As long as a massive segment of our nation’s young men are being raised to see malignant narcissists like Donald Trump and men like him as role models, a lifetime of great loneliness is all but guaranteed.
Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz
Lately, I’ve been reading and hearing a great deal about a supposed “Male Loneliness Epidemic in America.”
My social media feed is filled with news stories, think pieces, and video commentaries lamenting the apparent pervasive sense of isolation young men here are afflicted with; the absence of deep friendships with other men and meaningful connections with women, and the higher rates of self-harm and suicide.
And while the idea of a male loneliness epidemic itself feels a bit like a media fabrication, I will say that if such a debilitating emotional malady is indeed afflicting adolescent men, we really shouldn’t be surprised. Widespread male alienation and disconnection from society isn’t some elusive, freak occurrence requiring deep and thorough forensic investigation, it’s simply cause-and-effect.
For the last decade here in America, nearly forty percent of parents, many of them supposed Christians, have elevated a vile, cruel, serial predator to a gilded throne of cultic adoration. They have rooted their politics, theology, and their families almost completely in a human being embodying the very worst of what it means to be a man; an adjudicated rapist whose contempt for women is one of the most well-documented in our nation’s history.
It should have been obvious what this misplaced idolatry would yield:
- Young men with a dangerous sense of entitlement when it comes to the bodies of women.
- Young men who are unable to tap into compassion because they have been repeatedly told is a woke liberal disease.
- Young men violently allergic to sexuality that doesn’t match the rigid confines of their parents and pastors.
- Young men who believe that money and power and their penises give them license to do whatever they want with a woman regardless of what she wants.
- Young men for whom violent, hateful, and objectifying words are viewed as normal.
- Young men for whom the very idea of consent is unimportant.
- Young men who believe they will get rewarded for their misogyny and sexism and filth, because they’ve watched it happen.
- Young men who have no value for the truth or honesty.
- Young men incapable of apologizing.
In other words, it’s yielded young men who are becoming their fathers.
They are innocent heirs to a sad and hollow MAGA manhood that breeds bullies who sacrifice everything on the altar of power and brute force.
The entire MAGA movement is rooted in the most toxic of masculinities; perpetuating knuckle-dragging, emotionally-fetal, alpha male posturing; a culture of relentless aggression that rewards the crass, coronates cruelty, and celebrates sexism.
There isn’t a great deal of investigative work necessary, to draw the line from this kind of prehistoric, morally-stunted male ideology, to a generation of young men who can’t seem to figure out why women avoid them and why the none of the other dudes around them give a shit about them. The cause and the cure are staring MAGA in the mirror.
If American parents want to inoculate their sons from a lifelong lonely existence, they need to stop raising them to be misogynistic assholes.
They need to give them better role models at home and in the people they lift up as men worth emulating from a distance.
They need to teach them that emotions aren’t emasculating, that kindness isn’t weakness, and that caring deeply about other human beings is actually the highest thing they can aspire to.
As long as a massive segment of our nation’s young men are being raised to see malignant narcissists like Donald Trump and men like him as role models, a lifetime of emotional desolation, broken relationships, and great loneliness is all but guaranteed.
John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. When not actively working for a more compassionate planet, John enjoys spending time with his family, exercising, cooking, and having time in nature. He is the author of A Bigger Table, Hope and Other Superpowers, Low, and Stuff That Needs to Be Said.
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