Trump voters: As whiny and self-pitying as Men’s Rights Activists?

Anyone wbo has read this blog for any length of time is well aware how adept Men’s Rights Activists are at convincing themselves (if not necessarily anyone else) that they are the true victims in any given situation.

Indeed, writer and workshopper Warren Farrell, whose books have provided much of the intellectual underpinning of MRA ideology, has argued in complete seriousness that men are victimized by women’s butts. A shapely posterior, you see, has such a hypnotizing power over your typical horny man that young women have what he once called “miniskirt power” over their male bosses at work.

An article in today’s New York Times suggests that many Trump voters are equally adept at painting themselves as the victims — in their case not of butts but of liberal meanies.

It’s an absolute must read. Not because it’s a good article — it’s terrible — but because it is so revealing, not only about Trump voters but also about the strange reluctance of so many in the supposedly liberal press to hold Trump voters accountable for anything they say or do. Indeed, the basic thesis of the piece — titled “Are Liberals Helping Trump?” — is that liberals are being so mean to Trump voters that they’re pushing them even further into Trumpland.

The piece starts with a brief portrait of Jeffrey Medford, a South Carolinian who voted “reluctantly” for the most dangerous man to ever occupy the Oval Office. Trouble is, when he brings this up in any venue also frequented by liberals, they’re like all mean to him.

Mr. Medford should be a natural ally for liberals trying to convince the country that Mr. Trump was a bad choice. But it is not working out that way. Every time Mr. Medford dips into the political debate — either with strangers on Facebook or friends in New York and Los Angeles — he comes away feeling battered by contempt and an attitude of moral superiority.

“We’re backed into a corner,” said Mr. Medford, 46, whose business teaches people to be filmmakers. “There are at least some things about Trump I find to be defensible. But they are saying: ‘Agree with us 100 percent or you are morally bankrupt. You’re an idiot if you support any part of Trump.’ ”

He added: “I didn’t choose a side. They put me on one.”

Uh, dude, you put yourself on the side of an unstable, authoritarian bigot by voting for him. If you didn’t know what you were getting when you voted for him, then you weren’t paying attention. Trump started out his campaign with an explicitly racist attack on Mexican immigrants, and it pretty much went downhill from there. During his campaign, he revealed himself to be a bully and a chronic liar with no understanding of the job he felt he deserved, a man morally and practically unfit to be president.

And now Trump is making good, or at least trying to, on his terrible promises. His only redeeming feature is that he is so ignorant and inept that he’s fucking it up.

Oh, and did I mention that he’s hellbent on taking away the insurance I and literally millions of other Americans depend on for necessary treatment for the chronic health issues that insurance companies like to call “ongoing conditions?”

So, yeah, some of us are a bit testy.

The article’s author, Sabrina Tavernise, sets forth a thesis that more or less mirrors Medford’s self-pitying “argument.”

Liberals may feel energized by a surge in political activism, and a unified stance against a president they see as irresponsible and even dangerous. But that momentum is provoking an equal and opposite reaction on the right.

“Provoking.” I don’t want to sound, you know, mean here, but this is the logic abusers use to blame their victims for their own abusive meltdowns. It’s a kind of argument that seems to come naturally to MRAs, Trump supporters, and Trump-supporter enablers.

In recent interviews, conservative voters said they felt assaulted by what they said was a kind of moral Bolshevism — the belief that the liberal vision for the country was the only right one. 

Assaulted? You know who else feels assaulted? The longtime residents of this country who have been arrested and deported by ICE, including one woman picked up at a courthouse after she complained of domestic abuse. The Muslims held for hours in airports as a result of Trump’s profoundly un-American executive order.

Is it “self-righteous” for those opposed to Trump to point out the actual effects of his bigoted policies?

Protests and righteous indignation on social media and in Hollywood may seem to liberals to be about policy and persuasion. But moderate conservatives say they are having the opposite effect, chipping away at their middle ground and pushing them closer to Mr. Trump.

Again, it’s the logic of an abuser: “You made me hit you!”

“The name calling from the left is crazy,” said Bryce Youngquist, 34, who works in sales for a tech start-up in Mountain View, Calif., a liberal enclave where admitting you voted for Mr. Trump is a little like saying in the 1950s that you were gay.

First, it’s not “a little like” that at all. Second, are you seriously complaining that the left is … calling you names?

I mean, you do remember all of this, don’t you?

I feel just terrible for these people.

Mr. Younquist wasn’t quite so open about his Trump support.

“The only place he felt comfortable wearing his Make America Great Again hat,” Tavernise informs us,

was on a vacation in China. Even dating became difficult. Many people on Tinder have a warning on their profile: “Trump supporters swipe left” — meaning, get lost.

POOR BABY

“They were making me want to support him more with how irrational they were being,” Mr. Youngquist said.

I hate to tell you this, Mr. STEMLOGIC, but that’s not a very rational response at all.

Tavernise weighs in again with her equally stupid opinion. Which is pretty much the same opinion as all the Trump supporters she interviewed.

[I]f political action is meant to persuade people that Mr. Trump is bad for the country, then people on the fence would seem a logical place to start. Yet many seemingly persuadable conservatives say that liberals are burning bridges rather than building them.

How “persuadable” is someone who gets so mad that some women don’t want to date guys they violently disagree with politically that he decides he’s just going to SUPPORT TRUMP EVEN HARDER SO THERE TAKE THAT!!!1!!

But no Trump supporter may have suffered more for her beliefs than Ann O’Connell, a “retired administrative assistant in Syracuse who voted for Mr. Trump” despite being a registered Democrat. (She apparently liked Trump’s promise to build a big old wall to protect her from all the evil Mexicans who are creeping over our southern border and then I guess for some reason creeping all the way up to Syracuse, NY, not far from the Canadian border, where the percentage of Hispanics is far below the national average and which is actually a really terrible place to look for jobs right now.)

Anyway, Ms. O’Connell has suffered mightily for her beliefs. For she can no longer enjoy Meryl Streep movies! You know, because that mean actress lady gave that speech about how shitty it is to mock disabled people.

Mrs. O’Connell feels hopeless. She has deleted all her news feeds on Facebook and she tries to watch less TV. But politics keeps seeping in.

“I love Meryl Streep, but you know, she robbed me of that wonderful feeling when I go to the movies to be entertained,” she said.

BOO HOO HOO

Here’s my question: is it possible that these Trump supporters are feeling so defensive about their vote for president because on some level they know what they did was indefensible?

Or am I just being mean for even asking that question?

H/T — @ParkerMolloy, who posted a couple of the pics I used on Twitter.