From the Redwood Forest to The Fifth of November
I've been on a Steinbeck-inspired camping trip across the country since before the election. I've talked with with many people about it, but Bigfoot might have had the best insight so far.
Part of the reason for my camping trip, now in its eighth week and 15th state, is to get away from my familiar milieu as the blue wave of election angst crashes like a tsunami through the lives of so many friends, family and acquaintances. The other goal has been a classic “looking for America” journey and I can honestly say my perspective on what America is about has been much expanded and broadened by this journey, inspired by “Travels with Charley” and other books related to Arthurian legend and the questing of chivalrous knights.
On election night, I felt like I was steeping in a miasma of blue angst, wailing and gnashing of teeth, etc. that was not of my own making. So I hit the gas and drove three hours out of L.A. to spend the next three nights camping on Mt. Palomar, the site of the once world’s largest telescope, enjoying the quiet and turning my attention away from Earth into the stars and distant galaxies. After that I went to watch a Space-X rocket launch, visited London Bridge in Lake Havasu, the Boring Company site in Texas, a comedy show in Austin and the University of Arizona’s massive Biosphere 2 greenhouse near Tucson. But my first clue as to how the election might turn out was earlier in the California Redwoods…
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The “Avenue of the Giants” is a section of highway that parallels highway 101 in northern California and meanders through the largest remaining stands of old growth redwood forests in the world. As everyone knows, parallel highways are among the easiest means of toggling between parallel universes, which explains how I found myself at a gift shop stuffed with bigfoot tchotchkes and managed by its proprietor Robert Bly, author of “Iron John”— the men’s movement go-to book since the 1990’s. In this parallel universe, Bly was not actually deceased but just chose to let that be the public cover story after his tenured professorship was cancelled by a mob of anti-paternalism students at The Evergreen State College (It’s not uncommon in parallel universes for people to have entirely different career paths, especially when using the latest technology for literary devices).
“So,” I asked Robert, “What, actually, is the deal with all this bigfoot merch? I’m seeing it everywhere— life-size silhouettes cut out of steel plate rusting by country mailboxes, painted spare tire covers on the backs of jeeps, plushies for kids, and so on. I’m thinking, this is not our grandfather’s back-country mythical ape.”
“And you’d be right about that,” Bly grinned. “You’ve noticed there’s new energy in the Bigfoot myth. It’s no coincidence. It’s… significant.”
“And that significance is— what?”, I asked.
Bly stroked his beard in a hesitating, thoughtful way. “Why don’t you ask him?”, he replied.
“Ask Bigfoot? It’s not as though he has an agent I can just call on the phone.” I countered. “He’s not an easy man to meet. Refuses interviews. Reclusive in the extreme, or so I’ve heard.”
“Right. All of that. Plus, he doesn’t really communicate in human languages anyway.” Bly offered.
“Which makes him next to impossible to access or understand,” I continued, “A mystery wrapped in an enigma inside a riddle.”
“More like an in-your-face, wrapped in Captain Obvious’s cape inside a No-Duh” Bly quipped. “Don’t you get it? Sasquatch is big, muscular, hairy, strong and doesn’t say much of anything at all. He smells like incense cedar, venison jerky and maybe a little campfire smoke with whiskey on the side. Bigfoot is a metaphor for an alienated American masculinity that’s been shamed into silence and projected onto a mythical forest ape. See this young dad riding shotgun in the mini-van that just pulled up driven by his wife? I think he’s good for at least ninety dollars of Bigfoot t-shirts, mugs and fridge magnets… and he probably has no idea why he’ll buy them. Just you watch.”
And sure enough, twenty minutes later, the guy walked out with his assortment of Bigfoot paraphernalia and a smile on his face.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“It’s hard to explain, but, look, I’m a story-teller, okay? A middle-aged married man works as system administrator. He’s good at it, but he’s starting to burn-out working year after year upgrading hard disk storage units and applying zero-day operating system patches while trying to minimize the number of weekend upgrades he has to do while everyone else is at home. He sees a documentary about Sasquatch with the old grainy super-8 film from the 70’s and hunters’ stories and a bit of supposed Native American legend mixed in and he’s hooked, okay? He’s combing the internet evenings, sifting through reports and he becomes a Sasquatch believer. His wife thinks he’s gone nuts in a relatively harmless way. She’s got no interest in talking about bigfoot with her husband and she tells him, in no uncertain terms, that she does not believe in bigfoot.”
“This goes on for several months as he gets deeper into his ‘research’ and she’s getting annoyed that he spends as much time on it as he does and she’s frustrated.”
“One day, things are going unusually smoothly at work and he figures he’ll take a little comp-time and go home early. So he goes home mid-afternoon to find his wife, in bed, having sex with a Sasquatch. They’re really going at it. Bigfoot’s hair is thick with sweat and his low growl harmonizes with her moaning in a sliding pentatonic scale across three and a half octaves. He’s shocked and dumb-struck. After a few more minutes they climax and the man finally finds his voice and says, ‘Well! Now do you believe in bigfoot?’”
“His wife gently twirls some of the locks of hair hanging from his furry jammies and says, ‘well, no my love. I still don’t believe in bigfoot. But, I believe in you.’”
“And after another minute of reflection, he said, ‘Even better.’ and kissed her again, this time as himself.”
After a moment of silence, I guessed he’d reached the end of the story. I asked “Is it supposed to be a joke?”
Bly replied, “Maybe. The wise ones often laugh just so as not to cry about it. There are wild, strong, competitive, earthy and other-worldly parts of us that are denied and forgotten and yearn to be loved the same as our more culturally acceptable parts. That lack needs to be healed.”
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Driving south, I thought about the Harris 2024 ad about women secretly voting for Kamala without telling their Trump-supporting husbands about it.1 I supposed there’s probably some of that happening, but I began to wonder if maybe some of the reverse is happening too. Are there men who are uncomfortable telling their Harris-supporting wives that they’re secretly voting for Trump? Maybe some of that happens too.
A few days later, on November 5th, we got an answer. Trump won, after all. I don’t know if there were many sneaky men who voted for Trump without their wives’ knowledge. I am, however, of the opinion that suppressed or over-narrowly defined masculinity in our culture played a role in the decision and that some of this backlash resurgence of masculinity is healthy while other aspects of it aren’t.
Most of the pundits are bemoaning the conservative shift by young men2 as some kind of an embrace of misogyny, violence and paternalism3. Is it just coincidence that these articles are written by women? What are we to make of the tongue-in-cheek self-categorizing of Susan Milligan’s article as “Low Bro”?
Like bigfoot, American masculinity is largely mute and only known by it’s actions, doings and rare sightings. But that silence isn’t just a self-centered aloofness. There’s also a resignation to being misunderstood as toxic, dominating, violent and all the other negative associations our culture has heaped on masculinity over the past fifty years or so. Many of these associations are valid to some degree, but there are also many positive aspects of masculinity that should not be thrown out with the bathwater. When we interpret gender equality as gender-blindness and all gender characteristics as human characteristics with the same relevance to both/all sexes, we ignore some serious realities about human nature.
It is risky to discuss such topics without being pigeon-holed as some kind of Neanderthal throwback, so let me clarify. I’m not saying there are some human traits that are uniquely masculine or feminine. I’m not denying anyone’s freedom to be who they really are. I am saying that, on average, men express some human traits more than women and, on average, women express other human traits more than men. And, I am saying that averages matter— certainly in elections, at least. American masculinity is not something that will simply go away if you ignore it because it’s not simply cultural, it is also, at least partly, biological.
I am just one man, but perhaps an observant one. If I momentarily grant myself the conceit of speaking for all men, or at least American men, I’d say the following traits are pivotal, deep undercurrents of the America we’re seeing today. I’m not saying these traits are absolute or that actions attributed to them are always justified. I’m saying we ignore these characteristics at our peril and, if we don’t raise them up into the national dialog, we’re going to keep tripping over our genitalia and experiencing not only electile dysfuction but a wide range of other dysfunctions too.
Men want to be providers, finding meaning in sharing and earning love by helping to meet the real needs of family, friends and community members. When the economy tells us we can’t even provide enough to support ourselves, it is a deep insult.
Men want to be valued as earth-shaping agents of creation— building and making things that make everyone’s lives better. Too many burdensome rules and regulations often deny such creativity.
Men like to be unapologetically strong, physically, emotionally and intellectually— capable of handling whatever life may throw at us, sharing our vulnerable sides only with the closest of friends and family. To be mocked for our strengths leads to gifts not being shared.
Men want to compete with each other and to win, fair and square, when they do their best. They hate rigged games. They dislike the idea of equity because if everyone wins the same rewards, winning becomes meaningless.
(Real) men want to use their strength to ensure justice and security/safety for their community. There is honor when the strong protect the weak and provide a safe environment for everyone to achieve their fullest potential.
Men react negatively if they perceive others are not also generously sharing their gifts, but taking advantage of (or taking for granted) what they do. Men want their peers to show mutual concern for their needs too and shoulder the responsibility of caring for the community with them. They hate being made to feel like chumps for being of service to others. They want to teach lessons of honor, reciprocity and respect.
Men don’t want to be seen as separate from nature, but inherently enmeshed in nature— harvesting, hunting and fishing the earth’s bounty, caring for animals and nature, perhaps even sharing an almost mystical bond with living things as we gift our own blood, sweat and tears to the Earth in exchange for her gifts.
Men want to be in nature enough to have the clearest sense of who we are when we’re away from others’ influencing. The idea of being stuck inside 15-minute cities is anathema to men.
The challenge for us, as a society, is not to suppress and deny masculine traits, but to foster and discipline them in constructive ways and channel the formidable energy of masculinity into the most worthy endeavors.
It is a difficult economy these days. Supporting a family on one income is a rarity. Having two earners in a family should result in far greater abundance than we typically see. It is natural for men to want to have more self-determination, freedom and abundance in their lives. Policies that seem to work against that desire for abundance meet opposition.
Everywhere I look, it seems, there are more signs of frustrated masculinity.
I see it in the faces of the young men in the comedy clubs in Austin laughing loudly at jokes about men allowing themselves to acknowledge how they’d like to be sexually pleased (the “hawk tuah!” internet meme for example— look it up, if you must, but be forewarned), because, perhaps, it has been too taboo to talk about their own pleasure instead of dutifully focusing on pleasing their partner.
I hear it in stories of young men returning from foreign countries where they reveled in the absence of guard-rails and other forms of what, to them, seem like obsequious safety regulations.
I recognize it in the popularity of medieval festivals— play-acting sword fights and other role-playing.
I see it in how people react to Elon Musk’s bold technological ventures that speak to our wishes for the adventures and dangers of exploring space, the stripping away of politically correct speech in favor of free speech on social media platforms and safeguarding our destiny with electric cars that don’t emit greenhouse gasses from burning fossil fuels. Am I wrong in characterizing these as more-often-masculine wishes than feminine?
I note how differently our culture shapes men now. Where are today’s John Steinbecks, Ernest Hemingways, soldiers and titans of business? In the twentieth century, when someone asked permission unnecessarily, the reply was often, “Go ahead. It’s a free country.” We used to say “A man’s home is his castle” too. Don’t misunderstand me. Gender equality is crucial and elevating women to queen status as we claim our own sovereignty in king status is equally important. Our sovereign freedom and self-determination must be asserted and defended, but it seems, in our present economy, both men and women are now serfs working for sub-living wages in companies owned by Black Rock and living in tiny apartments without much land or privacy.
I would agree that, unguided and untrained, masculinity can be a bitch. At worst, it can turn selfish, angry, violent and even abusive. But men I admire hold to stories of honorable masculinity. Steinbeck liked to play at being King Arthur in the Pinnacles crowning the Salinas valley to the south. He wore a cardboard helmet and brandished a wooden sword. When, at age 58, he toured America in “Travels with Charley”, he called his camper truck “Rocinante” after Don Quixote’s horse in Cervantes’ legend of chivalry. Steinbeck modeled his band of heroic and comically flawed men in “Tortilla Flat” after King Arthur’s round table of chivalrous knights.
And, in the political world, Trump is certainly no chivalrous King or Knight. He has modeled the stunted masculinity— a cynical adaptation that nods to the “whatever works” principle of winning at all costs in this crazy capitalist game show America has become. Perhaps his best moment was his unhesitating pledge to keep fighting in the minutes after his attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania. That, and the hints of humility we saw in his eyes in the weeks following.
But Trump has, wisely or opportunistically, surrounded himself with some of the best knights— Kennedy, Musk and, yes I’ll say it, Gabbard. Being an honorable knight isn’t exclusively a male thing.
Kennedy is, of course, the scion of the American royal family associated with Camelot and he has said he’s much inspired by Arthurian legend, especially T. H. White’s “Once and Future King”. He has been slaying corporate dragons and corrupt agency monsters for decades in America’s courtrooms and, if you don’t see it, it’s only because you haven’t yet figured out that he’s right about all the environmental toxins we’re being poisoned with.
I’ve already extolled Musk’s business endeavors.
Tulsi Gabbard is the quintessential peaceful warrior who chooses battles very carefully and incisively asks if a battle is really in America’s best interests or not. She deserves a suit of armor as well.
The Democratic Party’s problem isn’t only that it has ignored men’s aspirations. After all, they got both the Ukraine war and COVID policy dead wrong. But, even if they do change course and get on the right side of history with those two major issues, they are still likely to fail if they don’t also find ways to stop ignoring men and, instead, work with the more constructive and honorable models of masculinity that men aspire to under the right conditions.
In summary, many men, especially young men are deeply unsatisfied with recent sociopolitical trends and their voices have not been heard. That’s why, when they make their wishes known in the ballot box, it comes as a surprise.
It may be Kamala’s defeat was reactionary, in part. If Trump’s 2016 election was, as Michael Moore characterized it, a monumental “fuck you” from the working class electorate to the powers that be, perhaps 2024 might be described as the electorate revolting against an overly controlling government and “sticking it to the man” only this year, “the man” was a woman.
The New Republic, Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, November 6, 2024, “Here’s How Badly Harris Lost Young Men”
The New Republic, Susan Milligan, October 28, 2024, (Category: “Low Bro”), “Trump’s Promise to Young Men: I Am Your Retribution Against Women”