This was a sign, yet again, of the strange and corroded sense of masculinity that torments some of Trump’s most ardent male supporters. More accurately, it is a child’s view of masculinity. Come on, Dad, quit it, guys don’t kiss. This is the insecurity of the boys who did not learn that to accept a father’s embrace is part of becoming a man.
These are people who wonder whether it is “appropriate” for a father to show affection to his adult son while finding nothing psychically troubling about Trump’s parenting, from his disdain for his eldest son to the sexualization of his daughters. They deride a man like Biden who had to raise two boys after losing his wife and baby in a car accident, and instead aspire to be the leering, perpetual adolescent now on his third trophy wife.
Such males — it is too much to call them men — are to be pitied. One can only imagine what kind of family relationship (or lack of one) produced people who still view fatherhood through the terrified, embryonic male identity of a small child.
