That’s My Dad

I haven’t been able to get this out of my head, so I’m getting it down.

I’m sure you’re aware of Gus Walz’s big moment at the Democratic Convention:

A young man, overwhelmed with love and pride as his dad accepts the Vice Presidential nomination. It was a beautiful moment, pure emotion. Pure love. M heart squeezed as I watched.

So I knew instantly MAGA was going to come for him.

The leading edge haters did — Ann Coulter, Dinesh D’Souza (who is a convicted felon by the way). The usual bottom feeders, calling him “a puffy beta,” “weird” and a “soy boy.” Just mocking and dragging this young man for loving his dad. He’s only 17.

But they were quickly checked by people pointing out Gus is neurodivergent. He has a learning disorder and anxiety. Mocking the disabled is still too much for rank and file MAGA, although their Dear Leader. can do it with impunity.

Some MAGA complained that they were “tricked” into mocking Gus. Because they “didn’t know” he was disabled. Like this fine specimen.

The Walz family has spoken publicly about Gus’s challenges and how they help him navigate them. It took a lot for him to be there in that huge stadium full of screaming people at all — as someone with anxiety as well, I know. I would have melted down. With fear, not happiness.

But here’s the thing — it doesn’t matter if Gus is neurodivergent OR NOT. Being overwhelmed with love for your father at his proudest moment is PERFECTLY NORMAL HUMAN EMOTION. There is nothing strange or unnatural about it. We should all hope to be so loved.

And you just don’t mock people like that. You just don’t. * It’s cruel. It’s small. It’s ugly.

All sorts of grown-ass people who should know better mocked a teenage boy publicly on the Internet. For *showing emotion.*

This is the worldview MAGA and Project 2025 want to bring us. This kind of “Biblical man- and womanhood.” I’m horrified by the vision of human relations they espouse. Where men are supposed to be some kind of emotionless brutes who only speak with their fists or their dick. The only acceptable emotions are rage and lust.

And women are — well, property, basically. Livestock. Breeders. Look at the landscape post-Dobbs: women who could have a brief, safe medical procedure and go on to live their lives and have more children, are dying or having their fertility forever destroyed. The right fetishizes baby-making, but don’t care if women are killed and mutilated when it goes wrong. Why do they hold our lives so cheaply?

Trump and Co. will strip women of the right to vote if they can. They flat-out say so. Peter Thiel, Posobiec, Fuentes. It’s in there.

Black men will be next.

This is the world a vote for Trump will bring us. Shitty little white men imposing their thwarted desires to be “strong” and “powerful” on the whole nation, by color of law if they can. By force if they can’t.**

These people are not mentally healthy. My husband laughed at me when I implicated “abusive parenting,” but Google “blanket training” and see if you agree with him, or with me.

Emotionally mature and stable people know, like Vice President Harris said, that leadership is truly marked not by who you beat down, but who lift up. VP Harris and Coach Walz have lifted a lot of people in their lives.

We can’t let these broken people, who can’t even recognize real love when they see it., run the country. Vote for Gus’s dad and his running mate on November 8.

*Except fascists. Mocking them is essential.

**Expect violence leading up to and on the Election Day. That’s a whole separate thing.