Is he a real man...or a macho man?

Stuart Schneiderman writes at Had Enough Therapy about Trump's use of the word "pussy" to describe Ted Cruz.

since Cruz has spent much of his time in the United States Senate as an army of one leading a war against the Washington establishment, it makes very little sense to call him a “pussy” unless you want to explain why you were not on the front lines or even on the back lines in the struggle.

Of course, Trump was striking a blow against political correctness. As long as that disease infects American culture, and as long as people are at their wits' end trying to figure out how to put an end to it they turn to Trump. How better to destroy political correctness than to be scrupulously and repulsively politically incorrect.

Better yet, since most sentient Americans understand that the country is becoming increasingly feminized—of women, by women, for women and for Muslim refugees—what better antidote could there be but a man who is not ashamed and apologetic about being a male, about being a white male, about having earned certain privileges, and even being especially crude. After all, Trump is the family breadwinner. In the Cruz family, the role falls to his wife, the Goldman Sachs managing director.

For his followers, Trump represents manliness on steroids. You can be sure that no one ever called Donald Trump a pussy. That must be the reason why his followers love him. They are convinced that in a Trumpified world they will not be harassed into saying that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman and will not have to fight to ensure that their teenage daughters do not have to share the shower room with a biologically male being. In a Trumpified world they will retain the right to believe that there was a reason why traditional marriage was always the norm in human societies.

The secret to Trump’s success with Republican voters isn’t that he’s un-PC or that he says what he thinks or that voters agree with his outlandish policy proposals. It’s that Trump is a symbol of a kind of unalloyed white-male entitlement slowly on the decline. His supporters miss it, and they want it back.

...White men want to feel special again. They want an identity too. And for a long time, what defined them was power and authority. They were the breadwinners in their families, and with that financial control came authority over their wives and children. They were the bosses at work. They set the culture norms and the discourse, and their interests and experiences and opinions were simply recognized as “American.”

That’s what Donald Trump embodies, and what he promises to bestow. It’s why his gaffes never quite seem to derail him — crude displays of male entitlement don’t hurt you when you’re running on crude male entitlement. It’s why his own history of multiple divorces and marriages to models and bankruptcies and gold-plated everything don’t make Republican voters conclude that he’s immoral or decadent or wasteful or foolish. Trump’s ethos is simple: he does whatever the hell he wants and he never has to say he’s sorry. If that’s not the dream of the adolescent American male, what is?

Ask yourself for a moment what kind of men made America great. Was there something wrong with the group that Tom Brokaw famously called the greatest generation? Was there something wrong with winning World War II and rebuilding America in its aftermath?

The men who did it did not feel entitled. They were willing to fight and die for their country. Should they have received some recognition for their strength and their victories? Should they have received respect for the privileges they earned? Is there something wrong with providing for your family or for being the boss at work?

...The culture warriors who are defending the oppressed peoples of the world, who are defending the Islamist terrorists and the refugee rapists, hate white Americans and white people in general.

The trouble with Trump, if I can put it this way, and I have often put it this way, is that he is not made of the same stuff as the men of the greatest generation. He looks more like a caricatured version of manliness than the real thing. He is more machismo than manliness. He is what manliness looks like in a feminized culture.

No one would dispute his success in real estate and reality television. But, to believe that his real achievements in one arena will naturally translate into great success in a completely different arena is folly. Trump has succeeded by posturing. If, at some point, he is obliged to try to fulfill his political promises, we will see whether he is a real man or a macho man.

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