Loving the Bad Boy

An Irish proverb reads, “A scone on the hearth for the wayward son.” We all know something about this deep-rooted feeling. How often have we witnessed in our own behavior, in others’ or in literature, what seems to be women’s archetypal empathy for the bad boy—son, brother, father, partner, friend—and how often that leads to many kinds of abuse.

It seems to me to be archetypal, by which I mean not in our conscious control. Perhaps there is some buried biological explanation, such as the notion that the bad boy sows his seed widely—of use in ancient cultures to replace the many lost through war, disease, and famine—but hardly applicable today when we are drowning in the effects of overpopulation.

Or, as Sylvia Plath states it more ominously in her poem, “Daddy”:

Every woman adores a Fascist
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

How often have we witnessed in our own behavior, in others' or in literature, what seems to be women's archetypal empathy for the bad boy?

One of the ways the bad boy keeps his admirers when his brutishness begins to lose its attraction is by calling on another archetype, our sympathy for the Poor Little Boy. Fallen on hard times through bad luck, illness or his own errors, we begin to feel sorry for him: “How are the mighty fallen,” or “Poor little boy, he really couldn’t help it…”

White women were a large factor in the last election, and we will be a large faction in the one coming up. I hope we will search our hearts for the remnants of these archetypes, fearlessly remembering when we sacrificed the needs of normal, “ordinary” boys and men to the devouring needs of the damaged, fearlessly remembering the times we put up—at least briefly—with abuse, and sparing our country the dreadful consequences of electing a brute.

In Politics Donald Trump