loading . . . Democrats Are Mom. Republicans Are Dad. Democrats are mom, Republicans are absentee dad, and the American electorate and media is the child who enjoys dad's lax rules and desperately pines for dad's love and sometimes runs back to mom for safety and reassurance, for fixing.
It's a supremely fucked up situation. But you knew that.
Central to Republican appeal in the third decade of the 21st century is the party's promise that you can say and do whatever you want when they're in charge. Go ahead, use the r-slur, as a treat. Engage in all manner of vicious and dehuamizating racial and ethnic stereotypes if that makes you happy. Talk openly about women as baby factories who shouldn't have bodily autonomy and certainly shouldn't have a say in how the home or the country are run. Dad will let you do all that while dad goes on a crime spree and blows the family's money and leaves the family in ruins. He did it last time. He'll do it again.
But at least you got to say some slurs in public. At least you got to be the worst version of yourself. That, dear child, is dad's version of freedom.
I guess this has been on my mind for a while.
Mom, meanwhile, works tirelessly to keep things running, to make a schedule and abide by it and ensure everyone's needs are being met while dad is off doing who knows what with who knows who with no regard for anyone but himself. Mom works a day job and comes home to work her second unpaid job: Cooking, cleaning, organizing, being everything to everyone. And she watches as her child ignores all this and gets hurt by dad and inexplicably wants nothing more than his love. Maybe this is because the child knows they have mom's love already. That has to be it, mom thinks, mom hopes.
The child comes back to mom when dad has done something mom views as unforgivable. Make it better, the child cries out. Make it hurt less. Clean up the mess dad has created for me. Make me whole again. So mom does all this, knowing the child will one day be back in her arms, tears and snot streaming everywhere, their world in tatters, begging to be comforted. Things, mom knows, will need to be fixed again.
I’m Begging The Democrats To Watch TVAmericans are raving with praise for a show about a billionaire family being tormented and killed by a saucy little demon and Democrats are shying away from an Eat The Rich ethos. That millions of Americans are titillated by the suffering of the wealthy on their TV screens apparently meansBad Faith TimesDenny Carter
With this mom-as-Democrat and dad-as-Republican dynamic comes an expectation that mom is reasonable – centrist, you might say – and even-keeled and polite. In no way can mom lash out or say what she means. Total emotional dysregulation is dad's thing. Mom must protect everyone's feelings all the time. So when mom curses – when she says something that could be interpreted as mean – it's a big fucking deal.
The official Democratic Party X account this week called Trump toady Stephen Miller an "ugly fuck" and told Miller to shut up after Miller said James Talarico was the first transgender Senate candidate from Texas (conservatives scientifically can't be funny because they can only punch down, and punching down is never funny). Katie Miller, Stephen's wife, later called this "violent rhetoric." The person who posted the retort to Miller thankfully did not back down.
The Democratic Party's social media team using the f-word was treated by mainstream press outlets as a small-scale scandal. Mom had cursed. Mom had acted a little bit like dad.
The Republican president and his outwardly fascist allies in Congress and in the media take to social media every day to call for ethnic cleansing and genocide and all manner of violence against their political enemies, both real and imagined. Senator Tom Cotton once came out and said the National Guard should mow down anyone agitating for civil rights in the US. The president threatens every couple weeks to drop nukes on countries that aren't doing what he wants them to do.
These are treated as non-stories. Because this is dad, and dad is just like that. He's a little crazy and doesn't think about what he says and sometimes doesn't mean what he says, though you never know when that is, exactly. Dad has a quick temper and won't put up with any shit from anyone. He doesn't care about anyone but himself but he might love you if you try hard enough. The one thing we know about dad is that he will hurt you if you don't do what he says. That's who he is: He's dad.
Part of life in this authoritarian phase is watching media outlets, like the country itself, beg and plead dad (Trump) to be good, to be kind, to be respectable and decent and a leader for everyone, while knowing mom is somewhere in the background waiting for her chance to make things right once again. This is the impetus behind the whole "today is the day Trump became president" meme: People in positions of power wanting dad to be something he's not and to care about something bigger than himself and his desires.
Be the dad we deserve, they cry out. And Trump replies: I am.
On today's BFT podcast – available to all BFT supporters – I talk about why a Stephen Miller quote inspired me, the bad faith of birth rate worries, and why liberals and the left need to lighten up if we're ever going to entice folks to stop standing on the sideline.
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