President Trump’s insults are exercising our opinion makers again this week. Lars Walker thinks Trump’s like Charlie Allnut, the Humphrey Bogart character in African Queen, useful guy to have around when you’re in trouble, but only when you are in trouble. Geof Shepherd notes that there’s a sexual divide among his acquaintance: the men he knows aren’t about to give up the ship to the Dems to stop the Trump insult-fest. But then there are the women, and they aren’t so sure:

They seem to be so worn down with the daily barrage of attacks and counterattacks that they appear willing to vote for peace at any price.

So how come, girls, you haven’t been organizing “make the hate go away” groups for the last 50 years as Democrats have been insulting you and your men as racist-sexist-homophobes?

We know why. Men have a Culture of Insult: we believe in a “frank and open discussion” of the issues, even mano-a-mano, if that is what it takes. Women have a Culture of Complaint: they just sit there, talking eye-to-eye with a woman friend, saying “I can’t believe the way Trump keeps tweeting those insults.”

This is completely understood in the separate but equal concepts of honor among men and honor among women. Honor among men is the reputation for courage; honor among women is the reputation for chastity. Men can forgive a lot in someone that’s courageous. Women are more concerned with appearance. Read Honor: A History by James Bowman to find out why.

The difference between the world of men and the world of women is crystallized in Gone with the Wind, as Stacey McCain reminds us of the classic scene where Rhett Butler scandalously offers $150 in gold to dance with the recently widowed Scarlett. But what about my reputation, whines Scarlett? Replies Rhett:

With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.

(In the book, at the end of Chapter IX, Rhett says: “Always provided you have enough courage -- or money -- you can do without a reputation.”)

Do you see how this exactly confirms my theory? For a man, courage is everything, never mind his reputation. Indeed, it is the reputation for courage that matters, and only that. For a woman, reputation (for chastity, for being a good little girl) is everything.

Do you see the irony here? For going on 170 years the left has been spewing out male-type insults, at capitalists, at the bourgeoisie, at men, at whites, at straights. And women have not complained. What’s the matter girls, cat got your tongue?

On the other hand the left has been encouraging its “Little Darlings” to play the victim game, as in “I can’t believe that ‘they’ haven’t given us Medicare for All.” “I can’t believe that there are less women CEOs than men.”

It’s cunning, it really is. The left takes half of the male culture of insult, the bad half -- and we men don’t dare push back against the insult of racist-sexist-homophobe. And it takes the bad half of the women’s culture of complaint to push its helpless-victims narrative.

Okay, so Trump has started pushing back on the insult front, and it’s a start. But the president would never tweet like this to a lefty racist rant:

How can any American, any citizen of our Country that freed the slaves, that brought workers into the middle class, that liberated women, that brought gays out of the closet, how can anyone be so evil to spew such hate? So Sad!

So there’s a way to go, guys, on the courage front.

But what about you ladies? How many of you are looking meaningfully into the eyes of your best friend at Starbucks and saying:

I can’t believe that Senator Warren, trying to take away my husband’s health care plan.

Or, alternatively,

I can’t believe that Bernie guy, talking about socialism all the time. Like, OMG, socialism is slavery!

See guys, there are two kinds of courage. There is the courage of the playground bully, free with the insults; then there is the courage of the Sacrificial Hero, willing to die so others may live.

There are two kinds of reputation, ladies. There is the reputation obtained by carefully reciting the conventional wisdom among your friends; then there is saying the right thing even though Betsy Gossip may be shocked.

“Everyone” likes to say that President Trump is recklessly careless with his tweets. But have you ever seen a tweet insulting President Xi of China? I don’t think so. Nor does Trump dare to touch the third rail of race with insult. Instead he goes out of his way to sweet-talk blacks and boast about record black unemployment.

Maybe the insults are strategy, to keep the Democrats and their Democratic operatives with bylines busy replying to the insults, while Trump rolls up the deep state.

Or maybe he is just winging it.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image credit: Gage Skidmore, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0