If there's one difference between Donald Trump in 2017 and his 2018 performance it's that now he seems to be truly unplugged, untethered, unleashed. Whatever you might want to call it, we are being treated to the rawest, purest form of his madness, free from the mitigation of seemingly any so-called adults in the room. His rate of lying has increased exponentially. He has truly begun palling around with dictators who have quite literally starved their people and plundered their country's riches to line their own pockets. He has repeatedly embarrassed our closest allies and undermined the post-WWII international alliances that have prevented a third global war from breaking out for over half a century. And he has either threatened or torpedoed every major trade alliance we have—an occurrence that is surely going to hurt our economy, increase the price of goods, likely drive down wages in some sectors and also expendable income (which is already happening), and will almost certainly force some people to lose their livelihoods. Bottom line: We have probably not even begun to see the havoc Trump's actions are going to wreak on this country on a sweeping, coast-to-coast scale.
And yet amid Trump's daily displays of erratic, uninformed, self-serving, delusional, and sometimes inexplicable antics, Trump's approval rating on Civiqs among the nation’s men has generally solidified in a positive direction throughout this year at around 49/50 percent (with an equally consistent disapproval rating at a slightly lower 46 percent).
And then there's the ladies, who this year have settled on a consistent 59/60 percent disapproving view of Trump's job performance, with a corresponding 37/38 percent approval rating of him.
Frankly, I'm not satisfied with either. Why Trump isn't sitting at a solid 80 percent disapproval rating (you can always count on about 20 percent of the population to approve of just about anything) is a total mystery to me. But as a woman, I find whatever general affinity half of America’s men feel for Trump entirely perplexing. While women disapprove of Trump at a rate of only ten points higher than men approve of him, politically speaking, anything 60 percent and above is typically viewed as prevailing opinion. Naturally, the breakdown by race, education, income, married/single, etc. yields all kinds of varying insights, but let's stick with the simplicity of the gender comparison because there's such a clear gap in perceptions of and support for Trump. Bottom line: At the moment, we're counting on a mass mobilization of female voters to save us from the dizzyingly distorted house of mirrors we've been trapped in since Trump took office.
In search of an explanation for Trump’s male allure, New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall cited a series of quotes this week from psychologists, biologists, and anthropologists that all strangely centered around a primal comparison to monkeys and apes.
“In many ways the performances of Donald Trump remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals,” anthropologist Jane Goodall had explained during the 2016 campaign. "In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks. The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position."
Biology professor Christopher Boehm offered up a similar explanation in 2016 for Trump's appeal.
"For my money, I turn to primate politics and the tactics of alpha males," he said. "His model of political posturing echoes what I saw while studying Tanzania’s wild Gombe chimpanzees. One stood out: Goblin, an alpha male. He threatened or attacked rivals who looked like they might challenge him, often acting sharply and preemptively.”
Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard, made a present-day comparison of Trump to a baboon: "[He's] almost a caricature of a contestant to be Alpha baboon: aggressive, hypersensitive to perceived threats to his dominance, boastful of his status and physical attributes (including his genitals), even the physical display of colorful big hair and a phallic red tie. Men may identify with such displays.”
Admittedly, I found these explanations for Trump’s draw as baffling as they were off-putting. The concept of some dude stomping around like a baboon not only seems totally unappealing, it’s also not backed up by any substance in Trump’s case. In real life, Trump is clearly a coward of epic proportions. For one, he hasn't fired a single major player in his administration face-to-face. That uncomfortable conversation always falls to someone like Chief of Staff John Kelly (think H.R. McMaster) or it simply gets dropped like an anonymous bomb on twitter (à la Reince Priebus).
Trump also never confronts any of his international equals in person. He makes nice during personal interactions then savages them in other venues. The cowardice is consistent: he waited until he was jetting away from the G-7 last month before blasting Canadian Prime Minister and host Justin Trudeau on twitter; he kicked off the NATO summit this week by calling Germany "captive" to Russia in front of cameras but "struck a more conciliatory tone" when he met one-on-one with German Chancellor Angela Merkel; and after grousing to a British newspaper that British Prime Minister Theresa May should have taken his advice on how to handle Brexit, he demurred to her during their joint press conference, saying he thinks she's "terrific" and offering "whatever you're gonna do is okay with us."
This. This is the guy that some 50 percent of fellas are digging for his superalphafragilistic preening and posturing and retreating? If only Mary Poppins would just stuff him back in her magic bag.
Whatever the original attraction, it does seem possible that a 50 percent male faction has solidified around Trump this year, at least partially, in response to a perceived existential threat from the #MeToo movement that has sweept America over the last year.
As Harvard’s Pinker told Edsall:
The latest battle of the sexes has the media, educational, and workplace establishments sympathizing with women and demonizing men. Much of this is justified and long overdue, given how women are exploited and discriminated against, but it may leave some men feeling defensive, belittled, and eager for a champion. This may especially affect lower-status men. High-status women may justifiably protest their treatment at the hands of high-status men, but lower-status men may feel less sympathy for them, particularly if they feel demeaned and disenfranchised.
Based on polling and election results, it does appear (and I have repeatedly argued) that some previously female GOP-leaners, particularly white and college-educated ones, have moved decisively in the direction of Democrats since 2016. At the same time, a contingent of males also appears to have coalesced more definitively around Trump. And if those men really perceive the current political moment as an existential threat and Trump as their savior, they could be supremely motivated to get to the polls this fall.
Let's hope the movement of women we've been watching and rooting for ever since the National Women's March sparked a post-election moment of healing will be equally as motivated this November by the existential threat Trump poses to equality, fairness, justice, and our republic.