Toxic Trumpculinity

I’m not much on the phrase “toxic masculinity.” Academics and activists and NPR throw around that phrase and it only serves to drive male voters even further right.

But sometimes it applies. And if there’s anybody whose picture should appear next to that phrase it’s Donald Trump. There’s a whole macho culture thing that surrounds Trump. He won in part because he worked it to get mostly young, disaffected men to vote when they never had before and probably never will again.

And yet, to me, Trump represents nothing I ever learned was or thought was masculine. He is not a stand up guy. He never takes personal responsibility for any failure. He takes credit for things he didn’t do. He confuses bluster with strength. He’s a liar. He’s a coward. He cheats and abandons his friends. He looks at everything from the standpoint of how it will benefit him. He treats women like objects and other men like pawns. He throws a lot of punches, but he can’t take one. He’s a whiner.

As an antidote to all that toxicity I’ve been reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy lately. I’m just going to quote a half-page or so from his 1998 novel Cities of the Plain to make my point about what real men do. Here it is without further commentary.

From Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy:

I’ll get him, said John Grady.

That’s pitiful, Billy said.

He caught him going past the corner of the barn and on to God knows where. He had his hat and his boots and dressed in these and his long white unionsuit he looked like the ghost of some ancient waddy wandering there.

John Grady took him by the arm and they started for the house. Come on, Mr. Johnson, he said. You don’t need to be out here.

(They entered the kitchen and John Grady got him some coffee.)

He helped the old man to a chair at the table and went on down the hallway. Mac’s light was on and he was standing in the door.

Is he all right?

Yessir. He’s all right.

He went on to the end of the hall and entered the room on the left and got the old man’s britches off the bedpost where he’d hung them. The pockets were weighted with change, with a pocketknife, a billfold. With a ring of keys to doors long since forgotten. He came back down the hallway holding them by the belt. Mac was still standing in the doorway. He was smoking a cigarette.

He ain’t got any clothes on?

Just his longjohns.

He’ll take off out of here one of these nights naked as a jaybird. Socorro’ll quit us for sure.

She won’t quit.

I know it.

What time is it, sir?

It’s after five. Damn near time to get up anyways.

Yessir.

Would you mind settin with him a bit?

No sir.

Make him feel better about it. Like he was gettin up anyways.

Yessir, I will.

You didn’t know you hired on a looneyfarm, did you?

He aint looney. He’s just old.

I know it. Go on. Fore he catches cold. Them old dropseats he wears are probably drafty to set around in.

Yessir.

He sat with the old man and drank coffee until Oren came in. Oren looked at them but he didn’t say anything. Socorro fixed breakfast and brought the eggs and biscuits and chorizo sausage and they ate. When John Grady took his plate to the sideboard and went out it was just breaking day. The old man was still sitting at the table in his hat. He’d been born in east Texas in eighteen sixty-seven and come out to this country as a young man. In his time the country had gone from the oil lamp and the horse and buggy to jet planes and the atomic bomb but that wasn’t what confuse him. It was the fact that his daughter was dead that he couldnt get the hang of.

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Free speech.

The rule of law.

Reason.

Tolerance.

Pluralism.