Alphas and Soyboys

There's a video gone viral of a kennel with a passel of dogs barking, snarling, and nipping at each other, with one troublemaker acting particularly aggressively. Another dog trots onto the scene and with nothing more than attitude puts the troublemaker into submission. It's an amazing demonstration of "alpha," and King Charles, as the alpha is either named or dubbed, is now an Internet legend.

The late Christopher Hitchens' amusing description about the actual King Charles III, sovereign of the United Kingdom - "the slobbering chinless dauphin of a son" - aside, King Charles the dog demonstrated in just a few seconds the traits of a true alpha. Yes, the back story includes him having fought his way to that status, but as the alpha of the pack, confidence and presence were what mattered.

I contrast this with the antics of Tim Walz, erstwhile Vice Presidential candidate, 2028 Democratic Party nomination hopeful, and bearer of the nickname “Tampon Tim” for his law “mandating free menstruation products in all public school restrooms used by students in grades four to 12.” On top of his cringeworthy explanation that he was selected because he "could code talk to white guys watching football, fixing their truck" comes the latest iteration of the Democrats' hackneyed "Resist (we much)!"

Walz is imploring the Democrats to "bully the shit" out of Trump in pursuit of the leftist agenda that the country so roundly rejected this past election. That crass language and attitude reminded me of Kendall Roy from the HBO series Succession. Kendall cursed deliberately, and often in cringe inducing fashion (actor Jeremy Strong deservedly won an Emmy for the role) in order to mask his inadequacy and present himself as an alpha.

It's the equivalent of a lawyer pounding the table, and it's a clear indicator that an alpha pretender is everything but.

The Democrats' problem - well, one of them - is that the very notion of an alpha male is anathema to them. Everything is about "girl bosses" and decrying "toxic masculinity," which in practice means that the only tolerable men are submissive, meek, deferential, and effeminate. Since this runs completely against male DNA, Team Blue alienated a large swathe of male voters this past election. As I recently blogged, they are now trying to figure out how to recapture those votes...

without changing anything.

Some of them are looking to anoint a leftist Joe Rogan - completely missing what Rogan's popularity is about, and completely ignoring that Rogan would have been deemed a Democrat a dozen or so years ago. This is part of the delusion that their only problem is in messaging, and that the message itself would be popular if it were well-communicated. Ask Disney how that's working out.

Joy Behar thinks the answer is to berate the men who shifted to the GOP. "Teach them to not be so sexist." yeah, that's a winning strategy. Shame the men who rejected the code talker gambit into coming back to a party that hates all things male.

Tim Walz thinks the answer is be phony-tough. To engage in a sideshow farce version of speaking truth to power, and to curse and bully in order to prove how genuine his party is.

Meanwhile, the other side of the aisle has its own caricatures. There's Andrew Tate, who offers misogyny as the pathway to male alphadom, and mistakes "big swinging dick" attitude for actual alpha-dog confidence. If your version of alpha is treating women like shit and blowing cigar smoke at others, you're doing it wrong and good people will want nothing to do with you.

Unfortunately, the flash lifestyle of the "manosphere" has its own allure, one I'm sure is amplified by the separation that social media creates between influencers and their audiences. It's easy to lay out a fantasy when you can edit out the parts of real life that don't advance your brand and when you can actually fabricate "lifestyle" moments. We've been seeing a similar phenomenon for decades in hip-hop, where bling and flash are elevated and the positive aspects of male alpha-dom such as responsibility, community-building, peacekeeping, and guidance get left in the dust. And, we see in the current POTUS's penchant for gilded everything that "flash" remains both alluring and popular.

I get it. Flash is fun, actual alpha behavior is tough, demanding, and doesn't offer the same external validation. We all know, however, who we'd rather have at the head of the table.

As for the Democrats’ belated desire to relate to men? First they have to get over their pajama-clad soy-boy ‘ideal man’ fantasy and stop calling all normal male behaviors “toxic.”