Love him or hate him – and he refuses to give us any other option –
presidential candidate Donald Trump has become the embodiment of whatever extreme
we feel we need to impose on him: deliverance or damnation, freedom or fascism,
truth or, well, trumpery. The media, confounded by his political popularity, are
obsessed with coming to grips with The Meaning of Trump. He is the culmination
of reality TV culture, goes one interpretation, or the harbinger of the end of democracy,
or the apotheosis of America’s supposedly racist underbelly. In the latest unflattering analysis, The
Atlantic’s James Hamblin declares that what The Donald really represents is
the apex of American masculinity – only not in a good way.
“Trump is both a product of a masculine culture and a beneficiary of its
musky tenets,” states Hamblin. He doesn’t feel the need to define the notion of
a “masculine culture” (or a “musky tenet,” for that matter); he simply considers
it a given that we live in one, that it is a problem, that Donald Trump is the “climax”
of it, and that we need to “stop valuing it, stop accepting it.”
Hamblin continues:
Masculine culture is both a reason that Trump
does what he does and a reason that people accept and trust it. His classical
brand of masculinity becomes toxic and feeds tribalism and violence and
entitlement among his followers—those who prefer fighting to talking, walls to
bridges, grimaces to smiles.
Of course, it is anti-Trump protesters – not his supporters – who are
guilty of a disturbing degree of tribalism, violence, and entitlement at Trump
rallies throughout the country. But that is an inconvenient truth for Hamblin,
who displays a racist, sexist, elitist contempt for the “white men without a
degree” whose “classical brand of masculinity” he declares “toxic.”
The feminist term “toxic masculinity” is
trendy these days, but it’s never presented in contrast to a healthy, positive
masculinity. That’s because those who use the term don’t believe there is a healthy, positive masculinity;
their aim is to dismantle the entire artificial construct of manhood and smash
the patriarchal chains that keep us from evolving. This is not simply snarky
exaggeration; Hamblin, for example, explicitly states that Trump makes him wish
that “f*ck the patriarchy” were as common an expression as “What’s up?”
Trump’s swagger and aggression make him, according to Hamblin, an
absolute “caricature of a man’s man”
because he browbeats, berates, and boasts. To be clear, though, those actions
do not characterize a man’s man; they characterize a bully. A man’s man doesn’t
need to push people around or brag about the size of his, er, hands. He
commands respect and admiration not by calling attention to his own
achievements or belittling others, but through the quiet fulfillment of his
duty as a man, husband, and father. By that measure, someone like TV host and
spokesman Mike Rowe is a man’s man. Among other contemporary celebrity
examples, actors Dwayne Johnson and Mark Wahlberg are men’s men.
Hamblin goes on to say that Trump’s “signature traits, confidence and
bravado, are hallmarks of masculinity. Through them he convinces people that
he’s correct, in control and trustworthy, even when his words are false or
misleading.” What Hamblin is describing is not a confident man but a con man. Again, bluffing and bravado are
not hallmarks of confidence or masculinity but of insecurity.
Hamblin is wrong about Trump’s supporters being drawn to him by this blustery
egotism masquerading as manhood. What Hamblin is trying to do in his article is
kill two birds with one stone: demonize Donald Trump and demonize American
masculinity. Therefore he strips away the political context that enabled a figure
like Trump to emerge and tries to tie the candidate’s popularity instead to the
kind of working class masculinity Hamblin and his ilk look down upon.
But what support Trump has galvanized is not due to an irresistible, “musky”
manliness. It is because the American males Hamblin dismisses as bitter,
uneducated racists are tired of being screwed over by corrupt, unprincipled politicians
year after year. They’re tired of the mainstream media lying to them and
holding them in the sort of contempt of which this Atlantic article reeks. They’re tired of being openly denigrated by
elitist “intellectuals” like Hamblin for their supposed white privilege and
their guns and religion. They are, like Network’s Howard Beale, mad as hell and they’re not going to take this
anymore. Enter Trump.
My aim is not to defend Donald Trump politically but to counter James Hamblin’s
attempt to use him to smear American manhood as toxic arrogance, egotism, and bullying.
Masculinity at its most quintessentially American is marked by a frontier self-reliance,
a no-nonsense commitment to hard work and duty, courage and service to others, humility
and gratitude, and an unforced self-confidence. That’s the antidote to the
“toxic” version.
From Acculturated, 8/15/16
