A Trump National Security Official Is Obsessed with Nuclear Apocalypse ... and Menswear!

Cool hobbies, bro.

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If you know anything about the menswear site Styleforum, then you know it's a place where intense opinions can be shared. Usually those opinions are along the lines of lapel widths, or the benefits of 14-ounce Japanese denim. But occasionally, they can be about nuclear apocalypse. At least they can be if you happen to be Michael Anton, a senior official on Trump's National Security Council.

In an article on The Intercept today, a profile of Anton's longstanding fear of an "inevitable" nuclear attack was laid out. And while many of his in-depth dissections of those fears were published in places like The Weekly Standard (where he also made his name as an intellectual voice of Trumpism), some of his most heady claims were made on a forum devoted to the ins and outs of men's style.

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Writing under the username "Manton," Anton has logged over 40,000 posts since joining Styleforum in 2002. And while some of them were about menswear—Anton has also published a book entitled, The Suit: A Machiavellian Approach to Men's Style—most of them appear to be about our impending nuclear destruction (as well as a few other odds and ends of doomsday proselytizing).

Asked by The Intercept as to why he chose Styleforum as his pulpit, he responded, "It's like a dorm room environment where even people like me, who are old, can feel 19 again…that's part of the fun of it, everybody speaks in a kind of lighthearted way."

In case you're curious what passes for lighthearted in Anton's "dorm room," there's this bright, cheerful nugget: "I look at the world and I see a whole movement of people who want to kill me, destroy my country, and end my civilization."

Oh, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Here are a few of his Styleforum highlights mentioned in the article:

On affirmative action:

"What actually happens today is a total, consuming obsession with 'diversity' defined solely by skin color (and to a lesser extent national origin) coupled with an even more consuming obsession with ideology."

In a thread titled "Capitalism Sucks":

"It is hard to escape the conclusion that in [Marx's] analysis of the consequences of capitalism, he was onto something."

"The dislocations and human pain and societal upheaval that Marx diagnosed as inevitable consequences of capitalism turned out to be quite real."

Yes, you read that right, a conservative on Trump's National Security Council is not a fan of capitalism. Clearly this man is an enigma wrapped in a riddle.

In one thread titled "Ask Manton About Nuclear War," he sketched a scenario involving a terrorist group that would "ship the weapon in a cargo container to a US port, where it will be loaded on a truck and driven to its destination. The motive will be kill Americans, to force our withdrawal from the Middle East, and to break our society in half."

And then in 2009, he answered a member of Styleforum who posed the following question, "manton hao 2 makez a nuclar bomb?" with an incredibly detailed account (running five paragraphs) about how to make a nuclear bomb. Pro tip: If your biggest fear is a nuclear holocaust, maybe don't post instructions on how to make a nuclear bomb on a public website.

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Some of the other highlights include: sketches of a post-nuclear apocalypse scenario in the United States; how the Upper West Side might burn with 10-K bomb hit on lower Manhattan, but wouldn't necessarily experience nuclear fallout; and why it wouldn't work to threaten Muslim countries with nuclear holocaust should they ever think about hitting us.

And as for menswear? Well, it took some digging on our part, but Anton does occasionally post on the subject. A couple of his more thoughtful sartorial musings include how high-end men's clothing is apparently like owning a vintage Italian sports car, and how annoying it is that skirts aren't socially acceptable for men (which, come summer especially, we kind of agree with):

"One of the annoying things about our little hobby [meaning menswear], at least for me, is I find I am constantly having to take clothes into the 'shop' for one reason or another...It's really a lot of work keeping all this crap in working order."

"With the weather getting hotter again I am reminded again of my long-held lament that skirts are not considered male-appropriate clothing in most of the western world...I'm thinking something as simple as a white linen sarong would be passable with a linen sport shirt or polo and wearable for things like backyard barbecues and lawn parties."

But given that Anton's ratio of doomsday posts to menswear posts is somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand to one, a Styleforum user eventually asked, "Do your friends invite you to parties anymore or do you just bum everyone out too much?" To which Anton's notably understated response was, "I admit that it's possible that I have too dim a view of human nature."

Say hello, folks, to the winner and undisputed champion of "Most Intense Guy on Styleforum." That's one hell of an accomplishment.

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