I have for a long time thought that the main harm caused by anti-feminist politics would not be through the realisation of its goals but through the stoking of ressentiments and senses of entitlement among many men (especially younger men) that would preclude the development by such men of any kind of constructive and respectful relationships with women. I also think that a lot of the Angry White Men are also Anomic White Men.
NB: Obviously the realisation of the goals of an anti-feminist politics would be catastrophically harmful, but I also think those goals are probably unrealisable outside of an extreme totalitarian framework.
Connell would argue that white male backlash against efforts to uncouple wealth and power from the gendered/racialised/sexualised capitist hierarchy at the centre of western society comes from two distinct groups: those men who have traditionally "won" through their compliance with the norms of the structure in their context (and the women who have benefitted from that) and now fear loss of that privilege; and those men who have traditionally "lost" because their access to resources prevents them from complying with the structure in their context, who were always angry and, through the loss of Unions and the rise of globalised outsourcing, now align their sense of security with their (mostly male) employers. Biden was right. This, as it has always been, is a function of an economic system that privileges some (and their allies) over others. What he missed was that globalised neoliberal capitalism has changed who white male workers and (the women who support them) see as the enemy. That's why the old traditional anti-woke (mostly male) lefties are out there banging the class drum again. We need to both re-assert the value of traditional markers of the skilled worker (e.g. apprenticeships) but this time include those traditionally excluded from them (such as women) and assert the place of men in the caring professions (e.g. nursing, social work). In other words, build a working class that doesn't give a shit about someone else's gender binary.
While I agree that "angry white men" are the bulk of the Trump support, the reason that Harris lost is that about 10 million people who voted for Biden did not vote for her, while Trump's vote increased by a small amount (2 million). So the loss of those groups is important in a narrow election. Several groups were not happy with the Democrats - poor whites feel that the Democrats have long promised and never delivered and have now (irrationally) gone to Trump, people of Middle Eastern origin voted against Harris because of the administration's policy on Israel, many Latino men (and whites) admire the "strong ruler" image of Trump, and I suspect that some voters would not vote for a woman. All of these small to moderate losses build up.
As I said, I’m not interested in analysing changes between 2020 and 2024. Post-mortems can't bring the patient back to life and, as I said at the beginning of the OP, there will be no point in refighting the 2024 election next time around.
That is partly true. But for the economist, change or improvement is mostly at the margin, and that is where it was lost. As a doctor myself, and a surgeon, post-mortems and audits are of value for the next similar case, and every election has the same broad issues / groups of voters who need to be considered
The archetypal angry white man is Rupert Murdoch, who anticipated both Putin and Trump in weaponising male resentment and projecting their own insecurities onto whole polities. In all probability, at least one of the three will not survive 2025, so things may look up.
White evangelical Christians make up 13% of the population and 18% of those who vote - they reliably vote around 83% in favour of Trump - the issue is largely one of race & the attempt to retain social and political power
Why not start at the logical beginning? How many white men are actually angry? What do they say they are angry about? How do their reports correspond with otherwise reliable observations of and conclusions about the matter? One might be disappointed or even frightened without being angry.
While, as an old lefty and feminist, I'd like to think your female correspondent and Trevor Best are right, life may well be, and likely is, more complicated than that. The attraction of some people to demagoguery, authoritarianism, racism, sexism, doubts about the excesses of identity politics, the idea of US exceptionalism and a correct perception of US decline may not only be due to anger.
Somebody has pointed to polls that seemed to show that a late Trump ad contrasting Harris' supposed concern with 'he/she' as against the Monster's supposed concern with 'you' shifted 2% of the vote.
I still think economics has a role to play. The spreading effect of economic inequality means the middle class and moderate rich have further to fall. There is no 'comfortably off'. Longer hours at work, rising house prices, reduced return to labour, and reduced upward mobilty all mean that they are getting less for the same labour input. This means a much reduced sense of economic security regardless of wealth.
But responding to this by voting for the Republican party is seriously stupid. Black women, who are at the sharp end of this process, have never given the Repubs any supprot.
Hmmm. If white men really don't have anything to complain about, can you suggest a reason so many of them have been committing slow-motion suicide – or actual suicide – in recent decades?
It doesn't matter whether or how the anger of white American men is justified - it engenders destructive and self-destructive behaviors of all kinds, from gun ownership to vaccine denial.
I have a hypothesis: most of them are materially comfortable but lack a deeper sense of purpose and meaning in their lives. They have been so comfortable since birth that they have never felt the need to grow up and commit to something meaningful.
This makes them susceptible to offers of a made up struggle, like the need to rail against ‘immigrants taking our jobs’ or whatever.
The only solution is a cultural shift that demands adult-aged people behave like adults. For example: an expectation that they take their votes seriously.
Not sure about the ‘made up’ part of the struggle - is a man likely to drink/drug himself to death if he feels materially comfortable? - but fair point otherwise, Mr Perret.
There have been multiple structural threats to white patriarchy since the 1970s. Undoing that is impossible and certainly undesirable. I get that for every incel screeching about their right to rape very young women they rate a 10 there are likely a dozen painfully struggling to navigate the effects of educated women in the workforce and a highly mobile labour market since globalisation and deindustrialisation but that doesn’t make them a more legitimate (or more working class) voice than women and people of colour. The solution? Surely better ideas about masculinity (and race).
Would the world be safer with a Democratic president when for most of the past term the system was run by the public service as we call it (Biden non compos mentis)but that is infiltrated by interests that want to control the world and have no interest in support of social services but destroy countries and kill millions as evidenced recently in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Trump surely is an loose cannon to say the least and easily led.
Biden's foreign policy has been awful, notably in backing Israel, but Trump will be worse in that and other respects. I don't think US had much to do with events in Syria, Lebanon or Iraq while Biden was in, and his (disastrously mismanaged) withdrawal from Afghanistan was not aimed at controlling the world.
"...his [Bidens']-(disastrously mismanaged) withdrawal from Afghanistan..." Evidence for this GOP talking point? I'm with Kevin Drum on this, His outline goes:
1. Trump cut a Munich-style deal with the Taliban for US withdrawal, behind the back of the puppet government in Kabul.
2. Puppet government, abandoned by its sponsor, collapsed in slo-mo, allowing Taliban to walk into Kabul ahead of schedule.
3. Biden`s DoD and State Dept arranged a successful rushed evacuation of c. 100k Americans and Afghan allies.
4. There were two untypical bad moments: a chaotic and panicky first day at the airport, quickly brought under control: and a serious attack st he airport later by ISIS. Both episodes were endlessly rerun on TV and became the false public image of the operation.
I didn't intend to suggest that Biden was wholly or even mainly responsible, but it was a disaster for him (and therefore for the world). His popularity dropped sharply and never recovered
G'day John, I understand that the US spent a couple of years training the takfiris for the takeover of Syria whilst they killed the economy via oil theft and control of the fertile land. Who supplies armaments to the Zionists that bombed Lebanon and Syria for years. What was the purpose of the time in Afghanistan if not a move to undermine another side of Russia's border remember Georgia, Chechnya. Think Zbigniew Brezezinski et al for some background to the play being performed and world domination is front and centre.
I agree with you about US backing of Israel, but this makes sense more in terms of US domestic politics than any coherent geopolitical strategy. I'm not an expert on Syria, and but my understanding is that the groups backed by the US were not those that took over (I assume that's the takfiris). Putin's crimes in Georgia, Chechnya, Ukraine and elsewhere are his own doing - blaming the US is par of the course. Brzezinski was influential 50 years ago, IIRC - talking about him now suggests a US-centric worldview that is long out of date.
The main thing Angry White Men are angry at?
Women.
I have for a long time thought that the main harm caused by anti-feminist politics would not be through the realisation of its goals but through the stoking of ressentiments and senses of entitlement among many men (especially younger men) that would preclude the development by such men of any kind of constructive and respectful relationships with women. I also think that a lot of the Angry White Men are also Anomic White Men.
NB: Obviously the realisation of the goals of an anti-feminist politics would be catastrophically harmful, but I also think those goals are probably unrealisable outside of an extreme totalitarian framework.
Connell would argue that white male backlash against efforts to uncouple wealth and power from the gendered/racialised/sexualised capitist hierarchy at the centre of western society comes from two distinct groups: those men who have traditionally "won" through their compliance with the norms of the structure in their context (and the women who have benefitted from that) and now fear loss of that privilege; and those men who have traditionally "lost" because their access to resources prevents them from complying with the structure in their context, who were always angry and, through the loss of Unions and the rise of globalised outsourcing, now align their sense of security with their (mostly male) employers. Biden was right. This, as it has always been, is a function of an economic system that privileges some (and their allies) over others. What he missed was that globalised neoliberal capitalism has changed who white male workers and (the women who support them) see as the enemy. That's why the old traditional anti-woke (mostly male) lefties are out there banging the class drum again. We need to both re-assert the value of traditional markers of the skilled worker (e.g. apprenticeships) but this time include those traditionally excluded from them (such as women) and assert the place of men in the caring professions (e.g. nursing, social work). In other words, build a working class that doesn't give a shit about someone else's gender binary.
See 'White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy' by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman.
While I agree that "angry white men" are the bulk of the Trump support, the reason that Harris lost is that about 10 million people who voted for Biden did not vote for her, while Trump's vote increased by a small amount (2 million). So the loss of those groups is important in a narrow election. Several groups were not happy with the Democrats - poor whites feel that the Democrats have long promised and never delivered and have now (irrationally) gone to Trump, people of Middle Eastern origin voted against Harris because of the administration's policy on Israel, many Latino men (and whites) admire the "strong ruler" image of Trump, and I suspect that some voters would not vote for a woman. All of these small to moderate losses build up.
As I said, I’m not interested in analysing changes between 2020 and 2024. Post-mortems can't bring the patient back to life and, as I said at the beginning of the OP, there will be no point in refighting the 2024 election next time around.
That is partly true. But for the economist, change or improvement is mostly at the margin, and that is where it was lost. As a doctor myself, and a surgeon, post-mortems and audits are of value for the next similar case, and every election has the same broad issues / groups of voters who need to be considered
The archetypal angry white man is Rupert Murdoch, who anticipated both Putin and Trump in weaponising male resentment and projecting their own insecurities onto whole polities. In all probability, at least one of the three will not survive 2025, so things may look up.
White evangelical Christians make up 13% of the population and 18% of those who vote - they reliably vote around 83% in favour of Trump - the issue is largely one of race & the attempt to retain social and political power
Why not start at the logical beginning? How many white men are actually angry? What do they say they are angry about? How do their reports correspond with otherwise reliable observations of and conclusions about the matter? One might be disappointed or even frightened without being angry.
While, as an old lefty and feminist, I'd like to think your female correspondent and Trevor Best are right, life may well be, and likely is, more complicated than that. The attraction of some people to demagoguery, authoritarianism, racism, sexism, doubts about the excesses of identity politics, the idea of US exceptionalism and a correct perception of US decline may not only be due to anger.
Somebody has pointed to polls that seemed to show that a late Trump ad contrasting Harris' supposed concern with 'he/she' as against the Monster's supposed concern with 'you' shifted 2% of the vote.
I still think economics has a role to play. The spreading effect of economic inequality means the middle class and moderate rich have further to fall. There is no 'comfortably off'. Longer hours at work, rising house prices, reduced return to labour, and reduced upward mobilty all mean that they are getting less for the same labour input. This means a much reduced sense of economic security regardless of wealth.
But responding to this by voting for the Republican party is seriously stupid. Black women, who are at the sharp end of this process, have never given the Repubs any supprot.
Well said John.
In any event, all the parsing in the world of exit polls etc. tells nothing of why a decisive number of Biden's voters stayed home.
Best of the season mate.
Hmmm. If white men really don't have anything to complain about, can you suggest a reason so many of them have been committing slow-motion suicide – or actual suicide – in recent decades?
It doesn't matter whether or how the anger of white American men is justified - it engenders destructive and self-destructive behaviors of all kinds, from gun ownership to vaccine denial.
I have a hypothesis: most of them are materially comfortable but lack a deeper sense of purpose and meaning in their lives. They have been so comfortable since birth that they have never felt the need to grow up and commit to something meaningful.
This makes them susceptible to offers of a made up struggle, like the need to rail against ‘immigrants taking our jobs’ or whatever.
The only solution is a cultural shift that demands adult-aged people behave like adults. For example: an expectation that they take their votes seriously.
Not sure about the ‘made up’ part of the struggle - is a man likely to drink/drug himself to death if he feels materially comfortable? - but fair point otherwise, Mr Perret.
There have been multiple structural threats to white patriarchy since the 1970s. Undoing that is impossible and certainly undesirable. I get that for every incel screeching about their right to rape very young women they rate a 10 there are likely a dozen painfully struggling to navigate the effects of educated women in the workforce and a highly mobile labour market since globalisation and deindustrialisation but that doesn’t make them a more legitimate (or more working class) voice than women and people of colour. The solution? Surely better ideas about masculinity (and race).
Would the world be safer with a Democratic president when for most of the past term the system was run by the public service as we call it (Biden non compos mentis)but that is infiltrated by interests that want to control the world and have no interest in support of social services but destroy countries and kill millions as evidenced recently in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Trump surely is an loose cannon to say the least and easily led.
Biden's foreign policy has been awful, notably in backing Israel, but Trump will be worse in that and other respects. I don't think US had much to do with events in Syria, Lebanon or Iraq while Biden was in, and his (disastrously mismanaged) withdrawal from Afghanistan was not aimed at controlling the world.
"...his [Bidens']-(disastrously mismanaged) withdrawal from Afghanistan..." Evidence for this GOP talking point? I'm with Kevin Drum on this, His outline goes:
1. Trump cut a Munich-style deal with the Taliban for US withdrawal, behind the back of the puppet government in Kabul.
2. Puppet government, abandoned by its sponsor, collapsed in slo-mo, allowing Taliban to walk into Kabul ahead of schedule.
3. Biden`s DoD and State Dept arranged a successful rushed evacuation of c. 100k Americans and Afghan allies.
4. There were two untypical bad moments: a chaotic and panicky first day at the airport, quickly brought under control: and a serious attack st he airport later by ISIS. Both episodes were endlessly rerun on TV and became the false public image of the operation.
I didn't intend to suggest that Biden was wholly or even mainly responsible, but it was a disaster for him (and therefore for the world). His popularity dropped sharply and never recovered
G'day John, I understand that the US spent a couple of years training the takfiris for the takeover of Syria whilst they killed the economy via oil theft and control of the fertile land. Who supplies armaments to the Zionists that bombed Lebanon and Syria for years. What was the purpose of the time in Afghanistan if not a move to undermine another side of Russia's border remember Georgia, Chechnya. Think Zbigniew Brezezinski et al for some background to the play being performed and world domination is front and centre.
Interested to hear your thoughts.
I agree with you about US backing of Israel, but this makes sense more in terms of US domestic politics than any coherent geopolitical strategy. I'm not an expert on Syria, and but my understanding is that the groups backed by the US were not those that took over (I assume that's the takfiris). Putin's crimes in Georgia, Chechnya, Ukraine and elsewhere are his own doing - blaming the US is par of the course. Brzezinski was influential 50 years ago, IIRC - talking about him now suggests a US-centric worldview that is long out of date.