Analysis: Modesty, self-effacement, loyalty to team used to be classic American male virtues. Then came Donald Trump.
The House impeachment and Senate trial of Donald Trump have offered good occasion to listen to and understand the minds of his defenders. Even people who dislike parts of his character or record invoke certain words again and again to describe the parts they do like.
Above all, the American Man of myth, in years past, had a complex relationship with violence. He was ready to use it, as in countless war movies and Westerns—but usually with an air of last-resort reluctance. David Maraniss wrote a best-selling biography of legendary football coach Vince Lombardi. Rick Atkinson has written histories of World War II and the Revolutionary War, with special emphasis on illuminating the characters of generals and average soldiers alike. Glenn Frankel has written histories of two classic Westerns—“The Searchers” and “High Noon”—and their iconic male stars, John Wayne and Gary Cooper.
That includes Trump himself. In the 2016 campaign he gave an interview to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of the Washington Post in which he talked at length about supposedly seeing Lombardi in action personally as a young man. As recounted by Trump, Lombardi came in a room and gained the loyalty of much larger and more powerful players by terrorizing them with anger.
He is even more certain that Trump and Lombardi have nothing in common. “He wouldn’t have lasted a day with Lombardi,” Maraniss said of the president. “He was obsessed with winning but he was even more obsessed with excellence.” Those fault lines in American culture, in addition to making politics more divisive, have shredded what once were almost universal understandings of what constituted strength and virtue.
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