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Donald Trump may be the least manly president in modern history according to a conservative professor at the U.S. Naval War College.
Trump has managed to gain support while acting like a selfish, petulant, cowardly and dishonorable bully. Stereotypical masculinity is not an identity to which all men adhere, or should even necessarily aspire to, but Trump has an uncanny following among men who do embrace a traditional “man’s man” ideal.
“Is Trump a man your father and grandfather would have respected?”
In his piece in the Atlantic, Tom Nichols dissects the qualities of “the self-identified class of hard-working men, the stand-up guys, among whom I was raised,” such as “courage, honesty, respect, an economy of words, a bit of modesty, and a willingness to take responsibility.”
As he lays bare these heroic virtues, he asks why “Trump’s working-class white male voters refuse to hold Trump to their own standards of masculinity,” and support, “a vain, cowardly, lying, vulgar, jabbering blowhard.”
Twitter has a lot of thoughts on this viral post:
I don’t get the lionizing of this ‘manly macho President’ - who wears a girdle, depends, lifts in his shoes, full face make up and a ridiculous vain hair do that requires a hairdresser every day to put together. The guy is both repulsive and cowardly — how is that tough?
— Jan Walker (@Artemesia44) May 25, 2020
