Donald Trump, the Most Unmanly President

Authored by theatlantic.com and submitted by Pomp_N_Circumstance
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I am not a psychologist, and I cannot adjudicate the theories of male behavior that might explain some of this. Others have tried. Two researchers who looked back at the 2016 presidential election suggested that support for Trump was higher in areas where there were more internet searches for topics such as “erectile dysfunction,” “how to get girls,” and “penis enlargement” than in pro-Hillary areas of the country. (One can only hope that correlation is not causation.) The idea that insecure men support bullies and authoritarians is hardly new; recall that one of George Orwell’s characters in 1984 dismissed all the “marching up and down and cheering and waving flags” as “simply sex gone sour.” To reduce all of this to sexual inadequacy, however, is too facile. It cannot explain why millions of men look the other way when Trump acts in ways they would typically find shameful. Nor is arguing that Trump is a bad person and therefore that the people who support him are either brainwashed or also bad people helpful. He is, and some of them are. But that doesn’t explain why men who would normally ostracize someone like Trump continue to embrace him.

In order to think about why these men support Trump, one must first grasp how deeply they are betraying their own definition of masculinity by looking more closely at the flaws they should, in principle, find revolting.

Is Trump honorable? This is a man who routinely refused to pay working people their due wages, and then lawyered them into the ground when they objected to being exploited. Trump is a rich downtown bully, the sort most working men usually hate.

Is Trump courageous? Courtiers like Victor Davis Hanson have compared Trump to the great heroes of the past, including George Patton, Ajax, and the Western gunslingers of the American cinema. Trump himself has mused about how he would have been a good general. He even fantasized about how he would have charged into the middle of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, without a weapon. “You don't know until you test it,” he said at a meeting with state governors just a couple of weeks after the massacre, “but I really believe I'd run in there, even if I didn't have a weapon, and I think most of the people in this room would have done that too.” Truly brave people never tell you how brave they are. I have known many combat veterans, and none of them extols his or her own courage. What saved them, they will tell you, was their training and their teamwork. Some—perhaps the bravest—lament that they were not able to do more for their comrades.

But even if we excuse Trump for the occasional hyperbole, the fact of the matter is that Trump is an obvious coward. He has two particular phobias: powerful men and intelligent women.

Whenever he is in the company of Russian President Vladimir Putin, to take the most cringe-inducing example, he visibly cowers. His attempts to ingratiate himself with Putin are embarrassing, especially given how effortlessly Putin can bend Trump to his will. When the Russian leader got Trump alone at a summit in Helsinki, he scared him so badly that at the subsequent joint press conference, Putin smiled pleasantly while the president of the United States publicly took the word of a former KGB officer over his own intelligence agencies.

colorful_theater on May 25th, 2020 at 10:55 UTC »

They perceive his constant whining as "fighting back". They perceive his simple english as relatable because they think an education makes you soft. They like how he objectifies and openly disrespects women. They like his bullying racism. They like that he eats fast food because taking care of your body isn't manly. Obviously this isn't how most men are, just the most shallow and insecure. Also he was running against one of the most influential self proclaimed feminists of our times. He became a symbol for anti feminism and therefore supporting him meant you were inherently more masculine (hence the alpha/beta male memes). They justify his every behavior because they couldn't stand the idea of putting a feminist in office.

The overt sexism forced the media to attack him, and his supporters. The victimhood mentality was reinforced and they felt like warriors in the culture war that ensued. However the anti feminist 'alt right' movement became more blatantly and undeniably racist over the years. While it radicalized many, their numbers dwindled as they continued to do stupid shit. That's why they're so desperate to go back to the good ol days to associate literally anything with Hillary Clinton, because antifeminism is what energized and angered his base in the beginning. Hopefully people aren't going to be fooled again by this nonsense in 2020.

TL;DR they like his buffoonery, simplicity and overt sexism and they felt insecure about voting for a feminist

Beaverny on May 25th, 2020 at 10:38 UTC »

"...Trump behaves in ways that many working-class men would ridicule: “He wears bronzer, loves gold and gossip, is obsessed with his physical appearance, whines constantly, can't control his emotions, watches daytime television, enjoys parades and interior decorating, and used to sell perfume.”

drvondoctor on May 25th, 2020 at 10:19 UTC »

Anyone remember how excited trump was to pick out new drapes for the oval office?