SUMMARY: In Trump’s 2024 “victory,” misogyny and toxic masculinity fueled his appeal to young male voters, overshadowing women’s rights and healthcare. This election signals a shift from liberal democracy to an age of oligarchy, marking a dangerous future where essential values and institutions face extinction.
KEY WORDS: Election 2024, Toxic Masculinity, Trump, Kamala Harris, Abortion, Conventional Wisdom, Political Press, Young Male Voters, Oligarchy
COMMENTS: What do you attribute Trump’s “victory” to? How do you explain it? I’d love to discuss it in the comment section!
If the Old FART’s 2016 win was a product of racism, then his 2024 “victory” is the grotesque offspring of misogyny and toxic masculinity. Welcome to the party you never wanted to attend.
Explaining Trump’s “Victory”
The Misguided Conventional Wisdom
The conventional wisdom from the legacy political press suggests Trump “super-charged” his base, attracting new voters—those who had never voted or were sporadic in their participation. But while we liberals thought he was alienating entire voting blocks, he was tapping a demographic we underestimated: young men enchanted by his juvenile delinquency and toxic masculinity.
Tapping New Voting Blocks
In 2016, it was rural Christian white people. The plan kinda fizzled out in 2020, probably because it died of #COVID19 and Trump’s genius plan to continue his super-spreading ways by discouraging early voting and to gather in large groups at polling places on Election Day. In 2024, he’s found young male voters who dig his juvenile delinquency, juvenile sexuality, and juvenile banter which really all add up to toxic masculinity. It also appealed to the Latin mas macho cultural stereotype.
While Harris and the Democrats rallied around women’s rights and healthcare, Trump and MAGA would beat them like abused housewives they should be. Unfortunately, it appealed to the baser instincts of younger men whose lack of economic and social opportunity, whether it was the indebted unemployed university grad or dead-end job of the blue collar worker, has led them to realize that the life they felt they were entitled to was forever outside of their grasp.
One of the first warning signs for me was a report out of ASU where the women in line were all Harris supporters, but the men were Trump supporters. The frats had organized a get-out-the-vote drive for their members. The frats. I remember those guys from my university days back in the ’80s. Yeah. They would be entitled and dickish enough to vote for Trump just to spite the libs, especially the bitchy feminists. If they can’t have the future they believe their parents have left to them, then, by God, they would have the world burn from climate change.
Implications of Trump 2.0
The Coming Mass Extinction Events
Our first go around with Trump was a dance on the edge of a knife, daring ourselves to fall over the edge. This second time feels like a mass extinction event waiting to be served on a platter.
- Liberal democracy — EXTINCT
- The Climate — EXTINCT
- Immigrants — EXTINCT
- Healthcare — EXTINCT
The list of what Trump will destroy goes on and on. The #COVID19 pandemic was but an appetizer for the main course that we’re about to be served. Trump’s medicine for healing our country is amputation and excision. He’s going to get rid of all those that he perceives of as opposing him.
The Dawn of Oligarchy
The Trump win was fueled by toxic masculinity. It has killed the age of liberal democracy and given birth to the age of oligarchy, but that is a post for another day.
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Image Attribution
This image was found on Teacher Nuha’s English Blog using a DuckDuckGo Creative Commons License search.
The Psy of Life 
I am terrified for what our little part of the world will become in January with the crowing of herr Trump. and I can admit, I am suicidal thinking about it.
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I am, too. It just seems so hopeless. I have visions of millions of people dying in climate-born disasters every year, of corporate consolidation of everything from housing to websites, concentration camps in the US, public health and other services being privatized and minimized, the nation becoming Cancer Alley, Flint water for everyone, the shift of global power to the axis of Putin, Xi, and Iran, the further erosion of voting. I just see disaster in every segment of society, but also, internationally.
Last time round we had the Resistance and Twitter. This time round we have exhaustion and hopelessness.
Jack
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We seem to have forgotten those young men in their Polo shirts and Khakis, with their torches, marching in Charlottesville. They didn’t go away. And Trump spoke straight to them. The Proud Boys failed to pull off the coup in ’20, but this year, the Frat Boys and the Incels came through for him. Them and our national habit of never being happy about the economy and always blaming the current occupant of the White House for that which he (so far) cannot control. The exit pollsters report that people were simply voting for change, without understanding to what.
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Howdy Bob!
I am frustrated with our political press for reporting that Trump’s ground game was in disarray and poorly organized and not picking up on the GotV for men sooner or more clearly. Appealing to the sporadic, seldom, and first-time voters is like the lemonade stand with a $100.00 glass of lemonade. You just need to sell one glass, and you just need those voters to show up for one election.
Instead we got reports of Trump’s rallies being under attended and people leaving early.
People are also now saying the polls were right. They once again underestimated Trump’s support. They didn’t find his seldom first-time voters to poll.
The last point I’ll make is that the national press isn’t reporting on the GOP’s voter suppression efforts and their effectiveness. Harris underperforming 2020 in key counties and precincts is testimony to their effectiveness.
Huzzah!
Jack
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The national press has had their collective head up where the sun don’t shine about Trump from the start. They have kept on trying to cover him and analyze him as if he were a relatively normal, even if disgusting, politician. Among other things, they should have been working from the start to rip up his “successful businessman” story.
Harris losing in Atlanta is proof of that effectiveness.
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Harris losing Atlanta is evidence of the effectiveness of Republican voter suppression laws and voting roll purges. Harris losing Philadelphia is evidence of the effectiveness of Russian disinformation and Musk buying votes. I can’t understand why the press isn’t reporting more on the effectiveness of those strategies than on the wonderment at the sporadic or first-time young male voter.
Jack
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The press is as vulnerable to menticide as anybody, and the temptation to keep trying to see things as “normal times”. They have also faced the problem of how to fact check effectively the torrent of lies from a multiplicity of sources.
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I’m afraid you’re right here. And, there are the changes in the schools of journalism akin to not teaching abortion techniques in medical school.
Like I keep saying. I’m in a very dark place. Everywhere I turn, all I see is more darkness.
Jack
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And, it doesn’t matter to Trump how much Biden, Harris, and others model proper democratic behavior regarding the transition. Trump will be Trump. Normal times ended quite a while ago, and the institutions haven’t caught up, about politics or the climate, except for the insurance industry about the climate. They get it.
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The insurance industries reaction to climate disaster is to quit selling policies in climate disaster prone areas and jack up the prices for everyone else. Government can soak the middle class for paying for climate disasters.
Should democrats sit at a table with fascists who are bent on gutting our democracy? Can we legally or ethically exclude them from participation? Is agreement to play by democratic rules and norms part of the deal for participating in elections? Every time we’ve seen fascists participate and win, the democracy backslides into single party minority rule.
It’s all too late now. The fox is in the hen house and the cow is out of the barn.
Jack
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In a functional democracy, that agreement, nay, commitment, to play by the rules is the foundation, and those who show they cannot or will not have to be kept marginalized, shamed, and need be, prosecuted. Nothing else works.
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We’ve done the opposite of marginalize, shame, and prosecute those who are breaking our foundational rules.
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One place to look for the path to that is in popular entertainment, particularly movies with heroes who are rules and norms breakers, the “Dirty Harry” types, the various loner vigilantes, the anti-heroes. What we celebrate in fiction, we are prepared to celebrate in real life.
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Howdy Bob!
For too long we’ve had the rouge cop who knows the TRUTH and will stop at nothing until justice is done as our archetypal hero. Trump has successfully occupied that space. That it doesn’t actually reflect reality — Trump isn’t about justice and knows nothing of the truth, but will stop at nothing — and isn’t the way the world actually works doesn’t matter. What matters is that 71 million voters (down from the 74 million votes he won in 2020) believe it.
Changing that social belief is hard work, but it can be done. Utilizing Hollywood and popular media will help.
Blog on Sibling!
Jack
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What everybody forgets about that rogue cop hero is that he is always a loner, not a leader, as at war with the system as with the bad guys, and very often operating out of a serious case of PTSD. Still, when we write all our tales of history about the kings, conquerors, and rebels instead of the artists, philosophers, and women, admiration goes to that type.
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We are a country of rugged individualists, after all, and Trump is a caricature of a human being. Politically, he started out as the rebel, now he’s the king. And, he definitely is at war with the system.
Jack
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A lot of those around him are of that same type. It may be true that a coalition of either sociopaths or narcissists, let alone both, is inherently unstable. And, not all fawning sycophants are genuine or trustworthy.
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What do they call it psychopathocracy? We’re in for a helluva ride. I used to say that it would take a generation to undo the damage from Trump’s first term. I don’t if we can undo the damage of a second. And, the really troubling thing is, we can’t stop the damage from happening now. Even if Trump were to drop dead tomorrow from a heart attack, we couldn’t stop the damage. We are on this course at least until 2026.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I’m afraid so.
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I wonder whether this finding might have something to say about willingness to follow Strong Man leaders.
https://www.psypost.org/huge-study-reveals-striking-decline-in-the-desire-to-stand-out-and-be-unique/
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Howdy Bob!
That’s a great study. Thank you for sharing it. I’ll include it in a future post. The first two things that pop into mind:
(1) Anti-social personalities like to stand out. They are contrarians. My first thought was that maybe the psychopaths in the Republican Party were on the decline, which didn’t seem right given the election results.
(2) Ordinary people are afraid of the flying-monkey brigade. MAGA has successfully used the social sanctioning of contrary opinions, beliefs, and actions that WE should’ve been able to use on Trump and MAGA.
(3) Groupthink for the win. This is the thought police in action and limiting dissent, and we both know that groupthink decisions are both more immoral and more disastrous than the last groupthink decision.
Blog on Sibling!
Jack
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That seems right, that fear is the key.
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