Embarrassment Will Make America Great Again

As the soldiers in Tim O’Brien’s classic short story “The Things They Carried” hump their burdens through Vietnam, the narrator observes, “Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.” In another iconic masterpiece, Talladega Nights, Will Ferrell as Ricky Bobby runs around a speedway infield in his underwear because he’s afraid to race again.

Ricky Bobby openly displays what O’Brien’s men are desperate to conceal: the nightmare of embarrassment coming true in broad daylight. Yet unlike stooges past, Ferrell’s persona is ultimately hip. No man ever wanted to be Larry, Moe, or Curly. But a fair number of guys — maybe too many guys, the complaint goes — want to be Will Ferrell, leaving us, as the LA Times recently claimed, “On screen and off, …living in a sort of golden age of man-children.” The implication, of course, is that man-children are not men at all.

But I think it’s more complicated than that. While many pundits focus on the indulgences of man-children — the drinking, the video games, the cluelessness about relationships — what’s most striking to me is how often leading man-child actors like Ferrell, Ben Stiller, and Ed Helms play characters who embarrass themselves almost beyond the viewers’ ability to bear it. Stiller faces Cameron Diaz with his own self-extracted semen dangling from his ear lobe; Helms punctures his scrotum doing a dance move on The Office; Ferrell is either unflatteringly shirtless, in his underwear, or naked in pretty much every movie he’s ever made. These men say “Bring it on!” to embarrassment with the enthusiasm of George W. Bush baiting Iraqi insurgents. And yet they often get the girl.

This undermining of the traditional grounds for masculine appeal is an outrage to the likes of Donald Trump. These signs of comfort with abasement touch a badly inflamed nerve in Trump and his supporters because they’re feeling, or are very afraid of feeling, a little abased themselves. In fact, I would suggest that Trump’s campaign is best understood as a reactionary war on embarrassment, with the (ironically) orange-faced candidate riding his allergy to embarrassment to new and dizzying heights.

As many commentators have noted, not only does Trump refuse to acknowledge his howling errors, he often shamelessly triples-down on gaffes, insults, and unfounded bits of braggadocio. He has to always be the bestest because anything less than the best is weak and shameful. Meanwhile, his followers rejoice: “If Trump doesn’t have to suffer embarrassment, then neither do we.” But as his Byzantine comb-over confirms, straining to avoid embarrassment can be worse than acknowledging it and moving on. In fact, it’s time to recognize that there’s a visionary element to Ferrell’s schtick: a more vigorous engagement with embarrassment is the way forward for America.

While anger and greed get the headlines, shame is busy in the boiler room firing things up. The old DSM-IV will tell you that a key component of the narcissistic personality is a lack of shame. Why? Because the narcissist is so insecure that any shame or sense of fault simply cannot be acknowledged — too painful! The narcissist’s trademark self-importance is an effort to protect the fragile self. The narcissist’s destructive lack of empathy stems from needing all psychic resources to prop up the self; very little empathy (or, at times of heightened insecurity, none at all) can be spared for others. Trump’s lack of empathy makes him want to carpet-bomb literally or figuratively any who might oppose him. Regarding a protestor at a recent rally of his, Trump said, “I’d like to punch him in the face.” Putin’s got the same deathly fear of appearing weak. Together they could kill us all.

Trump has been framed in both the conservative and liberal media as the revenge of the angry white male, but anger is not the root problem: fear of embarrassment is. It unites the run of bizarre insults cataloged by commentators like Frank Bruni: shaming McCain for his time as a prisoner of war, critiquing Marco Rubio’s sweat, and expressing disgust over Hilary Clinton’s bathroom visit, Megyn Kelly’s menstrual blood, and even, Bruni notes, the lawyer in 2011 who took a break from deposing Trump to breast feed. Fear of embarrassment motivated Trump’s defense of his penis size — interestingly with the same phrase used in the old reassuring Men’s Wearhouse ads: “I guarantee it.” These moments involve private bodily functions, physical intimacy, and vulnerability, all terrifying occasions to the embarrassment phobic. Finally, shame provided the terms of his rebuttal to Mitt Romney, whom he dubbed “an embarrassment to everybody.” Projection, anyone? Trump is desperately trying to hurl embarrassment as far away from himself as he can. Not me, he says.

The whole dynamic of Trump’s fear of embarrassment was on display in his unwillingness to participate in the Iowa Republican debate because Kelly would be moderating. This fear was well-founded: when Kelly and Trump met again in Detroit, she put him on his heels numerous times. And on the night of the Iowa debate, where did Trump run and hide from embarrassment? Right behind some ostensibly shame-proof war veterans, to whom he gave one of his self-aggrandizing speeches.

This not me statement is one that a lot of people (especially white men, it has to be said) are tempted to make these days when it comes to charges of racism, sexism and economic privilege. Politically incorrect people damn PC culture and the media because they can’t take being called out for their bad behavior, which promises more shame. In other words, Trump is just the boldest spokesperson for millions of embarrassment-phobic Americans whose attitudes threaten our collective progress.

So while movies and TV have played male embarrassment for laughs, I want to suggest that the ability to handle embarrassment is the key emotional skill of our perilous age. The ability to acknowledge and remember it. To move forward and be changed by it.

It’s a cherished trope that a real man can withstand pain without flinching or behaving badly. I’m willing to go with this. But I’ll also say that there’s no pain like shame. Just ask O’Brien’s soldiers, who would rather die than feel it. So suck it up, Mr. Trump, and take your shame like a man! At least admit you urinate! (Which, by the way, is a necessary and some say beautiful process.) Then you might progress to admitting when you don’t know what you’re talking about or insult people out of ignorance or insensitivity. Own it! And be nice about it, too.

Fellow men, fellow humans, let us all support one another in an effort to sheepishly acknowledge that we routinely do embarrassing things. And from that enlightened perspective, we’ll be better humans. We’ll be less likely to destroy the world. And we’ll realize that America has been great and will be great when we learn from our mistakes.