On Weakness

There is something about personal loyalty to Donald Trump that is deeply unmanly, of which Todd Blanche is only the most recent example in the list of sycophants Pete Hegseth has on his Signal group chat. Blanche’s trajectory follows so much of what we’ve seen in throughout recorded history in tribes defined by a charismatic leader: treating personal loyalty as a standalone virtue. I understand loyalty to family and friends, and of course understand loyalty to those beside whom you have “been through some shit.” As my wife would attest, my phone is always on, and for the simple reason that the men I went to war with may need, someday, someone to pick up a call at 2:30 in the morning. But those loyalties are reciprocal, or attached to something larger than yourself. What I don’t understand is a grown man treating loyalty to another grown man as evidence of his own character.

Pathetic would be the word, and it’s the stigmata of, to use a crude term as a form of understatement, a bitch. I don’t even really understand grown men wearing another grown man’s sports jersey. I’ll cheer for Tom Brady and can admire what Tom Brady accomplished. But I’m not wearing BRADY across my back. He’s a football player, I’m a grown man. The distinction is partly a joke, but there is something deeper underneath. Appreciation of talent in another does not, nor should it, require submission.

There’s something about that level of personal loyalty that runs counter to the idea of agency, which for men and women who live greatly, is the sine qua non of existence.

The strongest men I’ve known have generally been difficult to own. They can be loyal as hell, but their loyalty has limits. In the military, the oath is deliberately not to a president or a commanding officer but to the Constitution. That distinction is one of the great insights of the American system. Officers can give orders, but their authority comes from an institution and ultimately from law. Implied in that construct is a key idea: YOU decide, seriously and without pretense, whether a given order is in keeping with your understanding of the Constitution. It has been ever thus, because the road not traveled there leads to evils as disparate as Napoleon, Charlie Manson, and Hitler.

This is why personal fealty has historically been such an important feature of authoritarian politics. World War II gave us the Duce and the Führerprinzip, the idea that authority flowed downward from the leader and that subordinates owed him obedience. These examples vary widely in the gallons of blood spilled and the backsteps they forced mankind to take, and comparing their crimes to contemporary American politics would be absurd. But the psychological mechanism is worth recognizing: replace allegiance to principles and institutions with allegiance to a person.

That bargain is often presented as strength, but it is transparently weakness.

Real men do not say, “Tell me what to think.” There is nothing masculine about adjusting your beliefs whenever the most powerful man in the room adjusts his. All disputes in all circumstances should not end with the conclusion that your leader was right. Loyalty here is not loyalty at all, but abdication of your own conscience and abandonment of those who, depending on your role in their lives, depend on it.

Independent judgment can be difficult. Thinking for yourself means occasionally disappointing your tribe and admitting that someone you admire is wrong. This encompasses acts as brazen as landing your helicopter aside a ditch in the village of My Lai to stop a massacre and as small as using a gendered insult like “bitch” (to describe men who are acting like, well, bitches) in a blog despite knowing some of your readers will object to reading the crude langauge used in places where men sweat, work, and converse with their guards down. Thinking for yourself and acting on those thoughts means being willing to lose access, status, money, friendships, promotions, invitations, and applause because there is something you value more than belonging. Principled men have places they will not allow themselves to be pushed.

That is the paradox of the political strongman. He presents himself as an avatar of masculinity while surrounding himself with men who are increasingly required to demonstrate the opposite qualities: obedience, dependence, and fear of exclusion. They compete to show who is most loyal and mimic his mannerisms. They wear red ties too long and sit next to him in Cabinet meetings, mirroring his body language. The supposed alpha male sits at the center of a court populated by men terrified of displeasing him.

The phenomenon doesn’t belong exclusively to Trump or even to Republicans. The temptation exists anywhere charisma and power intersect. Democrats can build personality cults. Activists can do it. Navy SEALs do it. Surgeons do it. Human beings desperately want membership, certainty, and proximity to power, and smart people and organizations keep a sharp lookout for that dynamic. Genius people and organizations do that as well, but are designed so that those loyalties are pitted against one another to ensure no one demagogue ever wins a final victory.

Loyalty itself is not the problem. Loyalty may be one of the most important masculine virtues. It is why my phone is on in the night, and why, on more than one occasion, I’ve talked in the middle of the night at length to a slurred voice I recognize. But healthy loyalty is horizontal and reciprocal while fealty is vertical. Fealty says that because you are the leader, my responsibility is to follow. That’s different.

Genuine loyalty requires telling someone no. A friend who lets you destroy yourself because he doesn’t want to upset you isn’t particularly loyal. A subordinate who tells his commander only what the commander wants to hear isn’t loyal to the mission. But a father who tells his teenage son after a speeding ticket that he is grounded and cannot drive for a month, despite the inconvenience to the family, that is loyalty. The person willing to say, “I am with you, but I will not follow you there,” is the most loyal person in the room.

That is masculinity as it ought to be. Stand on your own feet. Think with your own brain. Keep your word. Respect worthy leaders, but never confuse respect with surrender. When necessary, be prepared to stand against anyone, and keep your conscience clean.

And don’t kneel.