A growing number of white, affluent high school and college jocks are being converted into “Trump bros” — and they’re not happy about anything except the convenient answers they’re hearing from Donald Trump…. “Misogyny was an issue about maybe 60, 80 years ago,” Jack Rowe, an 18-year-old high school student from St. Paul, Minnesota told CBS News. “That’s not an issue today. There are a lot bigger fish to fry…You know, ISIS is chopping off heads. We’ve got 19 trillion dollars in debt.”…. “There is a sentiment among frat guys, lacrosse players and middle class affluent white kids that they are kind of getting persecuted lately,” explained David Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, a fraternity focused sports website. Those voters are casting their ballots for Donald Trump. Portnoy explained that white guys feel like they have to “walk on eggshells” around anyone who isn’t white and male for fear of offending someone or having the joke blown out of proportion.
There’s nothing that says “I’m White and I should be able to do and/or say whatever I damned well please” more plainly than a bunch of clueless frat boy wannabes who look, act, and think like “Jersey Shore” extras. They do what they want when they want and to whom they want…and that’s just the way things are. Now these fine specimens of masculinity lay claim to believing they’re being emasculated by society and expected to apologize for being what they are? Puh-leeze….
OK…I’m White, and I all too well remember being of college age, which for me was the very definition of “Misspent youth.” Even so, I don’t recall ever feeling so entitled, so self-superior, and so above accountability that I could ever have credibly established a claim to being the victim of persecution. Those who some are referring to as “Trump bros” are every bit as clueless, self-absorbed, and prone to thinking with the wrong head as you might imagine them to be. You can do this when you believe your and your kind represent the apotheoses of humanity and that other demographic groups hate you for being unapologetically what you are.
Yep, those sounds you hear are White males, the heirs to and primary beneficiaries of White privilege, complaining about being “persecuted” by a society they believe expects them to apologize for being who they are.
You mean young, dumb, insensitive, racist, and thoroughly self-absorbed? Yeah, something like that.
“It’s an F-U to society, who is telling us we are a bad guy because we like hooking up with girls on spring break,” he added. “And they see Trump sticking up for that.”
“Part of the allure of Trump is that people find him to be someone who tells it like it is and honest, although he has no specific policies to back up anything that he’s actually saying,” said J. Camm, the managing editor of Bro Bible.
In this case, “telling it like it is” is nothing less than a license to let your asshole flag fly proudly and freely. “Trump bros” feel no obligation to anyone but themselves and their own kind. Completely and utterly self-absorbed, they recognize no obligation to or connection with the broader spectrum of society (i.e.- people not like them).
Comedian and Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper doesn’t call this type of candidate a “bro” but rather an “a—hole.” In The Daily Show’s first episode after Trump announced his candidacy for president last summer, Klepper announced that Donald Trump could, if elected, be “our first openly asshole President.” Historically speaking, Klepper clarified that Nixon was a “gaping asshole, but closeted,” Trump “says it loud and proud.”
Trump speaks to a segment of young, angry males who feel no responsibility or allegiance to anyone outside their tribe. They view the world as aligned against them because it doesn’t reflexively capitulate to their perception of their superior self-interest.
They hate us because they ain’t us….
Unfortunately, not being granted the elevated status of a special and superior human being simply because you’re White isn’t ipso facto evidence of persecution. You can certainly expect the world to cater to your every whim and desire…but you have no rational claim to the mantle of persecution when you don’t get your way.
Donald Trump holds a strong appeal to those who might charitably be described as “assholes”- those who believe it’s in fact possible to be part of a persecuted majority…and that they’re living proof of it. The fact that The Donald has no actual policies to back up his bloviating seems not to be an impediment to those who view declining to fulfill their every need and desire as abject proof of their persecution.
Our first “openly asshole President?” Why not? It’s not as if he doesn’t have a significant and committed following among Asshole-Americans.
Selfish, thoroughly self-absorbed, male, and possessed of the (unwarranted) belief that their beliefs and desires are primary? You might just be a “Trump bro”…not that it’s anything to be proud of.
