By Bill Maher
A YouGov report called ?The Decline of the Manly Man? was making the rounds recently. It asked 1,000 American men where they would put themselves on a spectrum of completely masculine (zero) to completely feminine (six). The results found that Millennial men don?t see themselves as terribly masculine. Points for self-awareness, I guess.
Sixty-five percent of Americans approaching retirement age responded that they were ?completely masculine.? Less than a third of Millennial men did. Thirteen percent of Millennial men identified halfway between masculine and feminine, and 12 percent said they?re slightly feminine. And I think this helps explain Donald Trump.
Trump voters are overwhelmingly male and older, and think the world has gotten too PC, too ?gay?, and they?d like their country to be more ?manly? again. That?s where Trump comes in. He?s going to kick everyone?s ass. He?s going to win. He doesn?t care about your feelings. He wants to dominate you. This appeals to a certain cross-section of America.
Economist Tyler Cowen recently put forth a similar suggestion. When trying to explain not only the rise of Trump, but why the Neo-Nazi Party almost won an election in Austria, Cowen postulated that, ?The contemporary world is not very well built for a large chunk of males.? Lots of jobs are no longer ?manly.? They?re service jobs. Students are coddled. The culture has been feminized. And ?egalitarian semi-cosmopolitanism just don?t sit well with many?what shall I call them? Brutes??
Cowen says, ?Quite simply, there are many people who don?t like it when the world becomes nicer. They do less well with nice. And they respond by in turn behaving less nicely, if only in their voting behavior and perhaps their internet harassment as well.?
He admits that he doesn?t have evidence to back this theory up, and neither do I. But it feels right, doesn?t it? What we?re experiencing now, not just in America, but around the world, is the revenge of the cavemen.