March 28, 2024

I’m not a real man

I wish I supported Donald Trump.

If you think about it, I should.

I’m a 59 year-old workingman who grew up in the Midwest. My wages have been stagnant for a number of years now. I take my hat off when I’m watching a parade and the flag passes. My grandparents were legal immigrants. I don’t own a gun, but I did when I was younger, and I’m a good shot. I can box. Black people are moving into my neighborhood. I’m a Christian.

How simple, then, to buy a Chinese-made, “Make America Great Again,” hat and start talking about building walls and banning Muslims. How easy to say I want to “take America back.” How much fun it would be to proclaim “All lives matter?” How restful to say welfare payments are bankrupting the country even though it isn’t true and hasn’t ever been true.

Saying or believing all that stuff is instant tough guy, like buying a leather jacket or a motorcycle. What sagging, slightly achy man my age doesn’t want to be tough again?

Was I ever tough? I was tough enough to work my way through college and graduate school. Tough enough that I’ve worked since I was 14, and I’ve never cashed an unemployment check or a welfare check. Tough enough that I own a house. Tough enough that I don’t have kids who live with other people. Tough enough that, when she got old enough that a trip to the hairdresser was difficult, I taught myself to wash and set my elderly mother’s hair.

Oh, but that’s not it. Tough in 2016 is a gun and a swagger and a sneer at “baby mamas.” Oh, your 18 year-old daughter might be pregnant out of wedlock, but she just “made a mistake.” She’s not a “whore” like the black women on welfare. And you might not be married to that man you live with, but you’re a Christian and you believe in “family values.”

Support the police, who make more money than you do and still have a union. Support the military, where the health insurance is better than you’ve ever had in your life. Support the corporations who buy their way out of the taxes you have to pay.

Support everyone but yourself. Beg for another smack in the mouth. You can take it. You’re tough. If you weren’t tough, you’d vote for black guys or women.

Yeah. I’m not a real man. If I was, I’d be afraid of everything new, everything different, everything that makes a noise in the night or a creak in the attic.

I’m not a Donald Trump supporter. You know why? Because I’m not scared.