Men are pack animals.
Not all of us, of course, but male culture is ordered by hierarchies of power, with the apex the alpha. It can be toxic and problematic, ill-considered and tribal, but it is also deeply embedded in our society and resistant to change.
The pack mentality is especially common in politics, where even men of principle drift to the center of gravity.
Donald Trump has come to power and still poses a threat to this country by pretending to be an alpha male and exploiting the group behavior of politicians, especially the Republican men with the most power.
Nothing illustrates pack behavior better than the immediate aftermath of the uprising: Some Republicans briefly turned against Trump and blamed him, believing he was injured and weakened by the episode. But when he seemed to have survived it, they quickly, obsessively, relapsed, tucked tails.
Both the men in the Capitol and the man on the street show packing behavior.
In a gym in Brooklyn a few months ago, I heard a group of friends talking loudly about politics. Two were white, and one was Black.
The two white men bragged about Trump, how much they loved his bravado. Even though there were disadvantages, it was overcome by this one positive trait. The Black man intervened with comments about Trump’s racism, but the two white men avoided it and dismissed it. They wanted to focus on his power and his power.
That is why I have fully, religiously begun to believe that if this country is to be saved, it will be women who do the salvation.
The enthralling testimony of former White House assistant Cassidy Hutchinson on Tuesday only strengthened my conviction. She did what so many men around the president refused to do: She spoke in service of the truth and the country.
This is not to say that there were no men who acted heroically in the face of recent threats to the country, but the women truly distinguished themselves, which is even more remarkable in politics, which even now is dominated by men.
There were the brave women who came forward with allegations of sexual assault against Donald Trump, even though they were attacked and scolded. I do not want to neglect to mention Christine Blasey Ford, who testified to her allegations against Brett Kavanaugh.
There was Nancy Pelosi, who kept the line as well as possible when Republicans held the majority, and accelerated an aggressive liberal agenda when Democrats regained the majority.
She also oversaw not one but two deposition votes against Trump, the first on accusations that he had sought foreign interference in the 2016 election, and the second on allegations of inciting the January 6 uprising.
In fact, in 2020, no group of voters voted more strongly for Trump than black women. In fact, regardless of their race, more women voted to get rid of Trump than men, although a majority of white women still voted for him.
Then there’s this point: America will regret the day it did not elect Hillary Clinton president in 2016. There was an open Supreme Court seat when people cast their ballots, and it still did not motivate enough Democrats to turn out for the polls or convince enough indecisive voters to support her.
Sure, there were overlapping factors operating in that cycle – Russian interference, the media’s skewed treatment of Clinton and Trump, Anthony Weiner’s laptop and James Comey’s outrageous 11th hour announcement – but sexism was also one of them.
Now we have a Supreme Court ready to plunge us into an era of regression. But even there we must take note of the women. When Ketanji Brown Jackson is sworn in on Thursday, the entire liberal arm of the court will be female. They may not be able to blunt the decisions of the theocratic majority, but this trio of women will put together the differences of opinion, set out the moral argument and lay the foundation for future courts that are more likely to undo the damage this one has done. .
The change could begin as soon as this fall, if enough women, inflamed by the Dobbs decision, go to the polls to punish Republicans for putting them in this position.
It is conventional wisdom that parties to power lose seats during the middle term, but in this cycle many women in this country are crazy about losing their civil rights and can therefore challenge that conventional wisdom.
In two generic congressional polls taken in the days after the court delivered its ruling in Dobbs, the Democrats had a significant lead over the Republicans. There are months to go before the election, but this finding is interesting and should be upsetting to Republicans.
Meanwhile, it is women like representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush who are insisting on an aggressive response to the abortion decision, while President Biden strikes at his institutionalist instincts.
It simply feels in this moment that women, more than men, have a clarity about the danger we face and the courage required to fight it.