It seems to have suddenly occurred to the Democrats that they have a problem with men. Oh, we know they have a problem with men. That’s all we’ve heard about for the past ten years ever since Donald Trump committed the great crime of beating Hillary Clinton.
I know because I used to be one of them — the #stillwithher type who marched with hundreds of thousands of women to protest the Trump election. And the one who said #metoo and fought every day as a brave member of the resistance? Yeah, that was me. But to quote Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, I ain’t like that no more.
And speaking of Clint Eastwood, you know what was a universal attraction for men and women? Masculine male heroes. And you want to know what Hollywood decided it didn’t need anymore? Masculine male heroes. Hollywood’s problem is now the Democrats’ problem. The box office has become a ghost town, and men are fleeing the Democratic Party in droves.
This gave someone in the Harris/Walz campaign the bright idea to form “White Dudes for Harris,” one of the most ill-conceived campaign pitches of my lifetime. It’s as though an extraterrestrial came down to the planet Earth and thought, “How can we lure in the males of this species?”
Apparently, the Harris campaign is spending $10 million on this mess. Do they really think they’re going to convince a single “white dude” with that ad? Maybe the self-hating ones.
But it won’t work. The reasons they cite for choosing the Democrats are all of the main reasons so many are voting for Trump in the first place. To quote Robert DeNiro playing a man afflicted with “toxic masculinity” in Raging Bull, it defeats its own purpose.
The only men who would proudly and publicly join that group are men who have no self-respect left because they’ve spent much of the past decade apologizing for their existence and de-centering themselves from the narrative, all the while getting a pat on the head from the women in their lives. The more wealth and power they have, the more likely they’ll put on that shirt and shake that groove thing.
And they’re surprised somehow that it didn’t work, that men didn’t flock to join a group that drained their testosterone faster than walking in on James Carville’s grandma naked. How did they think this was a good idea again? What preachy millennial childless cat lady made that call?
Meanwhile, Jen Paski does what many of the women of the Left do: attempt to redefine their idea of masculinity. Even Doug Emhoff isn’t buying it. He looks terrified, like he’s gotten in too deep, and he can’t find his way out of this mess.
I don’t want to insult Tim Walz or Doug Emhoff. I would never want to make them feel bad about things they can’t help, like masculinity, but BRUH. They would be what one might call sensitive men. No one out there is buying that Tim Walz is the masculine male role model that will bring back male voters. He’s just not that guy.
They’re trying to sell him as Chief Brody, but really, he’s Matt Hooper from the Oceanographic Institute.
Maybe he doesn’t have “city hands” because he’s been counting money his whole life, but the vibe is unmistakable. Anyone can identify the masculine characters in Jaws. They’re not hard to spot because they represent archetypes that most of us identify with - not as a culture, but as a species.
Masculinity is like physical beauty: you know it when you see it. You’re hard-wired to know it like peacocks know when a male does this:
We can’t just eradicate it and expect things to go well. And by the way, they could never even make Jaws today because they would not allow the film to be cast with three men like that. A woman would have to be on board the Orca to finally kill the shark.
Take the movie Twisters. I’ll never get over that one and shouldn’t either. They hire Glenn Powell — maybe the only masculine actor working in Hollywood — to play the hero who saves the day. Ah, but if you fell for that ruse, you’re just another sucker. Don’t you know the most intelligent girl in the room will also have to save the day with the tornado?
Twisters made money. It just didn’t make MONEY, money.
Maybe that was because they didn’t even allow us the simple pleasure of a kiss at the end of the movie because that would send the wrong message that women were only good for one thing. It wouldn’t, but that is what we’re all meant to think.
The reversed hierarchy that has all but destroyed Hollywood has crept its way into every corner of American life until we get all the way to “White Dudes for Harris.”
And now, Hollywood’s problem is the Democrats’ problem, too.
Try as they might to make it seem like the masculine dudes are for Harris, it just doesn’t ring true. It’s like Twisters. It’s a bait and switch. Like this Harris campaign ad:
#NOTALLMEN
As young women came of age online, many of them fell into a new wave of feminism that did seem to be anti-male. Or rather, anti-heterosexual males. Being a sensitive male feminist wasn’t a way out of it either. Men were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t.
That’s how the #notallmen hashtag was born. By the end of it, the idea was YES ALL MEN are predators and rapists and incels with “toxic masculinity.” Maybe old men shrugged it off, but I always wondered about all of those young men trying to make their way through middle and high school with this madness.
Anything and everything could be interpreted as predatory behavior - a look across the room, a touch on the arm, a hug, or if you ask a girl for her phone number. How could they navigate those treacherous waters where one wrong move and your life is over? “We’re not all like that,” they would plead. Sorry, but #notallmen will be the response.
Over time, it was a given that all men are bad and that all women are victims. Women drew power from victimhood as men shrank back. Or at least those who still wanted to remain on the Left.
The problem for men is that they feel hated, and no one wants to feel hated. It just makes them hate women back.
Like this TikTok video:
One of the biggest reasons for Joe Rogan’s success is that he offers a masculine role model. Rogan doesn’t apologize for his masculinity; he celebrates it. It’s not “toxic,” and it isn’t “rapey,” but it is a necessary part of the human experience. It’s something men and women both need.
We can’t do without masculinity any more than we can do without feminity. These are essential components inside all of us in varying degrees. But shaming men for who they are and how they were born - what they want to watch in movies or who they want to lead them politically - was always a recipe for disaster.
It was 25 years ago when Gladiator was released. A movie with a masculine hero if there ever was one.
And just when I was about to say Hollywood will never make a movie like that again, Hollywood has made a movie like that again. In November, Gladiator II will be released. My guess is that it will make a lot of money. It won’t even have to be good because audiences are starving for exactly this.
And maybe that explains why Trump is polling so well against Harris even after everything they’ve thrown at him. He offers necessary masculinity at a time when it is most desperately needed.
Speaking of emasculated men, Seth Meyers covered Trump's recent comments aimed at women:
The anger that came from women when Trump said he would be our “protector” was astonishing.
I do wonder whether it will have an impact beyond the women on the Left who hate him with white-hot anger unsurpassed in American life.
A cautionary tale is this: where masculine men go, women do soon follow. Maybe we could call that hashtag #notallwomen. Not all women hate Trump. Not all women hate men. Not all women hate being rescued by a handsome prince.
I think that explains a lot about the Trump movement. It isn’t so much that men hate angry women. It’s that they want to gravitate toward the fun side. Despite having all of the power, culture, wealth, and institutions, they are miserable on the Left.
This is what they are offering:
And this is what MAGA is offering.
Any questions?
You can’t stop what’s coming
One of the reasons I began escaping the misery of the Left and finding my way to MAGA rallies is that it was the one time I could feel happiness. Much of that has to do with acceptance and tolerance. It doesn’t read that way to the Left, but that is the MAGA I know.
Young men know that their future is brighter under Trump because they know what it’s been like with the Democrats in power. Suddenly, in the last five minutes of the Harris campaign, they’re rethinking how they’ve treated men? It is like crime, the economy, and the border: too little, too late.
Trump broadcasts the kind of masculine role model men crave that has been absent in our culture for too long. Whether that will translate to a win is a different question, but this problem will persist for the Democrats, at least until the empire collapses. And it will.
As for that woman I used to be, I can’t even recognize her anymore. I thought we were the good guys fighting the good fight. But really, we just didn’t want to let go of power. But to quote one of the greatest films ever made, one that is a study in masculinity, No Country for Old Men, “You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.”
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It's The Crisis of Masculinity, Stupid