'This is a public health crisis that can’t be solved by angry tweets or theatrical displays of bravado...It is beyond tragic that the most powerful man in the world is such a small man, utterly incapable of rising to the occasion...' From jacksontkatz:
This notion defies conventional wisdom, which regards the bombastic real estate developer and reality TV star as a prototypical alpha male. From the moment he declared his candidacy in 2015, MAGA hat-wearing truckers and Zegna suit-wearing bankers alike cited his manhood as the Trumpian quality they most admired.
Voters—especially but not exclusively white male voters—like candidates who appear tough, and are willing to hit back when they’re attacked. Arguably the greatest source of Donald Trump’s popularity with his white male base is his reputation as a “counterpuncher,” someone who will strike back against his critics and never back down. This is all embarrassingly juvenile and superficial—but in contemporary American politics, it works. In 2016, these gender dynamics translated into Trump’s crushing margin of victory over Hillary Clinton among white men.The coronavirus crisis has forced a long overdue reckoning with many unfair and dysfunctional aspects of this society, much of it related to income and wealth inequality. Poor and working-class people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, but especially, have much less access to quality health care. They also bear a disproportionate risk of exposure to the virus. But the crisis is also prompting a re-examination of cultural ideas about manhood and leadership, because traditional definitions of “toughness” and “strength” cannot easily be applied to fighting the virus and other 21One old school definition of being “man enough” means—when push comes to shove—that a man is willing and able to use force to dominate his enemies and impose his will. Trump figured out long ago that acting like a tough guy was the route to political power in this country. Give him credit—he was right. But the model of masculine power on which Trump’s political career is based has been rendered obsolete by COVID-19. You can’t intimidate a microbe with verbal taunts. You can’t bully a virus.., our team is continuing to report through this global health crisis—doing what we can to keep you informed and up-to-date on some of the most underreported issues of this pandemic. —we can’t do it without you.“ prefers to be in a fight. A fight is when’s he’s most comfortable and most confident as a political actor on the stage. It’s hard to be in a fight with a virus. It’s not an ideology, it’s not a political party, it doesn’t respond to your Twitter messages. So he has been struggling.” Trump might not be able to fight the virus, but he can still, of course, talk tough. And he gets plenty of free advice from conservative media personalities who routinely advise him about how to act like a “real man.” Consider the recent controversy about whether or not the president should follow White House protocol and cover his face.“An image of Donald Trump wearing a protective face mask while performing his duties … would be a searing image of weakness. It would signal that the United States is so powerless against this invisible enemy sprung from China that even its president must cower behind a mask.” Trump listens as U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams urges citizens to wear masks in public on April 22. For more than a generation, feminist scholars and journalists have criticized definitions of leadership that privileged “masculine” traits over those considered “feminine.” This definitional bias is one of the main reasons why this country has never had a woman president. But Trump’s cartoonish and disastrous performance of a “masculine” leadership style in a time of crisis has made gendered analyses of leadership styles more urgently required than ever.that Trump calls himself a “wartime president” who is fighting an “invisible enemy.” Militarized rhetoric of this sort is “as old as patriarchy,” they write. But it’s not helpful during the pandemic, because we are not at war. “Our toolkit for surviving the coronavirus is non-violent: wash your hands, shelter-in-place, wear a mask for essential errands, and quarantine if you’ve been exposed. This will buy us time while scientists develop a vaccine that will contain the virus. This is how we withstand this pandemic.
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