Perhaps the best example of this is Donald Trump himself. But other examples would include prominent right-leaning self-help gurus or manosphere influencers such as Jordan Peterson, Dave Ramsey, Andrew Tate, Justin Waller, and Shark Tank member Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary. Steve Jobs probably qualifies as does Elon Musk. There’s probably others I can’t think of right now.
Now I know some of these people built themselves from humble beginnings. But many were born into wealth. But the great constant seems to be that they are ANGRY…ALL THE TIME…AT PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE!!
Now granted some of that might just be part of their sales schtick. But you would think that men who amass that much wealth would at some point develop a cheerier disposition.
Entitlement. Rich white dudes have always had the run of the roost. Now you’re telling them that the rest of us aren’t cool with that? That makes them angry.
Seems to me that people like Pete Hegseth have this bizarre… compulsion? fetish? weird fascination… with being “tough guys”. The military apparently isn’t tough enough, or something. Doesn’t matter that the people who actually know about these things say we need people who understand history and technology, among other things, and not just trigger pullers.
I’ve never been in the military, so I guess I don’t know. And I suppose in an age where a lot of young boys have vapid role models and are very uncertain of their future prospects, the simple solution might be to get into MMA fighting, tattoos and talk a lot of crap about traditional gender norms. Maybe it’s confirmation bias, but I feel like I see a lot of young guys who have something to prove and no way to do it, so it turns simple-minded and mean-spirited.
I’d imagine that with fame and money and their particular “career,” they attract a huge amount of hatred and opposition. I can imagine that a guy like Andrew Tate who gets thousands of angry comments might develop even more of a prickly fuck-you personality even if he has just as many if not more supporting fans. Spite-ish attitude.
I’m not sure I’d include Jobs on your list. Everyone who knew him agrees that he was an asshole with a hellacious temper. But it was usually used in support of his “reality distortion field”, which led to technology that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.
I don’t remember Jobs whining about how unfair and hard life was for rich white males.
Maybe it’s just a reversion to the old normal after the turn-of-the-millennium trend toward “playful plutocrats” à la Richard Branson. (As spoofed on The Simpsons: “This new breed of fun-loving billionaire is a welcome change from the classic joyless miser brooding in his cavernous mansion…”)
I think that’s very much in line with the other examples I provided.
As I said, part of it might be related to their sales pitch in that they are connecting with other angry, dissatisfied people. Like “I’m angry about the same shit you are! The difference between your pathetic life and my life of ripped abs and Bugatti roadsters is I channeled that anger into my wealth-building framework, which I will teach to you for $199.99”
Another possibility is that a lot of these people are just fucked up like Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood and are incapable of happiness, regardless of how much wealth they have.
A third possibility is that wealth causes you to despise and feel contempt for most people. You can’t relate to most of their problems. Everyone either seems pathetic or like they want something from you but are unwilling to do what it takes to achieve what you achieved (even if much of it was handed to you). And it forces you to hang out with other like-minded rich douchebags.
Things used to be perfect in America. Absolutely amazing in every way. Men were men. Women were women. Kids played in perfectly manicured lawns while their parents hosted barbecues. There was no division, everyone knew their place, everyone was happy. Anyone who says anything even slightly negative about how things were back in the day, is a treasonous liar. And treason and lying makes me so so mad! It makes my blood boil just to think about it
On the other hand right now everything sucks. Absolutely everything. Honest straight white men can’t walk down the street without getting raped and murdered and forced to transition to a new gender against their will. Anyone who says anything slightly positive about the dystopian woke anarchy we find ourselves in is an appeaser and a liar. And appeasement and lying and woke dystopian anarchy makes me so mad! It makes my blood boil just to think about it.
In between Vietnam and 9/11 there was that whole “Iron John” thing, where young men (meaning white middle class men, of course) lacked “rites of passage into manhood” now that we don’t cram entire generations of guys into military meat grinders like we did back in the good old days. So the solution was to wear leather & moss mankinis and pound drums in the woods.
Followed by the Slacker archetype of manhood. “I’m a Loser Baby, so Why Don’t You Kill Me?” (since, despite my failure in the eyes of consumer culture, I’m not interested in killing my self). This era had a healthy contempt for the bullshit of masculine achievement: notably in the show Jackass. Bravery, danger, comradeship: all very real, but also all very much a big fucking joke. I was always waiting to see Wee-Man go to Iraq and risk an IED wearing nothing but a diaper.
All in all, men were headed in the right direction. Gallantry, valor, adventure? All very worthwhile pursuits, but also all too often a sucker’s game. Now they’re suckers for the same con, and it didn’t have to happen.
In 2010 there were over 50 million American men under 30: if all of them had been dumped into Iraq and Afghanistan en mass, and just hung out or wandered around like young guys do, pretty much matching the combined population of Iraq and Afghanistan of in total, imagine what a victory that would be for lethargy and nonsense, against the forces of dynamic bullshit.
I think that’s one of the problems. There isn’t a reasonable archetype for how a “man” is supposed to actually act. Like it seems like there’s all these men who really don’t understand basic adult human interactions like making friends, dating and romantic relationships, careers, and so on. Society seems to be pushing men to become genderless carbon blobs. So men sort of overcorrect to become these cynical slackers making their snide little side comments or take the other extreme and go all in on the twelve year old’s hyper masculine version of what a “real man” is supposed to be.
I do think that’s a problem. While the left/liberals have made a lot of mostly accurate criticisms about “traditional” masculinity over the years, they’ve never really proposed any alternative. Which created a vacuum that the most toxic portions of the Right have taken advantage of to fill.
The problem with “do your own thing” is that most people don’t want to invent themselves starting from scratch; they want some sort of guide for what their role in life is supposed to be like. And since the left has provided criticism but no guide, the right has been able to suck in a lot of directionless men into becoming if anything worse than the men of the past. Especially since the Right has a huge media machine to push their ideology, and the left and “moderates” don’t.
I recall - maybe 7 or 8 years ago - reading a thread on a forum where someone asked, “Progressives and feminists, what do you think is the value of men, or is the point of even keeping men around in the world, or what can men do that women can’t?” (some title to that effect)
The replies in that thread were a long series of awkward, “Well…..not really anything, we guess. There’s nothing a man can do a woman can’t, there’s no purpose or value intrinsically in having men in the world. Other than sperm being needed for reproduction, maybe.”
With that sort of message - even if a minority-niche view - it’s not surprising that many men would flock to the likes of Jordan Peterson or Andrew Tate.
That is a minority niche view (but it generates clicks and feeds the algorithm) and there’s probably an intersection of young women who devalue men and young women who provide arm candy for the angry macho rich guys. They have the common traits of making superficial assessments, and expect someone else to carry them through life.
There are no gendered vices or virtues (even though the punishments and rewards may be distributed unevenly for men and women)
I’ve done all the man stuff, 40+ years ago when one did it for adventure, not gender affirmation. Hop freights and live by my wits, deal with violent assholes though I hadn’t started it or provoked it. Bounced my head against bulkheads in 30-foot seas. Standing guard for Uncle Sam within range of a tree line where “they” might have been waiting to shoot. And of course the toughest of all: raise an American teenager until they become someone you don’t have to worry about. And women do all these same things.
If the Left has failed to provide a model of how modern men are to be, it’s because it’s not its job. The primary obligation of the individual is to be honest to him her or itself. Forge your own godamn identity. Make an ass of yourself while you’re doing, but don’t let anyone tell you completely how to do it. Not Andrew Tate on the Right or some Karen with a nose ring gesturing with bird hands on the Left.
I suspect a lot of young men are aimless. These are folks who feel as though they have poor economic prospects, few meaningful homosocial relationships, few romantic relationships, and maybe no idea how or perhaps no desire to put in the work to improve their situation. So the Andrew Tates of the world take advantage of the emptiness and gives them something to fill it up with.
