CryBabyism + the Decline of the American Man

If you're already calling bullshit on this, you're part of the problem.

Go ahead. Cry me a river.

“Eugene…what are your secrets of machismo?”

I wasn't aware that there were any secrets and certainly not of machismo, something at 15 I hadn’t really ever thought much about. Outside of being an ardent fan of the Village People’s paean to it via “Macho Man,” which really attracted because of Victor Willis’ interest in “being ready to get down with…ANYONE he can,” a better analog for the disco era you will not find, I just didn’t have the level of insight to answer the question.

So I laughed it off. But the asker stood, unmoved, and it was clear that the request for an answer was earnestly sought, and so like Wizard in Taxi Driver, when called upon to quell some of DeNiro’s cab driver’s increasingly “bad thoughts,” I winged it.

“There are none,” I laughed. “Or I don’t know what they are.”

Now he thought that I was not telling the truth. I’d been weightlifting since I was nine years old, taking martial arts and boxing since I was 10, carried a knife, wore army fatigues when I wasn’t actually going out to discos and was sexually active. Not much, but enough. Enough that he repeated the question and so, endeavoring to answer, to really answer I tried to and did: “I think it’s all about shouldering your burdens without complaint.”

In Trump’s head….If he wins, whoever is not him loses, and if he “loses”, whoever is not him loses.

This was accepted as an answer and we stood there in the aftermath weighing what exactly this might have meant. Because certainly by 1977, we had all had enough of the 1960s to understand that the previous benchmark for manliness — largely being the strong, silent type — was just about returning vets being so shellshocked about their wartime experiences that they just figured it was better to say nothing than to say whatever it was that they were thinking. Or put another way we were a generation of men who were told that our feelings mattered, and we should talk about things, if we were so inclined, and even “big guys cry” once sang football player Rosey Grier.

Actor George C. Scott though was once quoted saying “the 1960s were one of the worst things to ever happen to America” and at the time and in reference to civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, war, the end of it and the repellent Richard Milhouse Nixon, he was completely wrong. However, in connection to men’s sudden license to, and then inability to stop, talk that is, he may have been completely right.

Men, previously denied an avenue of expression via talk, now wouldn’t shut the fuck up. If you’re old enough to remember, the ‘70s were unofficially called The Me Decade and with that came men who, suddenly unburdened by the old way of doing things, were crafting new ways of doing things constructed with an endless amount of chatter. You think WW2 era men “mansplained” anything? I don’t know, but I guess it was hard to mansplain stuff when you’re trying to get the smell of burned corpses out of your head.

No, the ‘70s man was unmoored and make no mistake that this was part of what explained the surge of “the vacant stranger,” or at least “the misfit,” as a cinematic motif. From the aforementioned Travis Bickle to Jack Nicholson’s Randle McMurphy, these antiheroes stumbled through a tree line of talk trying to communicate their damned complicated feelings all while feeling terribly insulted and misunderstood in the face of people who, really, just didn't want to hear it.

This list goes on and continues way longer than it should have, by the way: Rambo, Captain America and Billy from Easy Rider, Tommy Lee Jones in Rolling Thunder, Kurtz and Willard in Apocalypse Now, and an army of men muttering “see, what I’m trying to say is…”

Which explains why Crybabyism and its fellow traveler Sore Loserism work so well together, one fueling the other in a grievance gyre, like a perpetuum mobile of misplaced macho.

And into this fray, like Yeats’ beast slouching toward Jerusalem steps Donald Trump, a man who came to public notice in a significant way in the 1970s. His mouth announced his presence and like Bowie once sang in regards to an admonition to beware the savage jaw, it just NEVER stopped.

No, he embraced the promise offered by the ‘70s like it was his personal credo and it became so. He talked his way into the White House with the vast majority of Trump voters I know, all men, claiming that one of the ways he did so, was because he was so “funny”.

“Little Marco, Sleepy Joe”…said one. “I think he’s HILARIOUS. He just says whatever he wants. I LOVE it!” The appeal of which is not lost, at least on me. It’s not only refreshing, but also places the rest of us in that “anything can happen” headspace which is, usually, a fun place to be.

The fun ceases when “anything” becomes “something” though and in Trump’s case something super specific: the inability, or unwillingness, to abide by the former manly virtue of accepting loss. In Trump’s head, framed by his valiant efforts at avoiding service in Vietnam, accepting loss is for losers and he won’t have it. If he wins, whoever is not him loses, and if he “loses”, whoever is not him loses.

Playing boards get tipped over, pieces get thrown to the floor, accusations of cheating abound and Crybabyism not only has become a thing but in 2022 it’s became a manly virtue. It now shows “conviction” and the resistance it implies appears to be “valorous”.

Which explains why Crybabyism and its fellow traveler Sore Loserism, work so well together, one fueling the other in a grievance gyre, like a perpetuum mobile of misplaced macho. LOUD NOISES is the clarion cry and the rest of us are just left wondering what all the hubbub’s about, Bub.

The good thing is, the midterm election cycle seemed to show some sort of possible preference for…a certain…quiet. Fetterman versus the reality TV oversharer Dr. Oz being a point of light. Beyond that, a raft of actual NOT winners, accepting the reality of their not having won like, dare we say, men. Even the women that have lost, have done so in a way that showed them shouldering their burden without complaint.

Now Trump, supposedly, will be announcing his candidacy for the 2024 Presidential Election this coming Tuesday. In tow the endless, and at this point, unsurprising litany of mewling, chest beating and “jokes”. The real and actual secret of his machismo resides in just this. Not John Wayne, or Gary Cooper, or Spencer Tracy, but the son of the ‘70s whose perception of self, steeped in Daddy issues and love of the sound of his own voice, will never be silent and in all likelihood, never strong.

A fact that he, and his ilk, will inevitably answer with, “oh yeah…what about…?” as the pieces fall to the floor and the playing board gets tipped over again.

But you know what? I’m not complaining. I’m just noting. So take note.