For his part, Buchanan tries to blame everything on international trade, as though there were no other forces in American economic or social life. Buchanan plays to his imagined audience's paranoia and envy. A presidential run will test the appeal of that message and, if historical patterns continue, will find it lacking. Faludi, on the other hand, attacks impersonal historical forces, not evil elites. She doesn't approve of the definition of masculinity that depends on control, but neither can she accept a society where things change without someone in charge.
Nobody knows who is in charge.
No one knows who to appeal to. The political action that could end men's betrayal is without a leverage point. To both Buchanan and Faludi, the changes in American life over the past 50 years have nothing to do with the desires or dissatisfactions of real, sympathetic Americans. These ideas make for impassioned prose, but they're lame as historical analysis. The very reason that cultural, economic, and social changes are so hard to control in a free society is that they emerge through the uncoordinated choices of millions of people.