Is Trump hot for Jon Husted? Trump, as always, is hot for power, and he has the backward belief that helping John Husted will boost his aura. Husted, for his part, has repeatedly played along with Trump’s innuendo because he is a MAGA bitch. Their interaction helps us understand how patriarchy shapes autocrats.
Patriarchy is a systemic order in which masculinity is privileged above all else; however, within the system, men must perform their gender in association with their specific level of the hierarchy. As Michel Foucault wrote: "He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.” Men must police their masculinity as much as they reinforce the subordinate nature of others. Judith Butler highlights how masculinity is unstable and must be repeatedly enforced through social practice. Butler defines gender as “the repeated stylization of the body… within a highly rigid regulatory frame.” To be a man within patriarchy is to spend your life measuring yourself against other men.
Men need to perform masculinity within an incredibly narrow range of norms. Today, they are trained to believe, unlike in previous eras when thoughtfulness or morality could measure a man, that physical strength or bank account size measures a man, a stand-in for the actual measuring stick they want to claim. (See my article about men being dicks.)
Think about the many systems of deference in masculine communities. Fraternities have leaders who must be tough. Until women worked in companies, CEOs often created a boys-will-be-boys culture that helped them assert authority. Men increased their clout by showing their willingness to subordinate themselves to a leader. Modern fraternity hazing rituals come from this historical aspect of masculine systems. But why do men have to show subordination? Patriarchal systems are generally hierarchical. Within that hierarchy, men constantly work to move up the pecking order. That destabilized system ensures subordinate men never get too powerful.
Autocrats exploit men's subordinate nature to rise to power. They create fervor that draws on men’s need to belong and have their place defined. Since men are privileged in patriarchy, they ignore the system altogether. As bell hooks writes, “most men never think about patriarchy—what it means, how it is created and sustained,” so they’re perfectly ignorant and so completely amenable to the forces of strong emotions.
Where men historically had hereditary jobs or high rates of conscription, many men now have nowhere to be subordinate. Workplace hierarchies have become less and less follow-the-leader. In youth sports, it lets men line up behind the strongest guy, but in adulthood, many men who yearn to be followers are far too old to play at a professional level. MAGA gave men who yearned for a strong, dominant voice a socially acceptable chance to subordinate themselves to a strong man.
When you look at strong men in history, most of their aura is bluster. Their carefully crafted personas are largely based on telling people what they want to hear. Men like Hitler and Mussolini understood that hate is the simplest emotion to gain the adoration of weak men. But simple talking points only go so far.
Even the dullest tools in the shed grow bored if potential autocrats do not show off their power. The easiest way for a strong man to demonstrate power is to put down another man. In the matrix of patriarchy, women are objects, but men are pawns. Throughout his rise to power, Trump has carefully created simple language to put down men. Any man who is a Democrat is a Dumbocrat. Trump describes President Obama's heritage by using his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. The language is simple because his audience is not that Swift. But the arrow is always pointed at men he is trying to beat. Trump does not have to win against Obama or Biden for his followers to see these as demonstrations of his masculinity. Trump isn't trying to win an intellectual argument. He is literally just trying to keep the dumbest Americans beholden to his masculine power.
Like Hitler and Mussolini, though words are only half of the problem, autocrats always eventually have trouble keeping power. Hate does not fill bellies. When autocrats cannot meet the most basic human needs, like affordable food, even those who are a sandwich shy of a picnic start wondering whether this man is, in fact, the strong leader they hoped to follow.
For Trump, whose failures have been piling up week after week, and his second term, more and more people are seeing through his act. Trump’s falling polls do not mean that Americans have finally understood that he’s a charlatan. It simply means subordinate men are wondering whether he's actually dominant. As a result, he is looking for some simple wins.
Husted played college football, and he still has a full head of hair. He has spent his two years bowing to Trump. That’s basically the MAGA Trifecta of a good man: if that good man is subordinate, Trump can retain his power. Trump needs Husted’s success to be tied to his own aura; he said, “*He went up 14 points or something. And that was my rally. That was when I said, you know, the word, the A-word, and everyone said, ‘Oh, why is he talking about that?’ You know, they didn’t put the whole clip on. They just put — I looked at his body, I said, ‘Look at his strength in this guy. This is crazy.” *Trump determines who gets a push from his aura, and by doing so, he reasserts his dominant power.
But if you really want to get Aura off of a politician, why not tout his actual work? Autocrats cannot give power to others. In a distributed power system, the autocrat becomes weakened. By talking about Jon Husted the same way he discussed Nicki Minaj, Houston is put in such a subordinate position that he becomes almost like a woman. In patriarchy, women are just objects. Objectifying Husted preserves the existing power dynamic in which Trump alone grants power.
