Tim Walz Isn’t Your Dad. Please Stop Creeping Me Out
Tim Walz is not your dad. Kamala Harris is not your aunt. If you’re looking for family, call your father.
There’s been a somewhat unnerving trend I’ve noticed in the two days since Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Social media users and the media have begun to refer to Walz in strangely familiar terms, referring to him as their dad or implying a more personal relationship than anyone should have with their political class.
One since-deleted tweet I saw exemplified this trend read:
Tim Walz is my dad; Kamala’s my fun aunt who lives next door. They just found out that I’m being bullied by the shittiest kid in my class, JD. When they try to talk to his dad, Don, it becomes clear he’s the real problem. They go back to their car; Kamala pulls out her cop badge, Tim grabs his old baseball bat. They walk back to Don’s porch. As Tim reaches for the doorbell they look at each other and smile. This is going to be fun.
To borrow something from the Democrats: this is weird.
It’s deeply unsettling that a grown man is ascribing parental values to a politician, and one he likely hadn't heard of until five minutes ago at that. Harris and Walz are not the ones who raised him, yet he fantasizes that they will solve his problems for him by dealing with his “bullies.”
This particular user was joined by David Hogg, a survivor of the Sandy Hook shooting turned gun grabber, who tweeted “Ask yourself- imagine you are stuck on the side of the road with a blown tire. Who do you want to show up. Tim Walz or JD Vance?”
The overwhelming response from the right seemed to be “I would change the tire myself” but even if I was a manlet that couldn’t change a tire on my own, my first thought would not be to call a politician to help me out.
I’m well aware that Twitter is not real life, and that manchildren online are not indicative of the broader American electorate. But I think the rush to label Walz as “America’s Dad” is indicative of a trend amongst Democrats that far precedes his ascent to the national stage.
I’ve written previously on Pajama Boy, Obama’s failure-to-launch made flesh designed to sell Obamacare to a skeptical public. Democrats, as far back as the early 2000s, have pushed the idea of a paternalistic government deeply involved in the life of its citizenry from cradle to grave.
Pajama Boy was part of a motley crew of government cheerleaders from the Obama era. Julia, from the titular “Life of Julia” campaign, also attempted to positively portray the benevolent welfare state of Obama’s dreams.
“Don’t worry,” Julia seems to whisper. “The government will be your family now.”
That sentiment has only intensified in recent years, as both Republicans and Democrats have doubled down on populist rhetoric that demands the government provide more social services, just with a different coat of paint.
But newly vox populesque Republicans tend to leave the personal at the door. They aren’t clamoring for Papa Ted Cruz to fix their toilets. Not so for Democrats, who frequently refer to their politicians in a glowing interpersonal light.
I was struck by why that was when I encountered another post on Twitter where the user posted “Tim Walz is the dad an entire generation wish they had instead of the one they lost to Fox News.”
This is the insidious part of the replace-your-family-with-politicians schtick from Democrats. There’s been a concerted effort by blue states to fundamentally tear the traditional family structure apart, sometimes with the force of law. Indeed, Walz’s Minnesota is one of those places where the state is able to take custody of children if their parents aren’t on-board with gender cult nonsense.
Minnesota law states “A court of this state has temporary emergency jurisdiction if the child is present in this state and … the child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care” meaning if a parent is unwilling to pursue medical intervention for their kid, they become the property of the state.
And I’ve personally encountered multiple posts across the most popular social media sites that encourage those who disagree with their parents' politics to shun them and replace them with an echo-chamber.
This is a profoundly dangerous way to structure society. The state, no matter how much it may align with your values, is not a replacement for the family. It cannot ever hope to replicate the close-knit bonds of kin. And when it does, it often has catastrophic consequences.
Florida Congressman Byron Donalds has argued that LBJ’s Great Society legislation was responsible for destroying the black family by attempting to replace fathers with government services. 50 years down the line, it’s undeniable that single black motherhood has become the norm and the consequences of this government intrusion into the nuclear family has been a disaster.
Tim Walz is not your dad. Kamala Harris is not your aunt. If you’re looking for family, call your father.
He’ll even change your tires for you.