Kicked and rec'd

What the hell, men?

(I know, I know, plenty of men voted D, etc. etc. etc. .... but STILL!!!)

Full disclosure, I'm 40, white and male.

Here's the truth as I see it. Looking at the data all around me, women pretty much run the home. They make the buying decisions, and so have most of the purchasing power in the home. Regardless of if they are working or stay-at-home. Men have abdicated any authority to women, if they ever had it to begin with. What authority they have, they take by force or some form of other aggression, be it mental or emotional. And yet, after all that, women still hold most of the power in the household statistically.

The GOP knows this, on some level. They also know a wedge when they see one, so they've been wielding it and playing like men are victims to the raging culture war -- one, they created, I believe. Many men I know are confused and uncertain where their place is in the shifting landscape that is America. And some, instead of going with the flow resist it because it is the one think they know they can do.

Granted, the GOP has little choice but to keep driving that wedge. They've lost women, they've lost most minority groups, they've lost the young, they have nothing left but bitter insecure and aging white men. The world is changing, as it always does, and there will be those who can't adapt to that change, and those that do.

My grandmother gave me great advice when I was a boy. She said "It is better to bend like the willow in the storm, than it is to stand like the oak and resist it. When the storm passes, the willow stands up again, the oak breaks." Its sad, I know, but my gender is pretty dumb sometimes.

The GOP has been successful in creating and reinforcing the Republican = Strong, Masculine, Confident and Democrat = Weak, Feminine, Wimpy dichotomy. Insecure white males who see their cultural power slipping away grasp onto identifying with anything that helps prop up their sense of being in charge and powerful.