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tRumplings, tRumpsters, tRumptards, ...





From boasting about the size of his penis on national television to releasing records of his high testosterone levels, President Trump’s rhetoric and behavior exude machismo. His behavior also seems to have struck a chord with some male voters. See, for example, the “Donald Trump: Finally Someone With Balls” T-shirts common at Trump rallies.

But our research suggests that Trump is not necessarily attracting male supporters who are as confidently masculine as the president presents himself to be. Instead, Trump appears to appeal more to men who are secretly insecure about their manhood. We call this the “fragile masculinity hypothesis.” Here is some of our evidence.

...

Our data suggests that fragile masculinity is a critical feature of our current politics. Nonetheless, points of caution are in order.

First, the research reported here is correlational. We can’t be entirely sure that fragile masculinity is causing people to vote in a certain way. However, given that experimental work has identified a causal connection between masculinity concerns and political beliefs, we think the correlations we’ve identified are important.

Second, it remains to be seen whether any link between fragile masculinity and voting will persist after Trump exits the national stage. We suspect, however, that Trump’s re-engineering of the GOP as a party inextricably tied to many Americans’ identity concerns — whether based on race, religion or gender — will ensure that fragile masculinity remains a force in politics.
 
tRumplings, tRumpsters, tRumptards, ...





From boasting about the size of his penis on national television to releasing records of his high testosterone levels, President Trump’s rhetoric and behavior exude machismo. His behavior also seems to have struck a chord with some male voters. See, for example, the “Donald Trump: Finally Someone With Balls” T-shirts common at Trump rallies.

But our research suggests that Trump is not necessarily attracting male supporters who are as confidently masculine as the president presents himself to be. Instead, Trump appears to appeal more to men who are secretly insecure about their manhood. We call this the “fragile masculinity hypothesis.” Here is some of our evidence.

...

Our data suggests that fragile masculinity is a critical feature of our current politics. Nonetheless, points of caution are in order.

First, the research reported here is correlational. We can’t be entirely sure that fragile masculinity is causing people to vote in a certain way. However, given that experimental work has identified a causal connection between masculinity concerns and political beliefs, we think the correlations we’ve identified are important.

Second, it remains to be seen whether any link between fragile masculinity and voting will persist after Trump exits the national stage. We suspect, however, that Trump’s re-engineering of the GOP as a party inextricably tied to many Americans’ identity concerns — whether based on race, religion or gender — will ensure that fragile masculinity remains a force in politics.


Willer R, Rogalin CL, Conlon B, Wojnowicz MT. Overdoing Gender: A Test of the Masculine Overcompensation Thesis. American Journal of Sociology 2013;118:980-1022. https://doi.org/10.1086/668417

The masculine overcompensation thesis asserts that men react to masculinity threats with extreme demonstrations of masculinity, a proposition tested here across four studies. In study 1, men and women were randomly given feedback suggesting they were either masculine or feminine. Women showed no effects when told they were masculine; however, men given feedback suggesting they were feminine expressed more support for war, homophobic attitudes, and interest in purchasing an SUV. Study 2 found that threatened men expressed greater support for, and desire to advance in, dominance hierarchies. Study 3 showed in a large-scale survey on a diverse sample that men who reported that social changes threatened the status of men also reported more homophopic and prodominance attitudes, support for war, and belief in male superiority. Finally, study 4 found that higher testosterone men showed stronger reactions to masculinity threats than those lower in testosterone. Together, these results support the masculine overcompensation thesis, show how it can shape political and cultural attitudes, and identify a hormonal factor influencing the effect.


[OA] Mason L, Wronski J. One Tribe to Bind Them All: How Our Social Group Attachments Strengthen Partisanship. Political Psychology 2018;39:257-77. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12485

“Social sorting” is a concept used by Mason (2016) to explain the process by which individuals' social identities grow increasingly aligned with a partisan identity, reducing social cross‐pressures on political behavior. Roccas and Brewer (2002) have found that individuals who feel fewer cross‐pressures more strongly identify with their ingroups and are less tolerant of outgroups. Accordingly, we create “objective” and “subjective” measures of social sorting to help identify the mechanism by which individual partisans connect social sorting to partisanship in the CCES and a nonprobability Internet sample. As racial, religious, and ideological identities have cumulatively moved into greater alignment with Democratic and Republican identities in recent decades, American partisans have grown increasingly identified with their parties due to the psychological effects of identity alignment captured in objective and subjective sorting mechanisms. However, we find that this effect is more powerful among Republicans than among Democrats, due to the general social homogeneity of the Republican party. Contrary to the assessments of modern political punditry, Republicans are more susceptible to identity‐based politics.

Whilst all authority in [the federal republic of the United States] will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other, in the multiplicity of sects.


— James Madison (The Federalist, No. 51)
 

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“Fascism” is a word that gets tossed around pretty loosely these days, usually as an epithet to discredit someone else’s politics.

One consequence is that no one really knows what the term means anymore. Liberals see fascism as the culmination of conservative thinking: an authoritarian, nationalist, and racist system of government organized around corporate power. For conservatives, fascism is totalitarianism masquerading as the nanny state.

A new book by Yale philosopher https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHow-Fascism-Works-Politics-Them%2Fdp%2F0525511830 (Jason Stanley) is the latest attempt to clarify what fascism is and how it functions in the modern world. Stanley focuses on propaganda and rhetoric, so his book is largely about the tropes and narratives that drive fascist politics.

I spoke with him recently about what fascism looks like today, why the destruction of truth is so essential to fascist movements, and whether he thinks it’s accurate to https://newrepublic.com/minutes/124205/yes-donald-trump-fascist (call) President Donald Trump a fascist, as https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-is-how-fascism-comes-to-america/2016/05/17/c4e32c58-1c47-11e6-8c7b-6931e66333e7_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.0f7d1dede9ce (some have).

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
 


Individual 1 ...

The Associate Press reports that on Thursday morning, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in the Southern District of New York to making false statements to Congress related to his involvement in real estate deals in Russia on behalf of Donald Trump. At the hearing, Cohen's lawyer told the judge that his client was entering a plea agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The criminal information describing Cohen's conduct is below. Lawfare will post additional documents as they become available.


 
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