Second, Dana is apolitical. His reticence to enter politics has been challenged due to his decades-long friendship with Trump, but he generally keeps his nose out of it. Unacceptable. Second only to martial prowess was state-craft, the art of organizing, leading, and optimizing the institutions that set the gears of the empire into motion.

The CEOs of the greatest companies in the world—Bezos, Musk, Cook, or Dana—are ultimately shopkeepers. Amazon, not Bezos himself, generated nearly $700 billion in revenue last year. The United States generated $5 trillion in revenue (taxes). Even Norway, whose GDP is significantly less than Amazon’s, stands above the glorified shipping company. Norway can mobilize troops, seize assets, and inflict violence. Amazon might have gold, but nations still hold the steel—and it is this monopoly on violence that caused the Romans to rightfully scorn industry divorced from politics.

Third, the Romans were an extremely pious people. Today, the word pious might call to mind cowled monks chanting psalms at 3 AM on Mt. Athos, but the modern sense has been wrung through the therapeutic converter—retooling every aspect of it into a means of achieving individual happines, healing, and fulfillment.

The Romans were religious not spiritual. They, like Dana, did not do 10-day retreats to heal old traumas, uncover their true self, or disentagle the web of self-deceptions and hang-ups that have undermined their aspirations. They did not meditate on AUM until the universe dissolved into the pristine, undying Oneness.

The Romans, however, did assiduously worship, revere, and follow the gods and obey their signs. Ritual established and reinforced the order between the state, the individual, and the cosmos, while the signs, revealed through entrails, bird flight, or oracular visions, were treated with the gravitas of the Senate or an emperor’s edict. The relationship was procedural and action-based.

Not facts over feelings. Deeds over feelings.

Dana is an atheist with little taste for ritual or cosmic order. God doesn’t exist, and it’s our own lives that need to be squared away, not abstract relationships with make-believe gods.

Despite these departures, Dana is a living specimen of an ethos and energy that has vanished from America, but it is this archetype, not the effete cultural commentators writing break-downs on Thucydides or geopolitical analyses of the Ukraine-Russian war, that stand a chance to lead us out of the doldrums and excesses we find ourselves.

It is men like Dana who, though imperfect relics of America’s more august hours, stand to propel it towards its new and finest hours.

The motto ought not be MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN—at least internally among the men who shall lead her forth. It should be MAKE AMERICA GREAT.

As with Konstantin’s inquiry whether the UFC boss pinches himself sometime wondering if this is a dream, we need not be pinchers.

We must be men of industry, of ambition, of endless energy, of grit, and of valor to hew the path forward, to build, to unite, to struggle, and to seize victory by our own will and with the blessings of the gods.

We need more Dana Whites.