Swarm-hater in chief. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
![](https://unherd.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/mary-100x100.jpeg)
Regardless of the motivation behind the attempt to assassinate Donald Trump, it’s striking to consider that this is effectively the second recent attempt to eliminate a nominated candidate for Leader of the Free World. While there was no AR-15 trained on Joe Biden, the efforts by factions in the party to make him stand down represent, albeit in a vastly different key, an attempt to remove a US presidential candidate scant months from an election.
The contrasting modus operandi in each case reveals a deeper struggle over how public life itself should be ordered. Should government comprise a named leader, clear hierarchies and acceptance that the final recourse for power is physical force? Or should it be softer and more collegiate, with a focus on consensus-formation rather than chains of command, and a more indirect means of dealing with enemies? If you believe the former, so the theory goes, you’re probably more Right-wing; if you believe the latter, likely more Left-wing. Both sides, meanwhile, increasingly map these sensibilities onto an emergent sex disparity in political affiliation, in which the Right is increasingly masculine-coded, and the Left feminine-coded.
The attacks on Trump and Biden correspond to this divide, too. What Trump faced on Saturday was a straightforward attempt at assassination in the masculine key, which is to say direct, violent and focused on a prominent individual. By contrast, the attacks on Biden since his poor performance in that debate two weeks ago constitute female-coded aggression at its most refined: whisper campaigns, anonymous character attacks, efforts at draining away social support and rendering someone a pariah.
But lapsing into this well-worn “gender-war” groove would mean missing the deeper disagreement, between individual agency and collective forms — and, also, the ways the two poles are more complementary than they think.
There really are well-documented differences between the way men and women approach social organisation that map crudely onto Republican and Democratic sensibilities. Though there are of course plenty of outliers, men are more likely to prioritise in-group cohesion, clear hierarchy and competition with out-groups; women, by contrast, are less violent, more cooperative and less committed to a defined in-group. The sexes also manage conflict differently: where female-typical disagreement often happens obliquely, for example via whisper campaigns or social ostracism, male-typical conflict is much more likely to be direct, confrontational and sometimes violent.
Trumpian Republicanism places more emphasis on hierarchy, open confrontation and prioritising the interests of the in-group — America — against competing out-groups, while setting great stock in a charismatic leader. The Left, by contrast, treats overt hierarchy with suspicion, often conflating it with “systems of oppression”, and prefers to emphasise “inclusivity”. The Democrats also evidently place considerably less stock in individual leadership. Otherwise they would not have devoted so much effort to denying Biden’s increasingly obvious frailty, maintaining an illusion of him being in charge sustained only by tight choreography and well-rehearsed lines plus a conspiracy of silence.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeSo glad we have Mary writing for us here… admiringly envious of her breadth of understanding…
I don’t believe the right is masculine coded at all, actually.
For me, the appeal of the right has far more to do with moral values – marriage being one man and one woman; right to life from conception to natural death; honoring the lives and wisdom of our elders but unafraid of respectfully calling anyone on the carpet for failings that impact the general welfare.
Which is why I’m seeing them all so much more as UniParty as conservatives as I’ve described are fading away.
I admire Mary’s work, but the core distinction is not between male and female, but right and wrong or true and false. Modernity has abandoned those distinctions and along with them all cause for hope.
I think her point is that women are prone to hive mentality and clique behavior (behind-the-back passive/aggressiveness) and men are forthright and individualistic. Women have run our education system for decades and it’s a total disaster. That’s where this sh*t started.
Women are incompetent back stabbers who ruin everything. Sounds like you would support repealing the 19th Amendment.
That first sentence,brilliantly put.
Masculine and feminine archetypes, not males and females. Excuse the pedantry, but there is a difference.
A very excellent article, Mary, but I think I only understood one word out of three! 😉
That said, I did get your point about the ‘Great Man’ and the ‘Swarm’. Nicely said!
Don’t underestimate yourself. The article is very feeble.
Women are less violent? Women are violent in a different way. I don’t think trump has a swarm. He merely has people who feel victimized by big government. A big government that doesn’t give two shites about them. Which of course why they gravitate to trump. It’s a really horrible way to pick a leader. As to assassination by harpy vs bullet? One lasts the rest of your life and one I s over quick.
The point MH makes is that Trump needs some form of swarm in government, and that failings from his previous administration were due to… lack of administration.
In his previous administration, Trump was gathering information on the administrators as to was acting patriotically, and who was not.
It’s why so many were included in the loop, to check them out. There is still much for the public to learn. We still haven’t heard about Uranium One, yet.
All politicians need an administration, a Civil Service, one that is civil, and not activists for the opposition.
What Trump got was a lack of cooperation, even doing the opposite of the order, and plotting against him, and the country.
History, without mentioning those that have taken and implemented the major decisions, is to not give the political Big Picture, which is the usual goal, and ‘Great Man Theory’ is the result. Enthusiasts, can then delve further. If you were interested in how cooking food developed, you would end up with people that changed History in that discipline.
It happens in Science too: we remember the leaps in knowledge, like Newton Laws of Motion, but Galileo rolling objects down an inclined plane, Tycho Brahe, or Kepler and his three laws, not so much.
Yeah well,in recent years Science decided to OPEN THE BOX AND TAKE THE MONEY. They make it up now and the story runs according to whose paying the most.
Women are proven more neurotic and caring for good evolutionary reasons (big 5 personality test). I believe it contributes to the “febrile compassion” of modern discourse. There is a brittle quality that requires offsetting.
Caring ….WTF….ever seen the single mums in the precinct.
Bonnie Tyler tells it like it is. She was Holding Out For A Hero. She wants to give it all to the man whose fresh from the fight. Sorry ,liberals but this is a THING. Men are aggressive because they KNOW that the women worth having,the Hot ones,rate a guy who can handle a fight.
Mine is Irish. She can bring the fight herself. Sometimes maybe a bit to much.
ALthough it is mentioned in the article, I believe it should take a much more prominent place in it: accountability and the lack thereof in the managerialist mindset.
Best example is the assassination attempt itself: the security organization at the pennsylvania event was abysmal and the person responsible, Mrs Cheatle, should be immediately replaced, yet this question isn’t even raised by the defenders of the managerialist system. The same applies to the catastrophic handling of Covid. We know today that the managerialist response caused much more harm than it avoided, yet no one is responsible.
How can anyone reasonable have the slightest trust in such a system ?
That chubby little woman trying to holster her weapon whilst chewing gum and her pony-tailed colleague fussing with her cool I’m-an-agent sunglasses perfectly illustrate the feminized “government” we in America now endure. Have you seen the photo of Biden’s communications team? They’re mostly female Zoomers.
Obama’s handlers gave rise to Trump, and to their complete bafflement, they’re now doing it on steroids.
Excellent observation!
She’s not fat, she’s big boned!
Girlies ruin any institution they are put in charge of,from the British.Economy,the Met Police,Talktalk,track + trace,to The Post Office and others
Top comment. The swarm abrogates responsibility. Conservatives demand responsibility because we honor covenant. “Protect and serve” means something. It’s not just theater. Results are results.
All we have been seeing from the Left since Obama days is Theater instead of progress. “Be seen to be virtuous” is more important than being effective. Consequences are “not my fault”. It’s a massive philosophical difference between Left and Right. Ideology versus Reality.
And the reality is that Trump is a fraudster and a petty convicted criminal. How do the right take account of that reality? They concoct swarm or a deep state that moves in mysterious ways to nobble not only the judges but also the whole judicial apparatus!
> The same applies to the catastrophic handling of Covid. We know today that the managerialist response caused much more harm than it avoided, yet no one is responsible.
Damn you really hit the nail on its head here!
As always a great article by Mary and touching on many key issues that I’ve been thinking a lot about.
I do agree that the world has become more female spirited (I use feminine spirited here as I think there are plenty of males who are very feminine spirited and versa) which carries both good and bad. However for me, Mary misses the key point which is one of trust.
Can we trust the swarm when we don’t know who’s accountable? The feminine spirit is also higher in agreeableness which can in certain cases trump truth. This creates a short-termism where the second order effects are less apparent but much more harmful than the original truth.
I think that social media and the feminine spirit go hand in hand to enable feminine type bullying (as well as many positive interactions).
Agreeableness too can lead to the trumping of women’s tears over a sound argument (what man continues driving hard facts home when a women cries but the opposite doesn’t hold).
What are we to do? Acknowledge that there are positive and negative attributes of both masculine and feminine spirits and try to work the best way forward.
In a practical level I think institutions should always be accountable to parliament – at least then it’s the devil we know. And we must continue to hold democracy and freedom of choice in general as the most sacred of things
We can’t even trust having an Energy Minister with enough knowledge to know that Windmills are not the answer.
Maybe we do, and there is a different agenda, with a different question, especially when he has passed A level Physics.
I don’t think this is one of Mary‘s best articles. The march through the institutions has been so dramatically successful only a forced march back into them is ever likely to reverse the trend. By its nature, that requires very many more people than just the leader and is primarily a function of coherent ideology, organisation and will.
The ridiculous revolving door of Trump’s inner cabal during his first presidency indicates he’s doesn’t have these three essentials.
While to some degree this maps onto the masculine/feminine thrust of the article, that isn’t central, and is a bit of a distraction. Replacing the swarm is the issue.
Replacing the swarm requires knowing who are members of the swarm, and those who are not.
It’s hard to say if he has those three essentials or not. He came from a completely different type of social environment into one that was vehemently opposed to his very existence in both aggressive active and passive obstructionist ways. Steep, steep learning curve for sure. I think we will likely get the opportunity to see how much he has learned.
Spot On. There is so much analogous to the spirit of both ‘genders’ here – from an individual level all the way up. The merging of all forces that was still swimming in the depths – breaking through the layers, manifesting and revealing itself in our present day. More is still to come. Whilst there is much complexity for both – you can see the deep patterns that all of us hold within – often unacknowledged. The two poles within each ‘gendered spirit’.
And …………….unacknowledged, deeply held grief.
How we all wish for ‘heaven on earth’…..
I have written two comments for this, both have disappeared without explanation. Mary is trolling me and my Substack in this article, but Unherd will not even allow me as a paying member to criticize the article.
About – interpocula (substack.com)
I had to post this on a different laptop!!
This article is trolling my Substack that is trying to expose a network that harasses, robs, drugs and sexually assaults men in Berlin. This is not the first time that I have been trolled by contributors to Unherd, nor is it the only platform to do so. See my comments on the following two The curse of the Dutch sodomite – UnHerd – The trouble with attachment theory – UnHerd
The last articles on my Substack criticized the naive belief in what is said about the victim on the Telegram Group chats where the harassment and violence is coordinated. That is to say, the naive belief in the network that is controlled by a handful of anonymous group chat administrators. The latter send out instructions to their members who swarm the victim. The network is ran by feminists but it has a broad membership that likely includes just as many men as women.
Just the tittle/subtitles of my last last three posts will give you an idea where the content of this article by Mary comes from. If you are sceptical then click on the links that Mary Harrington gives to ground her piece in reality. They have nothing to do with different models of power or swarms. The first says men are generally moving more to the right, women to the left. It is a short article linking these alleged trends to problems finding a romantic partner. The second is about how Trump is a macho man (so nothing new, and nothing to do with the top down hierarchy). The third article is about a claim that there are ‘too many preachy females in the democratic party’ (so actually the opposite of Harington’s whispering women carrying out character assassinations).
My last four posts:
Derrida contra Gone Girl Feminism: deconstructing pop-post-structuralism
Are All Activist Swarms Good?
How the ‘multitudes’ of Hardt and Negri have become the left’s internecine zealots
The Tyranny of Leaderless Activism
Mary plays on the structuralism vs post-structuralism debate and the Great Men of History vs intersectional forces as another way to mock my work. She is linking me to misogyny, trumpism, and fascism.
Has anyone heard or read the opinion Mary Harrington is allegedly critiquing? She links to a random Twitter post, as if one Twitter post from a random sexist guy makes a political movement worth talking about, “are we seriously arguing that such political takedowns were unheard-of until women entered public life?” No, no one is.
This whole article is a cheap play on assassination/character assassination. She uses her platform to propagate the gender stereotype that women just whisper nasty things about people. While only men are really violent. Meanwhile the men who are abused are trolled online because of the belief in the inherent social justice of these online networks, and the moral superiority of women.
Women are not just destroying men’s reputations or careers, they are doing much worse. Men need to grow up and make sure their basic human rights are protected from these anonymous unaccountable networks. Ultimately, however, we will need women to tell us that it’s alright to do so. Women know the soft power they wield over us. As the feminists who lead this network told me, all men do what they tell them because they believe they are special, just likely mummy said. They believe the women who tell them that they are special and not like the others. Which is why the strategy of Other and dehumanising their victim works so well.
About – interpocula (substack.com)
If ‘the deep state’ is responsibility diffused so widely that no-one can be held to account then the value of ‘democracy’ is much reduced. And when the deep state becomes entrenched it doesn’t matter who you vote for the deep state always wins.
Not male vs female, but accountable vs unaccountable. An unaccountable deep state is anathema to a Constitutional Republic. So long as the President is controlling the heads of the CIA, NSA etc, and Congress is able to sanction their excesses, then checks and balances are working. But once the deep state controls the President and the heads of those agencies are defying Congress, then the government of America has failed. The voter is disenfranchised and corruption reigns.
Male v female is accountable v non- accountable. Watch the so called justice systems at work.
“I dare say few want sexed polarity enough to swap desk work for manual labour.”
True enough for people with a white collar job. However, there are two important points this overlooks:
1. There are many people who would traditionally have done more skilled or manual work that have no jobs in the current globalised economy who might in fact welcome the return of well-paid and safe jobs of this kind.
2. Although we are strongly discouraged to think about it, our virtual world is still very much the product of physical labour. The average phone still requires 24 hours of human labour and the average laptop anything up to a week of human labour to produce. For the West, the physical labour that underpins the production of almost everything we import to consume is hidden from us overseas. That labour is neither well-paid nor (often) safe.
Globalists like to talk about “those jobs are never coming back” with the implication they no longer exist. Nothing is further from the truth: they are just elsewhere, for now.
Well stated. Someone still has to mine the copper for the wires, the lithium for the batteries, the trees for the paper box and the oil to produce diesel fuel. Back at the office, someone has to fix the toilet, bake the muffins and make the coffee for the meetings. And don’t forget about the guy who has to fix the leaking roof or replace the window after a storm.
Globalism is a modern slavery.
.
Therefore, manual laborers become an annoying nuisance in their own country. Such a life would suit me quite well as a programmer, if not for three minor circumstances.
.
First, as programming technology advances, tomorrow I myself may become an annoying nuisance.
.
Secondly, slaves can get tired of being slaves and take the slave owners by the throat, which we are already seeing today and we are seeing how the pampered elites and ourselves, fat in body and mind, can be eaten for dinner.
.
Thirdly, and here I may turn out to be an unfortunate exception, from the experience of my physical work, from the experience of my scientific work and from the experience of working in high-tech, I came away with a strong conviction that the percentage of idiots and reasonable people is approximately the same in these areas of human activity. Although among scientists the percentage of irresponsible idiots is slightly higher than average and this is understandable – they are never responsible for the results of their actions.
.
PS. As a result, I have a lot of respect for blue collar workers. It’s so out of date 🙁
I’ve just been writing about a futuristic novel of recent years that features this Who Runs Society? Do The Elite hold their place of Power as of right? The book is ” COURIERS -OFF GRID by J.A Swanson.
El Uro,
I too have worked in manual labour jobs, gone to uni and have been a white collar worker for over 20 years. I agree there are more irresponsible idiots in the latter categories. So thank you for pointing that out.
Mary says what I realised decades ago: the feminisation of work only came with technology that created safe work and work-lite. Feminists waited till the hard yacka was done then swooped. They pick the eyes out of what work they want and complain about the gender pay gap.
Accountability is certainly not high as a feminist priority and so we have the feminized workforce of experts and professionals dictating terms as authorities on whatever given subject and this is undermining democracy.
At the same time we are led to believe the feminized workers are more caring, but the reality is as long as the hard yacka is out of sight, they couldn’t care less. As was the case with coal, diamonds and now lithium etc, it is still males doing the vast majority of this unsafe and heavy work.
Excuse my somewhat clumsy comment as I have a head full of covid at the moment.
I remember in the 1970s and into the 80s a regular feature on our local tv was women who had fought prejudice and landed a job on the refuse trucks or down the sewers or other deeply unpleasant and strenuous jobs,probably low paid too. They’ve all disappeared now. And we all know women soldiers get themselves preggers before battle.
If we are going to break every down into masculine and feminine, again I would go back to Biblical model of Ish and Isha—equal but different—and look for the balance found in Biblical principles. Is “come let us reason together” masculine or feminine? Is self sacrifice masculine or feminine? Is servant leader masculine or feminine? Can we be individuals and still work cooperatively as in the Trinity?
Swarmism is a socialist face of a counterfeit religion, IMO.
Not only did the failed assassination boost Trump’s chances, his reaction in the moment and his bearing under fire practically guarantees it – his vote share among both men and women will surge.
Somewhat counterintuitively I also think the attack makes it much more likely that Biden will stand.
Ever since Biden said he would run for a 2nd term, I’ve been suggesting that he’d be swapped out at the convention, and Kamala would be bought off, and a last-minute, less mentally compromised candidate would be parachuted in with not enough time to be properly scrutinised. It would have to have been a female candidate, but maybe no longer.
Trump seems unbeatable at the moment, which makes challenging him seem like a losing ticket for anyone. Most Dems with a chance will surely keep their powder dry for 2028 rather than risk a drubbing in ’24.
The loss can then be hung on Biden’s hubris and the fact that he just clung on too long. Then a suitable female candidate will emerge for the next go round.
Actually yesterday, in response to Lionel Shriver’s ‘What-if-Trump-had-been-killed?’ piece, I posited the following (deeply cynical) alternative fantasy scenario:
Ingenious and very plausible. So you are predicting a false flag assassination of Biden. Martial law would follow and civil war would be inevitable. Yikes.
Hopefully they will be cautious that an FBI-instigated attack on Biden would be exposed immediately as a fraud
It was written yesterday as a response to Lionel Shriver’s “parallel universe” fantasy of what might have happened if Trump had been assassinated – she turned the dystopia up to eleven.
I tried to do the same.
Am I suggesting there was collusion from the authorities in the assassination attempt? No, I wouldn’t go that far.
But by god there are some questions to answer.
The most basic, base-line operational measures were not taken to secure a very simple and easy-to-control site. There were members of the crowd informing USSS personel and local law enforcement of the presence of an unknown man with a rifle pointed at the former President for several minutes before he opened fire. A local police officer was face to face with the shooter prior to him firing at Trump, yet backed away when threatened with a gun.
These are just a very few of the multiple lapses in basic protocols – any one of which should see people fired. To have quite so many occur on the one day when a “lone wolf” is actually present should make the most incurious among us ask questions.
But if I were to posit a parallel universe story of “what-if” it was a botched officially sanctioned plot? Well, that’s how I might guess it would play out in such a world.
Additional thought, expanding upon Mary’s interesting line of argument:
Perhaps “swarmism” and the feminisation of politics is something that can only thrive in peaceful times. When everything is hunkydory, you can afford to just swim along in this diffuse structure, things get done somehow, sometime and as long as nothing really bad happens, then a lack of accountability isn’t such a problem.
When the world gets more dangerous, hierarchies, clear lines of command and physical/military superiority are going to be the preferable form of governance and organisation. Things have to be done NOW, because Person X who has authority by virtue of being in Position Y, says so and is accountable for that task being performed. No time for inclusivity considerations, or whispering, intrigue and subtle social pressure/manipulation.
Going a little darker, even women’s rights as we in the West have enjoyed them for the past 100 years or so rest upon the most delicate crust of peaceful civilisation. The 7th October showed us just how quickly womens’ rights crumble and womens’ bodies become others’ property when that civilisation breaks down.
This is what keeps me up at night as we drift into an unstable world where violence and women-hating ideologies are fast proliferating.
Elective abortion is not a Federal Constitutional Right. Roe was a mistaken decision, much like the “Right” of slavery or restrictive suffrage. Not every legal ruling should be federalized. USA is a Republic. Each State has sovereignty over their jurisdiction. If one doesn’t like their State’s laws, then move or try to change them. There are many States I refuse to become a resident of due to their politics.
Why is enabled whoring a right.
This is what keeps me up at night as we drift into an unstable world where violence and women-hating ideologies are fast proliferating.
.
If you are surrounded by decent men, you shouldn’t worry too much. Yes, it may happen that at some point one of them will bark at you, “Shut up and do what I told you,” but believe me, you will be extremely relieved to shut up and do what you were told. And all will be well 🙂
Yes. Feminism works until there is hard work and giving your limbs and life for other people. Feminists look down their noses at those who do this stuff in both cases.
This article is hard to read not because it’s clever but because it is incoherent.
Let’s start with the sex dichotmy between right/male and left/female. This is mapped onto a (girly) whispering campaign against a leftist Biden and a (manly) AR15 fired against a right wing Trump. Let’s ignore for the moment, the possible motivations of the gunman himself because we don’t know them.
But, of course, Biden isn’t a leftist. He is a law and order reactionary operating within the loose boundaries of the Democrat party. Indeed, his elevation to Obama’s VP occurred at a time when Obama was considered dangerously left-wing and in need of a conservative VP to “balance the ticket”. More recently, Biden’s ascent to the presidency arose from the determination of the Democratic party to block a much more leftwing figure – Bernie Sanders. Once again a reactionary position.
Sanders, despite his actual leftism, was attacked by the establishement centre – the Swarm/Cathedral with almost as much viciousness as that to which Trump was subjected in 2016. See also the unconcealed loathing of “centrists” like Hillary Clinton for other figures to their left (Stein, Nader, Gabbard).
What you have is not therefore a left/right dichotomy but continuity vs change.
Seen from that perspective, it is obvious that challenges to the leadership from within the establishment/continuity tent may be less dramatic (the witholding of donor funds and op-eds in the papers) than the measures deployed against insurgents outside the tent. So now we have neither left/right nor male female and MH has no point at all except perhaps that the establishment defends itself against change.
That point is so self-evident that you need to dress it up to the point of absurdity to get an article out of it.
Indeed, his elevation to Obama’s VP occurred at a time when Obama was considered dangerously left-wing and in need of a conservative VP to “balance the ticket”.
Except that’s not why Biden was picked. Joe was assassination insurance because he’s always been a fool.
Its ironic that his elevation resuted in his vp Harris – an even bigger fool – who serves similarly as assassination protection.
Spot on. I don’t think the article deserves this response actually. I am afraid that Mary is not making a genuine point. Rather she is trolling me and my Substack and making a tenuous link with the recent assassination attempt with a play on ‘assassination (male)/character assassination (female)’. My last four posts were about ‘swarms’, leaderless activism, post-structuralism and it’s naive believe in online networks whose actions are totally unaccountable. Mary is linking me and my ideas to Trump, misogyny, and fascism to mock me.
I am trying to expose a feminist group that harasses and drugs men who have allegedly to have cheated on their girlfriend. Although they use a smear campaign that uses everything at their disposal to stoke hatred and disgust.. I am accused of being a racist, sexist, right wing misogynist cheating TERF cad with a wandering hand. I just rejected these women and their request that I spike men for them when I worked in a bar.
About – interpocula (substack.com)
[I had to post this on a different laptop!!]
What twaddle, trying to classify political right and left through identity ideology is playing to the prejudices of woke. Extremist left and right share some of the same features attributed to the right in this piece.
Way below her usual standards – just a lot of individually sensible bits that do not fit together or add up to anything coherent.
And anyway:
The whole point of immunity for Trump (as it was for Mussolini) is that the Great Leader should *not* be held responsible for his decisions. What he does is right because he does it, end of story.
The whole point of immunity for presidents making presidential decisions – including presidents NOT named Trump – is so the other side doesn’t perpetually try to criminalize decisions it dislikes.
Thanks. This Comments section is getting kind of over-heated. A bit of common sense reality is quite refreshing.
Of course the Left isn’t interested in “great men” as leaders. There was no Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Kier Sampan, Peron, Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro.
Blair, Corbyn, Stammer
Great piece. Perceptive, well-argued and nicely written.
As of March 2024, there were 510,665 full-time equivalent (FTE) civil servants – 8,220 ( 1.6%) more than in the previous quarter, which is the highest quarterly growth rate since the pandemic ( 2021 Q2). There are now 22,175 (4.5%) more civil servants than a year ago.
WHY???
My view has shifted to where I feel the current battle is amongst parties where membership aligns with: 1. the amount of learned helplessness individuals are willing to accept across a number of domains, some competing/complimentary/overlapping and 2. to whom they are willing to cede the corresponding responsibility/virtue/agency.
also greed, greed for power versus greed for material things amongst other manifestations of greed.
Good article.
As one who was bullied daily in a girls school give me an assailant I can see coming any day.
“Or should (power) be softer and more collegiate, with a focus on consensus-formation rather than chains of command, and a more indirect means of dealing with enemies?”
She’s describing exactly the hidden rule by arrogant elites that the Left has used to quietly undermine logic, common sense, order, even the rule of law in all our institutions over the decades. For all its supposed gentle collegiality it is smiling, vindictive Mean Girl politics and it’s terribly destructive.
“After all, the reputation “assassination” by gossip, smear and ostracism now being waged against Biden may be feminine-coded in its methods. But are we seriously arguing that such political takedowns were unheard-of until women entered public life? Millennia of court politics would suggest otherwise”.
Excellent take down of her own straw man by Harrington. Yep, “feminine-coded” is nonsense. As is:
“Nothing separates the sexes like manual labour.”
Perhaps MH means “nothing separates the classes…” but forgot to proof.
As I have reminded these halls so very very very often: women have worked in farming (including as slaves), factories, mines, mills (more than men because cheaper), processed food production (including chewing and regurgitating indigestible grasses), waste collection (human and animal faeces for agricultural and industrial use), cleaning and care since (and in some cases before) the dawn of history.
Middle class women (and men) in manual roles, less so.
Male and female together generate new life, so would liberalism and conservatism if ever they learn to incorporate each others strengths and birth something new.
it’s striking to consider that this is effectively the second recent attempt to eliminate a nominated candidate for Leader of the Free World.
This is quite a reach. Efforts to stop Trump pre-dated his inauguration. On the day of, WaPo ran an article calling for impeachment. The Biden thing only surfaced after the debate, when the people who told us how lucid he is could no longer lie to themselves.
The gender debate is playing out in the practical debate over the Secret Service response to the attempted assassination. The idea is that the agents ‘get big’ to cover the president, ‘swarming’ to protect him from further gunfire. The natural reaction to save one’s self is on video- a short woman agent crouching while large men are piling on the president. One or two agents should be able to quickly carry the president to the vehicle. That forced-on-everyone feminism is not working nor is it likely to. Where’s the balance?
I haven’t looked at the footage closely, so I’ll take your word on the short woman agent. But have you considered that people in a working group – even such a specialised group as a close personal protection detail – are chosen to provide a mix of skills? “One or two” (probably more) agents would indeed be needed for physical protection and evacuation, but others could be needed for, say, marksmanship, unarmed combat, and observing the nearest bystanders (a female acquaintance of mine used to do the last as part of her close-personal-protection job).
Three big men and one small woman linked shoulders around Trump to guard him and block sightlines. The three men blocked him, but the woman only came up to his shoulders …..
Seems like poor organisation, then.
The anti-America cabal of the Cultural Marxist Left, the Swarm aka Deep State, Big Tech, and billionaires both foreign and domestic contrived the placement of Joe Biden into the role as President in 2020. They had no intention of letting Biden make decisions as President. The “Man behind the curtain” was doing that. Biden was a place holder; he hasn’t been making any Executive Office policy decisions. Suspicions are that Obama in his third term and his acolytes have been doing that behind the curtain.
The same cabal that placed Biden in the oval office is now afraid because his mental condition has declined to the point that it isn’t plausible that they could deliver another 81 million votes, to such an incapacitated candidate, without calling attention to the “special Democrat ballot counting process”.
There is no provision in the Constitution for unaccountable power such as the Swarm, aka the Deep State and therefore, it is fair game for the Chief Executive to take control of his Executive Branch and say to the embedded Swarm, “You’re Fired”.
The author’s thesis has some attraction as an intellectual exercise but the Hegelian edifice that she creates flatters what is goiing on too much. The deep state in Turkiye was the army as is in Pakistan today. The deep state in the US is the constitution and the ideas that went into framing it. When Trump, Bannon et al allude to a ‘deep state’, that is what is what at the back of their minds – the idea that the state afford equal rights and protection to all. They resent the white man being placed at the same level as the non-white man, or, for that matter, men having no more a favoured status than women. And they use ‘deep state’ in pretty much the same way as they used and continue to use the allegations of vote rigging without any evidence, as a bogey to mislead the unwary into giving free reign to their essentially racist and anti-democratic tendencies under its cover. These people neither believe in the US Constitution nor in the judicial system that operates in the country.
I think the author has misunderstood. The battle now being waged in the West is not masculine dictatorship fighting a female “ swarm”. It is between those seeking freedom from tyranny and those who promote State imperium.
MH is always an interesting read. Reading this article, for some reason the terms the Great Man and the Swarm called to mind the terms Attila and the Witch Doctor, from Ayn Rand’s For the New Intellectual, which I haven’t read or thought of in ages. Why it did so, I’m not sure.
The EU must be the most “swarmist” entity on this side of the Atlantic, and it generates a similar type of debate to the one Harrington discusses above.
Another excellent cultural analysis. Thank you. Culture is, of course, central. But it is only part, albeit a large one, of the big picture. Institutions/organisations also matter. The exigencies of getting the job done, of orchestrating the division of labour required, balancing its centripetal forces with centrifugal authority, is a complicated business and there is no one best way of accomplishing it. It’s a matter of ‘horses for courses’, the character of the tasks shapes the solution. A ‘swarm’ in the jargon of organisational analysis is a network, a form of organisation suited to managing a high variety of complicated tasks. Bureaucracy work when programmes execute tasks monitored and controlled by hierarchy. It may well be that the feminine match the requirements of networks while the masculine relishes the technicalities of programme design and the pursuit of status allowed by hierarchy. I suggest that our problems follow from the collapse of the mediations that once drew citizens into the state. Political parties were the important players; not anymore as the increasing volatility shows. How to explain the collapse and trace its consequences, that’s the question. Has femininization played a role ? One` last question, does the feminine excel at cultural analysis?!
While I concede that the “deep state” confers through the heft of its mass a ballast against the vicissitudes of governance, it is mistaken to view it as a neutral entity. The deep state, in the U.S. at least, is thoroughly an asset of the Left, even during Republican administrations at the level below political appointments. The overwhelming majority of federal employees in Washington are Democrats. What the Biden administration reveals is that, when a president becomes as diminished as he, the deep state does not simply roll along like good little Soviet apparatchiks fearful of being too bold in their actions and using inertial guidance systems. The American deep state has a well endowed collective eminence grise that not only determines the agenda executed by the deep state in the situation of presidential non compos mentis, but increasingly sets it for all presidents including, until Trump, Republicans.
The reason traditional Republicans such as both George Bushes, Romney, Jeb Bush, and even Nikki Haley have lost traction on the Right is that they are Establishment Republicans who Trump supporters believe to be, beneath the rhetoric, beholden to globalist elites. That reality explains the visceral hatred of the liberal order for Trump. He is the only “conservative” Republican to meaningly challenge their power monopoly with anything other than words, which also explains how his followers can overlook Trump’s lack of rigor with the truth. They have been told so many pretty lies by Bush types who betrayed them on the most significant issues that, paradoxically, Trump, the known and open prevaricator, possesses a unique variety of truthfulness exhibited by his readiness to do what he says he will do on many issues.
test
As usual I want neither of what is offered, maybe a little if each. I suspect I am not alone, but the silent majority, as so often these days, is sidelined by the loud voices either side
This is the kind of article that gives academics a bad name. I don’t think Mary should be expected to write sensibily at the drop of a hat about whatever is happening. She needs more time to refine her work and make it easier to understand. The puffiness of this piece knocked out in a hurry is a good example. Leave hack journalism to the hack journalists.
Mary, thank you for a very interesting essay. I want you to pay attention to one small detail.
The head of the Secret Service is a woman appointed by Biden. She has repeatedly stated that her goal is to have 30% women in the Secret Service by 2030.
We’ve just seen the mid-term result of this smart women’s politics – women around the politician they’re supposed to protect being a head or two below him, and Trump being accused online of irresponsible behavior because he put their lives in danger (I read that myself).
Apparently, the responsible behavior of a politician today is to use his body to cover the female bodyguards recruited by a stupid woman.
This is the real result of the forced promotion of women to places where they should not be, including politics and leadership positions.
We are primates, our packs are hierarchical, leaders of our packs are males.
The above does not prohibit women from being leaders, history is full of examples of outstanding women leaders, but this is not the rule, these are exceptions.
If we are giving a woman an artificial priority, our pack is doomed.
There is a photograph of the Secret Service agents covering Trump, and one of them is a woman. Just like the men, she was willing to take a bullet to protect Trump.
She was too short and too small for the job. Would have been better in the crowd, providing cover …..
The point is that they didn’t ‘cover’ Trump.
Only stupid women are available to be appointed to be Heads of Concerns as intelligent women are pairing up with cool guys and having babies,establishing homes etc
I wouldn’t be so orthodox, there are women who do excellent management jobs, but I have noticed that footballers’ wives tend to shoot off three or more children without the slightest desire to sweat with their husbands on the football field.
The world view of this response to 7/13 is similar to Claire Lehmann over at Quillette.
But I would like to reduce this to black and white.
What do we need men for? To kill the invaders and to hang the murderers. For that men need to use force.
What do we need women for? To birth and nurture the children and to work together and help each other in this vital task. Force is beside the point.
I would argue that wherever a “swarm” is appropriate it should not be allowed to use force.
Our problem is that we have expanded government from its role of defending the borders into hundreds of areas where there are no borders to defend and force is not the appropriate tool.
Self driving and malfunctioning machinery of state but as described there are no accountable heads.
MAGA desperately wanted the shooter to be a violent Democrat and he wasn’t. He wasn’t particularly political, he was a Hinckley. MAGA is clearly a dangerous, violent cult that believes it has god on its side.
Do Republican donate to ActBlue? Do they shoot Republicans? I can call myself a Republican all day long, and even register as such, but that doesn’t make it so …..
When everyone is in charge no one is in charge
I think the turn towards masculinity in America shows itself in what is socially fashionable. The proliferation of tattoos which used to be the territory of sailors, men’s short back and sides, military style haircuts and beards or stubble faces. Gone is the softer, longer hair and clean-shaven look. Women favor tight, short, confining dresses over softer, more gentle, feminine fabrics. Alas for the loss of the feminine in both sexes. I find it jarring to look at these visually, unattractive trends.
Ronald Reagan was a Great Man. Donald Trump is a short-fingered vulgarian.
And you, Martin M, are a wise sage, good and true. (I guess?) 😉
Mary Harrington does a great deal of tacking back and forth is this essay but she doesn’t make much headway. She tries very hard to be profound, though, and that may be why she doesn’t get much of anywhere in terms of making a point.
What is not jejune here is hardly worth rebutting. Yes, in dealing with foes, women tend to gossip, men tend towards confrontation. ( Insert yawn emoji here ) Yes, there is such a thing as the Deep State, but that is really a melodramatic term for the Administrative State (AS), which is devolved power now become unaccountable. Yes, the state is layer upon layer of process, to which women are peculiarly adapted, but the AS is nothing at all like a swarm, a term she should retire since there already exists a term for what she means and it is herd behaviour. Yes, the ‘great man theory’ has fallen into desuetude, but what’s theoretical about it, and what need do process people have for the heroic when their ideal is the lowest common denominator? The feminization of society is about much more than the ascendency of a collaborative tendency since there is a broad cluster of traits whereby women differ from men, and the preference for cooperation is amongst the least dramatic and cogent of them. Yes, the individual will versus the collective will may be the human duality, but they are inseparable and irreconcilable. It is rather lame to ask why can’t we just all get along. And dishonest, too.
But, etcetera.
There are many elephants in the rooms Ms. Harrington dares not enter. Once she has screwed her courage to the sticking place, she might address the ubiquity of ‘diversity hires’ and the devaluation of standards they must necessarily entail, and feminism’s part in all that. Or leadership, and the paucity of it on the distaff side. But there is a paucity of it across the board, it seems. I think I will blame feminists for that, too. I mean, what man wants to be a leader of a regression towards the mean?
A dictator, elected or otherwise, can and must be held responsible for the actions of their nations both towards their own people and towards other nations. We all know it wasn’t some committee in Moscow or conclave of Russian generals who decided to go to war with Ukraine. Putin made that call and the results are on him for good or ill. When one holds absolute power, there are no excuses, no procedure to hide behind.
When people know they can’t be held responsible individually they tend to take greater risks. They also tend to be less thorough and studious than if they knew they were individually accountable. This is well documented in psychology. The most conspicuous example of the principle is mob psychology. Studies show th,at people will do things they would not ordinarily do when part of a group. This is just plain observable fact, proven over and over again in science and confirmed by history.
Thus, I have an issue with coding a preference for a defined leadership structure with a clear chain of command as ‘masculine’ and a preference for a rule by committee and a faceless collective rule as ‘feminine’ In my experience, both genders are equally capable of succumbing to mob psychology and dodging responsibility using collective psychology.
Indeed, the first and perhaps most prevalent example of how collective dodge real accountability came long before women were given the vote. I am speaking of corporations. The CEO is just an employee. In theory, he answers to a board of directors, who nobody knows and who change fairly regularly anyway. The owners are stockholders, sometimes individuals and sometimes other corporations, often with no individual owner holding a controlling interest. Who do we blame for something like the Deepwater Horizon disaster? BP? Who is that exactly? Who knows. In fact, the collectivist logic is legally established. The owners/stockholders cannot be prosecuted for anything the company does. The most they can lose is whatever they paid for their share of the company. If this isn’t the most egregious use of collectivist logic to evade personal accountability, I don’t know what is, and it cannot be blamed on women.
Government’s have simply been imitating this because most people are cowards and will take the easy way out when they can. Most of us, if we’re honest, will dodge responsibility for something bad if we can. That’s why personal responsibility is a critical social ethic that needs to be kept and enforced on a cultural level. It’s why governmental agencies should all be organized like the military, with a clear chain of command where the leaders of units are held responsible for the choices they make, and why it’s important for bureaucracies to be as transparent as possible. I don’t want to be told some committee made a bad decision because I know how people are. Everybody will blame everybody else and nobody will be able to tell after the fact who is really responsible. I’m not a nice person. I want a name so I know who effed up and who should be fired for failure and punished if they committed a crime. If a man knows his name will be on the national news and his life will be ruined if he screws up, he’s probably going to be a lot more diligent and cautious. In the long run, you get fewer screw ups. It also makes it easier to assess who is actually a competent decision maker.
Blaming women and feminism is a cop out. Yes, women do tend to be more consultative and consensus based, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, as long as at the end of the process somebody is held accountable, regardless of their leadership style. Some of history’s greatest rulers were women. Elizabeth I is widely considered the best and most accomplished ruler in British history. Catherine the Great was perhaps Russia’s greatest ruler despite being neither a man nor a Russian. One can find examples even as far back as ancient Egypt. These were monarchs when autocratic rule was expected. Nobody was going to make excuses for them. Nobody needed to.
This is well beyond a male/female dynamic. It’s a sign of moral, cultural, and social decay. People, both male and female want to take the risks and reap the rewards without any risk of consequences. I have no answer for this problem, but at least if we keep to some form of elected governments where leaders can be chosen and held accountable, however imperfectly, there’s a chance for a stronger generation to fix this. If we wholly give in to the collectivist mindset, it’s 1984. Big Brother isn’t a real person. Nobody is in charge. Who is to blame, Everyone is and no one is.
I pretty much agree with everything you say, but feminism has increased un-accountability for females (which was already a cultural thing). Look at the various courts. The whole culture has been feminized due to the flc and that has led to much moral decay (such as men kicking a bloke when he is down and women ripping kids away from good Dads).
Mary Harrington has surfaced a key dynamic of the modern ‘Woke’ era in what used to be the western ‘democracies’ – namely the feminisation of politics, public service, corporate entities, the media, education, medicine; in fact everything, including the military. This is a massive cultural revolution that has occurred in relatively recent times. Who knows where it will lead in the long term. So far it has not, on balance, had a positive impact on world affairs and our lives generally.
This was a great read, nice to see Mary continuing to identify and clarify concepts, it’s a much needed skill.
Reading this, it reminded me of 2008’s too big to fail discussion where the credentialed expert swarm monumentally failed society. This seems to be the big problem with power without accountability.
Is the financial crisis having a second episode in the form of a political crisis – and is it too important to fail?
Well I like Mr Trump because he’s like a normal person and he says things like your neighbours say. And he’s funny. In both a good and bad way. So,he’s greedy,obnoxious and sexually predatory,like I say,just like the neighbours,normal people,ha ha ha.
I’m voting Trump. Well if had a US vote I would.