Losing sucks. We all hate it. You can wallow in sadness or learn from the mistakes. Why I disagree with Trump and MAGA on just about everything, the fact is his campaign was able to (either on purpose or accidentally) tap into something that pretty easy to understand and get behind — actions have consequences.
Gentle parenting is the current rage and in style right now. If you don’t know what gentle parenting is, I’m going to try and boil it down to the most simple terms. Little kids have emotions, and when they act out, it’s their emotions getting the better of them. So, you need to nurture those emotions, allow them to be expressed, and in theory this will create healthier adults emotionally who don’t bottle things up. In theory, it’s great. I want my kids to have healthy emotional expressions as adults.
However, on the flip side, to those not in the trenches with a long term view, it 100% looks like kids are allowed to have tantrums and act out without consequences. In fact, it can easily look like the kids get what they want BECAUSE they had a tantrum becauase in the end, there is no “discipline” or “punishment” for their actions. In the past this was everything from time-outs to spanking. It was immediate and direct and effective. Did it create the best teens or adults emotionally? Maybe not, but for parents it got them through their day.
When you ask yourself why latinos and other groups moved to the right in 2024, I think it can be traced back to democrats having “gentle parenting” policies.
Take illegal immigration for example. Crossing the border illegally is a crime. We can quibble on WHY people do it (and many times it’s for a good and noble reason) but we can’t quibble on the fact that it’s not the process and it’s against US law.
In typical gentle parenting fashion democrats have focused on keeping families together (again, noble and moral), paths to citizenship, explaining the WHY and the fact that it DOES actually help Americans in many ways (they pay taxes, they do manual labor, etc).
However, republicans are rebelling on gentle parenting. They want an immediate and clear reaction to the action. Cross the border — GTFO one way or another.
Of course people resonate with that.
You can go back to BLM and protests as well.
While democrats spent hours and hours trying to explain systemic racism, why it exists, why people are mad, police brutality, how police are protected in the courts from consequences, etc…. republicans said “break the law, get punished”
Now was that point of view the “moral” or “right” or “empathetic” thing to do. Democrats listened to feelings, heard the emotions, allowed them to be expressed, etc. Republicans said we should give them a spanking and they should thank to the US for not doing worse.
Do I agree with it? Hell F’n no. Does it make logical sense why MANY MANY MANY people resonate with the simple action = consequence without nuance POV? Absolutely.
Am I saying democrats need to take hardocre R positions? No. Absolutely not. But do democrats need to rethink how problems are and solutions are defined — yes.
Gentle parenting makes sense for those that try and think 15-25 years into the future. It’s what my wife and I are trying to do. But when your kid is tantruming in public or yelling in your face, or simply not listening to basic things like “time for bed, or don’t throw food on the floor” it’s natural to want to give consequences quickly and severely.
If democrats want to see more blue arrows in 2 or 4 years — it’s time to get away from explaining problems away, telling voters they’re wrong and don’t understand, and start defining problems and simple solutions to it.
