Toxic Masculinity, Casino Capitalism, and America's Favorite Card

Toxic Masculinity, Casino Capitalism, and America’s Favorite Card Game The Poker Mindset

Andrew Manno Toxic Masculinity, Casino Capitalism, and America’s Favorite Card Game Andrew Manno Toxic Masculinity, Casino Capitalism, and America’s Favorite Card Game

The Poker Mindset Andrew Manno Department of English Raritan Valley Community College Branchburg, NJ, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-40259-4 ISBN 978-3-030-40260-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40260-0

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Preface and Acknowledgements

How is it that an English professor writes a book about masculinity and poker? As a bookish child, I struggled to create a masculine identity that combined academic inclinations with more-or-less unquestioned traditional ideas of masculinity. That bookishness led eventually to undergrad- uate and graduate degrees in literature. My doctoral dissertation in the mid-1990s, I can see now, while focusing on twentieth-century Irish literature, touched on issues of masculinity, albeit not in an overt way. Further, while working on my dissertation, I became a parent. During this time, I attempted to reconcile an academic identity with the expectation of being a middle-class “provider,” as these two seemed at odds considering the long years spent in graduate school living off stipends and teaching fellow- ships rather than making more lucrative career choices. These experiences prompted me to think about masculinity as an ideology: How is such an ideology constructed? How are the pressures to live up to the ideals of our traditional masculinity ideology harmful? How can they be resisted? As time went on, my analysis of masculinity became more explicit. As an English professor at Raritan Valley Community College in Branchburg, New Jersey, I researched the growing ﬁeld of Men’s Studies and thought about its important connections to Women and Gender Studies. One consequence of this research and analysis was that in 1999 I developed a course, Masculinity in Literature, that explores literature that questions, resists, or subverts traditional notions of masculinity. Further, I worked with colleagues at Raritan Valley to develop an Option in Women and

v vi PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Gender Studies for the A.A. in Liberal Arts degree and to create an Introduction to Women and Gender Studies course as part of the Option. As I thought more about Gender Studies and taught the Introduction to Women and Gender Studies course, I became convinced that it was essential to include an examination of masculinities in that course, because it generally wasn’t reflected in the textbooks available at the time. As a result, I cowrote an article published in the journal Men and Masculinities in 2011, “Navigating the Gender Box: Locating Masculinity in the Intro- duction to Women and Gender Studies Course.” I’ve also presented my work on analyzing poker through the lens of masculinity at a number of conferences over the last ten years, including conferences for the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, the American Men’s Studies Association, and the Working-Class Studies Association. This project is the result of a number of fortunate accidents. It was a fortunate accident in 2002 when two friendly neighbors invited me to a poker game at one of their homes. It was another fortunate accident that I did my doctoral work at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As I drove from New Jersey into the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania on Route 78 each morning during my time taking courses and working on my dissertation in the early 1990s, I saw the smoke billowing up from the Bethlehem Steel plant as I entered the town. The road I took to the Uni- versity passed massive Bethlehem Steel plant buildings. Eight years after the Bethlehem Steel Corporation filed for bankruptcy in 2001, the Sands Bethlehem Casino opened. I saw the transformation of the location from the site of an iconic industrial era company to a casino as a powerful symbol of the changing economy and the place of workers and citizens in it. I’m an experienced amateur poker player, having played recreationally for the past eighteen years. I’ve played in cash games and tournaments in poker rooms in nearby casinos, in cigar-smoke-filled garages and base- ments in my neighborhood and in nearby towns, and in free poker leagues across New Jersey. My personal journey helped me make sense of the in- tellectual journey that has resulted in the argument I make in this book. While I immediately saw the gender dynamics at work when I began playing poker, it took me many years to make sense of my own interest and involvement in poker and how it related to the poker boom. This book is not merely an academic exercise for me; it’s personal and the result of years of observation, research, and introspection. While I initially saw poker as a way to feel better about my masculine identity by conforming to aspects of traditionally accepted masculinity, I eventually came to PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii see poker as an activity that reinforces and perpetuates damaging masculine cultural values about wealth, consumption, toughness, risk-taking, and aggression, to name a few. If I’m being honest, I initially held myself above my fellow poker players, thinking that their enactment of traditional masculinity in the form of their displays of toughness, aggression, deception, and risk-taking was something to look down on. I saw my desire to play smart, disci- plined poker based on patience and sound decision-making as superior to their displays and apparent motivations. Eventually, I came to see the hubris of this thinking and realized that in my desire to play poker, I was not of course immune to the pressures of enacting traditional masculinity. In fact, I was enacting it every bit as much as my fellow players. The difference—something that took me quite a while to realize—was that I desired to enact different elements of traditional masculinity, those related to control and financial providership. The book that you are now reading is definitely not the same book on poker and masculinity that I envisioned almost twenty years ago. I initially took a very traditional literary approach and examined the way that representations of poker in fiction and film enacted traditional masculinity. However, that analysis didn’t explain poker’s popularity, so I shifted my analysis to argue that this popularity was due to it being a symbolic space where men can enact desired versions of masculinity that they had difficulty enacting in their daily lives. Such an analysis was an improvement from my original vision of the project, but it was still missing a larger reason for why the analysis was important. As I took a step back to consider the bigger picture of the economy, labor, and socio-economic class, I saw what I came to call the “Poker Mindset,” a set of values seen outside the poker table. This lens helped me connect ideas that were previously seen in isolation. One doesn’t need to be a poker player to subscribe to these values. They’re part of our cultural rhetoric and our current national ethos. Examining the “Poker Mindset” sheds light on three serious social problems—toxic masculinity, casino capitalism, and worker disenfranchisement—that are generally unexamined and certainly not adequately examined together. The Poker Mindset is a way to bring together an important analysis of these interconnected problems, explain how toxic masculinity fuels a damaging winner-take-all hyper-capitalism, and challenge accepted gender expectations as a way of bringing about both greater gender and economic equality. viii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book will not teach you how to play poker. For that, there are abundant books, websites, and other instructional materials. This book will also not focus on advanced poker strategy, the lives of famous poker players, or the history of poker, as do many other books about poker. In fact, if you love poker you may not love this book because this book asks some difﬁcult questions about poker’s popularity:

• Why has poker’s popularity increased since the early 2000s, and how are common explanations of poker’s popularity insufficient? • How is poker connected to masculinity? How does poker function as a masculine fantasy space? • What are the dominant values of poker culture, and how do they see expression in a larger ideology that is the “Poker Mindset”? • How does the Poker Mindset help us understand some pressing current social problems such as toxic masculinity, casino capitalism, dif- ficulties of the twenty-first-century workplace, and the rise of the phenomenon of “Trumpism”?

This book’s organization centers on my answers to these questions through my analysis of cultural texts and through interdisciplinary analysis of scholarship in gender studies, history, sociology, gaming, and gambling. At times, I also integrate my own observations as an experienced amateur poker player. Many people have helped me develop this project to whom I am grateful for their assistance. The Research Writing Group of the Cen- ter for Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship at Raritan Valley Com- munity College provided valuable feedback and welcomed encouragement a number of times while I was working out my ideas for the book proposal and during the drafting of the manuscript. Thanks also to Abbe Mulroy and Chad Peters of the RVCC Library for their assistance in gathering research. Special thanks to Brandyn Heppard, Jessica Darkenwald-DeCola, Alexa Offenhauer, Michelle Brazier, Jen- nifer Pearce-Morris, and Lauren Braun-Strumfels for their assistance at Research Writing Group meetings. I also want to thank Kevin Hinkle, Michael Bondhus, and the English Department for their encouragement and to Raritan Valley Community College for its support through two sabbaticals that were essential to providing the time for research and reﬁnement of ideas that propelled the development of this project. PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix

Thanks also to Gary Solovay for his helpful conversations about poker over the years and to Mike Dandrea and Tim Sherman, the self-described “Garage Hogs” who so generously invited me to that ﬁrst poker game almost twenty years ago. A very special thanks to my family, including my parents Tony and Grace; my brothers Tony and Chris; and Susan, Catie-Grace, and Evan for their continued support. Finally, I want to thank my partner, Karen Gaffney, for her enthusiastic and steadfast support, encouragement, and assistance through every step of this process.

Branchburg, USA Andrew Manno Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 “All In”: Poker as a Gendered Space 17

3 “On Tilt”: The Poker Mindset, Toxic Masculinity, and the Alt-Right 47

4 “A Stacked Deck”: Casino Capitalism and the Poker Mindset 93

5 “Deal Me In”: Neoliberal Workers and the Poker Mindset 135

6 “Fight, Don’t Fold”: The Poker Mindset and the Rise of Trumpism 167

7 Conclusion 201

Index 205

xi CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Since the turn of the twenty-ﬁrst century, it seems that poker is every- where. New casinos now include large poker rooms and older casinos are expanding and updating older poker rooms, when as recently as the 1990s some casinos didn’t offer poker at all, or the game was relegated to small, uninviting spaces. In addition to being played at casinos, poker is played online, at fundraising tournaments, and at taverns around the country in free “no gambling” poker leagues. It’s impossible to know exactly how many people play poker, but the game has been compared to baseball, with estimates that “[b]etween sixty and eighty million Americans play poker, making baseball the second great American game: second to make its appearance, second in the number of participants” (McManus 2009, p. 27). While these numbers are admittedly inexact, there’s little dispute that poker is very popular and very proﬁtable. Games tell us about ourselves, so much so that “we can learn far more about the conditions, and values, of a society by contemplating how it chooses to play, to use its free time, to take its leisure, than by examining how it goes about its work” (Giamatti 2011, p. 1). Since poker is so popular, it demands our analysis.

What Is Poker?

Poker is a card game played using a standard deck of ﬁfty-two cards, where players attempt to make the best hand. There are many variations of poker, but what these variations generally have in common is that the

© The Author(s) 2020 1 A. Manno, Toxic Masculinity, Casino Capitalism, and America’s Favorite Card Game, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40260-0_1 2 A. MANNO best hand is made of five cards and that the player can win a poker hand either by having the highest value hand in a showdown between players or through other players folding their cards and dropping out of the hand. The value of a poker hand is based on the probability of the hand occurring, with highest value hands having the lowest chance of occurring. Poker is fundamentally a betting game, and bets occur at different intervals during a poker hand, so in addition to winning a poker hand by having the strongest holding at showdown, a player can also win by everyone else being unwilling to match a player’s bet and folding before a showdown. The winner of a poker hand gets the “pot,” the total of all bets made during the hand. The betting nature of poker sets it apart from other non-betting games like rummy or pinochle, and the ability to bluff (and in doing so misrepresent or partially misrepresent the strength on one’s poker hand) is a crucial part of the game as a result of the “complex interplay between the intrinsic strength of a hand according to the predefined hierarchy of card combinations and the representation of the hand through the betting action” (Bjerg 2011, p. 204). The importance of betting and bluffing is greatly increased in the popular variation of poker called No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em.

No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em While there are many variations of poker, by far the most popular in the twenty-first century is No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em. In this version of the game, each player is dealt two cards face down called “hole cards,” which that player alone can use. In addition, at intervals throughout the poker hand, five shared “community” cards are dealt face up (called “the board”). Players make the best five-card hand from amongst the hole cards and the community cards. Betting intervals occur after the hole cards are dealt, after the first three community cards (“the flop”) are dealt all at one time, after the fourth community card (“the turn”), and after the fifth community card (“the river”). The term “no limit” refers to the betting amounts at each interval. Unlike “limit” poker variations that cap the amount of money that can be bet at each interval, in no-limit games, players can bet any amount of their available money above the minimum required amount. This increases the pressure on other players and allows players with lesser strength poker hands to force other players to fold their greater strength hands. The power of betting in poker (and especially in No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em) comes from the fact that the game is one of limited information. Players only know what cards they hold and the 1 INTRODUCTION 3 community cards, so they must speculate on the holdings of opponents. Texas Hold ‘Em is a relatively recent variation of poker, and poker itself is a relatively new—and decidedly American—game, although it has its roots in other European card games.

A Brief History of Poker

While the precise origins of poker are not known, historians and scholars of the game agree that poker has its roots in European “vying” games such as “English Brag, French Bouillotte, Italian Primera, Spanish Mus, and … the German game of Poch” (Bjerg 2011, p. 204). Bouillotte was also called “poque,” and McManus and others argue that poker was introduced to the United States in New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Further, poker historians argue that “poque,” which is pronounced with two syllables, would sound like “pokuh” when using a Southern pro- nunciation. When the game eventually spread north, “the second syllable would pick up an ‘r’” (McManus 2009,p.51). It’s worth noting that prior to the popularity of poker, one of the most- played card games from colonial times through the Civil War was whist, a forerunner of bridge. Whist is a cooperative and “cerebral trick-taking game encouraging honesty, partnership, sobriety, silence … and courteous manners” (McManus 2009, p. 71). Whist reflected the masculine ethos of the time, what historian Anthony Rotundo calls “communal manhood” with a focus on duty, honesty, and “public usefulness” (Rotundo 1994, p. 2). Benjamin Franklin maintained that whist was played “‘not for money but for honour’” (McManus 2009, p. 71). This is quite different from the focus on self-interest and dishonesty essential to poker, reflecting an evolving, more modern masculine ethos that mirrored the evolution of our market-based economy. Poker had several moments of expansion. The game spread up and down the Mississippi during the 1820s, especially on riverboats. It spread further during the Civil War and further still throughout the American “wild” west of the 1870s and 1880s (Kelly 2006). Poker then spread worldwide during World War II, when the US military provided more than thirty million decks of playing cards to GIs overseas (Kelly 2006). No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em likely originated in Texas in the 1920s and 1930s. The game spread in popularity due to a number of Texas road gamblers who eventually brought the game to Las Vegas, where the poker 4 A. MANNO variation was used at the first World Series of Poker at Binion’s Horseshoe Casino in 1970 (Bjerg 2011, p. 216).

Online Poker

While the World Series of Poker (WSOP) popularized No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em between the 1970s and the 1990s, the game exploded in popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s in large part due to the availability of online poker. Free online poker has been available since the mid-1990s, but the first for-money online poker was available at PlanetPoker in 1998 (“Online Poker”, n.d.). While identifying the total number of online poker players is extremely difficult, some studies have attempted to gather this information. The numbers, however, are inconsistent. Data collected between 2009 and 2010 identified over six million different online poker players worldwide, with the United States having the largest number with about 1.5 million players (Fiedler and Wilcke 2011, pp. 12, 15). Skolnik, on the other hand, indicates that ten million Americans played online poker for money in 2009 (Skolnik 2011,p.98). For-money online poker has faced a number of legal challenges since its inception. In 2006, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was added to the Security and Accountability for Every Port Act of 2006. The purpose of the UIGEA was to prohibit financial transactions from within the United States to online gambling sites (O’Brien 2012, p. 295). The law was quickly circumvented by players and online poker sites through the use of offshore money processing companies that acted as go-betweens for the players and the poker sites (O’Brien 2012, p. 300). Further, in 2011 in United States v Scheinberg, three major online poker companies (PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker) were indicted, and eleven defendants were charged with violating the UIGEA, as well as illegal gambling, money laundering, and conspiracies to commit bank fraud and wire fraud (O’Brien 2012, p. 295). These three poker websites were seized by the FBI and made unavailable to US online poker players. However, in 2012, a federal judge from New Jersey ruled that poker was primarily a game of skill rather than a game of chance, and the door was opened for states to allow online gaming for state residents. Currently, Delaware, Nevada, and New Jersey allow online gaming for its residents (“Online Poker”, n.d.). Brick and mortar casinos initially 1 INTRODUCTION 5 opposed online poker, seeing it as an existential threat to the casino business in Las Vegas and Atlantic City (Vardi 2011). However, casinos are now struggling with this new reality, with some opposing online poker (Ruddock 2017) and others cautiously supporting it with the hope of exclusive casino rights to offer online gaming (Vardi 2013). Regardless of these legal challenges, interest in poker has been consistently strong in the twenty-first century.

TheGrowthofPoker

Let’s consider the growth of poker further. One indicator of such growth is the popularity of televised poker. The most important in-person poker tournament, the World Series of Poker ten thousand dollar buy-in No- Limit Texas Hold ‘Em “Main Event” championship, held each year in Las Vegas and televised in recent years on ESPN, has shown massive growth. The tournament had 194 entrants in 1990, 512 in 2000, 2576 in 2004, 7221 in 2017, and 8569 in 2019. The first-place finisher in the 2019 WSOP Main Event won ten million dollars (“World Series of Poker”, n.d.). ESPN commentator Norman Chad said of the popularity of the World Series of Poker, “This is still the last great American gold rush” (Chad 2019). Free, no-gambling poker leagues are also popular, with just one league in the United States—a league in which I regularly play— including one hundred thirty thousand players (“World Tavern Poker”, n.d.). There has also been a resulting explosion of poker in the media. In the mid-1990s, there was one-hour-long poker show per year on television. In 2010, by contrast, there were fifty-eight episodes of fourteen different poker tournaments or cash games on eight different networks (Skolnik 2011,p.98). As a result of its popularity, poker is big business. Worldwide live tournament poker buy-ins rose from seventy-two million dollars in 2001 to three hundred ninety million dollars in 2005 to seven hundred million dollars in 2008 (Skolnik 2011, pp. 97–98). Commercial casinos “have generated nearly $98 billion since 2008, including $34.6 billion in 2010 (the last year for which data is available), up from $20 billion in 1998” (Denvir 2012), much of it due to poker’s popularity. The total prize pool for the World Series of Poker ten thousand dollar buy-in No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em event went from $1,940,000 in 1990 to $5,120,000 in 2000 to $80,548,600 in 2019 (“World Series of Poker”, n.d.; “31st Annual World Series of Poker”, n.d.; “$10,000 No-Limit Hold’em 6 A. MANNO

MAIN EVENT—World Championship [Event #73]” 2019). While there is a lack of data on the racial demographics of poker players, based on my observations I believe that it is fair to say that it is very likely that white men are primarily responsible for the poker boom of the twenty-ﬁrst century. I am a part of that poker boom. I began playing live poker and watching ESPN’s coverage of the WSOP in 2002, just as poker was beginning to grow in popularity in the United States.

How Poker’s Popularity Has Been Explained So Far

Clearly, poker is extremely popular, more popular than ever before, and popular mostly with men. Why is it so popular? Why does it matter that it’s so popular? What can this popularity tell us about our culture and about men? This book attempts to answer all of these questions. How- ever, before we get to the “why,” we need to get a better sense of this popularity. First, we need to examine some of the reasons that many have given for the poker boom. These reasons include (1) the rise of online poker, (2) use of the “hole card” camera, and (3) what’s commonly called the “Moneymaker Effect.”

Common Explanations for the Twenty-First-Century Poker Boom

The Rise of Online Poker One of the most common reasons given for poker’s popularity since the early 2000s is the wide availability of internet gambling. The internet has made it far easier for poker players to find live home games and to play poker online without ever setting foot in a casino. As mentioned earlier, Planet Poker in 1998 was the first online poker site where players could gamble real money. By early 2010, there were 545 online poker sites (“Online Poker”, n.d.), and there are over six hundred today (“List of All Known Poker Sites”, n.d.). Online poker sites help generate interest in poker, and many poker players enter casinos for the first time to play live poker only after playing online poker. In addition, online poker sites in the 2000s often awarded entries into major live tournaments like the World Series of Poker through small buy-in online satellite tournaments. 1 INTRODUCTION 7

This is how 2003 World Series of Poker winner Chris Moneymaker managed the ten thousand dollar buy-in that earned him a place in poker history. Finally, the internet has many sites like HomePokerGames.com that allow players all over the country to connect and ﬁnd local for-money poker games (“Home Poker Games”, n.d.).

The “Hole Card” Camera In addition to the advent of online poker, those who write about poker universally point to the use of the hole card camera as a reason for poker’s surging popularity in the early 2000s. In poker parlance, cards are called “hole cards” because they are akin to being in a hole and therefore seen only by the player who holds those cards and unseen by other players. Players in televised poker tournaments sit at specially designed poker tables that have cameras in the table surface in front of each player. Players place their hole cards face down on the camera, so it shows the television viewer each player’s cards even when the players themselves don’t see other players’ cards. The impact on the overall viewing experience is dramatic. Before its use, commentators—who could not see the players’ cards—speculated about a range of possible hands and “spotters” were sometimes used who would try to see the cards and report them to the commentators. Viewers were often not able to see what cards the players had, especially when the hand was won before the flop, and the overall viewing experience made the game seem rather distant, mysterious, and ultimately unsatisfying. The hole card camera began being used in 1999 during television broadcasts of No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em in the United Kingdom. It was first used in the United States in 2002 during its broadcasts of the World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker (“Hole Cam”, n.d.). Being able to see the players’ hole cards completely changes the viewing experience. It adds an immediacy and excitement to watching poker being played. Because poker is a game of incomplete information, the hole card camera allows the viewer to know more than the player knows. Additionally, because even viewers who see the hole cards through the camera don’t know what card will come next until it’s shown, there is often drama and excitement when something unexpected happens and when a player acts in a way the viewer knows is good or bad play. We cheer when we know that a player with an inferior hand has managed to bluff a player with a superior hand into folding, or we groan sympathetically as the player who 8 A. MANNO has been bluffed throws away the best cards, because we’re in on a secret the player doesn’t know. Further, No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em is an ideal poker game for television viewers. First, the betting structure of the poker variation makes it thrilling to watch. Because players can bet up to all of their chips at any time during a No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em hand, they can apply enormous pressure on opponents, and this makes for many dramatic moments. In addition, No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em is easier to follow that many other poker variations. Because the five community cards in the middle of the table are shared by all players, viewers only need to keep track of the two hole cards each player is dealt that make one hand unique from another hand. In other poker games such as Omaha or seven- and five-card stud, there are far more cards to track for each player’s hand, making the game much more difficult for the viewer to follow. Ultimately, the hole card camera allows a level of participation by home viewers that is unprecedented. The game becomes a kind of tutorial so the viewer can learn and apply strategies. It also allows the viewer to play along and imagine what should be done similarly and differently. Instead of just the eight or ten players at a poker table, now there are thousands or even millions of people playing that hand.

The “Moneymaker Effect” The rise of online poker was a necessary ingredient for the poker boom. The new hole card camera technology at televised poker tournaments was also a vital component. However, what was missing was something to spark the explosion. That something is called the “Moneymaker Effect.” In the early 2000s, online poker sites began the practice of holding “super satellite” online tournaments where players could spend a small sum on an online tournament, and if the player won that tournament, the player would advance to another larger tournament, where the winner would get a seat for the in-person World Series of Poker championship event. The appeal was obvious: for a relatively small investment, an online poker player could parlay his skill, guts, and luck into a ten thousand dollar seat in poker’s premier event. This is exactly how Chris Moneymaker gained entrance into the 2003 World Series Main Event. By winning a forty dollar buy-in online satellite tournament and then another online tournament made up of the other satellite tournament winners, online poker website PokerStars.com paid Moneymaker’s entrance fee. Moneymaker 1 INTRODUCTION 9 went on to win the 2003 Main Event, earning the accountant and amateur poker player (who had never played in a live tournament until the Main Event) $2.5 million. Moneymaker’s rags-to-riches win sparked the imagination of (primarily male) poker players and those who dreamed of getting rich quick via gambling. Moneymaker’s apt name was part of the formula. ESPN made much of the story of the young amateur Everyman accountant from Tennessee, and ESPN for only the second time used the hole camera technology that very same year in its coverage of the WSOP. This helped create a buzz around the game of poker that it had never before had. Chris Moneymaker’s steely bluff at the end of the 2003 World Series of Poker is now the stuff of modern poker legend, but it wouldn’t have had the same impact without the hole card camera. The amateur Moneymaker crippled the grizzled pro Sam Farha when the two were heads up playing for the championship. Moneymaker had nothing, not even a pair, and made the huge bluff, betting all his chips. Farha struggled with the decision for several minutes. He feared that making the wrong decision would cost him millions of dollars, and it did. Farha threw away the best hand. It was the epitome of poker. Farha didn’t know if Moneymaker was ultimately lying or telling the truth with his bet, causing Farha to take the more cautious approach and fold. Moneymaker’s risky gamble paid off and was called by ESPN’s Norman Chad the “bluff of the century.” Moneymaker’s win inspired men across the country to start regular home games, visit poker rooms in casinos for the ﬁrst time, and play poker online.

Writers About Poker Culture Don’t Sufficiently Explain the Poker Boom

While the Internet, the hole card camera, and the “Moneymaker Effect” were certainly vital components of the poker boom, they don’t fully explain poker’s explosion in popularity since the early 2000s. Even the most respected writers about poker—those who are considered experts on poker history and culture—haven’t adequately explained the poker boom. James McManus’s Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetah, and Binion’s World Series of Poker focuses on the bizarre murder case of Ted Binion, who for a time ran Binion’s Casino, the site of the WSOP for many years. McManus’s book at the same time chronicles his attempt at playing in the championship event in the World Series of Poker. McManus makes the case that the urge to gamble, take risks, and compete is explained 10 A. MANNO by our hunter-gatherer heritage where such behavior was essential to survival. While he convincingly maintains that sports fandom is a kind of war- fare through surrogates, his biological explanation of the masculine pull toward risk is decidedly unsatisfying. McManus likes poker because it gets him “back in the action” (McManus 2003, p. 26). He describes “Good Jim” and “Bad Jim,” where Bad Jim drinks and gambles too much, is very competitive, and sees poker as a way to deal with middle-age angst. In Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, McManus continues this suspect biological explanation of the desire for risk, arguing that the United States is made up of immigrants who are more likely to take risks, because they have a risk-taking gene and are a self-selecting group (McManus 2009, pp. 18–20). Likewise, in Bigger Deal: A Year Inside the Poker Boom, Anthony Holden’s follow-up to his highly regarded 1990 memoir, the author and chronicler of poker culture presents a similarly unsatisfying analysis of poker’s appeal. Like McManus, Holden also sees poker as a way to deal with middle-age angst. He says that poker allows him “to escape the grind of everyday life” and that it “gives a good workout to the dark side in all of us” (Holden 2007, p. 140). Both McManus and Holden take for granted that their stereotypically masculine worldviews are the result of biological destiny and fail to understand that they’re seeing the world through the lenses of cultural scripts about gender and money. Because the vast majority of poker players are men, it’s important to examine in a serious fashion poker’s connection to our culture’s dominant masculinity ideology. That means moving well beyond Holden’s and McManus’s (and others’) unquestioning attitudes toward modern American masculinity. We should be asking hard questions about poker’s popularity. For example: What values are embodied in poker? What lessons does the game teach us? How is the game a reﬂection of our larger culture, especially in our current historical moment? In short, how is poker’s popularity emblematic of a larger set of values and attitudes?

How This Book Provides New Answers to Explain Poker’s Popularity I argue that the popularity of poker is part of the larger cultural phenomenon I call the “Poker Mindset,” and this book will explore that mindset and its profound implications. Further, in order to understand the Poker Mindset, we must examine poker as a gendered activity and 1 INTRODUCTION 11 speciﬁcally how valued characteristics of traditional masculinity such as wealth, status, independence, aggression, daring, and stoicism are embedded in the rhetoric of the game as well as in our larger culture. Poker ultimately functions as a symbolic fantasy space where players negotiate the tensions of competing masculinities, as well as the contingencies of a neoliberal economy and their places in it as citizens and workers. As a result, the popularity of poker is a barometer for inter-related social problems such as toxic masculinity (as seen in the rise of Men’s Rights groups and the Alt-Right), the impact of casino capitalism and the weakening of the social safety net, and post-industrial worker disenfranchisement. The Poker Mindset reinforces rather than challenges traditional masculine gender values, especially those related to wealth, providership, and the myth of meritocracy. This winner-take-all mindset has caused massive inequalities, populist anger, and an embrace of authoritarianism and scapegoating in the guise of nostalgic fantasies of supposed better, simpler times most recently seen in the election of Donald J. Trump as 45th President of the United States. The scope of this project will focus on the United States, and my goal is to show readers that unquestioningly accepting the Poker Mindset protects the status quo and maintains and even exacerbates damaging systems of inequality.

How This Book Is Organized

Chapter 2, “‘All In’: Poker as a Gendered Space,” will situate poker as a gendered space and address the issue of women’s lack of participation in poker. The chapter will make the case that poker is rhetorically constructed as a sport. In doing so, the chapter will make use of research about sport and homosociality, dominance bonding, and the use of sports as a tool for legitimizing the superiority of traditional masculinity that teaches conformity to patriarchal values in order to maintain the power structures of the status quo. Further, Chapter 2 will examine sexism and misogyny in poker. For some, poker acts as a fantasy space for men to enact their idealized versions of masculinity at a time when that’s increasingly difﬁcult in everyday life. To develop this idea, Chapter 2 will also identify the main elements of the male gender role and present research about Gender Role Discrepancy Strain (GRDS), which will be used to explain the appeal of poker. The chapter will also include an examination of the gendered rhetoric of poker as seen in poker strategy books, the words of prominent poker players, and ﬁlm and advertising. 12 A. MANNO

Chapter 3, “‘On Tilt’: Toxic Masculinity and the Poker Mindset,” will step back from the poker table and apply the Poker Mindset outside of the poker world. The chapter will examine how the Poker Mindset intersects with the views espoused by the Alt-Right. In doing so, this chapter will engage with research on the groups that demonstrate a clear backlash to feminist thinking, including academic studies of the Alt-Right and Men’s Rights groups. Using the language of poker, this chapter will focus on how those angry men who subscribe to the values of the Poker Mindset are “on tilt” and furious about their perceived situations, resulting in sexist, racist, homophobic toxic masculinity. This chapter will make use of broad research on the origins and history of the Alt-Right, drawing upon scholarship on Men’s Rights Advocates, Father’s Rights groups, white nationalists, Pickup Artists, and Involuntary Celibates. Chapter 3 will also explore how online spaces lend themselves to misogynistic and racist views and will highlight research that explicitly ties the anger of the Alt-Right to an anti-feminist backlash. The chapter will include case studies of mass shooters Elliot Rodger and Stephen Paddock and “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli. Chapter 4, “‘A Stacked Deck’: Casino Capitalism and the Poker Mind- set,” will build on Chapter 3 by applying the Poker Mindset to casino capitalism. This chapter will define casino capitalism and explain how it’s a part of a larger neoliberal economy. Further, the chapter will examine casino building as a regressive tax on the poor that is part of a larger system corrupted by the influence of corporate money in politics. Chapter 4 will assert that the values of casino capitalism such as hyper-consumption and a winner-take-all economic mentality are embedded in the ideology of the Poker Mindset and perpetuate the status quo by supporting a winner- take-all worldview. Those who subscribe to this ideology are playing a “rigged game” with a “stacked deck” and rely upon the fantasy of the “big win” to provide economic security in the face of a diminishing social safety net. Individuals are forced to assume increased risk even as the elite have used their great wealth to create unfair advantages. Part of this analysis will examine how casino gaming has been normalized through greatly increased comfort with gaming machines due to widespread exposure to video games. The chapter will also draw on research about other fantasy gaming spaces in order to situate poker within a larger gaming cultural context, including connections to coin-operated video games and slot machine gaming. Finally, the chapter will draw on a specific example of the shift from industrial to post-industrial casino capitalism in Bethlehem, 1 INTRODUCTION 13

PA, which was once the site of one of the largest steel mills in the United States and until recently was the home of the Sands Bethlehem Casino, owned by Sheldon Adelson, Donald Trump’s biggest individual campaign donor during the 2016 presidential election. Chapter 4 will draw upon academic research about the causes and consequences of “casino capitalism” and upon academic critiques of neoliberalism. Chapter 5, “‘Deal Me In’: Neoliberal Workers and the Poker Mindset,” will move from a larger analysis of the economy to a focus on the impact of casino capitalism on workers in a post-industrial economy. The chapter will argue that the Poker Mindset reinforces the conditions that allow for worker disenfranchisement. Speciﬁcally, the chapter will outline some of the many problems facing modern workers such as stagnant wages, the rise of temporary and contingent work, downsizing, and outsourc- ing. Using the language of poker, these post-industrial citizens want to be “dealt into the game.” The chapter will also examine how neoliberal workers are trained to shoulder increasing risk while expecting both little loyalty from employers and increasingly contingent employment. Further, this analysis will show how the Poker Mindset afﬁrms the narrative of the independent “self-made man” and the myth of meritocracy to rationalize and in some cases even desire these changes. This chapter will include examples from the trucking industry; commercial juggernaut Amazon; and emerging forms of online work such Daily Fantasy Sports, e-sports, and online streamers. These new forms of work can be seen as emblematic of the evolving neoliberal job landscape. Chapter 6, “‘Fight, Not Fold’: The Poker Mindset and the Rise of Trumpism,” will examine how the Poker Mindset has contributed to the conditions that have allowed for the rise of populist anger, an embrace of authoritarianism, and the 2016 election of Donald Trump. Using the words of Trump from his books, interviews, tweets, autobiographies, and biographies, this chapter will make the argument that Donald Trump is the embodiment of the Poker Mindset, combining a winner-take-all worldview with the hallmarks of traditional masculinity. This chapter will draw upon academic studies of Trump, upon research about Trump’s performance of white masculinity, and upon research about populism and authoritarianism. Chapter 7, the Conclusion, will tie together the threads of the argument presented in the book and will make the case that it is urgent that we recognize how the values of the Poker Mindset are embedded in our ideas about masculinity and the American Dream of success. Further, the 14 A. MANNO conclusion will reiterate the need to see over-conformers to the ideology of the Poker Mindset not as aberrant “Others” but as representative of the cultural values in which we all participate and that we should work to challenge and dismantle.

References

“31st Annual World Series of Poker.” n.d. ConJelCo.com. https://onjelco.com/ wsop2000/event27.html. Accessed June 26, 2017. “$10,000 No-Limit Hold’em MAIN EVENT—World Championship (Event #73).” 2019. WSOP. http://www.wsop.com/tournaments/payouts/?aid=2& grid=1622&tid=17298&dayof=7661&rr=5. Accessed July 29. Bjerg, Ole. 2011. Poker: The Parody of Capitalism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ProQuest Ebook Central. Accessed June 17, 2018. Chad, Norman. 2019. “Main Event.” World Series of Poker. ESPN, July 3. Denvir, Daniel. 2012. “Casino Capitalism: As Gambling Spreads, Metaphor Becomes Reality.” Salon. https://salon.com/2012/03/09/casino_ capitalism_as_gambling_spreads_metaphor_becomes_reality/. Accessed May 12, 2015. Fiedler, Ingo, and Ann-Christin Wilcke. 2011. “The Market for Online Poker.” SSRN Electronic Journal 16 (1): 7–19. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn. 1747646. Giamatti, A. Bartlett. 2011. Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games. London: Bloomsbury. Holden, Anthony. 1990. Big Deal: A Year as a Professional Poker Player.New York: Viking. ———. 2007. Bigger Deal: A Year Inside the Poker Boom.NewYork:Simonand Schuster. “Home Poker Games.” n.d. HomePokerGames.com. http://homepokergames. com. Accessed June 27, 2017. Kelly, Jack. 2006. “Poker.” American Heritage. https://www.americanheritage. com/index.php/content/poker. Accessed June 18, 2018. “List of All Known Poker Sites.” n.d. PokerScout.com. http://pokerscout.com/ PokerSites.aspx. Accessed June 26, 2017. McManus, James. 2003. Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion’s World Series of Poker. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ———. 2009. Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. O’Brien, Kerry. 2012. “The Great Wildcard: How 2011 Shook the Online Poker World and Became a Game-Changer in the Battle for Legalization.” Journal of Legislation 38 (2): 295–318. Academic OneFile, EBSCOhost. Accessed July 11, 2018. 1 INTRODUCTION 15

Rotundo, Anthony. 1994. American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era.NewYork:BasicBooks. Ruddock, Steve. 2017. “Is Parx Casino Opposed to Online Gambling in Pennsyl- vania or Is It Trying to Negotiate a Better Deal?” Online Poker Report (blog). March 27, 2017. https://www.onlinepokerreport.com/24619/inside-parx- pa-online-gambling-dissent/. Accessed June 18, 2018. Skolnik, Sam. 2011. High Stakes: The Rising Cost of America’s Gambling Addic- tion. Boston: Beacon Press. Vardi, Nathan. 2011. “How the Las Vegas Casino Companies Became the Champions of Online Poker in America.” Forbes, September 30, 2011. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2011/09/30/how-the-las- vegas-casino-companies-became-the-champions-of-online-poker-in-america/# 6801eb823ff8. Accessed June 18, 2018. ———. 2013. “The Battle for Online Poker Between PokerStars and Caesars Entertainment Goes to New Jersey.” Forbes, March 5. https://www.forbes. com/sites/nathanvardi/2013/03/05/the-battle-for-online-poker-between- pokerstars-and-caesars-entertainment-goes-to-new-jersey/. Accessed June 18, 2018. Wikipedia Contributors. n.d. “Hole Cam.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hole_cam&oldid=502749881. Accessed June 6, 2018. ———. n.d. “Online Poker.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en. wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Online_poker&oldid=844560059. Accessed June 6, 2018. ———. n.d. “World Series of Poker.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclo- pedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=World_Series_of_Poker& oldid=847379847. Accessed June 6, 2018. ———. n.d. “World Tavern Poker.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=World_Tavern_Poker&oldid= 813158303. Accessed June 6, 2018. CHAPTER 2

“All In”: Poker as a Gendered Space

In Chapter 1, I argued that one way for us to examine our current Ameri- can moment is to consider the game of poker. I briefly explained the game of poker and the essential nature of betting in that game. I traced poker’s origin, the popularizing of the variation called No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em, the growth of poker in the twenty-first century, and the commonly understood factors leading to that growth. I argued that these common explanations for poker’s popularity in the twenty-first century were not sufficient because they did not examine poker through the lens of our culture’s dominant masculine gender ideology. I also argued that poker is such a potent symbolic fantasy space because it embodies a powerful set of cultural values that I call the Poker Mindset. It is crucial to analyze the Poker Mindset and its values about masculinity, the economy, and the American Dream in order to understand the recent popularity of the game and the impact of the Poker Mindset on such phenomena as the Alt-Right, casino capitalism, and populist anger. This chapter will situate poker within a larger gendered context that is important in understanding the values of the Poker Mindset. The chapter will begin by describing women’s lack of participation in poker. As a way of trying to explain this phenomenon, the chapter will also examine the way that poker is constructed as sport that exists as a homosocial space from which men receive a patriarchal dividend and through which cultural values are transmitted. Further, this chapter will continue this line of thinking by examining poker as a gendered space and will include details

© The Author(s) 2020 17 A. Manno, Toxic Masculinity, Casino Capitalism, and America’s Favorite Card Game, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40260-0_2 18 A. MANNO about the sexism and misogyny that are a large part of the modern poker scene. The poker phrase “all in” that is a part of the title of this chapter refers to a player betting all available chips on a hand of poker. Seen as a metaphor here, “all in” might also refer to the way that the poker table is an all-or-nothing masculine symbolic space where women often feel uncomfortable, out-of-place, and as interlopers or pretty distractions not to be taken seriously. Stepping back a bit, the chapter will brieﬂy examine gender role expectations of the cultural ideal of masculinity and the concept of Gender Role Discrepancy Strain (GRDS) in order to explain the result of not meeting those culturally expected masculine gender roles. The chapter will then introduce the concept of masculine symbolic fantasy spaces and the illusions of power they provide to men. The chapter will include an examination of the gendered rhetoric of poker as seen in poker strategy books, the words of prominent poker players, and ﬁlm and advertising to demonstrate the pervasiveness of the dominant masculine heterogendered mindset of the poker world.

Women’s Lack of Participation in Poker From the outside, it might appear that poker should be free of sexism. The rules of the game make no distinction between age, physical ability, gender, race, or sexual orientation of the players. Poker is a game that is open to a wide variety of players and often offers amateurs competition alongside professionals. What’s more, amateurs have a real chance to win in poker tournaments, where luck plays at least some part. Between the year 2002 (a year before the official beginning of the “poker boom”) and 2016, eight of the fifteen winners of the World Series of Poker championship event have been amateurs (“Official Media Guide: 48th Annual World Series of Poker” 2017, p. 69). Physical ability and age are not impediments to playing poker. So long as the player is of legal age and has the ability to sit at the table to participate in the game, poker is open to all. One might think, then, that poker would be a game played as much by women as by men, but that’s not the case at all. Women consistently make up less than five percent of the total WSOP player pool, a percentage that hasn’t changed since 1995 (Abarbanel and Bernhard 2012, p. 376). For example, the 2017 WSOP “Main Event” drew just 268 women of the 6737 total entrants, under four percent of the total field (“Official 2 “ALL IN”: POKER AS A GENDERED SPACE 19

Media Guide: 48th Annual World Series of Poker” 2017, p. 71). Further, there are many events that span the month-long World Series of Poker. In 2016, there were seventy-four total events, women won only three of those events, and one of those three wins was in a “ladies-only” tournament. In fact, in 2016, after forty-six years of the WSOP, women won a scant seventy events, with only twenty-four of those being events open to both men and women (“Ofﬁcial Media Guide: 48th Annual World Series of Poker” 2017, pp. 11–12, 73). More generally, scholarship on gambling shows that more men gamble than women (van Ingen 2008, p. 3) and recreationally gamble greater amounts of money, more often, and beginning at a younger age than women (Phillips 2009, p. 2). Men also gamble more on stock investments than women (Phillips 2009,p.4); focus on “strategic forms of gambling, such as card games, blackjack, and sports betting” (Phillips 2009,p.3);andaremotivatedtogamblefor“action” while women are more often motivated for “escape” (Philips 2009, pp. 5–6). As mentioned earlier, the games we play tell us about ourselves. Our leisure activities “are not simply an ‘escape’ from everyday culture; rather, they resonate, reify, and circulate icons, myths, and systems of socio- cultural life” (McKahan 2009, p. 70). In effect, those leisure activities help create and reinforce our values and belief systems. If the formal rules of poker make it a game open to anyone and yet ninety-ﬁve percent of poker players are consistently men, it raises the question of why don’t women play poker in greater numbers? The answer is that gambling in general, and poker very much in particular, are gendered activities and are culturally coded as masculine. Gambling has been historically connected with dominant ideas about masculinity, whereby the “men of ruling classes historically displayed social superiority and wealth through conspicuous consumption of leisure activities” (McKahan 2009, p. 70). Per this traditional masculinity, men both displayed and risked wealth via gambling (McKahan 2009, p. 70). We see this risking of wealth in order to generate more wealth at both casinos and on Wall Street, as the “accumulation of capital … has permeated Western capitalist masculinity” (McKahan 2009, pp. 70–71). Further, media representations directly connect gambling to the dominant masculinity ideology. Men’s magazines provide how-to articles on poker, with the implicit idea that successfully masculine men should understand gambling just as many middle-class young men today often feel they should understand masculine interests such as craft beer, bourbon, and cigars. Both historically and currently, 20 A. MANNO gambling is associated with the traditional masculine ideals of the demon- stration of wealth, power, risk, and control. One way to think about poker as a gendered space is to examine the way that poker is culturally constructed as sport.

Poker as Sport

Poker is portrayed in the media as a sport. The name of poker’s most famous and important poker tournament—the annual World Series of Poker held in Las Vegas, Nevada—intentionally evokes sporting events like baseball’s World Series. For example, ESPN—a sports-focused television network—covers the World Series of Poker extensively each year. As a result, it’s helpful to use the relationship between sports and gender as a starting point in an examination of the gendered nature of gambling in general and poker in particular. Common in the sporting world is a built-in gender inequality in the “formal rules, structure, and practice” of most sporting events that prevent women and men from “competing on a ‘level playing ﬁeld’ and diminish women’s ability to launch a legitimate challenge to the masculine superiority embedded in sports competition” (Wolkomir 2012, p. 407). Sports continues to be an “important proving ground for masculinity” (van Ingen 2008,p.3)wherethe“structures, rules, and strategic practices of popular sports are grounded in tropes of traditional hegemonic masculinity, including competition, risk-taking, and aggression” (McKahan 2009, p. 70) and those who aren’t successful at sports are seen as effeminate (McKahan 2009,p.70).Thereare both men’s and women’s professional and collegiate sports teams, but it’s rare and often newsworthy when a woman plays on a men’s team. Men and women tend to be segregated from each other in the sporting world based on the assumption that women can’t compete well enough or safely enough to be part of men’s teams. Men’s teams get most of the media attention and proﬁtable sponsorships, as well.

Sport as Homosocial Space That Transmits Values

Sports are well-known as masculine homosocial spaces. Here, the word “homosocial” refers to spaces where members of the same sex interact. In masculine homosocial sporting spaces, traditional masculine cultural ideals 2 “ALL IN”: POKER AS A GENDERED SPACE 21 are perpetuated. Dominance bonding is one such method of this perpetuation and happens when alliances occur between men who share masculine markers of privilege such as education level, socio-economic class, race, and sexual identity. Such members of homosocial groups use dominance bonding to “affirm to themselves and to communicate to outsiders the superiority of their class and gender positions” (Farr 1988, p. 276). In Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity, Michael Messner identifies sport as a social institution that transmits social values and acts to maintain control by ruling groups (Messner 1992, p. 12). For example, Messner argues that “combat sports” such as boxing, American football, and rugby serve in part “as training grounds for war” (Messner 1992, p. 15). By focusing on “dominance and submission” (Messner 1992, p. 15) in sports, masculine domination is legitimized in the larger culture, and because it is a homosocial masculine space that typically excludes women, sport acts to “symbolize the masculine structure of power over women” (Messner 1992, p. 6). As a result, Messner echoes other scholars in the idea that sport is a sexist institution (Messner 1992, p. 17) that reaffirms the existing patriarchal gender order (Messner 1992,p.18) and markers of privilege. As his title indicates, however, this power is “at play” and has been contested at times by attempts to “partially accept but also …redefine, negotiate, or … reject” (Messner 1992, p. 12) the ruling group by out-groups. Gender identity, then, is a “process of construction that develops, comes into crisis, and changes” (Messner 1992, p. 21) through interactions with an ever-changing social world. Eric Anderson argues that sport is connected with increased “masculine worth” (Anderson 2004, p. 15). This isn’t surprising when competitive sports act as rites of passage (Anderson 2009, p. 23) in our culture. Anderson also argues that “sports (for males) are a somewhat unique cultural location where boys and men gather to bond …. In sport, men relate in emotional and physical ways not acceptable in other cultural spaces” (Anderson 2009, p. 24). Anderson studied male college cheerleaders, many of whom were former football players who could not play successfully at the college level despite their desire to do so. He identifies the “disengagement effect” (Anderson 2004, p. 15) of these cheerleaders who want to be part of a team to affirm their masculine worth and use cheerleading as the way to be close to football although not actually playing the game (Anderson 2004, p. 15). Like Messner, Anderson 22 A. MANNO argues that sport is a training ground for social values, creating compli- ant capitalist workers by cultivating the “qualities of discipline and obedience, and to honor the hard work that was necessary in the dangerous occupations of industrial labor and mining” (Anderson 2009,p.25). Sport values “obedience to authority” and “docility” and was in the early days of competitive American sport “funded by those who maintained power of the reproduction of material goods” (Anderson 2009,p.25). The values embedded in sport map to traditional masculinity, with labor and breadwinning connected as “labors of love” (Anderson 2009, p. 26), because “what is learned in sport is reproduced outside of sport: Peo- ple who learn homophobia, sexism and conservative forms of masculinity in sport learn cognitive patterns and leadership styles that spill over into other institutions” (Anderson 2009, p. 62). Messner and Sabo argue that the “main function” of traditional [competitive] sport is to “teach conformity to patriarchal values” (Messner and Sabo 1994, p. 190). Sport requires competition, they continue, because it “enables the few men in powerful positions to exploit the dreams and control the actions of those under them” (Messner and Sabo 1994, p. 191), with boys and men pitted against each other and set apart from girls and women (Messner and Sabo 1994, p. 191). Anderson notes that Rotundo charts the rise of sport as happening alongside the second Industrial Revolution and its corresponding fears of effeminized men at the turn of the twentieth century (Rotundo 1993, p. 31). The rejection of femininity was part of a restrictive definition of masculinity that “created good industrial workers, soldiers, Christians, and consumers” (Anderson 2009, p. 30). Anderson asserts that “our desire to reproduce orthodox masculinity is less about the conscious and willing reproduction of patriarchy and more about our desires to morally equip boys with ‘the skills they need in life,’ through playing sport” (Anderson 2009, p. 77). As a result, this masculine gender training is connected to moral notions of character development. Note that Anderson uses the phrase “orthodox masculinity” here. While this is the term that he primarily uses to describe the masculine values that are embedded in the dominant culture that reflect institutional values, he also uses “traditional” and “conservative” (Anderson 2009,p.7)asdescrip- tors for such a version of masculinity. For the purposes of this book, I use “traditional” masculinity to indicate conservative masculine values such as independence, strength, courage, aggression, risk-taking, dominance, and the acquisition of wealth and power. Elsewhere, the phrase “hegemonic 2 “ALL IN”: POKER AS A GENDERED SPACE 23 masculinity” is used by some scholars in ways that are similar to “traditional,” “orthodox,” and “conservative” masculinity. However, I define hegemonic masculinity as the process by which traditional masculinity is legitimized and culturally privileged in its patriarchal superiority over cultural notions of femininity.

The Patriarchal Dividend

Anderson contends that the male cheerleaders in his study, like others who do not embody the “elite form of masculinity” (Anderson 2009, p. 37) still reap the “patriarchal dividend” that “permits all men to benefit from the marginalization of all women” (Anderson 2009, p. 37) and encourages those men embodying non-elite versions of masculinity to “invest” in their “symbolic” version of “dominating masculinity” (Anderson 2009, p. 37). Anderson posits the idea of “masculine capital” (Anderson 2009, p. 42) with masculinity as a “currency, in which privilege and esteem are traded” (Anderson 2009, p. 42), and notes that participation in competitive team sports is one of the best ways of building such masculine capital (Anderson 2009,p.42). However, the benefits of the patriarchal dividend are not equally apportioned due to built-in inequalities of race, gender identity, and socio-economic status. While “men in general derive benefits from the patriarchal dividend, those embodying subordinated masculinities may suffer disproportionately the costs of existing gender regimes. These tensions and disjunctures have been exacerbated by … [neoliberalism’s] emphasis on self-making and self-management, on the neoliberal self as an entrepreneurial self” (Cornwall 2016, p. 10). (The connection between neoliberalism and masculinity will be examines at length in upcoming chapters.) Messner and Sabo argue that due to “low social status, low levels of education, racism, homophobia, or incarceration, [marginalized men] lack of access to legitimate means of expressing the dominant white, middle-class, heterosexual form of masculinity” (Messner and Sabo 1994, p. 127). In traditional up-by-your-bootstraps masculinity, you only have yourself to blame for failures, and systems of oppression are not examined for the way they make it harder for those embodying marginalized masculinities. We might very well see participation in poker as a way that men benefit from the patriarchal dividend. This might explain why the poker table is coded as a heavily masculine space where men are “all in” in terms 24 A. MANNO of over-conforming to the values of traditional masculinity. I’d like to make it clear that I use the word “over-conform” here with specific purpose. The kinds of toxic, hypermasculine attitudes expressed at the poker table that will be described below should not be seen as falling outside the spectrum of the values of traditional masculinity that are embedded in our culture and in institutional structures. Instead, the expression of these values is intensified in the symbolic fantasy space of the poker table. (Similarly, as we’ll see in Chapter 3, those expressions are intensified in the online spaces inhabited by Alt-Right adherents.) This hypermasculine behavior might be shocking, but it falls squarely within the spectrum of traditional masculine values, albeit at the extreme end. I’d also like to note that some scholars take issue with the terms “toxic masculinity” and “hypermasculinity” on the grounds that they describe everyday masculinity in the United States. I agree, as stated above, that they fall within the same spectrum of values and behaviors but want to draw a distinction between those values and behaviors that even our patriarchal masculine culture sees as hypermasculine and toxic and those values and behaviors that, while damaging, are normalized and unquestioned.

Poker as a Gendered Space

I’ve been studying poker for close to twenty years, and there’s been scant research on the game from a gendered perspective. Fortunately, that’s slowly changing. The recent research of several scholars supports the idea that poker is a gendered space where good poker play is seen as successfully enacting the precepts of the dominant masculine gender ideology. Our cultural constructions of masculinity and its practices identify the poker table as a manly space, a space where “men and women learn to use heterogender frames to conceptualize poker” (Wolkomir 2012, p. 407). In other words, we bring our dominant gender values with us to the poker table. The heterogender frame of poker casts male players as skilled aggressors and female players as passive and emotional responders (Wolkomir 2012, p. 412). As such, the gendered rhetoric of male and female poker players “predominately ﬁt[s] into, rather than subvert[s], gender hierarchy” (Wolkomir 2012, p. 410). The rhetoric of poker is used “as a mechanism to label certain kinds of plays as masculine or feminine” (Wolkomir 2012, p. 412), with masculine play seen as competent and praiseworthy and feminine play seen as weak and ineffective. 2 “ALL IN”: POKER AS A GENDERED SPACE 25

Drawing on ethnographic research, Wolkomir argues that the space of the poker table is one where skilled play is thought of in the “hypermasculine terms of aggression, dominance, and control” (Wolkomir 2012, p. 412). Male poker players interviewed in Wolkomir’s research describe the desire to be “in command” and the “person who dictated the action at the table” (qtd. in Wolkomir 2012, p. 412). Such male poker players referred to themselves as the “alpha male,” “master of my domain,” and “a general” (qtd. in Wolkomir 2012, p. 412), reﬂecting the idea that men view “their success, and effective play … as synony- mous with the enactment of hegemonic masculinity” (Wolkomir 2012, p. 412). For example, the rhetoric of good poker play is linked to ideals of traditional masculinity:

[W]hen a player showed a big bluff at the end of a hand (e.g., when that player had a weak hand and forced an opponent to fold a good hand through strategic bets), other players often commented on the bluffer’s play, saying things like: “He’s not scared,” “He’s got cajones,” or “Nice play bully.” These comments ground this sort of strategic play in masculinity, linking it to courage, aggression and threat rather than to a more gender neutral perceptual ability to see a chance to “steal” a pot. (Wolkomir 2012, p. 412)

This kind of rhetoric also included taunting and goading other male players in ways that challenged their masculinity in an effort to control the action of the table and induce poor poker play. Some men were mocked by other male poker players for being “scared to play big pots or as too unskilled to play with the ‘big man’ at the table. In doing so, the experienced player was trying to induce the other man to make bad calls against him for lots of money” (Wolkomir 2012, p. 416). Gendered rhetoric that questions male players’ masculinity is used as a weapon at the poker table. The reverse is also true, with perceived weak poker play seen as effeminized. Male players who folded to an aggressive raise or a bluff were referred to in effeminizing terms that were used as insults such as that they were “playing like a girl” (qtd. in Wolkomir 2012, p. 413). Simi- lar taunts included “What’s the matter? You lose your purse?” and “You must not have a dick; you have a pussy” (qtd. in Wolkomir 2012, p. 413). Interestingly, so great was the desire of male poker players to avoid seeming effeminized that men interviewed tended to avoid playing hands with female poker players, both because the gendered view of female play as 26 A. MANNO passive means that female players bluff less often and therefore are more likely to have good hands, as well as due to the desire to avoid the embarrassment of losing all their money to a woman (Wolkomir 2012, p. 418). Based on the taunting comments above, that embarrassment would much more likely come from other male players in the homosocial masculine space of the poker table. The borders of accepted cultural displays of masculinity are patrolled in these homosocial spaces by other men in ways that both reinforce traditional masculinity and also serve the bullying players’ economic interests at the poker table by attempting to goad other male poker players into weaker play. In this way, such male poker players were “all in” in a gendered sense, over-conforming to the values of traditional masculinity in an effort to police the gendered space of the poker table for both gendered and economic ends. Further, rather than challenging the misogyny that is part of the traditional masculine rhetoric of poker, the female players in Wolkomir’s research fit “themselves into the traditionally gendered ‘slots’ available to women within a hegemonic frame,” acting “passive/submissive, dumb, or sexualized or some combination of the three” (Wolkomir 2012, p. 414). Female poker players reported attempting to use the “traditionally gendered ‘slots’ available to women with the hegemonic frame” (Wolkomir 2012, p. 414) to their advantage, employing deceptive practices like hid- ing their poker abilities or the strength of their hands and flirting with male players to create a sexualized poker table persona. However, this behavior just reinforces the gendered rhetoric of poker, in effect functioning to “obscure and reproduce oppressive conditions” as these female players “become advocates and protectors of the status quo” (Wolkomir 2012, p. 423) who reaffirm and perpetuate gender stereotypes. It’s not surprising, then, that poker culture is a space that is deeply rooted in sexism and misogyny.

Sexism and Misogyny in Poker

The hypermasculine space of the poker table makes it problematic and seemingly uninviting for female poker players. This goes a long way to explain the preponderance of men at live casino play and major poker tournaments such as the World Series of Poker, where the ratio has consistently been ninety-five percent men to five percent women. The lived experiences of female poker players speak to the hypermasculine and often misogynistic environment of live poker. Female poker players are regularly 2 “ALL IN”: POKER AS A GENDERED SPACE 27 questioned by other players at the table about their poker-playing ability and decision-making skills, are subjected to condescending comments and unwanted sexual attention, and endure patronizing behavior thinly masked as “chivalry” where male poker players will “coach” or “go easy” on female players. Female poker players report feeling harassed (especially when a male player loses a hand to a female player) and sometimes fear for their safety (Abarbanel and Bernhard 2012, pp. 368, 374–376). Kendyl Kearly, who writes about her experiences with sexism in poker, describes feeling like an “intruder” in casinos, where “[e]verything is designed to make men feel masculine” (Kearly 2014). The men at the poker table “insist” on buying her drinks, “laugh condescendingly” when she makes a big bet, and regularly pepper her with “patronizing comments” (Kearly 2014). She described male poker players openly criticizing her play at the table to each other and dealers flirting with her during games (Kearly 2014). Kearly also notes that unlike professional male poker players, the profiles of female pros found online tend to focus on their appearance, with article titles like “Top 10 Hottest Female Poker Players” (Sylvia 2015), leaving little question that the main audience of such articles is men. It’s not surprising then that Lydia Barry, of gaming consulting company Pegasus Gaming Solutions, is very clear in arguing that the women she’s interviewed avoid live poker because it is “intimidating” (qtd. in Scott 2015). Several high-profile examples of sexism in the poker world have begun to raise awareness about the sexism and misogyny that are embedded in poker culture. For example, one way that organizers of poker tournaments like the World Series of Poker have tried to make poker more appealing to women (and thereby increase casino and tournament earnings) is to create “ladies-only” poker tournaments. The WSOP has consistently offered women-only poker tournaments since 1977 (“List of World Series of Poker Ladies Champions,” n.d.). Female poker players, amateurs and pros alike, look forward to such tournaments and point to the chance to experience the camaraderie of other female poker players in a more com- fortable setting where they needn’t worry about facing the sexist environment that is part of the daily experience of female poker players in mixed-gender settings. Further, amateur female players have noted that the women-only tournaments provide a safer-feeling space to improve their skills (Arnett 2007). In 2010, however, a few male players began a firestorm of controversy in the poker world when they signed up for the women-only tournament. 28 A. MANNO

By law, men can’t be barred from such tournaments, and tournament organizers have relied on the good will of male players to support the women-only tournaments. That good will ended when six male players, including poker pro Shaun Deeb, played in the tournament. Several of the men wore dresses, and one male player used a tampon as a card protector (Kanigher 2010). Deeb dubiously claimed that he entered the tournament “to raise the question of sexual discrimination and gender equality at the WSOP” (“Daniel Negreanu Bashes Shaun Deeb” 2010). Instead, it’s more likely that the male players, as noted earlier, viewed the poker table as a traditionally masculine space, and in doing so subscribed to the belief that women-only tournaments were easier to win. It’s also likely that by dressing in drag, the male players were making a rather pathetic attempt to claim reverse sexism, not acknowledging their privilege as male poker players in a male-dominated poker world. Between 1992 and 2012, the World Series of Poker set the buy-into the women-only tournament at one thousand dollars. After the 2010 episode, and after men continued to enter the tournament over the next few years, however, the WSOP decided beginning in 2013 to increase the buy-in to ten thousand dollars with a nine thousand dollar discount for female players, a rule that was an attempt to discourage male players from entering the women-only tournament (“List of World Series of Poker Ladies Champions,” n.d.). Poker pro Shaun Deeb was also involved in another sexist poker scan- dal when fellow pro Jacklynn Moskow described the troubling way she was treated by the producers and others at the taping of the televised Poker Night in America. According to Moskow, behind the scenes she endured sexist and anti-Semitic comments from the producers, directors, and the on-screen host of the show, behavior that was either explicitly cheered on or rationalized away by male poker players (including Deeb) whowerepresentatthetime(Moskow2016). Moskow also describes an even more troubling scene involving Nolan Dalla, poker columnist and creative director of Poker Night in America. According to Moskow, Dalla said to those nearby, “‘Hey, watch this! I have wanted to do this for a long time.’ He proceeded to thrust his head directly into my chest and cleavage and shake it back and forth” (Moskow 2016). Moskow’s experience is an extreme example, but female poker players describe rampant sexism in the poker world. In his poker blog “Justin Bonomo Talks,” poker pro Bonomo quotes fellow pro Danielle Anderson on the ever-present sexism in poker. According to Anderson: 2 “ALL IN”: POKER AS A GENDERED SPACE 29

The pre-existing disproportionate ratio of males/females alone is enough to make walking into a card room an overwhelming experience for women. Throw any minority group into a situation where they are vastly outnum- bered, and it can be very intimidating. Add to that equation the prospect of sitting in close proximity to someone who may make sexist remarks, unwanted advances, and even unwelcome touch (all things I’ve experienced ﬁrsthand countless times) and it’s not exactly a welcoming environment for females. (qtd. in Bonomo 2015)

Poker pro Cate Hall echoes Anderson’s sentiments about the prevalence of sexism in poker:

I’m not a delicate naif who has been coddled from birth by the sisterhood. I can take a joke. I can take a compliment. But the amount of bullshit I contend with while playing poker—the incessance, the variety, the sheer volume of it—is totally exhausting. (Hall 2015)

Both Anderson and Hall are seasoned poker professionals who fully understand the hypermasculine dynamic of the poker table. What’s striking about their comments here is the amount of sexist behavior these women endure on a daily basis. Hall continues:

On good days, it exerts a slow drain on my mental resources. On bad ones, I still have to pick up to keep myself from tilting from frustration and fatigue. If I were not a serious competitor playing to make money, but instead an amateur playing to have some fun, I would not be back; the experience is emphatically not fun. (Hall 2015)

Poker players like Anderson and Hall face not only the challenge of the game itself but the added challenge of what is essentially a persistently hostile work environment. One of the commenters on Bonomo’s blog supports the views of Hall and Anderson, explicitly connecting sexist behavior to the game of poker itself:

The very setting of a live poker game is a woman’s worst nightmare— the sheer proximity of the male strangers at a full-ring table, the studied projection of dominance and aggression, the intentional provocative talk, 30 A. MANNO

threatening postures, and the “stare-downs” are all meant to induce vulnerability, intimidation, self-doubt, and the ultimate surrender of the opponent (see any beginner’s guide to live poker for more!). (qtd. in Bonomo 2015)

This kind of “leisure” atmosphere is certainly not welcoming for amateur female poker players, especially those just learning the game. In all of these cases, it’s abundantly clear that the poker table is a hypermasculine space, and the sexist attitudes of poker culture can make the poker table an unpleasant and potentially frightening place for women. A ﬁnal example: supporters of poker pro Sean Drake at the 2014 World Series of Poker “Monster Stack Event” wore tee-shirts with the slogan “Play Like Drake and Rape” (Grinstead 2014). The offensive term “chip rape” is very much a poker insider’s term and refers to the feeling of having one’s poker chips forcibly taken or forcibly taking away another player’s chips. To be clear, in any poker hand, players lose or gain chips, so the phrase “chip rape” adds no important information about the play of the game and instead functions to superimpose on the rhetoric of poker play the violent language of rape culture to tap into the hypermasculinity of the game. However, the term perfectly epitomizes the simmering misogyny of the “Poker Mindset,” where people would wear such shirts (with “Play Like Drake” on the front and “and Rape” alone on the back) and think it’s appropriate. The sexism and misogyny of poker are embedded in poker culture. In order to understand some of the other values of poker culture, it’s helpful to explain the gender roles of traditional masculinity.

Traditional Masculine Gender Roles and Gender Role Discrepancy Strain

Poker’s popularity with many men has to do in large part with the poker table being a powerful symbolic fantasy space where they can enact our culture’s dominant masculine gender ideology. The messages about this ideology can be seen in family dynamics, schools, sports, and our culture’s pervasive entertainment and advertising media. David and Brannon’s “dimensions” of the male gender role, while decades old, are still a good summary of these gender expectations:

1. No Sissy Stuff: The stigma of all stereotyped feminine characteristics and qualities, including openness and vulnerability. 2. The Big Wheel: Success, status, and the need to be looked up to. 2 “ALL IN”: POKER AS A GENDERED SPACE 31

3. The Sturdy Oak: A manly air of toughness, conﬁdence, and self- reliance. 4. Give ‘Em Hell!: The aura of aggression, violence, and daring. (David and Brannon 1976,p.12)

David and Brannon note that “in its purest form, the male sex role depicts a rather remarkable creature. This hypothetical man never feels anxious, depressed, or vulnerable, has never known the taste of tears, is devoid of any trace or hint of femininity. He is looked up to by all who know him, is a tower of strength both physically and emotionally, and exudes an unshakable confidence and determination that sets him apart from lesser beings. He’s also aggressive, forceful, and daring, a barely controlled vol- cano of primal force” (David and Brannon 1976, p. 36). While David and Brannon’s 1970s reference to “sex roles” may be partially outdated, their ideas still provide a valuable framework. They conclude that “[w]hile this description summarizes the total male role in pure form, it’s obviously unrealistic and unbelievable. We would be hard pressed to think of one man, even a fictional stereotype, who fits all these demands” (David and Brannon 1976, p. 36). These unattainable rules provide rigid boundaries for accepted traditional masculine behavior, have remained consistent for decades, and are used to determine whether someone is sufficiently manly. The power and consistency of these traditional masculine gender expectations place modern men in an extremely difficult bind. On the one hand, men are expected to meet these demands in order to appear sufficiently masculine and avoid being seen as effeminate or “gay.” Men are given powerful messages from the media, family, school, and sometimes religion that men should be wealthy, risk-taking, aggressive, tough, unemotional, powerful, and courageous. On the other hand, the modern United States doesn’t provide many opportunities for sufficiently enacting this kind of “lone wolf” masculinity. In fact, it’s often discouraged in the workplace and in relationships. Following the rules of traditional masculinity doesn’t fit with a modern workplace that generally requires constant communication, cooperation, and collaboration. Following the rules of traditional masculinity also doesn’t fit well with modern relationships that increasingly expect emotionally available partnerships and more equitable sharing of domestic and childcare responsibilities. What’s more, many modern men fully understand and embrace these workplace and relationship expectations, but that doesn’t change the reality of the pervasive messages that our culture sends and that we all (men and women 32 A. MANNO alike) receive about the demands of traditional masculinity. In fact, a 2015 report found that men feel like it’s harder to be a man today than in their father’s generation (“The Shriver Report Snapshot: An Insight into the 21st Century Man” 2016), indicating the tension men feel about successfully enacting traditional masculinity. Is it any wonder then that men feel like there’s little place in their daily lives for them to feel tough, self-reliant, confident, wealthy, aggressive, courageous, and daring? Is it any wonder they sometimes feel they are lacking a way to fulfill the demands of the dominant masculine ideology? Is it any wonder that they look for stand-ins and replacements for what they feel they cannot achieve in their daily lives? Many men feel a disappointment that becomes humiliation (at not feeling able to meet masculine standards of success) and then rage, which sees its expression through the violence pervasive in the media. For those familiar with men’s studies, it is probably no surprise that my work has been influenced by sociologist Michael Kimmel. However, in light of 2018 accusations that he sexually harassed former students, used his power as a prominent academic in an unprofessional way when dealing with female graduate students, and favored male graduate students over female graduate students (Mangan 2018;Flaherty2018; Coston 2018), I am uncomfortable referencing his work. As a result, I have removed extraneous references but have kept those that were central to the formation of my argument about the Poker Mindset, and this is one of those moments. There is a homosocial bonding that goes on around the media of what Kimmel calls “Guyland,” and he sees such media as fixated on escaping the cultural demands of adulthood where the tension exists to meet the competing demands of traditional masculinity and an increasingly progressive and inclusive modern male adulthood. Via the media of “Guyland,” men feel powerful and capable in ways that they don’t otherwise in the real world. Video games, rap music, television, talk radio (including sports radio), and porn are all sites where traditional masculine culture expresses its outrage over its sense of being denied what many men feel they are entitled to: free and easy sex; jobs that quickly lead to money, success, and power; and the means to demonstrate toughness, daring, courage, and strength (Kimmel 2008, pp. 144–168). The pressure to constantly prove masculine worth applies not only to young men (the focus of Kimmel’s Guyland) but to all men in a dominant masculine gender ideology that stresses being “self-made” men (Kimmel 2005,p.39). 2 “ALL IN”: POKER AS A GENDERED SPACE 33

When the demands of traditional masculinity seem in direct conflict with other equally powerful expectations in modern life, problems are bound to arise. The tension caused by the incompatibility of these demands even has a sociological name: GRDS, which occurs “when a man fails to live up to his own internalized or ideal gender role norms, which produces a discrepancy between how he thinks men ought to be and how he perceives himself to be” (Rummel and Levant 2014,p.1). These internalized and idealized masculine gender role norms are created through “social interactions resulting in reinforcement, punishment, and observational learning” (Rummel and Levant 2014,p.1).Becausethey are “contradictory and inconsistent” (Rummel and Levant 2014,p.1), gender rules are often broken as men compare their sense of performed gender identity against the idealized, often unattainable version of traditional masculinity. Navigating these gender rules is complicated business, and most boys quickly learn what behaviors to perform in order to fit into the expectations of traditional masculinity—what anti-violence educator Jackson Katz calls the “gender box” (Katz 2000)—and what behaviors result in punishment for being seen as effeminate. One way that GRDS manifests is through workplace interactions, and research reveals that increasing male participation in “pink collar” jobs (jobs that have traditionally been held primarily by women) such as elementary school teachers, nurses, home health aides, and clerical workers is one area where GRDS occurs. Men who hold pink-collar jobs in traditionally female-dominated professions can have a difficult time performing work that they might see as gendered feminine (Sobiraj et al. 2015, p. 56). Men who work in pink-collar jobs such as early childhood education and health care experience GRDS in the form of “more social stressors with colleagues and superiors” (Sobiraj et al. 2015, p. 54). Not meeting masculine gendered expectations results in “social and economic penalties” (Cheryan et al. 2015, p. 218). One way men deal with not meeting these expectations is to over-compensate and act in a stereotypically masculine way, avoiding anything seen as feminine (Cheryan et al. 2015, p. 219). A study based on questionnaires of one hundred seventy-five men in female-dominated jobs and eighty-eight men in male-dominated jobs revealed that men who “adhered to masculinity ideology tended to have poorer interpersonal competencies, such as conflict-management skills” (Sobiraj et al. 2015,p.56). For example, male clerical workers who were unwilling to complete “deferent” tasks such as getting coffee were viewed negatively by female 34 A. MANNO co-workers (Sobiraj et al. 2015, p. 56). Another example is the field of nursing, which requires that clinical nurses have frequent non-sexual intimate contact with patients in order to provide necessary patient care, but research shows that because touching itself has been feminized, male clinical nurses use fewer non-sexual intimate touches as part of their patient care than female nurses, raising concerns about quality of care (Hard- ing et al. 2008, pp. 88–90). In these examples, the pressure to perform traditional masculinity is at odds with the gendered expectations of pink- collar work, resulting in GRDS. When men fall in line with traditional performances of masculinity, they potentially impede the perception of their effective performance of such work. GRDS helps us understand the appeal of masculine symbolic fantasy spaces like poker.

Masculine Symbolic Fantasy Spaces

The tension between the expectations of traditional masculinity and the demands of modern male adulthood have caused many men to retreat to fantasy spaces of masculine power, symbolic fantasy spaces where men can enact their idealized versions of manliness. Kimmel writes that “the fantasy world of media is both an escape from and an escape to reality—the ‘reality’ that many of these guys secretly would like to inhabit” (Kimmel 2008, p. 150). Kimmel continues: “In their daily lives guys often feel that they don’t quite measure up to the standards of the Guy Code— always be in control, never show weakness, neediness, vulnerability—and so create ideal versions of themselves in fantasy” (Kimmel 2008, p. 150) such as in video games where “violence is restorative, and actions have no consequences whatsoever” (Kimmel 2008, p. 150). In the wildly popular Grand Theft Auto video game series, for example, your virtual self can earn points by gunning down enemies and innocent bystanders alike, running down pedestrians and eluding the police, and having sex with prostitutes and then killing them afterwards. Video games, violent movies, and readily available hardcore pornography that regularizes fantasies of eager-seeming women who are game for being dominated and humiliated in service of male desire all stoke masculine fantasies of power and control. Kimmel notes:

There is an old psychoanalytic maxim that what we lose in reality we re- create in fantasy. And what men believe they have lost is their unchallenged privilege to run the show …. They spend so much of their time being 2 “ALL IN”: POKER AS A GENDERED SPACE 35

bossed around by people—teachers, parents, bosses—it’s really a relief to be the meanest, most violent, and vengeful SOB around. And they spend so much of their lives in a world that is, if not dominated by women, at least is characterized by women’s presumed equality, that it’s nice to turn back the clock and return to a time when men ruled—and no one questioned it. (Kimmel 2008, pp. 155–156)

These fantasy spaces “offer safe risk-taking, power without pain” (Kimmel 2008, p. 158). The fantasy spaces of “Guyland” are troubling, not only due to their masculine “homosocial purity” (Kimmel 2008, p. 167) where men expect to “test themselves against the forces of nature and other men uncorrupted by the feminizing influence of women” (Kimmel 2008, p. 167), but also because they hide a “growing disquiet with guys’ roles in life, and a gnawing sense that what they were told would be theirs is no longer their birthright” (Kimmel 2008, p. 167). These fantasy spaces appeal to men’s sense of their privilege being challenged. Rather than embrace greater gender equality for women and rather than using the tension of GRDS in the service of “[c]hallenging and broadening sex role norms” (Garnets and Pleck 1979, p. 282) in ways will benefit both men and women, many men retreat to fantasy spaces and cling to the ideology of traditional masculinity. Gambling offers men fantasy spaces like Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS), where (predominantly male) players make bets on the daily results of sporting events as “managers” of fantasy teams. (We’ll learn more about DFS in Chapter 5.) Likewise, poker is an especially powerful symbolic fantasy space because it addresses the various rules of the traditional masculinity more directly, I would argue, than any other of these masculine fantasy spaces. Video games and porn appeal to the dictates of the traditional masculinity that focus on excitement, dominance, and aggression, but poker’s more immediate and visceral experience of risk-taking and the accumulation of wealth as status and power makes it an especially potent symbolic fantasy space. While the formal rules of poker make it open to all, the rhetoric of the game is decidedly in line with traditional masculinity. We can see examples of traditional masculinity in the way poker players and those who write about poker describe the game, in the language of poker strategy books, and in films and advertisements about poker. 36 A. MANNO

The Gendered Rhetoric of Poker: Risk and Excitement

The language that professional poker players and commentators on poker use to describe the game powerfully reﬂects the attitudes of traditional masculinity. For example, the language of excitement, risk, and daring can be seen in the way that poker players describe the game and their approach to it. British writer Al Alvarez famously described the Las Vegas poker scene of the early 1980s in The Biggest Game in Town.Alvarez interviewed a number of prominent poker players at the time, and in many of the interviews, the players touch on the allure of risk in poker. Professional poker player Mickey Appleman describes the appeal of poker as being about the “thrill of letting it all hang out. Poker for big money is a high-risk sport, like driving a racing car” (qtd. in Alvarez 2002, p. 61). 1982 World Series of Poker champion Jack Straus says of poker, “If there’s no risk of losing, there’s no high of winning” (qtd. in Alvarez 2002, p. 129). The 2012 documentary All In: The Poker Movie interviews a number of poker players and commentators about poker’s popularity and inﬂuence. Many of those interviewed point to the excitement of the game and the way it adds something not available in day-to-day life. For example, actor and amateur poker player John Marinacci rhapsodizes about risk and the allure of poker:

Whether you admit it or not, we all dream of that moment when we can change everything, when you can reinvent yourself. But rarely does that opportunity ever present itself. And when it does, how many of you would recognize it when it comes? And even if you did, would you have the guts to not just cash in while you’re ahead of the game. But to gamble, to really go for it, go for all of it …. The sort of dreams you never admit to anyone, the dreams you think of before you push in all your chips, the dreams you wish for, with your eyes closed, right before you blow out the candles. (All In: The Poker Movie 2012)

Ironically, Marinacci, an actor on The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire who played characters involved in organized crime, was himself arrested in 2011 for “his role in a mob-connected gambling ring” in New York as a “low-level functionary in a ‘Gambino Bookmaking Enterprise,’ solicit- ing bettors, collecting money and taking a percentage of the losing bets” 2 “ALL IN”: POKER AS A GENDERED SPACE 37

(Gorta 2011). For Marinacci, the allure of risk in poker and gambling in general proved to be his undoing. Notice the following examples where masculinity is not in the foreground, but we can see in each case a desire to abide by traditional masculinity’s stress on risk and excitement. McManus explains: “Men with desk jobs and completely legitimate careers, they find it exciting for a few hours a week or night, to behave like bad boys” (All In: The Poker Movie 2012). Longtime sportswriter Frank Deford says of poker, “There’s nothing more glamorous than to live your own life, to live on the edge, lots of women and good times. If you can find that by playing cards, hey who doesn’t want that?” He continues, “The old time gamblers, what made them so interesting was that they were operating on the edge, they were on the dark side” (All In: The Poker Movie 2012). Matt Damon, who played the lead character in the 1998 film Rounders, which some consider the best movie ever about poker, concurs: “Some people don’t really take those real risks in their lives, and maybe the game is where they can take those risks” (All In: The Poker Movie 2012). Perhaps most famously, Rounders describes the desire for risk and excitement that is embedded in the Poker Mindset. The main character, Mike, is a working-class law school student who is paying for his education by slowly and carefully playing poker for money in the many illegal poker rooms in New York City. At the beginning of the film, we see Mike moving around his apartment while his girlfriend sleeps, gathering up hidden rubber-banded bundles of money, a total of $30,000, his entire “bankroll.” As he’s doing this, we hear Mike’s narration of the scene:

Listen, here’s the thing. If you can’t spot the sucker the ﬁrst half hour at the table, then you are the sucker. Guys around here will tell you, you play for a living. It’s like any job. You don’t gamble. You grind it out. Your goal is to win one big bet an hour. That’s it. Don’t give anything away. That’s how I’ve paid my way through half of law school … a true grinder. See, I learned how to win a little at a time, but ﬁnally I’ve learned this: If you’re too careful, your whole life can be a fuckin’ grind. (Rounders 1998)

As he leaves his apartment, Mike thinks to himself, “They all know me as a small-timer, but that’s about to change. Like Papa Willenda said, ‘Life is on the wire. The rest is waiting’” (Rounders 1998). All of these examples capture the idea that while everyday life offers few chances for risk and excitement, poker provides these experiences. Also implicit in 38 A. MANNO these examples is the idea that the desire for risk is normalized and part of being a “regular guy.” Poker’s allure of risk and excitement functions as a way to mediate the competing expectations of men’s modern daily lives and the demands of the dominant masculinity ideology.

The Gendered Rhetoric of Poker: Competitiveness

Another way that poker players adhere to the dominant masculinity ideology and David and Brannon’s rule “Give ‘Em Hell” is in their ﬁerce competitiveness. In Deal Me In: Twenty of the World’s Top Poker Players Share the Heartbreaking and Inspiring Stories of How They Turned Pro, Mar- vin Karlins and Stephen John interview professional poker players about their attitudes about the game. In these interviews, we see in the players’ thoughts about poker their implicit and sometimes explicit expressions of traditional masculinity. Poker legend Doyle Brunson, a former college basketball star, states that, “I have always loved the competitive aspect of poker and, unlike athletics, where people can only compete at the highest level for a small portion of their lives, poker gives people a chance to compete for as long as they can sit at the tables and keep their wits about them. Poker has given me the chance to satisfy my need to compete” (qtd. in Karlins and John 2009, p. 14). In his seminal poker strategy book Super System: A Course in Power Poker, Brunson again stresses the importance of a competitive spirit: “One of the reasons I feel I’ve been so successful playing Poker is because of the competitive instincts that are within me. You’ve got to play hard to be a consistent winner at poker” (Brunson 2002, p. 12). Brunson states, “Few people realize how intensely competitive you must be to become a good Poker player” (Brunson 2002, p. 26). Howard Lederer points to his childhood of competitive family card games as the impetus for his career in poker: “It was OK—even honorable—to play hard, vanquish your opponent, and remain friends after the contest was over. I developed a love of competition from my father, who was ﬁercely competitive” (qtd. in Karlins and John 2009, p. 28). In the winner-take-all world of poker, where one’s winnings come at the cost of another’s losses, the competitive spirit described here is seen as a masculine virtue, one as at home in the business world as the poker room. 2 “ALL IN”: POKER AS A GENDERED SPACE 39

The Gendered Rhetoric of Poker: Courage, Toughness, and Aggressiveness

In addition to risk and competitiveness, poker players value courage, toughness, and aggressiveness, which embody elements of the “No Sissy Stuff,” “Be a Sturdy Oak,” and “Give ‘Em Hell” rules of traditional masculinity. Brunson notes that he often plays against other poker pros who are his friends, but in such situations, he says of his opponent, “I do my level best to cut his throat and he tries to cut mine …. I go into a Poker game with the idea of completely destroying it” (Brunson 2002, p. 26). Brunson asserts that “Timid players don’t win in high stakes poker” (Brunson 2002, p. 21). Courage “is one of the outstanding characteristics of a really top player” (Brunson 2002,p.34).Inordertowin at poker, you “can’t play a solid, safe game. You must get in there and gamble” (Brunson 2002, p. 420). Outside of the poker table, Brunson’s seeming unquestioned acceptance of traditional masculine values caused controversy in a 2015 series of transphobic tweets criticizing Caitlyn Jen- ner. Brunson wrote (in tweets now deleted): “I remember the pride I felt when Bruce Jenner ran around the track waving an American flag after setting records in the Olympics …. Bruce’s transition to a woman was confirmed today. He may still be some people’s hero, but not me” (“Poker Legend Doyle Brunson: Bruce Jenner’s No Longer My Hero” 2015). Presumably, Jenner’s Olympic achievements were seen by Brun- son as exemplars of the masculine competitive spirit that were betrayed by Jenner’s transition. Lee Nelson et al.’s aptly titled Kill Everyone: Advanced Strate- gies for No-Limit Hold ‘Em Poker Tournaments and Sit-n-Go’s describes a new generation of poker players influenced by Brunson’s hard-charging style of play as “ultra-aggressive” (Nelson et al. 2009,p.1) and “predatory” (Nelson et al. 2009, p. 9). Poker pro Annie Duke justifies taking money from retirees on fixed incomes in poker games: “It sounds kind of ruthless to take money off players betting their retirement money, but it was their choice to gamble that way” (qtd. in Karlins and John 2009, p. 99). Scotty Nguyen uses the language of aggression to describe the motivation for his poker career as essentially revenge and a desire to “break” another player for being verbally abusive and racially insensitive to him: “I didn’t just want to beat him; I wanted to break him” (qtd. in Karlins and John 2009, p. 117). 2001 World Series of Poker Main Event winner Carlos Mortensen (who has the aptly hypermasculine 40 A. MANNO nickname “El Matador”) uses a very aggressive table image to his advantage. He states, “My opponents think I’m very aggressive and even crazy at times. I like that image, because it gives me an advantage over other players …. If I smell weakness, I attack” (qtd. in Karlins and John 2009, pp. 178–179). British pro Dave “Devilfish” Ulliot explicitly uses the language of fighting in his description of his aggressive poker style of play: “I always likened my play to the way Mike Tyson fought. Every single time Tyson threw a punch he didn’t want to knock his opponent down, he wanted to kill the guy. That’s the way I play every hand. I want to put my opponent down for the count” (qtd. in Karlins and John 2009, p. 205). Finally, 2003 World Series of Poker winner Chris Moneymaker embodies the Everyman poker player whose courage made an out-of-work accountant a millionaire overnight and sparked the “poker boom” of the early 2000s. Moneymaker recalls a hand from the 2003 WSOP that wasn’t televised, a hand where he put his tournament life on the line with an extremely aggressive play in the form of a huge bluff that paid off. He writes in his autobiography Moneymaker:

I won bigger, more meaningful pots, and I knocked out or wounded bigger, more meaningful opponents, but no other hand came close to this one for balls and chops and bluster. I mean, this was poker. This was what the game was all about. This was why we played. Forget the luck of the draw, this was about having the stones to hang in there against no luck whatsoever. (Moneymaker 2009, location 2471)

For men like Moneymaker, poker represents what former economics professor and serious amateur player Peter Steiner describes as “a release of aggressions through the legitimized use of hostile and self-serving behavior that may be frowned upon in everyday pursuits” (Steiner 1996,p.6). Writer and poker player Jake Austen concurs, believing that “for most players a weekly game is an escape, a safe place to engage in the fantasies poker allows …. The important thing is that, unlike the fantasies of the armchair quarterback, the poker player is really in the game” (Austen 2003, p. xviii). Austen’s comment captures the special appeal of poker. Unlike fantasy sports or video games or porn, in the fantasy space of live poker, the player is there in the middle of the action and not experiencing the action through surrogates. 2 “ALL IN”: POKER AS A GENDERED SPACE 41

Messages about the desirability of men’s toughness, courage, and aggression are also seen in poker advertising. During the mid to late 2000s, online poker commercials often appeared on network television and the internet, despite the fact that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 made it illegal for internet companies to accept payments for unlawful gambling. Eventually, the most popular sites such as PokerStars and FullTiltPoker were seized by the FBI as part of 2011’s United States v Scheinberg, known to poker players as “Black Friday.” Nevertheless, during the time of their operation, these two most popular poker sites produced many commercials that directly played into ideas about traditional masculinity. Such gambling ads “often display a pre- occupation with heteronormativity and masculinity which continue to be central to the production of gambling discourses including male targets for gambling consumption” (van Igen 2008, p. 11). In one FullTilt commercial called “Anticipation,” we see a man getting ready for a night of poker. Interspersed with this are images of famous poker pros like Phil Ivey, Mike Matusow, Gus Hansen, and Howard Lederer. As this is happening, we hear the following: “Tonight can be a cakewalk or a grind, a heartbreaker or a dream. Tonight, we’ll put it all on the line for a chance to walk out a hero. We don’t know what tonight will bring. We play to find out. We play at FullTiltPoker.com” (“FullTilt Poker Commercial— Anticipation” 2010). In another FullTilt commercial called “Empire,” we see a close up of a poker table and many stacks of poker chips. The narrator says, “This is your city, the empire you built from nothing but cards and courage. It took all night, but the night’s not over, and empires don’t last forever. We play to protect what we’ve built. We play at FullTiltPoker.com” (“Full Tilt Poker Commercial—Empire” 2010). These FullTiltPoker commercials clearly appeal to the traditionally masculine values of risk (“put it all on the line”), courage (“walk out a hero”), and the accumulation and protection of wealth and power (protecting “the empire you built”). It’s also tempting to analyze the title of the latter commercial, “Empire,” as an appeal to the desire for dominance and control, like an emperor who rules over his domain. This rhetoric hearkens back to Wolkomir’s ethnographic study of poker players and the desire for male poker players to be seen as “in command,” “master of my domain,” and “a general” (Wolkomir 2012, p. 412). The rival online poker site PokerStars had its own masculine-focused commercials. In “Poker Stars—We Are Poker—East vs. West,” we see 42 A. MANNO two men at opposite ends of a poker table with a large crowd gathered around watching them play. We hear the following: “We are competition, aggression, calculating. We are trapped, fighting back. We are heroes. We are poker” (“Poker Stars—We Are Poker—East vs. West” 2011). Finally, in another PokerStars commercial, famous poker pro Daniel Negreanu sits across the poker table from one other player. The scene cuts back and forth to a boxing ring, with Negreanu on one side and a muscular boxer on the other side, banging together his boxing gloves in anticipation of fighting. The narrator says: “Tournament poker is about patience, stamina, and mental focus, until eventually you’re heads up and there’s just one more opponent to beat. Are you ready for tournament poker?” (“Daniel Negreanu Boxer TV AD—PokerStars.com” 2010). In both of these ads, poker is connected to combat, and the language of the ads explicitly refers to traditional masculine virtues by including the words “competition” and “aggression.” The ads also appeal to a masculine sense of courage and determination. In all of these examples, poker is clearly equated with traditional masculinity and desired qualities such as risk, excitement, courage, toughness, aggression, and the accumulation of wealth and power. Importantly, poker is also explicitly connected to battle, making the symbolic fantasy space of the poker table a stand-in for the boxing ring or the gladiator’s arena. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that poker is viewed in the media as sport, and as a result it’s important to situate poker within ideas about sport, gaming, and masculinity. As we can see from the examples in this chapter, poker is a highly gendered space, one that reflects and reinscribes the tensions and expectations of traditional masculinity. It is an especially powerful symbolic fantasy space because the poker table provides access to enacting many of the expected gender roles of traditional masculinity in ways that are increasingly difficult in everyday life. The Poker Mindset embodies these gender roles and the values that undergird them. Poker is such a rich fantasy space because it taps into so many of the tensions of our current moment. If the Poker Mindset were restricted to poker, that would still provide some interesting discussion about the problematic gendered nature of an incredibly popular game that has not received enough analysis and attention. However, as the rest of this book will show, the Poker Mindset is hardly restricted to the poker table. Instead, it permeates current debates about social problems such as the toxic masculinity of the Alt-Right, the shift to a casino capitalist economy, the impact of such an economic shift on both blue- and white-collar workers, and the rise in populism as seen 2 “ALL IN”: POKER AS A GENDERED SPACE 43 in the ascendance of Trumpism. As we’ll see next in Chapter 3,theval- ues of the Poker Mindset are part of the larger culture and aminate the grievances of the Alt-Right.

References

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“On Tilt”: The Poker Mindset, Toxic Masculinity, and the Alt-Right

The Poker Mindset is an ideology, a set of taken-for-granted values that are deeply embedded in American ideas of masculinity and economic success. As with any ideology, these values are perpetuated through cultural training by families, education, religion, politics, and business, just to name a few. The Poker Mindset powerfully combines values about gender and the economy in a way that helps us see how traditional masculinity enables neoliberalism and how neoliberalism enables traditional masculinity. Specifically, the focus in traditional masculinity on independence, toughness, competition, and aggression finds perfect expression in neoliberalism. In that economic paradigm, as once famously expressed by conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, “There is no such thing as a society.” Instead, there are only “individual men and women.” Thatcher’s statement epitomizes neoliberalism and its focus on the individual and resulting in the diminution of the state. In such an economic paradigm, the individual is responsible for his own economic success or failure in a highly competitive world of finite resources and where one’s gains necessarily come from others’ losses. As a result, the perfect neoliberal subject embodies traditional masculinity in its expressions of toughness, independence, and aggression. In such a competitive world, success is always possible for those who are seen as deserving by having embraced the values of the Poker Mindset. Problems arise, though, when those who feel entitled to success through adherence

© The Author(s) 2020 47 A. Manno, Toxic Masculinity, Casino Capitalism, and America’s Favorite Card Game, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40260-0_3 48 A. MANNO to such values feel thwarted and challenged by others who are seen as not playing by the same established rules. As Chapter 2 demonstrated, the poker table is the most obvious place to ﬁnd the Poker Mindset at work. After all, gambling in general is gendered masculine, poker is often portrayed as a sport, and the poker table can be an extremely sexist and misogynist space where players are “all in” in terms of over-conforming to traditional masculinity. The rhetoric of poker as seen in the words of prominent poker players, poker strategy books, movies, and commercials reinforce cultural messages about traditional masculinity. In addition to the Poker Mindset illuminating the gendered nature of poker, this mindset also provides a lens through which we can more clearly see several major features or trends of US society today, namely the sexism and misogyny of the Alt-Right, the shift to a neoliberal casino capitalist economy, the impact of such an economic shift on workers, and the rise of Trumpism. These are the areas the rest of this book will explore. In particular, this chapter will examine how the hypermasculine ideology of the Poker Mindset reveals why the Alt-Right is on the rise.

The Poker Mindset as a Way to Examine the Alt-Right

The Poker Mindset is a way to understand current interrelated extremist Alt-Right groups such as white nationalists, Men’s Rights Advocates (MRAs), Pickup Artists (PUAs), Involuntary Celibates (Incels), and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW). This chapter will provide an overview of each of these extremist groups and then analyze three case studies that reveal how our understanding is deepened when using the Poker Mind- set as a lens. This chapter will consider how the Poker Mindset helps us understand the grievances of the Alt-Right and Alt-Right-inspired or Alt-Right-style figures. Examining how the Poker Mindset animates the grievances of the Alt-Right helps us understand where those grievances originate and what ideology drives the toxic masculinity and casino capitalist attitudes of the Alt-Right and those it influences. It’s only by thinking about the ideology of the Poker Mindset—which represents damaging ideas about the roles of men and women, what men are entitled to, and how to achieve success in our neoliberal economy and at what cost—that we can identify ways to combat these ideas on a systemic level 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 49 rather than seeing members of the Alt-Right as lone wolves, mentally dis- turbed, and not like the rest of us. In fact, the actions of the Alt-Right, which are condemned as racist, sexist, and xenophobic, are another example of over-conforming to the ideologies of gender, race, and neoliberal notions of achieving the American Dream that make up the Poker Mindset. Rather than pathologizing these individuals, we should critically examine the belief system that created them and to which so many Amer- icans unquestioningly subscribe. Another reason it’s important to examine the ideology of the Alt-Right is because hate crimes are on the rise in the United States, up 12.5 percent in 2017 and the fourth consecutive year with an increase (Levin and Reitzel 2018, p. 3). According to a study of ten major US cities, the most common type of hate crimes in 2017 were anti-Black, anti-Latino, anti-gay, and anti-Semitic (Levin and Reitzel 2018, p. 8). Further, anti- Muslim hate crimes were up ninety-nine percent between 2014 and 2016 (Levin and Reitzel 2018, p. 27). These hate crimes are committed in a climate of intolerance that is propagated by the damaging rhetoric of the Alt-Right. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there have been thirteen “alt-right fatal episodes, leaving 43 dead and more than 60 injured” with nine occurring in 2017 (Hankes and Amend 2018). The killers were almost all white men under the age of thirty and “all share a history of consuming and/or participating in the type of far-right ecosystem that defines the alt-right” (Hankes and Amend 2018), from 4chan and Reddit to white nationalist and Men’s Rights sites. These online spaces tend to share common ideas: white identity is under attack by multiculturalism, political correctness, and feminism, with the “dark engine of the movement … [being] reactionary male resentment” (Hankes and Amend 2018) over perceived losses. The online spaces of the Alt-Right perpetuate these messages in order “to nourish the precise grievances recited by the disillusioned and indignant young men that dominate its ranks” (Hankes and Amend 2018). These messages aptly explain to Alt- Right adherents why aggrieved young men “don’t have the jobs or the sexual partners or the overall societal and cultural respect” (Hankes and Amend 2018) to which they believe—and to which these messages reaffirm—are entitled. Tellingly, the online radicalization of young men via the Alt-Right doesn’t typically begin by encounters with racist rhetoric, but instead with the sexist and misogynistic rhetoric of online Men’s Rights spaces. These spaces stoke the anger, sense of entitlement, and 50 A. MANNO fear of lost privilege that target feminism, multiculturalism, and political correctness as enemies. These grievances can act as a gateway to white nationalist ideology (Hankes and Amend 2018), especially as the United States still grapples with the impact of post-industrialism, the lingering effects of the Great Recession of 2008, the weakening of the social safety net, a growing opioid epidemic that is claiming the lives of whites at high rates, and the fear of demographic change as the United States heads toward becoming a country with white people in the statistical minority. More generally, between 2000 and 2018, there have been seventy mass shootings in the United States. Only two of those were by women acting alone, and one by a man and a woman acting together. All the rest were committed by men (Pan et al. 2018). While not all of these men were motivated by the Alt-Right, they were motivated by misguided and damaging notions of masculinity that can be directly connected to the Poker Mindset. If we’re to see how the Poker Mindset animates the grievances of the Alt-Right, it’s important to understand the different groups that make up the Alt-Right and their motivations. In addition to describing some of the different elements of the Alt-Right, this chapter will also present three case studies of infamous figures who are all connected through the Alt-Right and its ideology. Such case studies are helpful because they provide more in-depth narratives through which we can see the Poker Mindset at work. The Poker Mindset helps us tie together these disparate case studies and make better sense of the actions of these figures.

Defining the Alt-Right

The Alt-Right is a fundamentally sexist, racist, and white nationalist movement that mostly operates online and anonymously (Hawley 2017, pp. 3, 11). Unlike traditional conservatism, the Alt-Right doesn’t care about “moral traditionalism, economic liberty, and strong national defense” (Hawley 2017, p. 4). Also, unlike traditional conservativism, “the Alt- Right views the world as being fundamentally divided into competing groups, and the success of their group (whites) is their primary concern” (Hawley 2017, p. 18). It is a radicalized version of conservatism as seen in its rejection of the fundamental American notions of liberty and equality (Hawley 2017, p. 5). The rise of the Alt-Right coincides with the weakening of traditional conservatism, which has in the past “long served as an important gatekeeper” (Hawley 2017, p. 7) of right-wing beliefs 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 51 perceived as extremist but that would have previously been marginalized. Further, disruptive forces like the Alt-Right have the goal of displacing mainstream conservatism altogether (Hawley 2017,p.7). The “extremist ideology” (Hawley 2017, p. 8) of the Alt-Right has several key goals: stopping mass immigration, legitimizing white identity politics, resisting gender equality, and combatting political correctness (Hawley 2017, pp. 16–17). The focus of the first two of these goals is seen in the Alt-Right’s desire to create a “white ethnostate in North America” (Hawley 2017, p. 11). Richard Spencer, a key Alt-Right figure, advocates for such a white ethnostate and makes comparisons to the goals of the Alt-Right and those of Zionism in what Spencer calls their “identitarian” agenda (qtd. in Hawley 2017, p. 15). However, the Alt-Right is “unlike any racist movement we have ever seen. It is atomized, amorphous, predominantly online, and mostly anonymous” (Hawley 2017,p.3).As we’ll see, this contributes to the ability to radicalize new adherents. Haw- ley also argues that the Alt-Right hasn’t engaged in violent terrorism, but mainly online harassment (Hawley 2017, p. 12), and at the time of the publication of his research that might have been true, but that changed in the summer of 2017 with the Alt-Right “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia when a car slammed into a group of counter- protestors. One woman, Heather Heyer, was killed, and the driver, James Alex Fields, Jr., who participated in the white nationalist rally, was charged with first-degree murder (Hartung and Simon 2018). The white nationalists of the Alt-Right attempt to distinguish themselves from white supremacists. According to such Alt-Right thinking, while white supremacists see whites as superior and want a society of multiple races where whites are dominant, white nationalists often deny white superiority and desire a complete separation of whites and non- whites (Hawley 2017, p. 13). Hawley argues that the term “white nationalism” was “invented to make white-supremacist views more palatable” (Hawley 2017, p. 13). Regardless of whether white nationalist or white supremacist, these groups are motivated by the winner-take-all ideology of the Poker Mindset that sees the world in terms of constant competition for scarce resources and a deep sense of aggrieved entitlement via a perceived loss of power and privilege. Kimmel defines aggrieved entitlement as “that sense that those benefits to which you believed yourself entitled have been snatched away from you by unseen forces larger and more powerful” (Kimmel 2013,p.18). 52 A. MANNO

The Alt-Right uses “irony and humor” and “presents itself as a fun movement” (Hawley 2017, p. 20), which positions its racist views in a way that creates a broader appeal than more traditional white supremacist rhetoric (Hawley 2017, p. 25). An important part of this tactic is the use of online memes, which proliferate with ease and perpetuate both Alt- Right ideology and the practice of trolling as a crucial form of that pro- liferation. For example, Pepe the Frog (which depicts the cartoon head of a frog) is a meme that was appropriated by the Alt-Right from larger online culture and has become the de facto logo of the movement. Sim- ilarly, the Moon Man meme appropriates a 1980s McDonalds restaurant character for racist ends (Hawley 2017, p. 84). The Alt-Right also uses anti-Semitic memes such as placing triple parentheses around the names of Jewish public figures in order to “mark” then for easier targeting in online trolling (Hawley 2017,p.83). Further, the #draftourdaughters Twitter hashtag is a sexist meme that encourages women to enlist in the military to fight in a war with Russia that would be instigated by Hillary Clinton. This meme mocks both Clinton as hawkish on military intervention and attacks the notion that women should be on the front lines in the battlefield (Hawley 2017, p. 82). Another powerful sexist meme used by the Alt-Right is the labeling of men as “cucks,” which refers to cuckolds whose female partners have sex with other men. Such a label casts any man who opposes the anti-feminist rhetoric of the Alt-Right as weak and effeminate. Further, the related meme “cuckservative” refers to white conservative politicians who do not endorse the beliefs of the Alt-Right and who, as a result, cannot see that they are, according to the Alt-Right ideology, acting against their own interests as white men by not more strongly advocating the goals of white male identity politics (Hawley 2017,p.94).Alsorelated is the final meme that will be touched on here, the “red pill” (Hawley 2017, p. 83), a particularly powerful Alt-Right meme. This meme refers to the 1999 dystopian science fiction film The Matrix, in which the pro- tagonist Neo is offered a choice: take a blue pill and remain blissfully ignorant in his current life or take the red pill, which reveals the truth of his situation. When Neo takes the red pill, he wakes up and sees that he has been living as a prisoner in a virtual reality created by machines with artificial intelligence that have enslaved humans as energy for their computer systems. We can see the ideology of the Poker Mindset at work in the cuck/cuckservative, #draftourdaugthers, and “red pill” memes. These 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 53 memes draw from the hypermasculine, sexist, and misogynistic thinking of the Poker Mindset. The sexist and misogynistic #draftourdaughters meme points out supposed hypocrisy in feminism by using the idea that if women really want equality, they should be drafted into the military in times of war as are men. The assumption of this sexist meme is that women, when faced with this reality, will hypocritically cling to traditional notions of gender roles (traditional notions supported by the Alt-Right “manosphere”) rather than fight. In addition, painting Hillary Clinton as hawkish on military conflicts suggests that she is not conforming to expected notions of traditional femininity. The “cuck” meme mocks perceived weakness in men for not sufficiently embodying traditional masculine notions of strength, courage, and independence. Finally, the “red pill” meme powerfully reflects the aggrieved entitlement of the Poker Mindset. In the worldview of the Poker Mindset, men (and especially straight, white men) are increasingly victimized in a society that takes them for granted and takes away their jobs, their respect, and their assumed place of privilege in society. They believe that most men blindly and unthinkingly follow the new and unfair rules that are dominated by ideas about feminism and multiculturalism and want them to “take the red pill” and wake up and fight back. It’s worth taking the time here to examine some of the cultural forces that motivate the Alt-Right and how these forces are linked to the Poker Mindset.

What Motivates the Alt-Right?

What motivates the anger, racism, and sexism of the Alt-Right? First, while it’s true that a small number of America’s white men have bene- fited from the increased concentration of wealth in the last four decades, the vast majority of white men have been downwardly mobile, and some are very angry about it. Real income for most white men has fallen since the 1990s and had been flat since the 1970s. Median income for a family of four decreased between 1971 and 2000 by six thousand dollars in adjusted dollars. Eighty percent of jobs lost as a result of the recession of 2008 were held by men (Kimmel 2013, p. 10). In such a reality, winner- take-all views take hold, and “gender and racial equality feels like a loss to white men: if ‘they’ gain, ‘we’ lose” (Kimmel 2013, p. 16). Many white men as a result have the perception that the loss of cultural power, power that was once taken for granted, is caused by such increased equality and that “immigrants,” “multiculturalism,” and “feminism” are causes of their 54 A. MANNO diminished economic conditions. This thinking about jobs and income reflects the Poker Mindset’s neoliberal economic ethos of competition and perceived scarcity as normalized. Interestingly, Alt-Right adherents are generally “more optimistic about the current and future states of the economy than non-supporters” (Forscher and Kteilly 2017,p.22).While this thinking might seem counterintuitive and hard to explain, there is a certain logic to it if one accepts the ideology of the Poker Mindset and its unquestioned belief in individual merit. If one assumes that the current economic system is fair and rewards hard work and effort for those who are seen as deserving recipients of those rewards, then those who are seen as undeserving are perceived threats to the system who are unfairly benefitting and taking away resources from those who deserve it. For example, when minorities are perceived as benefitting unfairly from governmental assistance and affirmative action and when immigrants are perceived as taking jobs away from more deserving Americans, then minorities and immigrants are seen as dangerous impediments to the system operating as it should. Significantly, the Poker Mindset fails to examine how larger systems of inequality and privilege are actually the causes of many of the problems that post-industrial men face. The crucial reality is that the very forces that Alt-Right adherents demonize—feminism, multiculturalism, and those fighting for reasonable governmental regulations on industry and against the power of billionaires to influence the political system unfairly—are advocating for conditions that would ultimately benefit everyone not in the top one percent. We see the anger of downwardly mobile men connected to the Alt- Right through the Poker Mindset in the age at which men become Alt- Right adherents. The demographic most likely to be recruited into the Alt-Right are “white men between about 14 and 30, underemployed and frustrated with their lives” (Neiwert 2018). Young white men are increasingly “returning home to live with their parents, remaining unemployed or underemployed for a long time, and their resentment grows. They also have a lot of free time to spend on the Internet” (Hawley 2017,p.79). White nationalist Greg Johnson described a new generation of potential Alt-Right recruits as “intelligent, educated, and ambitious. They are also unemployed, idle, angry and searching for answers” (qtd. in Hawley 2017, p. 79). These unemployed or underemployed young white men are more susceptible to online radicalization and serious questioning of the status quo as this demographic is increasingly unmoored from markers of 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 55 middle-class entrenchment such as secure employment, greater financial security, and financial, career, and family responsibilities. The process for this online radicalization takes a fairly standard path: “Disaffected young men are recruited by overt appeals to their egos and desire to appear heroic. The appeals often employ transgressive rhetoric, with everything from racist humor to threats of violence, making participants feel that they’re being edgy and dark. The main fodder for their evolving worldview, however, is conspiracy theories” (Neiwert 2018). These conspiracy theories function to uphold the worldview of the Poker Mindset and provide a rationale for a sense of aggrieved entitlement built around following the rules of success of traditional masculinity. Kimmel argues that American men have a reason to be angry because they have played by the masculine rules of the game, but the promise of success has been unfulfilled: “Most American men live in a system in which they were promised a lot of rewards if they played by the rules. If they were good, decent, hardworking men, if they saddled up, or, even more accurately, if they got into the harness themselves, they would feel the respect of their wives and their children; if they fought in America’s wars and served their country fighting fires and stopping crime, they’d have the respect of their communities. And most important, if they were loyal to their colleagues and workmates, did an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay then they’d also have the respect of other men” (Kimmel 2013, pp. 26–27). The ideology of masculinity upon which these rules of the game are based is destructive and self-defeating, often leaving men “feeling empty and alone when we’ve done it right, and even worse when we feel like we’re doing it wrong” (Kimmel 2013, p. 9). This “adherence to traditional ideals of masculinity leaves so many white men feeling entitled to [the American Dream] …. And so now they are feeling cheated, unhappy, and unfulfilled” (Kimmel 2013, p. 15). Using the terminology of poker, these men can be seen as being “on tilt.” That phrase, when used in the context of poker, means that a player, having suffered a major loss at the poker table, acts without careful consideration of one’s actions. Instead, the poker player who is “on tilt” is guided by strong negative emotions such as frustration, anger, and aggression rather than by reason. When applying the phrase outside of the poker table, we can see the men that Kimmel describes as “on tilt” because they are frustrated and angry about their situations and lash out at perceived threats that are motivated more by emotion than by reason and evidence. Through playing by the culturally accepted rules or traditional masculinity and neoliberalism—that is, 56 A. MANNO the values of the Poker Mindset—these men expected their adherence to toughness, strength, competition, and individualism entitled them to success, and they lash out when that success eludes them. In doing so, they uphold the current system rather than question it. Research also tells us that Alt-Right adherents are much more likely to be “distrustful of … mainstream media and government” (Forscher and Kteily 2017, p. 2), “reported high levels of aggression” and “exhibited extreme levels of intergroup bias, including blatant dehumanization of racial minorities” (Forscher and Kteily 2017, p. 2). They see themselves as “less advantaged” than minority groups and see “discrimination against groups like whites and men as more of a problem than that against women and Blacks” (Forscher and Kteily 2017, p. 22). Further, adherents “feel that the social positions of their favored groups are under threat” and “expressed hostility that could be considered extremist” with “high levels of harassing and offensive behavior” (Forscher and Kteily 2017,p.22). All of these characteristics feed the sense of aggrieved entitlement of the Alt-Right. Because they adhere to the values of the Poker Mindset, these men see the world as a zero-sum game, so their perceived losses are seen as a result of corresponding gains by less deserving groups of people. This sense of aggrieved entitlement explains the animus toward women, minorities, and the forces of progressivism that the Alt-Right characterizes as wrongful political correctness. The work of the Alt-Right has been to try and restore that which they feel has been taken away by racial progress, immigration, feminism, LGBTQ rights, etc. However, rather than examine the institutional forces that have resulted in their disenfranchisement (increasing income inequality, stagnant wages, increasing college costs and staggering amounts of student loan debt, ever-increasing deregulation of industry, the dismantling of the social safety net, the influence of corporate money in politics, etc.), the aggrieved entitlement of the Alt-Right results in the “misdirected anger” that is the “central dynamic” and in the scapegoating women, minorities, and immigrants (Kimmel 2013, pp. 24–25). Just like the game of poker, because the Alt-Right views the world essentially as a winner-take-all game, the gains of one group are seen as the inevitable losses of another. Not surprisingly, Alt-Right adherents are likely to demonstrate authoritarian tendencies (Forscher and Kteily 2017, p. 2). Authoritarians view gender roles as natural and unchangeable, and this worldview guides the authoritarian’s life choices (Peterson and Zurbiggen 2010, pp. 1803, 1820). Authoritarianism is “activated and aggravated” by challenges to 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 57 the cultural status quo (Feldman 2016, p. 765) and is connected to prej- udice against nonnormative groups seen as challenging the morality of that status quo and more specifically against LGBTQ people (Crawford et al. 2015, p. e31). It is instructive to look back to another authoritarian moment in history as a way to contextualize our present moment. Erich Fromm examines the authoritarian tendency seen in the rise of the Third Reich in his 1941 Escape from Freedom, concluding that it stems from an “unbearable feeling of powerlessness” that is resolved by becoming “part of the bigger and more powerful whole outside of oneself, to submerge and participate in it” in order to gain its power (Fromm 1994, pp. 140, 154). We see examples of this in both the Alt-Right as a movement (including rallies such as “Unite the Right”) and in the support of authoritarian figures such as Donald Trump. We can see manifestations of authoritarian tendencies in the different groups that make up the Alt- Right.

White Nationalists

According to Jim Carrier of The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPL), white nationalists believe that “‘white identity’ is under attack by multi- cultural forces using ‘political correctness’ and ‘social justice’ to undermine white people and ‘their’ civilization” (Carrier 2017,p.4).White nationalist Richard Spencer, who according to the SPL advocates “traditional values,” is anti-immigration and is a “race realist” who believes in pseudo-scientiﬁc claims of white superiority and black inferiority (“Alt- Right: The White Nationalist’s Alternative to Conservatism” 2016, pp. 4– 5). The Alt-Right’s focus on American Identitarianism has been inﬂu- enced by European Identitarianism, which “emphasizes cultural and racial homogeneity within different countries” (“Alt-Right: The White Nation- alist’s Alternative to Conservatism” 2016, p. 5). Identitarianism is a racist and xenophobic far-right ideology that opposes globalization, multiculturalism, and mass immigration and supports a culturally homogenous white ethnostate. There are a growing number of Alt-Right blogs, websites, and online forums, including Alternative Right, American Renais- sance, and The Right Stuff Blog. However, most people learn about the views of the Alt-Right from Reddit, Twitter, and 4chan (“Alt-Right: The White Nationalist’s Alternative to Conservatism” 2016, p. 5). These online spaces provide the “digital infrastructure,” “information environment,” and “online culture” that foster hate groups (Klein 2017,p.5). 58 A. MANNO

Online hate sites can be seen as a spectrum that range from “self- identifying white supremacist sites, to the less obvious faux-social networks and community forums, to the faux information and research websites, to finally a few domains considered by some to be ‘mainstream’ political organizations, but whose pages commonly publish or host racist content” (Klein 2017, p. 9). Klein coins the term “information laundering” to refer to the process whereby “the constructs of cyberspace—primarily search engines, political blogs, and social networks—can unwittingly transform it into a loose form of web-based knowledge” (Klein 2017, p. 9). These spaces are designed for the internet user so that they “appear as educational, political, scientific, and even spiritual” (Klein 2017, p. 9). In this way, radicalization can occur whereby those visiting “mainstream” sites can encounter increasingly racist content over time as radicalization occurs. In addition, research shows that Alt-Right adherents can be separated into two general categories: populist/anti-establishment and supremacist (Forscher and Kteily 2017, p. 22). Researchers speculate that these two categories can be seen as development stages of white supremacist thinking, with adherents beginning their radicalization as populists before moving on to becoming supremacists (Forscher and Kteily 2017, p. 22). This research supports Hankes and Amend’s contention that most Alt-Right adherents begin their radicalization with more populist sexist and misogynistic Men’s Rights sites as a gateway to white nationalism. It’s not surprising, then, that white nationalists espouse sexist and misogynist views in addition to racists views. For example, a number of white nationalists call for “White Sharia,” making an explicit connection to Islamic Sharia law. White nationalist and former Marine Sacco Vandal, creator of the Alt-Right VandalVoid blog, advocates for “extreme” patriarchy and argues that “We have to strip females of suffrage and most if not all political, legal, and economic power” and “Our men need harems, and the members of those harems need to be baby factories” (qtd. in Kelley 2017). Hacker and online troll Andrew Auernheimer wrote the following in the neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer: “Man up, put women under your heel, throw away their birth control and make them bear your children and take care of your house. If they resist, discipline them. … All we are pushing for is a return to the status of women we had in the early 19th century before Jews and their feminism ruined our civilization. This should not be controversial. If you are opposing WHITE SHARIA 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 59 because you disagree with women being reduced to the status of property to be beaten and fucked at the whims of her husband, you are a faggot and a cuckold” (qtd. in Hankes and Amend 2018). Auernheimer clearly seems like a man who is “on tilt” and motivated by anger and frustration. While extreme, this thinking is an example of over-conforming to the Poker Mindset and reflects its entitlement-focused, sexist, and winner- take-all thinking. It also reflects the racist idea that if white women have more babies, the “white race” will grow. The Poker Mindset encapsulates the zero-sum thinking that animates both homophobia and racism.

Men’s Rights Advocates and Father’s Rights Groups While the media in recent years has portrayed the Alt-Right as primarily white nationalists (for example, the Charlottesville rally of 2017), other groups are part of the Alt-Right umbrella. It’s important to see them as part of the Alt-Right because they, too, reflect the ideology of the Poker Mindset, with damaging consequences. Men’s Rights Advocates and Father’s Rights groups are more focused on issues of gender than on issues of race, but there is certainly some overlap. The Men’s Rights movement came about in the 1960s in response to divorce reform and the gains of feminism (Dragiewicz 2011, p. 13). It was “born in parallel critique of the male sex role” (Kimmel 2013, p. 108). In other words, while the women’s liberation movement, seen most notably in Betty Friedan’s 1963 The Feminine Mystique, argued that women were trapped and stifled by their culturally constructed gender roles as housewives, men’s libera- tionists in the early 1970s argued that men, too, were trapped, but in their roles as stoic workers and providers (Kimmel 2013, pp. 103–104). Prob- lematically, these Men’s Rights Advocates saw men’s oppression by the male gender role as equal to women’s oppression (Kimmel 2013, p. 104) and failed to acknowledge the power of patriarchy, their male privilege, and the patriarchal dividend from which they benefitted in such a system. Betty Friedan in the tenth anniversary edition of The Feminine Mystique acknowledged men’s roles as a problem for men (Kimmel 2013, p. 104). However, by the 1980s, the Men’s Rights movement decided that women were to blame, and more specifically, feminism (Kimmel 2013, p. 107). Men’s Rights groups share a number of complaints in common about feminism. They believe that: 60 A. MANNO

• Feminism is defamatory, oppressive and obsolete • Feminism threatens the nation • Feminism is an affront to Christianity • Feminism strikes at fatherhood and the family • Feminism monopolizes the media and throttles free speech • Feminism subverts men’s rights and unleashes judicial bias • Feminism endangers men’s health and safety (qtd. in Dragiewicz 2011,p.14).

These attitudes reﬂect the fear of losing perceived advantages of traditional masculinity. There appears to be a breakdown in logic in the grievances of the Men’s Rights movement. On the one hand, Men’s Rights Advocates criticize women for enslaving men in the traditional male gender role as providers while spending the man’s money and not providing enough sex. On the other hand, they claim that they want traditional women who are homemakers (Kimmel 2013, p. 108). What links these two perspectives is a view of modern American women as money-grubbing and self-interested. MRAs fantasize about women who are willing to set aside their own lives and make obeying and serving their husbands their primary function. This seeming contradiction results in many MRAs making complaints about American women and arguing that US men should look for foreign women who are traditional, docile (supposedly unlike American women), not materialistic (again unlike American women), and supposedly more likely to want to please her man. A recent upswing in interest in mail-order brides is one possible example of this. Anastasia- Date, a leading online dating website that primarily connects American men with white Eastern European women, had about four million users in 2013 (Vandermey 2013) and a 2014 projected revenue of one hundred forty million dollars. The men featured on the web site’s testimonials are “sick of western women, whom they insist have forgotten ‘family values’” (Walker 2014). We see this sexist and archaic view of women in the form of “intellec- tual” provocateur Jordan Peterson. Just as Richard Spencer has become one of the leading voices of Alt-Right white nationalists, Peterson is such a voice for Alt-Right Men’s Rights Advocates. Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, believes that current hierarchies work and are good and natural. He asserts that “the current [gender] hierarchy [with men at the top] might be predicated on competence” 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 61

(qtd. in Bowles 2018), suggesting that things are the way they are not because of systemic power imbalances that prevent women, minorities, and immigrants from having the same opportunities as white men, but instead because white men are just better and deserve such a place on the hierarchy. Commenting on the April 23, 2018 car attack in Toronto by self-described “Incel” Alek Minassian (Crilly et al. 2018) that killed ten and injured fifteen, Peterson noted that “Violent attacks are what happens when men do not have partners, and society needs to work to make sure those men are married” and argues that the solution is “forced monogamy” (qtd. in Bowles 2018). Clearly, Peterson embodies the Poker Mindset in his dogged defense of white male privilege and an essentialist notion of gender that presumes men will inevitably resort to violence if they don’t have access to women in the ways in which they feel entitled. Traditional masculinity sees all men as sexual predators who are prone to violence and unable to suppress their urges. Such an attitude helps rationalize Peterson’s essentialist notions of gender and undergirds rape culture. Men’s Rights websites cultivate these attitudes about women and “blame feminism for giving women too much power that has, in effect, subordinated men” (Schmitz and Kazyak 2016, p. 8), with one common variety of Men’s Rights website providing a “breadth of lifestyle advice aimed at empowering men and encouraging them to unapologetically embrace their masculinity” (Schmitz and Kazyak 2016, p. 6). These websites also act as spaces for denigrating women in general and progressives for “stripping the modern man of power” (Schmitz and Kazyak 2016, p. 6). The most common themes seen in this variety of Men’s Rights websites are “Homosocial Policing of Masculinity, The Evils of Feminism, and Women as Sexual Commodities” (Schmitz and Kazyak 2016,p.6). A second variety of Men’s Rights websites focuses on men as victims in a culture that increasingly demonstrates misandry (Schmitz and Kazyak 2016, p. 8). The most common themes in this variety of website are “Men in Crisis, Combating Institutional Misandry and Delegitimizing Women’s Issues” (Schmitz and Kazyak 2016,p.8). The interests of Father’s Rights groups and anti-feminist Men’s Rights groups often overlap (Dragiewicz 2011, p. 13), with Father’s Rights groups considered a branch of the Men’s Rights movement. While Father’s Rights groups have some legitimate concerns about sometimes antiquated laws and practices related to alimony and child support (Kimmel 2013, p. 140), the focus of advocacy of Father’s Rights groups 62 A. MANNO has been decidedly anti-feminist. Specifically, Father’s Rights groups have tried to weaken women’s positions in domestic abuse cases by arguing that (as in Booth v Hvass in 2003) domestic abuse is “gender-neutral” (Dragiewicz 2011, p. 2), ignoring the fact that women are vastly disproportionately overrepresented as victims of domestic abuse. Dragiewicz connects the claims of Father’s Rights groups to Allan Johnson’s notion of patriarchy and the idea that “women’s interests are marginalized and men’s interests are equated with the general public interest …. One example … is the claim that violence is a ‘human issue’ rather than a ‘gender issue’” (Dragiewicz 2011, p. 21). She also refers to Johnson’s related idea that women are made invisible when they act in ways that might help women’s position, while men are made invisible when their privilege is questioned (Dragiewicz 2011, p. 24). Anti-feminist attacks don’t want to address violence against women. These attacks “undermine feminism” (Dragiewicz 2011, p. 50) and don’t want to examine such violence as a gendered phenomenon (Dragiewicz 2011, p. 51). Father’s Rights groups see all research that connects patriarchy with violence as ideologically motivated rather than as evidence (Dragiewicz 2011, p. 53). These anti-feminists argue that men are battered but few men report it out of shame (Dragiewicz 2011,p.53),soifmenarebatteredthenvio- lence can’t be gendered (Dragiewicz 2011, p. 53). These men point to rigid gender norms as the reason they don’t report battering by women (Dragiewicz 2011, p. 54), but on the other hand, they see violence as naturalized via gender roles: “Above all they point to the threat of fem- inization in patriarchal societies and the shaming tactics used to punish men who fail to dominate their wives or partners” (Dragiewicz 2011, p. 54). The faulty logic of Father’s Rights advocates is clear: they use restrictive gender roles to explain why men don’t report domestic abuse by women against men and to explain the pressure on men to act violently in relationships while at the same time arguing that domestic violence isn’t gendered because women can be batterers as well. Such a view results in claims that “rape culture is a feminist-produced moral panic” and can act to “mobilize young men and to exploit their anxieties about shifting consent standards and changing gender norms” (Gotell and Dutton 2016, p. 65). Father’s Rights groups are also motivated by what they see as unfair legal systems that use misandry and harmful male gender roles that punish men through child custody and alimony. Kimmel makes the point 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 63 that the main complaint of Father’s Rights groups is that they want more time for relationships with their kids, and this desire reflects changing notions of parenting that are the result of feminism, the very thing these Father’s Rights groups are deriding. Likewise, Messner makes the case that while the system can “screw” men regarding custody, child support, and alimony, the larger pattern reveals that in intact hetero families, there is a great deal of “father absence” (qtd. in Jaye 2016),andsowhenmen say they want to be involved after divorces, that seems not in keeping with these larger patterns. Messner advocates for full equality before divorces in order to expect it after divorces (Jaye 2016). This last point is important, as full equality is a direct challenge to the values of traditional masculinity that still often define hetero relationships in terms of divisions of labor by which men are economic providers and women are domestic caretak- ers, this even though many women work outside the home. This view of gender relations by Father’s Rights adherents as primarily economic relationships reflects the way that the Poker Mindset embodies both the attitudes of traditional masculinity and neoliberal capitalism.

Pickup Artists

Another example of the toxic masculinity of the Alt-Right that reflects the values of the Poker Mindset at work is seen in the Pickup Artist community. Pickup Artists see the women as conquests to be had if a man has strong enough seduction skills or “Game.” There are multiple PUA forums and websites that purport to teach men to use seduction skills and tricks on women to parlay into sex. There are even video games that focus on PUA strategies. Sexist PUA sites like RooshV and Return of Kings advocate traditional gender roles, bemoan American women as spoiled and entitled, urge American men to find foreign women who are more “eager to please,” and believe that when it comes to “Game,” “no” really means “not yet.” Pickup Artists are driven by the idea that seduction skills and tricks accomplished through strategic interactions with women are the basis of success in attaining sex with women, rather than other markers of such success like appearance, social status, or income level (Hambling-Jones and Merrison 2012, p. 1116). This way of thinking connects to the Poker Mindset rather clearly. Rather than examining systems of inequality to interrogate their impact on interpersonal relationships, PUAs instead look at themselves as individual actors responsible for their own success 64 A. MANNO with women through the best use of “Game.” In such a mindset, men are sexual predators and seduction is competition. Hambling-Jones and Merrison bear out this line of thinking and provide an example of the valuing of risk of the Poker Mindset in Pickup Artists when they refer to the PUA as “every bit the gambler” and for whom “risky play can have high payoffs” (Hambling-Jones and Merrison 2012, p. 1126). Such a framing of PUA as gambler epitomizes the Poker Mindset through seeing gender relations as a highly economic transaction. Daryush Valizadeh, known as RooshV on his online blog of the same name, is a leading voice in the PUA community and shares his views on PUA strategies and his personal philosophy in both his blog and his Bang series of books, which are in essence PUA travelogues chron- icling his adventures around the world on his quest “to get laid.” His blog was included in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s 2012 report on US hate groups and his Bang Iceland book was labeled a “rape guide” by Icelandic feminists (Baker 2013, p. 8). While Valizadeh is critical of American women who he characterizes as greedy and demanding, he also bemoans the women of other countries that have progressive women- friendly policies and vigorous social safety nets. For example, Valizadeh rails against the Danish government and its women because his “game” is less likely to work there due to the government’s support of women and greater gender equality (Baker 2013, pp. 8–9). Baker writes, “He’s not wrong. Several of Denmark’s social services are intended to reduce gender inequality by supporting women, a sort of state feminism he can’t accept” (Baker 2013, p. 9). These policies include generous maternity and paternity leaves and quality universal childcare. As a result of these policies, “Danish women are less likely to be financially dependent on men and therefore feel less pressure to ‘settle’” (Baker 2013, p. 9). According to Valizadeh, “When it comes to getting laid, your [the PUA’s] American attitude and belief system will cockblock the fuck out of you before you even open your mouth. Since basically the entire point of game is showing you’re better than the next guy … it’s no surprise that game efforts will not be well received” (qtd. in Baker 2013, p. 10). Denmark’s focus on solidarity as opposed to personal achievement is antithetical to “game” (Baker 2013, p. 10). This focus on solidarity weakens the power of PUA seduction tricks, such as “negging,” which are backhanded compliments the PUA gives to a target to reduce her confidence and make her easier to pick up. (An example: “I’m not usually attracted to women with broad shoulders, but 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 65

….”) There are many PUA online fora, blogs and YouTube video chan- nels that teach effective “Game” and the attitudes connected to it. Misog- ynist sites like Return of Kings and RooshV advocate for emotional and sometimes physical manipulation of women, and video games like Super Seducer normalize the objectification of women and gender role expectations for men as predators (“Super Seducer: How to Talk to Girls” 2018). It’s of little surprise, then, that this attitude about “Game” has resulted in a growing online community of men who share advice, tips, and experiences about nonconsensual condom removal during sex, a practice known as “stealthing.” This practice is clearly set in “misogyny and investment in male supremacy” and is a “form of sexual violence” (Brodsky 2017, pp. 188, 210). The practice also reflects the sexism and aggrieved entitlement of men who are “on tilt” in their over-conforming to the values of the Poker Mindset. Because traditional masculinity sees masculinity as superior to femininity, and because both traditional masculinity and neoliberalism see deception as appropriate in a highly competitive winner- take-all world, stealthing reflects a twisted logic that corresponds to the values of the Poker Mindset.

Involuntary Celibates

Involuntary celibates, who call themselves Incels, are another part of the Alt-Right that reflect the sexism, misogyny, and sense of aggrieved entitlement that are part of the Poker Mindset. Incels gather in online spaces to critique the Pickup Artist community, criticize women for withhold- ing sex, or to discuss their lack of sexual relationships. This lack of sexual relationships is generally involuntary (in other words, not of their choosing) and sometimes violent, as in the case of regular PUAHate vis- itor, failed PUA, and Isla Vista, CA mass shooter Elliot Rodger. Using the language and thinking of dominant hetero-masculinity, Incels divide men into “alphas” and “betas,” with alphas being successful at seduction of women and betas as being unsuccessful. Many Incels are former aspiring Pickup Artists who failed at their attempts at seductions. While these Incels gather online at sites like PUAHate in order to criticize Pickup-Artist culture, more importantly they criticize women who they find desirable for not finding them desirable. Like PUAs, Incels “coalesce around a deep-seated resentment toward women” (Mantilla 2015,p.61) and express entitlement to sex (Mantilla 2015, p. 61). They often call 66 A. MANNO desirable women (who are generally blonde and meeting our culture’s standard definition of beauty) “Stacys” and claim these women only are interested in “Chads,” men who embody stereotypical ideas of male attractiveness and success. Incels are disillusioned that PUA strategies don’t work for them, and blame women for their failures, with some calling for a “beta rebellion” (Hankes and Amend 2018) that includes increasing acts of violence, such as Rodger’s 2014 shooting rampage and Alek Minassian’s 2018 Toronto automobile attack. Minassian posted on Facebook before his attack, “The Incel rebellion has already begun. We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys!” and referred to Elliot Rodger in praiseworthy fashion as “the Supreme Gentleman” (qtd. in Crilly et al. 2018), a reference to Rodger’s manifesto “My Twisted World,” in which he referred to himself as a “beautiful, magnificent gentleman” (Rodger, n.d.). Rodger’s story will be examined in more depth below. Incels gather on websites and forums like Incel.me and others to express their anger at women for rejecting them, fantasize about violence, and preach about women’s proper roles. As one poster on an Incel forum wrote, “I don’t see women as human. All they are, or should be, is slaves to men. Cook, clean, and spreading legs when told to …. Let’s start beating women again” (qtd. in Cook, “A Toxic ‘Brotherhood’: Inside Incels’ Dark Online World” 2018a). As with so much of the Poker Mindset, it is the dogged belief in the values of traditional masculinity and its neoliberal “winner-take-all” economics of extreme competition that perpetuates the misogyny and self-loathing of Incels. As Jia Tolentino writes in a thoughtful piece in The New Yorker about the violence of Incels, “It is men, not women, who have shaped the contours of the Incel predicament. It is male power, not female power, that has chained all of human society to the idea that women are decorative sexual objects, and that male worth is measured by how good-looking a woman they acquire” (Tolentino 2018). Research shows that strong belief in traditional masculinity makes men unhappy and potentially more violent, resulting in declining male friendships as a result of “hyper self-reliance values” (Klein 2013, p. 23). Further, high Gender Role Discrepancy Strain (as Incels seem to experience) has “been linked to violence against women and gay men” (Baugher and Gazmararian 2015, p. 107). Men who feel that their masculinity is threatened (again, “betas” by definition see themselves as unsuccessfully performing traditional masculinity) compensate by “renouncing stereotypically feminine preferences and exaggerating other aspects of their 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 67 masculinity” (Cheryan et al. 2015, p. 8) as seen in Rodger’s focus on his gentlemanly demeanor. The question of whether women can be Incels is one that male Incels post about with bitterness and anger on Incel forums. In fact, the first Incel website was created by an Ottawa, Canada woman in 1993. Called Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project, the site was a space “open to anybody and everybody” (Baker 2016) to find support amongst others who seemed unable to find the intimacy they desired. In Alana’s case, when she created the website she felt she looked unattractive and had never had a boyfriend or sex (Baker 2016). Her intention was to create “a home for all Incels; rigid gender norms, she thought, burdened everyone. There were so many ways for people to end up lonely—from awk- wardness to mental illness to an overinvestment in the ‘normal’” (Baker 2016). More men than women used the site when she created it, but over time male Incels posting on the majority of Incel forums refused to acknowledge that women could be Incels, operating under the belief that even unattractive women can find men who will have sex with them, which male Incels argue is different from their plight (Alptraum 2018). This thinking reflects the values of the Poker Mindset and the traditionally masculine belief that men are perpetual sexual predators who will always take the opportunity for sex when it is presented. These male Incels claim their victimization is far beyond what women experience: “Women who try to challenge that line of thinking by pointing to their own dating woes are written off as delusional: ‘Stupid cunt thinks that not being able to get a 10/10 male model makes her Incel,’ declares one Reddit commenter in response to a woman who’d recently posted asking if the community welcomed ‘female Incels.’ These women are told that they could never truly understand the social isolation of an ugly, unloved man” (Alptraum 2018). In making the argument that women have all the power in sexual relationships and deny men intimacy, these “on tilt” male Incels reflect the sexism and misogyny of the Poker Mindset and refuse to see the humanity in women and that they, too, can suffer from loneliness. In the eyes of male Incels, women are “femoids”: “robot-like androids who only crave sex with Chads” (qtd. in Kini 2017) and feminism is a weapon used by women to victimize men (Kini 2017). Incel men, by adhering to traditional masculinity, feel entitled to sexual access to women. They also feel anger at those who are successful in the highly competitive sexual “marketplace.” Like Father’s Rights adherents and Pickup Artists, Incels reflect 68 A. MANNO the Poker Mindset in seeing gender relations in economic terms, in this case in terms of supply and demand. One way that Incel men deal with their feelings of unattractiveness to women is to try to enhance their appearance. There are a number of message boards such as Lookism.net that focus on exchanging tips on maximizing their appearance, a practice Incels call “looksmaxing”: “Penis stretching, eyebrow botox, wrist enlargement, ‘neck training,’ nostril shrinking and 3D-printed skull implants are among the desired proce- dures and ‘coping strategies’ discussed at length on these sites” (Cook, “Inside Incels’ Looksmaxing Obsession: Penis Stretching, Skull Implants and Rage” 2018b). However, these Incels go beyond critiquing each other’s appearances and providing tips. They are “are echo chambers for shame, hatred and entitlement. Users fixate on their perceived flaws and rage against the women who, they say, deny them sex—something they feel they are owed” (Cook, “Inside Incels’ Looksmaxing Obses- sion: Penis Stretching, Skull Implants and Rage” 2018b). Incels tend to describe themselves as “losers of the genetic lottery” (qtd. in Cook, “In- side Incels’ Looksmaxing Obsession: Penis Stretching, Skull Implants and Rage” 2018b) and focus on “getting even” rather than dealing with their feelings of rejection and loneliness (Cook, “Inside Incels’ Looksmaxing Obsession: Penis Stretching, Skull Implants and Rage” 2018b).

Men Going Their Own Way

One final Alt-Right group of men who reflect the sexism and misogyny of the Poker Mindset are Men Going Their Own Way. MGTOW men gather in online spaces to express their anger about perceived unfair treatment in a “gynocentric” world where they believe women increasingly have all the power. MGTOW adherents are often voluntarily celibate rather than engage in ongoing relationships. (However, some MGTOW men were once incels who seem to use the voluntary celibate label as a symbol of taking control.) These men “go their own way” and eschew relationships with women because they feel the problems associated with relationships outweigh the benefits. MGTOW adherents identify freedom as their ultimate goal and see women as barriers to that freedom. Like Men’s Rights Advocates, MGTOW men challenge some traditional gender roles such as providership. They also resemble MRAs in holding misogynistic views of women as greedy and manipulative, especially related to issues of being “tricked” into parenthood and child support and being victims of false 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 69 rape accusations (Lamoureux 2015). Such men describe themselves as “[r]efusing to bow, serve and kneel for the opportunity to be treated like a disposable utility” (MGTOW 2018). MGTOW men describe their “growth” within the community by “The Four Levels of MGTOW.” At the earlier levels, the MGTOW see that they’ve “taken the red pill” and believe they understand that they’re oppressed as men and avoid long- term relationships. At high levels, MGTOW men avoid even short-term relationships with women, can “refuse to earn more money than is necessary for sustaining life” (with the idea that doing more than this is participating in the cultural expectations of men as providers, and MGTOW men see that as a way that men are oppressed), and a larger disengagement with society (Lamoureux 2015). Like Incels, MGTOW men adhere to the values of traditional masculinity and the neoliberal marketplace. MGTOW men’s choice to opt out of relationships and refusal to play the role of providers does not reflect a repudiation of the rules of the Poker Mindset. Significantly, MGTOW adherents do not advocate for real structural changes to gender and economic paradigms. Instead, they demonize women and attempt to undermine their provider status only because it doesn’t work in their economic favor in their zero-sum worldview. While this general overview of some of the elements of the Alt-Right lets us see the Poker Mindset in action and how that mindset animates the attitudes of Alt-Right adherents, examining a few specific case studies of infamous Alt-Right-connected figures will shed even more light on the connections between the Poker Mindset and the Alt-Right.

Case Study: Elliot Rodger

Elliot Rodger was twenty-two years old when he went on a shooting rampage that killed six people on May 23, 2014 in Isla Vista, CA. News accounts of Rodger indicate that he suffered from mental health problems since childhood. His parents, during their divorce in 1999 when Rodger was eight years old, disagreed about the nature of his problems. His mother claimed Rodger was a high-functioning autistic, but his father disputed that diagnosis and argued that Elliot suffered from undiagnosed anxiety and depression (Nagourney et al. 2014). Described as withdrawn, “lonely and introverted,” his parents tried counselors and therapists, antipsychotic medication, and a number of different schools. In one of the series of high schools that Rodger attended, he was reportedly bullied, and he used the online video game “World of Warcraft” as a form 70 A. MANNO of escape from these torments. The principal of the high school for trou- bled children from which Rodger eventually graduated described him as having behaviors characteristic of Asperger’s syndrome (Nagourney et al. 2014). Rodger also attended several colleges, and he ultimately stopped going to classes in the months before the murders, spending his time instead frequenting online Incel, PUAhate, and bodybuilding sites; posting videos on YouTube; playing the lottery in the desperate hope that winning millions would lift his fortunes in general and with women in particular; and stewing about the unfairness of women not finding him desirable. One video he posted was called “Life is so unfair because girls don’t want me” (Hill 2018). Rodger’s biracial background (his mother Malaysian and his father white and British) loomed large in his life, with Rodger clearly favoring his whiteness and seeing white, blonde women as the ideal of beauty. Rodger describes in his manifesto twice having his hair colored blonde, including his fifth-grade school year (Nagourney et al. 2014), later writing that he “always envied and admired blonde-haired people, they always seemed so much more beautiful” (Rodger, n.d.). Rodger also uses his whiteness as a sign of his superiority over non-whites. When meeting new room- mates at college, talk turned to sexual experiences, a topic about which Rodger—as a virgin—fretted extensively. Upon finding out that a black roommate had sex for the first time at age 13 with a white girl, Rodger was infuriated, writing:

How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more. I tried not to believe his foul words, but they were already said, and it was hard to erase from my mind. If this is actually true, if this ugly black ﬁlth was able to have sex with a blonde white girl at the age of thirteen while I’ve had to suffer virginity all my life, then this just proves how ridiculous the female gender is. They would give themselves to this ﬁlthy scum, but they reject ME? The injustice! (Rodger, n.d.)

We see here Rodger’s strong sense of entitlement, his anger at not getting what he feels he is owed, his sexist beliefs that objectify women and that connect to this sense of entitlement, and his racist beliefs in white supremacist notions of racial heirarchies. 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 71

While Incels like Rodger see feminism as the weapon that women use to victimize men, it is in actuality the tool that could free him from the destructive ideology of the Poker Mindset. Feminism, “far from being Rodger’s enemy, may well be the primary force resisting the very system that made him feel—as a short, clumsy, effeminate, interracial boy—inadequate. His manifesto reveals that it was overwhelmingly boys, not girls, who bullied him: who pushed him into lockers, called him a loser, made fun of him for his virginity. But it was the girls who deprived him of sex, and the girls, therefore, who had to be destroyed” (Srinivasan 2018). Srinivasan continues: “Could it also be said that Rodger’s unfuckability was a symptom of the internalisation of patriarchal norms of men’s sexual attractiveness on the part of women?” (Srinivasan 2018). By this thinking, Rodger trapped himself in patriarchy’s sexist ideas of beauty standards and the expectation of male sexual conquest. I’d add here that the notion of the Poker Mindset lets us see here more clearly that this patriarchal system also includes neoliberal ideas about success, competition, and scarcity. In addition to Rodger’s ideas about race and how they fed both his anxiety about his whiteness and his anger and sense of entitlement, Rodger held destructive ideas about money and success that contributed to his Poker Mindset. For example, Rodger describes receiving tickets to a private Katy Perry concert held for “very wealthy people.” He “was eager to go,” noting that he “loved attending exclusive events” that made him “feel special” (Rodger, n.d.). Rodger posted pictures of himself attending the concert, flying first-class, and attending the premier of the movie The Hunger Games as ways to display his desired status (Hill 2018). Sepa- rately, Rodger writes that he had “a penchant for luxury, opulence, and prestige” (Rodger, n.d.). This desire for luxury and to feel special is likely at least partially the result of his childhood. Rodger’s father was a movie director who had a good amount of success early in his career, including working as Assistant Director on The Hunger Games. However, the family’s fortunes took a turn for the worse when Rodger’s father invested heavily in a documentary, Oh My God, which did poorly. The financial recession of 2008 made matters worse, and Rodger bitterly blamed his father for their change in circumstances. Rodger writes:

I tried to pretend as if I was part of a wealthy family. I should be. That was the life I was meant to live. I WOULD BE! If only my damnable mother had married into wealth instead of being selﬁsh. If only my failure of a 72 A. MANNO

father had made better decisions with his directing career instead wasting his money on that stupid documentary. I couldn’t help but feel a bitter form of envy at all of the rich kids at the concert. They grew up in lavish mansions, indulged in excessive opulence, and will never have to worry about anything in their pleasurable, hedonistic lives. I would take great pleasure in watching all of those rich families burn alive. Looking at all of them really drilled in my mind the importance of wealth. Wealth is one of the most important defining factors of self-worth and superiority. I hated and envied all of those kids for being born into wealth, while I had to struggle to find a way to claim wealth for myself. I had to be ruthless, and do whatever it takes to attain such wealth. After all, it was my only hope of ever being worthy of getting a girlfriend and living the life of gratification that I desire. (Rodger, n.d.)

Again, we see in Rodger’s words the toxic values of the Poker Mindset at work: an aggrieved entitlement manifesting in anger and genuine surprise that he does not have the life he feels he deserves. We also see him using language of the battlefield to describe his intended path to riches in a neoliberal economy: “struggle,” “ruthless,” and “do whatever it takes.” Rodger conflates sex and financial status, describing his stepmother as “my father’s acquisition” (Rodger, n.d.) and in doing so casts women as objects that can be bought and sold and serve to reflect a man’s status (Myketiak 2016, p. 299). Rodger’s fantasies of wealth, luxury, power, and beautiful women are all examples of the Poker Mindset. We see a powerful example of Rodger’s neoliberal equation in the form of his obsession with winning the lottery. In his mind, the only way he could attain the money that equals power and access to beautiful white women was through the “big win” represented by the lottery. Rodger describes “meditating” on “ways to get rich.” We can see how Rodger’s flawed thinking reflects the Poker Mind- set in the following series of entries in his manifesto, as his initial hope turns to a disillusionment that reinforces his worldview:

I was so desperate and I needed to do something right there and then. It was a matter of life and death. If I couldn’t make it, then I had nothing to live for. After a lot of deep thinking, I couldn’t come up with anything. Was I doomed to fail at everything? I began to feel hopeless, until I saw the current jackpot for the Megemillions [sic] Lottery. It was rising very high in the month of March. I had saved up a lot of money at the time, so 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 73

I had enough to spare on lottery tickets, so long as I didn’t go under $5000 dollars, which I wanted to keep as my minimum amount of savings just in case of an emergency, or in case I would have to carry out the Day of Retribution. As it so happened, I had well over $6000 saved up at the time, from all of the allowance, Christmas money, and birthday money that my parents and grandmothers had been sending me. For the ﬁrst time since moving to Santa Barbara, I began to take a serious interest in playing the Lottery again. I believed that it was destiny for me to win the Megamillions Lottery, particularly this very jackpot. People win the lottery every single month, so why not me? I was meant to live a life of signiﬁcance and extravagance. I was meant to win this jackpot. It was destiny. (Rodger, n.d.)

Rodger continues:

I knew I was always destined for great things. This must be it! I was destined to be the winner of the highest lottery jackpot in existence. I knew right then and there that this jackpot was meant for me. Who else deserved such a victory? I had been through so much rejection, suffering, and injustice in my life, and this was to be my salvation. With my whole body ﬁlled with feverish hope, I spent $700 dollars on lottery tickets for this drawing. As I spent this money, I imagined all the amazing sex I would have with a beautiful model girlfriend I would have once I become a man of wealth. (Rodger, n.d.)

And when Rodger doesn’t win:

The winner was some guy from Riverside. He took MY money. What a waste. What an injustice. I was so certain that the universe would ﬁnally grant me salvation after a life of torture and suffering. (Rodger, n.d.)

Rodger’s plight lets us see that gambling can be a form of suffering. Under neoliberalism, men love their suffering, because it’s part of the Poker Mindset’s ideology of success that they subscribe to, even though it hurts them. Rodger can literally think of no other way to reach his culturally constructed goals. The hope for the big win is what makes men put up with the much more common pain and suffering of loss in gambling. Rodger “presents how those in precarious situations—and who believe their social standing to have diminished—deﬁne the lottery as a site of economic and social power, especially following the 2008 recession” (Anten-Contreras 2018, p. 248). This analysis draws on economist 74 A. MANNO

Guy Standing’s notion of the “precariat,” a term he coined that combines “precarious” and “proletariat.” The precariat describes a growing under- class of low-paid, temporary, part-time, contingent workers who struggle to survive in the modern economy. While the Rodger family might not fit exactly into a description of such an economic category, perhaps one way to understand the economic pressures the Rodger family was experiencing is to use a more recent term coined by Alissa Quart in her book Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America. Quart draws on Standing’s notion of the precariat and expands this idea by adding the concept of the “Middle Precariat,” which she uses to describe the “65 percent of all Americans [who] worry about paying their bills” (Quart 2018, p. 15) and live paycheck to paycheck in an economy in which “middle-class life is now 30 percent more expensive than it was twenty years ago” (Quart 2018,p.5).TheMiddlePrecariat, according to Quart, is “expanding higher and higher into what is traditionally known as the solid bourgeoisie. These people believed that their training or background would ensure that they would be properly, com- fortably middle-class, but it has not worked out that way. Their labor has also been inconstant or contingent…” (Quart 2018, p. 6). Quart’s analysis lets us position the declining fortunes of the Rodger family as part of the middle precariat that she describes. Rodger’s manifesto describes a family that once could have been considered as upper class slipping into the middle class and needing to make some adjustments to lifestyle as a result. Rodger clearly worried about his family’s circumstances and placed the blame for the family’s fall in fortunes on his father’s individual actions. Rodger’s own difficulty in school made his individual success even less certain than his father’s, and his turn to the fantasy of the “big win” at the lottery shows both his desperation and his acknowledgment of his limited chances for a place amongst the economic elite that felt he deserved. The importance of the lottery to Rodger lies in its embodying his “sexist and racist fantasies of reclaiming a ‘rightful’ social position as well as fantasies of economic fitness embedded in the volatile relationship between wealth and masculinity in a risk-oriented society” (Anten-Contreras 2018, p. 249). In times of economic upheaval, men “nostalgically, and detrimentally, yearn for past models of identity” and embrace “nostalgic gender identifiers” (Anten-Contreras 2018, pp. 249–250). Because “entrepreneurial opportunities are evaporating … gambling coincides with what David Harvey calls ‘the seductive rhetoric’ 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 75 of neoliberalism that supports the restoration of class power” (Anten- Contreras 2018, p. 250). Economic circumstances are difficult since the recession overall, with homes “underwater,” rising student loan debt, stagnant wages, increased cost of living, the rise of the temporary job and contingent work for a growing precariat in a gig economy, the decline of unions, a weakened social safety net, etc. As a result, many men might be looking for ways to meet traditional masculine role expectations. How- ever, they “struggle to remain aggressive and masculine even as they view themselves as disadvantaged and victimized (gendered and racialized) by uncontrollable economic forces, a situation requiring novel strategies to experience and express their masculinity” (Anten-Contreras 2018, p. 251). For many men, gambling is a way to inhabit a fantasy space that allows them to feel as if they are enacting an increasingly out-of-reach traditional masculinity. Elliot Rodger saw the lottery as his way to live out his gendered and racialized fantasies of masculine power and success. Like other forms of gambling (such as poker, the main focus of this project), the lottery “has replaced traditional ideologies of social mobility” (Anten-Contreras 2018, p. 251) in a system where individuals are increasingly responsible for their economic well-being and systems of social support are declining. Natasha Schüll, in her examination of slot machine players, uses the term “model actuarial self” (Schüll 2012, p. 191) to describe the risk-management techniques that the modern neoliberal citizen-worker is expected to employ to protect “against the increasing risks of unemployment that have accompanied the emergence of ‘flexible,’ short-term regimes of service-based labor and the eclipse of social welfare programs” (Schüll 2012, p. 191). Doing so requires employees who take on the model actuarial self to be “extremely autonomous, highly rational, and ever-alert masters of themselves and their decisions; constant contingency management is the task” (Schüll 2012, p. 192). Rodger’s use of the lottery as a means of social mobility occurs “when former hegemonic categories no longer offered power” (Anten-Contreras 2018, p. 251). In this sense, all of us are gamblers of a sort, required to use the Poker Mindset if we wish to achieve the “Amer- ican Dream.” Rodger’s use of the lottery is a perfect example of neoliberal casino capitalism, which will be explored in Chapter 4. Roger sees no other means of attaining the wealth that he imagines will bring him luxury, power, and women. Rodger writes, “I believed that the only way for me to attain this wealth at the time was to win the Lottery.” Later, he continues: “I desperately pondered if there was some other way I could make millions 76 A. MANNO of dollars at my age, but I came up with nothing” (Rodger, n.d.). Taken together, Rodger’s words demonstrate that he sees no way, following traditional notions of hard work, to attain the massive wealth to which he aspires. It is only through the “big win” of a gambling jackpot that he hopes to achieve his goal. Anten-Contreras supports this line of thinking when he writes, “In an age of stagnant wages, casino capitalism presumes a lack of faith in hard work as a means of economic mobility. Instead, potential instantaneous jackpots provide the only available channel for economic assertion” (Anten-Contreras 2018, p. 255). Rodger’s Poker Mindset ideology sees wealth as gendered masculine and sees women as objects, as currency to be won in order to assert superiority. For him, the “‘alpha male’ is an economic category” (Anten-Contreras 2018, p. 264). The Poker Mindset extends to Rodger’s focus on the happiness and pleasure he feels he deserves (via sex with women) but is unfairly denied. Rodger refers to the pleasure he is denied over and over in his writings. For example, he writes that the “pleasures of sex and love will be denied to me,” the “boys who girls find attractive will live pleasure-filled lives while they dominate the boys who girls deem unworthy,” “I felt condemned to live a life of lonely celibacy while other boys were allowed to experience the pleasures of sex, all because girls didn’t want me,” and later: “Sex is evil, as it gives too much pleasure to those who don’t deserve it” (Rodger, n.d.). In these statements, we see Rodger’s sense of aggrieved entitlement as he is “on tilt” as a result of his anger and frustration. These gendered and economic readings of Rodger’s actions place his story in an important cultural context and avoid seeing him as merely a mentally ill “lone wolf”: “By framing him as autistic, the onus of explaining and understanding Rodger’s spree is placed squarely on him as an individual, rather than examining any social factors that may have pushed him towards feeling strain and using violence to alleviate this strain” (Blum and Jaworski 2016, p. 410). Such a focus on his individual actions “conflat[es] mental illness with violent behavior” even though “most cases of mental illness have nothing to do with violence” (Blum and Jaworski 2016, p. 411). Likewise, it would be a mistake, then, to view Parkland, Florida mass shooter Nikolas Cruz’s February 4, 2018 killing spree solely through the lens of his history of behavioral issues. Cruz commented on Elliot Rodger’s mass shooting by writing online, “Elliot rodger [sic] will not be forgotten” (qtd. in Ansari et al. 2018). Cruz also commented on an anti-fascist video (made by those 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 77 opposing Alt-Right and white supremacist groups), “I’m going to watch them sheep fall fuck antifa i wish to kill as many as i can” [sic] (qtd. in Ansari et al. 2018). Clearly, Cruz, like Rodger, was radicalized by exposure to the hateful ideology of the Alt-Right. Further, Adam Lanza, the mass shooter who killed twenty-eight people, mostly children, at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 4, 2012, demonstrated views reminiscent of Incels’ bitterness toward women. He wrote on a website devoted to those fascinated with mass killers and killings, “Pornography exists as a coping mechanism for an artificial scarcity of sex. And where does sexual harassment come from? Sexual harassment is a retaliation against, once again, an artificial scarcity of sex” (qtd. in Langman 2014). It must also be noted that we can see the interconnectedness of the values of traditional masculinity, the “on tilt” feelings of aggrieved entitlement, and the naked greed of neoliberal corporations in Adam Lanza’s use of a Bushmaster rifle in the Sandy Hook murders. The Bushmaster Firearms company used an advertising campaign that seemed tailor-made to appeal to the aggrieved entitlement of Incels like Rodger and Incel sympathizers like Lanza. The campaign, clearly based on stereotypes appealing to traditional masculinity, included a quiz with a series of “manhood questions” (Metzl 2019, p. 61) that would result in men having their “Man Card Reissued” (qtd. in Metzl 2019, p. 61). Metlz writes, “Many of the questions on the Man Card quiz read as predictably stereotyped: ‘Do you think tofu is an acceptable meat substitute? Can you change a tire? Have you ever watched figure skating on purpose?’” (Metzl 2019, p. 61). These questions, clearly intended to provoke the kind of tensions seen in Gender Role Discrep- ancy Strain, provide the symbolic promise that gun ownership will result in successful enactment of traditional masculinity. Further, mass shootings (and subsequent suicides) can be seen as acts of masculine power and control (Kalish and Kimmel 2010, p. 452), and the gendered nature of such gun advertising participates in the cultural framing of mass shootings in this way. In addition, gun culture is also a culture of consumption, linking it to the neoliberal ethos of the citizen as consumer, another connection between masculinity and neoliberalism that is at the heart of the Poker Mindset. Finally, PUA Valizadeh commented on Rodger’s mass shooting, painting Rodger as a failure. In this way, PUAs maintain their mindset focused 78 A. MANNO on individual accomplishments. Valizadeh wrote the following in his PUA blog Return of Kings:

Six lives would have been saved if there was a societal mechanism to steer sexually frustrated males like Rodger into learning self-improvement, game, and masculinity, the very values that are taught here and on many other manosphere sites that inexplicably have been attacked, disparaged, and even sought for eradication by the American media and blogosphere, men’s rights activists, ‘PUA haters’, and progressive organizations like the South- ern Poverty Law Center. All these groups are complicit for creating a cultural environment that allowed this massacre to occur. It is them who must accept responsibility for these seven deaths and make the moral change to their ideologies in order to prevent such an act from happening again…. Game is a tiny release valve on a cultural pressure cooker where meaningful relationships have become sick, fractured, and unfulﬁlling compared to the time of our grandparents when traditional sex roles existed. (Valizadeh 2014)

Valizadeh’s essentialist notions of masculinity—where women are inter- changeable sex objects for men and where men who do not have access to women cannot control themselves and act out, in Rodger’s case violently—are clear here. His desire for traditional gender roles speaks to the Poker Mindset’s sense of entitlement and desire for unequal power between men and women.

Case Study: Stephen Paddock

On October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock opened fire on the audience of the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. Paddock, shooting from his room on the thirty-second floor of the nearby Man- dalay Bay Hotel, killed fifty-nine (including himself) and wounded eight hundred sixty-nine people (Lombardo 2018). Born in 1953, Paddock was the oldest of four children. His father, Patrick Benjamin Paddock, who has been described as an “arrogant” and “egotistical” con man (qtd. in Tavernise et al. 2018), was a career criminal who went to prison for committing a number of bank robberies in 1960 when Stephen was seven years old (Tavernise et al. 2018). Growing up with a single mother in difficult economic circumstances, Paddock “learned resourcefulness and self-reliance from an early age” and was highly focused on “gaining complete control over his life and not having to rely on anyone” in 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 79 his efforts to “escape the unpredictability of poverty” (Tavernise et al. 2018). Described by his brother Bruce as “controlling” (qtd. in Hurtado and Jacob 2018) and very interested in material success, Paddock looked for jobs where he would earn the most money, and as a result had a series of jobs from working for the I.R.S. and the aerospace industry before finding financial success in real estate, where he bought and renovated properties, teaching himself repair work along the way (Tavernise et al. 2018). Like his father, Paddock was described as acting in a superior fashion to others (Tavernise et al. 2018). Further, he was described as “a narcissist” (Lombardo 2018, p. 20) with a “rigid and uncompromising attitude” (Tavernise et al. 2018). Paddock clearly reflects the values of the Poker Mindset. He has been thoroughly indoctrinated into winner- take-all neoliberalism and traditional masculine notions of independence, the importance of the accumulation of wealth, and stoicism. After his successes in real estate, Paddock took up gambling as his retirement activity, one that would also generate income for the money- obsessed man. Paddock’s brother Eric said of Paddock’s gambling, “It’s like a job for him. It’s a job where you make money” (qtd. in Kirby and Hartmann 2017). Specifically, Paddock focused on video poker, where he was reported to be a “midrange gambler whose wins and losses were in the tens of thousands of dollars” and who was seen as “the profile of a responsible gambler” who “paid all of his bills and did so on time” (Sullivan et al. 2017). Paddock “was a math guy” who could “tell you off the top of his head what the odds were down to the tenth of a percent on whatever machine he was playing” and studied the game “like it was a Ph.D. thing” (qtd. in Kirby and Hartmann 2017), according to his brother Eric. Unlike a number of other casino games, smart and diligent video poker players are able to gain a very slight “edge” over the casinos. In other words, fairly high-level video poker players can manage to win up to one percent of the time more than machines win, making video poker profitable in the long run. While there is some disagreement about whether Paddock was such a player (sometimes called an “advantage” player) (Bethea 2017), the amount of money he gambled put him “in the middle tier of VIP programs for loyal gamblers” (Sullivan et al. 2017), and Paddock reportedly told at least one other person that he gambled about one million dollars per year (Bethea 2017). Casinos regularly “comp” active players, meaning that such players are provided with benefits like complimentary drinks, food, and rooms, practices that 80 A. MANNO facilitate more casino play and work in the financial advantage of casinos that win more as players play more and inevitably lose more to the house advantage. While players at most games might score the occasional “big win,” over time the odds are stacked in the casino’s favor. Reflecting traditional masculinity’s valorization of the “big wheel” and neoliberalism’s focus on citizen as consumer, Paddock apparently had a taste for luxury, much like Elliot Rodger. Paddock used his higher-level VIP status to obtain complimentary services such as “limousine rides, spending complimentary cash on Swarovski crystal jewelry in the casino gift shop, and staying in free hotel rooms and suites” (Bethea 2017). Clark County, Nevada Sheriff Joe Lombardo, who prepared the police report about the Paddock mass shooting, described the perpetrator as a “status-driven” person (qtd. in “Las Vegas Shooter Stephen Paddock Had Lost Money, Been Depressed, Sheriff Says” 2017) who “only cared about himself” (Lombardo 2018, p. 20). “‘He acted like everybody worked for him and that he was above others,’ said John Weinreich, 48, a former executive casino host at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno, where he saw Mr. Paddock frequently from 2012 to 2014” (Tavernise et al. 2018). While the Clark County Sheriff’s report indicated there was no clear motive, there were several key investigative findings. First, the report indicates that Paddock acted alone, leaving no suicide note or manifesto (Lombardo 2018, p. 126). Second, it points toward a marked decline in Paddock’s financial situation between 2015 and 2017. Bank records indicate that Paddock had about two million dollars in his accounts in September 2015 and about five hundred thirty thousand dollars in 2017, with the biggest losses in the year of his death. Those losses included more than six hundred thousand dollars in casino losses and one hundred seventy thousand dollars in credit card payments (Lombardo 2018, p. 111). Lombardo speculated that these losses had caused “bouts of depression” (qtd. in “Las Vegas Shooter Stephen Paddock Had Lost Money, Been Depressed, Sheriff Says” 2017) that might have been a contributing factor (Boboltz 2018). Third, the Sheriff’s report indicates that there “was no evidence of radicalization or ideology to support any theory that Paddock supported or followed any hate group or any domestic or foreign terrorist organization. Despite numerous interviews with Paddock’s family, acquaintances and gambling contacts, investigators could not link Paddock to any specific ideology” (Lombardo 2018, p. 126). However, this last point is up for debate. 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 81

On May 18, 2018, the Sheriff’s office released a number of documents as a result of legal action from news organizations that shed new light on Paddock’s possible motives, including revealing interviews with people who spoke to Paddock and learned about his anti-government views. Specifically, some of those interviewed by the police indicated that Paddock “expressed conspiratorial, anti-government beliefs which are characteristic of the far right” (Wilson 2018). One of those interviewed indicated that she encountered Paddock in a diner just days before the shootings, and “heard him and a companion discussing the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Ruby Ridge standoff and the Waco siege” which “became touchstones for a rising anti-government militia movement in the 1990s” (Wilson 2018). Further, Paddock contacted a man in an attempt to buy the details for a device that would turn semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic weapons (Wilson 2018). (While the man refused to sell the schematics or make the device, Paddock clearly found a replace- ment in the “bump stocks” that he used during the shooting.) During their conversation, Paddock reportedly expressed anti-government conspiracy ideas, such as that the evacuations by FEMA during Hurricane Katrina in 2008 were “a dry run for law enforcement and military to start kicking’ down doors and … confiscating guns” (qtd. in Wilson 2018). The man reported that Paddock said to him that “Somebody has to wake up the American public and get them to arm themselves” and that “Some- times sacrifices have to be made” (qtd. in Wilson 2018). These are clearly not the words of someone, as Sheriff Lombard put it, with no evidence of radicalization. Questions remain, then, about both Paddock’s motivations and the extent of the Sherriff’s office’s investigations into Paddock’s anti- government beliefs and activities. Further, the requirement of legal action to cause the release of the documents that describe Paddock’s anti- government beliefs raises the question of whether Paddock’s whiteness and American citizenship played a part in the limited investigation. A study examining “lone wolf killers” (who act on their own and are presumed to be mentally unstable and not radicalized by any ideology) versus “lone wolf terrorists” (who are motivated “by discretely held views or a cogent ideology espoused by an organization”) (Beydoun 2018, p. 1220) compares Paddock to 2016 Florida Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen, arguing that “Paddock was swiftly presumed to be a lone wolf killer, while Mateen was immediately suspected of being a lone wolf 82 A. MANNO terrorist. For Paddock, the lone wolf designation was applied as a pre- sumptive exemption from terrorism, while it was assigned as a presump- tive connection to terrorism in the case of Mateen” (Beydoun 2018, p. 1237). These conclusions suggest a racist presumption by white law enforcement that white, American mass shooters are “lone wolf killers” while those like Mateen are presumed terrorists. Further, these conclusions underscore how the toxic masculinity of someone like Paddock is normalized, as it fits squarely within the accepted values of the Poker Mindset, albeit to the greater extent. Regardless of these questions, it’s clear that Paddock embodies many of the values of the Poker Mindset. His actions and words, as reported by others, paint a picture of a man who was obsessed with accumulating wealth and with creating a life where he was completely self-reliant. His family, significant others, and acquaintances indicate that he was controlling and emotionally stoic to the point of being distant. That he gravi- tated to video poker as his “retirement” (one that seems chosen with the express goal of generating more wealth) seems entirely in keeping with a man so consumed with wealth and status in a winner-take-all neoliberal world. Like Rodger, he apparently acted out violently when his financial losses threatened his view of the world.

Case Study: Martin Shkreli

Martin Shkreli is not a mass shooter like Elliot Rodger or Stephen Pad- dock, yet his story provides another important case study in the toxic masculinity that is part of the Poker Mindset and is motivated by the Alt- Right. While Shkreli, like Paddock, cannot be seen as directly connected to the ideology of the Alt-Right, he can be characterized as sympathetic to the ideas of the Alt-Right (sometimes called “Alt-Lite”). Shkreli was born on March 17, 1983 to Albanian immigrant parents. His father was a doorman and both his parents did part-time janito- rial work. Shkreli reportedly was academically gifted and graduated from Baruch College in New York with a degree in business administration (McLean 2018). His father sparked his interest in finance by giving him the book The Alchemy of Finance, by George Soros. Shkreli’s winner-take- all ethos emerged early. Young Shkreli also “idolized” Bill Gates, remark- ing that “People said Microsoft was the evil empire, but I just saw an empire” (qtd. in McLean 2018). In addition to these role models for the 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 83 young Shkreli, he also described—at an Alt-Right art show in 2016— looking up to Donald Trump, saying that, “In many ways, Trump’s success is image related. When my family came to America in the ‘70s, we grew to know Trump as the definition of success in America” (qtd. in Lynn 2018). Trump’s glitzy, gold-embossed version of success clearly had an impact on the young Shkreli, who seems to have quickly understood the nature of Trump’s “art of the deal” (which, as we’ll see in Chapter 6, focuses on con-man-like moves to bend rules and manipulate weak points in systems for his financial benefit). Shkreli says he “weaseled” himself into an internship at a hedge fund, starting in the mailroom and eventually learning about the “short-selling” of biotech stocks (essentially betting against stocks, gambling that such stocks won’t live up to expectations or get FDA approval) (McLean 2018). After a few years at a number of other hedge funds, Shkreli started Elea Capital Management that dissolved in 2007 when Shkreli made a bet that didn’t work out and he “refused to pay,” making “veiled threats of filing bankruptcy” (McLean 2018). It was only after the financial crisis of 2008 and Lehman’s dissolution that the verdict against Shkreli for non- payment was vacated (McLean 2018). Shkreli used Alt-Right-style online trolling during his second hedge fund, short-selling biotech stocks and then posting negative assessments of the stocks in online chat rooms. In 2012, Shkreli left the hedge fund business and created biotech company Retrophin, but his deceptive practices caused him to be replaced as C.O.O. in 2014 (and ultimately convicted of securities fraud in 2017 over these practices). That same year, he created another biotech company, Turing, which acquired the drug Daraprim, the only FDA drug approved for the treatment of toxoplasmo- sis, a dangerous blood parasite (McLean 2018). While about twenty-five percent of Americans over twelve carry the parasite, it can be deadly for those with compromised immune systems, including children and those with HIV (“Martin Shkreli and the Increased Cost of Daraprim” 2015, p. 6). Under Shkreli’s direction, Turing raised the price of Daraprim from $13.50 per tablet to seven hundred fifty dollars per tablet, a five thousand percent increase (“Martin Shkreli and the Increased Cost of Daraprim” 2015). When the move caused outrage, Shkreli commented, “No one wants to say it, no one’s proud of it, but this is a capitalist society, a capitalist system, and capitalism rules” (qtd. in Reich 2018). To be sure, 84 A. MANNO other drug companies have done much as Shkreli did with Turing and Daraprim. In fact, soon before Turing acquired Daraprim, Rodelis Ther- apeutics acquired cycloserine, a drug used to treat severe cases of tubercu- losis, and raised the price from five hundred dollars for thirty pills to ten thousand eight hundred dollars. Further, Nirmal Mulye, head of Nostrum Laboratories, justified raising the price of “essential” antibiotic nitrofuran- toin by four hundred percent to $2392 per bottle by arguing that it is a “moral requirement to make more money when you can … to sell the product for the highest price” (qtd. in Hiltzik 2018). Shkreli’s unrepen- tant attitude and trolling strategies, reflective of his Poker Mindset ideology of valuing money over people, in large part explains the uproar over Daraprim but masks the systemic nature of the extreme greed that motivates so many companies under neoliberalism. He is an easy scapegoat who over-conforms to the values of the Poker Mindset. Shkreli can be categorized as “Alt-Right Lite” as a result of his online trolling strategies, his sexism and misogyny, and his affiliation with prominent Alt-Right figures. In addition to using online chat rooms to try and devalue biotech stocks that he has short-sold, Shkreli used Twitter to troll his perceived opponents. For example, after freelance journalist Lauren Duca wrote a piece for Teen Vogue in 2016 called “Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America,” Shkreli tweeted an invitation to Duca to attend Trump’s inauguration. When she declined, Shkreli photoshopped an image of Duca with her husband and replaced her husband’s face with his own, commenting, “For better or worse til death do us part” (qtd. in Dancyger 2017). For his actions, seen by Duca as both creepy and vaguely threatening, Twitter suspended Shkreli’s account (Dancyger 2017). Shkreli has had more direct connections with the figures of the Alt-Right. A planned 2017 appearance at the University of California with Alt-Right provocateur Milo Yiannopolus was canceled after intense campus protests (Oppenheim 2017). In addition, at the 2016 pro-Trump art show called “Daddy Will Save Us,” Shkreli included a piece entitled “Pill 2016,” which featured a “red and blue pill in a glass and wood enclosure” (Nolan 2016). The description of the piece, in the Alt-Right-leaning Breitbart.com, comments, “Displaying a pill divided between the com- forting dullness of blue, and the fiery wokeness of red, Shkreli asks us to consider the eternal choice between hard truth and blissful ignorance” (qtd. in Nolan 2016). Shkreli’s reference to the blue pill and red pill memes of the Alt-Right are clearly intentional, as is his unapologetic neoliberal greed in the piece’s reference to Daraprin, his claim to infamy. 3 “ON TILT”: THE POKER MINDSET, TOXIC MASCULINITY … 85

Moreover, at the 2017 “Deploraball,” an Alt-Right gathering of Trump supporters (who repurposed the term Hillary Clinton used to describe Trump supporters, “a basket of deplorables”), Shkreli appeared with Michael Flynn, Jr., son of one-time Trump national security advi- sor. (Both Flynn, Jr. and his father were later caught up in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and Flynn, Sr. pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators.) In attendance was also prominent Alt-Right figure Mike Cernovich (Gray 2017). Finally, Shkreli’s bail on the securities fraud charges was revoked when he posted online offering five thousand dollars for some of Hillary Clinton’s hair (Clifford 2018). At his sentencing, Shkreli admitted to “trying to grow [his] stature and reputation,” and a psychiatrist’s report indicated that Shkreli “cannot tolerate failure and instead will lie and rationalize his failures to perpetuate his self-image” (Saul 2018). We can see from Shkreli’s words and actions that he, too, embodies the Poker Mindset. Focused on wealth by any means, Shkreli gambled on stocks, used Alt-Right-style trolling attacks in his efforts to create favor- able market conditions, and used those same trolling strategies to make sexist attacks against those who challenged his personal and political role models. He unabashedly championed a neoliberal winner-take-all business model that values profits over people and demonstrated aggrieved entitlement in his defense against attacks for such behavior. To be clear, though, while in some ways an outlier due to his brazen public “on tilt” persona, Shkreli fits within the spectrum of the Poker Mindset. However, he over-conforms to the ideology of the Poker Mindset, and his example should not tempt us into pathologizing his antics. Instead, we should see him as an indictment of the system in which we all participate and are implicated. In this chapter, we have examined how the Poker Mindset animates some of the elements of the Alt-Right. Specifically, we’ve seen how white nationalists, Men’s Rights and Father’s Rights Advocates, Incels, Pickup Artists, and Men Going Their Own Way all reflect the ideology of the Poker Mindset, whether its sexism and misogyny, its overt racism, its sense of aggrieved entitlement, or its winner-take-all neoliberal take on the American Dream. Poker and the notion of the Poker Mindset provide a unique vantage point for analyzing the Alt-Right and some of the case studies examined here. Elliot Rodger, Stephen Paddock, and Martin Shkreli all embody these elements of the Poker Mindset in different ways. The power of the notion of the Poker Mindset is that it lets us see the 86 A. MANNO overlapping systems of gender, race, and the economy together in one unified ideology that operates in support of patriarchy. In Chapter 4,we’ll move beyond the Alt-Right to the larger system of casino capitalism as a way to understand how the Poker Mindset inspires the policies and practices of our neoliberal economy in an age of a weakening social safety net and increased risks for individuals who become akin to gamblers in their everyday lives.

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and Style. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/06/ukraine- wife-internet-romance-industry-online-scam. Accessed July 24, 2018. Wilson, Jason. 2018. “New Documents Suggest Las Vegas Shooter Was Conspiracy Theorist—What We Know.” The Guardian, May 19, sec. US News. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/19/stephen- paddock-las-vegas-shooter-conspiracy-theories-documents-explained. Accessed July 24, 2018. CHAPTER 4

“A Stacked Deck”: Casino Capitalism and the Poker Mindset

While Chapter 1 established the importance of examining the current cultural impact of poker and the Poker Mindset that so influences ideas about masculinity and economic success in the twenty-first-century United States and Chapter 2 examined in detail the values of the Poker Mindset within the world of amateur and professional poker, Chapter 3 stepped outside of the casino and other gambling venues to make an argument about how the Poker Mindset animates the grievances of the Alt-Right and those inspired by Alt-Right-style thinking. This chapter will expand upon the previous chapter and examine how the values of the Poker Mindset connect to the larger economy. Specifically, this chapter will argue that the ideology of the Poker Mindset is deeply connected to neoliberalism and its current version of what some have called “casino capitalism.” Casino capitalism can also be seen as the way that states increasingly rely upon gambling to fund essential services in a tax-averse political landscape. Further, in order to situate this analysis, I’ll provide some background on neoliberalism and the term “casino capitalism” and its agenda of concentrating wealth, limiting government, weakening the social safety net, and transferring greater risk and responsibility to the individual. Thus, one key goal of casino capitalism under neoliberalism is to redefine democracy as less about active participation in the political process and more about consumption through the creation of citizen-consumers trained in the values of the Poker Mindset.

This chapter will also examine how the ideology of the Poker Mindset is normalized and perpetuated. I will use several gambling and gambling- style examples to demonstrate the transfer of risk from the State to the citizen-consumer and the cultural training that normalizes this transfer in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This chapter will explore how the ideology of the Poker Mindset (and its intersection of toxic masculinity and a winner-take-all casino capitalist economic attitude) manifests in a number of ways, all examples of corruption stemming from unequal access to and use of power and resources. The chapter will conclude with particularly apt examples of the ideology of the Poker Mindset in the form of case studies of the oversized influence of Koch brothers and of the transformation of Bethlehem, PA from industrial city to post- industrial, casino capitalist exemplar city. The gambling metaphor from the title of this chapter is highly relevant. In poker, as in card games in general, a “stacked deck” is one where the cards are unfairly set in favor of one player. The phrase, like so many others from gambling and poker, has such power that it has become part of our more general, non-gambling vernacular. We know, of course, that a “stacked deck” occurs when circumstances are unfairly set to the advantage of some over others. The corruption of the neoliberal casino capitalist system, then, reflects a deck that has been stacked in favor of the powerful economic elite and against the rest of us. Examining this casino capitalist system through the lens of the Poker Mindset reveals how the stacking of the deck has been normalized using the winner-take-all values of that ideology.

Defining Neoliberalism

In order to understand why the Poker Mindset has become so powerful and pervasive over the last four decades, we need to examine how the changes in the United States’ economic landscape have provided fertile ground for the Poker Mindset. In the same way that toxic masculinity shapes gender in the United States and in turn allows for the Poker Mind- set, our current era of neoliberalism shapes class in the United States and fuels the Poker Mindset. Neoliberalism is essentially a shift in the United States over the past four decades that has fostered the rise of corporate power and the power of a wealthy elite that supports a regime of wage stagnation, union-busting, deregulation, and the increased privatization 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 95 of public services. With this shift has come a loss of democracy where individuals no longer have the same protections that they once did. Under- standing this neoliberal emergence is fundamental to understanding the Poker Mindset. In A Brief History of Neoliberalism, David Harvey points to 1978– 1980 as key years in the development of neoliberalism, with China’s Deng Xiaoping liberalizing the Chinese economy in 1978, paving the way for it to become an open, capitalist economy; US Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volker in 1979 pivoting the US economy to be focused on continually combatting inflation, regardless of that policy’s impact on employment; UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979 working to “curb trade union power”; and US President Ronald Reagan in 1980 beginning a campaign to deregulate industry, “curb the power of labour,” and “liberate the powers of finance” (Harvey 2007,p.1).In the United States and the UK, at least, these moves were motivated by a philosophy advocating the idea that “human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices” (Harvey 2007, p. 2). In addition to eliminating barriers to industry, neoliberalism moves to privatize markets that are not already open to industry, such as “water, education, healthcare, social security, or environmental pollution … by state action if necessary” (Harvey 2007, p. 2). Harvey maintains that since the 1970s, privatization, deregulation, and the weakening of the social safety net have been common features of neoliberalism (Harvey 2007, pp. 2–3) with the goal of bringing “all human action into the domain of the market” (Harvey 2007,p.3). Prior to the neoliberal era, Keynesian economic theory ruled the day. Harvey notes that “[t]his form of political–economic organization is now usually referred to as ‘embedded liberalism’ to signal how market processes and entrepreneurial and corporate activities were surrounded by a web of social and political constraints and a regulatory environment that sometimes restrained but in other instances led the way in economic and industrial strategy” (Harvey 2007, p. 11). In countries using this economic system, support for collective bargaining, “controls over the free mobility of capital,” and “expanded public expenditures and welfare- state-building” (Harvey 2007, p. 11) were some of the policies supported by government that were seen as being consistent with generally strong 96 A. MANNO rates of economic growth. As such, a “social and moral economy … was fostered through the activities of an interventionist state” (Harvey 2007, p. 12). Regulation of industry, therefore, was seen to serve a public good. According to former Clinton administration Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, such regulation “stabilized industry, maintained jobs and wages, and protected the economic bases of communities where regulated industries were headquartered or did business. It also sought to weigh industry’s need for profits against the public’s need for safe, fair, and reliable service” (Reich 2008, Kindle Locations 406–411). This crucial balance has been disrupted by neoliberalism. Not all were happy with a Keynesian approach to the economy. As early as 1947, the ultra-conservative Mont Pelerin Society, composed of founding members such as University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman and London School of Economics economist Frederich von Hayek, met with the goal of dismantling the protections of the Keynesian policy approach (Harvey 2007, p. 20). They maintained in their founding statement that controls on markets result from a “decline in the belief in private property and the competitive market” (Harvey 2007,p.20).They believed that such a decline threatened the rule of law and the “central values of civilization” (Harvey 2007, p. 20). Wealthy political and financial supporters of the ideas of the Mont Pelerin Society in the United States existed for decades, but it was only in the 1970s, with the twin economic troubles of high unemployment and high inflation (a phenomenon known as stagflation), that the economic principles of the Society gained real traction. Championed by right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and key intellectuals in University of Chicago’s economics program like Friedman and later Hayek, the notion of deregulation came to be seen as a viable approach to stagflation by the Carter administration and was greatly expanded during the Reagan years (Harvey 2007,p.22). Widespread acceptance of neoliberal notions of deregulation and unfet- tered industry were nurtured by cultural institutions—educational, reli- gious, and professional—creating a “climate of opinion in support of neoliberalism as the exclusive guarantor of freedom” (Harvey 2007, p. 40) that ultimately became institutionalized in political party policy, both Republican and Democrat, albeit to different extents. Because the neoliberal approach inevitably resulted in the “restoration of economic power to a small elite” (Harvey 2007, p. 40) and would not as a result garner much widespread support on those terms, appeals to “traditions and cultural values” of individual liberty masked the true intent of the 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 97 neoliberal project. Harvey writes, “[O]nce the state apparatus made the neoliberal turn it could use its powers of persuasion, co-optation, bribery, and threat to maintain the climate of consent necessary to perpetuate its power” (Harvey 2007, p. 40). This consent has taken the form of appeals to freedom in terms of consumption, lifestyle, and other cultural practices rather than the systemic freedoms (such as support of labor unions and worker rights, appropriate industry regulations, higher corporate tax rates, etc.) that would ensure more equitable distribution of financial gains. The appeal to individual liberty that has been at the heart of the marketing of the neoliberal project has the added benefit to the elite of fragmenting potential detractors. This focus on individual liberty, however, also has the effect of transferring responsibility for individual welfare from the state and from employers to the consumer-citizen whose main goal is consumption and who is trained in an ethos of self-sufficiency and accepting as personal failures those that can rightly be attributed to institutional failures. Harvey notes that those groups and movements that rely upon varying notions of individual freedom, regardless of intent—libertarianism, multiculturalism, identity politics, and also “narcissistic consumerism”—are disconnected from each other and “the social forces ranged in pursuit of social justice” (Harvey 2007, p. 41). Thus, they do not easily forge alliances and are ripe for being co-opted into the values and practices of neoliberalism. In this paradigm, “[i]ndividual success or failure are interpreted in terms of entrepreneurial virtues or personal failings … rather than being attributed to any systemic property (such as the class exclusion usually attributed to capitalism)” (Harvey 2007, p. 66). This ethos has been used as justification for the weakening of the social safety net. These concurrent strategies—creating an ethos of individual freedom and transferring responsibility to the individual—treat citizens as commodities and work together to redis- tribute wealth to the elite. Harvey claims that “[c]ommodification presumes the existence of property rights over processes, things, and social relations, that a price can be put on them, and that they can be treated subject to legal contract. The market is presumed to work as an appropriate guide—an ethic—for all human action” (Harvey 2007, p. 165). The forces aligned to enact this redistribution of wealth result in a process Harvey describes as “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey 2007, p. 159), which is the epitome of a winner-take-all neoliberal ideology. 98 A. MANNO

Casino Capitalism and Neoliberalism

Interestingly, and I would say presciently, the term “casino capitalism” emerged in the 1980s to help explain the rise of neoliberalism. This term serves to establish a strong connection between the broad concept of neoliberalism and my specific concept of the Poker Mindset. The term “casino capitalism” was first coined by international political economy scholar Susan Strange in her 1986 book Casino Capitalism.Strange warned that the global finance markets “resemble nothing as much as a vast casino” (Strange 1986, p. 1) where bets are placed for staggeringly high stakes. While individuals can choose to avoid betting at casinos, we are all involved and at risk on a daily basis with the betting of the global financial system (Strange 1986, p. 2). Strange worried about the corrosive social impact of this risk in global financial markets:

For when sheer luck begins to take over and to determine more and more of what happens to people, and skill, effort, initiative, determination and hard work count for less and less, then inevitably faith and conﬁdence on the social and political system quickly fades. Respect for ethical values— on which in the end a free democratic society relies—suffers a dangerous decline. It is when bad luck can strike a person not only from directions where luck has always ruled: health, love, natural catastrophes or genetic chance, but from new and unexpected directions as well, that a psychological change takes place. Luck, now, as well as idleness or inadequacy, can lose you a job. Luck can wipe out a lifetime’s savings…. There seems less and less point in trying to make the right decision, when it is so difﬁcult to know how the wheel of chance will turn and where it will come to rest. (Strange 1986, pp. 2–3)

Such a system also inevitably leads to inequalities, with some having the resources to protect themselves from bad luck that others do not (Strange 1986, p. 3). As a result, “[f]rustration and anger become sharper and are apt to be more violently expressed when the realm of luck becomes too large and when the arbitrariness of the system seems to operate so very unequally” (Strange 1986, p. 3). Strange’s warnings were indeed prescient. In the 1990s and into the 2000s, increasingly risky bets were made on instruments such as credit default swaps and derivatives. The Great Recession of 2008, in addition, stemmed in large part from risky deals related to home mortgages. The anger that Strange warns against as a result of the arbitrariness of luck might be seen as akin to the forces that 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 99 gave rise to the right-wing populism and support of authoritarianism that is now sweeping much of the Western world, perhaps an unforeseen result of a weakening social safety net and increasing responsibility for success and failure placed upon the neoliberal consumer-citizen. Cultural critic Henry Giroux is highly critical of the neoliberal era, wor- rying like Strange about the negative consequences of an extreme focus on individual responsibility and consumption. In such a system, “mindless self-gratification becomes the sanctioned norm and public issues collapse into the realm of privatized anger and rage” (Giroux 2015,p.2).Casino capitalist notions of the self prevent real social change. When competition is seen as “a form of social combat” and when agency is seen as merely “the freedom to pursue one’s self-interests independently of larger social concerns” and “without regard to the consequences for others for the larger social order,” we become like “zombies” and cannot enact real social change (Giroux 2015, p. 2). Giroux writes, “This market-driven notion of freedom emphasizes choice as an economic function defined largely as the right to buy things while at the same time canceling out any active understanding of freedom and choice as the right to make rational choices concerning the very structure of power and governance in a society” (Giroux 2015, p. 10). Giroux’s notion of the zombie is akin to the consumer-citizen motivated by the values of the Poker Mindset, “infected” by neoliberal patriarchal thinking. In addition, the term “casino capitalism” can be seen literally as well as figuratively. While “casino capitalism” is an insightful way of understanding our economic landscape writ large, it also explains the specific economic status of the casino industry through the expansion of gambling in general and the increase in casino construction in particular as revenue streams for state economies. In the neoliberal era, when individuals are given more and more responsibility for their success and failure and the role of government is increasingly seen as limited, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the idea of tax increases is a political nonstarter for many states. In this environment, states are beginning to depend on gambling expansion and casino development as a crucial source of revenue. “Gover- nors today are under enormous pressure to maintain public services without raising taxes, which is why so many are latching onto the ‘painless tax’ of gambling as a quick and easy budget fix. More gambling means governments can rake in tens of billions of dollars in tax revenue from lotteries, casinos, and other forms of wagering each year,” writes David Clary in Gangsters to Governors: The New Bosses of Gambling in America. 100 A. MANNO

Clary notes that every US state except Hawaii and Utah has at least one form of legal gambling, with an estimated two hundred forty billion dollar annual economic impact as of 2014. The US gaming industry includes about 1.7 million jobs, with casinos employing over 700,000 workers. So ubiquitous is gambling in the twenty-first century that there are almost 900,000 gambling machines in United States, and more than 200,000 places to purchase lottery tickets (Clary 2017, pp. 4–5). Americans spent over seventy billion dollars at casinos in 2015 and another seventy billion dollars on lottery tickets (Cohen and Schwartz 2018,p.3). The expansion of casino building in the twenty-first-century follows a trusted pattern: times of economic difficulty result in lessening of concerns about the social and moral impact of gambling, and greater access occurs. This was the case in 1933 during the Great Depression when pari-mutuel betting (or pooled betting seen in horse racing and sporting events) was legalized in ten US states (Cohen and Schwartz 2018,p.5). During the years of stagflation in the 1970s, “New Jersey’s legalization of casino gaming in Atlantic City in 1976 kicked off the wave of casino expansion” (Cohen and Schwartz 2018, p. 6) that continued into the recession years of the early 1980s. Similarly, following the Great Reces- sion of 2008, more and more states are looking toward gambling and casino development as the solution to their political and fiscal problems. The logic of states in relying on gambling also includes facing what they consider to be an unchanging reality: individuals will gamble regardless of whether it is legal or illegal. Rather than receiving no revenue and dealing with the host of problems created by such widespread criminal activity, by legalizing many types of gambling, states have undercut criminal enterprises and realized profit as a result (Clary 2017,p.5). While states have raised large amounts of revenue from legalized gambling, sixty-eight billion dollars in state lotteries in 2012 alone, less than a third of that has made its way to state social programs (Clary 2017, p. 64). “[H]efty administrative, marketing, and prize payout expenses” (Clary 2017, p. 64) account for the rest. Unfortunately for states, there is a saturation point for the use of casinos to fill essential revenue generation. Even as states lower contributions to education and other social programs with the idea that revenue generated by casinos and lotteries will fill the gap, the explosion of casino building has created competition for gambling dollars, and as a result gambling revenues have fallen since 2012 and states “are being forced to pay for those services that would have come from gaming revenue from other monies” (Clary 2017, p. 173). 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 101

States increasingly rely upon gaming revenue. In Delaware, for example, gambling revenue in 2014 was greater than the total state income tax paid by corporations based in the state, and the “state’s politicians have a direct interest in fostering the health of their casinos if they want to maintain services without raising income taxes” (Clary 2017, p. 181). States are afraid to raise taxes, and so casino gambling and lotteries are used to provide essential revenue to fund social services. When more and more states follow suit, that creates competition for a finite number of gamblers, so gambling revenue falls, and that leaves states short of money to pay for those services. Those states are then faced with the need to invest more money in gambling advertising and marketing, rather than address- ing the real cause of their problems: they’re not investing in maintaining key services and took the easy way out, a state version of the “big win” that individual lottery players and gamblers have with the Poker Mind- set. Rather than making sound fiscal choices that are politically unpopu- lar, such as raising taxes, especially on the wealthiest and corporations, in order to ensure proper funding of essential services, states—like individual gamblers—have seen it harder to change the system and instead look for the easy win in gambling as a way to deal with economic problems. In addition to the impact on state services, the casino expansion explosion reflects profound changes in individual wages and job prospects: “The growth of the gambling industry feeds on America’s job insecurity; people, whether gambling or seeking employment, have fewer viable ways to make good money. As the country has deindustrialized since the 1980s, and unions have been marginalized, real wages stagnated and then declined. At the same time, a deregulated and ascendant financial sector offered easier-than-ever credit cards and home mortgages, leading Amer- icans desperate to maintain their lifestyle deep into debt” (Denvir 2012). Just as these “postindustrial peasants” are experiencing more job insecurity, they are tied to debt via “subprime mortgages” and “high-on- student debt but low-on-job-prospects for-profit colleges” as there has been a “massive move to privatize the financing system for the two traditional mechanisms of economic mobility: homeownership and education” (Denvir 2012). Casino jobs, like other service jobs, cannot replace the often unionized industrial jobs of the past that provided stable, middle- class lifestyles. Further, while casino revenues grew seventy-five percent between 1998 and 2012, in the same period employment grew just five percent (Denvir 2012), indicating that the gains from casino expansion have been to the elite and to politicians who have avoided difficult choices 102 A. MANNO and not to citizens. As a result, gambling, whether via casinos or the lottery, has increased as the chance of upward mobility has diminished, “thus representing a postmodern twist on the country’s tradition of meritocratic rise” (Schwartz 2018, p. 157). It should be noted that there are some who challenge the appropri- ateness of the use of the term “casino capitalism” on the grounds that it does not provide an accurate description of the work of financial markets. Answering such criticism of the term here will help better clarify its meaning. Anthropologist Karen Ho, for example, argues that such a comparison is “unhelpful” and “analytically inadequate” because it does not account for the “rich evidence that international finance is an internally diverse and complex assemblage” with its own “moral economy” (Ho 2005, p. 111) where financiers monitor each other’s behavior for ethical violations. But what if the “moral economy” is based on the shared values of the Poker Mindset? What are “infractions” under such a moral regime? The term as I use it does not stand in for specific games of chance found at casinos (where, of course, players can pick and choose in terms of games played) or actual casino practices. Instead, the term refers to the larger systems of economic policies under neoliberalism whereby states are underfunded and rely upon gaming revenues to plug up shortfalls. It also refers to markets that operate in entirely self-serving manners, even though actions will have negative implications on the larger economy. Before the Great Recession, Wall Street widely accepted subprime mortgages, risky derivatives, and other volatile financial bets as part of its normal business model. Where was the self-correcting “moral economy” of those working as traders? Is that really the kind of infraction that Ho here means? This questioning of the use of the term “casino capitalism” makes even more imperative an understanding of the values of the Poker Mindset and how that ideology presupposes as naturalized and “moral” those highly suspect business practices that have the devastating impact of concentrating wealth, providing unfair advantages to those who know how to “stack the deck” or work such a “rigged” system, and who never question the institutionalized inequalities of the system itself. 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 103

How the Ideology of the Poker Mindset and Casino Capitalism Are Normalized

The rigged system of casino capitalism becomes normalized through the ideology of the Poker Mindset that combines notions about masculinity with internalized neoliberal expectations of economic success and our place as citizen-consumers. This occurs through many means, including messages sent via the media, family, education, the workplace, etc. These messages also come from how our government handles the illegal actions of the financial industry. Specifically, after the financial crisis of 2008, criminal behavior by major banks was not prosecuted or punished to the degree as required by the law. Instead, a “new and unprecedented lawlessness emerged” where “the most economically and politically powerful financiers attained a broad criminal immunity for financial crimes” (Ramirez and Ramirez 2017, pp. 3–4), with such crimes being “affirmed by the government’s new unspoken policy of indulgences for the most likely to shower government agents and political leaders with various forms of largesse and patronage” (Ramirez and Ramirez 2017, p. 4). Ramirez and Ramirez worry that as a result, “Ordinary citizens will hold the law in lower esteem if it looks rigged in favor of the wealthiest in society, and they too will fall prey to skirt legal incentives” (Ramirez and Ramirez 2017, p. 4). When corruption becomes endemic for those in power, it has a corrosive cultural impact. In his fascinating book, The Cheating Culture: Why Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead, David Callahan pursues this line of thought when he writes that “In a society where winners win bigger than ever and losers are punished more harshly—whether by losing a job with benefits or not earning enough money to make ends meet—more and more people will do anything to be a winner…. Cheating is more tempting if the penalties for failure are higher” (Callahan 2004, p. 69). Callahan uses survey data from the 1960s through the present to argue that Americans are less trusting of each other and are more likely to believe that others will take advantage when possible rather than be fair, with sixty percent of Americans now believing, “you can’t be too careful in dealing with people” (Callahan 2004, p. 91). He continues, “Distrust is obvious fuel for cheating. If you think people are out to cheat you, you’re more apt to believe that the rules don’t really matter and that you’ve got to live by your wits as opposed to ethical principles. You may imagine for self- protective reasons that you need to cheat others before they get a chance 104 A. MANNO to cheat you” (Callahan 2004, p. 92). (We’ll see examples of this kind of thinking in Chapter 6.) Callahan echoes Strange’s concerns that the result of this risk and uncertainty is a diminution in trust in ethical values. Lindisfarne et al. provide a much-needed gendered analysis of neoliberalism and explain why many men—including men who are not amongst the elite—participate in this destructive economic system. They argue that non-elite men, just by the very fact of them being men, benefit from a patriarchal dividend, a concept described in Chapter 2 of this book (Lindisfarne et al. 2016, p. 9). However, while non-elite men might benefit from patriarchy, they also pay a price for their non-elite status. In particular, “those embodying subordinated masculinities may suffer disproportionately the costs of existing gender regimes” (Lindisfarne et al. 2016, pp. 9–10) as a result of neoliberalism’s increased emphasis on “self- making,” “self-management,” and the “neoliberal self as entrepreneurial self” (Lindisfarne et al. 2016, p. 10). Because these expectations come from both neoliberal notions of success and traditional notions of masculinity (in terms of how its ideology defines success and the way to become successful), “tensions and disjunctures” (Lindisfarne et al. 2016, p. 9) have increased, especially in the neoliberal era with its weakened social safety net and increased risk for the individual. The authors make the important point that just as it is important to examine multiple masculinities and the complex ways that the power relations of traditional masculinity play out for different groups of men in terms of factors such as gender identity, race, class, ability, neurotypical status, etc., it is also important to examine the “important dimensions of the diverse and diver- gent ways neoliberalism plays out in people’s everyday lives in different social and cultural contexts” (Lindisfarne et al. 2016,p.24).Weneed only think back to the complicated interplay of race, social class, and masculinity in the account of Alt-Right-inspired mass shooter Elliot Rodger in Chapter 3 for an example of these disjunctures.

Managing Risk in Uncertain Times and the Entrepreneurial Self

The desire to use data to predict future events and manage risk in the face of uncertainty has a long history in the United States, dating back to tensions surrounding nineteenth-century attempts at crop and weather predictions, where “the production of knowledge about the future was 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 105 shaped by conflicts over authority and expertise within scientific institutions, the federal government, the legal system, the press, and popular discourse” (Pietruska 2017, p. 5). Pietruska notes that in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, our decision-making processes have become “increasingly embedded in layers of predictive knowledge infras- tructures that offer around-the-clock access to increasingly precise and probabilisitic forecasts” (Pietruska 2017, p. 257) and that “uncertainty as an inescapable feature of economic life” (Pietruska 2017, p. 263) creates a desire to “tame uncertainty and manage risk” (Pietruska 2017, p. 264). One way to examine the increasing stress on self-management in the neoliberal era is to look at ways that popular culture trains us— and especially men—in the neoliberal masculine ideology that embeds self-management in our worldview. Carly Kocurek’s Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood in the Video Game Arcade provides one significant way that such training occurred. In addition to explaining how video gaming has been traditionally coded as masculine (with its emphasis on competition, violence, and aggression, for example), Kocurek argues that the values embedded within video gaming act as a training ground for post-industrial workers. Similar to the way that Messner and Sabo argue that sports trains men to be docile capitalist workers that accept dominant patriarchal values (per Chapter 2), Kocurek posits that video games “train players in gaming behaviors by rewarding them with points, game time, and the ability to access subsequent levels, or by explicitly ranking them against other players on the score lists” (Kocurek 2015, p. xviii). Kocurek sees arcade video gaming as an economic harbinger of things to come, with the “emergence not only of the new technology of the computer but of a new credit-heavy deindustrialized, service-based economy” (Kocurek 2015, p. xviii). Kocurek continues by making comparisons between video gaming culture and changes in the larger economy as video gaming in general (and especially arcade gameplay of the 1970s and 1980s) “privileges and values individualized competition, technological fluency, and a type of consumer spending often likened to gambling; it also reinforces what have become prevailing ideas about masculinity” (Kocurek 2015,p.4). Teens entranced by the lights and sounds of video arcades of the 1970s and 1980s who stuffed quarter after quarter into the gaming machines evoke modern-day casinos where gamblers do much the same. Arcade games, Kocurek writes, “prepared players to serve both as laborers in the emergent white-collar service economy, where computers 106 A. MANNO would be at the center of professional activity, and as investors/players in an increasingly deregulated marketplace” (Kocurek 2015,p.12).In an economy that had become increasingly reliant on consumer credit (Kocurek 2015, p. 13), video gaming of the 1970s and 1980s also prepared young men to be workers and consumers in an uncertain economic era: “The young men playing early coin-operated video games were at a seemingly unprecedented level of economic risk, encountering decreases in their earning power and increases in unemployment while they were lured to consumption as a way to self-expression and satisfac- tion” (Kocurek 2015, p. 26). Kocurek’s analysis of the cultural impact (both gender and economic) of video gaming is important, as it helps explain in part how the stage was set not only for a generation of post- industrial workers but also for a generation of poker players (in some ways as a new form of post-industrial worker) in the late 1990s and beyond. Video gaming can be seen as a training ground for poker players, and especially online poker players, providing them with a familiarity with computer interfaces, gaming strategies, and intense competition with a focus on individualized accomplishment in a pay-to-play, winner-take-all environment. When Chris Moneymaker became the face of poker in 2003 with his win in the Main Event of the World Series of Poker, it was online poker that got him that ten thousand dollar buy-in, and Moneymaker himself notes that he was a teen video gamer (Moneymaker 2009, location 332). Moneymaker, born in 1975, was ten years old when the Nin- tendo Entertainment System was released in the United States in 1985 and was twenty-eight years old in 2003 when he won the World Series of Poker championship event after first winning several online poker tournaments. He is a perfect example of a generation of poker players who began as gamers, easily transitioned to online poker as it came of age in the early 2000s, and then moved onto home games and in-person casino poker. While Kocurek sees video arcades of the 1970s and 1980s as training for boys and men for a credit-heavy post-industrial, technology-focused, individual-focused economy where casino gambling machines are adult versions of video arcade machines, Schüll examines machine gambling (such as slot machines) as a reflection of the anxieties of a neoliberal economy and the individual’s place in it. Schüll makes the case that machine gambling is a “solitary, absorptive, activity [that] can suspend time, space, monetary value, social roles, and sometimes even one’s sense of existence” (Schüll 2014, p. 12). While I argue that card gambling such as poker offers a symbolic fantasy space to enact traditionally masculine 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 107 gender and economic roles, Schüll claims that machine gambling offers the lure of the suspension of identity in a zone of nothingness (Schüll 2014, p. 13) Machine gambling, as a result, provides “a window onto the kinds of contingencies and anxieties that riddle contemporary Amer- ican life and the kinds of technological encounters that individuals are likely to employ in the management of these contingencies and anxieties” (Schüll 2014, p. 13). Such technological encounters function to “man- ufacture ‘certainties’ of a sort” and “enact a mode of self-equilibration” (Schüll 2014, p. 13) by limiting choice and creating a distance from the self (Schüll 2014, p. 13) in a trance-like state (Schüll 2014,p.19),perhaps another way of understanding Giroux’s notion of the casino capitalist zombie. The goal behind this interruption of reality is to “suspend key elements of contemporary life—market-based exchange, monetary value, and con- ventional time [which is itself monetized via the work day, the ‘punch card,’ etc.]—along with the social expectations for self-maximizing, risk managing behavior” (Schüll 2014, p. 191). This desire to escape the pressures of contemporary life comes from the push for all of us to be what Schüll calls “self-actuarial” and manage the myriad risks associated with being a modern economic subject in an economy increasingly focused on self-regulation as a result of deindustrialization, the rise of the information and service-based economies, large sale deregulation, a decline of the social safety net, and reliance on flexible, part-time, “gig-economy”-type working conditions. For neoliberal subjects negotiating this reality, everyday life becomes a constant set of choices in the face of risk. They are required to choose, and this becomes oppressive (Schüll 2014, p. 192), as “the pressure to sift through … choice can tyrannize and debilitate, increasing the potential for disappointment, regret, guilt, and leaving individuals feeling barely able to manage their lives” (Schüll 2014, p. 192). We must make choices without the appropriate “knowledge, foresight, or resources” (Schüll 2014, p. 192) required, resulting in “anxiety and insecurity” (Schüll 2014, p. 192). The siren song of the disconnection from self that is provided by machine gambling makes great sense in this context. However, we might see the lure of machine gambling and its resulting trance-like state as both another version of the Poker Mind- set and as its opposite. Faced with the demands of an economy that requires us to be unrelentingly self-actuarial, one response is to look for escape in machine gambling. However, the model actuarial self that 108 A. MANNO

Schüll describes (and the one that machine gamblers desire to escape) is the world that the poker player inhabits and embraces via the Poker Mind- set, one that is completely based on an individual’s actions, where risk is continually negotiated, and where individuals are in constant competition with each other in a system with few safety nets for failure. In a world filled with such risks, serious poker players look for ways to manage contingency and turn to sophisticated analytics for help. The tools they use are a far cry from those nineteenth-century crop- and weather-prediction tools that Pietruska describes. It’s only a small step from the skills and values learned from video gaming that Kocurek examines to the similar but more advanced metrics and methods used by serious poker players (and especially serious online poker players). Serious poker players (as opposed to amateur and recreational players) use sophisticated analytics to help them optimize play, such as hand trackers that pull data from online poker site live chat feeds, programs that analyze player tendencies versus opponents, simulations and “what ifs” for key hands, analysis of an opponent’s hands played, and analysis of a player’s level of aggression (Schüll 2016, pp. 563, 570–572). A key goal of such analytics, available most usefully to online poker players who see thousands of hands per session by “multi-tabling” (that is, playing at multiple virtual poker tables at one time on a online poker site) is to avoid losing focus and control over optimal poker play due to “bad luck” hand losses and going “on tilt.” This is accomplished by focusing on long-term strategies in an attempt to deal with such “bad luck” caused by differences between the long-term statistical probability of hand results and short-term variances from those probabilities (Schüll 2016, p. 564). The use of such analytics has come to be seen as a requirement for serious online poker (Schüll 2016, p. 565). Further, serious poker players now also use Game Theory (developed by Princeton mathematician John Nash in the early 1950s) in their poker play. This highly mathematical approach to poker, called Game Theory Optimal (GTO) poker is distin- guished from the more common “exploitative” approach to poker used almost universally by amateur players. Schüll makes the case that “the game [of online poker] offers players a training ground in how to act decisively” (Schüll 2016, p. 656) in a world full of risk. Because choice-making is not just available but a necessary function of modern life (Schüll 2016, p. 565), we can see 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 109 online poker players as examples of neoliberal subjects who self-regulate and work toward “equipoise and indifference-to-outcome” (Schüll 2016, pp. 566–567) when dealing with extremely large numbers of variances due to multi-tabling at online poker websites. Serious online poker players engage with uncertainty by using their analytics to “render the field of uncertainty apprehensible, available, and actionable” as players work to “reduce or even neutralize such uncertainties” (Schüll 2016, p. 565). The use of powerful computer analytics is a way to better process uncertainty and therefore care less about individual losses in the short term. Seri- ous poker players are “emphatically encouraged to disregard (and indeed, renounce) their actual all-in winnings” (Schüll 2016, p. 570) and think about winnings over a statistically significant time period and strive for optimal play despite the outcome. Online poker players also use this analytic regime of decision-making outside of the online poker table as they enact “personal routines of self-inventory and self-adjustment” through “practiced exposure to a digitally mediated stream of chance,” with the result being “composure” in the face of online variances that “carries over to life off-line, lending them a subjective readiness for living with uncertainty. In this sense, the digital tools available to online poker players can be understood as technologies of the self” and as “vehicle[s] for self-fashioning” (Schüll 2016, p. 566). This accepting of short-term losses and looking instead to optimal play also happens offline (Schüll 2016, p. 583), whereby online poker players learn to disconnect performance from outcome (Schüll 2016, p. 584). These analytics offer training in “tools, techniques, and practices of self-discipline” to avoid sub-optimal choices based on emotions and “express the challenges and dilemmas of living and acting within the fast-moving, highly uncertain terrain of the present-day economy” (Schüll 2016, p. 588). Much like the way big businesses involved in different kinds of gambling are profiting from sophisticated data gathering and analysis—such as Wall Street’s push for technology that allows trading at ever-smaller slivers of seconds to provide ways to handle high-speed stock trading (Markoff 2018) or the importance to sports betting companies of gathering “data on second-by second [in-game] action … [in order to] create manifold betting opportunities” (Glanz and Armendariz 2018)—online poker players, in business for themselves, are using data to manage risk to their advantage in an attempt to thrive in an economy that seems increasingly rigged to favor those in power. 110 A. MANNO

Defining Corruption

When the ideology of the Poker Mindset becomes internalized and is present across institutional networks, the values of the Poker Mindset manifest in multiple examples of corruption that have come to be seen as the status quo, a form of “rigged game” that people take for granted. We can see examples of the way the game is rigged in the shifting legal definition of corruption, in those who influence US political and economic systems, in the way the United States handles debt and related industries such as payday lending and the student loan crisis, in the funding of higher education, and even in parenting norms across social classes. When the winner-take-all ideology of the Poker Mindset predominates, we can see shifting ideas of corruption, with a new normalization of self- serving behavior that is at odds with the public good. Zephyr Teachout’s Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United traces the change in attitude toward corruption in the United States. She notes that historically, corruption did “not just include blatant bribes and theft from the public till, but encompasses many situations where politicians and public institutions serve private interests at the public’s expense. This idea of corruption jealously guards the public morality of the interactions between representatives of government and private parties, foreign parties, or other politicians” (Teachout 2014,p.2).This traditional American idea of corruption was intended to protect the public from “the dangers of unrestrained self-interest” (Teachout 2014,p.4), and this view held for the country’s first two centuries (Teachout 2014, p. 4). Specifically, the law has regarded not just transactional (or quid pro quo) influence as corruption but has also recognized the more subtle and indirect ways that corruption can operate (Teachout 2014,p.4).Tea- chout points to the 2014 McCutcheon v. FEC as a prime example of the way that modern jurisprudence has shifted away from a broader notion of corruption to a much narrower one. McCutcheon was a significant campaign finance case where the Supreme Court, led in the majority by Chief Justice John Roberts, created a “new legal order [that] treats corruption lightly and in a limited way. It narrows the scope of what is considered corruption to explicit deals. It reclassifies influence-seeking as normal and desirable political behavior…. It attempts to wring the moral content out of the term corruption and tell a story about corruption that is consistent with a world populated by self-interested actors” (Teachout 2014,p.8). In short, this new view of corruption is entirely consistent with the Poker 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 111

Mindset and the influences of patriarchy and neoliberalism. The 2010 Citizen’s United v FEC case also supported this neoliberal worldview, ostensibly counting corporations as having the same free speech rights as people and thus giving corporations, with their extreme spending power, an outsized influence on lawmakers and therefore public policy. This blurring of the lines of corruption has a corrosive impact, as corruption becomes normalized and part of the status quo. Just as Herman and Chomsky describe the way that the media becomes organized to perpetuate certain views and avoid challenging others (Herman and Chomsky 2002, p. 11), Teachout describes the normalization of the gift economy that hides quid quo pro corruption. Teachout claims that this use of the gift economy to hide quid pro quo corruption is “so sophisticated that even the people inside it may sometimes feel it is a culture of goodwill and not the auctioning off of public welfare. Quids and quos are not named, but the general obligations are broadly understood, and failure to conform to the experience of the gift economy leads to gifts drying up” (Teachout 2014, p. 253). Such a system provides unfair influence for those with connections and resources, and most of those people turn out to be white, male, and elite.

Hand in Glove: Business, the State, and Stacking the Deck

A Rigged Two-Party System In a winner-take-all system defined by the Poker Mindset, those looking for an “edge” to gain power or maintain it know how to “game” the system. In the realm of politics, the two-party system has been gamed to serve the interests of those in power rather than serve the interests of those who elected them. Gehl and Porter argue against the claim that our political system is “broken.” Instead, they maintain that “Washington is delivering exactly what it is currently designed to deliver. The real problem is that our political system is no longer designed to serve the public interest, and has been slowly reconfigured to benefit the private interests of gain-seeking organizations: our major political parties and their industry allies” (Gehl and Porter 2017, p. 1). In defining politics as a self- serving industry, they identify its “key players” as “private, gain-seeking organizations. The industry competes, just like other industries, to grow and accumulate resources and influence for itself. The key players work 112 A. MANNO to advance their self-interests, not necessarily the public interest” (Gehl and Porter 2017, p. 2). This modern political system “has no basis in the Constitution. As our system evolved, the parties—and a larger political industrial complex that surrounds them—established and optimized a set of rules and practices that enhanced their power and diminished our democracy” (Gehl and Porter 2017, p. 2). Furthermore, the modern politics industry sets its own rules and lacks oversight and regulations, allowing controlling parties to practice gerrymandering and the limiting of the power of the minority party by not allowing it to bring bills for floor votes (Gehl and Porter 2017, p. 2). As a result of this stacking the deck of the two-party political system, “The most powerful customers are partisan primary voters, [and especially] special interests, and donors. Average voters and current non-voters, the majority of citizens, have little or no influence on policy or outcomes” (Gehl and Porter 2017,p.3). Seeing the world through the lens of a neoliberal Poker Mindset, winning is everything, and the ends therefore justify the means, even if the result is that the two-party system only serves the few rather than the many. The Poker Mindset’s focus on the accumulation of wealth and power perpetuates and normalizes corruption, creating an apparatus that sustains the status quo.

The Corruption of the Permanent Political Class

Because political parties are ultimately self-serving, it’s unsurprising that a permanent political class has arisen in support of these politics. The permanent political class includes “a networked layer of high-income people and those striving for wealth including many politicians in and out of office, lobbyists, consultants, appointed bureaucrats (functionaries of the ‘regulatory state’), pollsters, television celebrity journalists (but not investigative reporters), and the politically connected in the nation’s capital and in the states. Not least are behind-the-scenes billionaires such as Charles and David Koch and some who are highly visible such as Sheldon Adelson who exert influence with tens of millions to Super PACs and directly to campaigns and via seemingly nonpolitical giving, such as to universities” (Formisano 2017, p. 3) that shape public opinion and promote valued causes while remaining hidden from public view. Examples of the corruption common to the permanent political class include directing money to business associates, family members, and friends “through their congressional offices, campaign committees, and political action committees” 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 113

(Formisano 2017, p. 39), the growth of unregistered “shadow lobbyists” (Formisano 2017, p. 64), the reality that more than half of former members of Congress work in lobbying (while only three percent did so in 1970) (Formisano 2017, p. 71), and the fact that the amount of money spent by lobbyists grew more than sevenfold, to $3.31 billion in 2012 (Formisano 2017,p.63). The day-to-day dealings of the members of the permanent political class “keep their own interests and those of their families foremost among their priorities” (Formisano 2017, p. 3) and work together with ﬁnancial institutions, lobbyists, and the media, all reﬂecting a “take-what-you-can- feather-my-nest ethos” (Formisano 2017, p. 4) that is an extension of the neoliberal Poker Mindset in that it’s about me getting mine and everyone else is on their own because they’re likely doing the same. Formisano echoes Teachout’s critique of normalized corruption in politics when he notes that some say that members of the political class “are not corrupt but ‘decent people’ participating in a corrupt system…. Jack Abramoff was the rare uber-lobbyist who went to jail, according to insiders, for doing in excess what other lobbyists and members of Congress do routinely” (Formisano 2017, p. 5). The lens of the Poker Mindset allows us to see that Abramoff over-conformed to the values of the Poker Mindset and was punished for being both too much of an example of the unsa- vory common practices of lobbyists and for his extreme version of such behavior.

The Debt Crisis and Corruption: Payday Lending

We can see one important example of the winner-take-all corruption of the Poker Mindset at work in the payday lending industry. The payday lending industry over-conforms to the values of the Poker Mindset in its avaricious preying on low-income consumers who live paycheck to paycheck and sometimes fall short in their financial resources. Any irregular expense of significance can cause extreme financial problems for this demographic. In the absence of a substantial social safety net, the payday lending industry offers cash-strapped consumers loans at interest rates far higher than traditional banks, and until 2016, these payday lenders encountered little regulatory scrutiny. However, in 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed new rules that would seriously curb the predatory practices of payday lenders. The Bureau, in its press release announcing these proposed rules, noted that payday 114 A. MANNO loan recipients “are being set up to fail with loan payments that they are unable to repay. Faced with unaffordable payments, consumers must choose between defaulting, reborrowing, or skipping other financial obligations like rent or basic living expenses like food and medical care. The CFPB is concerned that these practices also lead to collateral damage in other aspects of consumers’ lives such as steep penalty fees, bank account closures, and vehicle seizures” (“Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Proposes Rule to End Payday Debt Traps” 2016). Payday loans are typically short-term in nature, but because many low-income borrowers are unable to repay on time, such loans are often rolled into new loans with additional fees. Payday loans generally have annual percentage rates of three hundred percent or even higher, causing these short-term loans to become hard-to-escape long-term debt. Research from the CFPB indicates that more than eighty percent of single-payment loans are reborrowed and twenty percent of payday loans default. The CPFB’s proposed rules included crucial ability-to-pay protections that “would require lenders to determine upfront that consumers can afford to repay their loans without reborrowing” and would cap interest rates at twenty-eight or thirty-six percent, depending on length of loan and other loan specifics (“Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Proposes Rule to End Payday Debt Traps” 2016). While these proposed changes would bring great consumer safety improvements over existing practices, critics claimed the changes didn’t go far enough. Nick Bourke of the Pew Charitable Trusts complained that the CFPB did not include in its final proposed rules a stipulation that would require long-term loans to make up no more than five percent of the consumer’s monthly income (Cowley 2016). Pew research indicates that twelve million Americans use payday loans each year, generating “more than $9 billion in interest, penalties, and fees. Most borrowers end up paying more in interest, penalties, and fees than they originally received in credit” (Madrid 2018). The payday lending industry fought back against any proposed changes to their core business model. Despite the fact that “[n]umerous studies have shown most … [payday loan companies] to be predatory, [it has been] to little regulatory effect, because the for-profits are entwined with the political class and make hefty campaign contributions to federal and state legislators. Some members of Congress and other government officials are investors and profiteers” (Formisano 2017,p.96).Nine million dollars in campaign contributions has gone from the industry to members of Congress since 2012, with seven million dollars of that 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 115 going to Republicans and sixty-three thousand dollars to Mick Mulvaney, initially the Trump-appointed interim head of the CFPB, then Direc- tor of the Office of Management and Budget, and as of the writing of this chapter Trump’s Acting Chief of Staff. Mulvaney, in his role at the CFPB, stopped the Obama-era CFPB rules from taking effect (Madrid 2018). As a result, payday lending companies “have seen their prospects improve dramatically under the Trump administration and the Republi- can Congress” (Madrid 2018), with a March 2018 joint resolution introduced that would eliminate the CFPB’s restrictions and prevent future restrictions. The winner-take-all neoliberal ethos of the Poker Mindset can also be seen in the way that accumulation by dispossession occurs via the cooperation of the state and business interests. Just as low-income individuals are susceptible to the predatory practices of the payday lending industry, they are also more likely to get caught in a cycle of debt that results from the cozy relationship between debt collectors and the criminal justice system. The American Civil Liberties Union reports that the “criminalization of private debt happens when judges, at the request of collection agencies, issue arrest warrants for people who failed to appear in court to deal with unpaid civil debt judgments. In many cases, the debtors were unaware they were sued or had not received notice to show up in court” (“The Criminalization of Private Debt” 2018). With more than six thousand debt collection firms in the United States collecting billions of dollars every year, millions of collection lawsuits are filed annually, with some debt collection lawyers filing hundreds of lawsuits daily, “often with little evidence that the alleged debt is actually owed. Once a lawsuit is filed, the process is stacked against defendants, the overwhelming majority of whom are not represented by an attorney” (“The Criminalization of Pri- vate Debt” 2018), with over ninety-five percent of cases decided against the debtor. In many cases, the defendant does not know there was a suit, and “collectors have little incentive to give proper notice to the defendants” (“The Criminalization of Private Debt” 2018). The criminal justice system works in concert with the debt collectors, partnering with local district attorneys to threaten prosecution unless debt payment is made, with some debt collectors using, with permission, the letterhead of the district attorney’s office “to threaten people with criminal prosecution, jail, and fines—even when the prosecutor hasn’t reviewed the case to see if a criminal violation occurred” (“The Criminalization of Private Debt” 2018) if debts are not repaid. An investigation by the ACLU of more 116 A. MANNO than one thousand cases revealed that many of those who were jailed or were threatened with jail were often “struggling to recover after the loss of a job, mounting medical bills, the death of a family member, a divorce, or an illness. They included retirees or people with disabilities who are unable to work” (“The Criminalization of Private Debt” 2018).

Higher Education and Neoliberal Corruption

The Poker Mindset also allows us to see the neoliberal corruption of accumulation by dispossession in the current higher education student loan crisis, where shrinking public funding puts ever-greater financial burdens on the citizen-consumer and trains students to think that they bear the financial risks and burdens of higher education as the social safety net shrinks. The goal of this transformation of the university can be seen as the effort to train young people to accept “[m]anufactured conditions of fierce competition for scarce resources,” and to “equip students as well as faculty with a survival-of-the-fittest, dog-eat-dog worldview that justifies the sweated labor of global capital and further feeds campus rape culture, white supremacy, and passivity or free-market opportunism when it comes to the global threat of climate change” (Welch 2018). In 2017, state funding for two- and four-year colleges was nine billion dollars less that before the Great Recession of 2008. At the same time, tuition for public colleges and universities has increased overall by thirty-five percent since 2008. Tuition at four-year public universities is up sixty percent in a number of states such as Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, and Hawaii. Further, tuition doubled in Louisiana. During the same time period, real median income rose by only 2.1 percent. The dramatic decreases in state funding that have resulted in these tuition increases have also had other negative consequences such as the elimi- nation of faculty positions and courses offerings, campus closings, and a reduction in student services (Mitchell et al. 2017). In such an atmosphere, a neoliberal “starve-the-beast” agenda seems at work. As we’ll examine shortly, far-right oligarchs such as the Kochs see democracy as incompatible with their political and economic agen- das. As they have gained control of state legislatures through a stealth takeover of government during the past decade, they have enacted their policy demands using think tanks and other outside lobbying groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that often present legislatures with ready-made bills. Attacks on public worker unions and 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 117 curriculum that focuses on diversity and inclusion and otherwise challenge the status quo such as African-American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Women and Gender Studies, LGBTQ Studies, etc. have increased. It’s not surprising then that the power of full-time, tenure-track faculty has also come under attack. Under the austerity budgets adopted without question by states (states that seem averse to raising taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals for fear that they will flee the state), the assumption is that such austere budgets are their only course of action, when of course they are not. (Think only of Ronald Reagan’s slashing of the top tax rate from seventy percent to twenty-eight percent, as previously mentioned, for rebuttal of the “need” for austere budgets.) In such an environment, today more than three-quarters of US college and university faculty are adjuncts (Welch 2018), contingent faculty with no long-term job security, generally low wages, and generally little or no access to health insurance. This number is a stark difference from the early 1970s (near the beginning of the neoliberal era), when three-quarters of such US college and university faculty were long-term and tenure-track (Welch 2018). Fur- ther, today’s contingent faculty often teach at multiple campuses, have little time for interaction with students outside of class, and have little or no involvement in larger departmental or institutional curricular or governance discussions. Meanwhile higher education currently is in a compliance-heavy era where states and the federal government are increasingly fearful of financial fraud in higher education, which can also be seen as part of the neoliberal austerity agenda. In such an environment, scarce higher education dollars are less likely to be spent on instruction and more likely to be used for the burgeoning higher education administrative bureaucracy. There are now more administrators in higher education than tenure-track faculty members, and the highest paid of them make salaries akin to corporate America. While the ranks of tenure-track faculty are shrinking, top university money reserves are increasing. In 2010, while the University of Illinois, “pleading poverty,” increased tuition and furloughed faculty, it also “increased its wealth from $65 million to $385 million” (Welch 2018). Further, “[b]etween 1978 and 2012, US colleges have borne a total tuition and fee increase of 1,120 percent” (Welch 2018), almost twice the amount that medical expenses increased during the same period. One way that universities have reacted to the lack of state and federal financial support is to look toward corporate partnerships (Welch 2018). 118 A. MANNO

The result is an increasing commodification of education, one that creates docile workers—neoliberal subjects who expect austerity, debt, fierce competition, and bearing the brunt of the lack of a strong social safety net. Welch quotes Slaughter and Rhoades’ Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: “What had once been a ‘public good/learning regime’… is being replaced with an ‘academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime’” (Welch 2018). This shift in higher education reflects the neoliberal values of the Poker Mindset in its weakening of the social safety net (as education is a crucial method of social mobility), the transfer of responsibilities from government to the individual, and the increasing privatization of elements of public institutions. At odds with the compliance-heavy regime faced by public colleges and universities, for-profit colleges, with powerful lobbying efforts and influential supporters in Washington, are seeing regulatory roll-backs. Trump administration Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s connection to casino capitalism are seen in her deep ties to Amway, a company that’s multi- level-marketing business model was investigated as a pyramid scheme. DeVos is married to the former CEO of Amway and is the daughter-in- law of the company’s founder. Under DeVos, the Department of Educa- tion is attempting to roll back Obama-era student protections on higher education that will make it easier for for-profit online colleges to avoid more stringent accreditation requirements and to avoid a rule requiring for-profit colleges to prepare students for gainful employment (Quinlan 2019). In the case of both public and for-profit colleges, though, the burden of debt falls increasingly on the student. Seen this way, higher education debt “is not just a mode of financing but a mode of pedagogy” (The Edu-factory Collective, n.d.). Debt teaches that a college education is a consumer-driven product and that the rational choice for a career is not to be motivated by intrinsic interest or altruism but the ability to make money to pay back loans. Debt teaches the values of neoliberalism in that “the primary ordering principle of the world is the capitalist market, and that the market is natural, inevitable, and implacable” (The Edu-factory Collective, n.d.). It teaches that “the state’s role is to augment commerce, abetting consuming, which spurs producing; its role is not to interfere with the market, except to catalyze it. Debt teaches that the social contract is an obligation to the institutions of capital” and that “[e]ach citizen is a private subscriber to public services and should pay his or her own way; social entitlements such as welfare promote laziness rather than the proper competitive spirit. Debt is the civic version of tough love” (The Edu-factory Collective, n.d.). 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 119

Neoliberalism, then, and casino capitalism, might be said to stoke the ﬂames of patriarchal misogyny resulting from a dog-eat-dog ethos. This perfectly reﬂects the Poker Mindset and its combination of the values of traditional masculinity and winner-take-all notions of economic success.

When Class Divisions Heighten Inequality In addition to the way that younger people are trained in the winner- take-all values of the neoliberal Poker Mindset via higher education, such values are also normalized in older generations via widely accepted notions of the path to, and markers of, upper-middle-class success. As a result, they are built into the system and are generally invisible, hidden within the values of the Poker Mindset. For example, the upper middle class, loosely defined as the top twenty percent of income with household earnings above one hundred twelve thousand dollars, is a driver for inequality in terms of education, health, family, and civic involvement. Seeing America’s economic problems in terms of the one percent versus the ninety-nine percent hides the problem of the outsized influence that the upper-middle-class wields (Reeves 2017, pp. 2–4). In Dream Hoard- ers: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It, Reeves argues that Trump supporters “have no problem with the rich. In fact, they admire them. The enemy are the upper-middle-class professionals: journalists, scholars, technocrats, managers, bureaucrats, the people with letters after their names. You and me” (Reeves 2017, p. 4). Reeves claims that members of the upper middle class “proclaim the benefits of free markets” and yet are “largely insulated from the risks they can pose” (Reeves 2017, p. 4). Such privileged people can take high-minded positions that benefit them, unlike those of lower socio-economic status: “We proclaim the ‘net’ benefits of free-trade, technological advances, and immigration, safe in the knowledge that we will be among the beneficiaries” (Reeves 2017, p. 4). Here, while Reeves does not explicitly indicate it, I can argue that those of the upper middle class who benefit from the current economic system embrace the winner-take-all values of the Poker Mindset. The predominantly white upper middle class has advantages generally in stable homes, highly educated parents, parents more likely to be married and stay married, good neighborhoods, and some of the best schools (Reeves 2017, pp. 8–9). The benefits granted to the upper middle class are passed down to the next generation, creating the “greatest class persis- tence” (Reeves 2017, p. 9) for members of that demographic compared 120 A. MANNO to those below. According to Reeves, “Relative intergenerational mobility is necessarily a zero-sum game. For one person to move up the ladder, somebody else must move down. Sometimes that will have to be one of our own children. Otherwise the glass floor protecting affluent kids from falling acts also as a glass ceiling, blocking upward mobility for those born on a lower run of the ladder. The problem we face is not just class separation, but class perpetuation” (Reeves 2017, p. 10). Reeves provides two reasons for this blocking of upward mobility: “market merit” and “opportunity hoarding” (Reeves 2017, p. 10). By market merit, Reeves explains that our market economy rewards the skills valued by the market, and the best way to learn those skills is through an elite education, which is “the main mechanism for the reproduction of upper-middle-class status across generations” (Reeves 2017, pp. 10–11), creating a “deeply unfair society” where “merit” is “largely as a result of the lottery of birth” (Reeves 2017, p. 10). Opportunity hoarding also functions to give advantages to the upper middle class by providing unfair advantages in access to finite opportunities. Such opportunity hoarding is seen in “exclusionary zon- ing in residential areas; unfair mechanisms influencing college admissions, including legacy preferences; and the informal allocation of internships” (Reeves 2017, p. 12). Reeves notes that progress is possible only when the upper middle class is willing to give up something. This seems unlikely when success, like the economy, is viewed through the values of the Poker Mindset and is seen as grounded in winner-take-all competition. Similarly, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett argues in The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class that a small group of upper-middle- class Americans, as a result of their access to cultural capital, has an outsized advantage and are making inequality worse. Specifically, the “democratization of conspicuous consumption” has caused members of the middle class to spend more on material symbols of status but less “on those things that would pave the way to greater intergenerational upward mobility” (Currid-Halkett 2017, p. 21), such as education, healthcare, diet and lifestyle, and retirement savings. Further, these members of the aspirational class, like the upper-middle-class opportunity hoarders that Reeves describes, need not be ultra-rich to rack up advantages. Instead, Currid-Halkett explains that members of the aspirational class focus less on conspicuous consumption and more on “inconspicuous consumption,” which she defines as the “appropriation of certain behaviors and goods … [that] are becoming … crucial to signaling social position” (Currid-Halkett 2017, p. 21) and are a powerful form of cultural capital. 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 121

The Poker Mindset lets us see the ways that white privilege, male privilege, and trained behaviors of consumption, competition, never having enough, and winner-take-all are baked into American notions of success in ways that encourage opportunity hoarding. In order to fully appreciate the role of today’s neoliberal landscape as fertile ground for the Poker Mindset, this chapter will conclude with two case studies that demonstrate the casino capitalist Poker Mindset in action: the impact of the Koch brothers and the transformation of Bethlehem, PA from industrial steel town to post-industrial casino town.

Case Study in the Poker Mindset: The Koch Brothers

In Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, investigative journalist Jane Mayer tells the story of how ultra-conservative billionaires have used their fortunes to influence our democracy. Mayer focuses much of her analysis on David and Charles Koch’s efforts to use of their billions in support of right-wing causes and the remaking of government to suit their financial interests. She begins with their father, Fred Chase Koch, who founded the family oil business and developed it during the 1930s by helping Stalin in Russia and Hitler in Germany to set up modern oil refineries in both countries (Mayer 2016, pp. 27–29). The Koch patriarch wrote in 1938, “Although nobody agrees with me, I am of the opinion that the only sound countries in the world are Germany, Italy, and Japan, simply because they are all working and working hard,” contrasting them to places he considered less desirable due to “idleness, feeding at the public trough, dependence on the government, etc.” (qtd. in Mayer 2016, p. 31). The elder Koch was described as a ruthless disciplinarian who instilled his world view in his children, sending Charles Koch off to boarding school to toughen him up and putting an extreme fear of failure in his sons, creating a bullying and extremely competitive environment (Mayer 2016, pp. 32–37). He “tried to indoctrinate the boys politically” (Mayer 2016, p. 38), espousing his views of the dangers of government (Mayer 2016, p. 38). This winner-take-all attitude apparently made an impact on the young Charles Koch. Mayer describes that he told this prescient joke as a child: “When called upon to split a treat with others, he would say with a wise-guy grin, ‘I just want my fair share—which is all of it’” (Mayer 2016, p. 378). Fred Koch was one of the founding members of the John Birch Soci- ety, a group that railed against the Brown v. Board of Education decision. 122 A. MANNO

Fred Koch’s racist views were on display when he wrote, “The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America” (Mayer 2016, p. 39). Charles Koch became interested in the Freedom School, led by Robert LeFevre, who advocated extreme freedom and free enterprise and was “as adamantly opposed to America’s government as he was to Communism” (Mayer 2016, p. 43). LeFevre “favored the abolition of the state” (Mayer 2016, p. 43), and thought the New Deal was bad policy. In the mid-1960s, Charles Koch was a major financial supporter of the Freedom School and both an executive and member of its board of trustees (Mayer 2016, p. 43). While at the Freedom School, Charles Koch became influenced by the thinking of laissez-faire economist Fred- erich Hayek (Mayer 2016, p. 45). According to Mayer, “The [Freedom] school taught a revisionist version of American history in which the rob- ber barons were heroes, not villains, and the Gilded Age was the country’s golden era” (Mayer 2016, p. 44). This seems disturbingly similar to the racist revisionist history of the Lost Cause by the South after the Civil War used to justify past and present oppressions and inequalities. Charles Koch also became interested in the writings of University of Virginia economics professor James McGill Buchanan in the early 1970s. Buchanan, who was Chair of the Economics Department in 1956, proposed a plan to “deal with the incursion on states’ rights” (MacLean 2018, p. xiii) as a result of the 1954 Brown decision. Buchanan’s ultimate goal was to “reduce the authority and reach of government or to diminish the power and standing of those calling on government to protect their rights or to provide for them in one way or another” (MacLean 2018, p. xv). For Charles Koch, Buchanan’s thinking provided a roadmap by which he could “secure the transformation in American government he wanted” (xx) and thus “save capitalism from democracy—permanently” (MacLean 2018, p. xx). Historian Nancy MacLean argues that “a quest that began as a quiet attempt to prevent the state of Virginia from having to meet national Democratic standards of fair treatment and equal protection under the law would, some 60 years later, become the veri- table opposite of itself: a stealth bid to reverse-engineer all of America, at both the state and national levels, back to the political economy and oligarchical governance of mid-century Virginia, minus the segregation” (MacLean 2018, p. xv). The lens of the Poker Mindset lets us see that its winner-take-all neoliberal worldview justifies this deeply undemocratic goal. 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 123

Charles Koch thought that the best way to gain new supporters would be to focus on “‘attracting youth’ because ‘this is the only group that is open to a radically different social philosophy.’ He would act on this belief in years to come by funneling millions of dollars into educational indoctrination, with free-market curricula and even video games promot- ing his ideology pitched to prospects as young as grade school” (Mayer 2016, p. 56). This is similar to the current strategies of the Alt-Right in indoctrinating new adherents. Charles Koch also created the Cato Insti- tute, dedicated to espousing libertarian ideology. The Kochs “consistently depicted Cato and other ideological projects their philanthropy supported as nonpartisan and disinterested” (Mayer 2016, p. 88), but this is clearly not the case. The Koch’s influence is seen in the work of the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, and the Moral Majority, all providing evidence of the growing conservatism that the Koch brothers worked toward (Mayer 2016, pp. 89–90). They saw the fruit of their efforts during the Rea- gan years, with his administration adopting sixty-one percent of the 1270 conservative policies presented by the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership playbook (Mayer 2016, p. 90) and cutting tax rates on the highest earners (Mayer 2016, p. 91). This set the stage for the neoliberal starve-the-beast philosophy of limiting government and weakening the social safety net that is with us today. The Koch brothers allied with the evangelical right and were successful in their effort to “wrest control over the machinery of the Republican Party beginning in the late 1990s and with sharply escalating determination after 2008” (MacLean 2018, p. xxvii). Mayer tells the story of the moment in 2008 when Barack Obama was inaugurated, and she focuses not on the inauguration itself but instead on a gathering organized by the Koch brothers, who brought together other wealthy conservatives in order to organize to undermine the Obama agenda and push their own (Mayer 2016, pp. 2–3). The Kochs’ January 2009 gathering was “shrouded in secrecy” (Mayer 2016, p. 8), with attendees of that meeting and others like it being “routinely admonished to destroy all copies of any paperwork” and to “say nothing to the news media and to post nothing about the meetings online” (Mayer 2016,p.9).TheKochbrothers had tried a third party presidential run in 1980 when David Koch ran as a libertarian, but that type of conservatism was seen as too fringe and extreme by mainstream Republican conservatives at the time. The Kochs decided, then, to change the Republican party so that it was more in their 124 A. MANNO own image (Mayer 2016, pp. 3–4). Mayer writes, “They used their fortune to impose their minority view on the majority by other means” by “pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a stealthy effort to move their political views from the fringe to the center of American political life” through building a “daunting national political machine” (Mayer 2016, p. 3). The Kochs “waged a long and remarkable battle of ideas” (Mayer 2016, p. 3) through think tanks, lobbyists, academic programs, legal groups, and judicial influence that seemed unconnected and were “cloaked in secrecy” without a “money trail that the public could trace” (Mayer 2016,p.4). The Koch network is made up of other wealthy conservatives such as Richard Mellon Scaife (Mellon banking and Gulf Oil), Harry and Lynde Bradley (who worked with defense contracts), the Devos family (who own Amway), the Coors family (who are beer magnates), (Mayer 2016,p.4), Paul Singer (described by many as a “vulture capitalist”) (Mayer 2016, p. 12), Robert Mercer (hedge fund manager) (Mayer 2016, p. 13), those representing oil and fracking interests (Mayer 2016, pp. 15–16), and Sheldon Adelson (casino magnate) (Mayer 2016, p. 17). These wealthy conservatives “challenged the widely accepted post-World War II consensus that an activist government was a force of public good. Instead, they argued for ‘limited government,’ drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry, particularly in the environmental arena. They were said to be driven by principle, but their positions dovetailed seamlessly with their personal financial interests” (Mayer 2016,p.4).ThelensofthePoker Mindset lets us see that their principles include the virtue of the accumulation of wealth and power at the expense of others in a highly competitive world. We can see an example of the Poker Mindset at work in Feagin and Ducey’s notion of the elite-white-male dominance system. They explicitly make the connection between masculinity, race, and power in their concept. They claim that the “central problem of the twenty-first century is elite white men” (Feagin and Ducey 2017, p. 1), and that this small elite rules actively, undemocratically, and globally, yet remains largely invisible to the billions of people it routinely dominates” (Feagin and Ducey 2017, p. 1). The result is that men in the United States make up eighty percent of the members of Congress, seventy-eight percent of state political executives and seventy-five percent of state lawmakers, eighty-four percent of mayors of the top one hundred cities, one hundred percent of Wall Street 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 125

CEOs, ninety-five percent of Fortune 500 CEOs, seventy-three percent of tenured professors, ninety percent of Silicon Valley technology jobs, and eighty-seven percent of police department members (Feagin and Ducey 2017, p. 1). They conclude that for “white-run oligopoly capitalism to prosper, ordinary whites, not just the elite, must believe in the fictional bootstrap narrative” (Feagin and Ducey 2017, p. 163). This mythology of the self-made man is in keeping with the meritocratic values of the Poker Mindset and serves as a rationale for the extreme inequalities of wealth and power of those such as the Koch brothers. MacLean pulls no punches in her assessment of the goals of the Kochs and their ultra-wealthy counterparts: “Their cause, they say, is liberty. But by that they mean with the insulation of private property rights from the reach of government– and the takeover of what was long public (schools, prisons, western lands, and much more) by corporations, a system that would radically reduce the freedom of the many. In a nutshell, they aim to hollow out democratic resistance” (MacLean 2018, p. xxviii) and return to oligarchy, where political and economic control are held by an elite few who think they know what’s best and use whatever “scholarship” that serves their selfish ends. For example, James McGill Buchanan, the economics professor with whose writings Charles Koch became enamored, published an article called “The Samaritan’s Dilemma,” in which he argued that we “may simply be too compassionate for our own well-being or for that of an orderly and productive free society” (qtd. in MacLean 2018, p. 142). Buchanan twisted the parable of the good Samaritan, arguing that Jesus was wrong in his belief for helping others because he lacked the “strategic courage” to allow the victim to learn to help himself, in this way casting the victim as the victimizer (MacLean 2018, pp. 142– 143). Such treatises appeal directly to the values of the Poker Mindset and help these ultra-right figures rationalize their stealth take-over and neutering of government, because in the face of a lack of popular support for their goal of essentially redistributing income back to the elites, the radical right made it a goal to weaken democratic institutions in their work towards oligarchy (MacLean 2018, p. 223) and thus—as mentioned earlier—“save capitalism from democracy” (MacLean 2018, p. xx). Mayer examines the political activism of John M. Olin, whose Olin Foundation “bankrolled a new approach to jurisprudence known as Law and Economics: at law schools such as Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Columbia, Georgetown, and the University of Virginia” (Mayer 2016, p. 107). The goal was to push back against “expanded consumer, labor, and environmental rights” and demands for “racial and sexual equality 126 A. MANNO and greater workplace safety” (Mayer 2016, p. 107) by examining laws “not just for their fairness but also for their economic impact” (Mayer 2016, p. 107). The Koch network also funded a sort of campus political indoctrination program, giving almost one hundred fifty thousand dollars to Brown University’s Political Theory Project, “a freshman seminar in free-market classics taught by a libertarian” (Mayer 2016, p. 155). Interestingly, the strategy documents of the radical right refer specifically to the connection between ideas about the economy and gender in their efforts to sway public opinion. These documents stress that “efforts should probably focus on men, because they are ‘more likely to think like economists,’ whereas women tend to anticipate the downside of economic liberty and so support government intervention” (Mayer 2016, p. 224). This directly supports the notion of the Poker Mindset, where the targeting of men is reasonable due to the intersection of masculinity and ideas about the economy, success, providership, and the American Dream.

Case Study in the Poker Mindset: Bethlehem, PA

The Bethlehem Steel Company was established in 1899 in Bethlehem, PA, a city located in the eastern portion of the state’s Lehigh Valley. It ultimately became the second largest US steel provider and made the steel portions of the Golden Gate Bridge, and it was a primary provider of steel for the US military during World War II. The company was also an example of positive industrial era work relations, rights, and benefits. Across the United States during the industrial era, “the steel industry set precedents for broader labor relations in which large corporations (like Bethlehem Steel), encouraged and compelled by the state, recognized the rights of increasingly bureaucratic unions to collective bargaining, resulting in rising working-class wages and benefits, and increased consumer demand. This accord fueled US economic growth in the postwar period” (Schennum 2011, p. 2). Bethlehem Steel was a vital part of the economy of Bethlehem, making up over half of all wages earned by residents in 1957 (Taft 2016, p. 31). Further, the steel mill in Bethlehem had a powerful symbolic meaning, signifying “a much broader cultural commitment in American society–a commitment to the ethos of manufacturing production, a legitimation of the importance of the industrial working man, and a recognition that industrial workers had earned the right to a middle-class standard of living, dignity at work, and broadly defined citizenship rights” (Schennum 2011,p.7). 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 127

This symbolic meaning changed, however, and the steel mill soon came to symbolize the decaying industrial economy and the casting off of its workers, “as processes of deindustrialization and restructuring in the steel industry and at the Bethlehem plant initiated a long period of instability for workers. Workers hired in 1964/65 enjoyed only ten to fifteen years of this order before processes of transformation to a neoliberal regime, including deindustrialization in steel, became evident” (Schennum 2011, p. 13). The steel industry in the United States went from a mainstay of industrial work to “a trendsetter in processes of deindustrialization” (Schennum 2011, p. 2). Beginning in the late 1970s, the steel industry attempted to “restore high rates of profitability” through neoliberal practices such as “undermining union strength, extracting concession- ary contracts, pursuing capital mobility, and ultimately reporting to the bankruptcy courts to eliminate working class assets” (Schennum 2011, p. 2). Since the 1980s, when neoliberal trade and economic trade policies “catered to corporate interests … companies have decimated their labor forces through automation and moved abroad or to other states. These corporate strategies reduce labor costs, take advantage of tax incentives, and avoid environmental regulations, decisions aimed primarily at boost- ing shareholder value by improving the bottom line. Workers meanwhile increasingly make concessions, hoping to keep corporations profitable in order to protect their jobs, in essence tipping the balance of the social contract toward capital needs” (Taft 2016, pp. 37–38). We can see in this example the shift from stable, middle-class industrial worker to tenuous, under-valued neoliberal worker. When Bethlehem Steel filed for bankruptcy in 2001, it was caught in the system of neoliberal profiteering that saw profits as the ultimate goal and that cared little for the lives of the displaced workers. According to Schennum, “While the bankruptcy process meant the demise of the company, and stripped hard-earned benefits from workers, it resulted in profits for vulture investors like [current Trump administration Secretary of Commerce] Wilbur Ross, experts like Steve Miller, and high-priced bankruptcy bankers and lawyers” (Schennum 2011, p. 24). Bethlehem Steel’s bankruptcy in 2001 “was a precedent-setting case in which the court allowed the company to shed its retiree commitments in favor of stockholder value” (Taft 2016, p. 32). That was followed by employee loss of health care coverage in 2003 (Taft 2016, p. 32). These losses of benefits were unexpected by the employees who knew the plant was 128 A. MANNO closing (Taft 2016, p. 32). It caused many former steel workers to experience poverty and threw them into the workforce in mostly service jobs at a fraction of the wages earned at their former jobs (Schennum 2011, p. 24). Schennum writes, “While workers were very bitter about these processes of dispossession, they did not mobilize collectively to combat them. The uneven distribution of the effects of accumulation by dispossession over the variegated steelworking class undermined the potential for collective response” (Schennum 2011, p. 24). Instead, workers tended to deal with their job loss and economic insecurity “as a private experience” (Schennum 2011, p. 24). In addition, some workers reported blaming themselves for their “own shortcomings” rather than blame Bethlehem Steel. Enacting stereotypical masculine traits of independence and self-sufficiency that connected “employment status as a measure of self-worth,” a large number of former steelworkers “refused to go on welfare or food stamps because of the shame associated with job loss” (Taft 2016, p. 45). We can clearly see the values of the Poker Mindset at work here in the focus on individual effort and responsibility of these displaced steelworkers and the ways that the expectations of traditional masculinity contribute to this worldview. In perhaps the most telling way possible, former Bethlehem Steel workers experienced the shift from industrial to casino capitalist economy with the transformation of the site of the former Bethlehem Steel mill into the Bethlehem Sands Casino. The growth of casinos nationwide “metaphorically encapsulate[s] how an economic culture in which high-stakes gambles are rewarded has remade the relationship between capital and community” (Taft 2016, p. 15). Former Bethlehem Steel steel workers were eligible for Trade Readjustment Allowance benefits—federal income support benefits intended for workers who lose their jobs due to foreign trade—to pay course tuition if they enrolled in nearby Northampton Community College’s Casino Training Programs, located in a former steel mill plant building (Taft 2016,p.40).Taft evokes the ethos of casino capitalism when she writes, “social protections most visible in the form of the union contract have been replaced with emphases on individual risk, a model for which the casino industry seems an apt representative” (Taft 2016, p. 100). Education in the post-industrial era substitutes workplace security and the assurance of the social safety net with a focus on flexibility and portability. We can see an example in the former Bethlehem Steel workers who trained at Northampton Community College to become casino dealers. Here, an 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 129 education system in the neoliberal era props up the casino industry and thus casino capitalism and neoliberalism in general. In place of the unionized, industrial workplace of the steel mill, where the “principle of seniority invoked values about work and skill, structured access to jobs, and organized social relations within the plant” (Schennum 2011, p. 22), the neoliberal post-industrial workplace of the casino values “flexibility, mobility, and short-term opportunities” (Taft 2016,p.15) and not the knowledge and experience of seniority. In fact, the notion of seniority “was re-defined from a prestigious resource to a deficit. They found respected, assertive masculine attitudes that served well on the shop floor were detrimental in service work” (Schennum 2011,p.25).Thereis a strong gendered component to this, creating tensions for former industrial workers in the post-industrial workplace. While industrial jobs that define masculine worth and a middle-class lifestyle for many disappear, the new economy demands more progressive attitudes toward gender, so in addition to the dispossession workers felt as a result of their disconnection from the previous unionized, well-paid industrial work, they might see progressive attitudes toward gender pitted against them just as the economy must seem to be pitted against them. This might be all the more reason why such working-class people feel embittered of those upper middle-class people (often from the coasts and often college educated) because they represent all those things that seem wrong to the dispossessed former industrial workers. In the rise of casino capitalism, we can see the complicity and the kind of corruption Teachout describes between industry and the state. The gaming industry donated six million dollars to state political campaigns, with $1.7 million going to the gubernatorial campaign of candidate Ed Rendell. When he took office, the first bill Rendell introduced was to legalize slot machines, and the bill explicitly prevented a public vote on the measure, one that “[m]ost agree” would not have passed a public vote (Taft 2016, p. 63). The Bethlehem Sands Casino was opened by billionaire Sheldon Adelson in 2009. Adelson was born in 1933 “to a Lithuanian-immigrant father who drove a cab and a mother who ran a knitting shop” (Taft 2016, pp. 228–229) and was raised “in a shabby one- room tenement in Dorchester in South Boston” (Clary 2017, p. 229). While Adelson was not a good student, he “learned how to hustle early on by selling newspapers and starting a candy vending machine business as a teen” (Clary 2017, p. 229). Adelson embodies the traditional masculine notion of the self-made man and is perhaps most famous for co-founding 130 A. MANNO the Computer Dealers’ Exhibition (COMDEX) in 1979. COMDEX was a highly successful and influential computer trade show held in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 1989, he bought the Sands casino in Las Vegas from Kirk Kerkorian and built the biggest convention center in the US next to the hotel/casino. He sold COMDEX for $862 million and later demolished the Sands and built the Venetian hotel and casino in its place in 1995, followed in 2009 by the Palazzo (Clary 2017, p. 229). At the opening cere- mony of the Bethlehem Sands Casino in 2009, Adelson said the following in his remarks: “In Hebrew, Bethlehem means ‘the house of bread.’ And what do you need to make bread? Dough. That’s what we intend to make here” (quoted in Taft 2016, p. 12). By “we,” Adelson apparently meant the casino, not the gambling public. Within the first four days of opening, more than sixty thousand people wagered over sixty million dollars on slot machines alone, generating over five million dollars in slot winnings for the casino (and obviously lost by gamblers) (Taft 2016,p.6). It’s clear from these numbers that Adelson and the Sands (emblematic of the larger neoliberal system of casino capitalism) are taking far more away from Bethlehem than they are giving. It is yet another form of accumulation by dispossession as patrons flock toward casinos, giving upon their money for the long-shot chance at the big win. (The Sands Bethlehem Casino was sold and renamed the Wind Creek Casino Bethlehem in July 2019.) Casino capitalism, then, is both figurative and literal. It reflects the transformation of our economy to one where wealth has been strategically diverted to elites and where government and business work hand-in-hand for their mutual enrichments at the expense of the interests of American citizens. Further, casino capitalism also reflects a training regime, one seen for example through interactions with higher education and with technologies of self-management. This training regime reinforces messages of the need for the individual to accept ever-greater risk for failure and a diminished social safety net. The Poker Mindset, with its winner-take-all values, serves as an ideology that props up neoliberalism by normalizing the accumulation by dispossession that is its essential function and providing false hope for a “big win” that will beat the odds and provide a chance at the dream of riches. 4 “A STACKED DECK”: CASINO CAPITALISM AND THE POKER MINDSET 131

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“Deal Me In”: Neoliberal Workers and the Poker Mindset

As I wrote in the Chapters 1 and 2, poker’s popularity can be seen as a reflection of the larger cultural phenomenon that I call the “Poker Mind- set,” and in order to understand the Poker Mindset, we must examine poker as a gendered activity and specifically how valued characteristics of traditional masculinity such as wealth, status, independence, aggression, daring, and stoicism are embedded in the rhetoric of the game as well as in our larger culture. Poker ultimately functions as a symbolic fantasy space where players negotiate the tensions of competing masculinities, as well as the contingencies of a harsh neoliberal economy and their places in it as citizens and workers. According to Communications scholar Aaron Duncan, “Professional poker players can … be viewed as entrepreneurial role models for a new, risk-based society” (Duncan 2014,p.39).He argues that the American Dream has been transformed from one where success and virtue results from hard work to a “pokerized” version of the American Dream where skill, luck, greed, and winning are the most important markers of success (Duncan 2014,p.41).Inaneoliberal,risk- based society, aren’t gamblers in general and poker players, in particular, the exemplars of entrepreneurial selves, career managers who are not dependent on an employer? In a sense, poker players are the epitome of freelancers, gamblers like others in a gig economy who desire to be “dealt into the game” and who are chasing the new American Dream of the big win as the path to financial success. The “fantasy of the big win” becomes the “ultimate capitalist product, one that offers realization of all

© The Author(s) 2020 135 A. Manno, Toxic Masculinity, Casino Capitalism, and America’s Favorite Card Game, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40260-0_5 136 A. MANNO consumer dreams” (Young 2010, p. 260). In our dangerous modern risk- based society, the risk becomes commodified. Young argues that “a risk society … produces … demand for risk,” but risk that is “controllable, bounded, and individualized” and that is “free of the broader global anxieties associated with the risk society” (Young 2010, p. 269). What the concept of the Poker Mindset adds to Young’s analysis is an explanation of why citizen-consumers in twenty-first-century America—who are faced with increasing risks and responsibilities created by a weakened safety net, the retreat of government from regulating business, and an ever more unstable and contingent work life—would seek out risk via gambling. Because the Poker Mindset is an ideology, a belief system that is generally unquestioned and seen as “natural,” the ideas about masculinity and economic success that are bound up into the Poker Mindset are taken for granted. These beliefs include the following: the system is fair and everyone has an equal chance, success is defined through wealth and status, individuals succeed based on their own hard work and initiative, there are limited resources that must be fought over, competition is natural and necessary, toughness and aggression are needed in competition for scarce resources, choosing the correct risks is necessary, and manliness is seen through providership. If these beliefs are taken for granted, it makes sense that recreational arenas of play would replicate and perpetuate the power structures of the larger culture rather than challenge them. The space of the poker table and the Poker Mindset allows for the display of retrograde gender values not appropriate in many social settings, including many workplaces, in progressive notions of relationships, etc. Such displays prop up some men’s notions of themselves in a culture where many may feel that they are increasingly losing power, influence, and relevance. Gam- bling as a “safe space” to try out risk and to provide a sense of the success of the “big win” reinscribes the values of the Poker Mindset. The Poker Mindset has been cultivated in part because it is the most effective mindset for the neoliberal agenda to become powerful and to be perpetuated. This chapter examines the pressures that neoliberal workers, both blue- collar and white-collar alike, face in working to be their own companies and forging their own brands. Different groups of people with different levels of access to power and resources are able to respond to these pressures in different ways. This chapter begins with a brief example from my observations of the way that the space of the poker table can be used as part of an informal employment economy to help find work for fellow poker players. The chapter next identifies the majority of the jobs that 5 “DEAL ME IN”: NEOLIBERAL WORKERS AND THE POKER MINDSET 137 make up the new working class and the structural factors that lead to job insecurity and fewer protections against wage theft and unsafe working conditions. This instability has a corrosive effect, resulting in weakened relationships, fear of intimacy, and lack of trust in institutions such as the government and education. Despite this instability, a belief in the value of self-reliant meritocracy predominates. One important example of the way that the values of the Poker Mindset can be seen having an impact on workers in a neoliberal economy is in the transformation of the trucking industry. The example of the changes in the trucking industry during the neoliberal era demonstrates how government and industry have worked hand in hand in ways that have transformed what was once a respected, unionized, well-paid profession to an unstable, economically risky, and sometimes even dangerous profession. This chapter also explores the ways that white-collar workers deal with an insecure economy, from embracing the metaphor of self-as-business to reframing job instability in terms of narratives of self-reliant control over one’s career by not being beholden to paternalistic employers to reimagining gender expectations for men who are temporarily supported by spouses in-between jobs. Further, this chapter includes the important example of the company Amazon as neoliberal white-collar employer and how its practices reflect the values of the Poker Mindset and threaten to change the national employment landscape. (While Amazon also employs many blue-collar workers in its warehouses, the focus here will be on its white-collar workers.) Finally, this chapter concludes with several “nontraditional” jobs in the twenty-first century that are especially emblematic of our neoliberal risk-based society: daily fantasy sports gamblers, e-sports participants, and online streamers. The powerful narratives of the Poker Mindset—narratives that tap into deeply entrenched values of individual responsibility, providership, and a strong work ethic—enable and perpetuate the often cruel conditions under which neoliberal workers exist.

Poker as Informal Employment Network: My Observations

Most every Monday night, I drive to a small local tavern about fifteen minutes from my home in central New Jersey. It’s generally relatively quiet when I arrive at about 6 p.m. It’s a friendly place, and after going there week after week for over ten years, the bartender and waitresses will greet me by name. I’ll have dinner with a longtime friend and chat about 138 A. MANNO the week: how his business is going, how my work as a community college professor is going. Soon enough, people begin to crowd into the bar. As they eat and drink, poker tables are set up around the perimeter of the tavern, with two decks of cards, one blue and one red set in the center of each table along with eight neat stacks of red, green, black, and white poker chips. The tables allow easy access to the bar and are within view of one of the many televisions playing in the background. I play in poker tournaments in this tavern as part of a national tavern poker league. Poker players in the league compete for points and overall ranking rather than for money, but many take it quite seriously, playing at multiple venues per week in hopes of attaining top tavern, region, state, and national rankings. While tavern poker is played for points, the possibility exists for players to win “big money.” The best tavern poker players across the nation gather yearly in Las Vegas or Atlantic City for tournaments that send winners to the annual World Series of Poker with entry fees paid and the chance for real-money payouts. Tavern poker players come and go, but a surprising number of players are there week in and week out. Players develop friendships, and we learn bits and pieces about each other’s lives. I know about players who own businesses. I know who went to the casino that week (or multiple times that week), and I often hear both “big win” but more often “bad beat” stories. I also learn more intimate details. I know, for example, players who lost loved ones in the past year, who are recovering from cancer and other illnesses, who are retired, and who are unemployed or underemployed and looking for work. Within this environment, where players fiercely compete at the poker table and yet spend so much time together week in and week out, something interesting occurs that sheds some light on the neoliberal post-industrial economy. This space offers the predominantly male poker players important networking connections and informal ways to benefit economically via business arrangements and employment opportunities. In doing this, players benefit from an informal handshake network of the poker table as they tap into one of the important values of the Poker Mindset: they can continue to be economic providers. These arrangements have nothing to do with the game of poker, but they have everything to do with the symbolic space of poker and with the Poker Mindset. Poker players are drawn to these tavern games for multiple reasons, including some or all of those mentioned above, but because these are not games for “real money,” these other benefits are important to recognize and understand. That’s 5 “DEAL ME IN”: NEOLIBERAL WORKERS AND THE POKER MINDSET 139 not to say that free poker as a game has nothing to do with real-money winnings. Another of the informal networks of free tavern poker is that some players find and arrange amongst themselves real-money games at each other’s homes. It’s also likely true that such informal networking happens at many poker tables across the country, including wealthy and powerful amateur poker players who benefit in similar ways. Even if these different groups of people might play poker at different venues, the fact that the poker table is the space where this networking happens is no accident, due to what poker and the Poker Mindset represent. We can see the Poker Mindset at work in the way that this informal networking reflects an attitude of increased risk and responsibility for the individual worker in a neoliberal moment when we are forced to be, as one scholar puts it, “companies of one” (Lane 2011,p.9).Someplayers use these weekly poker tournaments as a kind of informal gig economy networking vehicle where they find temporary jobs for each other doing such tasks as web design, printing, flooring installations, painting, yard work, handyman work, etc. Therefore, analyzing the employment conditions of workers like these and others across several layers of the modern, neoliberal economy will help reveal another level of significance of the Poker Mindset. Chapter 4 gave the big picture of the neoliberal shift over the past few decades and how that has impacted our culture, but we also need to see what this looks like on the ground—in the lives of actual people in blue- and white-collar roles.

The Working Class in the Insecure Economy

While Millennials and members of GenZ are often characterized as lazy and entitled, the truth of their experience is often different. They have inherited a harsh economic reality that is likely quite different from that of their grandparents and perhaps their parents. Real wages for working-class jobs have fallen since 1973 by twenty-six percent for those without a high school diploma and twelve percent for those with a high school diploma. At the same time, since 1979, seventy percent of overall income gains have gone to the top fifth of workers, while the bottom fifth only gained 0.4 percent (Silva 2015, p. 15). Scholz makes an explicit connection between what has been called the temporary, unstable “gig” economy and neoliberalism by invoking Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as crucial economic forebears of this modern paradigm. They “damaged the belief in the ability of unions to watch out for workers; they weakened the 140 A. MANNO belief and the possibility of solidarity, and created a framework in which … the decoupling of productivity and income became more plausible” (Scholz 2017, p. 161). In other words, these forebears set the stage for the unmerciful way that many workers are treated today. American workers of every socio-economic, gender, and racial group have worked more hours since the neoliberal turn of the 1970s in response to job insecurity (Pugh 2015, p. 22). Employer-provided health insurance covered only twenty-four percent of low-wage workers in 2007 but covered sixty-two percent of middle-income workers (Weil 2014, p. 16). Further, there is a massive disparity in terms of the debt loads of different socio-economic classes, with lower-income workers shouldering debt payments representing forty percent of income and the highest earners debt representing about only four percent of their income (Weil 2014, p. 15). Another disparity in the neoliberal economy is between wages and productivity. Between 2000 and 2012, real wages for workers at the fiftieth percentile in wage distribution increased by only four percent while during the same time period productivity increased by twenty-three percent (Weil 2014, p. 16). The profits generated by this increased productivity are clearly not being fairly distributed to workers, whose wages barely outpace rises in the cost of living. Pugh writes that, “Inevitability works here as a sort of ideology, shoring up insecurity culture. The assumed inevitability of insecurity reflects the dominance of particular narratives about how the economy works, and is promulgated by institutional forces that benefit from it…. Collective notions of what we owe each other at work gain certain traction when they are institutionalized in state policies, workplace practices, and court decisions” (Pugh 2015, p. 25). The narratives that Pugh mentions— those that justify low wages for workers in the face of high profits for corporations—are part and parcel of the Poker Mindset because those who hold this mindset incorrectly see such realities as the only way things can be, the necessary conditions of our unforgiving US market economy. The new working-class jobs typically consist of retail, food service, and caring jobs (Draut 2016, p. 24). The workers in these jobs often act as contractors or subcontractors, are placed by temp agencies, or are part of a franchise system (Draut 2016, p. 24). While there is a stereotype of fast food workers as being predominantly teenagers, the reality is quite different. Teenagers only make up thirty percent of fast food workers. Over twenty-five percent of fast food workers are parents (Draut 2016, p. 25) “who must rely on meager pay and unstable schedules to provide 5 “DEAL ME IN”: NEOLIBERAL WORKERS AND THE POKER MINDSET 141 food for their children” (Draut 2016, p. 26). A similar reality differing from stereotype exists for retail workers. Again, many might assume that most of these workers are teenagers doing part-time work, but the reality is that more than half of all retail workers “are contributing 50 percent to their family’s income” (Draut 2016, p. 26). Like fast food jobs, most retail jobs are done by non-college-degree-holding adults (Draut 2016, p. 26). Home health care work, child care work, and personal aide work will be “one of the largest sources of new jobs for the foreseeable future” (Draut 2016, p. 39), but they don’t offer much opportunity for career advancement, and pursuing such advancement requires expensive college courses and time away from work to pursue such credentials, making it especially difficult for working-class women, who shoulder the majority of childcare and domestic work, to get ahead (Draut 2016, p. 39). Many of these working-class jobs are structured in ways that make it difficult for workers to get enough hours. This, coupled with low pay, unpredictable on-call or just-in-time scheduling, and unpaid overtime results in many of these workers, in their own words, feeling “‘invisible,’ ‘disrespected,’ and ‘unappreciated’” (Draut 2016, p. 48). This severe scheduling paradigm does not allow employees to plan for childcare or second jobs, as employers often only provide less than a week’s advance notice for a worker’s schedule. Job insecurity is the new normal. Pugh writes, “In most dual- earner families, one or both partners report having an insecure job; in almost half off these households, both partners think their employment is insecure” (Pugh 2015, p. 5). The move from secure work to insecure work is most starkly seen at both extremes of the workforce: union workers versus contingent workers. While union members represent a diminishing number of the total workforce, the number of contingent workers is growing as a percentage of the workforce. Pugh defines contingent workers as on-call, self-employed, or contractor, and they far outnumber union workers at a ratio of more than 1.5 to one (Pugh 2015, pp. 5–6). The contingent and mobile nature of the modern workforce is especially hard on women due to their greater hours spent on caregiving for children, the elderly, and those in poor health (Pugh 2015,p.12). Government oversight of industries in terms of employee protections has been weakening since the 1970s as part of the larger neoliberal agenda, as we saw in Chapter 4. Such a work regime status quo contributes to the actual decline of union power and also reinforces a 142 A. MANNO mindset of grim individualism that undermines the appeal of union solidarity (Pugh 2015, p. 25). The unrelenting goal of such an employment regime is lower wages and the transfer of money to economic elites at the expense of workers. This is accomplished by using the ideology of individual responsibility coupled with the belief that workers should “give their all” for their employers (Pugh 2015, p. 20). Tech entrepreneurs used the financial upheaval and resulting job insecurity of the Great Recession of 2008 as a way to capitalize on worker desperation by “restructuring the economy” (Scholz 2017, p. 161) into the gig economy. The unstable and temporary gig economy is “really an on-demand service economy that set out to monetize services that were previously private” (Scholz 2017, p. 156). This is, of course, part of the neoliberal agenda. Scholz coins the term “crowd fleecing”—which seems to be a dark spin on “crowd sourcing”—to refer to the “reorganization of work that is marked by temporal uncertainty” and conditions that result in “wage theft, deregulation, an increased desensitization of work, and unprecedented workplace surveillance” (Scholz 2017, p. 114). Such workers are, similar to the way that Pugh describes, “called upon to give everything and ask for nothing” (Scholz 2017, p. 114). These stark modern types of employment arrangements are not well protected by existing labor laws (many of which are almost one hundred years old) and leave workers vulnerable to wage theft and unsafe working conditions with little recourse (Draut 2016,p.24). Labor laws meant to protect workers have not kept pace with the changing nature of the employment landscape. Such laws, some of which date back to the 1930s, “often assume simple and direct employee/employer relationships” (Weil 2014, p. 4). These laws, “crafted to safeguard basic standards, to reduce health and safety risks, and to cushion displacement from injury and economic downturn often fail do so” (Weil 2014,p.4) in the context of work done for companies by contractors, franchisees, and other external employee arrangements (Weil 2014,p.4). Pugh notes that while we might expect the most vulnerable workers in the insecure economy—those “at the bottom of the skill hierarchy” (Pugh 2015, p. 20) and who Draut would categorize as the new working class— to desire greater “loyalty” and “security” from employers, that is not the case. In fact, “most of those with low-skilled or lower-paying jobs seemed to put themselves in the employer’s shoes” so that while employers were seen as owing workers little, workers felt that they “must give their all” (Pugh 2015, p. 20), with seventy-five percent of workers interviewed indicating the importance of a strong work ethic (Pugh 2015, p. 20). This 5 “DEAL ME IN”: NEOLIBERAL WORKERS AND THE POKER MINDSET 143

“one-way honor system” (Pugh 2015, p. 198) predicated on narratives of the importance of a strong work ethic has powerful roots in America and connects to issues of character, where “intense work commitment” is seen as “a core part of being an honorable person” (Pugh 2015, p. 21). This belief also connects to the Poker Mindset in its meritocratic notions of the American Dream in terms of the belief that a worker might someday be the boss. One of the interventions that this project brings to bear is to superimpose a more acute gendered analysis of these economic narratives of success via the lens of traditional masculinity. Such an analysis reveals that the “honorable” nature of an intense work ethic is strongly connected with valued “manly” virtues. Pugh writes that the “call of duty has long been powerful for men, particularly less advantaged men, providing a narrative throughout history that has both elicited and made sense of their sacrifices in their service to risk … [and] backbreaking work” (Pugh 2015, p. 107). Echoing the deep dissatisfaction experienced by men who feel that they are cast aside by new economic realities and a greater cultural acceptance of feminism, Pugh notes that job insecurity and its consequences can result in “angry white men” who feel that they are “betrayed at work and at home” as a result of their belief in the cultural narrative that sees the “primacy of work as a moral measure” (Pugh 2015, p. 107). As a result, the lives of working-class young adults are characterized by risk and a lack of choice (Silva 2015, p. 8). Many of those who Silva interviewed “bounce from one unstable job to the next, racking up credit card debt to make ends meet and fearing the day when economic shocks—an illness, a school loan coming out of deferment” (Silva 2015, p. 8)—will upend their lives. The risk and instability that they experience teaches self-reliance and the lesson that “being an adult means trusting no one but yourself” (Silva 2015, p. 9). When illness, injury, unexpected expenses, or “family dissolution” happen, “they must rely on individual solutions—mainly their credit cards—to survive” (Silva 2015, p. 36). It’s not surprising, then, that working-class young adults carry much more debt than higher income earners. Believing the ethos of the Poker Mindset, many working-class young adults think that a “stable and upwardly mobile life is possible if only they take the ‘right’ risks” (Silva 2015, p. 36). In such a context, they “learn to approach others with suspicion and distrust” (Silva 2015, p. 84). This places barriers to intimate relationships. Instead of seeing relationships as offering comfort, support, and stability, for young working-class adults, “intimacy becomes yet another risk to bear” (Silva 2015, p. 59). This 144 A. MANNO also ties into the ideology of the Poker Mindset and its focus on providership as a marker of traditional masculinity. Silva writes, “In an era when economic and social shocks such as job loss, illness, or disability are the responsibility of the individual alone, the field of intimacy becomes yet another arena of struggle. Single working-class white and especially black men who subscribe to traditional gender ideology but do not hold stable jobs for example believe that their inability to support a wife and children precludes the possibility of monogamy” (Silva 2015, p. 78). Dis- ruption becomes the mantra of business and has been translated into a “moral order characterized by a hegemonic, legitimating discourse” (Snyder 2016, p. 8), normalizing insecurity as a key tenet of the business world and often resulting in a corresponding insecurity in the personal lives of the working class. The kinds of concerns that I hear regularly at local tavern poker games are consistent with these concerns about precar- ity and insecurity. While the specific occupations might vary—the players at tavern poker represent both white-collar jobs and many working-class jobs like water-company repairman, gas station attendant, grocery-store meatpacker, golf course groundskeeper, and painter—the talk at or near the poker table is often related to finding additional “gig” work. The concerns are not directed to the system but about what they need to do as individuals to recalibrate their personal brands so that they can be more fully “dealt in” to the game of the neoliberal economy. In this sense, the phrase “Deal Me In” that is part of the title of this chapter can be seen as reflecting a belief in the values of the Poker Mindset and its meritocratic faith in individual effort as the bedrock of economic success. The Poker Mindset, then, through its connection to masculinity and neoliberalism is akin to what Silva calls a “lived system of meanings and values” (Silva 2015, p. 98). Seeing the world through the lens of hyper- individualism impedes the ability to trust others, whether resulting in tensions surrounding intimate relationships or resistance to forming coalitions with others in similar circumstances. Instead, the meritocratic focus of the Poker Mindset results in the “explicit rejection” of “social groups and institutions” (Silva 2015, p. 84) and “deep animosities towards others—particularly African-Americans—who are seen as undeserving of help” (Silva 2015, p. 84). Workers hold tight to the neoliberal focus on self-reliance that is part of the Poker Mindset. Seemingly paradoxically, those same workers expect nothing from employers (not loyalty or fair treatment) while at the same time feel let down by social institutions such 5 “DEAL ME IN”: NEOLIBERAL WORKERS AND THE POKER MINDSET 145 as the government and the education system. This further fuels the belief that they can only count on themselves (Silva 2015, pp. 95–96). With such a worldview, where workers see the world as a zero-sum game and resources as scarce, the Poker Mindset does not manifest in questioning the power of the elite and of corporations and the damage they have done to the lives of working-class Americans. In such an austere neoliberal environment, where betrayal is the dominant feature, working-class people may feel that they can only count on themselves and create a rationalizing worldview of rugged individualism because they feel that no one gave them anything and they are angry at those who they believe are getting advantages. Looking at larger systems of inequality to see privilege and racism is quite difficult with such a worldview. Doing so would upend their rationale for their own failures, as would creating alliances in combating expectations of going it alone. The result of bearing the weight of these institutional forces, according to Standing, is that these working- class people are part of the precariat and experience anger, alienation, anxiety, and a breakdown in norms (Standing 2016, p. 22). Standing writes, “People in incipient competition conceal from others knowledge, information, contacts and resources, in case revealing them would take away a competitive edge. Fear of failure, or of being able to achieve only a limited success, easily leads to disavowal of empathy” (Standing 2016,p.26). This aptly describes the ethos of the poker table itself. Players withhold information from each other with the goal of leveraging this information (and sometimes providing verbal and nonverbal disinformation) into profit, which can only be made by taking from others in a system of finite resources. Talk tends toward the superficial, including jokes and taunts, and deeper connections are generally not made during poker play itself. Trucking is an important example where the Poker Mindset has been used as an ideology that has rationalized the transformation of the industry via neoliberalism. This transformation has resulted in financial gains of trucking companies and losses for truck drivers. Such a transformation has been accomplished through a combination of the deregulation of the trucking industry, the shifting of risk and expenses onto the driver and away from trucking companies, the lowering of wages through manipulation of the market, and through the industry’s appeals to drivers using false narratives—narratives that are part of the Poker Mindset—of self-reliance and independent ownership. This is very different from the trucking profession as it was in the middle of the twentieth century. The combination of union organization and government regulations made 146 A. MANNO truckers “the best-paid and most powerful segment of the US working class” (Viscelli 2016, p. 3) between the 1950s and 1970s. In the 1970s, however, the economic logic of deregulation had become normalized, with key academics reaching “nearly universal consensus” (Viscelli 2016, p. 17) about the need for deregulation. This consensus was deliberately manufactured via the politicization of the academic debate using a “re- volving door between universities, think tanks, and government” (Viscelli 2016, p. 17). The legislative work to deregulate the industry began in 1980, with the final result of total deregulation occurring in 1985 (Viscelli 2016, p. 20). Workers bore the brunt of the cost reductions that resulted from deregulation of the industry, with “[t]otal employee compensation per mile, including benefits” falling “by 44 percent in over-the-road trucking from 1977 to 1987” (Viscelli 2016,p.22). As we’ve seen with other examples of the uncompromising neoliberal era approach to the business model and its relationship with employees, the trucking industry shifted risk and expenses from trucking companies to the contractor drivers who are increasingly enticed into a lease-to-own scheme. For example, during the Great Recession of 2008, trucking companies “had contractors shoulder an increasing share of the costs and risks of truck ownership” (Viscelli 2016, p. 193). By freezing the hiring of truckers, large trucking companies slowed driver turnover as the job market for drivers tightened, after which the trucking companies promptly made major reductions in driver pay (Viscelli 2016, p. 193). Trucking companies have “intentionally transformed the contractor model in order to lower costs, shift risk, retain drivers, and prevent unionization” (Viscelli 2016, p. 203). An important part of this strategy is to create a narrative that appeals to truck drivers in encouraging them to become contractors. This appeal, which Viscelli describes as a “carefully crafted discourse” to which drivers are exposed “from the moment they are recruited and trained” (Viscelli 2016, p. 203), attempts to have drivers see themselves as “small businesses and not workers” (Viscelli 2016, p. 204) so that drivers will “identify their interests with the interests of carriers rather than employee truckers” (Viscelli 2016, p. 204). For example, the Amer- ican Trucking Association wrote that drivers want to “live out their own version of the American Dream” (qtd. in Viscelli 2016, p. 112) by being self-employed independent contractors. Further, the website Overdrive, which describes itself as “the premier resource for online trucking news” (“Overdrive” 2019), included an article extolling the benefits of being independent trucking contractors. The article quotes a trucker, Bryant 5 “DEAL ME IN”: NEOLIBERAL WORKERS AND THE POKER MINDSET 147

Coll, who states that being an independent contractor provides the feeling of “running your business” (qtd. in Kvidera 2019). In employing this rhetoric, trucking companies use the ideology of the Poker Mindset and its powerful notions about the American Dream and masculine ideals of independent ownership. This is especially true for the “highly masculine” (Snyder 2016, p. 202) workplace culture of the trucking industry. Believing this rhetoric, contractor drivers imagine themselves as independent businesses while lacking the power that trucking companies have in determining the rules for the relationship between contractor and trucking company. One consequence is the debt that drivers ﬁnd themselves in when engaging in lease-to-own agreements. Another result is that by creating a narrative whereby trucker-contractors see their interests aligned more with the trucking companies than with other truckers, they undermine the ability to form coalitions to ﬁght for fair wages, working conditions, and other trucker-friendly employment arrangements.

White-Collar Workers and Insecure Corporate Culture

Unlike the insecure, low-skilled workers that Draut describes, Pugh argues that many white-collar professionals “embrace insecurity culture at work as the conduit to the flexibility they prize and the opportunities they enjoy, and their narratives of independence mesh well with the reign- ing ethos of insecurity culture, that of a privatized, autonomous self with responsibility for one’s own trajectory” (Pugh 2015, p. 50). The ability of a small number of workers to thrive in such a brutal economy serves to justify the economic paradigm itself, despite the struggles of so many working-class and middle-income white-collar workers. The success of these affluent few reinforces the values of the Poker Mindset, values that these white-collar workers embrace, and results in seeing the troubles of the working class as individual rather than systemic failures. Furthermore, the ability of affluent workers to navigate insecurity requires resources that often make this possible, resources working-class and middle-income white-collar workers might lack. One of the ways that white-collar workers navigate job insecurity in the twenty-first century is by using the metaphor of the self-as-business as the starting point for the job search. This is a significant change from the metaphor of self-as-property that dominated during the twentieth century. Using that self-as-property metaphor, employees essentially rented 148 A. MANNO themselves out to employers. In doing so, “you give up some of your freedom to do whatever you want during the day in exchange for some security” (Gershon 2017, p. 12), essentially selling the “capacities they possess” (Gershon 2017, p. 2). With the shift to the self-as-business metaphor, workers “think they own themselves as though they are businesses—bundles of skills, assists, qualities, experiences, and relationships, bundles that must be consciously managed and constantly enhanced” (Gershon 2017, p. 1). In the twenty-first-century workplace, using the self-as-business metaphor, the relationship between worker and employer is seen as a business-to-business relationship. Instead of renting oneself to an employer in exchange for some security, the worker creates “a partnership [with the employer] that distributes responsibility and risk so that every ‘business’ involved can maintain its own autonomy in the market” (Gershon 2017, p. 13). This change in metaphor is consequential and paves the way for working relationships whereby the employee has far less job security, as seen in the rise of contractors and freelancers in the United States. Gershon notes that between 2011 and 2015, the use of freelancers increased by 33.8%, with almost eighteen million Americans working at least fifteen hours or more per week as contractors, up from 13.3 million (Gershon 2017, p. 15). Even companies seen as highly desirable employers such as Google are using large numbers of contractors, with the company employing 121,000 temporary workers and contractors as of March 2019 as compared to 102,000 full-time employees (Wakabayashi 2019). With the self-as-business metaphor, loyalty and job security are not valued. Instead, “the metaphor of self-as-business presupposes that competition is at the core of every relationship. Businesses might enter into alliances with each other, but only as a temporary arrangement against the backdrop of market competition. These alliances will end the moment one of them becomes disadvantageous to one party” (Gershon 2017, p. 249). As a result, job turnover is high in the business world of self-as-business. In fact, “[q]uitting (and getting laid off or fired) is the engine that makes contemporary hiring what it is today” (Gershon 2017, p. 29). Indus- tries have emerged that monetize this high job turnover. When workers think about a career not as stable employment but “a string of jobs” (Gershon 2017, p. 207) leading to career advancement, recruiters work to convince employees to switch jobs (Gershon 2017, p. 207), and career counselors can provide training on creating brands for workers in a self-as- business environment (Gershon 2017, p. 26). Like the meritocratic focus 5 “DEAL ME IN”: NEOLIBERAL WORKERS AND THE POKER MINDSET 149 on working-class young adults, the self-as-business metaphor of white- collar workers “doesn’t make room for solidarity. If everyone is a business, there are no structural divisions between people…. Everyone is supposedly on equal footing” (Gershon 2017, p. 249). With competition as the ruling principle, it doesn’t “easily lead to meaningful and longstanding cooperation” (Gershon 2017, p. 249). Lane studied the careers of Silicon Valley tech workers. She, too, identifies the self-as-business metaphor at work, which she calls “the ideology of career management” (Lane 2011, p. 13). She describes it as “a neoliberal faith in individual agency, the logic and efficiency of the free market, and the naturalness of the status quo system of insecure employment” (Lane 2011, p. 4). Like Silva, Lane argues that neoliberalism “continues to play a powerful role in shaping the lives of individual Americans” (Lane 2011, p. 4) and refers to Harvey’s similar notion that these values are so ubiquitous that they have “become incorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world” (Lane 2011, p. 3). The tech workers that Lane interviewed espoused many of the same beliefs expressed by Draut’s and Silva’s examinations of the working class and Pugh’s, Scholz’s, and Gerson’s examinations of white-collar workers. These beliefs are in keeping with the values of the Poker Mindset and its focus on masculine independence and a belief that our system is meritocratic: the free market is fair, the individual actor is better than the collective, government intervention is bad, problems can generally be solved through the work of the individual in the context of the free market, and we should have faith in the value of hard work to get ahead (Lane 2011, p. 5). These are also the views predominantly held by the tavern poker players that I encounter each week at the not-for-money tavern poker tournaments in which I play. While they might complain about their work, I don’t hear my fellow tavern poker players challenging the status quo of the neoliberal free market. There seems to be no doubt that it’s up to each individual to make the most of employment opportunities. To this end, they network with other players and often provide business connections that lead to work: a player who hires another player to paint his house, refinish his floors, or make and print business cards, for example. The tech workers that Lane describes face even more job instability than many other post-industrial workers. Lane notes that while the average US employee changes jobs about ten times over the course of a career, the average Silicon Valley tech worker faces about twenty job changes 150 A. MANNO

(Lane 2011, p. 39). One might imagine, then, that such workers, who face this level of workplace volatility, would yearn for job stability and feel resentment at their employers. When these tech workers were laid off, they reported cobbling together work through part-time, contract positions, “relied on limited unemployment benefits, fell into debt, accepted low-paid, low-status interim jobs, feared for their families’ economic well-being, and experienced depression, self-doubt, and discouragement” (Lane 2011, p. 9). Despite all this, these tech workers “rarely perceived themselves as victims of their former employers or of capitalism more generally” (Lane 2011, p. 9). Instead, such workers have used the Poker Mindset to reflect the new realities of the bleak post-industrial workplace. Rather than seeing themselves as victims of a system set up to make profit for a powerful few on the backs of the many, these workers embraced the gendered values of neoliberalism via the Poker Mindset. With this worldview, it is the workers who expect loyalty from employers who are the victims because the expectation of job security reflects a feminized “childish dependence” (Lane 2011, p. 45) on one employer (Lane 2011, pp. 9, 13, 45). Redefining masculinity to suit their new employment conditions, these tech workers see themselves as “‘companies of one,’ entrepreneurial agents engaged in the constant labor of defining, improving, and marketing ‘the brand called you’” (Lane 2011, p. 9). Doing so taps into career management’s “long history of management theory and American mythologies of meritocratic individualism and masculine agency” (Lane 2011, p. 13), allowing the male tech worker to “adopt a posture of self-reliance that shored up his threatened masculinity” (Lane 2011, p. 45). A worker dealing with job loss “is refashioned into a frontier-like, self-sufficient career manager” (Lane 2011,p.49)asserting control over his career and “where job security is something you create for yourself” (Lane 2011, p. 49). This narrative lifts up risk as valued and “celebrates rather than stigmatizes job seekers’ unsteady employment records and associates job loss not with failure but with self-reliance and a willingness to do whatever it takes to succeed” (Lane 2011, p. 48). This focus on masculine self-reliance taps into long-valorized American icons like the cowboy, who is valued for his tough-minded independence and willingness to take risks. This brings to mind the image of the poker player. Professional poker players often speak about the idea of being their own bosses and creating their own luck through risk. Independence and self-sufficiency in the cruel winner-take-all poker world draws upon the same frontier spirit of the cowboy that Lane evokes in her descriptions of 5 “DEAL ME IN”: NEOLIBERAL WORKERS AND THE POKER MINDSET 151 the attitudes of modern white-collar career managers. As evidence of the way that the ethos of the Poker Mindset permeates the thinking of these contingent tech workers, they reframe victimhood not as connected to those who experience work instability but to those “‘suckers’ … who perceive job security as a possibility, let alone a right” (Lane 2011, p. 46). Similar thinking is used to rationalize how white-collar workers have seen the loss of blue-collar jobs. Lane writes, “Many used the logic of social Darwinism to fault their newly unemployed blue-collar neighbors for failing too adapt to a changing economy” (Lane 2011, p. 38). This, too, is in line with the winner-take-all ideology of the Poker Mindset and its view that there need to be losers in order for there to be winners. It should be noted, though, that white-collar workers have significant advantages over blue-collar workers in negotiating the perils of the modern insecure workplace. Specifically, while working-class young adults fear the risks associated with intimate relationships as potential economic burdens, white-collar workers, and especially men, can utilize the earning power of spouses as a way to weather layoffs and retool for new positions. White-collar workers sometimes benefit from the stability of two income marriages and men can embrace two gender values in tension, defining masculinity in ways that they see fitting traditional masculinity. First, they can be self-reliant career managers in their movements from one job to another. In addition, they can do whatever it takes to continue a successful career trajectory, including being temporarily dependent on a spouse’s income while out of work (Lane 2011, p. 121). Lane writes, “In adopting the illusion of complete self-reliance that career management provides, male workers have rejected the idea that they depend on anyone, a stance maintained even when they rely on an employer for a paycheck or a spouse for the roof over their head and the food on the table” (Lane 2011, p. 127). The ability to be an effective white-collar career manager “rests heavily, if often invisibly” (Lane 2011, p. 129) on a working spouse. Worker benefits and employment safeguards that were once provided by companies to employees have been eroded or elimi- nated altogether, and the burden of such an absence of a safety net has been “quietly transferred onto the shoulders of the dual-earner family” (Lane 2011, p. 129). This reality reinforces class divisions and makes it possible for white-collar workers to continue to rationalize blue-collar employment issues as a matter of individual rather than systemic failures. Furthermore, because both blue-collar and white-collar workers alike see the economic system as natural and inevitable, there is little impetus for 152 A. MANNO organizing coalitions to agitate for systemic change, only giving companies even more power in their unequal relationships with workers. A historical perspective here illuminates changing attitudes toward work and masculinity. During the late nineteenth century, corporations attempted to change the prevalent attitude at a time when “self- employment was the ideal for middle class white men in the United States” (Lane 2011, p. 9). The growth of large corporations during this time prompted widespread concerns that men who were sedentary office workers would become “soft” as a result of “overcivilization” (Putney 2001, p. 4). Lane writes, “companies had to convince employees that a career within the corporation was a legitimate and sufficiently masculine option for ambitious, talented young men. To this end, employers started offering employee insurance, pensions, and other benefits under a budding system of welfare capitalism. To foster employee loyalty, they popularized the image of the corporation as family” (Lane 2011, pp. 49–50). To be clear, the purpose of these benefits for companies was to help the bottom line of the companies, not the workers. The changing attitude about worker benefits reflects the extent to which accepted values about the workplace and workers’ roles and expectations are culturally and historically defined. Perhaps these benefits offered by employers appealed to late nineteenth-century workers’ notions of masculinity. Anthony Rotundo, in American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era contends that eighteenth-century masculinity was focused on what he calls “communal manhood,” defined by a man’s duty and responsibility to family and community (Rotundo 1993, p. 2). While Rotundo claims that definitions of masculinity changed in the nineteenth century to focus on individual accomplishment to reflect the “spread of a market economy” (Rotundo 1993, p. 3), he also notes that these cultural definitions of masculinity are not monolithic, with culturally valued gender expectations from one time period still having power in another. Taken this way, the appeal of duty to family in terms of providership that was so powerful in eighteenth-century masculinity can be seen as having power in the nineteenth century and still having power today. (One need only look at a May 2019 New York Times article “With His Job Gone, an Autoworker Wonders, ‘What Am I as a Man?’” [Tavernise 2019] to see a current example.) This appeal to masculine providership for family likely explains the increasing benefits that nineteenth-century employers offered to entice new employees and also explains the appeal to company as family. 5 “DEAL ME IN”: NEOLIBERAL WORKERS AND THE POKER MINDSET 153

A corollary to the way that blue-collar workers are treated by the trucking industry in the twenty-first century can be seen in the ways that white-collar workers are treated by a company like Amazon. A lengthy 2015 New York Times exposé interviewed many current and former Amazon employees and presented a disturbing portrait of a company that had intentionally developed a crushing corporate culture that burns through employees in a combative, hypercompetitive workplace where anything less that eighty-hour workweeks (including expected work at nights, on weekends, and on vacations) and total commitment leaves people open for the yearly firing of “Amazonians.” Amazon calls the ranking and firing process “purposeful Darwinism” (Kantor and Streitfeld 2018), and it reflects the obsession with metrics and assessment that CEO Jeff Bezos has made a cornerstone of Amazon’s approach to assessing employee effectiveness. Amazon doesn’t “cater” to employees, displaying its valuing of frugality through “bare bones desks” and employees often paying for their own business expenses. Bottom-performing employees, based on metrics and an internal online feedback tool, are fired yearly, creating a highly competitive environment where “it is in everyone’s interest to outperform everyone else” (Kantor and Streitfeld 2018). According to the Amazon ethos, the ideal workplace is “a meritocracy in which people and ideas compete and the best win, where co-workers challenge one another” (Kantor and Streitfeld 2018). The result is “a world of frequent combat” (Kantor and Streitfeld 2018). The internal online quality reporting tool, AnyTime Feedback Tool, has reportedly been used by some to raise up some employees and “bury” others. Some employees reportedly form “pacts with colleagues” to eliminate competition or make room for a needed team member in a workplace that runs lean and where work teams are always maneuvering for resources. In such a stressful workplace, it’s a common occurrence to see workers crying at their desks (Kantor and Streitfeld 2018). As a teen, Bezos spent summers at his grandfather’s twenty-five- thousand-acre Texas ranch, “fixing machines, working with cattle, and learning self-reliance” (Anders 2019). We see the masculine frontier ethos at work in Amazon’s “Leadership Principles,” which states in part that Amazon values “calculated risk” (“Leadership Principles” 2019). He also echoes traditional masculine values in his 2010 commencement speech at Princeton University, asking graduates, “Will you play it safe, or will you be a little swashbuckling?” and “When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?” (Bezos 2010). The New York Times article 154 A. MANNO calls Amazon’s Leadership Principles “the articles of faith that describe the way Amazonians should act” that have been integrated into the company’s “daily language and rituals” (Kantor and Streitfeld 2018). It’s clear that most white-collar Amazon employees have “internalized Amazon’s priorities,” so much so that some Amazonians “say they teach them to their children” (Kantor and Streitfeld 2018). Bezos sees his primary job at Amazon as “helping to maintain the culture” (Kantor and Streitfeld 2018). Such an uncompromising culture leaves little room for problems that arise from health and family issues. Having a baby, a serious illness, or caring for an elderly parent are life events that some say triggered low job- performance reviews, performance improvement plans (PIPs) meant for under-performing employees, and ultimately leaving the company. Molly Jay, a former Amazon employee who cut back her work hours to care for her father who was dying of cancer, was denied a request for a transfer to a “less pressure-filled job” (Kantor and Streitfeld 2018). Commenting on Amazon’s expectations of total commitment to the job, Jay said “When you’re not able to give your absolute all, 80 hours a week, they see it as a major weakness” (qtd. in Kantor and Streitfeld 2018). Other former Amazon employees recounted their own tales of Amazon’s unwillingness to accommodate difficult life circumstances and being told “I’m sorry, work is still going to need to get done” (Kantor and Streitfeld 2018). Julia Cheiffetz, a former Amazon employee, writes in a Medium article that in her second year at Amazon, she became pregnant, and six weeks after giving birth, she was diagnosed with cancer. After medical treatment, Cheiffetz was ready to return to Amazon after five months, but upon her return she was put on a PIP meant for employees who weren’t meeting standards and lost her direct reports. Cheiffetz soon resigned. In her article, she directly addresses Jeff Bezos and writes, “Please, make Amazon a more hospitable place for women and parents. Reevaluate your parental leave policies” (Cheiffetz 2015). Unlike many other tech companies, which are improving family leave policies such as adding paternity leave, Amazon’s policies lag behind (Kantor and Streitfeld 2018). Unsurprisingly, some see a gender gap at Amazon, and few of Amazon’s top-level executives are women (Kantor and Streitfeld 2018). The Leadership Principles and Amazon’s harsh corporate culture seem to place women at a disadvantage. One might ask whether a workplace where being blunt and critical is expected is at odds with a larger culture that still unfortunately can see assertive women as bossy and undesirable. 5 “DEAL ME IN”: NEOLIBERAL WORKERS AND THE POKER MINDSET 155

Amazon’s harsh employment culture causes a great deal of turnover at the company. The median employee tenure at the company is one year, per a 2013 survey, and is “among the briefest of the Fortune 500” (Kan- tor and Streitfeld 2018). Further, by Amazon’s accounting, only fifteen percent of employees stayed at the company more than five years (Kantor and Streitfeld 2018). Jeff Bezos seems to have no problem with the high rate of turnover, envisioning “a new kind of workplace: fluid but tough with employees staying only a short time and employers demanding the maximum” (Kantor and Streitfeld 2018). According to current and former employees, the high turnover is not “a failure of the system … but rather the logical conclusion: mass intake of new workers, who help the Amazon machine spin and then wear out, leaving only the most committed Amazonians to survive” (Kantor and Streitfeld 2018). This system reflects the values of the Poker Mindset in a particularly stark way by seeing profit as the ultimate goal and employees as disposable resources to achieve those profits. Amazon is the most valuable company on the planet, as of January 2019 (La Monica 2019). For all its riches, Amazon has been accused of being quite stingy with its philanthropy, and this, I’d argue, is a direct result if its corporate culture, a culture that strongly reflects the masculine and neoliberal values of the Poker Mindset. While Microsoft and other highly profitable companies include philanthropy as part of their institutional missions, including encouraging employee giving and matching employee charitable donations, Amazon eschews such an approach, with Amazon employees being told that charitable donations are a personal, not a company, matter (Martinez and Heim 2012). A former member of the Seattle City Council criticized Amazon, chiding it by saying, “I think it’s fair to suggest that they [Amazon] take a bigger role in the civic life of their home” (qtd. in Martinez and Heim 2012). Others echo this criticism. An article in Forbes comments, “Plenty of corporations are underperforming as philanthropists on the world stage, although rarely does the disparity between size and community impact seem as wide as it is with Amazon” (Scott 2019). Bezos has been described as a political libertarian, reportedly using his vast resources to oppose a Washington state ballot initiative that “sought to impose a state income tax on Wash- ington’s wealthiest residents” (Martinez and Heim 2012). Amazon’s lack of corporate philanthropic generosity, as well as Bezos’s personal opposition to taxes on the ultra-rich, clearly reflect the attitudes of the Poker 156 A. MANNO

Mindset. Bezos seems to want to control how his wealth is used for philanthropic purposes and opposes the kinds of taxes that would result in monies available for state and federal governments to use for improvement programs of their choice. The Bezos way, like the Poker Mindset, seems to be one where competition and individual achievement do the most social good and should determine where and how finite resources are used. Many modern businesses operate not with the goal of social responsibility but instead follow the spirit of economist Milton Friedman, one of the leading thinkers who promoted the virtues of neoliberalism as noted in Chapter 4. Friedman who wrote in 1962’s Capitalism and Freedom that “there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it plays within the rules of the game” (qtd. in Collins 2009). (Of course, powerful corporations and their lobbyists can influence the rules of the game, as we saw in Chapter 4.) Bezos and Amazon seem to take this approach. Echoing Freidman, Bezos believes that the social good that Amazon accomplishes is through its business practices, commenting, “Our core business activities are probably the most important thing we contribute” (qtd. in Martinez and Heim 2012). In another interview, Bezos expressed the idea that “for-profit models improve the world more than philanthropy models, if they can be made to work” (qtd.inMartinezandHeim2012). Bezos’s worldview of harsh competition, ultra-demanding expectations of employees’ time and commitment, and willingness to use churn and burn employee turnover speaks to a pitiless company that serves no greater good than its bottom line and places very little value on its employees as human beings. Scott warns that “when a company shows little interest in its communities or employees beyond its business roles, a culture of rampant employee disengagement is sure to follow” and that “a company that focuses on the humanity of its employees is less likely to exploit them” (Scott 2019). It should be noted that many white-collar workers desire a job at Amazon, which provides a generous compensation package and stock options to such employees (Lowrey 2015). Amazon’s focus on profit reflects the values of the Poker Mindset and an attitude where profit is at the heart of capitalism both on the systemic and individual levels. Both the company and individuals seem motivated by profits, and while some white-collar employees speak out about Amazon’s corporate culture, many others do not and seem willing to pay the price of that culture for the resulting economic and career rewards. 5 “DEAL ME IN”: NEOLIBERAL WORKERS AND THE POKER MINDSET 157

The problem, some economists argue, however, is not with a lack of corporate philanthropy but with the very systems that increasingly rely upon it. Yale economist John Roemer, commenting on corporate philanthropy, notes that, “Repairing the present injustice should not be left to charity (or corporate philanthropy) but instead should be a state mandate” (qtd. in Collins 2009). Collins also quotes Reich: “The message that companies are moral beings with social responsibility diverts public attention from the task of establishing laws and rules in the first place…. Meanwhile, increasingly, the real democratic process is being left to companies and lobbyists” (qtd. in Collins 2009). Both economists speak to the need for stronger regulations on business and to the danger of the increasing reliance on corporate philanthropy. These economists make an important point that helps us see that the problems described here are systemic and not the result of individual companies like Amazon. Amazon has been singled out because it is over-conforming to the values of the Poker Mindset, like “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli described in Chapter 3 and lobbyist Jack Abramoff referred to in Chapter 4.Inorderforthe neoliberal system to operate without serious challenges to the system itself, a policing of extreme examples seems to take place. While Shkreli and Abramoff received prison sentences as punishment for their criminal actions, Amazon has not apparently committed any crimes, instead receiving censure by some while still having a massive influence via its wildly popular and profitable services.

The “Company of One” in the Twenty-First Century: Living and Working Online

In the twenty-first-century neoliberal risk economy, where workers act as career-managing “companies of one” and work to build their own “brands,” we can examine several examples of work where the individual uses the values of the Poker Mindset. While the poker player, both in- person and online, is an obvious example, let’s examine some less obvious examples such as Daily Fantasy Sports gamblers, e-sports participants, and online streamers. Fantasy sports leagues, where sports fans participate to assemble rosters of players from professional sports teams in fantasy teams, have existed for decades. Reports about fantasy sports date back to the late 1950s for golf and the early 1960s for football (“Fantasy Sport” 2019). The internet has made participation in fantasy sports easier, with online tracking tools, databases, and other tools to help fantasy team “managers” 158 A. MANNO track their player and team progress throughout a season. The participant with the best season-long record would win a fantasy league contest. While the earlier daily fantasy sports leagues date back to the 1990s, they truly became popularized in 2009, three years after the passing of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, which had the effect of stopping most US online poker by preventing online poker players from depositing money at online poker websites (“Daily Fantasy Sports” 2019). The bill explicitly exempted fantasy sports (Kang 2018). Online poker became the inspiration for Daily Fantasy Sports, and the industry converted many displaced former online poker players into DFS players. Daily Fantasy Sports is an accelerated version of fantasy sports. While the culture of fantasy sports doesn’t necessarily require gambling (although gambling certainly was a part of many homegrown fantasy sports leagues), with this more recent corporatized version, real-money betting is the key feature of the business model. Instead of tracking a fantasy team over the course of a season, DFS players can make multiple bets on weekly and even daily bases. In 2009, the DFS company FanDuel was launched, and in 2012 its major competitor DraftKings launched its own DFS service. While there are other smaller players in the DFS market, these two companies dominate the industry, controlling ninety-five percent of the DFS market (“Daily Fantasy Sports” 2019) and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising. DraftKings and FanDuel in 2015 spent a combined two hundred million dollars on advertising. Many of their ads include “regular guys” winning money through Daily Fantasy Sports (Kang 2018),andsuchadsare shown frequently on networks like ESPN. In addition, the two DFS companies aggressively pursued business relationships with professional sports leagues and individual teams. The National Football League, the National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association, and Major League Baseball have all either entered into sponsorship agreements for a number of individual teams with one of the two DFS companies or have invested in the companies themselves. Further, sports broadcast networks ESPN and Fox Sports have made advertising and sponsorship deals with FanDuel or DraftKings (“Daily Fantasy Sports” 2019). Sports leagues and broadcast networks fully understand that the DFS industry increases sports viewership, so that while many sports leagues had previously opposed legalized sports betting, these business entities now have a significant stake in the success of the DFS industry. 5 “DEAL ME IN”: NEOLIBERAL WORKERS AND THE POKER MINDSET 159

In 2015, FanDuel and DraftKings separately expanded their services into professional e-sports, so that participants could wager on the outcome of major pro gaming events (“Daily Fantasy Sports” 2019). Betting on e-sports is legal in US states where sports betting is also legal (Mantel 2016, p. 902). In 2018, the e-sports audience was estimated at three hundred eighty million people worldwide and with total revenue at $905.6 million and expected revenue of $1.6 billion by 2022, with seventy-five percent of fourteen- to twenty-one-year olds either playing or watching online multiplayer games in 2018. Epic Games, the maker of the game Fortnite, expects to pay out one hundred million dollars between 2019 and 2020 in tournament prize money (Marshall 2019,p.5).Advertisers understand the power of that demographic, so companies like Red Bull, Coca Cola, and Intel are sponsoring e-sports events, hoping to appeal to the largely male e-sports audience (Marshall 2019, p. 7). Over one hundred colleges and universities have competitive e-sports programs, and they are also increasing at the high school level (Marshall 2019,p.4). The growth of e-sports competition and viewing corresponds with the rise of more “casual” online streaming of gaming using such platforms as Twitch and YouTube. Video game streamers play games while their viewers watch. In addition to the screen where gameplay occurs, viewers also often see an inset video of the gamer superimposed on the gameplay screen as well as a chat area where viewers can interact with each other and the streamer as they comment on the stream, the streamer, and other viewers. At the time of the writing of this book, Epic Game’s Fortnite and Respawn Entertainment’s Apex Legends are two of the most popular games for streamers and viewers alike. Both are part of the extremely popular genre called “Battle Royale” that has generated much interest across a number of games. In Battle Royale games, a number of players (in the case of Fortnite, generally one hundred players) are dropped into a set location and scramble to find weapons and resources in order to eliminate all the other players and be the last player standing. Battle Royale games are in many ways emblematic of the neoliberal Poker Mindset. They are winner- take-all fantasy spaces like the poker table where players fight for limited resources and take other players’ resources when they defeat them. The popularity of such Battle Royale games in an era of economic insecurity is telling. In the case of Fortnite, which boasts over two hundred million players worldwide (Fagan and Webb 2019), players choose brightly colored avatars, clothing, and weapons appearance options that change over time, as well as special movements called emotes. Emotes include dance 160 A. MANNO moves, or other physical gestures like a fist pump or brushing off your shoulders that are often used by players to taunt other players after defeating them. Online streamers play such games while broadcasting their play live to viewers via Twitch or YouTube, and viewers watch as the streamers play the game, interact with others playing the game, and also interact with the stream viewers by responding to the chat portion of the stream. As Taylor writes, “Accomplished streamers become adept at following this online conversation, keeping an eye on the chat window, talking to and engaging with their viewers, and all the while playing the game” (Taylor 2018, p. 71), including having viewers provide “input on choices within the game” (Taylor 2018, p. 72). Some might wonder about the appeal to millions of viewers of watching someone else play a video game. Why not play the game yourself and be an active participant rather than a more passive consumer of content? Streamers respond that there is a “performative aspect” (Taylor 2018, p. 77) to their work. One streamer commented that when viewers watch a stream, they “are not experiencing a game” (qtd. in Taylor 2018, p. 77). Instead, viewers are “watching a specific entertainment product—one produced through the streamer’s unique actions assembled for broadcast” (Taylor 2018, p. 77), which reflects the streamer’s “brand.” One of the most popular Fortnite streamers is twenty-seven-year-old Tyler Blevins, who goes by the gamer tag “Ninja.” He currently has over twenty-two million YouTube subscribers (“Ninja—YouTube” 2019) and over ten million Twitch followers. The first professional video game player to be on the cover of ESPN The Magazine, Blevins reportedly earns at least five hundred thousand dollars monthly through a portion of each Amazon-owned Twitch subscriber’s monthly payments, revenue from advertising on his YouTube channel, sponsorship deals, and from “tips” from subscribers who receive special channel benefits from streamers for their donations (Fagan and Webb 2019). Business Insider reports that sponsor Red Bull built Blevins a cutting-edge streaming studio that is “custom made to fit Ninja’s growing personal brand” (Fagan and Webb 2019). Because subscribers and tip donations are such an important part of streamers’ revenue, they are “expected to perform gratitude” as a way to maintain their relationship with their audiences and encourage further donations by bringing attention to those viewers who donate, with the level of this attention “appropriate to the given donation’s amount” (Partin 2019, p. 156). 5 “DEAL ME IN”: NEOLIBERAL WORKERS AND THE POKER MINDSET 161

Research shows that viewer engagement with online gaming streamers is “motivated by a desire for social interaction and sense of community” (Hilvert-Bruce et al. 2018, p. 65). Gaining the attention from streamers, then, is monetized, and streamers “acknowledge and celebrate subscribers and donors, in order to encourage further purchasing behavior in the community through social pressure, togetherness or even competition” (Sjöblom and Hamari 2017, p. 24). Such competitions include streamer “channel games.” One such game labels a donor as the “Boss,” acknowledging that donor with an on-screen display of the viewer’s name and donation amount. Then, the streamer encourages viewers to “attack” that Boss through additional donations, with the viewer whose donation amount “defeats” the Boss becoming the new Boss with that person’s name and donation amount prominently displayed (Partin 2019, p. 157). In the cases of Daily Fantasy Sports, professional e-sports, and online streamers, we see examples of the Poker Mindset through the neoliberal sense of self as “company of one.” In the case of Daily Fantasy Sports, many players use the activity as their main source of income, gamblers like professional online poker players who leverage data and take risks in pursuit of profits. E-sports pros use their skills at gaming in order to attract lucrative sponsorships as they chase tournament winnings using their individual skill in direct competition with others. Online gaming streamers rely on their gaming skills, but they also use marketing and their personalities to make connections with their audiences in an effort to build a personal brand as they pursue subscribers, followers, sponsors, ad revenue, and donors. All of them are essentially freelancers in an insecure economy. In her book Cruel Optimism, Lauren Berlant argues that “cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing” (Berlant 2011, p. 1). In essence, Berlant claims in part that since the neoliberal era of the early 1980s, Americans continue to believe in the narrative of the American Dream and its promise of upward mobility, despite realities that render the Dream increasingly suspect and out of reach. Lisa Duggan’s book Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed plays on Berlant’s title in her critique of Rand’s novels, writing, “The feelings of aspira- tion and glee that enliven Rand’s novels combine contempt for and indifference to others. The resulting Randian sense of life might be called ‘optimistic cruelty.’ Optimistic cruelty is the sense of life for the age of greed” (Duggan 2019, p. xvi). Duggan’s inversion of Berlant’s phrase is significant, as it highlights the cruelty that is inherent 162 A. MANNO in pure capitalist greed and the entitlement that animates it. The Poker Mindset might be said to thrive on the cruel optimism of the narrative of the American Dream in the neoliberal era while engendering in neoliberal subjects a sense of optimistic cruelty that characterizes the enactment of the values Poker Mindset. We’ve seen in this chapter many ways that the neoliberal economy is cruel, all resulting in the increased risk and responsibility of the individual. We’ve seen the cruelty in working-class employees struggling with irregular hours in unstable temporary jobs and in white-collar employees who experience frequent job changes and demanding, high-stress jobs as the norm. We’ve also seen the grim optimism that these workers describe. Many report feeling they need to “give their all” to employers they know owe them nothing in hopes of being dealt a good hand. The belief in the cruel optimism of neoliberalism is a belief that—looking back to the beginning of this chapter—the system is fair and everyone has an equal chance, success is defined through wealth and status, individuals succeed based on their own hard work and initiative, there are limited resources that must be fought over, competition is natural and necessary, toughness and aggression are needed in competition for scarce resources, choosing the correct risks is necessary, and manliness is seen through providership. These are the values of the Poker Mindset. The concept of the Poker Mindset lets us see the crucial connection between neoliberalism and masculinity. They are mutually reinforcing, and we can understand the result in the way that neoliberal workers are seen by employers and the way that they see themselves. Aside from the most affluent white-collar workers, nobody is truly ben- efiting from this system. Mid-level white-collar workers and down are suffering. As long as our culture embraces the values of the Poker Mindset, things are unlikely to change. The tavern poker players I see each week will continue to use the space to unquestioningly accept their employment conditions and cobble together work opportunities. I expect they’ll also continue to use the space of the poker table to play out, at least temporarily, their masculine fantasies of aggression, competition, power, and control, with those masculine fantasies buttressing the economic status quo.

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“Fight, Don’t Fold”: The Poker Mindset and the Rise of Trumpism

If you were to observe most any relatively serious poker player in action for a sufficient length of time, you would notice the desire that poker players have to see the next hand of cards dealt to them. I’ve witnessed poker players almost falling asleep at the poker table rather than forego seeing another poker hand. I’ve also regularly seen players practically sprint to the restroom in order to try and return before missing a hand or running back to the table to avoid having their hand “mucked” due to being away when the hand is dealt and it’s their turn to act. In other words, because poker players can always find a poker game whether online or in a casino literally anytime day or night, poker is a game where the prospect of the “big win” is just one hand away. This creates for some an insatiable appetite that fuels gambling. By all accounts, Donald Trump is not a “gambling man,” at least not in the sense that phrase is generally used. He seems not to be interested in the kinds of gambling that occurs at slot machines, table games, or card rooms in casinos. However, Donald Trump is every bit the gambling man in the sense of embodying the values of the Poker Mindset. The “big win” motivates Donald Trump just as it does poker players. He, too, has a seemingly insatiable appetite for the “next hand,” but for him the “big win” is another financial deal that will bring more money, success, fame, and more winning in general. Alan Greenberg, former chairman of investment bank Bear Stearns—a bank that collapsed due to risky bets on subprime mortgages during the financial crisis of 2008—said of Trump,

“He has an appetite like a Rocky Mountain vulture.… He’d like to own the world” (qtd. in Buettner and Craig 2019). Just like the game of poker more than any other game embodies the hypermasculine, neoliberal values of the Poker Mindset, so too does Trump perhaps more than any current figure embody those values. This final chapter highlights the significance of the Poker Mindset within one of the most pressing current issues of the day: the divisive presidency of Donald Trump. It will become clear that Trump not only exemplifies the Poker Mindset but receives so much positive and negative attention because he over-conforms to its values. The Poker Mindset is a powerful lens through which to examine Donald Trump, as it combines neoliberalism’s focus on creating a “company of one,” as seen in the last chapter, with traditional masculinity’s focus on competition, winning at all costs, strength, cunning, independent action, and fighting instead of “folding” (qtd. in Johnston 2016,p.38).

Media Reaction to Trump as Candidate

Before we examine how Donald Trump embodies the values of the Poker Mindset, it is important to situate him as presidential candidate and identify both the reaction to his candidacy and the initial underestimation of his appeal to voters. Doing so is crucial to seeing the power of the ideology of the Poker Mindset both to Donald Trump’s view of the world and to those of his supporters. As a candidate in the 2016 presidential race, Donald Trump was not taken seriously at the start. When he made the announcement on June 16, 2015 at Trump Tower in New York City, members of the non-right-wing media were immediately skeptical. Trump’s flair for spectacle was on display as he and Melania Trump descended down an escalator surrounded by spectators—who it was later revealed were paid fifty dollars each to clap (Johnston 2016, p. xvi) and Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” played in the background. Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page wrote, “[L]et’s not treat Donald Trump like a serious candidate” (qtd. in Kranish et al. 2017, p. 5), MSNBC described the announcement as “a little comic relief” (qtd. in Kranish et al. 2017, p. 5), and CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin glibly remarked, “Donald Trump is engaging in one of his fictional presidential campaigns” (qtd. in Kranish et al. 2017,p.5).In some ways, it’s hard to blame them. Donald Trump is a man who is often seen as more flash than substance, and he’d toyed with runs for president a number of times in the past. 6 “FIGHT, DON’T FOLD”: THE POKER MINDSET AND THE RISE … 169

Pollsters also questioned the real possibility of a Trump presidency. The University of Virginia Center for Politics political analysis and electoral projections newsletter Sabato’s Crystal Ball questioned its own polling data in the 2016 presidential election. An article in the August 11, 2016 newsletter claimed, “Despite the excellent track record [of the polling model that the Center for Politics uses]… there are good reasons to be skeptical about the 2016 forecast” (Abramowitz 2016) and pointed to their assessment that Trump was not a “mainstream Republican” (Abramowitz 2016) and that “he does not appear to be running a competent campaign” (Abramowitz 2016) as key factors in going against their own data and declaring Hillary Clinton “a strong favorite” to win the 2016 presidential election. The mainstream media’s dismissal of the seri- ousness of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the metrics used for analyzing polling data seem to belie a basic misunderstanding of both Trump voters and how Trump’s unorthodox candidacy appealed to those voters. The media’s lack of understanding of the power of the Poker Mindset in part explains its mistakes in underestimating Donald Trump’s popular appeal and what shocked so many in his 2016 presidential election victory.

Trump Voters: A Profile

A profile of Trump voters and its consistency with the Poker Mindset helps shed light on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential win. One-third of the American electorate is white and without a college degree. Two- thirds of this group voted for Donald Trump in 2016 (Nelson 2018, p. 19), turning out at a higher rate than in the 2012 election (Nelson 2018, p. 19). However, despite media reporting that paints Trump voters as mostly working class, the “typical Donald Trump voter is an older white man, who lives in rural America, has a middle or upper income, has fears about immigration and economic decline, and is angry with government” (Fuchs 2017, p. 3). As a result of fears about worsening economic conditions, up to ten percent of the US electorate who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 voted for Donald Trump in 2016 (Nelson 2018, p. 19). Donald Trump’s “charismatic populism” (Ginsburg and Aziz 2018, p. 125) appealed to voters from rural areas and small towns, which have fared much worse since the Great Recession than metropoli- tan areas (Galston 2018, p. 68). Areas of lower social mobility also tended to vote for Donald Trump. In these areas, children “are having difficulty 170 A. MANNO just reaching the status of their parents” (Pettigrew 2017, p. 111). Ironi- cally, these votes for Republican Donald Trump come from working-class areas where Republican legislatures have cut funding to the higher education institutions that help citizens train for better jobs and increased social mobility (Pettigrew 2017, p. 111). The mainstream media, pundits, and many pollsters made incorrect assumptions about the motivations of Trump voters. Many assumed that Republican voters mirrored the attitudes of Republican politicians and “cared mostly about the Reaganite agenda of limiting the power of the federal government” (Ceaser et al. 2017, p. 13). However, research reveals that Trump voters were much more motivated by status threat, economic insecurity, and a corresponding fear of globalization than traditional Republican policy concerns (Ceaser et al. 2017, p. 13). The consequence of the media’s focus on economic issues as motivator for Trump support rather than threat to status is that “Trump’s victory may be viewed more admirably when it is attributed to a groundswell of support from previously ignored workers than when it is attributed to those whose status is threatened by minorities and foreign countries” (Mutz 2018, p. E4338). This status threat is a “psychological mindset rather than an actual event or misfortune” (Mutz 2018, p. E4338). The power of this mindset can be seen in research that shows that since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, racial animus has caused more white people to oppose welfare, due to perception that welfare entitlements unfairly advantage black people while white people are falling behind. This is despite the fact that white people make up fifty-two percent of welfare recipients while black people only make up less than twenty-five percent. White people also receive the majority of Medicaid entitlement benefits (Chow 2019). Donald Trump’s message resonated with voters “living in racially isolated communities, who have experienced worse health outcomes, lower social mobility, and greater reliance on Social Security income” (Ginsburg and Aziz 2018, p. 125). White Trump voters “have experienced significantly less contact with minorities than other Americans” (Azarian 2019) and “feel deprived relative to what they expected to possess at this point in their lives and relative to what they erroneously perceive other ‘less deserving’ groups have acquired” (Petti- grew 2017, p. 111). We can see the politics of resentment at work here via the perceived threat to status that motivated many Trump voters. Rather than seeing problems with declines in social mobility as symptoms of larger systemic institutional inequalities, the Poker Mindset pits us against 6 “FIGHT, DON’T FOLD”: THE POKER MINDSET AND THE RISE … 171 those with whom we should be forming alliances to agitate for meaningful changes such as universal healthcare, lower medical and prescription drug costs, and a livable minimum wage. In a neoliberal economy in which the ideology of the Poker Mindset tells us that success is a zero-sum game and winner-take-all, competition reigns and the perception of unfair advantages for immigrants and minority groups creates resentment and anger. Journalists incorrectly believed that because “lack of a college education was persistently noted as the strongest predictor of Trump support” (Mutz 2018, p. E4338), concern about the economy was the primary motivation for support of Donald Trump (Mutz 2018, p. E4338). However, “[n]egative attitudes toward racial and ethnic diversity are also correlated with low levels of education” (Mutz 2018, p. E4338). As a result, Mutz argues that in the 2016 presidential election, “education represented group status threat rather than being left behind economically. Those who felt that the hierarchy was being upended—with whites discriminated against more than blacks, Christians discriminated against more than Muslims, and men discriminated against more than women— were most likely to support Trump” (Mutz 2018, p. E4338). Trump supporters are also more likely to believe that “people are responsible for themselves” (Hawkins et al. 2018, p. 91) and think men are discriminated against more than “LGBTQ people, women, and most ethnic minorities” (Kacala 2019). These findings are supported by research that fears about cultural displacement and immigrants were “more powerful factors than economic concerns in predicting support for Trump among white working-class voters” (Cox et al. 2019). Further, sixty-five percent of white working-class Americans think that American culture since the 1950s has declined, sixty-eight percent reported feeling the United States is “in danger of losing its culture and identity” (Cox et al. 2019), and forty-eight percent believe that “things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country” (Cox et al. 2019). Taken together, this reflects the idea that whites feel imperiled in their “sense of dominance over social and political priorities” (Mutz 2018, p. E4331), leaving them open to a political candidate who both stokes their fear and promises a return to a social order where their advantages are unchallenged. However, we should avoid the misperception that the 2016 presidential election was an anomaly. As Larry Bartels wrote just two days after the election, an “extraordinary campaign has produced a remarkably ordinary election outcome, primarily reflecting partisan patterns familiar from previous election cycles” (Bartels 2016). In other words, the 2016 172 A. MANNO election followed true to a pattern that has occurred across several decades: the vast majority of Democrats (eighty-nine percent) voted for the Democratic candidate and the vast majority of Republicans (ninety percent) voted for the Republican candidate (Bartels 2016). It’s not surprising that Trump voters tend to demonstrate a Social Dominance Orientation, favoring hierarchies where “high-status groups have dominance over low-status groups one” (Azarian 2019). Individu- als with Social Dominance Orientation “are typically dominant, driven, tough-minded, disagreeable, and relatively uncaring seekers of power … [who] believe in a ‘dog-eat-dog’ world… [and are] motivated by self-interest and self-indulgence” (Pettigrew 2017, p. 108). These views clearly reflect the winner-take-all ethos of the Poker Mindset. Trump supporters also tend to have authoritarian personalities and view the world as a threatening, feel hostility to those from out-groups, demonstrate deference to authority, and dislike new experiences (Pettigrew 2017, p. 108). Further research shows that men who have “fragile masculinity” find Trump appealing and “they are drawn to Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric because it makes them feel more powerful” (Reed 2018). This, too, reflects the Poker Mindset and its focus on strong and tough traditional masculinity. It should be of little surprise that those who have authoritarian personalities also strongly prefer candidates such as Donald Trump who demonstrate authoritarian leanings. Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric—focusing on dangers of illegal immigrants, for example— activates a fear response that causes supporters to “strongly defend those who share their worldviews and national or ethnic identity, and act out more aggressively towards those who do not” (Azarian 2019). This makes perfect sense if one sees the world as a zero-sum game, per a belief in the Poker Mindset. “Others”—whether in terms of politics, race, gender identity, religion, national origin, or immigration status—are threats to a shaky sense of status and are to be feared. Trump supporters tend to hold some common personal values that played an important part in Trump’s election victory. Regardless of stated political party affiliation, Trump supporters in a research study were less valuing of altruism and more valuing of power, commerce, and tradition (Sherman 2018, p. 33). In addition, Trump supporters in the study were “less supportive of social welfare programs, seek power over others, are motivated by wealth and accumulation, and prefer conformity, hierarchy, and clear-cut rules for behavior” (Sherman 2018,p.34).Theyalso believe that “hard work pays off” and that “those who don’t make it 6 “FIGHT, DON’T FOLD”: THE POKER MINDSET AND THE RISE … 173 are lazy” (Sherman 2018, p. 34). Trump’s campaign rhetoric aligns with these values as well as with the values of the Poker Mindset. In a neoliberal economy, the Poker Mindset teaches that the accumulation of wealth and power over others are markers of success. Not working toward these goals or failing to meet these goals makes one lazy or a failure using a meritocratic worldview and leaves no room for acknowledging the kinds of systemic inequities that might result in the need for social welfare programs.

Outsider Candidate

Donald Trump differed greatly from modern Republican or Democrat presidential candidates in that he positioned himself as a true outsider candidate. While his outsider status might be uncommon in modern- day politics, it clearly reflects the masculine go-it-alone aspect of the Poker Mindset. He managed to turn his outsider status to his benefit despite lacking the qualities that many experts say are necessary for the presidency. Specifically, Donald Trump lacks any public service experience, by all accounts his presidential campaign was chaotic rather than well-organized and professional, he lacked the support of significant mainstream Republican politicians, lacked positive coverage in the media, and lacked the support of “public intellectuals and opinion makers” (Ceaser et al. 2017, p. viii). Trump, however, used his outsider status to his advantage, painting politicians as ineffectual “losers” who “rigged” the system to their advantage and to the disadvantage of “real” Ameri- cans. In doing so, Trump was able to perform a kind of political alchemy, presenting himself as “the people’s billionaire, offering unashamedly what the average American wanted, a Trump steak or a night at a casino, or showing the kind of luxury people could only yearn for, like a personal airplane” (Ceaser et al. 2017,p.ix).Hemadethecasethatasuccessful businessman would be far more effective in the White House than a politician, and he appealed to the disaffection and racial animus of whites, casting them as victims of job-taking or violent immigrant outsiders. Trump’s place as political outsider is part of a long tradition in American politics. For example, followers of Andrew Jackson claimed in 1824 that the deadlocked election was rigged (Ceaser et al. 2017,p.5). Depression-era Senator Huey Long promised to bring back power to the average American with the slogan “Every Man a King.” Some of Long’s supporters embraced the birther conspiracy theory that Frankin Delano Roosevelt was a Jew who changed his name from Rosenfeld 174 A. MANNO

(Ceaser et al. 2017, pp. 5–6). Anti-integrationist and one-time Alabama Governor George Wallace in 1968 claimed in an angry speech to his supporters that he would run over protestors with his car. The crowd was filled with Wallace supporters who were described at the time as a “pack of angry, frustrated men and women, who see his cause, not just as a chance for victory but as a guarantee of vengeance against all who have affronted them for so long” (qtd. in Ceaser et al. 2017,p.6). Wallace’s fiery remark brings to mind both Donald Trump’s claim during the 2016 presidential campaign that so great is his popularity, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters” (qtd. in Reuters 2016) and white nationalist James Alex Fields’ 2017 murder of Heather Heyer at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia when Fields drove into a group of the protestors. Like these other political outsiders, Donald Trump has no problem flout- ing convention and accepted standards of propriety, attacking perceived foes regardless of their positions, situations, or accomplishments. He uses Twitter as his platform of choice, acting as cyberbully, trolling those who dare to criticize him. He’s attacked the families of Gold Star military heroes, the late Senator John McCain’s POW status, judges, the Justice Department, the FBI, Congress, his former presidential rival, and many others representing established institutions in service of his seemingly endless personal and political grievances. Trump also differs from other presidential candidates in the apparent level of his ignorance. While ignorance is not a hallmark of the Poker Mindset, relying on instincts and common sense are, and Trump therefore demonstrates a kind of populist intelligence that eschews facts and expertise. In his scathing account of the Trump White House, Michael Wolff writes:

There was simply no subject, other than perhaps building construction, that [Trump] had substantially mastered. Everything with him was off- the-cuff. Whatever he knew he seems to have learned an hour before—and that was mostly half-baked. But each member of the new Trump team was convincing him- or herself otherwise—because what did they know, the man had been elected president. He offered something, obviously. Indeed, while everybody in his rich-guy social circle knew about his wide-ranging ignorance—Trump, the businessman, could not even read a balance sheet, and Trump, who had campaigned on his deal-making skills, was, with his inattention to details, a terrible negotiator. (Wolff 2018,p.22) 6 “FIGHT, DON’T FOLD”: THE POKER MINDSET AND THE RISE … 175

Trump’s ignorance about such areas as American history, foreign affairs, and climate change are well-documented. We saw a jarring example of that ignorance during his July 4, 2019 speech, when Trump said the following: “In June of 1775, the Continental Congress created a uniﬁed army out of the revolutionary forces encamped around Boston and New York.… The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware, and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown.… Our army manned the air, it rammed the ram- parts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory” (qtd. in Lyons 2019). Of course, airplane travel was not available until the beginning of the twentieth century, but such matters do not seem to bother Trump supporters, many of whom set aside such concerns if Trump’s policies will advance a right-wing agenda. Donald Trump seems not to recognize his lack of expertise. This is seen in his pattern of anti-intellectualism that falls squarely within a long Amer- ican tradition dating back to the seventeenth century (Campbell 2018, p. 15). Americans value “common sense and pragmatism” (Campbell 2018, p. 15) over intellectualism and this sentiment of anti-intellectualism “gradually pervaded” religion, business, and even education (Campbell 2018, p. 15). Donald Trump seems both to brag about his intelligence and at the same time display anti-intellectualist attitudes in his remarks about his time doing graduate work in business at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he attended in 1966. He later said of his time at Wharton in his 1987 book Trump: The Art of the Deal:

Perhaps the most important thing I learned at Wharton was not to be overly impressed by academic credentials. It didn’t take me long to realize that there was nothing particularly awesome or exceptional about my classmates, and that I could compete with them just ﬁne. The other important thing I got from Wharton was a Wharton degree. In my opinion, that degree doesn’t prove very much, but a lot of people I do business with take it very seriously, and it’s considered very prestigious. (Trump and Schwartz 1987,p.90)

Much has been made of Trump’s comments about what he considers his prodigious intelligence, as well as his frequent attacks of others for having a “low IQ,” but Trump’s anti-intellectualism can be seen in his distanc- ing himself from the academic world and placing himself squarely in the 176 A. MANNO pragmatic world of business, where Trump believes that instinct rather than book-learning is essential to success. For example, Trump trusts his business skills as the best skills for the presidency. He said, “[I]t’s about time that this country had somebody running it that has an idea about money.… And if we could run our country the way I’ve run my company, we would have a country that you would be so proud of” (qtd. in Fuchs 2017, p. 4). Some have connected anti-intellectualism with beliefs in American exceptionalism and populist beliefs that education is a form of elitism (Jouet 2017, p. 43) that have resulted in the United States being particularly susceptible to disinformation (Jouet 2017,p.63).

Deception and Lies

One of the hallmarks of a good poker player is the ability to deceive. While Donald Trump seems not to be a poker player, he has nevertheless mastered the art of deception. This skill serves him well in the winner-take-all business world in which Trump operates. In this context, deception can be good business practice by providing an essential advantage. In a cut- throat business world, liars like Trump assume that opponents will also lie, so deception is justiﬁed. Johnston tells a story of his ﬁrst meeting with Trump that demonstrates Trump’s con man’s instinct for lying:

I brought up a casino issue that Trump did not know much about, intentionally saying something false, a technique that has many uses in investigative reporting. Trump immediately embraced my faux fact and shaped his answer to it, much the way television psychics listen for clues in what people say to share their soothsaying. (Johnston 2016, p. xiii)

This example reveals Trump’s lack of depth of knowledge but more importantly here reveals his conﬁdence man-style attempt to “bluff his way out of not knowing facts” (Johnston 2016, p. xiv). The bluff in poker is an attempt to deceive an opponent about the strength of one’s poker hand to the bluffer’s advantage. More generally, it’s an attempt to deceive about one’s intentions or capacities. In the example Johnston provides above, Trump’s bluff is his deception in trying to convince Johnston that he knows information that he really does not know. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that Trump’s most-used two-word phrase is “Believe Me” (Buchanan et al. 2019), one that entices the listener to set aside reserva- tions and embrace Trump’s often deceptive claims. 6 “FIGHT, DON’T FOLD”: THE POKER MINDSET AND THE RISE … 177

This example of Trump’s bluffing might seem a trivial matter, but it is only one example of a pattern of behavior, and the consequences for the country in the hands of an inveterate liar are far-reaching. Donald Trump uses lies, disinformation, doublespeak, and gaslighting in astonishing amounts to his advantage. As of April 26, 2019, Presi- dent Trump told ten thousand lies, with over two thousand at rallies, almost two thousand in tweets, and almost one thousand in speeches (Alterman 2019). Giroux quotes journalist Masha Gessen on Trump: “Donald Trump has an instinct for doing…violence to language.… He is particularly adept at taking words and phrases that deal with power relationships and turning them into their opposite” (qtd. in Giroux and Yancy 2018, p. 26). Trump’s lies move beyond the ignorance of misinformation to ill-intentioned disinformation, with the intention of swaying public opinion for political purposes (Jouet 2017, p. 63). The purpose is to sow doubt and confusion using a form of gaslighting that unmoors what is “true” from facts and expertise. Donald Trump’s use of the term “fake news” is an important example. Trump takes credit for the use of the term (Grynbaum 2019), although he is certainly not the first politician to question the validity of negative news coverage. The list of targets of Trump’s use of the term, from The Russia Dossier to the media to reports of chaos in the White House, continues to grow (Britzky 2018). The impact of the insidious inversion of the term “fake news” is to blur the distinction between disinformation and accurately reported news. The Russian campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election included disinformation about candidate Hillary Clinton. This can accurately be called fake news. However, when Donald Trump uses the term “fake news” to describe accurate reporting on credibly sourced stories in reputable journalistic publications, the very notion of truth is turned on its head. We see another example of this inversion with Trump’s use of the phrase “safe space” in his Tweet criticizing the cast of the play Hamilton. At the end of a performance that Vice-President Mike Pence attended, one of the cast members read a statement written by the cast, crew, and the show’s creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. The statement indicated that those who wrote it were “alarmed” and “anxious” about whether the Trump administration will protect a “diverse America” (qtd. Mele and Healy 2016). Trump tweeted that the cast should “Apologize!” and that “The Theater must always be a safe and special place” (qtd. in Mele and Healy 2016). Here, Trump’s appropriation of the term “safe space” inverts a power dynamic. In the common use of 178 A. MANNO the term, safe spaces are meant for those who are marginalized and feel threatened, such as racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ people, etc. Trump’s invocation of the phrase in his tweet is a sort of dog-whistle to his supporters who feel like whites are more discriminated against than blacks and other minority groups and that liberals are the ones who are intolerant, despite the fact that the statement was a plea for tolerance reacting to the policies and rhetoric of the Trump administration. A final example of Trump’s deceptive language is in his use of the phrase “enemy of the people.” On February 20, 2019, President Trump tweeted, “The New York Times reporting is false. They are a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” (qtd. in Grynbaum and Sullivan 2019) on the heels of a New York Times investigative report “describing how Mr. Trump had worked to influence and undermine federal investigations involving him, his presidential campaign and his administration” (Grynbaum and Sullivan 2019). In another tweet, the President wrote, “The Press has never been more dishonest than it is today. Stories are written that have absolutely no basis in fact. The writers don’t even call asking for verification. They are totally out of control.… The New York Times reporting is false” (qtd. in Grynbaum and Sullivan 2019). New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger responded to Trump’s accusations, stating “In demonizing the free press as the enemy, simply for performing its role of asking difficult questions and bringing uncomfortable information to light, President Trump is retreating from a distinctly American principle.… It’s a principle that previous occupants of the Oval Office fiercely defended regardless of their politics, party affiliation or complaints about how they were covered” (qtd. in Grynbaum and Sullivan 2019). On April 5, 2019, President Trump expanded his use of the phrase “enemy of the people” to include the press in general that publishes negative stories about him and his administration, writing, “The press is doing everything within their power to fight the magnificence of the phrase, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! They can’t stand the fact that this Administration has done more than virtually any other Administration in its first 2yrs. They are truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” (qtd. in Samuels 2019). The phrase, which has “been used repeatedly by dictators and autocrats to delegitimize foreign governments, opposition parties, and dissenters” (Bondarenko 2019), is another form of gaslighting that attempts to undermine challenges to those in power. Like “fake news,” “enemy of the people” when used to reference the news media calls into question the fairness and accuracy of news reporting and makes the false 6 “FIGHT, DON’T FOLD”: THE POKER MINDSET AND THE RISE … 179 claim that the news media does not serve the interests of the people. Fur- ther, these phrases demonstrate Trump’s Poker Mindset in his constant aggression and combativeness with those who challenge him. In the case of Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, as we’ll see shortly, the “people” who matter are his supporters, and the brand of populism he espouses suggests that the checks and balances of democracies, including the fourth estate of the press, are hindrances to the power of the people. The twisted logic of Trump’s lies casts those checks and balances as not only hindrances to people’s freedoms but as the causes of violence. When asked by a reporter about the impact of Trump’s use of the phrase “enemy of the people” and whether it might elicit violence, Trump responded “It is my only form of fighting back” (qtd. in Chait 2018). When asked a similar question by another reporter on a different occasion, Trump responded, “You know what, you’re creating violence by your question. You are creating. You.… The fake news is creating violence.… I’ll tell you what, if the media would write correctly and write accurately and write fairly, you’d have a lot less violence in this country” (qtd. in Chait 2018). Trump’s response is chilling and suggests that any negative news coverage is unfair and untrue and therefore worthy of eliciting violence from his supporters. Rather than calling for an end to violence, Trump instead calls for an end to what he considers unfair news coverage, hoping that the news media will wilt under such threats of continued violence. Here, Trump’s inclination to lie combines with his aggressive desire to go on the attack, both of which are characteristics of the Poker Mindset. Ignorance and lies work together, with lies feeding ignorance as Fox News, the most watched cable news network in the country, presents viewers with false and misleading information daily. Politifact’s analysis of statements made on Fox News shows that only twenty-two percent of statements made in broadcasts are true or mostly true, with nineteen percent half-true, and a frightening sixty-nine percent as mostly false or completely false (“Fox’s File: Pundifact” 2019). By comparison, an analysis of CNN found twenty percent of statements made were mostly false or completely false (“CNN’s File: Pundifact” 2019). The majority of “information” on Fox News, then, is disinformation, manufacturing ignorance. Giroux writes that Donald Trump “uses the power of the presidency to peddle misinformation, erode any sense of shared citizenship, ridicule critical media and celebrate right-wing ‘disimagination machines’ such as Fox News and Breitbart News. Under his ‘brand of reality TV politics,’ lying has become normalized, truthfulness is viewed as a 180 A. MANNO liability, ignorance is propagated at the highest levels of government and the corporate controlled media, and fear-soaked cyclones of distraction and destruction immunize the American public to the cost of human suffering and misery” (Giroux 2017, “Gangster Capitalism and Nostalgic Authoritarianism in Trump’s America”). With the skillful slipperiness of an experienced con man, Trump sows doubt and confusion to blunt criticisms of his words and actions. Lying is something of a family tradition for the Trumps. An Octo- ber 2, 2018 New York Times investigative report detailed the lengths to which Trump’s father Fred Trump organized his business empire in ways to funnel money to his children, Donald Trump especially. The Times makes this assessment of Fred Trump’s and Donald’s Trump’s willingness to lie for their financial gain: “They were both fluent in the language of half-truths and lies, interviews and records show. They both delighted in transgressing without getting caught. They were both wizards at manip- ulating the value of their assets, making them appear worth a lot or a little depending on their needs” (Barstow et al. 2018). Donald Trump was clearly the son who took after Fred Trump, and Fred Trump paved the way for Donald Trump’s later financial exploits through giving large amounts of money to his son starting almost as soon as he was born. Donald Trump has reportedly received in total the equivalent of over four hundred million dollars in today’s dollars. He was receiving two hundred thousand dollars per year in today’s dollar by three years old and had received the equivalent of one million dollars by eight years old. By the time that Donald Trump was in college, he was receiving the equivalent of one million dollars yearly from Fred Trump, an amount that rose to five million dollars each year when Donald Trump reached his forties (Barstow et al. 2018). According to the New York Times investigation, “Fred Trump was relentless and creative in finding ways to channel his wealth to his children. He made Donald not just his salaried employee but also his property manager, landlord, banker and consultant” (Barstow et al. 2018). Fred Trump created almost three hundred “revenue streams” in order to funnel money to his son, and “much of his giving was structured to sidestep gift and inheritance taxes using methods experts described to The Times as improper and possibly illegal” (Barstow et al. 2018). We’ll touch more on both Fred Trump’s and Donald Trump’s corrupt business practices later in this chapter, but for now, we can see that Donald was the recipient of a vast fortune bestowed on him by his wealthy and ingenious father. However, both Fred Trump and Donald Trump participated in 6 “FIGHT, DON’T FOLD”: THE POKER MINDSET AND THE RISE … 181 creating the myth of Donald Trump as self-made man. Donald Trump’s “singular achievement was building the brand of Donald J. Trump, Self- Made Billionaire, a brand so potent it generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue through TV shows, books and licensing deals” (Barstow et al. 2018). This brand of self-made billionaire fits perfectly with the Poker Mindset and its valuing of independent effort and success. Donald Trump has long lied about the amount of money his father gave him. Tapping into the value of meritocratic success that is important in Poker Mindset, the myth of the self-made billionaire requires that Donald Trump do it alone. Those lies include a story that Trump often tells about the help he received from his father: he received a “small” million dollar loan that he paid back with interest. He also minimized the success of his father’s business, commenting on Fred Trump’s business empire, “It wasn’t a great business. It was a good business” (qtd. in Barstow et al. 2018). “I built what I built myself” (qtd. in Barstow et al. 2018), Trump claimed, and “My father didn’t give me much money, but what he did give me was a good education” (qtd. in Fuchs 2017,p.49). The implication is clear: it was Donald Trump who used his talent to turn a good business into a great business. The New York Times article continues, “Through it all, Fred Trump played along. Never once did he publicly question his son’s claim about the $1 million loan. ‘Everything he touches turns to gold,’ [Fred Trump] told the Times … in 1976.” “He’s gone way beyond me, absolutely” (qtd. in Barstow et al. 2018), Fred Trump said in a later article. Even while Trump was being featured in the media for his self-made wealth, he was claiming as his own wealth that which came from Fred Trump. All the while, Fred Trump was subsidiz- ing his son’s business ventures and bailing him out as necessary (Barstow et al. 2018). So great was Donald Trump’s desire to be seen by the media as a successful billionaire businessman that he created thinly veiled personas who he could use to brag about himself to publications like the Washing- ton Post or New York Magazine. Posing as a Trump publicist, Trump would say he was “John Miller” or “John Barron.” The Washington Post obtained a recording and reporters covering the story described the calls: “The voice is instantly familiar; the tone, confident, even cocky; the cadence, distinctly Trumpian” (Fisher and Hobson 2016). From Trump’s lying about the source of his wealth to his seeming obsessive lies to bur- nish his image to the over ten thousand lies he has told since taking the office of the presidency, it’s clear that Donald Trump sees lying as normal 182 A. MANNO operating procedure. His lies are a grave threat to democracy, for “the normalization of state-sanctioned lying kills democracy and destroys the capacity to produce informed judgments,” and “[a]s language is emptied of meaning, an authoritarian populism is emboldened” (Giroux 2017, “Gangster Capitalism and Nostalgic Authoritarianism in Trump’s Amer- ica”). Donald Trump tells far more lies than average, with almost two- thirds of them being self-serving, according to analysis of his lies (Depaulo 2017). Tellingly, Trump’s lies differed from participants in a research study in a “stunning way” in their cruelty, as “[a]n astonishing 50 percent of Trump’s lies were hurtful or disparaging” (Depaulo 2017). The author concludes, “By telling so many lies, and so many that are mean-spirited, Trump is violating some of the most fundamental norms of human social interaction and human decency” (Depaulo 2017). The sheer number of Trump’s lies might be shocking and seem to defy norms, but in fact Don- ald Trump is hardly an outlier. If anything, he over-conforms to the values of the Poker Mindset, as we’ve seen in other examples in previous chapters such as “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli and lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Trump’s lies fit within the values of the Poker Mindset that normalize deception and dirty tricks because winning at all costs is paramount and is seen as the height of traditional masculine success.

Lone Wolf

Donald Trump’s lies in business serve his goal of fostering his image as self-made man who operates independently in a harsh capitalist world. One of the ways that Trump expresses the values of the Poker Mindset is through his belief in the importance of independent action and solv- ing problems on his own. He even goes far as to assert that “he alone” can ﬁx America’s problems. Further, he spent an enormous amount of energy building the myth (one as I’ve explained earlier that is false) of Donald Trump as self-made billionaire. Trump’s focus on presenting an image of independent decision-making and action can be seen in a number of examples. As president, Donald Trump has used more executive orders than any president since Harry Truman. While Truman faced a conservative Congress that blocked many of his “Fair Deal” more progressive domestic agenda policy initiatives, Trump issued executive orders even though he had the support of a Republican-controlled Congress in the ﬁrst two years of his presidency (Nelson 2018, p. 28). Acting alone allows Trump to build his “brand” as lone-wolf self-made man. He makes 6 “FIGHT, DON’T FOLD”: THE POKER MINDSET AND THE RISE … 183

“most of his decisions himself, consulting no one: ‘I understand life,’ he said, ‘And I understand how life works. I’m the Lone Ranger’” (Kran- ish et al. 2017, p. 3). Trump’s use of the metaphor of a larger-than-life independent and masculine popular culture figure to describe himself is telling and fits with Trump’s focus on self-as-brand: “Hyper-individualism is Trumpology’s first element. Trump is a brand. Trump is a strategy. Trump is entertainment. Trump is a spectacle. Trump is politics. Trump is instrumentalisation of everything surrounding him. Trump is the absolute commodification of the self” (Fuchs 2017, pp. 48–49). Again, the Poker Mindset lets us see how neoliberalism’s focus on self-branding combines with the values of traditional masculinity in Trump’s worldview. Woodward provides a chilling example of the chaos of the Trump administration that is reflective of Donald Trump’s predilection to act as lone wolf. He uses the example of the United States–Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) with South Korea. A military strategic benefit of the treaty is that it would allow the United States to detect a missile launch from North Korea within seven seconds. Without a United States base of operations in South Korea, the closest place to detect such a missile launch would be in Alaska, and it would take a full fifteen minutes for an Alaskan facility to detect a North Korean missile launch, a massive difference in time (Woodward 2018, pp. xvii–xviii). Trump became fixated on the costs of the trade agreement, because the United States has an eighteen-billion-dollar trade deficit with South Korea and spent over three billion dollars per year for US troops in South Korea (Woodward 2018, p. xviii). He attempted to draft a letter that would pull the United States out of the KORUS FTA. Woodward writes, “the reality was that the United States in 2017 was tethered to the words and actions of an emotionally overwrought, mercurial and unpredictable leader. Members of his staff had joined to purposefully block some of what they believed were the president’s most dangerous impulses” (Woodward 2018,p.xxii).Such was the independent impulsiveness of this decision that National Security advisers had to resort to sneaking a copy of the unsigned letter off his desk in order to prevent him from signing, hoping that he would forget about it. This happened multiple times (Woodward 2018, pp. xviii–xxii).

Winner-Take-All

Just as Trump’s lies and focus on branding himself as lone wolf serve his financial interests, they also reflect his all-consuming desire to win at all costs. Another way that Donald Trump embodies the Poker Mindset 184 A. MANNO is in his winner-take-all mentality. In all conflicts, whether political or financial, seemingly regardless of how small or petty, he needs to see himself as the “winner.” Further, he believes that money is the key marker of success, and desires the accumulation of wealth as a key way to be a winner. Despite all of the financial help from his father, Donald Trump justifies his wealth as the result of his hard work and innate abilities. “You can create your own luck, you can make things happen through hard work and intelligence. You can become luckier” (qtd. in Fuchs 2017, p. 114), claims Trump, in effect supporting the Poker Mindset’s myth of meritocracy, dismissing the massive wealth gifted to him by his father, and justifying the financial struggles of those who are less successful as individual failings. Seeing the world as a place of constant competition and battle is a central part of Trump’s winner-take-all Poker Mindset. He has written about it and spoken about it many times. Trump has written, “The world is a vicious and brutal place. We think we’re civilized. In truth, it’s a cruel world and people are ruthless.… People will be mean and nasty and try to hurt you just for sport. Lions in the jungle only kill for food, but humans kill for fun” (qtd. in Fuchs 2017, p. 51). He’s also written, “The world is a brutal place. I love to crush the other side and take the benefits. Why? Because there is nothing greater. For me it is even better than sex, and I love sex” (qtd. in Fuchs 2017, p. 51). Further, Trump writes, “The world is a vicious and brutal place.… They want your job, they want your house, they want your money, they want your wife, and they even want your dog. Those are your friends; your enemies are even worse!” (qtd. in Watts 2017). Tony Schwarz, who cowrote The Art of the Deal, describes the damage that can be done with such a winner-take-all attitude: “If you don’t care what the collateral damage you create is, then you have a potential advantage.… He used a hammer, deceit, relentlessness and an absence of conscience as a formula for getting what he wanted” (qtd. in Buettner and Haberman 2019). Perhaps Trump honed this view of the world at the New York Military Academy, where he spent some years as a student. His baseball coach focused on the importance of winning at all costs, saying of those days, “I taught them that winning wasn’t everything, it was the only thing” (qtd. in Kranish et al. 2017,p.42). Donald Trump apparently took those words to heart, as the coach said of Trump, “He always had to be number one, in everything. He was a conniver even then. A real pain in the ass. He would do anything to win [and] just wanted to be first, in everything, and he wanted people to know 6 “FIGHT, DON’T FOLD”: THE POKER MINDSET AND THE RISE … 185 he was first” (qtd. in Kranish et al. 2017, p. 42). Trump’s desire to win at all costs overlaps with his predilection for deceit. By many accounts, he is an inveterate cheater at golf. According to sportswriter Rick Reilly, “When it comes to cheating, he’s an eleven on a scale of one to ten” (qtd. in Kranish et al. 2017, p. 182). Trump justifies his cheating by saying, “Ahh, the guys I play with cheat all the time, I have to cheat just to keep up with them” (qtd. in Kranish et al. 2017, p. 182). If you view the world as a brutal place of constant combat where your opponents cheat, then you’re justified in cheating yourself. This same winner-take-all attitude allows Trump voters to dismiss his lying and corruption because they believe the other side is doing the same (Marcotte 2018).

Fighting, Not Folding

When life is a constant battle, fighting is better than—in Trump’s words— “folding” (a poker term that means not giving up), and dominating others and bullying are important ways to survive in a harsh world. To Donald Trump, “survival, toughness, strength, and the willingness to fight, lead and compete are moral norms” (Fuchs 2017). Trump has so thoroughly over-conformed to the values of the Poker Mindset that he sees competition, battle, and toughness as moral goods. Apparently young Donald Trump had a taste for violence, fighting, and bullying. Neighbors of the young Trump related stories “of a child Donald throwing rocks at little children in playpens and provoking disputes with other kids” (Johnston 2016, p. 17). Young Trump also reportedly bullied his younger brother (Kranish et al. 2017, p. 34) and eagerly embraced the hypermasculine culture of toughness, competition, and cruelty at the New York Military Academy (Kranish et al. 2017, p. 40). Trump speaks often of how he relishes opportunities to fight. He told one biographer, “I always love to fight… all types of fights, including physical” (qtd. in D’Antonio 2016,p.11).InThe Art of the Deal, Trump proclaims, “when people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard” (Trump and Schwartz 1987, p. 59). Further, he’s commented, “I think I probably expect the worst of people because I’ve seen too much.… Life is about survival.… It’s always about survival” (qtd. in D’Antonio 2016, p. 326). When viewed through such a Hobbesian lens of life as nasty and brutish, the world can be divided cleanly into winner and losers, the successful and the “suckers.” Trump likes to tell a story to illustrate his 186 A. MANNO early understanding of this idea. According to the story, Fred Trump took his son to the opening of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in 1964. At the event the designer of the bridge stood to the side and received no recognition. Donald later remarked on this incident, “Nobody even mentioned his name.… I realized then and there that if you let people treat you how they want, you’ll be made a fool. I realized then and there something I would never forget: I don’t want to be made anybody’s sucker” (qtd. in Kranish et al. 2017, p. 45). Trump reiterated this view in a 1981 interview, stating that “man is the most vicious of all animals, and life is a series of battles ending in victory or defeat.… You can’t just let people make a sucker out of you” (qtd. in D’Antonio 2016, p. 154). Trump refers to the idea of not being a fool or sucker many times. He referred to those who eschew revenge when attacked as “fools” (Johnston 2016,p.7).He regularly blames any foreign policy problems on the weakness and fool- ishness of American leaders (Laderman and Simms 2017,p.4).Atthe 2011 Conservative Political Action Committee Conference, Trump revis- ited this theme, asserting that “the United States has become a whipping post for the rest to the world. They are not treating us properly. Amer- ica today is missing quality leadership and foreign countries have quickly realized this. It is for this reason that the United States is becoming the laughing stock of the world” (qtd. in Laderman and Simms 2017, p. 75).

Revenge

In addition to Trump’s inclination to fight—and especially to fight back with disproportionate force—is his belief in the power and value of revenge. One biographer has gone so far as to argue that “Trump himself has reduced his life philosophy to a single word—revenge” (Johnston 2016, p. 7). Trump himself has said, “My motto: Always get even” (qtd. in Watts) and “I love getting even.… [encouraging readers of his books to] go for the jugular, attack them in spades!” (qtd. in Johnston 2016, p. 7). Trump has also similarly stated about revenge, “When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades… so that people will not want to mess with you” (qtd. in Fuchs 2017, p. 51). In his book Think Big, Trump writes “If you don’t get even, you are just a schmuck! I really mean it, too” (qtd. in Laderman and Simms 2017, p. 26). Trump’s strategy, then, is not only based on what appears to be a mean-spirited worldview but also on the belief that a fear of disproportionate counterattacks will prevent attacks in the first place. A biographer tells the story of an 6 “FIGHT, DON’T FOLD”: THE POKER MINDSET AND THE RISE … 187 example of Trump’s penchant for revenge. He had felt wronged by a former associate whom he considered disloyal. In Trump’s words, “she had turned on me after I had done so much to help her. I had asked her for one favor in return and she turned me down flat. She ended up losing her home. Her husband, who was only in it for the money, walked out on her and I was glad. Over the years many people have called asking for a recommendation for her. I only gave her bad recommendations. I can’t stomach disloyalty… And now I go out of my way to make her life miserable” (qtd. in Johnston 2016, pp. 23–24). Such a Manichaean, black and white view of loyalty fits well with the winner-take-all, zero- sum-game ideology of the Poker Mindset. This is a view of loyalty that has been likened to that of mob bosses, and as we’ll see below, both Fred Trump and Donald Trump have allegedly had significant connections to organized crime figures.

Corruption

From his grandfather to his father to himself, Donald Trump comes from a line of corrupt ﬁgures who bend and break the rules for their own gain in their effort to win at all costs. Trump’s grandfather Friedrich Trump was born in the southwest German town of Kallstadt. Friedrich Trump’s father—and Trump’s great-grandfather—Johannes Trump died of lung cancer when Friedrich Trump was eight years old, leaving his wife with mounting debts. In order to deal with those debts, fourteen-year-old Friedrich Trump was apprenticed to a nearby barber, but unhappy with his circumstances, Friedrich Trump traveled with his older sister in 1885 to New York. However, Friedrich Trump ran afoul of German law because he left without completing his compulsory three-year military service and without requesting permission to emigrate (Kranish et al. 2017, p. 23). With a keen desire to become wealthy, Friedrich Trump traveled west during the gold rush, and in 1891 he opened a lodging house in Seattle. Friedrich Trump reportedly obtained the land for his lodging house using a false “gold strike” claim. (Such claims granted a parcel of land for free where a prospector had found gold.) The lodging house also reportedly operated as a bordello. When the west coast gold rush subsided, Friedrich Trump opened a similar establishment in the Yukon and eventually exited the business as authorities were increasingly enforcing “sin” laws prohibit- ing drinking, gambling, and prostitution (Kranish et al. 2017,p.24).It’s worth noting here the afﬁnities between Friedrich Trump and Donald 188 A. MANNO

Trump. Both men profited from those who dreamed of striking it rich, whether prospecting for gold or playing slot machines or table games at Donald Trump’s Atlantic City casinos. Friedrich Trump traveled back to Kallstadt in 1901 a relatively wealthy man looking for a wife. It was there he met and married Elizabeth Christ, and the couple returned to New York in 1902. However, Elizabeth Trump wasn’t happy and wished to return to Germany, which they did in 1904. While Kallstadt was happy to have the wealthy Friedrich Trump return, the German government, unsatisfied with Friedrich Trump’s explanations for his illegal emigration and failure to complete his mandatory military service, forced the Trumps to leave Germany in 1905 (Kranish et al. 2017, p. 25). Back in New York City, Friedrich Trump opened a barbershop, which Trump biographer David Cay Johnston suggests was possibly a front for criminal activity: “[B]ecause men of dubious means could come in for a daily shave or just hang out… [barbershops] could have been opportune places to gather business intelligence and engage in sub rosa transactions with many ethnic criminal elements in the big city” (Johnston 2016, p. 7). While hard evidence of Friedrich Trump’s involvement with organized crime does not seem to exist, his son Fred Trump and grandson Donald Trump much more clearly were involved with known organized crime figures. Fred Trump reportedly was involved with organized crime as part of his building construction business after the end of World War II. Fred Trump partnered with Willie Tomasello, who provided a cash-strapped Fred Trump an infusion of “operating capital on a short notice” (John- ston 2016, p. 14). Tomasello was a known associate of New York’s Genovese and Gambino crime families (Johnston 2016, p. 14). Johnston writes, “just as Friedrich Trump had engaged in illicit businesses to build his fortune in the late nineteenth century, his son Fred Trump turns to an organized crime associate as his longtime partner to build his own” (Johnston 2016, pp. 14–15). As indicated earlier in this chapter, another example of the corruption of the Trumps can be seen in Fred Trump’s gifting of money to his son, as revealed by New York Times investigative reporting, likely skirting tax laws in providing over four hundred million dollars to Trump using hundreds of revenue streams. Further, Fred Trump’s complex business practices broke the spirit of the law if not the letter when he enriched himself building housing using FHA funding, prompting Congressional investigations (Johnston 2016, pp. 11–14). 6 “FIGHT, DON’T FOLD”: THE POKER MINDSET AND THE RISE … 189

Donald Trump followed in this family tradition of corruption, and “would also do business with the heads of the same [Genevese and Gam- bino crime] families, though at a remove, developing numerous business connections with an assortment of criminals” (Johnston 2016, p. 15). When Trump applied for a casino license in the 1980s, for example, his background check revealed that he “had been in contact with people associated with organized crime” (Kranish et al. 2017, p. 125). Trump has also been suspected of laundering money on several occasions. The failures of Trump’s three Atlantic City casinos stem from “a mixture of enormous debts, rival venues, weak local demand and negative press, which suggested that Trump’s business were facilitating money laundering— something later given credence when the Taj was fined $10 m for failing to report suspicious transactions” (Hobbs 2019). There have also been accusations of financial improprieties via Trump’s real estate properties. At Trump Tower in New York City, for example, Russian organized crime members “began to launder money by buying and selling apartments” (Snyder 2018, p. 219) in the 1990s, a Russian hit man wanted by the FBI lived in Trump Tower, and a Russian gambling operation was broken up in the apartment below Trump’s. Further improprieties occurred in other Trump properties, with a third of the units in Trump World Tower “bought by people or entities from the former Soviet Union” (Snyder 2018, p. 220) and hundreds of units from Trump’s Florida properties bought through shell companies connected to individuals “convicted of running a gambling and laundering scheme from Trump Tower” (Snyder 2018, p. 220). Son Donald Trump, Jr. said in 2008, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia” (qtd. in Snyder 2018, p. 220). Further evidence of Trump’s corrupt willingness to bend or break rules in order to enrich himself can be seen in his attempt to manipulate stocks in order to make a profit. Despite the myth of Donald Trump as self-made billionaire, Trump was already “in deep financial distress” (Buettner and Craig 2019) the very same year that The Art of the Deal cemented Trump’s popular cultural image as business savant. Between 1985 and 1994, Donald Trump lost $1.7 billion, “more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer” (Buettner and Craig 2019). He lost so much money that he did not qualify to pay taxes for eight years of the ten-year period. While Trump was publicly burnishing his self-made billionaire image—such as in Newsweek magazine in 1987 when he proclaimed, “There is no one my age who has accomplished 190 A. MANNO more” (qtd. in Buettner and Craig 2019)—he was constantly searching for sources of revenue to improve his debt-heavy financial situation. Between 1986 and 1989, Donald Trump used his media image to present himself as a “corporate raider.” In a financial sleight-of-hand, Trump “would acquire shares in a company with borrowed money, suggest publicly that he was contemplating buying enough to become majority owner, then quietly sell on the resulting rise in stock price” (Buettner and Craig 2019). This con worked for a time, earning Trump millions, but Trump “lost most, if not all, of these gains after investors stopped taking his takeover talk seriously” (Buettner and Craig 2019). It seems that investors quickly caught onto Trump’s deceptive maneuvers. While Trump reportedly earned almost seventy million dollars from stock gains between 1986 and 1989, he lost a whopping thirty-five million in the stock market in 1990 alone. This loss was the result of Trump’s 1989 purchase of stock and announcement of takeover plans of American Airlines. Traders saw through his con. An airline analyst commented in the media on Trump’s Wall Street showmanship, “I’m very skeptical of everything this man does” (qtd. in Buettner and Craig 2019). We also see examples of Trump’s penchant for corruption and his winner-take-all Poker Mindset in his common practice of not paying people who do work for him (Buettner and Haberman 2019). He conned thousands of dupes into paying tens of thousands of dollars for his bogus Trump University. Trump was required to refund twenty-five million dollars to those he tricked with false claims about the education experience (Johnston 2016, p. 10). As of June 2016, Trump and Trump businesses have been the subject of “3,500 legal actions in federal and state courts during the past three decades” (qtd. in Solnit 2018), whether as defendants or plaintiffs. Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen suggested during his testimony before Congress that “Trump ran his campaign as something of an infomercial, hoping to convince the Russians that he was a good partner. To enrich himself, Trump promised to realign American foreign policy” (Foer 2019). From his questionable long-standing lending relationship with Deutsche Bank (Enrich 2019) to the appearance of nepotism in the White House (Wolff 2018, p. 29) to concerns that he is violating the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution (Johnston 2016,p.6;Frum2018, p. 54), Donald Trump exemplifies the winner-take-all ideology of the Poker Mindset that sees corruption as business-as-usual in a harsh economic world. 6 “FIGHT, DON’T FOLD”: THE POKER MINDSET AND THE RISE … 191

Finally, the Mueller Report identifies Donald Trump’s corrupt efforts to influence the investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 US presidential election. In his final report, Robert S. Mueller writes, “The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests” (Mueller 2019, Volume II, p. 158). As a result, according to Mueller’s report, President Trump did attempt—despite Trump’s assessment that the report totally exonerated him—to influence the investigation via “multiple acts… that were capable of exerting undue influence” (Mueller 2019, Volume II, p. 157). As with the KORUS example, it was only the more principled refusals of Trump’s underlings that saved Trump from himself.

Authoritarianism

Donald Trump’s populist appeal is based in large part on his authoritarian tendencies, which tie into a number of the values of the Poker Mindset, including masculine strength and independence and a winner-take all view of the world as bitter conflict where constant attacks are necessary. Neoliberalism contributes to the cultural conditions that create an atmosphere ripe for authoritarianism, with the “corporatization of the state and civil society, the destruction of public goods and commons, the commercial control of the media, and the rise of an economic survival-of-the-fittest ethos” (Giroux 2017, America at War with Itself, p. 4). There is a “deadening of public values and civic consciousness” as a “market-driven public pedagogy… acts relentlessly to replace the open power of citizenship with a closed set of pre-defined consumer choices” (Giroux 2017, America at War with Itself, p. 10). In such an atmosphere of artificial austerity, the brand that is Donald Trump appears appealing, offering the promise of safety and protection through masculine power and strength, as well as the potential for great wealth. Research shows that there are several “behavioral warning signs” (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, pp. 21–22) that identify an authoritarian. These include questioning the legitimacy of the established democratic system, questioning the legitimacy of opponents, encouraging violence, and attacking the media (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, pp. 21–22). We see examples of all of these in Donald Trump. Trump regularly claims that the system is “rigged.” He has challenged the legitimacy of opponents on multiple occasions, from questioning the citizenship of Barack 192 A. MANNO

Obama to labeling his 2016 presidential opponent “Crooked Hillary” and leading chants at his rallies of “Lock Her Up!” Donald Trump has frequently justified or even encouraged violence, especially at his rallies. At a February 16, 2016 rally in Iowa, Trump commented to the crowd, “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, will ya? Seriously. Just knock the hell out of them. I promise you I will pay the legal fees. I promise” (qtd. in Lev- itsky and Ziblatt 2018, p. 63). Further, at a February 22, 2016 rally in Nevada, Trump commented on a protester present in the audience, “I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks. It’s true.… I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you” (qtd. in Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, p. 63). Here, Trump is doing several things at once. He’s invoking better times past, the epitome of his slogan “Make America Great Again,” and the idea that we’re now too politically correct and should be intolerant of—and even violent to—those who disrespect us. He’s also burnishing his own masculinity by stating that he’d like to be the one doing the punching. Finally, Trump is drawing a clear distinction between his people and everyone else. The implication is that Trump supporters are better than everyone else, which serves to prop up his supporters’ sense of themselves as a wronged group in these politically correct times when things are stacked against them and other candidates like Hillary Clinton are calling them “a basket of deplorables.” Finally, Trump regularly attacks the media, labeling those media sources who provide coverage critical of Trump, as previously discussed in this chapter, as “fake news.” Trump required the media to stand in penned-in areas during his 2016 presidential election rallies where they were regularity heckled by the crowds. Donald Trump is apparently enamored of authoritarian political strongmen, including Philippine’s Rodrigo Duterte, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, China’s leader XiJinping, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Trump said of working with China’s leader, “I find China, frankly, in many ways to be far more honorable than Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy, I really do” (Landler 2019), referring disparagingly to Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. Vladimir Putin draws on the ideas of fascist philosopher Ivan Ilyin, who described the characteristics of fascism of the 1920s and 1930s. Such fascists “celebrated will and violence over reason and law,” were leaders “with a mystical connection to his people,” 6 “FIGHT, DON’T FOLD”: THE POKER MINDSET AND THE RISE … 193 and painted globalization “as a conspiracy rather than a set of problems” (Snyder 2018, p. 16). Donald Trump also seems to fit these fascistic characteristics. Trump’s authoritarian brand of charismatic populism revolves around Trump as cult of personality. He is both self-centered and self- aggrandizing. As a leader, Trump takes an independent approach, as we’ve seen earlier in this chapter. He has said, “Leadership is not a group effort” (qtd.inFuchs2017, p. 50). Thirty-five psychiatrists, writing a letter to The New York Times a month after Trump’s inauguration speech, worried about his fitness to serve, due to his narrow-mindedness and lack of understanding of others. They wrote:

Mr. Trump’s [inauguration] speech and actions demonstrate an inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions. His words and behavior suggest a profound inability to empathize. Individuals with these traits distort reality to suit their psychological state, attacking facts and those who conveyed them.… In a powerful leader, these attacks are likely to increase, as his personal myth of greatness appears to be conﬁrmed. We believe that the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump’s speech and actions make him incapable of serving safely as president. (qtd. in Johnston 2019, p. 258)

It’s worth noting that Fox News commentators responded to this same inaugural speech by calling Trump’s performance “muscular,” “very forceful,” and “masterful” (qtd. in Giroux and Yancy 2018, p. 92), conforming to the values of the Poker Mindset by using the language of traditional masculinity to praise Trump’s performance. Further, psychiatrist Prudence L. Gourguechon, a former president of the American Psychological Association, proposed evaluating Trump’s “fitness for office” using the United States Army Field Manual on “Leader Development.” The qualities important to leadership that Gourguechon identified from the Manual include trust, discipline and self-control, judgment and critical thinking, self-awareness, and empathy (Johnston 2019, p. 258). Donald Trump has failed to demonstrate, through his words and actions, that he possesses these qualities. His racially charged and sexist language divides rather than unites, whether fear-mongering about the danger of “illegal immigrants” and Black Lives Matter protesters or mocking the appearance and normal bodily functions of women. Any sign of protest is a call for battle in Trump’s 194 A. MANNO worldview. Mocking anti-fascist protesters, Trump attempted to emascu- late the group by referring to their small muscles: “You see these little arms, these little arms” (qtd. in Chait 2018), Trump said as he used his fingers to demonstrate small biceps. He imagined what a fight would look like between his (manly) supporters and these supposedly weakling anti-fascist protestors: “Where are the Bikers for Trump Where are the police? Where are the military? Where are — ICE? Where are the border patrol?” (qtd. in Chait 2018). Here, Trump is using the power of the state (federal agents and police) and pitting them in his rhetoric against protestors whose mission is to combat fascists and white nationalists. Trump’s authoritarian stance here is chilling. Donald Trump’s supporters are drawn to his appeal to authoritarian populism. Populists often fear economic, demographic, and cultural changes and see them as potential threats to the social order. Animus toward immigrants, elites, and foreigners result in scapegoating (Galston 2018, p. 34). “The politics of blame provides fertile ground for dem- agogues who know how to play on people’s hopes and fears” (Galston 2018, p. 34) and Donald Trump follows the demagogue’s playbook perfectly. His populist message demonizes “elites” and “the system” as corrupt and paints “his people” as right-minded and their common sense as better than the elite’s expertise (Galston 2018, p. 34). Galston describes populism as being motivated more by feelings than a clear ideology:

[P]opulists typically display disappointment at frustrated economic expectation, resentment against rules they regard as rigged and against special interests and wealthy elites who are proﬁting at their expense, in fear of threats to their physical and cultural security. Combined, these emotions often yield anger, which talented politicians can mobilize in their pursuit of political power. (Galston 2018,p.35)

Those with authoritarian personalities are drawn to populism. People with such personalities “display aggression toward outgroup members, submis- siveness to authority, resistance to new experiences, and a rigid hierarchi- cal view of society” (Azarian 2019).

Accusations of Sexual Harassment and Assault

Perhaps the most disturbing way that Donald Trump seems to over- conform to the values of the Poker Mindset is in the many accusations of 6 “FIGHT, DON’T FOLD”: THE POKER MINDSET AND THE RISE … 195 sexual harassment and assault made against him. As of the writing of this chapter, sixteen women have accused Trump of sexual assault, ranging from unwanted kissing, unwanted touching of genitalia, and rape (Des- jardins 2016). Trump also reportedly walked into the dressing rooms of beauty pageants while contestants were dressing and looked up women’s skirts at other events (Desjardins 2016). Trump’s attitudes toward women, as evidenced in his own words in the now-infamous Access Holl- wood “pussy-grabbing” tape, is one of extreme entitlement. He uses his fame and power as rationales for his behavior. The former New York Mil- itary School “Ladies Man,” divorced three times and accused of multiple affairs and the payments of “hush money” to silence potential accusers, seems to equate sexual conquest with masculine success. Trump’s words and actions reflect the boorish and almost cartoonish sexist and misogynistic behavior of the poker players described in Chapter 2 and the angry misogyny of members of the Alt-Right discussed in Chapter 3. Donald Trump could be the poster boy for toxic masculinity. Decades worth of sexual misconduct allegations and Trump’s own words in print, on television, and on tape confirm this. He wields the power of entitled rich white masculinity and uses thinly veiled racist, sexist, and xenophobic language to present himself as a strong voice of the people who feel disen- franchised, threatened, and increasingly left behind in the face of globalization, a harsh post-industrial economy, the prospect of the United States becoming a country where white people are in the statistical minority, and the increasing acceptance of progressive social values. Donald Trump embodies the values of the Poker Mindset in his focus on lone-wolf masculinity, his winner-take-all view of the world as one of constant competition and combat, and his willingness to lie and cheat in the process. How- ever, Trump is no outlier. He is one of us. He represents the natural end- point of toxic masculinity and harsh neoliberalism. He is so compelling to some and so infuriating to others only because he over-conforms to the values of the Poker Mindset. We must avoid the mistake of thinking that defeating him will solve America’s problems. The systemic problems of racism, sexism, and economic inequality will still exist. His angry and resentful voters will still exist. The conditions that activated those voters into Trump supporters will still exist. It is only in recognizing how our shared ideology of the Poker Mindset reinforces and reaffirms those systems of inequality that we might start the hard work of forming coalitions and trying to dismantle that ideology. 196 A. MANNO

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Conclusion

As I write this conclusion during the summer of 2019, the United States has once again been stunned by the horrific violence of mass shootings. In the span of twenty-four hours, from Saturday morning on August 3, 2019 to the evening of the same day, two mass shootings occurred. In El Paso, Texas, twenty-one-year-old Patrick Crusius surrendered to authorities after allegedly killing twenty-two people and injuring many more at a Walmart store crowded with back-to-school shoppers. Nineteen minutes before the first frantic call to 911 alerted authorities of the active shooter, a “hate-filled, anti-immigrant manifesto” (Arango et al. 2019) was posted online. The manifesto (which while suspected has not yet been definitively connected to Crusius) accused immigrants of planning an attack on the United States and blamed immigrants for a diminution of American life, stating that “if we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can be more sustainable” (qtd. in Arango et al. 2019). The poster of the manifesto makes explicit reference to the mass shootings at the Christchurch mosque in New Zealand in April 2019 and espouses white supremacist talking points (Arango et al. 2019). Police authorities are treating the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism. Less than twenty-four hours after the El Paso mass shooting, another occurred in Dayton, Ohio. Twenty-four-year-old Connor Betts allegedly killed nine and injured more than twenty people. Wearing body armor, a mask and ear protection, and carrying an assault rifle, Betts was killed by police less than a minute after the shooting began (Williams et al. 2019).

While motives for the Betts mass shooting are at this time unclear, former friends describe an angry young man steeped in the values of toxic masculinity. While in high school, Betts reportedly created a “hit list” of classmates he wanted to harm (Williams et al. 2019) and a “rape list” of female classmates he wanted to sexually assault (“Connor Stephen Betts, Iden- tified as Dayton Suspected Shooter, Once Kept ‘Hit List,’ ‘Rape List,’ Classmates Say,” 2019). Betts was described by a former classmate as being “always obsessed” with guns (qtd. in Williams et al. 2019). As usual, the two mass shootings, on the heels of yet another scene of carnage at the Gilroy, California Garlic Festival that killed three people just a week before the El Paso and Dayton killings, prompted attempts in the media to make sense of the tragedies. The Los Angeles Times published a story on August 4, 2019 called “Op-Ed: We have studied every mass shooting since 1986. Here’s what we’ve learned about the shooters” by a professor of criminology and a professor of criminal justice (Peter- son and Densley 2019). The scholars created a database of every mass shooter since 1966 who “shot and killed four or more people in a public space” (Peterson and Densley 2019) with the goal of identifying patterns that might prevent further shootings. The scholars identify four common- alities: trauma experienced at a young age, a crisis related to a personal problem or grievance, finding connections to other shooters for valida- tion, and access to weapons in creating the ability to follow through with the mass shooting (Peterson and Densley 2019). Nowhere in this think piece do these scholars foreground the fact that the El Paso and Dayton shooters—as well as the vast majority of mass shooters—are men. Nor do these scholars identify our masculinity ideology as something that needs to be examined. Scholars and the media still tend to have a massive blind spot when it comes to the connection between mass shootings and men and their masculinity ideology. As a result, there is a great urgency to have a lens through which to understand these horrific acts of violence. My intervention in this book, the concept of the Poker Mindset, is such a lens, and scholars, educators, parents, the media, and activists need to be aware of it. We must also remember, as I’ve mentioned multiple times over the course of this book, that those figures highlighted within—mass shooters, white nationalists, Men’s Rights Advocates, Incels, Pickup Artists, and even President Donald Trump—are not outliers. Their actions are often extreme and result in widespread cultural condemnation, but all of these figures operate within the parameters of the cultural ideology of the Poker 7 CONCLUSION 203

Mindset that we all experience. These figures, however, over-conform to the values of the Poker Mindset, just as others under-conform to those values. When we pathologize over-conformers, we protect the status quo. The argument that I’ve tried to make in this book is that the Poker Mindset is a helpful way to understand the values and often unquestioned assumptions that support the status quo in American society. While the space of the poker table is an intensified site where we see these values and assumptions at work both in the rhetoric and play of the game, the Poker Mindset can also be seen operating outside the space of the poker table. The status quo supported by the Poker Mindset includes a view of gender relations whereby the valued characteristics of traditional masculinity—strength, courage, aggression, competition, risk, cunning, stoicism, and the accumulation of wealth and status—still hold powerful and often undisputed influence. The status quo of traditional masculinity determines how we think about the pursuit of success and the American Dream in our neoliberal era. Neoliberalism reflects the values of traditional masculinity, and we see evidence of those values in the winner-take-all nature of the American business world. In this business world, profits are seen as moral goods in themselves, whether through pharmaceutical companies that raise prices on their essential medicines exponentially or create the conditions that contributed to our current opioid crisis, through for-profit prisons and a corrupt bail system that doubly punishes the poor, through an avaricious payday lending industry that preys on the financially insecure and propped up by politicians that have been enriched by industry lobbyists, or through corporate CEOs who are rewarded for workforce reductions with compensation packages through which they earn on average three hundred times their average employee, up tenfold since the 1970s and the neoliberal turn. When common pathways to financial security such as higher education seem untenable due to skyrocketing tuition costs that are the result of austerity budgets caused by drastic lowering of top tax rates on the rich (again since the 1970s), student higher education loan debt has become a crisis that has hobbled a generation of young people and caused frustration, anger, and sometimes despair. We see evidence of this frustration in the sexism, racism, and homophobia of the Alt-Right and in the rise of authoritarian populism. Supporters of these movements are rightly angry, but they wrongly scapegoat immigrants, feminism, multiculturalism, the Black Lives Matter movement, and LGBTQ people for their problems, 204 A. MANNO incorrectly believing that advances made by these groups result in losses for others. The concept of the Poker Mindset should be applied not only to life- or-death situations like mass shootings but also to situations that might not seem in obvious crisis or spark immediate outrage. However, it is only by beginning to see how the Poker Mindset impacts these less obvious, more taken-for-granted as status quo crises that we can hope to address the more extreme problems. I take inspiration from Arruzza et al.’s Fem- inism for the 99%: A Manifesto (2019) and will end by arguing that in order to meet some of our most pressing challenges, the kinds of challenges addressed in this book, we need what I’ll call an “anti-neoliberalist feminism,” one that is anti-sexist, anti-racist, fights for strengthening the social safety net, and finds common cause with other like-minded social justice movements.

References

Arango, Tim, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, and Katie Benner. 2019. “Minutes Before El Paso Killing, Hate-Filled Manifesto Appears Online.” The New York Times, August 3, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/ us/patrick-crusius-el-paso-shooter-manifesto.html. Arruzza, Cinzia, et al. 2019. Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto. London: Verso. “Connor Stephen Betts, Identiﬁed as Dayton Suspected Shooter, Once Kept ‘Hit List,’ ‘Rape List,’ Classmates Say.” 2019. https://abc7chicago.com/ dayton-suspected-shooter-had-hit-list-rape-list-classmates-say/5442328/. Accessed August 5, 2019. Peterson, Jillian, and James Densley. 2019. “Op-Ed: We Have Studied Every Mass Shooting Since 1966. Here’s What We’ve Learned About the Shoot- ers.” Los Angeles Times, August 4. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/ 2019-08-04/el-paso-dayton-gilroy-mass-shooters-data. Accessed August 5, 2019. Williams, Kevin, Hannah Knowles, Hannah Natanson, and Peter Whoriskey. 2019. “Gunman Killed Sister, Eight Others in Second Deadly U.S. Mass Shooting in 24 Hours.” Washington Post, August 4, sec. National. https:// www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/04/nine-fatally-shot-dayton- including-suspect-day-after-mass-shooting-texas/. Accessed August 5, 2019. Index

A Bluff, 2, 7, 9, 25, 26, 40, 176 Absolute Poker, 4 Brown v Board of Education, 121 Adelson, Sheldon, 13, 112, 124, 129, Buchanan, James McGill, 122, 125, 130 176 Alek Minassian, 61, 66 All in, 18, 23, 26, 48 Alpha males, 25, 76 C Alt-Right, 11, 12, 17, 24, 42, 43, Capitalism, 63, 97, 125, 150, 152, 48–54, 56–60, 63, 65, 68, 69, 156 77, 82–86, 93, 123, 195, 203 Casino capitalism, 11–13, 17, 75, 76, Amazon, 13, 137, 153–157 86, 93, 98, 99, 102, 103, 119, Apex Legends, 159 128–130 Authoritarianism, 11, 13, 56, 99, 180, Cato Institute, 123 182, 191 Chads, 66, 67 4chan, 49, 57 Citizens United v FEC, 111 B Clinton, Hillary, 52, 53, 85, 96, 169, Battle Royale games, 159 177, 192 Beta males, 65 Computer Dealers’ Exhibition Bethlehem, PA, 13, 94, 121, 126 (COMDEX), 130 Bethlehem Steel, 126–128 Corruption, 94, 103, 110–113, 116, Bezos, Jeff, 153–155 129, 185, 188–190

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 205 license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Manno, Toxic Masculinity, Casino Capitalism, and America’s Favorite Card Game, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40260-0 206 INDEX

Cruel optimism, 162 Gender Role Discrepancy Strain Cruz, Nikolas, 76, 77 (GRDS), 11, 18, 30, 33–35, 66, Cuckservative, 52 77

D H Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS), 13, 35, Hegemonic masculinity, 20, 23, 25 137, 157–159, 161 Hole card camera, 7–9 Daraprim, 83, 84 Hole cards, 2, 6–8 Deal Me In, 144 Homosociality, 11 Deeb, Shaun, 28 Dominance bonding, 11, 21 Draftkings, 158, 159 I #draftourdaughters, 52, 53 Identitarianism, 57 Involuntary Celibates (Incels), 12, 48, 65–69, 71, 77, 85, 202 E ESPN, 5, 6, 9, 20, 158 J E-sports, 137, 157, 159, 161 James Alex Fields, Jr., 51, 174 John Birch Society, 121 F FanDuel, 158, 159 K Fantasy sports, 40, 157, 158 Kimmel, Michael, 32, 34, 51, 55, 56, Father’s Rights Groups, 12, 59, 61–63 59–62 Fortnite, 159, 160 Koch brothers, 94, 121, 123, 125 Freedom School, 122 Koch, Charles, 112, 121–123, 125 Friedman, Milton, 96, 156 Koch, David, 112, 123 Full Tilt Poker, 4 Koch, Fred Chase, 121

G L Gambling, 4, 6, 9, 19, 20, 35, 37, LeFevre, Robert, 122 41, 48, 73–76, 79, 80, 83, 93, Libertarianism, 97 94, 99–102, 105, 106, 109, 130, Looksmaxing, 68 136, 158, 167, 187, 189 Lottery, 70, 72–75, 100–102 Gender, 10, 11, 17, 18, 20–24, 26, 28, 30–33, 35, 42, 47, 49, 51, 53, 56, 59–65, 67–69, 78, 86, M 94, 104, 106, 107, 126, 129, Machine gambling, 106–108 136, 137, 140, 144, 151, 152, Male gender role, 11, 30, 59, 60, 62 154, 203 Masculine capital, 23 INDEX 207

Masculinity, 10, 11, 13, 17–20, P 22–26, 31, 34, 35, 37, 38, 41, Paddock, Stephen, 12, 78–82, 85 42, 47, 50, 55, 61, 65, 66, 74, Patriarchal dividend, 17, 23, 59, 104 75, 77, 78, 93, 103, 104, 124, Patriarchy, 22, 58, 59, 62, 71, 86, 126, 136, 144, 150–152, 162, 104, 111 192, 202 Pepe the Frog, 52 McCutcheon v FEC, 110 Peterson, Jordan, 56, 60, 61, 202 Memes, 52, 84 Pickup Artists, 12, 63, 64, 67 Men Going Their Own Way Pink-collar jobs, 33 (MGTOW), 48, 68, 69, 85 Planet Poker, 4, 6 Men’s Rights Advocates (MRAs), 12, Pokerassport,11, 20, 42, 48 48, 59, 60, 68, 202 Poker hand tracker, 108 Middle Precariat, 74 Poker Mindset, 10–14, 17, 32, 37, Model actuarial self, 75, 107 42, 43, 47–56, 59, 61, 63–69, Moneymaker, Chris, 7–9, 40, 106 71–73, 75–79, 82, 84–86, 93–95, Moneymaker Effect, 6, 8, 9 98, 99, 101–103, 107, 108, Mont Pelerin Society, 96 110–113, 115, 116, 118–122, Moon Man, 52 124–126, 128, 130, 135–140, Mulvaney, Mick, 115 143–145, 147, 149–151, 155– 157, 159, 161, 162, 167–174, Myth of meritocracy, 11, 13, 184 179, 181–185, 187, 190, 191, 193–195, 202–204 Poker rules, 1–2 N Poker Stars, 41, 42 Neoliberalism, 13, 23, 47, 55, 65, 73, Populism, 13, 42, 99, 179, 182, 193, 75, 77, 79, 80, 84, 93–98, 102, 194, 203 104, 111, 118, 119, 129, 130, Precariat, 74, 75, 145 139, 144, 145, 149, 150, 156, 162, 168, 183, 191, 195, 203 No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em, 4, 5, 17 R Reagan, Ronald, 95, 96, 117, 123, 139 Reddit, 49, 57, 67 O Red Pill, 52, 53, 84 Online poker, 4–8, 41, 106, 108, Rodger, Elliot, 12, 65–67, 69–78, 80, 109, 158, 161 82, 85, 104 Online streamers, 13, 137, 157, 160, 161 Orthodox masculinity, 22 S On tilt, 12, 55, 59, 65, 67, 76, 77, Sands Bethlehem Casino, 13, 128–130 85, 108 Sexism and misogyny in poker, 11, 26 Over-conform, 24, 84, 85, 113, 168, Sexual harassment, 77, 195 182, 194, 195, 203 Shkreli, Martin, 12, 82–85 208 INDEX

Slot machines, 12, 75, 106, 129, 130, Unite the Right Rally, 174 167, 188 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforce- Social Dominance Orientation, 172 ment Act (UIGEA), 4, 41, Spencer, Richard, 51, 57, 60 158 Stacked deck, 12, 94 Stacys, 66 Status threat, 170, 171 V Symbolic fantasy space, 11, 17, 18, Valizadeh, Roosh, 64, 77, 78 24, 30, 34, 35, 42, 106, 135 Video game arcades, 105, 106 Video games, 12, 32, 34, 35, 40, 63, 65, 105, 106, 123 T Video poker, 79, 82 Toxic masculinity, 11, 12, 24, 42, 47, 48, 82, 94, 195, 202 Traditional masculinity, 11, 13, 19, W 22–26, 30–39, 41, 42, 48, 55, Whist, 3 60, 66, 75, 77, 104, 119, 128, White ethnostate, 51 135, 143, 144, 151, 168, 172, White nationalists, 12, 48–51, 57–60, 183, 193, 203 85, 174, 194, 202 Trolling, 52, 83–85, 174 White supremacists, 51, 52, 58, 70, Trucking industry, 13, 137, 145–147, 77, 201 153 Winner-take-all, 11–13, 38, 51, 53, Trump, Donald, 11, 13, 57, 83, 56, 59, 65, 66, 79, 82, 85, 94, 167–177, 179–185, 187–195, 97, 106, 110, 111, 113, 115, 202 119–122, 130, 150, 151, 159, Trump, Fred, 180, 181, 186–188 171, 172, 176, 184, 185, 187, Trump, Friedrich, 187, 188 190, 195, 203 Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, 160 World Series of Poker “Main Event”, 5, 18, 39, 106 WorldSeriesofPoker(WSOP),4–9, U 18–20, 26–28, 30, 36, 40, 106, United States v Scheinberg, 4, 41 138