firstthings.com
2025-05-04
When Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, the boys crowed and the girls cried. At least that's what America's elite media told us. Sixteen-year-old Naomi xADBeinart reported in the New York Times that the girls at her New York City school were lying "under a blanket of despair" while the boys played computer games. Intense anxiety left the girls "gasping for breath" as the boys "breath[ed] easily." Teen Vogue gathered the reactions of young women from across the country. One twenty-four-year-old called the election result "heartbreaking." A college senior described herself and her female classmates as "angry and frightened." Another college student reported that "most people I've talked to today have been crying, mostly nonstop." As for men, they "have been radicalized by Joe Rogan and xADAndrew Tate" and supported Trump out of "racism, toxic masculinity, and misogyny."
These girls' older professional-class sisters fell into high-functioning depression. Female therapists were as rattled as their patients. An upstate New York counselor reported "more or less crying while my client was crying." One from Massachusetts struggled to "manage [her] own despair" while treating others. A New York City therapist of thirty years equated Trump's victory to 9/11 and the Covid pandemic.