The Angry White Male Caucus
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
When Matt Damon did his Brett Kavanaugh imitation on “Saturday Night Live,” you could tell that he nailed it before he said a word. It was all about the face — that sneering, rage-filled scowl. Kavanaugh didn’t sound like a judge at his Senate hearing last week, let alone a potential Supreme Court justice; he didn’t even manage to look like one.
But then again, Lindsey Graham, who went through the hearing with pretty much the same expression on his face, didn’t look much like a senator, either.
There have been many studies of the forces driving Trump support, and in particular the rage that is so pervasive a feature of the MAGA movement. What Thursday’s hearing drove home, however, was that white male rage isn’t restricted to blue-collar guys in diners. It’s also present among people who’ve done very well in life’s lottery, whom you would normally consider very much part of the elite.
In other words, hatred can go along with high income, and all too often does.
At this point there’s overwhelming evidence against the “economic anxiety” hypothesis — the notion that people voted for Donald Trump because they had been hurt by globalization. In fact, people who were doing well financially were just as likely to support Trump as people who were doing badly.
What distinguished Trump voters was, instead, racial resentment. Furthermore, this resentment was and is driven not by actual economic losses at the hands of minority groups, but by fear of losing status in a changing country, one in which the privilege of being a white man isn’t what it used to be.
And here’s the thing: It’s perfectly possible for a man to lead a comfortable, indeed enviable life by any objective standard, yet be consumed with bitterness driven by status anxiety.
You might think that this is impossible, that having a good job and a comfortable life would inoculate someone against envy and hatred. That is, you might think that if you knew nothing of human nature and the world.
I’ve spent my whole adult life in rarefied academic circles, where everyone has a good income and excellent working conditions. Yet I know many people in that world who are seething with resentment because they aren’t at Harvard or Yale, or who actually are at Harvard or Yale but are seething all the same because they haven’t received a Nobel Prize.
And this sort of high-end resentment, the anger of highly privileged people who nonetheless feel that they aren’t privileged enough or that their privileges might be eroded by social change, suffuses the modern conservative movement.
It starts, of course, at the top, with that walking, talking, golfing bundle of resentment that is Donald Trump. You might imagine that a man who lives in the White House would no longer feel the need to, for example, make false claims about his college record. But Trump still doesn’t get the respect he obviously craves.
Indeed, it seems apparent that his jihad against Barack Obama was fueled by envy: Obama was a black man who was also a class act, with all the grace and poise Trump lacks. And Trump couldn’t stand it.
Kavanaugh is clearly cut from the same cloth, and not just because he rivals Trump in his propensity for lying about matters great and small.
As a lot of reporting shows, the angry face Kavanaugh presented to the world last week wasn’t something new, brought on by the charges of past abuse. Classmates from his Yale days describe him as a belligerent heavy drinker even then. His memo to Ken Starr as he helped harass Bill Clinton — in which he declared that “it is our job to make his pattern of revolting behavior clear” — shows rage as well as cynicism.
And Kavanaugh, like Trump, is still in the habit of embellishing his academic record after all these years, declaring that he got into Yale despite having “no connections.” In fact, he was a legacy student whose grandfather went there.
Indeed, my guess is that his privileged roots are precisely why he’s so angry.
I very much ran with the nerds during my own time at Yale, but I did encounter people like Kavanaugh — hard-partying sons of privilege who counted on their connections to insulate them from any consequences from their actions, up to and including abusive behavior toward women. And that kind of elite privilege still exists.
But it’s privilege under siege. An increasingly diverse society no longer accepts the God-given right of white males from the right families to run things, and a society with many empowered, educated women is finally rejecting the droit de seigneur once granted to powerful men.
And nothing makes a man accustomed to privilege angrier than the prospect of losing some of that privilege, especially if it comes with the suggestion that people like him are subject to the same rules as the rest of us.
So what we got last week was a view into the soul of Trumpism. It’s not about “populism” — it would be hard to find a judge as anti-worker as Brett Kavanaugh. Instead, it’s about the rage of white men, upper class as well as working class, who perceive a threat to their privileged position. And that rage may destroy America as we know it.
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OMG, the poor white male victim syndrome. It's discrimination I tell ya. /s
I've often said that I've had a deprived existence.
Being a straight male WASP, I have never been subject to discrimination. No one has ever refused me anything because of my color or religion or sex... or whatever...
Deprived, I tell you!
The last time experienced it was in a restaurant in Pontiac, Michigan. It was an all black waitstaff and all black customers and they refused to serve us. They would take the orders of all the black customers even those that arrived well after we did but would not come to take our order even after we notified them that we were waiting. Once we realized what was going on we left and went elsewhere.
And to think, that was how blacks were treated every day in America for centuries. Now that some black community apparently has the audacity to return the favor out comes the righteous indignation. It's still wrong for them do have done such a thing to you if they did, but are you sure it wasn't a self service establishment where you have to go up to a counter and order? I've been in a few places like that and if you just sit down and wait for your order to be taken you'll be there an hour before anyone comes to let you know.
Wow, I don't know how to respond to this without someone flagging me.
Where I grew up in a unsheltered real world it didn't matter what color you were.
If you were in a place of being a minority you would know it.
Righteous Indignation? I didn't see anything like that in Dean's comment, but I understand your need to read in what emotions you think he was experiencing.
"I could rape someone on 5th Ave and not lose any angry white male supporters!"
"I landed under sniper fire and had to run for my life"
My question to any Republican voter is "what have they done for you?"
Every border state has voted primarily Republican at all levels, did Republicans fix immigration? NO!
Every other state that has voted primarily Republican at all levels, did Republicans fix anything? Fix healthcare? Fix jobs? Fix wages? Fix infrastructure? NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, and NO!
Republicans are only experts at messaging, convincing their base and uninformed voters that horrible policies or promises are what they want so vote for a Republican.
Now the fight over Roe after Republican voters secretly are waking up to how much Republicans have done nothing for them, are still clinging to the Republican party over this ONE issue alone.
Republican voters are abandoning their principles, their values, fully and publicly accepting the lies, the corruption, simply to get this one thing from Republicans.
Republican donors only wanted to steal from the American taxpayer and Republicans gleefully paid their donors back for years and years of support while they got nothing done.
They take less from me with the tax breaks. They gave me the right to protect myself in my own home with the make my day law. They protect me from the liberal gun grabbers. They gave us sequestration. They successfully blocked many of Obama’s socialist theft and redistribution policy proposals. They are rolling back freedom stripping federal regulations. They are giving us a more conservative Federal court justices in the lower courts. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Yep, including tax cuts for the middle class. But you think the GOP cares about the middle class...
I already knew they were pillaging and looting but I thought the raping was just a metaphor. It seems it was not.
"Angry White Male Caucus?"
What benefits from this phenom?
A weakened, confused, divided and fearful America clears the stage for a rising World influence and control by Russian Federation Oligarchy. It is amazing that Putin has so many allies ( witting and unwitting ) within our government and population.
At the recent Trump Rally in West Virginia, one of the attendees actually thanked Putin for delivering Trump to save America. Against this there isn't any defense.
"When Matt Damon did his Brett Kavanaugh imitation on “Saturday Night Live,” you could tell that he nailed it before he said a word."
Now that's fucking funny.
Matt Damon Once Defended Men From ‘Baseless Sexual Assault Claims’
“I’d go ‘I don’t want this out there’” he said. “Now with the internet – not that the internet wasn’t there ten years ago – but now with social media, these stories, it’s like they get gasoline poured on them. So if you make that same claim to me today, I’d be scorched earth. I’d go ‘I don’t care if it costs me $10 million to fight this in court with you for ten years, you’re not taking my name from me. You’re not taking my name and my reputation from me because I worked too hard for it and you can’t just blow me up like that.’”
Tissue? I thought it was hilarious.
Angry White Republican Male
Florida man arrested for threats to kill Democrats, 'weak' Republicans, over Kavanaugh nomination: sheriff
Here's his FB post:
I can tell it seems I will be sacrificing my life for my country. But I am ready and will know who needs to be killed after the vote to put Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. I believe democrats need to made to be afraid to do what they are doing right now and weak republicans that do not vote for him need to pay with their lives.
Republicans must be so proud, this is one of orange conman toddler in chiefs "fine people", maybe orange shit stain will bail him out and pay for his lawyer.
Well, ya know what they say, "all the nuts roll down to florida".
I went to Florida once, I couldn't get back to the USA fast enough.
Here's another....such a peace loving soul...