I have an old college friend who is very Elon Musk-like. He sold some tech companies he founded in the 90s and started his own venture capital firm. The guys always involved in some very public fight with this group or that group. I think for a lot of these guys, they have big egos and a ton of money and they can’t tolerate a world that various in any way from how they would have it be. Probably because they are so used to using their money to craft the world in the image they would make of it.
Being angry means you’re afraid of something, ashamed of something, or you’re sad about something, and you can’t/won’t really express it in a better or more descriptive way.
So the question is really what are they afraid of, ashamed of, or sad about? My contention is that a lot of them never really got what they wanted, and feel like they were sold a bill of goods by society. The sort of success they want rings hollow in some ways, and they feel like they didn’t expect that, weren’t warned about it, etc… And now they hear/see politicians talking about taxing them more, blaming them for the ills of other people who they’ve never met, and generally discounting every concern or issue they may have simply because of the color of their skin and their gender. (“woe is me, I have it so hard”)
It’s not surprising that this would result in anger. It’s all relative you know; to some Hispanic guy sharing an apartment with five other guys and making minimum wage working construction, this other guy’s life sounds great, because it addresses/satisfies that guy’s concerns and fears. But it may not do so for the guy living it.
And to dismiss all that because “old white men” as a class have it good, is really missing the forest for the trees.
Yeah, but… To them I’d say join the fucking club, you know? It’s fine to be disappointed and frustrated and need to work through that, but they lose me when they start blaming women or immigrants or whatever for their problems. Maybe they should look more deeply about where their values came from and who actually benefits from their misery. Because it’s not minorites. That’s the bill of goods they were sold, but it’s the ones exploiting them they need to get angry about.
I’m not sure why everyone is viewing this through a lens of racism. Plenty of rich angry white dudes out there whose anger isn’t targeted towards any specific race or group.
I think a lot of the resentment towards women comes from the frustrations related to the dynamics of finding and maintaining a relationship. Maybe they’ve had a few bad relationships or a divorce or they’re stuck in an unhappy marriage.
And I think maybe it doesn’t really feel like “success” to a lot of men. To me it feels like a lot of conflicting demands placed on me without really any rewards other than some abstract notion of “family love” and societal acceptance.
Thing is, it’s not “white men” who have most of the money; it’s the rich regardless of skin color or gender. Both the right and left wings for their own reasons conflate rich white men with white men in general, and one effect of that is that it produces a feeling of solidarity among poor and middle class white men with a wealthy class that reciprocates by looking at them as subhumans and “useful idiots”.
What they left should have been doing is hammering on that class divide, and convincing those poor and middle class whites that their interests weren’t served by sucking up to billionaires.
I think we’ve been saying exactly the same thing, just approaching it from different perspectives.
Jason Sudeikis’ character there is ostensibly “successful”, but I’m sure he’s sitting there questioning how useful that sort of success is, and probably there’s some other path he wishes he’d have taken, had he just known how hollow the success would actually ring.
But he’s stuck, and doesn’t have a way out. And in many men, that sadness and mourning for what could have been, combined with the fear that this is all he’s ever going to have, and it’s all downhill from here conspire pretty easily to engender a lot of anger and discontentment.
I actually think the majority of what people call racism in the US is actually classism, but it’s distorted and confused by the fact that the poor are disproportionately not white. Something like 8% of the people below the poverty line are non-Hispanic white, while the population in general is around 60% non-Hispanic white. So if you see a poor person, they’re most likely to be some other ethnic group- black people in particular are disproportionately poor as are hispanic people. And in some parts of the country, that’s even more starkly apparent.
Much of what people bitch about when saying things that are perceived as racist are usually classist things, but since there’s such a close correlation between race and income, it’s taken differently.
IIRC at that point in the film, Sudeikis is basically a small-time drug dealer looking to disguise himself as a typical middle-class schmuck.
It’s similar to the concept of “golden handcuffs”. It’s not so much “successful” as having a job that pays just enough and is stable enough that you’re willing to accept it.
I assumed we were talking about Jordan Peterson et al. And all those other guys profiting off of male dissatisfaction by pointing the finger at marginalized groups.
I mentioned this in another thread, I have spent a higher than average time (for a woman) in certain parts of the manosphere, and the relatively harmless arena of productivity/minimalism is a short jaunt to hustle culture and where do you end up? Where I ended up was a YouTube video by a guy exuding easy confidence with some reasonably good advice about overcoming social anxiety. Since I have that, I watched a second video, and something was… not right. He’s giving a lecture to a group of young men who are hanging on his every word. And he starts interrogating this guy in front of everyone, about his values and what he thinks of himself. It was ostensibly to push him toward some kind of insight, but the longer it went on, the more it became, like, bullying. And blatant manipulation. And the poor guy he was hammering was getting more and more agitated but also, like, clearly believed it was for his own good. it was really uncomfortable.
So I googled the man’s YouTube handle and sure enough, it was the reinvented persona of serial rapist and sex trafficker Andrew fuckin’ Tate.
Naw, here in central Florida MAGA central, the poor whites are the most vocal racists that you’ll find just about anywhere I’ve ever been. Saying the “N-word” all of the time is not even remotely about classism. Maybe I’m not in the majority when it comes to racism definitions (I bet I am), but I’m certainly not confusing racism with classism.
Having been raised in a rural white working-class culture in Michigan, I’m going to have to agree with that one. Is every single poor white person in existence racist? No. But for many, it’s pretty core to their identity. Some people use alcohol as a social lubricant; others use racism (and many, of course, use both.)
When I think about my biological father, a self-identified redneck, alcoholic, lower educated white working class guy absolutely surrounded by racism, raised by racists, friends with racists, it’s really quite astonishing to me that he wasn’t a racist. That’s a stand out.
Are “they” not? Generally most men who have achieved any level of financial success have to deal with all sorts of demands on his time and his finances. The jerky, demanding, cheapskate boss. Keeping a wife and children into a lifestyle they’ve become accustomed to. Bills, Taxes. Liberals and other groups declaring it “unfair”. Maybe they have employees or subordinates at work and maybe they are inept at their jobs or try to cheat them. Resisting social pressure to conform and keep up with people they might not even like. I suppose everyone deals with this on some level, but I also think that there is an aspect of the more you have, the more you have to be taken from you.
Which leads me to my next point…
I don’t think that’s inaccurate.
Much of their anger and fear may be that what they have achieved may be taken away, simply because someone decided it was “unfair”. And whether it is unfair or not, most people will become angry and resentful and do whatever is in their power to fight you if you try to take something from them.
Maybe expand to “…what they have achieved, or received as a generational legacy, may be taken away…”
I think it’s status anxiety. Guys like Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson know deep down that they’ve gotten extraordinarily lucky and they have no real talent. They’ve blustered and bluffed their way to fame, and they feel insecure because know they could be knocked off the pedestal at any time by any other no-talent grifter.
Because of their insecurity they are extraordinarily selfish and greedy. They can’t afford to be generous or pay tax because they know their star could fade at any moment.
They have feelings of envy and inferiority to people who have actual marketable skills and concrete achievements, so they love to pick those people apart, and the easiest way to do that is to suggest that they’re DEI hires or undeserving in some other way.
What an empty life.
I feel like so many people spend their years playing the wrong game. Take these pick up artists. They view the relationship between men and women as primarily adversarial, and as long as they do that, they cut off all chance of having anything authentic and mutually supportive.
Same for men who belittle other men for showing vulnerability or emotion. What they could have is a relationship where they are allowed to show up as fully themselves. But they pretty much guarantee it won’t happen.
These men have an idea for example that an equal partnership would entail them feeling emasculated and miserable. When in fact the happiest couples are the ones who can share each other’s load and where you get to show up as whole, complex people rather than just a stereotype about your gender.
And while I doubt Andrew Tate had any desire for anything authentic, a lot of his followers do.
“So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains
And we never even know we have the key”
Already Gone, the Eagles
I would agree with this. They play this game, it gets them to a certain point, and they realize that not only have they topped out in terms of fame and income, they’ll never be able to do anything else.
They are stuck playing this unfulfilling role that gets them as much hate as adoration (if not more). So they’re doomed to a life of chasing dwindling returns of adoration, and pushing back on the ever-increasing mountain of hate, and thinking that they have no other options.
I’m not convinced that there is that strong of a correlation between anger and wealth on that side of the aisle. On the conservative side, I see plenty of poor angry white dudes espousing the exact same sentiments as the wealthy.
I’ve had good and bad bosses while being financially successful. I’ve NEVER had a boss as demanding as many fast food workers face on a daily basis.
Pretty self inflicted, if you ask me.
After bills and taxes, I’ve still been in far better shape that a large portion of the population. No reason for anger there. Hell, if you want to give me four times as much money, you can increase my marginal rates and I’ll still be smiling all day long.
I’m not sure what “it” is, so I can’t really comment. I’m a well off liberal white dude, but no one in my circle would consider me an angry person.
If my employees are inept or trying to cheat me, yet remain employed, I’m pretty inept and probably don’t deserve my financial situation. Someone should be coming after me and my money.
In a literal sense, it’s true that more can be taken from me. I just don’t see the mechanism for it to happen in a way that would cause me to get angry. I’m far more likely to anger over injustices to others than because there was a 2% tax hike or something similar.
Those immigrants aren’t out to get me. The gays aren’t trying to force me to divorce my wife and go to leather clubs. Women aren’t after my money.
While I think @HMS_Irruncible is probably correct about the status anxiety for some of them, I think most rich angry white dudes are basically poor angry white dudes that got lucky financially. They were always going to be angry, either way.
Agree 100%.
When I was starting out in life, I didn’t understand the irrational opposition–a phobia it seemed, to paying taxes–in my conservative friends. I didn’t have much money, but I didn’t see taxes as the cause of that.
They assured me that when I started making more money and paying more taxes, my opinion on taxes would change.
It hasn’t.
It seems like some conservatives would rather be making $50,000 (and paying no tax on it) to making $200,000 and paying half of it in taxes.
The late Roy Cohn was said to have wanted to die broke owing, millions to the IRS.
Curiously, that attitude reminds me of Chris Rock’s story of the way his mother paid the bills every month. She made the checks out, but didn’t mail them in until they would arrive on the exact day they were due. “She seemed to think if she died owing money, she’d ‘won’”.
I would happily pay more in taxes for a broader social safety net, universal healthcare and since we’re dreaming, roads that don’t tear up my car.
I recently saw that a local millage for the fire department failed. The fire department. People don’t even want to fund basic services.