Trump isn’t an icon of positive masculinity. He also did very little for young men during his four years as president

  • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    The US will get the leader they deserve.

    Too bad the rest of the world will feel the consequences as well while they have no say in the matter.

    • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      Nor does half the country. I just don’t understand why trump appeals to young men at all. He’s just some horrifically uncool geezer.

      • aramis87@fedia.io
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        2 months ago

        Because all of the aggrieved male content on yt, TikTok, podcasts, etc. There’s an entire normie-to-nazi pipeline ffs, and the social media algorithms continually promote stuff that’s just slightly more “edgy”, and suddenly kids have gone from Joe Rogan to Andrew Tate. Because all of the white males behind social media - spez, Zuckerberg, Musk, etc - agree with that content and continue to find excuses to “free speech” it.

        • shalafi@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Those boys should put in more work getting laid. And that’s only a partial joke.

          The incel thing drags them in, step 1 into the pipe. The can’t get laid, must be something going on they can’t put their finger on, but that thing is damned sure someone else’s fault.

          “I’m white, OK looking and I’m a nice guy!” The unspoken question, the unthought question, is, “What happened to my privilege?” For past generations, life seemed to work out well enough for white guys, but it sure as hell isn’t working out for me!

          Demographic shift has been wild in my lifetime. Too young to have experienced this, they get a feeling that something nebulous has changed, for the worse. They see minorities of all stripes stepping onto a more level playing field and then tune into YouTubers saying, “Yes! Now you get it! The other is the thing you didn’t realize was holding you down!” Well god damn, now it all makes sense!

          Back to getting laid, the fun part. Nothing like a good screw to smooth those rejected feels. You’re wanted, wanted as a man. But if they think going hard-right is going to land them some pussy, oh boy… The few women in that scene are strictly for the alphas! Your beta ass won’t even get scraps.

          Dated quite a bit couple of years back. That was an education. Few women had political statements in their profiles, but many wrote something akin to, “I’m not interested in politics.”, often followed by a lovey, flowery sentence to lighten the mood. Men: This is code for, “Don’t come at me with your Trump bullshit.” Yes, apparently guys often pull that horsepucky on the first date. These woman are screening for conservatives, they ain’t gonna hear it. Talking on the phone to a potential date (who I ended up dating for a few months!),

          “(laughing) Yeah, I’m a bit of a redneck.”

          Silence. Wrong thing to say there, buckaroo.

          “…uh, just how redneck?”

          “I loathe Trump if that’s what you’re getting at.”

          “Oh, whew! Just checking, can’t be too careful these days.”

          tl;dr: We need to get the word out to these young men, “This crap you’re watching is anathema to getting laid.”

          • futatorius@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            The few women in that scene are strictly for the alphas! Your beta ass won’t even get scraps.

            The reality is that in humans, there’s no such thing as alphas and betas. The ethology that claimed that’s how wolves organize their societies, and that meme-level social darwinists tried to apply to people, was wrong too.

          • Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Feel like calling them incels and assuming you know every thing going on there gives them an easy out. Need to start asking these turds what gives them the right? Who entitled them to feel so fucking special? Was it popular media? Because that’s all bullshit and we’ve known that since day one, so why the fuck do they think they get to live a delusion?

          • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I cannot emphasize enough to men: nobody wants to hear how overarmed someone pursuing them is.

            But seriously, the right wing loves to imply that “real men” are right wing and that women want a “real man”. And the left can’t really counter the first part because “real man” is a concept rooted in patriarchal expectations and is partly associated with real jackasses. But the second part we only have an unsatisfying answer for: that women are people and all want different things.

            But they’re training young men to struggle romantically and be pissed about it without the emotional intelligence to deal with that anger. Oh and they’re encouraging those men to buy guns and to take offense at women being scared of men. That’s not how you make your fans into happy husbands and fathers who credit you for setting them on the path to that. It’s how you make them into suicide terrorists, it’s far closer to what Al Quadra did than what loving fathers do.

        • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 months ago

          Pair that with white males feeling entitled to things (mostly money, women, and even friends) and society currently being set up to keep them away from those things. They’re rightfully angry, it’s just their anger is being directed at the wrong things.

          • futatorius@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            Society isn’t set up to keep them away from anything: that’s paranoid rationalization. They’re just shit at relating to people and lack discipline and intelligence. Once you make the empowering realization that the world doesn’t owe you a fucking thing, you have a realistic starting point. Blaming other people, or “society,” is just an excuse for inaction.

            • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              Yeah, when white men do the shit that people who are successful and not white men do they often find themselves among us. Not always, but nobody gets perfect odds

      • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Look at 99% of media before 2001 AD. White male hero. Star Trek TOS was a giant ground breaker showing Uhura, but all the real critical leaders were males. Think on this; the James Bond movie Thunderball has a scene that’s pretty much rape; they were selling little kids’ toys based on that movie. There’s a John Wayne movie where Wayne throws someone else’s kid into a river to teach the boy how to get over his fear of water.

        This is what these young men and their fathers consume. And Trump plays to that. He’s a macho hero who plays by his own rules and doesn’t take crap from anyone.

        Muhammed Ali did more in real life than Clint Eastwood ever did in all his movies put together; guess which one these folks admire?

        • bassomitron@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          No offense, but I’d safely bet maybe 0.1% of current generation young men have watched any of those movies. This article is primarily talking about younger Gen Z folks (18-30), so people born 1994-2006. These males specifically consume idiot social media personalities vs old school macho man movies from the 50s and 60s.

        • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          This is what these young men and their fathers consume. And Trump plays to that. He’s a macho hero who plays by his own rules and doesn’t take crap from anyone.

          How the fuck do they think Trump is macho?

          • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Because he has money, he can say whatever the fuck he wants and no woman can boss him. Kind of like Elon. If you have a broken brain, that is “macho”.

          • dirthawker0@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Because all his earlier life was spent paying pretty women (and girls) to hang around pretending to be attracted to him (when it was actually money, food, and/ot entertainment).

          • Kalysta@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            Because Andrew Tate, Ben Shapiro, and Jordan Peterson tell them Trump is macho and the young men don’t know any better. They think these morons are authority figures

        • angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com
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          2 months ago

          I’m a zoomed so I can confirm you completely failed to bring up any media relevant to Gen Z, and Star Trek TOS and Ali are closer than Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, and Bond.

        • futatorius@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          And Trump plays to that. He’s a macho hero who plays by his own rules and doesn’t take crap from anyone.

          Except he’s not. He’s a lard-assed con artist, appearance-obsessed but ridiculous: fake hair, fake tan, trying to exaggerate his height and hide his obesity, a bully, a coward, a liar, and anyone who’s seen the video of him grovelling in Putin’s presence wouldn’t say he doesn’t take crap from anyone. He’s a servile, fawning toady who would have been nothing without his daddy’s money. If this society were a meritocracy, he’d be pounding farts out of shirttails in a steam laundry in New Jersey, if he could be employed at all.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Yep, he’s a very weird old man. I think they might think rallying around him is a way to reclaim their manhood.

      • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        That’s the problem with colts from the outside you don’t get it.

        From the inside they don’t get it either but they still keep going.

    • mean_bean279@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      You’re not paying enough attention if you think Trump winning means “too bad the rest of the world will feel the consequences.” Germany just elected their first far right government since WWII, France had a massive right wing that is now in the EU council, Austria… well they keep making shitty right wing choices, down into South America Argentina shifted right, and other countries continue to do so as well. We’re not special or alone in this.

      • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Oh I’ll definitely give you that! My own little corner of the world has been ruled by fairly hard-right nutjobs for over a decade, and while not quite as dramatic as elsewhere, almost all metrics for a positive society have gone down, except employment. We too suffer from insurmountable housing costs and low wages, which is not a coincidence at all.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          almost all metrics for a positive society have gone down, except employment.

          In other words, all the metrics have gone down.

          (Employment is only a positive metric when the alternative is poverty, not self-actualization. The notion that being employed is intrinsically good is some elitist/authoritarian bullshit rooted more in keeping the working class too scared and busy to demand better for themselves than anything else.)

      • piefedderatedd@piefed.socialOP
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        2 months ago

        You’re not paying enough attention if you think Trump winning means “too bad the rest of the world will feel the consequences.” Germany just elected their first far right government since WWII,

        There were elections in two states in the east of Germany last weekend. In one of them the far right party AfD gained most votes compared to others. In the other state they finished second largest. There is nothing decisive however. Other parties have been called to set up a firewall “Brandmauer” to prevent the AfD to govern.

        France had a massive right wing that is now in the EU council, Austria… well they keep making shitty right wing choices, down into South America Argentina shifted right, and other countries continue to do so as well. We’re not special or alone in this.

        Exactly. In the last few decades Austria , Turkey and Hungary were among the first to shift to far right party based governments in Europe. An interesting read is this book by Turkish journalist Ece Temelkuran (Who fled the country) which is about Turkey going downhill from democracy to dictatorship. This book also reflects on Trump winning in 2016. At some point also Poland had a far-right government but the damage from that is slowly being repaired by a new government. By now among others Slovakia, Italy and the Netherlands have far-right government coalitions. Outside Europe there was Bolsonaro in Brazil. Still, Trump winning (legally or not) would be bad for the rest of the world, especially for Ukraine.

      • futatorius@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Germany just elected their first far right government since WWII

        In one German state, Thuringia. That’s the German equivalent of Mississippi. It’s bad, but not bad on the national level yet. In France, the FN (the extreme-right party) lost in the run-off, though their leader has been pretending to be less of a jackbooted thug than her father, the previous FN leader.

        You’re correct that the return of fascism is a global problem. If something were to happen to Putin, many of those rightwing parties would collapse back into the squabbling gangs of hooligans and racist goons they were before they started getting Russian advice, funding and help from troll farms. That’s why Russian propaganda outlets like RT and Sputnik have been so anti-Harris. They know Trump will sell out Ukraine and gut NATO, and that’s the only way Putin can keep his job and his head.

    • Kalysta@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Most of us do not deserve the orange monster. Most of us are actually good people who are just trying to survive. Don’t wish harm on the whole country because a bunch of assholes use a shit electoral college system to their advantage.