TFP Article on "How Democrats Lost Men"

[ThatZanyFatball]

I know Bari Weiss and TFP are divisive, but I wanted to share this article with you fine ladies to hear your perspectives. I know you're mostly UK and this is US, but considering Trump's impact in the world right now it's pretty relevant.

I think the author makes some good points but then loses me when he says things like "The downside of such a safe and easy society is that men almost never get access to public honor, which leads many of them to entirely abandon that as a personal goal."

He doesn't seem to describe what exactly he means by "public honor." The idea that men need to be publicly, openly recognized and cheered for doing - manly? - things, and that's why they're trending right?

But other points, like "When you lose sight of the evolutionary pressures that underlie much of human behavior, you risk wandering into ideological nonsense." I think is a valid point.

https://www.thefp.com/p/how-democrats-lost-men?utm_source=cbs_news&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true

I think Obama is a hinge point. Obama's rhetoric de-emphasised differences and emphasised unity. Many people voted for him because he promised to be the final bump to a post racial society - that with his election we could finally put racism in general and the shadow of slavery in particular into the past. If you read Obama's speeches closely that's not exactly what he promised, but that's what people took away from them, especially in the 2008 election.

But the Obama campaign and his on-line supporters were highly race sensitive with accusation of racism fired indiscriminately 360 degrees. It was the first manifestation of the online woke mob that took hold even before social media was a fully formed thing. Every criticism was framed as a racist attack on a black man, as if Bill Clinton had been granted some kind of deference either from the right or the left.

I still think Obama deserves credit for discipline and not engaging in the race baiting that his supporters did. And it should be noted that Obama did face an extremely unpleasant strain of racial scrutiny - that he wasn't really African American and that his sympathies weren't with Christians. The whole birth-certificate conspiracy was highly embedded in the populist right and its impulses were xenophobic and racist. AND Trump indulged that with gusto. Truly a shameful performance.

But in the end I think it's fair to note that the Obamas backtracked on their perceived promise to remove race from politics once-and-for-all and his legacy was more divisive than unifying. It also set the stage for Clinton's and Biden's extreme form of identity politics which has consumed the party though the control lines are indirect, leading through the DNC and the consultant class. In some respects he's a tragic figure because he clearly saw the dangers of his presidency and yet still wasn't able to avoid them.

What I'm saying is that I think whether or not he is macho, sexist or woman harming is irrelevant to the question why he won the election.

He won the election because he got more votes.

I think he got more votes because voters preferred what he was offering - whatever that was - to what the democrats offered.

I don't think the men (or women) who voted for him did so because he was macho, sexist or woman harming.

Trump is their version of Farage. Both claim problems are simple to solve and that, surprise, immigrants (particularly Muslims) are behind most of them. Both are lying sexist, racists because their "great past" is always when white men ruled everything and everyone else knew their place.

Simple solutions are more appealing than more complex ones. But we're don't live in a simple world and sadly for the believers in our snake oil salesman, we're not the global force of yesteryear (and will never be again) that could have made brexit successful. Anyone who pretends that "if only we did X simple thing, our country would be great again", is unfortunately always going to be wrong because no government wanting reelection (all of them!) will pass up easy wins.

Their cult believers though will never face that reality because it means admitting they were duped. Instead they behave like a cult where every word is true, even if it undermines the words of last week. Epstein and the about face from before/after the election is only one example. Another is the tariffs which are supposed to bring business back to the US that Trump apparently brought back to the US in his first term - but his followers refuse to face that cognitive dissonance. Here we're supposed to celebrate trade deals that account for a tiny fraction of the growth we lost by leaving the EU. Absolutely shameless.

@IwantToRetire - "... So Trump gaining a million votes many of whom unexpectedly were male Latinos still doesn't explain why the Democrats lost 7 million votes.

That is the biggest factor. The non voters..."

I don't understand your point.

Obviously around 7 million voters who previously voted democrat didn't this time.

Why they didn't I don't actually know, but I suspect that they didn't find the democratic offering attractive and didn't want to endorse it, but couldn't bring themselves to vote for Trump.

Maybe they were completely demoralised over the original selection of Biden, who was obviously unfit from the outset to be a candidate, and his last minute replacement by someone who was never going to win, and those 7 million voters just threw in the towel.

Maybe an unexpected number of male Latinos voted for Trump because - surprise surprise - they approved of his approach to illegal immigration over that of the democrats.

Maybe voters in that demographic who are disproportionately the victims of crime thought that the democrats were too soft in their approach to crime and voted for Trump.

I don't know why the democrats lost 7 million votes and neither do you, but if you want to argue that it isn't the fault of the party itself then I think you've got your head stuck in the sand.

"... Also the complete humour by pass.

The comment about Kamala Harris is a joke - honestly what back wood were you living in during the election.

It's actually the Maga machos who came up with the line.

Talk about a head in hands moment."

I was living in the backwoods of the UK but I did try to follow the election pretty closely. I watched several of Kamala Harris' performances on TV and I genuinely came to the conclusion that she was unelectable.

Not because she was black and not because she was a woman. But because she spoke rubbish.

Didn't she at some point or other float the idea that the taxpayer would fund "gender reassignment" operations for prisoners, or have I got that wrong?

If she did it's wasn't going to help her winning an election

Of course I suppose the other explanation is those 7 million voters never existed in the first place! 😆

I don't know if there is life after death, but there are two things that inevitably do come after death - you will be baptised a Mormon and you will become a registered Democrat in Chicago 😄

Didn't she at some point or other float the idea that the taxpayer would fund "gender reassignment" operations for prisoners, or have I got that wrong?

She did say that. Not as part of the 2024 campaign, but before that point.

This is one of the big things that the die hard Dem supporters won't take on board. Some of the polices and attitudes from the party faithful have just lost all connection with ordinary people's values and reality. They come across as unhinged.

Many Dems expected people to ignore that, hold their nose and vote for her regardless, because the alternative was worse.

But many were not prepared to do that - and I completely understand. The party just isn't listening. Voting for them would have given them an even greater mandate for their nonsense.

And in fact, they don't seem to have learnt any lessons from their loss.

If this isn't a recipe for losing people, then I don't know what is.

I'm not saying Joe Biden was ever a brilliant politician, but when he was still compos mentis he had two things going for him.

One was that he wasn't very interested in the celebrity culture that too many Democrats are bedazzled by. That went against the persona he'd built up as Blue Collar Joe, the union endorsed candidate. If he had been the candidate in 2016, I don't think he would have been taking time out from the campaign trail to party in the Hamptons with Barbra Streisand.

The other was that, maybe just because he was old and not online, he didn't confuse Lefty Twitter with Democrat voters. If he ever saw Lefty Twitter, he would probably have said "there's no way I can sell these policies to elderly black church ladies in South Carolina", which he knew is the key constituency you need to win the primary.

This kind of common sense isn't a very high bar, but it's become quite rare among centre left politicians.

The right has its own problems with audience capture, but that's a different story.

Sow how did he think he could sell a trans activist health secretary to the American people, and trans ideology more widely?

Well, firstly he's a true believer in the trans cause via his friendship with Sarah McBride, who worked for Beau Biden and bonded with Joe and Jill over Beau's death.

Secondly, by the time he got to be president, he wasn't really doing much thinking. It would be interesting to know who was making the decisions.

You're a mine of information, lol. There was me thinking that Sleepy really believed in this stuff, or wanted to show how much he identified (sorry for the pun) with the stuff troubling young left activists the most, trans being right up there with racial stuff.
No. Instead he was co-opted by pure emotion.
And this is an older (oldest) politician who as much as anyone cut his teeth in the real cauldron of right/left politics from over a half century ago.
Yet on trans he proved to be an unthinking sap.

And this is one of the things I believe lost Harris the presidency.

There was of course her lack of popularity to start, she totally bombed in the Democrat primaries, and was a massively unpopular VP. So crazy to run her as a candidate under even the best circumstances.

But then you have Biden revealed as completely incapable of carrying on tin the role, something people had suspected for quite some time. And then they can't keep a lid on it, and it's pretty clear that it has been going on for quite some time, and has been covered up by the people around him.

Including Harris.

And then there is the question, who has been making the decisions all this time?

Who chose Harris, since there was no vote, is it the same person who decided to cover up Biden's state?

We now know a lot more of the details of Biden's mental degeneration, but at the time, these were all questions in the minds of the voters. I can easily imagine seven million people who didn't really want to vote for Trump also thinking, no fucking way am I voting for the people who just tried to trick me into voting for a figurehead.

I don't pretend to know much about this, but there are many suggesting that Obama is pulling the strings in the background.

I suspect, in reality, the key players are not well known to the public.

Exactly!

And keeping in mind too how Democrats tried to manipulate the 2016 primary against Bernie Sanders - who had a real shot st winning against Trump - in favor of Hillary Clinton. The Dem party is clearly under the control of puppet masters who have no interest in why the majority of their own voters want - especially considering poll after poll of show the majority of Dem voters do not believe in gender ideology. On the flip side, the inmates are running the asylum that is the GOP. We centrists are just doomed.

Be careful what you wish for.

My grandad fought in WW2. He never once asked to be "honoured". He mostly just wanted to work on his allotment. Likewise I suspect most serving members of the military would prefer better pay/veteran support/healthcare. I'm proud of family members that served. They'd think I'd lost my mind if I started talking about honouring them or their warrior ethos.

There have been many societies in history which did put male virility and the male warrior on a pedestal. Or that honoured/worshipped a hyper masculine notion of glory, male youth and health. Without exception, every single one of those societies resulted in the mass death of young men in bloody wars. Just as North Korea or Soviet Russia worship(ped) the common man/woman. It's hard to find Soviet artwork that doesn't speak to the inner glory of the ordinary human spirit. Surprisingly, the USSR also presided over the deaths of millions of ordinary people. On a more prosaic level, the owners of Victoria's Secret worshipped female beauty so much they turned them into literal.angels. They were, ahem, not great for the welfare of girls/young women. Even if some men do feel jealous/left out to see the female form seemingly worshipped above men. I guess there was Abercrombie and Fitch of that makes them feel better? Just don't Google the owners

Humans aren't made to be worshipped or put on pedestals. That's why the main thrust of most sensible feminism was for women to be treated as human beings.

That Bari Weiss is pushing this argument suggests the Trump propaganda line is pivoting from the preelection "Trump is the anti war president" to "Trump is giving young men the chance to be real men by finding glory in wars." Yay for America I guess.

Public honour? Heroism? It sounds like a very American, colonial idea of manliness, ie hacking a farm out of the bush and shooting the indigenous owners of said bush. As a man myself I think most men want something much more prosaic: a purpose in life, family, friends, not being thought that they're made of slugs and snails and puppy dog's tails. Not so very different to women I think.

No, deep deep down you want to die in a war really. Bari Weiss' point is that Trump is going to allow American men the chance to do this and this makes him good. No Foreign Wars is sooooo 2024.

Oh come on, bollocks.

The idea that KH was a good candidate who people didn’t vote for because they were racist or sexist is ridiculous.

Exit polls found people thought the country was getting worse. They associated this with Biden. To win, KH would have had to succeed in strongly disassociating herself from Biden and his policies. Instead, in a remarkable demonstration of lack of political instinct, she did the opposite. She said she’d do nothing differently. There’s a reason Trump’s campaign played that clip over and over.

Her campaign insulted the people she needed to vote for her in their adverts, and worse, didn’t even seem to realise they were doing so. Showing your open contempt for voters is not a winning strategy. I actually thought one of their ads was a spoof by the republicans when I first saw it. I was astonished to realise it was a genuine Democrat advert.

Not Being Trump and being pro abortion was the democrats election strategy. But most people vote on what effects then, and unwanted pregnancies is not something that the majority of voters think will affect them. It’s a die on the hill issue for committed feminists, but not most other people.

Finally KH speaks like a certain type of Oprah Winfrey, vaguely alternative, vaguely spiritual, motivational speaker. That appeals to quite a small sub set of women. And probably very few men.

This is not a story of racist, sexist Americans. It’s a story of a terrible candidate who ran a truly terrible campaign. Against a candidate who ran a very well targeted campaign that spoke to voters concerns, ‘KH is for they/them, Trump is for you’. Was is inspired slogan.

Inspired lie perhaps. Because "it" was all about him and his family. That's all, and now the US is on the verge of ceasing to be a democracy.

I think you are being rather reductive. The desire for a heroes journey doesn't mean gee, men want the chance to go to war.

Though I will say, as someone who joined the military at 21, there were lots of younger men who were looking for just that kind of thing. And overall it was pretty good for them, it channelled a lot of energy in a productive direction.

I do find it interesting on MN that so many women quite rightly rail against gender stereotypes that are either imposed by patriarchal society or TiMs with their takes on traditional female "glamour". Yet men are put into boxes as well.
Heroic men don't only have to be ones that jump on hand grenades to save their platoon, or jump into an icy river to save a swimmer.
They can also just be guys who take a stand when it's needed, be dependable, look out for their wife/partner and family, local neighborhood.
Maybe in a time of really crazy thinking, be one of the few people that speak up for women and reality amongst other things.
There are quite a few of us about

But this was kind of the point. The heroic journey can take many forms, but it is something that young men in particular want.

You are the one saying it only means jumping on a grenade.

It reminds me of a few years ago, in an interview, Bono made the observation that mainstream types of pop music didn't have much of a place for angry young men who wanted to challenge the system. It was all kind of Ed Sheeran stuff about feelings. Quite different than was he was young where there was a ton of political pop music. He felt that the angry young men were mostly finding a voice in certain genres of rap music, which has some elements that are maybe not always so healthy.

A (female) friend of mine was like, well that is good, they are better off for those young men to just get more in touch with their feelings like women.

You see a similar divide in Christian churches as well. The very emotive ones tend to be heavily weighted towards women. The ones with the most men have a more heroes journey approach, at least as an option. The battle against the dark self, in that case, but it can often have rather militaristic imagery. Rather than the lovey my boyfriend is Jesus stuff.

The Democrats have really pushed the emotional approach, Be Kind, stuff. It resonates less with men. And some women - I hate that shit and find it massively embarrassing - but there is defiantly a sex imbalance in who is attracted.

Well, stereotypes and generalisations are long standing, because there's often a lot of truth in them.
Re churches, I've attended a handful recently, and my experience is that the evangelical charismatic churches offer different messaging to men and women, simultaneously it seems.
Even though in the final analysis they weren't for me (I'm hugely unclubbable, lol), they offer amazing kinship for women and men, both young and old.
Evidence suggests it's the Orthodox churches that offer a more muscular faith of particular appeal to young men.

It's almost as if the two sexes want different things, or at least different groups within the sexes.

I make a point of being polite to the Mormon missionaries when I see them about. Their beliefs aren't mine, but they're only about 19 and in a foreign country and missing their family.

Mormonism, because of its incredibly strong emphasis on family and community, could be a great option for a lost young man who lacks structure in his life, who maybe feels lonely and isolated, and who aspires to find a partner and start a family. Or for a lost young woman who feels the same way.

It's absolutely not a good option for an angry young man who can't submit to authority. Nor will that young man be interested in highly feminised mainstream churches.

I don't know if there is a spiritual option for that young man, and careers in the army aren't what they used to be.

I'm not saying society has to be geared towards the needs of the alienated boy or young man, just that, amongst all the varied provision we have, it would be good to have some provision for them.

And the heroic impulse doesn't have to be about war. Even in terms of entertainment, The Lion King is a great heroic journey story that boys can identify with, but that was produced over 30 years ago. I struggle to think of a Disney film since that's had a character who boys can aspire to be like, rather than a villain or a bumbling sitcom dad or the girlboss heroine's comedic sidekick.

Don't get me wrong, I have zero problem with more active and empowered female characters. I know why Frozen inspires cultlike devotion from young girls. But there isn't much in it for boys, unless they're the minority of boys who want to be a princess when they grow up. I think it's possible to appeal to both; though maybe not at the same time.