For Trump, the Meanness is the Message
This final week is all about seizing control of the narrative about masculinity. The meanness is the message - and so is the man-ness.
“The Cruelty is the Point,” proclaimed Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer’s 2018 essay and book about the Trump era, and never has it been more apparent than during the waning days of the current campaign, and especially at Sunday’s rally in New York.
While Trump himself often improvises, upchucking his “weaves” of hate, the racist, vulgar vitriol spewed by his loyalists at MSG was all scripted, vetted and telepromptered, and therefore intentional. For all of those filthy presentations, whether spontaneous or scripted, it added up to a symphony of scuz designed to intimidate, overwhelm and dominate, the verbal equivalent of Hulk Hogan ripping off his shirt (or trying to).
On social media, some commented that MAGA’s opponents shouldn’t be baited by the rhetorical histrionics because this verbal garbage was designed to capture the news cycle during this final week. I couldn’t disagree more. As Serwer indicated long ago, when children were separated from parents at the border, the meanness is the message - and that meanness should be our message, because everything else flows from that. Trump’s entire agenda, from abortion to xenophobia, emanates from the sociopathic cruelty and lack of empathy at the core of his being. The cruelty is his heart and soul. To quote a song about one who stole Christmas, his heart’s an empty hole.
The cruelty is his point, and it should be ours.
If he is trying to appeal to men, I believe he’s in for a big shock. Manhood is not about dominance, it is about kindness and taking responsibility. I literally wrote the book about being a mensch. For Jews, the ideal model of a man is not a musclebound intimidator. Incidentally, although in German the term clearly refers to males and connotes masculinity (or, in the case of Nietzsche, uber-masculinity) for Jews it is not gender-specific - a woman can be a mensch too. As I wrote in Mensch-Marks:
In the Talmud, Hillel the sage states, “In a world that lacks humanity, be human.” In a world as dehumanizing as ours has become, simply being a kind, honest and loving person, a man or woman of integrity, has become a measure of heroism – and at a time when norms of civility are being routinely quashed, it may be the only measure that matters. Hillel is saying that when everything seems to have become unhinged around you, just persevere with the singular focus of being the best human being you can be, and everything else will follow from that. If you can get your own act together, at some point others will follow your lead.
Leo Rosten, who wrote “The Joy of Yiddish,” defines mensch as “someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character.” Dr. Saul Levine writes in Psychology Today, “The admirable traits included under the rubric of mensch read like a compendium of what Saints or the Dalai Lama represent to many, or others whom you might think merit that kind of respect. These personality characteristics include decency, wisdom, kindness, honesty, trustworthiness, respect, benevolence, compassion, and altruism.”
But one does not need to be a saint just to be a decent, thoughtful person. To be a morally evolved human being means in fact to be fallible and imperfect, but always striving to do better. It means to seek justice but never at the expense of compassion. It means to connect, to family, to one’s people and one’s home. It means to seek transcendence, to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, to love unconditionally, to serve a higher cause and live a life of dignity and integrity.
In other words, to be a man is to be the opposite of what the MSG-MAGA rally propagated. It is to the be opposite of Donald Trump.
And that needs to be our message, not only for the final week, but for all time. We can’t allow Americans of all genders to forget it. But especially men.
It's like the story of the man outside the gates of Sodom, warning the people to stop their sinning, a legend popularized by Elie Wiesel: “He went on preaching day after day, maybe even picketing. But no one listened. He was not discouraged. He went on preaching for years. Finally, someone asked him, ‘Rabbi, why do you do that? Don't you see it is no use?’ He said, ‘I know it is of no use, but I must. And I will tell you why: in the beginning I thought I had to protest and to shout in order to change them. I have given up this hope. Now I know I must picket and scream and shout so that they should not change me.’"
And, I would add, if we cultivate civility and integrity with dogged persistence, we will eventually change them too.
That’s our task now. Highlight the hate and present a new model of love. Masculine love. Years ago, when I circumcised my own son (the first time I had ever performed a bris), it helped me to understand an essential lesson about fatherhood, that the knife transforms the father not to sculptor or mentor, but, paradoxically, into a shield. I wrote:
The breast provides, but the knife protects. It channels a father's natural anger and jealousy into one controlled cut. He takes off one small part in order to preserve – and love – the whole.
I appeal to men not to fall for this Übermensch nonsense. America is better than that.
Now is the time to prove it, by proclaiming real mensch-hood nonstop. This final week is all about seizing control of the narrative about masculinity. The meanness is the message - and so is the man-ness. The final battle, for the soul of America - and of manhood - has begun.
I’ve known many mensches, and you, Donald are no mensch.
