America, That Bad Little Girl
Plus: Childcare costs, Texas time, and more...
Keep your kinks to yourself: At a Turning Point USA rally for Donald Trump this week, former Fox News anchor—and now, independent media mogul—Tucker Carlson got mighty poetic:
"If you allow people to get away with things that are completely over the top and outrageous…and you do nothing about it…you're going to get more of it," he began, analogizing the Trump-America relationship to that of a father and his misbehaving children.
"There has to be a point at which Dad comes home," he continued. "Yeah, that's right. Dad comes home, and he's pissed. Dad is pissed. He's not vengeful. He loves his children, disobedient as they may be. He loves them because they're his children."
"Get to your room right now, and think about what you did! And when Dad gets home, you know what he says? 'You've been a bad girl. You've been a bad little girl, and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it's not gonna hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it's not. I'm not gonna lie. It's gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You're getting a vigorous spanking because you've been a bad girl. And it has to be this way.'"
This strange, kinky soliloquy on the right reminded me of this terrible graphic—not the first of its kind, and representative of a whole genre—on the left:
Come on, we all know there's only one VP candidate you would be excited to see at the family gathering — and he's the one who will actually protect IVF, abortion access, or LGBTQ+ rights.
Voters know who is fighting for them and who is just creeping them out. pic.twitter.com/viWahTwtIk
— Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) October 1, 2024
America's not some naughty little girl, J.D. Vance isn't a creepy uncle, Tim Walz isn't a lovable Carhartt dad, Kamala's not mother (or a "baddie"), and Donald Trump isn't daddy, the disciplinarian. America's still the freest, richest, most prosperous place on Earth, not because of politicians who try to convince us they're parental figures but despite them.
There are a bunch of narratives that have emerged from this election cycle—educational polarization widening, second-/third-/fourth-generation Latinos moving rightward, the oddness of both Georgia and Arizona becoming just a tad bluer—but one under-discussed narrative is the degree to which the younger generation (and apparently Tucker Carlson, too!) grafts familial roles and relationships onto politicians and their supporters. It started as just a silly little meme—Gen Z calls people mother as a sort of term of approval, in the same way that they've recast brat's meaning—but it says something about the level at which we're operating: We wrongly understand politics as deeply personal (which raises the temperature); interpret authority as something to be assented or submitted to, not checked; think in terms of oversimplified memes, not foundational principles.
Speaking of kids: "I have a toddler and over the past three years my family has spent over $120,000 on childcare…How can families like ours, or those with fewer resources and more kids, sustain the rising costs of raising children today?" asked one man in a NewsNation town hall with Republican vice presidential contender J.D. Vance.
"Sometimes these issues are a little bit harder for working moms than working dads," offered Vance—admitting gender differences that are sometimes a little triggering for progressives—before launching into his real answer: "I think we have to give young women and young men more options to actually build the kind of childcare that works for them."
"Some people would like to stay at home maybe for a couple years, maybe they'd like to stay at home for a couple months then go back to the workforce, maybe they'd like to go back to the workforce right away. The childcare regime we have in this country basically tries to force a one-size-fits-all model on the entire country."
He spoke about the Community Development Block Grants, and how these fund only one type of childcare. He talked about how there are sometimes grandparents, aunts/uncles, members of a church community who want to take care of children, but that it's very hard for these folks to actually receive any sort of federal incentives to make it financially possible for them. "The federal government actually makes it really hard for anybody other than the people who are currently providing childcare to get into that job." (Watch here.)
Vance is, of course, no libertarian. At one point, he endorsed forcing large companies to accommodate such childcare arrangements via mandating paid leave provisions. And involving the government in any of this is something with which many libertarians would find fault. But his fundamental point is a fair one: The federal government currently subsidizes certain types of behavior but not others. What would happen if we made a concerted effort to tweak that, to allow more choice?
The "weird" Ohioan has his flaws, but this town hall was an example of where elections ought to be focused: on actual policy tradeoffs that affect real people's lives, and what the role of government is exactly in facilitating people getting to live out their full potential.
Meanwhile in Texas: As the race nears to a close, Kamala Harris has this weekend decided to eschew another swing state visit, choosing good old red Texas (my homeland) instead.
Accompanied by native Texans Beyoncé and Willie Nelson, Harris appears to be trying to emphasize abortion rights, in a place with strict bans, and sort of gin up interest and virality amid plenty of campaign monotony and predictability. She'll sit down with podcaster/therapy-speak normie-whisperer/Target mom Brené Brown. She'll probably don a cowboy hat.
Amusingly, Donald Trump will fly on down to the Lone Star State to record an interview with Joe Rogan today. It's kind of a fun, absurd, late-in-the-game coincidence that both presidential candidates are hitting Texas, versus a state that's actually in play. (Unless…could it be in play? Probably not, but that would be wild.)
Scenes from New York: No. Let's just think about Texas for another moment. Just take a moment to think about kolaches and Luckenbach and gun rights and watering holes and margaritas and Tex-Mex. It's my newsletter, and we'll spend a moment appreciating Texas if I say so, dammit. What have you done to respect Texas today?
QUICK HITS
- "Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has achieved early production yields at its first plant in Arizona that surpass similar factories back home, a significant breakthrough for a US expansion project initially dogged by delays and worker strife," reports Bloomberg. "The share of chips manufactured at TSMC's facility in Phoenix that are usable is about 4 percentage points higher than comparable facilities in Taiwan, Rick Cassidy, president of TSMC's US division, told listeners on a webinar Wednesday, according to a person who participated. The success rate, or yield, is a critical measure in the semiconductor industry because it determines whether companies will be able to cover the enormous costs of a chip plant." TL;DR, this has big implications as far as American competitiveness with China, the strategic value of Taiwan, etc.
- "Citizens in the UK have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted for silently praying outside abortion clinics," reports Madeleine Kearns for The Free Press. "Even organizing pro-life meetings in your own home may be a criminal offense." The full piece is very much worth a read.
- "Asking a newsroom's journalists who they're voting for (always with the acceptable response option of 'none of your damned business'), is a way of telling both external audience and internal management some useful information about organizational tilt," writes Reason's Matt Welch in "Show Us Your Votes, Cowards!"
- You'd have to be mighty desperate to want to come to Canada of all places. But, in all seriousness, this seems bad for would-be migrants (and…possibly for America's border influx?). Also, what does "let our economy catch up" even mean?
We're going to significantly reduce the number of immigrants coming to Canada for the next two years. This is temporary — to pause our population growth and let our economy catch up.
We have to get the system working right for all Canadians.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) October 24, 2024
- Speaking of immigration, this may be my favorite theory circulating on X right now:
The fact JD Vance in all likelihood cooks Indian food better and more often than Kamala Harris does is a testament to how well integration is happening in this country, disproving his immigration pessimism.
— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) October 25, 2024
