Daddy issues

On Tucker Carlson's strange allegory of the wayward daughter and the angry father

Paging Dr. Freud. Can Dr. Sigmund Freud report to Donald Trump campaign headquarters, stat?

This is some really weird stuff. Have you seen it?

This is footage of former Fox News anchor, Trump fanboy, Russian grocery reviewer, and bowtie afficionado Tucker Carlson campaigning for Trump in Georgia. In the midst of a long diatribe about how the Democrats have ruined America, Tucker embarks on a real stemwinder of a tale involving a naughty teenage girl and vigorous spankings administered by an angry dad who has come home to restore order.

“If you allow your fifteen-year-old daughter to slam the door and give you the finger, you’re going to get more of it…No…There has to be a point at which dad comes home…Dad comes home and he’s pissed!…He’s not vengeful. He loves his children, disobedient as they may be, because they’re his children and they live in his house. But he’s very disappointed in their behavior…

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…and I’m not going to lie: it’s going to hurt you more than it hurts me…You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl.”

And it has to be this way! It has to be this way because it’s true. You’re only going to get better when you take responsibility for what you did. It’s not said in the spirit of hate. It’s not vengeance or bigotry. It’s said in the spirit of justice."

If it’s not clear from my write-up, Carlson is not offering parenting advice; he’s presenting an allegory. In this bizarre fable, the naughty adolescent girl represents wayward Americans who oppose Trump, and the daddy figure who is on his way home to mete out justice is of course Donald Trump, heading back to the presidency.

Throughout Carlson’s weaving of this story, the Georgia crowd erupts in raucous cheers. They absolutely love this stuff. People getting punished is one of MAGA’s favorite things to imagine (or vote for), and Trump himself administering the beatings is their dreamiest dream. Carlson’s inclusion of vaguely biblical language (“he’s not vengeful; he loves his children”) only adds to their glee.

I just find it creepy.

I actually pity the people who are cheering in the crowd in the Tucker Carlson video. What kind of childhood horrors would one have to have experienced to enjoy hearing this story, or to enjoy telling this story?

Of course, I am hardly qualified to offer insight on the psychology or sociology of abuse. But someday, when Trump has receded, someone will publish the definitive study of the psycho-freudian-religious-emotional neurosis that characterizes a not-small portion of the Trumpian rhetoric and worldview and apparently population. Abuse and violence seem to be a signifcant part of these people’s lives.

We know Donald Trump’s own father Fred was something of a monster. (Fred was a “high-functioning sociopath” prone to bullying and bigotry, writes Donald Trump’s niece Mary). We’ve heard the story of Trump himself smacking his grown son to the floor for wearing a baseball jersey to a baseball game. And of course Trump has been found liable and fined millions of dollars for raping a woman, and continues to be credibly accused by dozens of women of domineering, hateful abuse over his predatory lifetime.

Fun fact: this information turns no voters against him. No, I don’t understand it either. Even more fun fact: while I was composing this little essay, we learned that yet another woman has accused Trump of sexually abusing her. And this news will cause roughly zero Trump voters to reconsider.

I hope the less nutty MAGAists can understand why Tucker Carlson’s allegory and the cheers it incites are so utterly baffling to those of us outside the MAGA universe. If you wonder what Walz means when he says "they're just so weird," cue up Tucker Carlson and his tale of the spanking daddy.

But here’s the thing, Tucker and MAGA: if you really want to use this angry-dad-punishes-naughty-daughter allegory to describe the relationship between the people of our democratic, diverse, constitutionally configured nation and the head of that nation's executive branch, I think you have cast your characters exactly backwards.

Because here in the USA, the head of the household is We the People.

Your beloved Daddy Trump should be obedient to us.

And we are pissed.

Source: Daddy Come Home sheet music. Irving Berlin, composer. Library of Congress Public domain. https://www.loc.gov/item/2023791394/