Building A Clear Vision For A Movement

One of the things that people seeking political change when they are completely out of power do is focus on "movement politics", i.e. long-term, grass roots efforts to chance the views of elites and of the general public.

A key piece of a political movement is to articulate a clear vision for the future. Right now, a key part of that is to articulate a clear vision of it looks like to be masculine.

The MAGA movement is heavily reliant upon white men, especially middle aged Christian white men, and to a lesser extent Hispanic men, especially men without college degrees.

These men feel aggrieved by economic losses in relative status compared to non-white men, to women, and to college educated men. Their incomes have been stagnant relative to inflation since the early 1970s, while everyone else has improved in relative terms to them over the last half-century. They have high rates of unemployment relative to more educated people, which also destroys their credit when they can't pay rent or a mortgage or other bills for a while until they find a new job. They are finding it harder to find someone willing to marry them, and if they do marry face divorce at record rates. They are at great risk of losing contact with their children, either in custody fights, or at the hands of child protective services for abuse or neglect. 

Often, they've worked jobs involving manual labor that they can no longer perform by late middle age, but they lack pensions or large retirement savings or private disability insurance to allow them to stop. So, they are reliant on government disability payments, when they've been taught that it is shameful to receive handouts and this requires bureaucratic efforts that are not their strong point.

They weren't particularly successful in school, academically or (often) disciplinarily. They get tripped up over what they see as "woke" and feminized expectations for their behavior in public. Even if they are married with kids, they are no longer the kings of their own households that they were when patriarchal norms were strong. The establishment has seriously condemned them for using corporal punishment with their children, for using physical force with their romantic partners, and for settling disputes with fists, in ways that half a century ago were at least tolerated, if not expected. Ignoring those changes finds them reported to child protective services for abuse and neglect, to the police for domestic violence or even marital rape, and arrested for assaults that would once have been seen as justified.

The MAGA movement, in its very wording, "Make America Great Again", offers them a vision of a return to this dysfunctional, toxic, vision of masculinity, where they don't have to worry about "woke" etiquette that he has not internalized, where their homophobia and transphobia were mainstream norms, where a man was the unquestioned head of the household and physical force was an acceptable way to protect that prerogative, and where a man was expected to respond to besmirched honor or anti-social behavior or threats to himself, his friends, his family, or is property with physical force and firearms. He sees the economy as a zero sum game where any competition from immigrants, imported goods made by foreign workers, women in the workplace, or minorities in the workplace harms him and welcomes anything that reduces that competition. He feels cheated by the college educated elite that has appropriated all of the increased productivity in the economy for themselves, and doesn't trust them as a result, even about matters where they know what is best better than he does.

The left needs to develop a vision of manhood that is better than this, that is functional in modern society, and that is nonetheless attainable even for men who aren't academic hotshots or particularly good at learning new social scripts.

This is a project that has been successfully managed in the past. The same era known for cowboys in the American West, a beacon of manliness, which was roughly the Victorian era, was also an era in which the notion of the "gentleman" was popularized. 

The ideal of the gentleman was less crass than the vision of masculinity that came before it. A gentleman respects women. A gentleman takes pride in a dignified and civilized appearance. A gentleman is trustworthy and plays fair (at least until adversaries don't). A gentleman refrains from profanity and speaks in a dignified speech register, even if he may not be erudite enough to speak like a highly educated person. A gentleman behaves in a civilized manner in public. A gentleman's behavior earns the respect of his family and acquaintances rather than merely insisting upon it without earning it. A gentleman may be capable of winning a fight, but he avoids fighting when possible.

Many iconic fictional characters exemplified this vision of masculinity, at least to some extent.

A twenty-first century vision of a gentleman that the left can foster won't be the same as the vision of a gentleman a century and a half ago. But if the left doesn't develop a clear, widely understood, and attainable life script and ideal to strive for, for men, then it won't be able to compete with the MAGA right for the hearts and minds of men because it does have a vision for them.

The meme at the start of this post tries to cast the vision of masculinity that Donald Trump exemplifies as weak, insecure, and little. And, there is little reason to doubt that a man like Donald Trump, had he not inherited a real estate fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars early in life, would have been extremely unsuccessful in modern society and its economy. Indeed, even as things are, he has not exactly been a business genius and would have been much wealthier if he'd simply invested his wealth in the stock market rather than frequently failing or underperforming in his own business investments even when he tries to lie and cheat to attain them.

It evokes as one element of masculinity, security in your own identity and self-worth flowing from personal inner strength, that allows a man to brush off slights to his honor and refrain from habitually putting other people down. It evokes someone who looks beyond himself to the greater good who has concern for the well-being of other people.

Other elements of that vision might include humility and a willingness to learn from others who know more than you do about something, valuing knowledge instead of ridiculing it, a capacity to cooperate with others and be a team player, "servant leadership", and the magnanimity to have empathy and compassion for others as a demonstration of your strength and security. The vision should shed machismo without simply being "anti-macho."

Likewise, the left needs to embrace and support attractive and worthwhile life scripts for people, especially men, for whom the path of going to a four year college, earning a degree, and entering into a white-collar managerial or professional career, isn't a realistic one.

Public schools need to offer better alternatives for students for whom a curriculum designed to prepare them for a liberal arts based college education is not the right one. The paths to careers that take skill and training beyond a high school diploma, but without a four year college degree need to be more widely known. And, we need an economy where those careers are a viable path that can allow people who take it to secure the American Dream.

The "maker" movement has done a lot to rehabilitate the idea that skilled, hands on, physical craftsmanship is honorable and enviable, rather than being just a badge of failure to succeed in more cerebral pursuits.

More needs to be done to prevent men from fleeing well-paying occupations that our economy urgently needs, that have long been seen as, or are becoming, "pink collar" jobs, like nursing, social work, and being a school teacher. And a lot of that takes efforts that are more cultural, cosmetic, and social than it does actual changes to the jobs or what it takes to secure those jobs.