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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGreat article about drumpf's total lack of manliness
This is really pretty fascinating.... if you read DU every day, none of this is new to you. We've had this conversation and cited each of these examples a hundred times. The article focuses on why the "stiff upper lip salt of the earth manly men" not only ignore drumpf's complete lack of these traits, but actually foist those traits upon him. I'm reminded, with a slug of bile threatening to burst forth from my throat, of the artwork of Jon Mcnaughton. A man who creates an image of drumpf that simply doesn't exist... like the one below...
Contrast to the real thing............
Yet if you ask these "manly men" which of these two images represents the actual drumpf, they will all say the painting, despite the second image being an actual photograph of the president.
How drumpf got to this point I suppose is a question historians and psychiatrists will be scratching their heads about for decades to come.
Anyway, here is the article.......
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/donald-trump-the-most-unmanly-president/612031/
So many mysteries surround Donald Trump: the contents of his tax returns, the apparent miracle of his graduation from college. Some of them are merely curiosities; others are of national importance, such as whether he understood the nuclear-weapons briefing given to every president. I prefer not to dwell on this question.
But since his first day as a presidential candidate, I have been baffled by one mystery in particular: Why do working-class white menthe most reliable component of Donald Trumps basesupport someone who is, by their own standards, the least masculine man ever to hold the modern presidency? The question is not whether Trump fails to meet some archaic or idealized version of masculinity. The presidents inability to measure up to Marcus Aurelius or Omar Bradley is not the issue. Rather, the question is why so many of Trumps working-class white male voters refuse to hold Trump to their own standards of masculinitywhy they support a man who behaves more like a little boy.
I am a son of the working class, and I know these cultural standards. The men I grew up with think of themselves as pretty tough guys, and most of them are. They are not the products of elite universities and cosmopolitan living. These are men whose fathers and grandfathers came from a culture that looks down upon lying, cheating, and bragging, especially about sex or courage. (My fathers best friend got the Silver Star for wiping out a German machine-gun nest in Europe, and I never heard a word about it until after the mans funeral.) They admire and value the understated swagger, the rock-solid confidence, and the quiet reserve of such cultural heroes as John Waynes Green Beret Colonel Mike Kirby and Sylvester Stallones John Rambo (also, as it turns out, a former Green Beret.)
They are, as an American Psychological Association feature describes them, men who adhere to norms such as toughness, dominance, self-reliance, heterosexual behaviors, restriction of emotional expression and the avoidance of traditionally feminine attitudes and behaviors. But I didnt need an expert study to tell me this; they are men like my late father and his friends, who understood that a mans word is his bond and that a handshake means something. They are men who still believe in a days work for a days wages. They feel that you should never thank another man when he hands you a paycheck that you earned. They shoulder most burdens in silenceperhaps to an unhealthy degreeand know that there is honor in making an honest living and raising a family.
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,304 posts)the difference between "Trump voters" and "[white] working class." Trump voters like Trump precisely because of who he is -- someone who speaks his mind, leads through steamrolling, is openly racist, insults people to their faces and treats women like shit if they are seen to deserve it. And that actually intersects quite a bit with what is valued as masculinity in this culture.
People didn't support Hitler because he was the ultimate Aryan manly-man, either.
patricia92243
(12,591 posts)sop
(10,090 posts)or Rambo. These manly-men like to pretend they're tough guys, what with their military-style weaponry, mega trucks and infantile behavior.
ismnotwasm
(41,955 posts)Not particularly manly that artist is obsessively weird.
The idea of manhood is changing, and many men dont like it. Housework, cooking, changing diapers. Thought as womens work, turns out its not a gendered capability at all. And women have successfully entered traditionally male domains, business, medicine, science. Also not inherently gendered, although occasionally one sees an article about brain differences, as though that is some sort of barrier to say, math or IT. Men are Also entering traditional womens professions, nursing and teaching, for instance.
Othering people of different races or religion to feel strong is now exposed for the pathological bigotry it is.
And I think its that last more than anything that drives Trump supporters. From outright racists to those who need a target to feel alive and worthy, those people flock to him, and he comforts their insecurities.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Trump is not a man. He will never be a man. He is a snivelling little coward, a toddler in a 73-year-old man's body, a whiny little bitch. He is the least manly man I have ever seen in my life.