The Grand Illusion
American males in the 18-29 age group favor Donald Trump disproportionately. In today’s United States, that shouldn’t be a surprise.
In a way, Trump represents everything that most young males want – money, the ability to have their way with women, the apparent ability to tell the government to stuff it, the ability to avoid adult supervision, and the ability to put down women, especially strong women, at will, all without repercussions – not to mention the ability to complain endlessly about how everyone is against him.
I’m certainly not the only one who’s made that connection. There was a New York Post story earlier this week about Trump’s “unabashed machismo vibe,” and its effective appeal to 18-29 year-old American males.
But the appeal goes beyond that. Too many men are still boys. As they get older, their toys just get bigger, and more expensive. I see it all the time – small houses with powerboats almost the size of the house, families with multiple ATVs and multiple trail bikes, but who plead poverty and can’t or won’t provide health insurance or help their children with college expenses. Male students driving late model cars or pick-up trucks who claim they can’t afford textbooks.
When men complain that their wages haven’t kept up with inflation, and that housing is too expensive, I have to wonder. The mortgage rates they complain about are lower than any mortgage I was able to get for more than forty years. The only time they were lower was after we’d slaved to pay off the house, but as an adult, you have to realize that matters don’t always go your way, no matter how long and hard you work (the odds are just far better if you do)…and that most women get tired of boys who never grow up (which might help explain why more women oppose Trump).
This is off-topic but the hardcover edition of Sub-Majer’s Challenge is now available for pre-order on Amazon
There are many reasonable reasons the young, and young men in particular, might not like the Democrats. I’m surprised you can’t think of any.
* The cost of housing has gone up. You may have paid a higher interest rate for your mortgage but your house was a lot less expensive.
* You also didn’t have to pay as much for your college degree which eats deeply into people’s income.
* Inflation on items in the store has surged. That hits young families with children particularly hard.
* They have to compete with a surge of illegal migrants who reduce salaries and are housed for free, which reduces the supply of housing, increasing the price of housing.
* Kamala says that there are only laws that control the bodies of women, ignoring the draft.
* Biden has brought us closer to World War 3 than any other president (Bulletin of Atomic Scientists). That would cause young men to be drafted, to defend a country whose morals they don’t agree with. Wonder why the military can’t reach its recruitment goals?
* Kamala wants to control guns. Yes she now pretends she cares about the 2cd amendment but that’s a flip. Men are the ones who have to protect their families in dangerous areas. They might prefer to have guns to do so.
* Kamala says we all have to be woker. Wokeness has made it harder for white men, and men in general to get a job.
* Kamala wants to regulate free speech, and Waltz claims the 1st amendment does not apply to “hate speech”. Men typically banter around, but that’s not ok anymore, because someone might get offended. That’s a female trait (agreeableness) men don’t like.
* Not everyone trusts the people who tell us what is “misinformation” or “malinformation”. Such people care about being able to hear news those in power don’t like, even if it makes Kerry’s life governing harder.
* Some people might be voting for Trump because they don’t like the way the Democrat party operates: removing alternate candidates, forcing Biden through the primaries, then replacing him without any democratic consultation by Kamala. Lying about Biden being the sharpest ever, then kicking him out once he fails an interview.
* Many men care about competence which no longer seems to matter (witness Kamala and Waltz standing for US president). Instead what seems to matter is DEI. Many men don’t care about belonging to some “victim” group.
* Many men are disgusted by the killing going on in Israel made possible by the US sending C-50’s full of bombs. Trump says he wants peace in Ukraine and the Middle East. People might believe him.
* Many men are inspired by people like Elon Musk, RFK Jr, JD Vance and Trump: people who made a difference. The Democrats ceaselessly belittle them.
* Some young people died, others were injured by the COVID vaccinations that were imposed by Biden’s administration on every company with more than 500 employees. RFK Jr makes a lot of sense to some people.
* Other young men may resonate with MAHA since 1/3 of them are too obese to be accepted if they wanted to join the military.
* Some men may be put off by the adverts suggesting that women should lie to their husband about their votes, that there’s a secret society of women that trumps the trust you have in another person.
* Indeed some people might just be rebelling against the insane amount of pressure people are applying to “vote the right way”, as if a vote were some sort of moral evaluation. A vote is supposed to be a choice of the best program.
The young family near me doesn’t have the useless luxuries you describe, but they complain that they can’t afford to buy a house and can only rent despite both having good jobs. They hope there will be a surplus of housing once the Boomers die off.
I’m sure there are unreasonable reasons to vote for Trump, but to portray all Trump voters as having no reasonable reasons is not just uncharitable, it’s simply wrong.
Clearly a vote for Trump is a vote against “going forwards” in the same direction. It’s a vote to go back, fix things, and then choose a different path forwards. That path doesn’t have to be misogynistic.
I agree that many men agree with what you laid out. That’s exactly the problem. In addition, many of those “reasons” embody half-truths or falsehoods, not that people can’t whole-heartedly embrace half-truths or falsehoods.
And whose fault is it that 1/3 of young men are obese, or that many women don’t dare to disagree openly with men, given the on-going violence against women by men? Getting beaten for disagreeing isn’t conducive to saying how you feel.
We agree that people should not beat each other. It is however unlikely that every Trump voting man beats his wife.
As for obesity, I think the notion that a lot of “food” sold in the US is toxic for one’s mitochondria which causes fat build-up has some validity. Other countries have lower obesity but stricter food regulation. Casey Means has been talking about it recently.
In a democracy, one has to convince the other side that one’s “facts” are correct. One can’t just berate them for being evil. Doing so polarizes the society and lays the ground for civil war. Our media no longer addresses both sides, and so radically different “facts” are reported to both sides. Other parts of the world are also told completely different narratives to those spun in the US.
For instance, one side might claim the economy is awful. By that they mean they can’t get jobs. The other side might claim the economy is great. By that they mean the stock market is up. These two things used to be linked because inequality was lower and the Fed did not print an insane amount of money. However they aren’t anymore, so both sides have “facts” to back up their position, but they are talking about different meanings of the word “economy”.
> …to portray all Trump voters as having no reasonable reasons is not just uncharitable, it’s simply wrong.
Aside from what LEM correctly points out, the other problem is that anyone voting for Trump, no matter their reason(s), is facilitating fascism, misogyny, racism, corruption, anti-science thinking, and the list goes on.
That bigger picture is why it is quite fair to fault Trump voters. We could see the end of the Republic. I’m not exaggerating. That’s why all the Republicans from Arnold to the Cheneys are endorsing Harris.
You’ve stated a bunch of opinions as if they were facts. You need to prove these statements. Start by proving that Trump is a Fascist. If you can’t, then how do you expect to convince anyone else but your own choir?
Cheney advocated and implemented torture. If anything his endorsement of Harris is a red flag. Two decades ago no democrat would have been proud of such an endorsement. Watch Democracy Now! from his time to see what was thought of him.
When a man says he’ll be a dictator as Trump did, and when he wants to lock up his opponents if the election doesn’t go his way, and when he wants to put someone who criticizes him, as Liz Cheney did, in front of a firing squad, I’d say that goes a fair way toward the Mussolini model.
My understanding is that Trump said that if he were dictator for a day, he’d do something or the other. It’s not much different from saying “If I were king…” Would we make a fuss if someone else said the same thing?
JD Vance claimed on Rogan that Trump had grounds to get the DOJ to investigate Hillary for felonies during his presidency, but refrained because it would divide the country further. That suggests he would not do so this time around. Moreover, presumably a US President can’t simply lock anyone up on his say-so, so what he wants shouldn’t matter. A more likely concern is lawfare, but a Trump supporter would point out that Trump has also been the target of lawfare (“Russia, Russia, Russia”, and the current court cases against Trump).
I’m not sure what “put someone who criticizes him” means. If you are referring to today’s kerfuffle, Liz Cheney advocates war, and he suggested those who advocate war like her would change their tune if they were forced to fight. This could well be true. Many people would behave more humanely if it was their skin was in the game.
Although I find Trump’s stream of consciousness utterances annoying and sometimes confusing, I’m personally more concerned by the kinds of people he surrounded himself with during his first administration. I hope he’ll select wiser minions this time around…
> You’ve stated a bunch of opinions as if they were facts.
No, I’ve made a bunch of statements with a factual basis.
But you know what? Here’s something I think we can agree on. See, I don’t think anything I’ve said or could say has swayed or will sway you. Certainly nothing you’ve said has swayed me. Maybe we can both find something more productive to do.
That’s a problem in a democracy.
You could convince me that Hitler was a fascist because the characteristics of a fascist apply to him.
What Wineguy said below about him aren’t the characteristics of a fascist, but bad character traits. Some of the stuff seems to be hearsay, and given the way the media itself is misreporting what happens, it would take work to determine which of his claims are correct, but his post helps me understand why he feels that way, and that I find useful.
Your post is simply antagonistic and provides me with no useful information.
Everything you don’t like is either antagonistic or not useful or injures your self-esteem.
Enough is enough.
LEM, you called me a Nazi. That was uncalled for and inaccurate.
Enough is enough.
It’s take way to long to go through all of your points, but felt I should point out an issue with at least one of them, specifically housing.
At the end of 1980, the average income in the US was $21,064.61. At the end of 2022, it was $106,400.00. An increase of ~4x. (Source: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2023/demo/income-poverty/p60-279.html, Table A-2).
At the end of 1980, the average home price was $59,034.91. At the end of 2022, it was $372,484.96. An increase of ~5.3x. (Source: https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/).
So home prices outpaced income by 32.5%. BUT, and this goes to LEM’s comment about interest rates, at the end of 1980, the average mortgage rate was 15%, compared to ~6.4% at the end of 2022, or the peak of 7.8% in October. So as a share of income, the mortgage payment in January 1981 would have been substantially higher than the payment at the end of 2022.
None of these numbers are inflation adjusted, they are raw, so there can’t be an argument about how the CPI doesn’t truly reflect the increase in costs.
For some of the others, there are valid complaints. But any reasonable analysis would show problems with most of them, such as the cost of a college education. Why has the cost gone up so much? Two major reasons. First, colleges keep adding “amenities” to their campuses, because students making choices that factor those in (at least more frequently than in the past, such as when I went to college 30 years ago). Second, and this is a big one, the amount of government funding going to education has been repeatedly cut, sometimes explicitly, but many times by just freezing the budget instead of raising it to match inflation. And which party was most frequently in power when those cuts happened? I’ll give you a hint: the party that has historically wanted to cut taxes, disband the Department of Education, and (at the pre-college level) divert funds from public schools to charter and private schools. And all of those things are still on their agenda.
What matters is the median income. Averages include Elon Musk.
The median HOUSEHOLD income was $80,610 in the US according the Census. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p60-282.html . These days that’s for 2 people holding 2 jobs. A lot of Trump voters probably fall into this category.
“I hope he’ll select wiser minions this time around…”
Do you mean people who will not restrain Trump’s impulses?
No that’s not what I mean.
Our favorite author is writing a blog which is expressing his opinions. To say that he needs to provide facts to convert people to his perspective is doing the same thing to him that you are accusing him of doing to you. You ask for facts but generate a list of opinions about why young adult males might vote for Trump. Your assumption that facts sway opinion is usually incorrect. Most of the political ads are about emotion and not facts. This is understandable in that an emotion can be conveyed in 30 seconds when the facts need to be grounded in context.
Take the state of the economy. The Dow is twice what it was 4 years ago. For some people that is a huge benefit but for others it doesn’t matter when the cost of daily items has gone more than their paychecks. Now today I can go to the store and get toilet paper without a problem when 4 years ago I had to camp out at Walmart for a shipment to come in. But it is reasonable to say Covid messed everything up. Then we need to look at the response to Covid and the economic impacts involved. Soon instead of a few facts we are looking at a large book or a semester long course on this topic.
Many of your points seem to read the mind of Kamala and take everything she says seriously but do not take Trumps many statements and actions as President as seriously. I don’t see any facts in your list. Lee asks a question and supplies some of his thoughts on the issue. People do have different experiences and perspectives. Your response overall does answer the question but not in the way you intended. Most 18-29 year old males believe the lies that the extremely wealthy tell them including that wealth trickles down and that some other group is out to get them when it is the wealthy you are making life difficult for everyone. It is clear to me that Trump’s program is to make the world better in the short term for the extremely wealthy while increasing the hardship for everyone else. Your points show that 18-29 year old males don’t see this.
A final problem in all discussions is that online it is hard to know if people are genuine including this post. Lee’s post has his name attached to it and a long history of making statements about politics. So it is very likely that he is the author of these words but the rest of us could have any number of reasons to put whatever comments in and it is not discernible the sincerity of those comments from just the comments themselves.
I’m not sure why you see opinions rather than facts. I googled for you the first couple of points I listed and here are some sources:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS
https://www.marketwatch.com/graphics/college-debt-now-and-then/
Kamala saying we need to be woker: https://x.com/CaptainMorganTN/status/1837743398666621098
Tim Waltz saying the first amendment doesn’t include misinformation or hate speech: https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1821234167251923318#m
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday clock: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/
I’m not sure where your “very wealthy” liars fit in to these sources.
Yes, some of LEM’s books are my favorites, but I find it sad that he, like so many other Americans, is so polarized, and seems only to spit bile and venom towards the “other side”. (Sorry LEM, but that is how I perceive it). I wish you were fairer, and strong-manned the other side’s points: interpret their points in the most charitable way you can, and then criticize those interpretations.
At this point Democrats are more likely to marry someone from a completely different culture than a Republican. No other country displays this pathology and it bodes ill for the future. I don’t really understand why so few people see this.
And I can’t pretend to believe all is well with this country when I read things like this: https://x.com/evanwch/status/1851368198802948283#m
Perception is always in the eye of the offended. Whether you can see it or not, everything I’ve said about Trump has a proven factual basis. Is it negative? Absolutely. It’s also factually and in many cases legally proven. So, it’s not exactly unfounded venom. I’m far from polarized. I’ve also deplored the excesses of the woke and the left, but their excesses are far less worrisome in this election than Trump’s. From what you write, you’re, like many people, only seeing what you wish to see.
Your line about marrying someone from another culture being a pathology says it all. You’re just expressing another form of Nazism.
This is misconstruing my point.
The US is well known internationally for being so insular that most Americans don’t have a passport (30% in 2008, 46% last year). If they only marry people of their own party to the extent that they marry foreigners in preference to Republicans, it tells you that they don’t marry Republicans at all.
Nazism has nothing to do with this. It is about considering other “races” of people to be unworthy of life. I said no such thing, believe no such thing and I don’t appreciate my character being besmirched in this manner. You have never met me.
It’s beyond me how you can infer that I’m seeing what I wish to see when I literally said that I wish to see far less polarization.
I don’t even understand why you’re so freaked out by Trump. He was President before, and while it certainly wasn’t great, it wasn’t the end of the world. To his credit didn’t get involved in as many wars as the current administration has.
On the other hand, I do see reasons to worry about the current administration’s actions. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov just said that the US and Russia are “very close to engaging in a direct military conflict”. Russia is the state with the largest nuclear arsenal. They just successfully tested their nuclear missiles.
Anyway, I guess we’ll see what Tuesday brings. I’ll probably be unhappy either way, but I hope we can avoid a civil war.
Maybe people are freaked out by Trump because:
1. His attitude towards women is little better than that they are property.
2. His attitude towards his own government is that it was to be soaked for everything he can get.
3. He has had to declare bankruptcy 6 times.
4. When told his own VP was in danger as Right-wing rioters were storming the Capitol, he said “So what.”
5. When he was Commander in Chief, his attitude towards the women and men in uniform was that they were “losers” and “suckers.”
Trump has shown a profound lack of respect for people who have entrusted their lives, reputations, and fortunes to him. So please let me tell you that many of us are “freaked out” that there are so many people who think he is a good choice for president.
Well said!
Thanks for your explanation Wineguy. I understand where you are coming from in that these are bad character traits.
Personally I tend to focus on hard facts because they do not depend on interpretation. I knew he had declared bankruptcy once, but not 6 times.
Looking up your soaking claim, I find that apparently he misused his charitable foundation to further his political and business interests and was fined for it. He also spent a lot of time at Mar-a-Lago which cost money (flying there, back, and secret service protection), and his wife stayed at Trump tower which cost a lot. Given how wealthy he is, he should have paid for some of that, but I do wonder how differently Biden has behaved going to Delaware. This isn’t good, but it’s not ransacking the treasury. If I missed something, please let me know.
The other things you mention are hard to check. For instance the Washington Post says “so what” was alleged, not proven. I’ve seen so many cases where the media says Trump says one thing, but finding a video with the full statement makes it clear that he said something else that I no longer believe anything I can’t check.
I don’t know how many people think he was a good president — I don’t know any personally although I do know some people who confided to me that they voted for him because they found Hillary more objectionable. No doubt there are some, but that’s not what’s being voted on.
The question that’s being voted on is whether the country will do better under his administration or with Kamala’s: one is also judging the team around each candidate and trying to divine what impact they might have.
I would prefer to have a better set of choices, but these days, the candidates seem to come from the bottom of the same barrel. This seems to be true in other countries too — the UK, France, Germany.
As far as character traits go, Jill Stein seems to be a good person. But she’d never get in, and she doesn’t have a team to speak of, so if she were to be elected, she’d have to appoint people who would end up doing whatever they wanted to do.
(or maybe it was Biden they objected to, I don’t recall).