He does have family values, they’re just not AyLeetist family values
A senior editor at the Catholic magazine First Things tells us that we just don’t understand about Trump’s “family values.” Why don’t we? Because we’re the Koastul AyLeeet.
People I knew from college or had met in New York expressed distaste for Mr. Trump’s behavior. If they were religiously conservative, they stressed his infidelity while also objecting to his insults of women. If they were liberal, they objected to his treatment of women and viewed his infidelity as a sign that his religious supporters were hypocrites. Not a single peer of mine in New York — no matter how conservative or religious — publicly supported Mr. Trump.
In contrast, almost all of the people I know in my hometown in Nebraska proudly supported him. They glossed over his infidelities and stressed that he seemed to be a good father. They were impressed by his “respectful” sons and admired the success of his daughters.
But he doesn’t seem to be a good father. He bragged of spending no time doing things like playing with them in the park when they were little, let alone changing diapers. He punched Don Junior to the floor in front of his friends for not wearing a suit for a baseball game. He agreed with Howard Stern on live radio that his daughter is a piece of ass. He’s not a good father, he’s a rich father. He’s made them rich so they stick around.
The people I know in Nebraska have the same moral views as my religious acquaintances in New York, yet they had a totally different view of Mr. Trump as a standard-bearer for family values. What made the difference? In a word, class.
And geography, don’t forget geography. New York versus Nebraska. Subtle enough for you?
In their book “Red Families v. Blue Families,” Naomi Cahn and June Carbone popularized the idea of “blue” and “red” family models. Blue families prize equality and companionship between spouses while putting a low value on childbearing. Red families tend to be inegalitarian or complementarian, viewing the man as the primary breadwinner and the mother as the primary caregiver. Early marriage and multiple children are typical.
Red families tend toward conservatism, and blue tend toward progressivism, but the models share an upper-class stress on respectability and a strong taboo against out-of-wedlock birth.
A third model can be found among working-class whites, blacks and Hispanics — let’s call it purple. In these families, bonds between mothers and children are prized above those between couples. Unstable relationships are the norm, and fathers quickly end up out of the picture.
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Baffling as it may be to elites, Mr. Trump embodies a real if imperfect model of family values.
Sure, and by the same token he follows a real if imperfect model of ethics.
And why are we supposed to value those “purple” or “red” values? Seriously? Maybe the “coastal elites” have something going for them. Maybe their ideas make sense. Maybe the world would be just a bit better if we followed values of companionship and partnership rather than thinking it’s okay for daddy to beat the s**t out of mommy, require her to have sex on demand, and then when he’s done, turn the belt on the kids just for good measure.
I grew up in one of the families he talks about…let’s call it purple, my ass. The only thing purple is the bruises worn by women and children, and the prose that often serves as political discourse. If that is the model this country wants, then I want nothing to do with this country. I worked for decades to get myself out of that nightmare, and I try to survive living in Nebraska until I can retire and get the hell to a state with “coastal elite” values.
I read this op-ed earlier and was baffled as to what it was actually supposed to mean; it reads like the sort of bullshit paper I’d write at 7 AM in college. All I’m getting is “Trump voters aren’t all bad because reasons”.
BKiSA, it’s more than that. It’s not just “Trump voters aren’t all bad because reasons”, it’s “coastal elites are snobbish snobs because reasons”. We’re being told (1) that we’re coastal elites even if we happen to live in Nebraska (because liberal thought, you know) and (2) that our values are okay for us, but we just don’t get it that their values are great for them, and we need to be understanding about their desire to push their nasty archaic backward values on us because they are values, which we don’t actually have.
Those who have spent their entire lives sneering at the values of “coastal elites” are upset that those same “coastal elites” don’t immediately lay down, roll over, and play dead. We stand up for our own values, and see them as worth defending. We insist that “equal” means equal for everyone, not just equal for conservative Christian Republican white male property owners.
And there you go. Being all elitist and unreasonable again.
How interesting that this is a piece written for a catholic publication! I have enjoyed the ‘moral’ christian crowd twist themselves into pretzels to support Trump, and here we see the fruits of their sophistimicated apologetics: there are real people that share his admittedly flawed values, so stop harping on those flaws!
Pretty amazing.
Maybe this is new official theology from the Catholics Church? The 10 Commandments are more like suggestions. “No biggy if you don’t follow them, we don’t mind one way or the other.” One can hope I guess.
I think the purple model is supposed to be about strong mother-child ties, ideally good (if not as strong) father-child ones, and an acceptance of indifferent ties between the parents, with single parenting essentially the norm. Under that model, Trump gets more or less a pass for serial marriages.
But even under that model, he shouldn’t get a pass for abusive relations with women, and absolutely not for abusing his children. In addition, the weak parental ties aren’t so much a feature as something that’s excused, largely on account of so much economic insecurity that keeping two adults persistently as heads of household with children isn’t likely to work. But that’s absolutely not a problem Trump has.
So if he’s getting a good look under this model, it’s still running on his supporters being willing to accept him doing things that mock their family values, or willing to convince themselves that (e.g.) he really does love his children, has been a fine (if temporary) husband to his wives, and hasn’t done significantly wrong by other women either.
There may not really be anything terribly wrong with the purple family model – taken seriously. There’s a whole lot wrong with expecting it to defend Trump.
Or there may be. Indifferent ties between parents are a bad thing for the parents…and for the children, as I can tell you from experience. Part of those family values include a commitment to a structure that places the man at the head of the family, and everyone else subordinate. I’m sorry, but the insistence that I accept this model as on a par with the “coastal elite” model of partnership, companionship, and friendship within a marriage is too much. I have no reason to accept this, because I have seen what it does to women and children – and to men, to be totally honest.
It is disingenuous of them to claim that the “purple” family values are about strong ties between parents and children. They are about hierarchical marriages and parenting, with man having possession of all members of the household, and woman/children subordinate to his desires, his goals, his pleasures, and his needs. They like to hide it between something that sounds great – oooh, strong ties between mother and child! Who could be against that.
This article also seems to assume that strong parent-child bonds are not part of the “coastal elite” mindset, and that is just bogus. He covered himself by referring to childbearing rather than child rearing, but that doesn’t help. To see childbearing as a fulfillment or a singular goal is to dismiss most of what women want to do. Yes, many, perhaps most, women honestly and sincerely want children (same with men), but the fact that “coastal elites” choose to have small families, one or two, is not an indictment of their worldview.
Yes, that’s an important point. That part nagged at me yesterday but I didn’t take the time to look at it harder – that sly trick of referring to childbearing to the exclusion of how to rear them. In the pre-Feminine Mystique days the style was for women to stay home with the kids but to ignore them while doing so, often while quietly draining a bottle of gin. The coastal ayleeets triggered a shift away from that, and that’s a good thing.
Too many are blinded by the Trump family’s market value and their remarkable ability to turn little more than the supposed cachet of their name and even less actual ability and talent into, pretty much literally, filthy lucre. That their home life is likely not a lot of fun is beside the point. Wealth justifies all. Being rich and famous for being rich and famous means that God has smiled upon them. Trump’s supporters dream of being part of the realm of “Rules are for other people.” They admire him for getting away with it and vicariously ride on his coattails. That the Trumps make libs cry is just a delicious added bonus.