Look who’s jumping on the Alpha Male bandwagon! If it isn’t the New York Times and the Hill calling for the use of “high-dominance rhetoric” to beat Trump

The Hill published a non-paywalled piece referring to the login-required NYT piece

May 13, 2024

I love to send out a good communication analysis in this substack, and two of the social experiments the NYT piece makes reference to are so interesting that they make the entire original op-ed worth reading (but I summarize them both here too).

Also, had you heard that 73% of Americans consider themselves to be patriotic, according to this March 2023 WSJ poll? I want to lead with that stat because knowing that the authors of the two pieces we’re analyzing had that high number at the back of their minds while crafting their argument is going to make a ton of sense in a few paragraphs.

The NYT opinion piece Trump Knows Dominance Wins, Someone Tell Democrats by a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, M. Steven Fish, who is the author of “Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy’s Edge,” can be read here.

The Hill piece entitled How using ‘high dominance’ rhetoric can help Biden beat Trump, by Glenn Altschuler, professor of American History at Cornell, which references the NYT piece, can be read here.

Alright, let’s dig in and analyze the three elements of communication: what the authors are literally saying, what they’re really saying, and — the most revealing — what they left unsaid.

Fish’s major claim is this: “Politics is a dominance competition, and Mr. Trump is an avid and ruthless practitioner of it. He offers a striking contrast with most Democrats, who are more likely to fret over focus-group data.” The word “fret” is an interesting choice, with its connotation of something moms or worrywarts do, wringing their hands in a moment riddled with anxiety. And while that second statement might be subjective, the author’s claim that politics is a dominance competition was the conclusion drawn from a 2008 social experiment which tested levels of testosterone in the saliva of voters on election night. The results, published in a paper called Dominance, Politics, and Physiology: Voters’ Testosterone Changes on the Night of the 2008 United States Presidential Election, concluded that “male voters exhibit biological responses to the realignment of a country's dominance hierarchy as if they participated in an interpersonal dominance contest.” Their testosterone levels declined after Obama was announced the winner if they didn’t vote for him or stayed steady if they did vote for him, mirroring the decline or steadiness of testosterone levels that occur in men after they physically fight and either win or lose. (No measurable effect on women’s testosterone was detected, per the study, but I wonder if women’s levels of dopamine, associated with the feeling of winning and reward, surged or plummeted?)

Dare we conclude that the declaration, “There’s going to be so much winning / You’re gonna be tired of winning,” by alpha male (a.k.a. “high dominance”) candidate Trump in 2016 tapped into a deeply primal hardwired part of the human brain? And if, as the spit test study showed, losing feels so bad, is it possible we could also be hardwired to support the candidate more likely to win, and feel compelled to eschew third party “spoiler” candidates in order to avoid the testosterone drop? Though the T drop wouldn’t affect women directly, such a drop in our male partners and family members would certainly change the emotional trajectory of our day (and night!).

So let’s say we can agree with Fish that “politics is a dominance competition.” He goes on to say, “High-dominance leaders shape reality. They embrace conflict, chafe at playing defense and exhibit self-assurance even in pursuit of unpopular goals.” In the Hill piece, Altschuler says, referring to parts of Fish’s book that Fish himself left out of the NYT op-ed, that high-dominance republicans “use entertaining, provocative language; cast themselves as buoyant, confident, menacing and morally superior, and when caught in a lie, double down instead of revise or retract.”

Sounds like Trump. And that’s why what both of these writers have to say is ultimately so important: because acknowledging what it is that people like about Trump is acknowledging that people like Trump. Both of these essays are a giant red neon sign confession: Fine. (In the voice of Thor from the sitcom “Ghosts” on CBS:) You win. Orange Man Not Necessarily All Bad. In fact, admit the two writers, Trump has some likable — even emulative — traits.

Additionally, the Hill piece says, Hi-Dom republicans “cast their opponents as weak, underhanded, unpatriotic and worthy of ridicule and contempt.” And apparently, we love this. I mean everyone. We — you, me, democrats, republicans, independents — Americans of all stripes. Fish tells us that “neuroscientists monitoring listeners’ brain activity while they watched televised debates found that audiences — not just Mr. Trump’s followers — delighted in the belittling nicknames he uses for his opponents. His boldness and provocations held audience attention at a much higher level than his opponents’ play-it-safe recitations of their policy stances and résumés.”

Really? Delighted?!? You don’t say!

To voters, fear smells like weakness. From the NYT:

The American National Elections Studies has polled voters on presidential candidates’ traits since the 1980s, and the candidate who rated higher on “strong leadership” has never lost …

… and …

When Kamala Harris was asked in January if she was scared of a second Trump term, she said, “I am scared as heck!” and added that “we should all be scared.” To voters, that fear smells like weakness. In a 2022 CBS News survey on parties’ traits, the most frequently cited description of the Democratic Party was “weak.” In a recent Gallup poll, 38 percent regarded Mr. Biden as “a strong and decisive leader,” compared with 57 percent for Mr. Trump.

Here’s where, in our communication analysis, I ask myself what is not being said. If fear is perceived as weakness, and leadership is associated with strength, what is it that this political correctness line-tiptoeing dude is trying so hard not to say? Come on, man, spit it out! He gets close when he says, “… liberals … struggle to adopt the us-versus-them framing that is crucial to rousing supporters.” Us v. Them reminds me of President Bush during the early days of the War on Terror. Remember when he would say, “You’re either with us or against us” in his speeches about the axis of evil and fighting the tare-rists?

If the exit polling mentioned above is true, and fear is perceived by many Americans as weakness, and leadership is associated with strength, then strong leadership can be conflated in the primal human brain with being feared. In my old youtube videos and blogposts about tribal roles (alpha, beta, sigma, and omega), I used to write about what I call the safety/danger paradox. That is to say: dangerous people can make us feel safe. If we are under their protection, because they are our leader, then their danger to a potential enemy renders us safe. Is a person scary, a threat, and someone to be scorned? Or is that very same person commanding, but protective, and someone to be respected? It depends on whose auspices you’re under and whether you feel that human source of dangerousness keeps you and your family safe at night.

So what is Fish really saying? Well, he’s not a fan of Kamala Harris. She “frets” and we know how he feels about the display of submission and indicator of weakness known in the vernacular as fretting. And, heck, he’d take W. over another four years of Biden or Trump (I speculate). That said, let’s agree for the sake of argument that all Americans, including Professor Fish, want to feel safe and secure. A lot of “bad dudes” feared President Trump because of the strong leadership mentioned in the Gallup poll above. Fish is acknowledging that scariness/protectiveness feature of high-dominance alpha males like Trump as being part and parcel of why he’s so appealing to his many supporters, and then making a big deal of pointing out, “Look, Dems, you don’t have to like Trump. Just be like Trump.”

An important brief aside (and throw-back to my tribal roles days of 2017 and 2018 when I made videos about the topic): what separates the alpha-bros (wanna-be alphas) from true alpha males is an open heart. Love. Alpha males like Trump feel love for all the people in the tribe (or country, family, company, etc.) who are dependent on their strength and protection for survival. They often don’t, can’t, or won’t show it because another thing that we humans conflate with weakness is excessive emotion. The alpha’s (whether male or female) desire to protect you is sometimes all the evidence of their love you will ever get. It’s Trump’s Achilles heel. He says things like, “if you don’t have borders, you don’t have a country,” and it’s the most logical thing in the world. Too logical. You have to be a logical person to hear what he’s really saying, which is, “I want to protect everyone in our country from danger with strong borders.” And people aren’t very logical. Then the glowing suggestion box (the TV) comes along, blasting command statements to believe half-truths and whole lies into our minds all day, and wipes away whatever semblance of reasoning we had up to that point.

A call for rebranded nationalism

Remember that 73%-of-us-are-patriotic figure I quoted you at the start? From the Hill: “Fish notes that 73 percent of Americans say patriotism is important to them, a higher percentage than say marriage, having children or believing in God is important. 56 percent … believe the term applies to the GOP, while only 46 percent believe it applies to the Democrats.” Holy cow. Let that sink in. Patriotism is important to more people than belief in God. But it’s still good news that the overwhelming majority of Americans consistently love our country: it’s nice to know that patriotism is widespread. And oh, what was that last part, only democrats who are also democrats-in-denial think democrats are patriotic? Now, you and I know exactly which events in recent history led to that stat in the WSJ poll. But — hilariously — Fish is going to tell us, in not nearly so direct and straightforward a way as the math does when we subtract 46 from 73 and chuckle to ourselves, “math doesn’t lie” under our breath, that Dems need to be PATRIOTIC LIKE TRUMP in order to get those numbers back up. Lmao. Get a load of this:

(And by the way, this is all from the Hill piece. No chance in hell was there that the NYT would allow the words nationalism and nationalist to occupy a single millimeter of cyber, printed, or other space in their world.)

Fish urges liberal politicians to stop implying or asserting that the country is a site of wrongs that need to be righted … and [instead] proclaim their faith in “the nation’s inexhaustible promise — with absolutely no reservations.”
Doing so, he argues, allows Democrats to contrast their inclusive nationalism … with MAGA’s exclusionist, un-American white identity politics. He urges Democrats to tell stories about the American Dream that present equal opportunity “for traditionally underprivileged groups as inseparable from the progress of the entire nation,” describe economic justice “in language that celebrates Americans’ enterprising spirit, bootstrap mentality, and belief in personal responsibility,” and the United States as the promoter and protector of freedom ….

But wait! There’s more!! Keep reading because not only is there a new and improved diet “inclusive nationalism,” there’s a new and improved sugar-free nationalist master narrative! No one knows for sure if this is a narrative of a nationalist Master (Mr. Dominance-obsessed Fish, or should I say, Professor) OR if this is the master narrative of all nationalists. Just as when the NYT in bad faith during the Trump years attributed racism to every nationalist of visibly Caucasian ancestry, labeling them “white nationalists,” I too must satirically feign confusion and in good faith presume some sort of fun and unique alternative lifestyle-based motivation underpinning Fish’s super bizarre choice of words and word order!

Altschuler continues in the Hill:

This nationalist master narrative, Fish emphasizes, can contain claims that Republicans, not “America,” have made it more difficult to attack poverty, confront climate change, address voter suppression, enact universal background checks on gun purchases and ban the sale of assault weapons. The narrative could conclude, a la Ronald Reagan, with a promise of a glorious tomorrow and a call to action.

LOL! And as long as we’re pulling a Ron Reagan, maybe we could use a cool slogan like his, from 1980, like … make America great again …????

Ok, and if you’re reading this, silly Dems, jobs are how we “attack poverty,” so maybe stop outsourcing them with your shitty “free” trade agreements, and wise up to the fact that the majority of Americans rate about ten other issues higher on their list of grievances than climate change and background checks (also, what voter suppression?? Do you guys live on Earth? Or just write about being an American human as a side hustle?).

Fish concludes in the NYT:

“Mr. Biden could even counter the perception that his age has rendered him feeble by taking a page from his higher-dominance predecessors, the mighty leaders [Fish mentions FDR, JFK, and MLK] who mobilized dominance to promote freedom, equality and progress.”

The problem here as we well know is that there has been no progress, unless we count how dangerously close we’ve progressed toward the edge of a fiscal cliff; and what of freedom — unconstitutional vaccine mandates will be the legacy of Biden’s Bill of Rights-eviscerating regime; and equality? Maybe if we count how equally screwed we are as a collective as inflation and unsustainable levels of quantitative easing and foreign aid undermine the nature of math reality that would normally undergird every economic health indicator we view as legitimate, from the cost of mortgages to credit card interest rates to cereal box price tags. When every facet of daily life becomes farcical — $10 chicken nuggets, 29% interest rates, billions of dollars for countries most Americans could not spell the names of, never mind find on a map — people stop voting. And the powers that be don’t care if half the population doesn’t show up to vote. In fact, they rely on it.

They just want Trump to lose. (Stay tuned for a future post on why this is exactly the attitude that invites an RFK Jr type to be a spoiler, and the same attitude that most effectively ensures another 4 years of Trump either way.)

Accidental Philosophy

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