Amid the usual headlines predicting a Trump Apocalypse in The Washington Post—one can’t miss such bangers as “Trump upends century-old approach to the world” and “Latest Trump guidance on race has schools scrambling amid ‘intense fear’”—comes columnist Catherine Rampell’s “Why Gen Z men love Trump’s reign of destruction.”
Rampell cites statistics showing that young men are faring worse than young women in such areas as drug abuse and academic achievement. More of them live with their parents, and “younger white men from low-income households … are worse off than their fathers.” Increasingly isolated by technology, we are told, young men retreat into “echo chambers” of pro-Trump “alt-right podcasters and influencers.”
Gen Z men, Rampell maintains, were won over by Trump’s “strongman tendencies,” his “macho effect,” and his “’high-energy, edgy, almost transgressive rhetoric’”—much more than by his policies. He helped “isolated young men feel welcome and liked.” But she intones, “Trump’s agenda has done little to address the economic and mental health challenges young men face.”
Richard V. Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, says that young men are viewed as “being the problem” by Democrats and have therefore been politically adrift. He tells Rampell that we must stop “’pathologizing’” them and start listening to them.
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