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Tangent: Daddy Politics (Patreon)

Published:
2025-06-02 23:55:26
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Hey all,

Sorry this took way longer than I intended—the whole fascist dictatorship situation has been a real downer and my productivity has suffered. I had to film this one on four separate days, but whatever, I got the job done. It is a little more tangenty than past Tangents.

I'll be doing the second half of that AMA stream later this week too so keep an eye out for a post about that.

Thanks as always for you support!

-Natalie

Files

Tangent: Daddy Politics

Thanks so much for your support! Sources: Arendt, Hannah—The Origins of Totalitarianism Freud, Sigmund—Totem and Taboo Freud, Sigmund—Civilization and Its Discontents Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark—Metaphors We Live By Lakoff, George—Moral Politics Reich, Wilhelm—The Mass Psychology of Fascism ▬ Contents▬ Part 1: Getting So Hard For You 5:17 Part 2: Daddy vs. Mommy 15:55 Part 3: ContraDictions 37:10 Part 4: The Male Loneliness Epidemic 53:21 Part 5: A Contribution to Leftist Infighting 1:00:00

Comments

Nora

Yay! A tangent!

Ayyah Saleh

mother has fed us happy pride everyone

Frankie

♥️♥️♥️♥️

Marzlz

I basically teleported when I got the notification 😭

Mac

I was JUST about to chop a ton of vegetables and wondered “shoot what do I watch?” Thanks mom!

Doctor Tony

I know what I'm doing tonight!

Sassy Ali

I look forward to the breaking bad household stream section.

Alison

Just when I’ve run out ways to procrastinate studying, mommy comes in clutch dropping a new video. Sorry, daddy.

Lucas S

My man calls me daddy; is this about me?

Liz

I said "Yay!" out loud when I saw this notification.

Julia Estornell

You're all good, your wellbeing and health is most important. I'm looking forward to watching!

terrestrial trash

The Poles have just elected our own equivalent of Trump last night, so this is super fucking topical. Hopefully it will be at least a little comforting to hear what the spanking daddy dom across the Atlantic is up to.

Archmage

The way I GASPED when I got the notification 😭

LizSwaff

So excited for the video! I don’t think anyone should have to apologize for not having the best mental health in these times.

Clawdeena

I have a 4 hour flight ahead of me and this released just in time to cure my boredom

Flatlander Woman

I'm 5 minutes in and I love Natalie going hard. Old school style. Angry Natalie is the best Natalie, I'm sorry.

Laura Bea

im two minutes in and EXCUSE ME IS THAT A SHIRT WITH KATYA'S FACE ON IT .... based lol

Guilherme Tamaki

Woow best surprise ever! I just rewatched Conspiracy and was wondering when the next video would drop. Hope you are doing fine Nat, you are loved and wondeful! Take care of yourself!

Anthony Behnke

I hope all that Breaking Bad yaoi research paid off!

Tim the Canadian

No matter what happens next, you will have friends and support in Canada, happy pride month.

lulikm

I guess my plans to go to sleep before 3am and wake up before noon just went out the window.

Lucas S

Maybe not

Jo

Psssst. This is viewable to free members. Figured you'd want to know.

Samblix

Wishing you a happy Pride month of which I this one isn't particularly a happy one. Please take care of yourself Natalie!

Chandler Martin

You’re definitely not alone in feeling worn out by the absurdity of the orange man’s fascist takeover. Glad you finished the tangent tho. Can’t wait to watch!

Helen

Thank you, Natalie. This was exceptional as always. Now, get in bed by 8 and asleep by 12. Please eat good food. Flip your mattress. Keep going. Love you. P.s hope Vivaldi on the cello goes well x

Léandre Pelland Cyr

Girl I'm *canadian* and the whole fascist thing has been a nerve wrecker, if you decided to take a decade off I'm pretty sure everyone would understand.

y c

katya hoodie

Amy Rivet

Ur hair looks pretty

Cinabeeeeee

Re: Hard vs soft science metaphor - I think this metaphor works until you get to quantum mechanics. "Hard" is a metaphor for precision, which also depends on how well you can control all your variables and confounds. You can be very precise with laser wavelengths, the proportion of chiral enantiomers in a reaction, and doses of a new drug given to inbred male mice that have all had highly uniform controlled life experiences. 'soft' science can't have this level of control and its strategies all involve trying to see a signal through a ton of noise. High sample sizes, correlational analysis, difficulty teasing out cultural dependence, etc. The questions soft sciences ask are often far more utilitarian on an everyday basis though (the science of how people do people-ing and how to people better or more in the ways we find beneficial or to reduce people-acts we don't like), which is why it is still worthwhile despite the noise.

Ale Kenward

I watch this from a country where we elected a woman who is a PhD in physics, a grandmother and has the demeanor of a very strict primary school teacher. I couldn't be happier.

stef

Hello, mother.

highclass_lady

As someone who's parents were of the "spare the rod & spoil the child" types, this is a really tough Tangent for me: starting when I was about 2 years old (I have a near-photographic memory) my mom would call my dad & ask him to come home from work so he could beat me & he would. Sighing at an untimely moment, or any expression that could be interpreted as rolling my eyes, or daring to pout, not being able to endure physical pain without crying, all led to escalation in physical punishments, especially those inflicted without warning to startle me & prevent me from having a counter argument or feeling prepared. And when I was no longer living with them, my brother was worse than my Dad in some other ways, & his wife was worse to me than them all. As someone who went to boarding school, 1 of the stricter of the boarding schools I went to, was a continuation of the total authoritarian power structure. They enabled & empowered these parents to be even more controlling & restricting with strict rules & punishment systems. They validated parents sense of feeling victimised by their ungrateful rebellious children & taught them how to manipulate desires for love & acceptance with threats & customised punishment protocols. The pressure of the punishments divided us students into teacher's pets narcs / snitches whose lives were made easier by being granted more freedoms, & rebels who were routinely harassed & bullied by staff who took advantage of every punitive measure they were allowed to inflict. The scapegoats got turned in to endure retaliation so that the majority would get some semblance of mercy. Yet they still let forms of sexual abuse inflicted by students onto other students slide, even forcing us to be friends, & in some cases remain roommates, with our peer bullies & abusers. As someone who's experienced uncontrollable, highly unregulated authoritarianism in both my early childhood home & later in boarding schools, it's so infuriating to see people repeat those same patterns & power structures in the grown up political world. Everyone thinks that they can be Daddy's Favourite, Teacher's Pet, that's how they can romanticise authoritarianism. I can see how these patterns are being repeated, & if anything got me through what I went through as a child, when life gets this hard, the first thing we can do to resist is survive. And you will get better at doing that.

Austin F

as a (gay) man, i think the real solution for the "male loneliness epidemic" is to loosen restrictive masculinity roles. you know, tucker, maybe a 6th grade boy would not be so horrified by the concept of "being told to pee sitting down" if he didn't constantly worry that other boys would punch him in the nose because he didn't perfectly fit masculinity roles. i think that's a big reason why manosphere thinking is so attractive to straight men that feel rejected by idealized/traditional masculinity, but rarely to gay or trans men, despite the fact that we're universally rejected by that standard. most gay and/or trans men know by now that 'traditional' masculinity has no place for us and never will, but a lot of straight loners still try to cling to the chance that they could reach it. they can't accept that they aren't daddy and refuse to make peace with mommy

stef

Nobody can present these persistent horrors and still make me laugh except for you.

Allen Bray

"God is a male lover, the humans are his female lover" someone needs to tell Ben Shapiro this. I want to see how he would react.

M. A.

The reight loves using the hard/soft thing to force a consensus on various issues. Like casting climate change as "just a belief held by soft liberals" or invalidating trans people by claiming that "sex is real", turning gender into a "hard" scientific thing. Hard = immovable/concrete, soft = malleable/abstract. Really happy the populism thing was brought up, because it creates an environment like this where the truthiness of basic information is decided by who screams louder and becomes the authoritative daddy of that issue. Thats what weirds me out about some leftists who think that adopting this model is somehow the right strategy

Douglas Grion Filho

Just wanna say that, although i disagree with natalie's political views a fair bit (i am one of those commies that found your channel lol), i still find incredible value in listening to your opinions and analysis. They challenge my worldview and force me to think, and thats what learning is all about. I think nowadays its so trivially easy to put yourself in an echo chamber bubble that people's views become caricatures and true discussion is thrown aside. So thanks natalie for making this! I found the subject super interesting and your views as always very persuasively argued and nuanced :)

Frozen_Thorn

I feel like the leftists that you are describing are basically tankies.

M. A.

I mean seriously, their whole schtick is "you gotta toughen up and be manly" and they scream and cry about how difficult young boys' lives are because... **checks notes**... they are allowed to pee sitting down and dress up however they want. The manosphere, the place for the manliest, toughest, alpha males, is evidently full of people who weren't tough enough to survive in this brutal, cutthroat world of femboys and trans people

Maria

I missed the tangents! I love this one. Thank you so much. Great work!

Marinousky

Every time Natalie says something ridiculous, and I think she is satirizing conservative viewpoints…only to be slapped in the face by a conservative pundits saying the same shit word for word... 🤯🤣😭

Bruno Sauvagnat

So I understand your perspective are built on your own experience in the US and your shock with the current rise of fascism in the US, but I really think you (and a ton of other commentators) are kind of writing yourself into a corner by keeping this essentialist view of ''Libs'', the left and the right with the left co-joining with the far right. Not saying it can never happen, but this reading of political views is a bit all over the place and essentialising a variety of people into archetype that are not really representatives of what type of politic is actually put in place in the US or elsewhere. For example, Biden became less popular when he was actually at his dadiest, protesting the war in Gaza was already then a very dangerous thing that could lead to beating, prison time and loosing your job. The belt was already out. So why did he fail? Why did the left daddy worshipper not vote for him and the mommy party got him out for a mommy-daddy in the form of Kamala-Harris (caring, but will be though on the border, keep sending arms to Israel while reigning it in)? Also Daddy Trump is facing a lot of protest and people are being deported to silence those critics. People didn't like daddy Stalin, they just silenced dissenter. I understand you're here doing more a very interesting philosophical exercise, but I think it explains certainly well the daddy dynamic of the right, but leave the mommy psychology of the libs underdeveloped or at the very least doesn't explain much of it's appeal save for the fact it's not daddy and it's good to care. I think you've been analysing a lot of right wing and left wing writers through in an attempt to debunk them so to speak, but maybe it could be an interesting exercise for you to actually make a case for those centrist caring mommy? What's the good mommy brings to us in addition to milk and nurturing? Why should we all desire to be mommies? Anyway, interesting video otherwise and certainly an entertaining thought exercise.

Aristana Scourtas

Ooo I’m only one minute in but let me just say that my therapist talks about this all the time!! Not with politicians specifically, but more with authority figures in general and the family dynamic. This comes up a lot for me with work stuff (rip).

Marinousky

I’ve honestly been thinking about the topic in this video for a long time. I’m from Mexico, and I think one of the reasons why Mexico and many other countries in the global south. Have been able to have a woman president before the US is because there is some sort of mythical conception of a mother Mary, mother homeland, mother mexico, mother Russia… something for people to hold onto when they think about female authority. And I think this sterile, Protestant place has no notion of divine feminine in it’s conception of itself, so there’s just nothing to associate women in power with other than a nagging mother-daughter-wife.

lotusmaglite

God is a Smith, humans are his Morrissey.

Fillory

Messiah is mid, I will die on this hill.

hannah m

I think this is an easier argument to make if the nurturing mommy party were actually providing essential care, at least daddy politic is doing what’s expected of him (punishing). an exploration of the bernie/trump voter through this (and probs psychoanalytical) lens would be interesting. still not sure how neoliberalism is mommy though

hannah m

tbc I liked this tangent a lot and think this is a unique perspective. I just think it used to be more true than it is now

ez ra

i love u for this one fr

Ian Albert

You deserve a fun light topic next tangent. As a treat. Fun and light topics like... um... uh... well surely *something* is still just simple and enjoyable without crushingly depressing undertones.

Random person

While I see where you are coming about leftist-liberal fighting, I also feel like you're not discussing (maybe you know it but it wasn't mentioned in this video), that liberals also prefer to fight leftists more the conservatives/Trumpians/whatever. I very often seen resist libs berating online leftists for alienating "centrists" and blaming leftists for 2016 and 2024 with very little acknowledgement that "leftists" in the USA are an extreme minority. I truly believe that if every "leftist" in the USA had voted for Harris, Trump would still have won. I also feel like liberals don't want to deal with Republicans or get "centrist" conservatives to either stay home or God forbid vote for a Dem. To be fair, I don't blame them for this. Trying to talk to Trumpian about politics sounds fucking horrendous. The difference is I generally don't see leftists telling libs to go and reach across the aisle or whatever. At least not as often. I think it all boils down to "leftists" having no power in the USA, and libs are very rapidly whatever power they had. And that is fucking terrifying. Again, I don't even blame them for this. If I was a lib, I would much rather argue with the most obnoxious online leftist in the world than with a MAGA true believer. Like an online leftist is ultimately gonna be shitty, make fun of me, and tell me some slogans. A MAGA true believer would literally think I'm subhuman. I voted for Harris btw, not that it mattered since I'm a very red state. Anyway, this is a depressing video. We are in depressing times though, so it is what it is. I am trying to remain somewhat positive since it seems that (for now), Trump is pissing off a lot of normies.

Cait Monroe

I kept being startled when it was revealed that you were just directly quoting that guy. Jesus

Jake Vaughn

Thanks for this one in particular 🙏

Adam Finch

Maybe I'm naive, but I agreed with this right up until the end. I would describe myself as a leftist rather than a liberal, but I definitely don't see libs as worse than the right or fascists, and no leftist I know thinks that way (for context I'm Canadian, although I doubt we're all that different from Americans in this regard). Perhaps we blame the libs more than the right for some things, like Bernie losing, but in my circles we tend to understand that some liberals will turn fascist when push comes to shove, but others will stick to their lib values or turn to the anti-fascist left. The fact that some of them could become anti-fascist makes them better than the right, inherently. We just also recognize that some of them are business libs who will support whoever they think will improve their financial standing, including fascists.

Lazar Andjelic

I definitely understand and mostly agree with the notion of scratch a dirtbag leftist and a fascist bleeds. I don't understand how this in turn means we should move away from leftist politics towards liberalism. Voting is one thing, we probably will have to continue voting for the liberal as long as there's no viable left alternative, but at least for me and fellow queer genz autistic weirdos, the anger at Democrats is not that they convey an image of weakness, it's that their words give us hope for the future, but their actions then say that future isn't actually possible. And as the future becomes more bleak, the people in the party providing solutions with actual potential are the ones shunned and locked out of positions of power. I understand the frustration around leftists acting against the political interests they pretend to care about, but I think believing liberal politics can put a stop to what's happening right now is just as wishful thinking as a communist thinking the revolution's coming to save us all

Conri Connell

Ugh soooo good so bleak so cogent. Honestly the best political commentary I've heard in years. I've run the gambit of male leftists to fabulous dirtbag leftists to militant internet communists - but at the end of the day sometimes the simplest answers are the correct answers. Thank youuu

Jane Allred

Hi Natalie, speaking as someone who has never gotten the appeal of daddy, and who is a forever mommy simp, you've honestly lost me on your analysis of the metaphor liberals = mommy = democrats. While I think that this is a metaphor we all would like to believe, its applicability has fundamentally fallen apart sincethe tiem of Lakkoff's book. That is, despite everyone (including myself), who loves calling the democrats libs, they represent an increasingly conservative world view (they had in the 90's as well, but it was an easier illusion to maintain then), who have for the most part maintained their base by being not quite as bad as republicans. That is, they are mommy, but a particular sort of conservative mommy, who is in control enough of her natural nurturing instinct to properly administer tough love. Austerity in general, but perhaps we can do some means testing for some social programs in there. While I want to end there, I ought to draw out the obvious politicali mplications of this, despite it inevitably leading to a discussion which I find at best useless and exhausting: that is, what to do with the inadequacy of the democrats (and center-left parties more generally) to speak to the liberal elements of their base. I'm one of the people who is deeply upset with the democrats (this doesn't mean I'm not appalled and terrified trump or republicans, the human soul is capable of profound depths of varied feelings), and dirty commie I may be (don't worry, I was one before I discovered your channel), I think even the libs of the party have good reason to be upset with the leadership of the party for being so antagonistic towards their base, their useless courting during the past eight years of the mythical anti-trump conservative, their doubling down on militarism and jingoism etc. I'm not saying that's how you should feel, but that frustration at the party makes sense from many perspectives, not just the overly online brocialist.

Ema

There used to be a view amongst many Marxists that we should vote liberal because its easier to organise and protest under left or liberal governments. But that view seems to have faded over the last few decades. I dont understand why, as it just seems very self evidently true, whether you believe in revolution or not.

Ayanna

Exactly. The thing with infighting is that infighting involves two parties. It's not just leftist attacking libs, in fact this all started back in 2016 with libs blaming leftist for Hillary loosing when she literally won the popular vote and "Bernie or Bust" was a fringe movement at best. There were probably more people who voted for Harambe in 2016 than were Bernie or Busters.

Lorena

This is probably one of my favorite tangents, from the beginning with metaphors and language to the end with politics. The point hits home because I’m a liberal mother living with a mostly conservative father. He has expressed that being authoritarian is a necessary and my job as a woman is to be nurturing, also prefer me to be that way. The ying to my yang and all that. Now, I’m not sure this is the end of democracy and I think spreading hopelessness is actually more harmful for our hearts. I don’t want to give up out of spite. As in let’s not give up and hand it all in a silver platter. Because the more we give in and comfortable they feel about using scapegoats the more that we let them win by omission

Connor Gibson

your best tangent since granola fascism, wow. left me with lots to think about

Ayanna

I think if Trump has a major fuck up where his weakness as a leader is revealed, then something like a revolution can occur, but otherwise, I agree that nothing is getting done. Usually in countries where someone undesirable is elected to office, a lot of movement happens initially that gets them out within the year. Trump got elected in November and there's been no mass movement to get him out. Not even from Democrats who campaigned off of Trump being a threat to our democracy.

Lorena

Also you look so pretty and you are a gift to the world 🩷

Rose Dombegh

anyone else notice that the "soft" humanities versus "hard" sciences are ... like ... the nagging women versus the authoritative men?

Our Political Economy

I love your work Natalie, but taking an individual political science study on *stated* reasons for selecting a candidate, where the primary independent variable is a self created index as potential evidence against Marx is a bit weak imo. Again, I really appreciate your insight, but maybe this was a bit of a gesture toward other frustrations you have with marxists these days? I could be wrong, and am only critiquing in good faith.

Julia Estornell

I thought the heteronornativity of the Mommy/Daddy dichotomy already implied a level of conservatism. Mommy will always be beholden to conservative views of femininity *because* she is Mommy. For me what I took away from this video was a troubling question: How do we escape this? Can we? Because as it exists, these roles exist only to wax and wane, always in conflict. I think that's why leftism is appealing, at least through gender liberation there is hope for something beyond this feminine and masculine power struggle.

Liv

the dictatorship has def been bummer city

Queen Bee BumbleGee

The French Revolution happened when Pluto was in Aquarius. As of last year I think, Pluto has re-entered Aquarius for the first time since like 1798. js

Narcissa Deville

I'm being so real, this is the best Tangent ever and I kind of wish this was a main channel vid because there are so many people I would share this with <3 great work as always.

Brendan

This was a great tangent and left me a lot to think about. I do think, however, that to a lot of leftists, Bernie bros, etc. the liberal establishment is representative as sort of a metaphorical structural/cultural mother figure, but more like a mother that abandonded her kids at the bus stop with no money to fend for themselves so that she can go and exploit the global south and fund the bombing of children and their families overseas. Whats to stop leftists from idolizing and leaning into a authoritarian daddy figure when the nurturing mother figure spends time scolding but doesn't even nurture?

Ted(dy)

Natalie, I’m very tired rn and I feel a little delirious at the moment not to be crazy but this video is incredibly eye-opening and I want to express how strongly I feel about it. I *really* hope you consider turning this into a main channel video. Thank you for everything you do and happy pride! ♥️

Maria Light

okay this was great, loved it, i'll be thinking on it for days, but holy fuck did you make me laugh with the sims footage. What a pay off its been seeing every stream leading up to this tangent thank you. I know about lockpicking, breaking bad, daddy and the age of empires. Truly enriched.

firelizard

brb while i go gift my father a membership for father’s day, so that he can watch this video and learn why his marriage to my mother fell apart, and also maybe why my shithead brother hates both him and me, but not our mother. i just read a psypost article talking about the perhaps clinical narcissism in authoritarian leaders like trump, putin, and hitler—from the perspective of family dynamics. a common denominator seems to be authoritarian fathers who cause trauma during developmental periods in adolescence, and coddling mothers. give my brother a few billion dollars and he’s basically just gay elon musk, i’m literally not even joking. he’s such a fucking asshole

Rose Dombegh

Also quick thought on divine presence in Abrahamic religions ... While "God" is often represented as a "He," aspect of divinity/God's presence are frequently female/feminine. God's "breath" mentioned in Genesis (related to the "spirit") is the feminine Hebrew word "ruach." The term is also feminine in Syriac, and some early Christian Syriac theologians imagined the Holy Spirit part of the Trinity using feminine terms. Wisdom, or the feminine "Sophia" in Greek, is considered an aspect of God's presence (as mentioned in the psalms, and discussed at length by St. Augustine; this is why there are churches named after "Sophia") and has been related to the Logos of Christ, etc. etc. Also, one could argue Mary takes on an ... erm ... motherly divine figure role as the Mother of God, the Theotokos (pls don't inquisition me), and the coming of the Kingdom is conceptualized in Paul's letters as childbirth. I just mention this bc so much of the gender nuance gets left out in modern or "folk" expressions of Christianity, it makes me sad to think the richness of the 2,000+ years of thought my get forgotten altogether.

Allen Bray

Second comment but i feel this is important to say. Not doing emotional work for men isnt being callous, its simply not enabling their toxicity. I see alot of discussion about the term toxic masculinity and ive seen recent changes to it in order to attempt to be more appealing to men. As a man, i hate this, its harmful to men, more harmful than the original toxic masculinity. This is because it teaches such men that throwing a tantrum gets them their way. The male loneliness epidemic is a problem with masculinity and men in general that men need to fix, not women. As a lonely man who has had issues with mental health and suicide, i do believe its due to toxic masculinity. Most men i run into online nowadays act weirdly masculine. Men dont even use normal language often, they speak in memes and shit posts. Women do need to support men in their struggles though, not because they are women but because people should support other people. and sometimes the best support you can get is getting called out.

MJayBee

Sweet baby Jebus, Natalie… I needed a cigarette by the end of this video. On one hand, you summed up our current political hellscape in a way few have, which was nice. On the other hand, your analysis was so nakedly honest, & bleak that I’m tempted to throw myself into a volcano. This is sarcasm and my highest complement, brava mother

queertheoryxyz

Second half of the AMA stream on the way? my apartment is about to be so sparkling clean

Sean Hicks

I don't think the divide being a cultural issue necessarily precludes Marxist analysis, after all it was material conditions that drove the church to maintain that hierarchy for centuries, and material conditions that drove conservatives to spend decades stoking it through propaganda.

Elsie Hupp

Mommy and Daddy are fighting again!

Elsie Hupp

Whomst among us is okay?

Mina Y.

random but I really love the flow of ideas in this tangent in particular — each subsection just bleeds really well to build into the next

william kirkpatrick

I am so happy that there is a new Contrapoints. I had to renew my payment method just now and it made me realize how important being on here is so I am feeling so "humble and blessed" lol. I am having a "humble and blessed" moment. I have been watching everything starting with Envy after enduring substitutes and it is so much more deep than I ever thought before. I really want to follow in Natalie's footsteps so I have been trying to make some good piano recordings before trying to become a youtuber. And I think I finally succeeded. I have at least 5 decent recordings of decent piano music. SO I am watching this as soon as I am done with Brigitte Empire's new video about One Piece.

Jessicka Anne

I’d be so curious for your take on spiral dynamics. I feel it lends itself to explaining a lot of these ruptures as well.

Em

This video ties in interestingly with an interview of Ocean Vuong. In the latter half he discusses gender roles in different countries — his immigrant family grew up with war, so they abandoned anything that didn’t work for them. For him, he says that this allowed him to shed American ideals of masculinity (in my mind, the need to be Daddy). I kept thinking about this and his version of masculinity throughout

Alison Ludwig

Hey, you do you, but if the way isn't prepared for your father to accept these arguments, then Natalie's video may just fall on deaf ears or worse, harden him further. I'm in the same boat with an authoritarian-loving, Trump-supporting dad but have chipped away ever-so-slightly by gifting him a Brene Brown book and discussing my reading of John Bradshaw and inner-child work. Despite some thawing of relations, I wouldn't even think of sending him this for Father's Day, at best he'd be puzzled by it and at worst threatened.

Michelle Santamaria

I've recently been watching Doomscroll too and wondered what Natalie's take on Liu's ideas might be.

Alison Ludwig

God, why do women have to nurture? I f***ing hate that society expects me (and my cohort of women) to be nurturing. We are stupid-ass primates just as much as men and just as capable (and desiring of) shooting, smashing, burning, consuming, and destroying. And men are just as capable of growing, nurturing, fostering, creating, and designing. Non-conventional men have been accepted for centuries, but people still reject women who don't follow conventions.

Hartyewh

This is far too well structured and central to be just a tangent😅

Alison Ludwig

Never thought I'd die fighting side-by-side with an elf ;)

Bee Vee

I agree. I the cultural and material are far deeper intertwined

Olson Cannon

I agree. There is a very fluent sense of conversationalism that all of her videos tend to include. But this tangent definitely foes it with a sense of ease and flow that makes it easy to watch and learn from

fa

are you just gonna be 4:3 forever now

R. Nowadays

I really hope your next tangent is something lighter, great work tho!

Dihuh

This was an interesting tangent, but I feel like your analysis of leftists going against Kamala/DNC missed the glaring point of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Is the DNC as bad as the RNC? No, but the ongoing US support across both party lines for Israel's genocidal acts really made the line blur for many voters in a way we should be empathetic to. Not to mention that there are plenty of protests happening right now to combat the ongoing terror from the current administration, so the idea that leftists only protest the DNC and not the RNC feels more like a personal observation than one reflective of what's happening now. I appreciate your videos and I have been a long time fan, but I think expressing a political point of view now without talking about the plight of Palestinians falls pretty flat for me.

Xev Masias

The video appears unavailable and restricted for me...

Andrew May

The Jesus Umbrella bit is a fucking triumph!

PicarosPage

Today is a good day! Thanks for the new Video Nathalie

Hareton Oliver

For me personally, my leftist beef with liberals isn't about them being soft so much as it is them being often incompetent. You've used the MLK quote before- "Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic." To use a worse quote from a worse person from "the other side" lol, I remember hearing Jordan Peterson once say something like "A good Christian should be kind & useful. 'The Left' are kind but useless, the right are useful but not always kind." Incidentally this does kinda echo my childhood dynamic, where my mom was kind but pretty useless in protecting me from my stepdad, who was abusive but effective. Obviously using the archetypal/binary framing is limited. My biological dad wasn't especially kind or effective. And I've had many amazing examples of women & queer people (& some men) throughout my life who are competent in enacting their caring values- loving and powerful. I definitely agree that some leftists are led by sadism & revenge too much, but I do think *some* resentment of liberals is valid when it feels like they're cosplaying values they never seem to actualise. There's a lot of locally engaged socialists & anarchists who work hard & lovingly to improve things on a small-scale/for their local communities. From my experience these people have no interest in entering the larger political system because they know that entails being slowed down by liberals, centrists & conservatives to such an extent that nothing ever really moves- their love becomes anemic. Anyway sorry for rambling lol, thanks for an awesome vid & giving me lots to think about as always :)

Elliot Theodor

Hi! As an Israeli leftists firmly against the Gaza war crimes, and as someone who is currently ADHD hyper focusing on the mechanisms for extreme right rising, I'd like to share something I think could explain the phenomenon you're describing: Maria Snegovaya on her book When Left Moves Right proposes the thesis that since The 2008 economics crisis, traditional left wing parties in many countries basically aligned with center right economic policy and traditional left voters were left with no real alternative for the right (and that this also shifted the entire overture window to the right). Which I believe is what happened with the Harris-Gaza effect you're describing. the US support of Israel has always been about economics (mainly oil politics) and a sort of cold-war ish playout of the big powers' differences in the middle east, right? I mean I think it is, as someone who's grown up in that mess. So I propose that Harris not condemning Netanyahu's government is really about alignment to a right wing economic view that's is based on being anti-russian, anti-chinese and a "we need a military base in the middle east to deal with the Arabs on oil".

Andrew May

Part IV is like the 2025 follow-up to the summer 2019 smash hit, “Men”. I feel like it picks up right where that left off: men need a new positive ideal of manhood. And here’s how not to do that.

Andrew May

“Oh my God, is the loneliness stored in the balls?!” HOW DID YOU DO THAT?!

Andrew May

Where are the non-conventional men being accepted? Can I go to there???

Andrew May

As a male Humanities teacher—yes. Yes indeed.

Andrew May

I haven’t thought this one through enough, but there’s something curious at play here. Like Nurturing Mother said, Trump can’t claim any moral superiority or authority because he is a (admitted? all-but-admitted?) libertine, &c., but his supporters still see him as a divine daddy sent unto us for moral correction. It’s the most batshit mental gymnastics I’ve seen any group of people do (and I used to be in a cult!). Disavowal is nuts.

Andrew May

A tangent-tangent question related to your conservative mommy point: can anyone in power not fall into—or at least not be perceived as—conservative? Doesn’t leading and having power in a group mean you seek to sustain that arrangement, even in benevolence or altruism? Power is conservative otherwise it—stops being power? Maybe I just need to go back to sleep.

MT_Mogs

I have recently started working at an after school care. And the different parents/educator styles you encounter makes you crazy.

Michael D

Have you read The Righteous Mind by Haidt? It explains different psychhological aspects of the left/right quite well.

LJC

just wanted to pop in and say leave him?

Austin F

i think it's a stretch to say that the attacks on palestine were what 'made the line blur for many voters'. exit polls from the US election show (unfortunately) that palestine was not what most people were considering while voting. not only that, but the leftist resentment towards democrats has existed since long before october 7th. it feels myopic to attribute this longtime pattern to israel's war crimes.

Austin F

it might be controversial to say, but i think almost all of the worst problems for young boys can be tied to strict masculinity roles. the fact that they're not taken seriously when they're assaulted - check. violence from other boys - check. homophobia and transphobia - check. the manosphere refuses to accept that the problem for young boys isn't women. it's men. it's the patriarchy. it's the adult men enforcing the masculinity roles on the young boys. growing up as a boy that isn't traditionally masculine (including being gay, trans, etc) is actually pretty terrifying. you're always worried that the people around you are going to 'figure out' that you're an outsider, and you know that other boys are fully willing to be physically violent about it. not only that, but because of how many single-gender spaces there are for kids, you can never really escape it (if i could've spent more of my time around girls, i 100% would have).

firelizard

my dad isn’t a trump supporter. he’s actually the exact opposite, and he likes natalie’s videos. he IS very stubborn, authoritarian, and sort of narcissistic tho

Sam Tyndall

totem and taboo referenced in lieu of violence and the sacred

Անդրանիկ Սարեան

I have and at first I thought it was cool but the more I learn about Haidt the more I learn he's a moron. He went to a dinner at an indian rural household and noted that the men got to sit while the women stand and served. He went 'oh at first I got upset but then I realise this was just a moral intuition clash' It's like no dude - they're sexist. Fuck em. There are actual, good, rational reasons not to discriminate against women in this manner. Maybe what he describes as 'right wing moral intuitions' result from a refusal to think rationally about moral intuitions? Just my thought. He calls 'Fairness' a left-wing moral intuition, but much of fairness is just rationality as applied to emotions.

James

I feel like the leftist reflex to blame liberals is similar to the anger a child feels when their mom gives an abuser another chance. We recognise our powerlessness to stop the situation and take refuge in anger at the competing authority figure for not taking steps to prevent it. The anger makes us overlook how a fear of the unknown can make you passive and unable to take decisive action. It leads us to ascribe greater agency to people than is always warranted when sometimes, a situation has to play itself out before people are ready to take a drastic leap, and we have no real control over when that will happen. I think it makes people resentful that we’re going to have to fix this mess in a decade or two. It’s hard to accept when you’ve been dealt a bad hand and there’s not much you can do about it.

Michael D

Yeah some leftists have issues with him. Rightists too. Wasn't asking you. He does distinguish between fairness from the point of view of the left and the right. He provides an idea of why people vote right vs left etc based on emotions which is more complicated than the simpler one based on authoritarianism that is in this video.

Thomas Kerr

What a good listen! I really appreciate hearing your personal impression of these things, and how thoughtfully you approach everything you talk about. Hearing your choice of words and the way you approach topics like these that the Guardian or the Economist would flabber (imo) always makes me happy. Parasocial of me! Anyway, thanks Natalie.

Mark keogh

My goal as a father was to produce evil off-spring. They have been a terrible disappointment to me.

Pentalis

I was having a rotten day, seeing your upload gave me a glimmer of hope. Time to watch

Lorena

Thank you, it’s not as bad as I made it sound though, I’m watching this video with him tonight, hopefully it leads to a positive discussion

léonard

Great video!

Elias Tsirides

While enjoying this video I kept thinking of something that Naomi Klein said in a recent interview.. that all these "daddies" will soon come to a rude awaking when they realise that.. mommy is home!! I believe she was not referring either to the liberals or Natalie ( I might be wrong XD), but clearly to Earth.. I loved that and I loved this video!

Ángel González

Magdalena bay's album, imaginal disk, are all bangers by the way

Ale Kenward

The US has been aligned with Israel for decades, why is the genocide in Gaza now suddenly such an importan issue?

Ale Kenward

What I suspect lately, is that many self proclaimed marxists enjoy being under an authoritarian rule because what they like is the feeling of martyrdom, to cosplay as "the resistance", always as long as they are directly targeted. A social democratic government that fucks up ocassionally but nother major is the worst for them, because it doesn't lead to their apocalyptic view of the world. Natalie hit the nail on the head when she called some fraction of the left as a cult that is waiting for the rapture (it was in Envy , i think).

unemployed_waif

I listened to the nyt daily podcast for 6/3 /25 right after listening to this. they talked about how race is less and less of a factor that determines who one votes for. across the board, most diverse counties voted trump. this tangent feels like the answer to the question of why. trump has a universal appeal as father to everyone who values that.

SuperMaria

Agree with everyone saying this is your best tangent yet. Will rewatch many times. Love your work madly. I am however here to call you out on you enjoying social atomization, I was watching back in 2020-22 and you were so not enjoying that 😢 The difference is that for most people (aka the straights), not being socially atomized and being partnered go hand in hand or at least tend to be heavily correlated

Ema

Yep.

Darren DM

An excellent tangent. Many thanks :)

Edgar Allan‘s Hoe

Woah I didn’t expect to see George Lakoff in a video about daddy politics! I did my master thesis presentation on Conceptual Metaphors and it honestly changed my brain chemistry so much, he’s a G

stick by stick

Hello! Could someone share the youtube url for the tangent? It's the only way I can get around the YouTube blockers that stop me from scrolling.... the system I have going on is complex and boring and stops me from spending 7+ hours a day online, but I still love a tangent!

julia

One of your best tangents, if not the best one period. Loved you talking about different places in the world and different religions having different perspectives on how feminine or masculine omnipotent beings are, and how those differences shape the way they organize their social structures, even if they don’t adhere to those polytheistic beliefs anymore, I.E. in a lot of the world, the lesser prominence of ‘strict father’ morality means having practices like your elders living with you out of a more nurturing and family/collective oriented society than USA cowboy individualism. Amazing video x

julia

Another commenter pointed out the global south’s conception of a mother, especially a mother Mary in the case of the prominence of catholicism in South America, that prioritizes, in a way, the power of maternal figures in a way that’s less passive. P.D. please take care of yourself and try to prioritize your wellbeing, we appreciate you as more than a political thought robot and want you to be well x

Jenavive!

this one put into words what's been gnawing at the back of my mind for three years now. After the first watch I'm left feeling like cement that just dried, a kind of certainty that the future I'm moving toward will never emerge at scale. And wondering if working toward fuck-you money and dual citizenship is my only recourse to make sure I'm as safe as I can be? I don't know. It's not a happy feeling ahaha but it also isn't far off from relief. Thanks for this one -- excited to watch again and understand how this mingles with my belief in interdependence.

Dihuh

Exit polls from the swing states did show that many voters did not vote for Kamala because of the genocide, so I think it's equally nearsighted to say it had 0 effect on how the democratic base currently views the DNC (not to mention continued anger/criticism in the aftermath of Black Lives Matter). Also to the other commenter who says why is genocide now such an "important issue", I just wanna say "oof"

Jessika Janene

I love a tangent during authoritarian control. Thank you Natalie.

XavierTeatime

Man, what a great tangent. LOVE when Natalie gets to just lib the fuck out for a bit. I agree with you 100% that a lot of people across the *entire* political spectrum fall victim to the "fuck Democrats, at least Trump is a big strong daddy" mindset. And the whole segment about material conditions being largely irrelevant to voting habits compared to culture war concerns - Can we get a Contrapoints/Will Stancil collab to make the biggest weirdos of Twitter go into mass psychosis?

Casey Lowell

This was so useful and helpful to listen to. Thank you so much for it! I would love to hear a future possible chat about human sadism in general (or as talked about within this same lens of politics?), as it feels like a core piece of this whole tangent.

Erin Braun

I just knew those two clips of Carlson and Gibson from the 'Conspiracy' video would lead to a daddy tangent

Joshan Smith

I was watching this at 3am and about to pass out, but one she got to "leftist infighting" is was like a caffeine shot got injected in my veins and woke me up. So glad someone smarter has explained how I have been feeling for the past several months. Leftists on Tiktok will not like this tho but thank God this is a patreon exclusive.

Edy Richardson

I think the obvious answer is that before we didn’t have instagram and TikTok with which to watch children get their heads blown off at any given moment. Most people didn’t know about it till recently.

Daniel Broening

Great tangent. I would also mention how sexual reproduction was understood considering 99% of human history life was believed to come from male seed (active) with the woman being a passive field to be plowed or cup to be filled and not a coequal player in reproduction until the discovery of the zygote. That belief was encoded in the sciences, religions and philosophies of the times and is a legacy that we still live with today. I would argue that Freud encoded those antiqued beliefs into his science with his theories of penis envy and the tabula rasa of the unconscious.

Gabriella yungme69

Note on woman leaders: I was canvassing for Kamala Harris in a swing state. This one guy admitted he was an undecided voter because Kamala Harris was a woman. He then specified that specifically it was because she was a woman prosecutor from California. He was worried she would make bad foreign policy decisions because she would be trying to act tough as a woman who had a career in an aggressive role. Interestingly, he said that he voted for Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 primaries. I thought that was super contradictory. I told this to my bf who grew up in a conservative area, who explained that this was in fact coherent sexism. Elizabeth Warren has strict teacher energy, which is basically the only traditional model for a woman in a leadership position who is not your mom or nanny. So a sexist man could scale that to visualize someone like that as a plausible leader. Whereas being a woman prosecutor is simply a woman doing a man's job, much more confusing and therefore threatening.

goblin stack

Yet another banger, thank you mother

ContraPoints

Yeah I think she's seen as threatening in the same way as Hillary, a woman trying to usurp male forms of power

AutumnCorvidae

It's like Mommy's come home... and she's taken her cat ears off. Seriously, great tangent. It's forcing me to look rather uncomfortably at my own thought patterns and politics...

ContraPoints

most of my videos are about sadism in one way or another lol

ContraPoints

someone sent me an email recommending Lakoff's books and I'm completely hooked on them, he's great

ContraPoints

"drink water" is mommy authority. I don't mind it so much.

Kai Lewen

That point reminded me of FD Signifire's post election video and how people kept criticizing him for saying it was the racism. Friends. It definitely can be concluded now it wasn't the material conditions 🙄

SuperMaria

I'll allow it™ Thanks for everything! <3

Kai Lewen

This comment section is really cool. Not as funny as with other tangents, but definitely cool. Thanks everybody for sharing your thoughts!

Brandon Callaway

Man, Contrapoints day is a good day! Thanks for the drop!

Lasha Bezhashvili

Natalie, that a was a heavy note to end. I live in a country that is also being brutalized by a daddy. I participated in protests against daddy and daddy sent his police force to kidnap people when they would be separated from the main body and torture them in police cars. There is ample evidence. They also paid criminals to do the beating as well (there’s video evidence and I know one person who was a victim of this). Yet what shocked me the most was not the fact that the police did that but how a huge chunk of the society I am part of thought nothing of this. They seem to think that daddy torturing people is normal and just and I don’t know stupid you can be to not to see the future implications of it. I guess the love for daddy overpowers reason. I am also thinking lately that liberal order might be an anomaly that happens at particular intersections of various forces and that most people are not inclined to Enlightenment values. I am not planning to stop fighting, which so far resulted in not getting rid of daddy but me being dragged to court twice this year, as I do not see the alternative. So there’s that but there is one aspect that I also wanted to mention regarding men’s attitude towards the motherly nurture value. As a man, I feel like what brings tension with this value is the mother’s intolerance of risk and adventure. Nurture, domesticity, cuddles for me are often accompanied by suffocation. Mommy won’t let me go play outside after dark. I want a little bit of risk and recklessness but mommy says that I might put myself and others in danger. I must confess mommy is right and I guess in our liberal utopia we should find release in art and video games, but before that happens, I live secretly enjoying the occasional police chases that I find myself in and enjoying me tickling with other types of risk, such as telling pro-government men in the comment sections to meet me in the street to fight it out… Why? Well for many reasons, but one of them is that finally all the rage that I would direct at myself for not producing enough art or literature or videos has found itself an external enemy, and I am more happier with myself now than before daddy began his brutal campaign against us people who don’t want a brutal daddy in our lives.

Chris Snider

Another metaphor that is used in hard science spaces that often goes ignored as a metaphor is the concept of “attraction.” With magnets, we say that one pole will “attract” the opposite pole. This obviously doesn’t mean the pole is going to the gym to get buff and then put on some slutty singlet number to get that little twink pole to come over to his place to wreck him, it’s that the two poles are drawn towards each other by their magnetic force. Similarly, with subatomic particles, we will also say they are “bound” together. Obviously the protons are putting on their Hatsune Miku binders to stay together, they are united and stay in close proximity due to the strong nuclear force. I always think of these anytime someone from the hard sciences act like metaphors are something that only people with soft literature degrees deal with and they have no impact on their lives.

Kenn yu

Ooh the last part of your video really was speaking to something that I was kind of thinking but didn’t have the courage to discuss in a more public space. It’s definitely true to an extent that leftists perform aggression towards liberals more than fascists because they think they can get away with it. Especially people implicating more “violent” or revolutionary alternatives towards voting when shutting down libs. If they are actually revolutionary to even a fraction of the extent they claimed to be, their main presence would not be on twitter, YouTube or Reddit, they would be either only active in real life or on telegram. They say these things in the open precisely because they knew deep down that they actually pose 0 challenge to the institution. It’s also kind of true that psychologically the far left and the far right might come from the same place. They are usually young people who felt extremely marginalized/victimized and disenfranchised by the system (whether that’s true or not). It might be true that there’s some common grounds to the general conditions that create someone who wants to completely overthrow the current system in perhaps violent ways, despite its potential and immediate devastation in a shorter period of time.

Kenn yu

I have been really enjoying your more recent videos that explored a more psychological or spiritual aspect of politics. I don’t think Marxists are necessarily wrong in that class struggle can be a very dominant proponent of history moving forward, but your videos did get me thinking about the psychological and spiritual aspects of politics, which I don’t all agree with but it’s an impactful perspective I’ve never considered before.

flyx

I think one more reason why conservatives love Trump's chaotic demeanor is that they are more comfortable with the kind of criticism it evokes from the left: When liberals do their „murder by words“ and expose Trump for the clown he is, this can easily be countered by an appeal to ad hominem, i.e. saying that this is a personal attack against Trump and thus no valid argument (though they employ more colorful language like „witch hunt“). An actual daddy that rigorously imposes morality would set a higher standard in how both he and his followers should answer to criticism. Or, phrased differently: The more fact-based the left can argue its position, the less rigorous a right-wing candidate can be for them to maintain their feeling of moral superiority. With most science being on the side of the left, the right orbits towards the defense of insanity.

Lasha Bezhashvili

Oh and one more thing, I have a sense that many right wingers hate Ukraine for reasons that probably border the ones you discussed. They think daddy Putin ought to do whatever it wants with its former colony, but spoiled Ukraine is fighting against daddy’s right to punish it.

The Larkwood Group

We ended up a long way from Lakoff, but who doesn't love a long, crooked path?

Riverbank Frank

Could it be the shift in what liberalism represented up until the late 70s? I have to say, I really don’t think suspending criticism of centrist dems is warranted in light of neoliberalism degrading the conditions of working people over the past 40 years. I won’t downplay the degree to which the far left can often sabotage progress, but I think we’ve gotta understand their takes here and this is how I broadly understand it.

mer2

At the start of the video, I was kind of expecting something about Confucianism, as they explicitly compare the roles of the ruler and their subjects to the roles of parents and children. After having seen the video, it probably would have distracted too much from the main point of the video. I mean, Confucianism doesn't seem to be that relevant for understanding western Daddy politics, but I might be wrong. I studied linguistics (and I am still trying to finish my PhD), and I remember 20 odd years ago my semantics professor saying about one of Lakoff's books: "It is absolutely brilliant, and also completely wrong." (this was about the linguistic part of his theories obviously). I always remembered this as a great example of how you can disagree with something completely, but still appreciate the work.

Ema

Yeah but not just in the way you are implying. Imo, neoliberalism has also made the left dumber. Like people seem to read less, are more competitive, more all or nothing thinking, more extremism. And it seems worst in the US. Watching from out of the US, Im just thinking wtaf are you all doing?

Denise D

I will wait for however long it takes, to get this content. Thank you!

Cookie

God is a gamer, humans are his games 🫢🤪

Sean Callahan

MOTHER IS SPEAKING 🗣️ I AM SEATED. (jokes aside, happy to see new content! Going into this blind, have no idea what this is exactly about and I’m here for this. All that is in my head upon seeing the title is the sound bite of ‘it’s Daddy and he’s taking his belt off—‘)

Melissa Xu

Sorry if this is a dumb comment compared to everyone else's here, I'm not a socialist debate bro or a university degree intellectual by any means. I'm a long-time Contra fan and I'm just happy to be here, but the last part of that video really bothered me. I don't think I dislike liberals because I like daddy, I dislike them because when my little sister debated in her high school politics class against her conservative white zionist teacher after he told everyone that a ceasefire shouldn't happen because Palestinian civilians are collateral damage for a greater cause, her LIBERAL "diversity-and-inclusion"-loving high school admin tried to get her kicked out of all her extra-curriculars and barred her from student council in order to "set an example" with her to all the other students who got mad at the politics teacher. (I know this because she had one teacher on her side who was present in the meetings). They did this because I guess it was easier to threaten and silence literal children of colour than punish or deal with the blowback from the actions of their conservative politics teacher, so I guess yeah you could say I dislike their weakness in that sense BUT In regards to what contra claims leftists feel about liberals, couldn't you say liberals feel this way about leftists a lot more? It's liberals who assumed kids like my little sister are just overly sensitive snowflakes. It's liberals who protect strong conservative daddies over weak little SJW babies. It's liberals who are focusing way more on the antisemitism with leftists than the HUGE amounts of islamophobia with liberals and conservatives that is literally causing a genocide atm. I PROMISE I'm not one of those crazy people who were sending contra gore on twitter I've been a patron for a long time and I'm coming from a genuine place.

Kirsty McGuire

Trying to watch but my kitten is on the keyboard.

Andy Pfau

Among your best work. I saw the title and was not particularly enthused or intrigued; however, by the end I was deeply invested, informed, and entertained. Almost cathartic.

Wissa

Maybe a little off topic, but I’ve discovered lately that so much of my pain is rooted in the conflict between the explicit rules learned through peers and culture and parents and the “archaic” implicit rules that people pretend we aren’t still gripped by. Though, sometimes it’s hard to distinguish where certain rules originated, culture gives lip service to feminism while engraining the opposite in more subtle ways. Like fish in water. Those implicit rules are now becoming explicit again thanks to the redpill manosphere, but imo to say that only they believe in those ideas is not truly accurate, considering how internalized these things are. Anytime something implicit becomes explicit, it is, as you said, a liberation of sorts, and that’s probably why open and direct misogyny is becoming so outwardly popularized again. I’m still dealing with trying to sort through the frustration caused by internal misogyny and mixed messaging. It’s excruciating to realize I sided with my dad’s patriarchal attitude because if I ever let myself realize how wrong and horrible it was, my hate for him would kill me. Can’t break the family.

Friends&Angels

To this point, if we’re following this logic of daddy/mommy politics, the “parents” representing America are still both imperialists…? (Not trying to come off as a mic drop pwn-lord, I swear 😅) Actively violent and imperialist daddy, passively violent and imperialist mommy. So the blanket defense of liberalism against leftism as an act of resistance against Lakoffian politicized misogyny…feels too broad (and probably an extremely understandable reaction to being a high profile video essayist trying to use a platform to encourage voting for Harris to a sea of lefty viewers, many with misogyny issues). Natalie makes the point that many liberals *and* leftists lay disproportionate blame at the feet of liberal politicians even as conservatives are doing immeasurably more harm to them, and I agree that a lot of this tendency does come from Lakoffian political misogyny. But simultaneously…should we as this Nation of Babies be content with our current state of liberalism? With hegemonic mommy who tells immigrants “don’t come here” and offers less and less in the way of nurturant policy? Who cares for a few of her children, less for most, and is actively hostile to the children of the less powerful? Idk, I voted for Harris, I think leftists could stand to be more practical and engaged in the liberal processes that create social welfare. But Modern American Liberalism…..? She’s not mother. She’s not even mommy. We deserve a true Politics of Mother :’) (I’m a high school English teacher sitting in my car typing this after school like a freak, I’m so sorry. I love your work and your brain Natalie, thank you for all you do, sorry I went crazy!)

breausephina

These seem like pretty broad statements to make and assume the behaviors of a few individuals are reflective of the entire political philosophy, no? Punishing children for unpopular political stances is not inherent to liberalism as an ideology and you can see that behavior happening across the political spectrum over the past few years. So why is it the fault of liberalism? It's not politically liberal behavior. IMO, it is culture-war mentality to observe the behavior of people who call themselves a certain thing and deduce from there that their behavior IS the political ideology rather than observing, say, a self-described liberal punishing a child over a difference of opinion, referring back to the liberal philosophical tradition, and deducing that that individual's behavior is misaligned with their stated beliefs. I don't know. People say a lot of things about what they believe in and then absolutely don't act that way. That's why I've been telling people there's no such thing as a cis ally - it's a little hyperbolic but I genuinely have yet to meet a cis person who does the actual work of allyship to the trans community. 🤷 If I held every misaligned label against the person slapping it on themselves I'd never get along with anyone.

breausephina

Every time someone makes the point that Israel was founded on principles of brutal dispossession and colonialism I cannot stop myself from wondering how logically legitimate it is to call for the end of Israel without also and maybe first calling for the end of the United States. That's part of what strikes people as antisemitic - this rules for thee, not for me attitude that American leftists have toward a foreign power that is primarily Jewish. And then even if an American leftist were to say that yes, the United States should also not exist, we'd circle back to Natalie's point about calls for violent revolution in the US being mostly self-indulgent in that leftists say it in the open only because they know there's no chance of it happening. I stand with Palestine *and* I really look forward to the point that we start having a brass tacks conversation about what can actually be done to help actual human beings who are actually being mass murdered half the globe away.

Mavi Peru

I loved this video! thank you! I just went to visit my conservative family and this made me think of them. How would they rank in that scale? I would rank as 100% liberal. Somewhat unrelated, I was who has designed the current society, and the society where black slaves lost their arms at the banana plantain? And where the orgies and the punishments were so sadistic? And why was that so different from other society, for example, the Aztecs? Could you make a video of how the Marques de Sade came to be? Is it that his mother didn't love him or is it that she loved him too much?

pjkc

🚨 New sociopolitical Freudian nightmare unlocked 🚨

HK225

Holy SHIT, that ending.

Elwood Olson

Such an interesting take, and a dark one, too! But I have to wonder, what would a positive version of political charisma look like? If even left-wing populism is really just a by-product of "ambient sadism," and other types of liberal reform are doomed to be viewed as matronly and nagging, what hope do we have for a good, popularly elected leader? (And surely we shouldn't lose hope for charismatic female leadership, either?) Take MLK, for example. He definitely has daddy energy, and he's not afraid to flex muscle, so to speak. In Envy, Natalie has that quote of his about how "justice at its best is power implementing the demands of love." I suppose this is daddy threatening to punish hatred and bigotry itself? But somehow that metaphor doesn't seem quite right.

Liv

i saw a tiktok theorizing that those “debate” videos going viral (like jubilee) are just fetish content. a lot of the themes you discussed here feed into that, i’d say. even the titles like “conservative OWNS liberal crybaby” feel similar to porn. it doesn’t matter what the opponent says, because they are cast in the role of submission. if they push back, or make sound arguments, they are just being bratty. maybe this is dworkin-y, but “debating” bad faith actors just positions you as the object of submission and masochism, not as someone with agency. idk if i’m making sense so im going to stop here lol loved the video

Kaitlyn

Oh my goshh i have so many thoughts so far. -the view of the devil as COMPLETELY 100% evil and without nuance in relation to abortion as a moral argument makes SO MUCH SENSE because in the Catholic Pro Life circles that I snoop in, they view abortion as a 100% evil, and as long as they maintain that view of abortion=the devil, they will never develop any nuanced discussion of exceptions to what they view as a good vs evil thing. Once you introduce an OUNCE of nuance the whole thing falls apart. -another thing re: Catholicism is the metaphor "offering your suffering up to God." A lot of saints are revered FOR their suffering and pain, and it's viewed as a Holy and Righteous thing... to suffer. So in the Catholic Mommy™️ circles I also snoop in (i have a problem, but as an ex catholic i simply indulge), they view suffering in motherhood (aka when your husband isn't doing jack shit) as an offering to God, a Holy thing.

Beth Jerky

this is such a fantastic one. thank you so much!

TurgidTaters

Please make this essay public... It's an incredible description of what is driving conservative politics.

Mars Westgate

the united states of american as a whole has daddy issues

Beth Jerky

makes sense to me! see also Matt Bernstein's youtube video called "Jubilee Must Be Stopped"

terrorist hamster

the thing about "validation" is that it's not always the nurturing "your pain is valid" comfort thing. sometimes it's validation through projection: "yes, your pain is valid, and everyone should burn, and *I* will burn them for you." in either context, sincerity is entirely optional. thank you for the tangent, natalie! this was a great watch.

Friends&Angels

I was also uneasy with the ending, and I think your comment points to an interesting question of whether self-avowed leftists want our politics to be a Daddy Politic or a Mommy Politic (namely—do we want to own lib cucks and usher in the rev while being maximally aggro with ourselves and others, or do we want to take care of each other in the ol Marx “from each/to each” way). I think there’s a lot to be said about the fact that conservatives call social welfare programs “communist.” They hate the Dark Mother that is a politics of care.

william kirkpatrick

bravo, I especially liked the part with the avant garde piano where it is so well explained how some men have no understanding how much hard work it takes to do what women do, to make a space nice, and to dress well and to just make EVERYTHING nice. It is time for men to start trying to do all the things women do, and feeling whole within themself instead of needing another, a woman who has made herself beautiful, has purified the air, the space.

Kenn yu

I think the term liberal can be pretty broad. Contra herself is a liberal, but she’s very openly against the genocide and has advocated against it. In the context of this video I believe she’s more so describing the fundamental views about governing, which is by democratic elections (which may be a bit out of reach under capitalism.) Do you think the type of aggression against libs like contra who are pro Palestine can be somewhat accounted for by her reasoning in the end? For example such as the people who sent her gore as you mentioned.

pinemeat

I'm seeing a lot of praise for the end of this video, and I'd just like to push back on it a little bit and offer my own (socialist) perspective. First of all, I wanna say that I do agree with the criticism of leftists presented in the video. I agree that leftists often echo the mysoginist/bigoted attitudes and behavior of conservatives towards those they disagree with. I also agree with the assessment that accelarationism is stupid. The idea that Trump's election would somehow spark a revolution is purely wishful thinking imo. Where I disagree, is with the general framing of liberalism being weak "mommy politics" for virgins and communism and conservatism being based "daddy politics" for chads. I think pretty much every political ideology can be and has been portrayed as either archetype, liberalism included. I've seen plenty of #Resistance libs thirst over Biden and Obama as these masculine presidential daddies in the exact same way conservatives thirst over Trump. Subsequently, just like conservatives they'll turn around and portray anyone to their left as maybe well-meaning but weak and unrealistic. I can't tell you how many times I've expressed my political opinions as a young socialist woman to older liberals and immediately get told that I'm just naiive and inexperienced. Ultimately, I think the video was really good but just felt like liberals got let off the hook at the end there when they didn't deserve it.

SaintBaBo

Agreed, I think it’s especially off base considering how many prominent liberals we’ve seen exhibit militaristic bloodlust regarding Israel’s genocide.

Xan

Steiner math meets Contrapoints...thank you so very very much for that.

Melissa Xu

I don't know about the people who sent her gore, but what bothers me personally is the assumption that I don't like libs because I don't want mommy politics. I actually WOULD like libs if they were ACTUALLY nurturing mommies, but I don't think they are. From experience, it seem like it's all just talk and when it's actually time to BE mommy they just act like daddy anyway, if that makes sense. So I assume that's the main reason why leftists dislike them hence the scratch a liberal a fascist bleeds saying. But again, I'm not university educated and I'm talking from mostly personal experiences with liberals (for example we all know a super girlboss feminist BLM loving executive at a company who's actually a horrible person, often to minorities in particular), but from what I've heard I don't seem to be alone in these experiences.

Melissa Xu

Yeah but from my experience liberals seem to be misaligned with their stated beliefs veeeeeery often, to the point that I think it's quite disingenuous of you to imply that what my sister experienced what just the result of a few bad apple liberals rather than a symptom of a greater problem considering you look at the democratic party's stance on Gaza.

Perro Callejero

(I always love a new Contrapoints vid. But in my family it has been the Daddies who have been ineradicably liberal for generations and the Mommies who have been susceptible to fascism. And, if Daddy has had to spank the kids, there was a failure of leadership.)

Zeif

Damn, they need the deviants to be punished to keep everyone on the straight path. That idea sheds a lot of light on attitudes and policies towards single mothers, people struggling with addiction, LGBT, and the gender non conforming!

SaintBaBo

This is such nonsense. “American leftists single out Israel for its colonial/imperialist state actions which is antisemitic, but also if they level the same criticisms at America…uh that’s just disingenuous for some reason.”

Austin F

i really don't understand why people think that the entire country would be socialist if they just learned about class consciousness and weren't "conditioned" otherwise. i think that's incredibly naive. first of all, a ton of people are way too bigoted to align with leftists/liberals that explicitly support minorities (and no, bigotry is not caused exclusively by capitalism or neoliberalism). but also, plenty of people's personalities just aren't receptive to socialism, especially not in the west, and i don't think that's entirely due to propaganda. to me, saying that class consciousness would make everyone band together against capitalism is a fundamental misunderstanding of how human psychology works. emotions like fear are infinitely stronger motivators than logic-based marxism. even if every single person read das kapital in full, the majority of voters are never going to be fueled by reading theory. that's just not going to happen. every time a revolution has actually happened, it's been fueled by simpler urges, like literal starvation.

chris

In the 1920s, one fear among political leaders in switzerland was that, if women were allowed to vote, the whole political system would become more socialist.

GGN

once again you are correct about everything

no

horseshoe theory isnt correct abt left and right meeting at the extremes, it's just every type of politics has a fascist entry, that's true of anarchism (primitivists, french theory cultists, restorative justice for rapists insisters), of non anarchist left (tankies, broadly speaking the type of leftie sensibility of being ever ready to cringe until frothing), of liberals (bill maher, idw, arguably peterson and the like), of conservatives. (or e.g. think of a long 'progressive' eugenic tradition...). you cant deradicalize your viewers back into liberalism nor have you radicalized them into anarchists... and be careful about this endorsement of 'mommy politics', it can be very rife with patriarchal authoritarianism. anyway check out writings of james c scott (seeing like a state, two cheers for anarchism etc), he is a kind of thinker that seems to be a sort of liberal that agrees with anarchists, i guess? very beloved by anarchists, altho his view of state ifl is rosier than is justified. i feel like a lot of times when one talks of liberalism and leftism and such, they talk of a sensibility or temperament rather than anything

no

also i know you dont need randos to tell you how to live your life but tangents seem to have gotten out of control havent they. relaxing some standards for thoroughness isnt the same thing as purposefully producing shoddy and rushed work. we just want to hear you thoughts, to argue some and a juicy bibliography

Claraby

Great video. Appreciate it

Milena D.K.

I just wanna point out that the USSR also had a “Order of Maternal Glory” for women who had many children… but at least they gave them healthcare and finacial suport…

James

Agreed. “Things are shit” doesn’t seem like a validating message. But if people feel that way, acknowledging it is much better than being told by the other side “No actually, things must be fine because a spreadsheet said the economy grew by 0.2% last quarter”.

Jana Drápelová

I like the ending - as a leftist I think I do blame the libs too much. As if they “allowed” for this to happen with bad politics. But the push right is happening in most of the western world (only recently slightly counteracted with Trump’s incompetence) so it is unfair. Maybe we need to harness the mythical NB parental figure lol.

Ann C

I watched the latest Tangent in two viewings and finished it last night. After watching, I felt a bit depressed and hopeless about the future. Still, after two cups of strong coffee this morning, I'm ready to take it on again. Natalie covered a lot of material in this Tangent that was unfamiliar to me, so I'll benefit from a second viewing.

Kaitlyn

This also reminds me of the part in Men where you discuss a need for a masculine figure in the general left wing movement. If daddy is everything maybe this really is our only good ways out...

Barry

I dunno, I dunno... It's all nice Liberal Mommy until she gives you a vigorous spanking for not letting Daddy kill Palestinians. Look, maybe Mommy just needs to leave Daddy - and maybe we should move the fuck out and get a job. (By job I mean seize the means of capitalist production).

Cynthia Sonier

You nailed what's wrong with abusive daddies and daddy politics with the first part of the video, and with the last sentence, you nailed what's wrong with the mommy role and mommy politics: mommies can gaslight you into self-oblivion, precisely because they seem more gentle. That's what the democratic party does.

Andy White

I read Lakoff's Moral Politics after Trump's first victory. I was convinced that he, or someone advising him, had read it because he appeared to have learned how to mobilise Father Morality. The one policy he emphasised ad nauseum was Build The Wall. The idea of the wall is an easily understood synecdoche for the strict enforcement of rules and the exclusion of the threatening other that is at the heart of father morality. Because of this, I think conservatives naturally assumed Trump was their man who would support most right wing policies. Hilary Clinton, on the other hand, had no equivalent simple message that was emblematic of an alternative viewpoint. I won't say misogyny wasn't a factor in her loss, or in Kamala Harris's loss as well, but I think both of them were so committed to appearing centrist that they avoiding having a bold vision they would be expected to fulfil once in office The nurturant equivalent of Trump's wall was Bernie Sanders' promise of universal health care. I wonder if Bernie could have fused both parental moralities by becoming the nation's grandfather. I think a grandparent has authority, but it comes with affection rather than fear. What do you think?

Savannah Clements

You nailed the leftist political streamers on the head. It’s become hard to watch them esp during and post the election. Kamala couldn’t have been worse than this. It’s so hard to hear people I enjoyed listing to advocate for voting for someone other than her.

Savannah Clements

I liked the ending. As a socialist, I do agree and deeply resonated with this as someone who also sees this issue within my own community.

Taikolovesyou

Fantastic as always! I also kept thinking about Jackie Jackson and Virginia Lamb in The Hunger; "we always do as daddy says"

Kavi Montanaro

This is all really helpful. Your framing of folk christianity as polytheistic is spot on. I have always felt that the role of Satan in the popular protestant universe is too contradictory. When I read Dante’s Inferno, I was surprised that Satan is basically completely defeated, imprisoned in ice. He’s not a force in the world to Dante at all. All the demons in hell work for God. The Comedy can feel like a feminist work despite its patriarchal context, and Dante’s main goal might be to restore femininity to the church - he wants the pope to be politically submissive to a righteous emperor, and the role of the church to be maternal. He still wants his daddy, but he believes that the church is corrupted when it takes that role from a king.

Melissa Xu

You just put into words exactly how I feel

Teed Rockwell

Terrific work. Great research and perceptive analysis. It would be good to also look into the way these metaphors have been used in the left. Robin DiAngelo's work on purging racism uses the purity metaphor, as is the demand that people stop using words like "master bedroom", even though no one has ever been offended by them.. And the reaction to your hiring of Buck Angel was a rather hysterical use of the contagion metaphor, as if you had cooties because you hired him, and Abigail Thorne had cooties because you hired her.

a. j. archer

there are complex layers, including misogyny, for why someone might hate mommy more for staying with daddy, minimising and rationalising his abuse than they do daddy for actually beating them, but that doesn't mean mommy is a good parent... i guess i just wish in general we could all regard politicians as more like the mail carrier or the dishwasher repair person and keep all that mommy/daddy stuff out of civic life and in the bedroom where it belongs

ContraPoints

Yeah the endless repetition of “build the wall” was incredibly effective. No one really cared about the literal wall, but it’s a powerful symbol. I agree that in 2028 Dems should focus on healthcare and seek out similarly resonant slogans. Obama did incredibly well on “hope” and “change” (I think the effectiveness of that was situational—most people were pretty sick of Bush by 2008). What the Dems should definitely not do is try to be Daddy Lite. Always ends up having Dukakis tank energy.

RJ Blue

You truly couldn’t illustrate Natalie’s point better if you tried. If Mommy Liberals are in power, Daddy Republicans aren’t doing anything. If they’re not in power, they have no power to give anyone a vigorous spanking for anything. But it’s more fun to blame them, right? Safer, less likely to have REAL consequences like sending you to an El Salvadoran death camp. Hence like 85% of you disappearing as soon as Trump was inaugurated, except the Liberal Jews you’ve spent the past year and a half whining about. Also, what the fuck would “leaving” be in this circumstance? I’m talking plans, not buzz phrases. “Seize the means of production” okay but how? This is revolutionary ideation, and I’m shocked someone old enough to be named Garry hasn’t grown out of it yet.

Medieval Cat

Oooh so if liberals can’t be our daddy (see Tim Walz) maybe we need to find that one friend’s older brother..

DoesYoul

I kinda love the square camera format very artsy /srs

RJ Blue

It must be so frustrating to write these really good, well thought-out videos and have so many people completely ignore 98% of it to argue with the 2% that gently encouraged them to question themselves, too. Now, to reductively lock into a point of my own: I disagree with the idea that you’re a leftie Jordan Peterson. JP is such an effective funnel into the right wing pipeline because his incoherent, (initially) plausibly deniable conservatism leaves so many questions impossible to answer. The only way to deal with it, once you agree with him, is to radicalize further. That just isn’t true of you. Sure, you helped me crystallize my left-wing political beliefs into words, which made it easier for me to keep moving left — but life radicalizes people moreso than individual online figures do. And when the shitshow that was 2019-2021 radicalized me into a revolutionary-ideating, zero-sum, politically useless leftist, you were also what pulled me back to a more social democrat/democratic socialist type of deal again, because what you say DOES hold up to scrutiny. The problem is that a lot of people have just stopped listening to anyone who isn’t unconditionally agreeing with them, as we often do when emotions run high. You don’t have to hold yourself responsible for such obvious examples of confirmation bias. Frankly, credit to you for not falling prey to the audience capture that’s consumed so many online leftists lately. Anyway, I hope you don’t let the nitpicking and grandstanding stop you from being proud of this video. In terms of substance, this one could easily stand alongside the long form content on your channel and IMO is one of your best. ❤️

RJ Blue

I think the idea that mommy somehow has a responsibility to protect you from daddy is the one place where this metaphor? simile? falls apart. Mommy doesn’t vote in elections, we do, and we keep electing to stay with daddy.

ContraPoints

I like it too. It started because I’m a boomer who couldn’t get OBS to work but I’m kind of feeling it

Barry

Garry is a young and vibrant name. Other than that I'll take your criticism. But just be careful that you don't go reaching out for Mommy's soft hand, then when you finally grasp it and look up... it's not mommy... It's Keir Starmer. There is worse things than being called Garry.

Felix

I think this tangent is fascinating, but I do think the analysis is incomplete and bit biased (we all have our own emotional baggage). What’s being proposed as “mommy politics” as it pertains to the topic of archetypes and metaphors feels overly charitable. After all, abusive mothers are not outliers in many people’s childhoods but rather often embody the equally troubling counterpart in this dynamic. The challenge with this proposition is that it starts becoming incoherent once it is translated into politics because the agents participating in democracy are all adults. However, parenting inherently involves children and in this dynamic, there is no grey area. One party has all the power, and the other party can only hope their guardians are somewhat semi-functional adults. This complicates things significantly because to a child, it is irrelevant which parent is facing greater oppressive forces. And it should be, because they are completely powerless and none of them asked to be born. Most experienced therapists won’t respond to a patient’s pain with, “Yes, but think of how hard it was for x parent,” because they understand that the moment someone uses their own trauma to justify harm, they’ve crossed the line into perpetuating it —regardless of whether it’s the mother or the father. That said, I would argue that this dynamic is more commonly seen in maternal abuse, precisely because mothers do face greater systemic hardship. In my opinion, if “mommy politics” were subjected to the same level of scrutiny as “daddy politics”, we would uncover something far more disturbing than the familiar image of the “unappreciated, overburdened caregiver.” I would even argue that the remaining 50% of individuals who endured abuse at the hands of their mothers eventually grow up to feel a deep, delayed resentment toward their fathers anyway. The realization that the other incredibly powerful agent in this dynamic was completely absent and failed to further prevent or alleviate this suffering can be earth-shattering. While I don’t necessarily reject some connections drawn between leftism and of course right-wing authoritarian “daddy politics,” I can’t help but notice a tiny lack of equal introspection. Viewed through a similar lens, I see tons of problematic connections between “mommy politics” and liberalism. Liberalism for example will bend over backwards to prioritize civility over justice which kind of always ends up enabling violence and abuse to the least powerful. I have no doubt that Natalie could articulate this far more eloquently, and I’d be thrilled to see this topic revisited in a future main channel video. P.S. Do in fact become your own mother wife.

S. Aurora Simmons

Fantastic work as always, tho truly very disturbing. Have you read the dawn of everything? You could do a book report tangent.

Christopher Price

in some ways i agree with you that leftism needs a bit of a RETVRN to classical enlightenment liberalism, and there leftists smarter than any of us who are pushing for this idea, like Vivek Chibber. And that there are too many young leftists who want a return to daddy and reify daddy politics, because they want to revive Stalinismo, so then the natural enemy is the liberal. BUT Dialectical Materialism is a tool for the liberation of the working class, and guide us past the mommy/daddy/me politics of the current order, because it is about (and this is going to sound so woo-woo) the self-actualization of the working class -- that is the working class takes power by becoming its own parent, just as you recommend young men become their own domestic goddesses. Without this dynamic then democratic liberalism will absolutely destroy itself -- a Miss Havisham eternally contemplating bliss she was denied. And it's important that this is going to be a continuing dynamic, as seen in the USSR (this going to get me accused of being a Trot, I'm not a Trot) -- Stalin halted it, essentially saying that I am forever daddy, and we don't need further thesis/antithesis/synthesis, and with that any dynamic Soviet political thought stopped and the USSR was just a series of guys who had once been in the same room as Lenin until that became unsustainable and it collapsed. Today Russian politics still don't have any conventional dynamic, because the liberalism modeled in 1990s Russia was the complete absence of any welfare state, so Putinism is basically divorced daddy politics trying to learn to mommy, also reading a lot of books about Stalin.

Christopher Price

and to add a note about Abrahamic religions and maternal imagery, Jesus does use maternal imagery in talking about Himself, most striking in Matthew 23:37: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing."

RJ Blue

Yeah, y’know what, that was actually pretty mean of me — I’m sorry. My real name was exclusively an old lady name until suddenly becoming an old lady and toddler name like 4 years ago, so I’m stone-throwing from my glass house over here. You’re definitely right that we need to be careful about picking a centrist, Kier Starmer being a great example of why. It’s a conversation that’s better suited to the primaries, and now that I think about it, I can’t help wondering if refusing to HAVE a primary (thereby forcing that discourse into the general election cycle) was part of the problem in 2024.

pinemeat

yeah, maybe I didn't make it clear enough in my original comment but I largely agree with her criticism of the left. I just wanted to add to the conversation by pointing out that this stuff applies to liberals too.

Vuk Brajuskovic

Great video with thoughtful analysis, as always. :) I do think it would be interesting to take a look at what roles anxiety and fear of uncertainty play in people's embrace of authoritarianism and daddy politics. I guess Kierkegaard did call anxiety the dizziness of freedom, and if my experiences with mental health therapy have taught me anything, it's that people really struggle to cope with anxiety and uncertainty. So, I think it's not unreasonable to say that for a lot of people, it's a lot more bearable to have daddy tell you what you need to do to be a good boy or girl than it is to face the intrinsic uncertainty of living a free life and forging your own meaning.

Allison

Your toughts about being, in a way, happier with yourself reminded me about how some people talked about being happier or less depressed in London during the Blitz in WWII. One theory why is that they had a sense of strong purpose and community that isn't there in ordinary circumstances. Which kind of relates back to what Natalie said about some of us mere mortals (self included) want to feel part of a bigger project. Art, vids, etc tend to be bit more solitary creations, and so maybe don't fulfill the same needs. I'm curious if that aligns with your experience at all?

Allison

Enjoyed the thought-provoking video! Your mention of Aristotle saying that democracy contains the seeds of its own destruction really hit me. Since this election, I have found myself questioning my democratic ideals on a deeper level. I genuinely do not want the backwards Christian conservatives dictating how I or people I care about live our lives at all. I'm wrestling with a question of whether the majority of people are smart enough to maintain a liberal democracy, much less improve it. And if they aren't, what does that mean?

Rose Dombegh

Have you read Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind"? I wonder how "Daddy morality" would fit into his framework of how groups understand morality He also has some interesting theories on the tension between "I" and "we" and how people need to lose themselves in a group, the atomization of society, etc.

MJ

I feel conflicted about the idea that revolutions have only occurred and/or succeeded under “weak” leaders. Did the revolutions occur because the leader was weak, or did people come to see the leader as being weak after the revolution occurred? History is by definition written by looking backwards, so something like that feels so hard to accurately determine. I think almost anything can be thought of like “Ah, of course this happened, just look at everything that led up to it”, and that’s almost impossible to really apply when you’re in the current moment, aside from extremely obvious comparisons. I’m not saying Natalie is wrong either about it, but it’s just such a difficult thing to parse about something as inherently chaotic as revolutions.

a. j. archer

i do strongly feel that the democrats have a responsibility to try to stop the republicans by winning elections though! like, what else do i give them money for? so when i feel they're not being aggressive enough with their strategy, i have been known to get angrier about that than i am at republicans themselves, for all the reasons so thoughtfully discussed in the video. of course that's not an especially useful emotion, and it certainly shouldn't motivate me to decide there's no point in voting for dems, or to discourage other people from voting for them, but i also think it's a response to legitimate failures of leadership

Sally Karoline Olika Morks

Thank you for the tangent! You argue that there was no socialist revolution in nazi germany, as an argument that a liberal government would be a better condition for a socialist revolution, but I don't think that argument holds. The november-revolution in germany was betrayed by the social democrats (/liberals). So in this case it might have been the opposite. That the nazi's could only gain power because of the social democrats. That being said, I think the whole argument is flipped around. I would imagine that a liberal government would be a sign, that a socialist movement is thriving. So the socialist movement makes liberal government possible in the first place, not the other way around. :)

allocat5867

Tangent idea: right wing/neoliberal debate lords. Like Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Tim Pool, Destiny.

phastinemoon

There’s so much to process, that I can’t articulate on mobile (these damn phones), so I’ll just say after this, I NEVER want to hear “Daddy” or “Mommy” AGAIN.

Ryn

I forgor ,,

Daniel Ringer

As you're saying, the Republicans always kinda ruled as the strict father figures. But you know, when one dad would fail or get voted out, the next dad would take their place. Where I think a Trump was able to subvert this is, by sucking up all the oxygen in the room for many years, he became the only "daddy." So it doesn't matter if he's stupid and a hypocrite and tried to destroy democracy, he's still dad. Nothing can turn them away from him and they honestly couldn't imagine voting for anyone else.

Grady Wiehe

Natalie, you are a scholar (a *hard* scholar), a political commentator, a visual artist…but above all - in my heart - you are the greatest comedian working today. I could’ve just watched a straight hour of your dramatic reading of Nick Fuentes. I cackled so hard. Your timing and delivery are impeccable. Your wit is unmatched. Bravo 🙌

Fuffy4Ever

Love Ocean Vuong 💗💗💗

Dave L

Okay, I'll be the online pedant again. The phrase "dirtbag left" was coined by Amber Frost as a reaction against Michelle Obama's "they go low, we go high." Amber and the Chapos' reaction to the 2016 election was, "how did that work out for you?" So instead of going high, the dirtbag maxim was "never cede the low ground," on the idea that vulgarity is naturally the domain of the left, and that the left should never allow the right to appropriate their vulgar discourse. So if you have to characterize the dirtbag left, that's gist of what they're trying to do. Great tangent, though.

Fuffy4Ever

I heard her say in an interview, and I think she says this a lot, to just be an ordinary leftist — like support the workers on strike and stop trying to have the most sophisticated, pure leftist take on things. And I love that. But… I unfollowed her on twitter a few years back bc the anti id politics got lowkey transphobic and annoying. Would also love Natalie’s take on her!

Niamh

Ok normally I don't mind gatekeeping these, but there's so many people I want to send this to. I hope you consider doing a public version ❤️

Jacob Barr

Thank you Mommy for this excellent explanation of the predicament we’re in. Personally I grew up Without a Daddy and honestly I feel that was a blessing.

B Cavello

Is it okay to share the link to these outside of Patreon? I have some collaborators I’d really like to share with!

Cookie

Is there a way to get the YouTube link? I have trouble watching here :(

thea darling

a great video that had me pausing several times to admire the analysis. i think everything around punishment and morality, especially about the self-policing and denial of desire as a core conservative virtue, to be right on the money. as always, natalie does extremely rigorous work and her videos are "drop everything and watch" for me, even though i must usually brace for the recurring "let's kick the left" segment. i unsurprisingly found the last third quite difficult to watch. while i definitely agree that there're bad ideas and even some bad actors that're popular in leftist circles (chapo, red scare, certain of zizek's takes), i think this video betrays a pretty flagrant lack of introspection about liberalism's history of scapegoating. as a transwoman, watching liberal politicians immediately throw our community to the wolves, in an attempt to scapegoat their own failure, was hardly a surprising turn of events in 2024. i find the general kowtowing and compliance that many sitting liberal politicians have displayed toward trump to be just as indicative of their own desire for a powerful father figure as what a few podcasters on the left might say. i think zizek and schumer are both wrong to make nice with trump. to go a step further, there's plenty of evidence for liberals viewing leftists as the greater enemy – blaming sanders-trump voters for killing hillary's chances or uncommitted for killing kamala's, rather than addressing the root causes of either problem. most leftists i know want to work with liberals, vote with liberals, but often when dems get power, we're ignored and when they lose power, we're scapegoated. despite that disagreement, an excellent topic and one i'll be thinking about for a long time.

Hark a Harold

I do wonder how far a unifying theory of human psychology can take us from the facts. Louis XVI was a weak king, but it wasn't his weakness that precipitated the revolution. It was famine. For the Romanov's the example is even less clear to me. They put down a revolution in 1905, and they slaughtered demonstrators on Bloody Sunday. The difference in 1917 was the total collapse of human hope, for a better future, for a working social fabric. There is a criticism of Marxism, that it imagines a revolution without revolutionary need. But human history does not argue that repression guarantees revolution. Marxism isn't a criticism of feudalism (as a historical phenomenon, though it does mock it where it is an atavism) where repression is the norm. Revolutions happen when people are driven to extremity, and are more susceptible to ideology. I'm not putting this well, but I basically think this misses the substance of why political change happens. Dissatisfaction with Daddy doesn't really explain 1789 or 1917.

Rose Dombegh

How do you think your work would change if you reconceptualized argument as something like dancing?

Rose Dombegh

(Has this channel been a dance with the alt-right?)

yorrith de bakker

Thank you Natalie! For opening conversation about developmental psychology as a base for political or social reform and debate. As you geniusly deconstruct our small minds with - the framing of “daddy politics” as a fascist backlash of our patriarchal wounds. And describe “mommy politics” as nurturing weak overbearing mothering leftists climbing out of the same wound. I can’t but reflect on a polarized, split view of authority and care — a dynamic Melanie Klein’s object relations theory helps illuminate. In early development, infants often split caregivers into “good” and “bad” objects, unable to hold the ambivalence that someone can be both loving and frustrating. It takes a while for “bad mommy” and “good mommy” to become one and the same parent. This same splitting can manifest in political discourse: strength becomes associated with harsh paternalism, while care is dismissed as weakness. Klein’s theory invites us to see this rejection of ambivalence — the inability to hold both strength and care in the same figure — as a defense against anxiety. A more integrated political perspective would recognize the need for both structure and compassion, without reducing either to caricature. But when a world goes into crisis I feel we revert back to splitting the parents. And are afraid of allowing ambivalence in leaders when the world is anxiety inducing and unstable. So maybe it’s good to make the root of the problem, our unwillingness to see depth of experience and complexity in others, during high levels of stress. As a cause of this sadomasochisme that fuels extremist rage. And so easily splits the American parent in two. I’m not sure if this is something useful 🤓

Pamela Allen

I think there was a lot of great, interesting stuff here on the psychoanalysis front, but I do have to say that towards the end you really lost me. I think there is another dimension here—the legitimacy of parental authority at all and how that fits into this analogy. Why must the effort to improve society consist of appeals to authority who have thoroughly demonstrated time and time again that they don’t care if marginalized people live or die? The duopoly are abusive parents. Consider going no-contact.

Isto

Did anyone get a ‘Daddy’ count? ‘Mommy’ count? Is there a script we could run a word search on?

Paul Des Lauries

You know the argument is getting serious when Contra breaks out the Big Gun* *Close personal friend Hillary Clinton

Kevin Hengehold

How does strict father morality interact with military discipline? I think about the "umbrellas of authority" a lot (https://jesuswithoutbaggage.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/4-umbrella-of-protection.png), because it makes the exact opposite point it intends to - as long as the top umbrella (christ) is there, the others are irrelevant. But, seen as junior officers reporting to senior officers (I don't know military stuff), it all snaps into place real quick. So, are militaries generalizations of the family, or are families small-scale replicas of the military? Or some third, dialectical thing?

La La

47:55 an entrée into the tangent we've all been desiring, PSYCHOANALYSIS. Bring it to us, Natalie, WE ARE PRIMED

Julianna

This feels a bit like talking into the void here lol but I'm having a rough time mentally and I'm hoping it'll be cathartic. First of all the frustration with people not voting and "not being a part of the two party system" as if one is actually as bad as the other, which ties in to your point about people not starting a revolution under a dictator. I'm not saying the situation would have been different in Palestine with Harris in power, but I do believe the discourse would have been different, there would have been a chance of her government listening to the protests, and people wouldn't be arrested/deported for taking part in those protests. It's easier to stand up for other people's rights and humanity when your own aren't being taken away. Secondly, for all the leftist talk of class consciousness, I can't help but wonder how many of these people are actually working class or have any proximity at all to it. Some of my family members' entire lives revolve around work, house work, and taking care of other family members - they certainly don't have the time to be having long arguments online and I don't know that they'd see any benefit to it. When they do engage with the news/current events they unfortunately fall into the trap of right wing populism. The vlogbrothers have a good video about populism and media revolutions that I think also covers some good points about why the world is the way it is at the moment. Also, has anyone actually sat down and thought about what a revolution entails? Like a real one? There's a lot of killing and dying that I don't think most people are prepared for (also my understanding of America is that the leftists are not the ones with guns lol). My family is Eastern European and leftists should try and recommend communism to someone that has lived under it and see the reaction you get, lol. When I was younger I would always say "oh, but that wasn't REAL communism. REAL communism would be ran by the people" and people would say I was unrealistic/idealistic and honestly, the older I get the more inclined I am to agree. Understanding the difference between the way you want the world to be and how it actually is is something I'm still coming to terms with, but I think it's a valuable lesson that a lot of people need to learn. This isn't to say we shouldn't ever try and make things better, but I think it's worth being a bit more practical with it. Finally I feel there's a parallel between fascists and some cult followers. In any doomsday cult where a prediction for the end of the earth is given, you'd expect the followers to leave when the prediction is wrong. But most don't. If anything, they double down. Cognitive dissonance is strong. I think that's most of the things I've had stewing inside me regarding this, thanks for coming to my ted talk.

For Autumn

so, some leftists want to break society to bring on a communist utopia. some tech bros want to accelerate an AI-apocalypse so they can survive in their doomsday bunkers and emerge to create a brave new world. some Christians support Israel because they want their End Times prophecies fulfilled and bring on the Second Coming. what's the underlying philosophy behind this mad rush to the end of the world across politics, culture and religion?

Sam

I really agree with what you said about communism and people who live under it or have ties to it. My grandma is polish, I have Lithuanian friends, and a friend who is cantonese. All of these people that actually have links to communist leaderships do not like it and almost find it offensive when people seem to love it and brandish the hammer and sickle. My lithuanian friends found it outright offensive when it was handed to them printed on a pamphlet in a liberal city we lived in. Too many middle class white people love communism but only 'in theory'. Anyone who has links to a communist regime will certainly not wish to push towards a 'communist utopia'

Soffy

I do think it’s important to distinguish between fascism – as a historically specific phenomenon – and whatever it is we’re seeing today (maybe right-wing populism). But I recently heard someone make a pretty convincing point about a trait the two have in common: what they called "Schmierentheater". I think the term, maybe unconsciously, echoes that Adorno-point you're taking on, too. It roughly translates to 'third-rate melodrama,' 'charade,' or 'farce,' and it describes that weird moment when something is clearly staged, no one really believes it, and yet everyone goes along with it anyway. I find that idea super relevant to the current European context, which I’m a bit closer to. Just look at Alice Weidel, the head of Germany’s far-right party – she’s been remarkably successful (they came second in the recent elections), and I think it’s precisely because she’s so consistently and blatantly dishonest, to the point of absurdity. She literally publicly claimed Hitler was a marxist a couple of months ago.

Soffy

I'm very happy about all the Freud and Critical Theory content in your recent videos btw

RarelyOnline

Natalie, this is great! I hope you're feeling a little better and enjoying the Trump/Musk feud. Tbh, my morale and productivity have also been affected by the fascist autocracy going on here in the States. So, I get it. May I suggest a future tangent topic?: (fear of) cuckoldry in politics

L

something i very much appreciate about your work is that it always leaves me new info that helps strengthen AND challenge beliefs/stances i hold. you help remind me that fighting internet brain rot and propaganda even if it seems “good” is an active practice. thank you natalie <3

Gumball

Basically a crazy person who had some interesting ideas

Gumball

Thats u contra

jesse sa

hope you're feeling vindicated by the girls fighting, it's daddy on daddy violence

Lasha Bezhashvili

Being part of a crowd fighting for something noble, in my experience, is indeed exhilarating, but, at least in my case, I live in a society which is not atomized and which still maintains strong relative bonds, so being part of something bigger is kinda baked in your life here. For me what changed though is the fact that now I have a good reason to tell myself why I am not accomplishing the projects that I want to accomplish 😂

Kirsty McGuire

I watched this video at the same time as trying to memorize my Tarot deck. The emperor and empress with now and forever be Daddy and Mommy. Their meaning are slightly different but it's a really useful cognitive shortcut tbh so thanks 😁

Queen of Narnia

Jacinda Ardern was affectionately known as "Aunty Cindy". She frequently talks about the strength of empathy in a leader. She became a literal mummy while Prime Minister. She was re-elected with the largest vote margin since NZ started its MMP system, so much so Labour was able to govern alone. She had to resign because she became overwhelmed from all the death threats made by cookers, which tripled during the pandemic.

breausephina

Right, sure, but that's not the fault of liberalism as a political philosophy, it's the fault of Democrats not really being particularly politically liberal. I'm not saying it's a few bad apples, I'm saying that yeah, there's misalignment all over American politics due in large part to a culture war that's been going on for 60+ years and has leveraged mass media to distort actual political thought into matters of political identity rather than matters of ethics, morality, and justice. The people we call "liberals" in the US are usually not actually all that liberal philosophically speaking. And I blame that less on the ideological structures of liberalism than I do on capitalism and American exceptionalism.

breausephina

My gay dads are fighting, mom

breausephina

Great observation - I've also been thinking a lot about the concept of "apocalyptic pop" a la Billie Eilish's "Birds of a Feather" and a lot of the new Miley Cyrus album. It's strange to be in a period where even pop music has a vibe of "I know we're all going to die but I want to fall in love anyway." The historical apocalyptic album that comes to mind is The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, which was also created in a time of 1) technological acceleration the likes of which humanity had never seen (ie going to space) and 2) deep economic unrest (especially but not exclusively in the UK). It kind of makes me feel hopeful that we'll weather all of this. Maybe the "we're all going to die" part is worthwhile to focus on in the short term but the "I want to fall in love anyway" is the core thing to hold on to.

Ivy T

Very off the cuff, a guess might be climate anxiety?

Soffy

Regarding this whole topic I would recommend you reading Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, it’s a brilliant read on fascist consciousness especially considering military contexts

Mitch Kelley

1000th like is crazy I should be the 100,000th

Barry

It's all good <3

a. j. archer

i honestly think that in every instance that kind of thinking is pure escapist fantasy

Alyssa Favreau

"Clean your room" Yeah, it's wild how much of my decision to stop dating men was the realization of how many were looking for a tripled wife/mother/therapist and my unwillingness to take on extra roles.

Larissa Castagno

I am the kid of a latin american immigrant who campaigned for Biden and felt really betrayed by the democratic party during the last admin. I also followed Palestinian journalists and had my eyes very much opened up by American imperialism. In my view the Biden admin was also paternalistic and violently brutal with Palestine. I don't think it's as simple as mommy = dems and daddy = repubs but this gave lots of food for thought. Thank you.

For Autumn

ooh, smart! I think you may be onto something

For Autumn

how do we escape their escapism :'))

Zyzi

... were those disco clips from the song "daddy cool" by boney m?! awe, natalie. you know how to get to my heart (tangents and flashy disco lol). also, thank you for doing all the research and reading for the rest of us. if i had it in me to say what you do and not just thinking it and being in despair constantly-- well, it'd be this channel! thank you for making so many people feel seen, sane, and understood.

Janine

Am a leftist that completely disagrees with you but still found this video interesting

Danielle Carlson

Listened to this while soothing my biological 2 month old son

run_away

I don't know how natalie wades through hate speech and doesn't end up emotionally scarred. Even listening to trump read that poem made me pause the video and pace around my apartment before continuing. I can't image sorting through hours of that stuff to find clips, and then having to listen to them again and again in an edit. I mean I'm grateful but ffffffffffffuck.

ijbol

At the risk of doing a Centrism (gesticulating at the act of conversation happening and admiring it rather than engaging with the conversation, a-la Jackie Jackson), I like this discussion, and wish more of it would happen. Ultimately, I understand what @breausephina is saying: liberalism as a philosphical and political movement is a long standing complex tradition and, very importantly, an INFLUENCIAL movement so even if it is most popularly championed by the Democrats (who we can all agree suck and don't practice what they preach), we do ourselves a diservice by tossing away such ubiquitous notions as democracy and pursuit of equality as lib fantasies that have no impact or political value. But also, like many leftists in this comment section like @Melissa Xu, I am very interested in the actual, pragmatic manifestation of this liberalism in the world as it stands. I'm partial to the framework of critique that characterizes liberalism as it exists today as band-aid, counter-revolutionary politics. When you take wishy-washy ideas from liberalism and herald them as the supposed philisophical underpinnings of your capitalistic, imperialist system, how can it read as anything but farcical and insincere? Mommy may pretend to care about daddy's abuse, but she's ultimately in cahoots with him. I think the Palestinian genocide radicalized many people who had this suspicion and witnessing the sheer inhumanity from the Dems we're meant to side with created in leftists this reflexive revulsion towards any and all things lib. But also, when I sit down and look at the perpetual back and forth between libs and leftist, I can't help but see needless disagreement. I think Contra has a good set of observations about the futility of left-lib infighting (eg: in-group Cringe, and now in this Tangent: blaming Mommy for Daddy's Politics) but IMO, the best one is Envy's Nietzschian critique of leftists' worship of impotence and a lack of agency. I think a healthy dose fear of power is important, but critique of power is insufficient, and a will to power is necessary to create change. Frankly, my biggest enemy at the moment is a bit unusual: it's the damn phones. I've been red-pilled by CJ The X's (esp on their patreon) recent embrace of Pragmatism as a philosophical, and their focus on the ills of social media, and I'm unironically a big proponent of "phone bad, actually" when characterizing leftwing discourse in our political moment. By design, Twitter will always be a place where in 2025 libs are able to say fuck you to leftists who criticised Biden and blamed them for losing the election to Trump (they don't actually believe that, they're just frustrated at the state of things and taking it out on leftist who they belittle & some have bought into the idea that fierce allegiance to the Dems is the only way out), and leftists can always laugh at the pathetic libs and their silly little faith in democracy and electoralism which aCtTuALy conceals their underlying facism and bloodthirst (which none of them actually believe. I don't think any rational leftist thinks tearing down idealistic or even Dem-bound liberals is the height of praxis, however cathartic it may feel). Obviously, this is a caracature of the most annoying people on either ends of the left/lib divide, but I think the essence of these ideas still drives a lot of the pointless bickering we do. And the whole time, nothing gets done. All we've done is waste time posturing, and arguing, and feeling morally superior, while the enemy wins.

Julie

Another amazing video. Please don’t undersell yourself. ❤️

Official Golden Corral

The way I see it, the special animosity that leftists direct toward liberals is based out of a sense of betrayal. Most leftists recognize that, socially, liberals are more aligned with them than are conservatives. Leftists are unlikely to hold political office, which means that leftist social goals become realized in the U.S. only through liberal representatives, if at all. The anemia of liberal platforms becomes a sort of liberal failure of their leftist counterparts, then. There is a deep frustration fomented by being coerced into voting for someone who doesn’t even share your political beliefs only to see them fail in advancing the sparse objectives on which you agree. To put this in mommy and daddy terms (I hope): Baby knows Daddy is bad, and she expects Daddy to take his belt off, but Mommy is supposed to soothe Baby, and she seems categorically incapable of stopping Daddy from doing what he does. This failure—and this proximity—somehow makes Baby resent Mommy far more than she ever could Daddy.

For Autumn

thank you 💖 gotta look into it!

Matej Pop-Duchev

Speaking of institutionalizing the castrating maternal superego

Austin F

i think a lot of (not all) internet far leftists are so fixated on idealism and never really consider how life works, which is why they feel like revolutionary LARP to me. things like "would this communist utopia be corrupt" or "how many deaths and atrocities would happen in a real revolution" don't even cross their mind. you see this in their ideas about gun control - they want to "arm the working class" for a revolution as if the military doesn't have tanks and homing drones lmao it's just a childish fantasy

Tineke van Ravenswaaij

Thank you so much Natalie. I have been feeling lost for a while, because I am so tired of all the leftist rambling going on online. Leftist calling other leftist people to put something on their insta. Being so busy with being on the right side of history. Go be busy be on the right side of showing up for a friend or neigbor. Go be busy being on the right side for fucking loving and taking care of yourself. I think a lot these days is just showing you listen to you daddy or you mommy by showing what kind of people you follow or unfollow. Or what kind of books or documentaires you watch. Or what you eat or do not eat. So people are happy if you show that you post about palestine. They do not care if you know the history. Most people, right and left, do not want to talk about the fact that things can co exist and that we should be able to talk about muslim extremism and islamophobia. Moet people care more about not being cancelled. And sometimes I am also most people. If you want change, it is gonna cost you something. Something more than a post on the socials.

Dotbeau

Ooh good points, this also tracks with a conservative rejection of labor demands and reform. David Graeber talks about this in bullshit jobs I think, with the Protestant work ethic etc, labor/work is supposed to be painful and miserable (and, back to fun Metaphors That Rule the World, labor itself is a metaphor for giving birth, which god made painful as punishment against Eve for her sins), so of course they would not be sympathetic to demands for better working conditions. Work is supposed to suck, and if it kills you it was gods will.

Dotbeau

The section about Hillary and the points in this thread also have me thinking about another (perhaps obvious) way Hillary is masculinized… she’s synonymous with cuckoldry in pop culture. So not only is she trying to do a man’s job, she’s a beta cuck trying to get her husband’s old job after his very public betrayal and disgrace. Damn, the daddy/mommy dynamics of liberal Clintondom could be an entire video in itself lol

Avly

Why do I feel the urge to learn the umbrella-ramble by heart?

Joan

The Phoenician Scheme is very much daddy politics. Wes Anderson has always been focused on the authoritarian dad but his recent movie takes particular interest in the authoritarian dad’s relationship to religion, to reverence, to perceived invincibility.

Jessie Lees

It's interesting how much people want to uphold patriarchal fascism government. Governments exist because we need some leadership to organize a society of humans and determine how we allocate things we work on together and take care of each other. That seems to be the how and why we formed mini governments prior to large city states.

ManyEyedCrow

I share the disillusionment with those hoping for catastrophe, or some other mechanism for sudden, radical change. It feels intellectually dishonest; to believe this, you have to ignore all the deaths and ruined lives that occur when there are sudden economic shifts. Gradual improvement is too boring for some, I guess, but it seems to be the only choice that doesn’t increase human misery. Also, the ending, about the almost intentional self-deception of the mass of Fascist followers as a justification for violence hit hard.

Roi Ankori-Karlinsky

Thanks for this! As always, so insightful and filmed in a satisfying, engaging way <3 A quick thought: In Judaism, G-D (elohim, adonai) is a they and has multiple names of different genders (Schina - female, Hashem - male). The Talmud and Mishnah (Jewish law) interchange genders all the time (more here: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/37225?lang=bi)

Jon Stewart

Ah! These videos nourish my cockles like nobody's business. So clever, so funny, so rewarding. Bravo! (btw anyone reading, I'm not that Jon Stewart, but I am called Jon Stewart.

Deconstruction Interactive

that was an excellent tangent. Love the last two parts especially! Re: male loneliness, it's such an obvious and brilliant point -- if men want to be self-reliant, shouldn't they learn healthy self-care mechanisms? (Which, of course, probably involve *some* amount of peer reliance). And re: leftist fighting, you're right on point! To add more Russian history analogies, the second half of the 19th century featured a lot of political instability in the Russian empire, culminating with the assassination of Emperor Alexander II... who was, of course, a relatively liberal emperor and freed the serfs of Russia. One nagging feeling I've had during the Biden presidency feels related -- it's that I wonder if the reason Trump got re-elected is not that Biden was old or that inflation was high (though media coverage of both factors played a role in shaping the public narratives). Trump got elected because the Biden presidency was a relatively liberal permissive mommy-state presidency and lots of people hated it.

J Jones

Contrapoints gives me intellectual ecstacies - it's like thinky porn

J Jones

Thinky kink, perhaps

CassieWasRight

I like a lot about this video, but I have to disagree with the last point about leftists not protesting Republicans/Trumpists. They are - they're just posting about it less on Instagram or wherever because the social media environment has gotten so much more hostile. (With the caveat that many of the protests are led by people who could be considered more "resistance lib" types, but if they think billionaires are bad and that trans people, immigrants, and women deserve rights that makes them leftist enough for me.) My riff on your point about leftists not understanding populist rage is that a lot of men online mistakenly think that People Posting About How Angry They Are is the same thing as having actual power to enact substantive change when they are...basically unrelated

Alex M

And with that, her head has been completely lost up her ass. It's been real ya'll. Heads up: "the left" is not bitching on the internet. They are out salting and politically educating people. For the last n times, when your analysis has relied on your perception of "the left," it has completely butchered it to the point of uselessness. For anybody confused, refer to F.D. Signifier's "I might need to update my post election takes..."

Ren

Yeah, there's definitely talk about G-d as a mother, about G-d's breasts, etc. It's certainly less common than G-d being gendered male, but it's present. It just tends to be ignored by Christians (even though Jesus occasionally did it too, as when he compared himself to a mother hen).

Alvaro Altamirano

Ok, the part about the French Revolution happening with Louis XVI totally depressed me.

Eric Lei

Not only did Hitler give out the Mother’s Cross to mothers of sufficient children of aryan ancestry, he literally became the godfather of the seventh son, or ninth child. Daddy politics at its most blatant?

Franx Franklin

Wow. I don't know what to say other than you slayed the fuck out of that. I'm just so thankful that you are able to communicate these ideas so thoroughly, clearly and hilariously. Acceptance of the truly irrational darkness at play in human nature (whether left right or whatever) is the key to so many issues. Thankyou once again, keep doing what you're doing <3

William M

Hell yes to this video.

Androgynous Slut

The last part of the video felt like a caricaturish mischaracterization of American leftism

Androgynous Slut

Just to give an example: I am certain that the vast majority of American leftists do not want or advocate for violent political revolution. Instead they like, door knock for candidates that want to expand public services lol. The reality of what you observe on the ground is so much more reasonable and actionable than what is portrayed in this video.

Christopher Price

to keep with the analogy Biden was "mothering" other nations--Ukraine and Israel. FEMA announced a budget shortfall at the same time a massive aid package to Israel was announced. like, shortchanging hurricane survivors at home (in swing states!), while Israel got even more bombs for its genocide is beyond perversion. Meanwhile, Ukraine was getting blank checks right when inflation was at its worst.

Alamareth

Secretly in my heart I still believe that a kind of relovution will happen in the USA, because I am French and Americans are dumdum with guns. No hard feelings <3

Tegan Palmer

Thanks Natalie, this really helped - I often feel like I don't understand about half of the world, and this felt really enlightening as to why. Would love to be able to share this video with people outside patreon, so hope the ideas make it into the main channel. Thanks again!

Hermonica

F.D. Signifier has also disliked people citing him to dispute other YouTubers. To quote him. "If you love me, don't talk about our relationship."

S. R.

Have you ever read Ada palmer's too like the lightning series? Some of what you said about mummy politics reminded me of something in there

laxsill

It's really interesting when you get into bible and I'm happy you refer to my favorite part of the Yom Kipur liturgy (ki onu omecho). But I think you might be simplifying it. God has a lot of female aspects in jewish theology, most notably God as the aspect of "Shchine" which is really female coded. However, the specific aspect of God relating to judgement is male coded, which is why we speak of God as a father there. There's also another famous part of the Yom Kipur liturgy which is also said on many ordinary days but amplified on Yom Kipur which is the Ovinu Malkeinu (literally "our father, our king") which we do not say on shabes (even on YK) and the explanation I've heard is that it's too strong of a concept to simultaneously relate to God as a loving parent and as a supreme king. Should fit the topic of this video.

Cree

Do fine it quite interesting that less than a week after this video is posted that an uprising in LA emerges to push back against out modern day Gestapo and is growing rapid solidarity with support throughout other cities in the US and through out the world.

Gael The Dude

Hi, Could you include a hyperlink to the video somewhere in the text? YouTube is yelling at me about signing in to view it but not letting me sign in.

Gael The Dude

I’ve temporarily resorted to using a 3rd party source but know that I feel DEVASTATINGLY bad about.

dean

when you say you want your viewers to become "liberals", do you mean social democrats? to assuage your guilt or frustration, i was already a communist (of sorts) before your videos, so no harm done <3

+χ+

F** great video! Being inspired by “Listen, Little Man!” and the experience of a f* mandatory military service in Greece, I see no contradiction in fasc*s loving being ruled; like this they become the rule, they have no accountability over their actions, they are feeling attached to the top of the pyramid that is crushing “weak” people (and eventually themselves).

Sean Callahan

Soooooo I’ve sat with this video for a bit and I’m really conflicted. Overall: I loved the content and the topics you spoke on, and your analysis as a whole. But speaking as someone who really loves all your videos (both on patreon and main channel), has disagreed on minor things here or there—this is the first real piece of content where I find myself seriously disagreeing with you and questioning what you meant. I am with you and mostly getting what you mean—all the way until the end. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding what you said but let me explain: Your representation of leftists is what concerns me. On one hand I totally agree that leftists are not without issues. I think there’s still plenty of infighting and a part of that comes down to how many different types of leftists there are under this damn broad umbrella: socialists, marxists, communists, anarchists(?) and more labels I’m not smart enough to identify. I also agree that often leftists—especially ones my age—can be extremely volatile and unforgiving, and not give people a lot of room to change their views or develop. But to me, I felt you generalized leftists as being nastier to liberals than conservatives were—and you seemed concerned about the idea of conservatives being ‘re-radicalized’ by your content into leftists. I felt extremely lost trying to follow your line of thinking, even considering the topics discussed previously. Perhaps what I wish for is more clarity how you view things politically? Given the trajectory of this tangent? I’m struggling to see what you want the main takeaway to be in this sub tangent. Also wanna clarify: love and support you as a content creator, not gonna crucify you at the stake if you really do consider yourself a ‘lib’ (though I’ll politely poke fun ofc haha). I love your transparency and I guess I’m feeling a bit lost and blurry at this point. Would appreciate a deeper diver into this if you’re willing! Or if you already have in the AMA

Jesse Fabert

I really like this one but I think it gets a little too Freudian. I think at least some conservatives oppose the Democratic party's attempts to provide public infrastructure not because they think that ~dems are just like their nagging bitch mother-wife~ so much as they reasonably understand that anyone who provides for you can also control you by threatening to withhold whatever it is they provide. When conservatives complained about the ACA, for instance, they were framing the government as a controlling (paternalistic) authority, rather than an implicitly unconditional + trustworthy (maternal) provider.At the same time, leftists/liberals seem happy to accept a "strict daddy" type of authority so long as he's taking off his belt to whup someone else-- like, I'm really not shedding any tears for conservatives who think of mask mandates and vaccine requirements as a kind of authoritarian overreach. I think its more accurate to say that conservatives tend to assume that one's ability to provide care must necessarily imply that one has the authority to control those that it provides for. While I don't really blame them for feeling that way, I also really wish they would stop taking it for granted/proposing policy which reinforces it against their "enemies" (like expecting people on food stamps or income assistance to submit to surveillance/austerity).

Hanié

Thanks to Trump and Netanyahu I am now under attacks from inside and outside IRI. I know you have your reasons for not talking about the Middle East. I understand that. But these lunatics + IR are being our death. AGAIN. Well, constantly. God, the complexity of this situation is killing me. I do not even know why I am writing this here.

Cyn

Positively drinking up everything about mommy and daddy. Like a lot of leftists, I bristled around the end, but that also might be because I don’t identify as a liberal, but a social democrat who recognizes the need for radicalizing more liberals and those right-leaning/apolitical types and I do wonder if any of that would be happening if Trump didn’t win either the first or second presidency. I, for example, may have not moved to where I am on the spectrum were it not for Bernie’s two losses. We want things to happen immediately, I guess, but it’s actually more likely to take some time. I think the core issue is there’s no central leader and strategy over the broad left. Bernie should take up this mantle, but all he does is a passive kind of “we gotta vote for the liberal in the general election” thing (Stern, but Docile Uncle) with no recourse for what we do AFTER that. Vague proclamations like “keep fighting” or “speak up” don’t do anything. I voted for Jill Stein in the 24 general, and my choice was strategic - to try and get the Green Party to 5% for better ballot access/funds. But I did that in a blue state. If I was in a swing state, I likely would have voted Kamala. So imagine if that was a united left strategy across the board - vote green in red or blue and Kamala in a swing state. The problem is we all know after Election Day if there’s no follow up with political strategy/direct action to “move the Dems left,” then we’re stagnant. And I think leftists just don’t wanna stay there anymore. My most significant question is: where is Mother? Or Father? Not mean mommy, not sadist daddy, but the purest, most powerful forms of the archetypes? Never forget one of your videos citing MLK’s quote about power and love, that what is needed is a realization that “power without love is reckless and abusive and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”

Ethan Good

Some years ago while texting with a friend, I articulated my observation that the Left and Right are gendered female and male, respectively. I felt quite proud of myself at the time, since the observation was genuine inspiration on my part, i.e., I hadn't watched a video on the subject or anything. As such, seeing Natalie unpack the topic in such detail is tremendously satisfying. I'll comment something more intelligent after I've had the chance to re-watch and digest everything.

Hannah

I have been thinking about this video nonstop since I watched it. Thank you so much for this one! I think this is the closest I’ve ever been to understanding how a Conservative brain works.

Helen 🌸

Fantastic tangent, great job!

JoyOfResistance

Revolutions don't happen because of weak leaders, they SUCCEED because of weak leaders. There have been so many more revolts and revolutions in Europe throughout the centuries (many to rebel against serfdom, inequality, unjust laws or to protect communities) and so, so many peasants lives were lost. It's really time America learned about those events and how the struggle against unjust power, kings and oppression has been a war going on for CENTURIES and still we continue and fight.

Andy Summer

I'm also #concerned by the end of this video. While I've known I'm probably a bit farther left than Natalie, nothing about her videos has ever suggested she's a liberal, or wanted to create more liberals (in the American sense). Liberals are for Israel, genocide in Gaza, for profit healthcare, foreign wars, billionaires, stagnant wages, p. much stagnant everything. The status quo. I'm not a huge revolutionist either, but even if you're more buddy buddy with or hold your nose to vote for these people for strategic/incremental reasons, the democratic party is weak and ineffectual at slow, boring progress, and outright refuse to wield any tools of change like court packing or abolishing the filibuster. If leftists are more hostile towards than libs than the conservatives, it's because the latter is a lost cause and there's at least some lingering faraway hope that maybe democrats would ever see reason.

JoyOfResistance

FD Signifier has a great video about how he doesn't want to go too far left on YouTube, because it costs him viewers (he talks about how his video on P Diddy got 3M views, while a video about abolishing the police that he worked on for a long time got just a tiny fraction of that). I notice this with more Youtubers lately, how they seem to *insist* on distancing themselves from 'those lefty left left people', and I wonder how much this is inspired by the fear of losing income and viewers? It's a trend I really don't like, especially not in these times, because it's just - again - punching down on the people who really really need support & a voice right now.

Matthew Bowden

This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about in that I see kind of a muddling of the term liberal. Like I know a lot of liberals are exactly what you described, but those aren’t really traits intrinsic to liberalism writ large. Like, the people who call themselves liberal are shifting to the right and taking the term with them. So now there’s multiple definitions of liberal and Natalie doesn’t really define what she means by it.

Matthew Bowden

I love listening to these tangents over and over to get the most out of them but I HATE that i have to go get my phone and skip past that full 10 minutes of the don telling the snake story

slightlyedi

i feel like a lot of these comments are missing Natalie’s point about leftist infighting. the hyper vigilance and cynical relationship a lot of leftist have developed to liberalism is both frustrating and understandable. like liberalism has let a lot of leftists down but leftists often seem more interested in scolding liberals then actually finding common ground. and at the end of the day, that relationship of resentment and scolding feels very counterproductive to longstanding change.

Andy Summer

True. In anger, I'm conflating liberal voter opinions with the results if not also the opinions we get from liberal politicians. Polling on issues may often show the base is further left than the representatives, but the thing is - when the base is obsessed with making excuses for their bad politics, "have you seen the other guys", and insisting that we can't have someone like Bernie Sanders...why wouldn't I conflate them.

Rose Dombegh

Whose the "salt of the earth white man" at the beginning of the video?

Matthew Bowden

Yeah I think you’re observing something very true. I think the basic tenets of liberalism should still be advocated for, like secularism and democracy and personal liberty, but the people who identify as liberal have completely lost the plot

Beth S

Interestingly, this makes me think of Hakeem Jeffries' "Presidents come and Presidents go, but God is still on the throne" tweet a few months ago, which I interpret as as a statement of repudiation of daddy politics, and which also enraged self-described leftists online. There are a lot of obvious historical reasons why black americans would be more skeptical of authoritarian social and government dynamics, but I also think daddy politics can venture too close to actual blasphemy, too close to unseating God. You're not supposed to *worship* daddy, but that is what a lot of Trump supporters seem to do. Full-on prosperity gospel, they believe their devotion will result in being showered with blessings and riches. Then it's funny that it dovetails into Natalie's point about leftist affect. I do think it inspired rage in part because it was interpreted as an intention to do nothing (bad faith misreading imo), but mostly because it displayed perceived Weakness, if your vision of strength doesn't include steadfast endurance (feminine coded, even immediately brings to my mind Ola Belle Reed's performance of I've Endured, which has a very tough femininity to it.) The fact is that we, the left-wing in America, lost and there's very little to do when you lose other than brace and survive. There are rarely any wins to extract from it. I dunno, I don't have anything more coherent to say about that aspect but feel the need to be supportive because I can already see it is pretty unpopular in the responses. But basically every other person I know and respect has recently made some sort of comment about being disillusioned with leftism as a distinction from liberalism (or more importantly, the people who find it necessary to make such a distinction.) I've been a hater for way longer so it brings some relief to see people say it and make me feel less insane for it lol.

Bando Fett

Hi! I think your argument can be applied to other, broader contexts without too far a leap of faith. Daddy knowledge and mommy knowledge. Just as you talked Bout daddy and mommy politics, the quality of knowledge accumulation in the world is suffering because certain subjects (masculine) subjects, knowledge accumulation is subject to tight controls and criticism and punishments for failure - think the hard sciences with tough barriers to entry, top schools, prestige and lots of money if you get a job as a engineer, you get it. Daddy knowledge, the sciences. Mommy knowledge, on the other hand, yoga, spirituality, political economy, is widely and available at a lower cost - nurturant, one might say, with a fairly low bar of access to it. However, when people go out and teach themselves on these topics, they are very likely to learn things in a way that validates their own identity rather than the truth. Same thing happened with how I learnt about fashion. I was exposed to lower quality knowledge but lots of it, effectively keeping me in a shopping loop for years, that I am still trying to get out of. It is therefore more subject to cognitive biases. This is therefore an effective refutation of the argument that polarization in today's societies is exclusively due to the YouTube algorithms. The algorithms and the internet are guilty of making low quality Information, that is consistent with identity-related biases, much more commonly available(still terrible). But just a side comment - this mommy/daddy knowledge bias in our societies runs deeper.

Jun Sekiya

Interesting point about leftists shying from Trump rallies because they wouldn’t dare. My mind went to Antifa and street fights with the Proud Boys but I can’t say I know statistics about # of protesters at Trump rallies vs dem rallies, and how many of each turn violent

Jun Sekiya

I also think Natalie is spot on with the draw of so many to Daddy Politics. I do think the reason it’s so compelling and authoritarian populism is so appealing is for pragmatic reasons, that people intuit from their environment that physical violence is a powerful undergirding force of political legitimacy. and so they’re drawn to candidates they feel can pragmatically deploy that violence to the goals they support

Jun Sekiya

given that we have this fear driven instinct to reach for Daddy Politics, I guess the obvious step is to ask where do we from here? which I’m curious about Natalie’s take— do we try and convince people their fear is unwarranted, and that they don’t need daddy to protect them? or does it come to a pure battle of physical force where leftists and liberals need to somehow out-daddy the party of daddies?

Lily Sovacole

Thank you so much for this video, vraiment merci beaucoup ! - Your french girl.

John Savage

Omg I read "Don't think of an Elephant" a few years ago, and I've been waiting for more people to discuss Geroge Lakoffs work ever since

Elliot Theodor

That's a really good question. I guess it's both the scale and the media focus. Israel has been committing war crimes against Palestinians for decades, and it's never gotten this much of a spotlight. I think it's the fact that Netanyahu is basically a physcopath and doesn't even heed US guidelines anymore that really got the US alarmed. Even Trump can't rein him in, and even though I'm a devoted trump hater - we on the Israeli left wing all thought he'd be enough of a bully to bully Netanyahu into stopping the genocide. Second thing is - and I really can't stress this enough - the media attention focused on the middle east because of the oil trade and the playout of china-russia-us-eurppe power dynamics in the middle east via proxies. This is OIL TRADE politics, it doesn't really have anything to do with human lives. Otherwise we'd be hearing a lot more about certain parts of Africa.

Cynthia Sonier

Whenever MAGAs cheer for "daddy to take his belt off", I just see a bunch of whiny, angry children who grew up WITHOUT fathers and never got over the big mean "no"'s and the discipline that mothers and teachers told them! They wish for onmipresent, omnipotent imaginary friend that hates the same people they to, hates the same things they do and can dish out all the cruelty they wish they could but somehow never "take his belt off" to beat them up. That's a father....in the mind of someone who was always left wishing for one because there was no human to fill the role and tie it firmly into reality! Learning that your dad is not that omnipotent figure is part of growing up and we do it from the first time we see dad lose his temper at us as kids, to the day we see him in a coffin.

Andrew May

Oh right, back to metaphors. Nobody asked, but Otto Santa Ana took Lakoff’s metaphor ideas into 90s immigration discourse (that’s an awful summary). It’s called Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse. Good shit.

Andrew May

I can’t believe he just did that. What the hell was he thinking?!

Hannah

Appreciate this thread, which pretty much captures my conflicted thoughts as a historically lib-hating leftist (lol) following the video too. I’m trying to be less lib hating since Trump’s re-election but yeah the Dems make it hard. I agree w the argument that it was foolish for some leftists to think Trump’s election would somehow lay the ground for a socialist revolution, but following Natalie’s own argument about weak rulers leading to revolution, could you not argue that it was the Dems own perceived mommyness that contributed to Trumpers taking advantage of that and framing it as a revolt against wokeness, nags, women etc? It seems to me like, following the arguments of Natalie’s Twilight video, different strains of Daddy/Mommy power are going to always show up in human politics. While Daddy politics is tainted through its association w conservativism and fascism, at one point Natalie does point out the usefulness of a certain type of Daddy discipline / repression (rapists should be more repressed). So while at the end of this video she seems to arrive at an argument for more “liberal” mommyism over daddy politics (inc perhaps the daddy politics of the hard communist left), I think I’m more interested in thinking about what a left daddy and mommy politics lol can look like? What is the place of both strength/discipline and nurture on the left and how can we perhaps try to hold both together more effectively (even if there’s always going to be tension)?

charlie

You need professional help sir, nothing of which can be sought out in a patreon comment section

Ethan Good

Please go to therapy. I'm being genuine, not snarky.

SevenTrees

damn. called out in the nurturing mommy politics way.

Nicole Swedberg

1,000,000 bonus points for mentioning totem and taboo.

Jon Stewart

This is my favorite tangent yet. I would never ever read an academic paper on how the metaphorical nature of contrasting cultural values influences US electoral politics...but if you present it in a video with jokes about getting so hard for you, I'm all over that fucker. Bravo! More like this!

Viviane P.L.

By the comment section people liked how hard Natalie could get

AionMirror

this is actually way too good to stay on patreon i hope you post this to public soon

Ezra Bozeman

honestly, this video has to be one of my favorite things you’ve ever put out. wish i could share this bc i think it’s such an astute and important read of our political moment, but i’ll just do my best to summarize. amazing work as always, natalie! i hope you are well<3

MW

I can explain the umbrellas: it's a piss thing

Sep S.

Wow, this is bad. Very bad. Shallow, cruel, mean-spirited left-bashing disguised as cute scholarly musings. I can't believe she did this. I've followed her for 8 years and defended her at every turn and I just cannot believe she would put out something this irresponsible. Basically she's using spurious polisci and pop psychology to smear the entire Marxist left as always have been misogynist, and she's weaponizing the trust she's built as an expert on gender issues to do it. Incredibly stuff. I wish there was more pushback against it in the comments. I hope she makes it public like people are saying she should, so I and others have an opportunity to respond to some of the terrible arguments she makes. She said she felt alone in her support for Kamala in the 2024 election. She should have taken her own advice and done some self-care and become her own mommywife instead of taking her admitted bitterness out on literally the smallest, weakest political coalition in the world right now. But she chose to "punch left". As metaphors go, that's one she should examine more closely the next time she wonders why leftists don't like liberals that much.

Rose Dombegh

Dude you're describing the last 12 minutes of a 1h 12min video. And its a Tangent. It's not meant to be perfect, or even something she'll still agree with in a few months. The entire point of Tangents is they let her try out material. Also. She only "put out" this video to her Patrons. We literally signed up (with money) to hear her hot takes. I hope it's fair to assume we have the ability to entertain ideas without believing them.

Sep S.

Of course you're right about the Tangent thing & Patreon aspect, which is why I didn't feel like I should be commenting anywhere but here on this app for now. But to be clear, it wasn't just the last 12 minutes, it was also what felt like a very surface-level "vibes" reading of things like the "culture" v "materialism" debate and other leftist points that she is surely familiar with already, and just the whole gendering the Dems as the good guys in a patriarchal dichotomy and pretending like criticizing them or demanding things from them is just childish needy man-baby stuff instead of how politics works. I'm old enough to remember the "misogynist Bernie Bros" narrative being cynically deployed by the Hillary campaign, and so this Tangent's entire gender-metaphor concept felt like a long academic-sounding set-up for making exactly that argument but with the numbers filed off. Especially after I read the comments, it really worried me that maybe people who weren't aware of the history of the weaponization of id politics against the left and feminists running interference for establishment Dems were just uncritically embracing this way of conceptualizing the political conflict. And also generally, I've watched every other Tangent, and none of them felt this under-researched with such levels of personal-vendetta-ish vitriolic undertone to them - this approached "I got cancelled" video levels of bile. We're on a precipice when it comes to electoral politics, it feels like a make-or-break moment, and she is such a huge voice that I worry when she starts showing open contempt for any kind leftist alternative to the Dem status quo. The way she claimed leftist protesters only pick soft Dem targets because they can get away with it, while Dems actually have enormous power and meanwhile protesters have actually been gassed and beaten in the streets under both party's administrations, and then proceeded to casually lump them in with J.K. Rowling, the closest thing this community has to a supervillain? I'm sorry, but that's alarming. If that's where your framework takes you, I can't think of a worse one for understanding the extremely important politics of this moment. I hope you're right and she changes her mind about some of this stuff, and that I'm overestimating the damage this tangent can do all by itself. Thanks for replying anyway, made me feel less insane lol

Tomme

The Marxist left is p fucking misogynist and ur proving her point

Sep S.

Lol how am I proving that? By not liking the tangent? Even if I'm personally bad, she is saying they're structurally misogynist, don't you think that's problematic? Just disqualifying an entire emancipatory philosophy like that with people on here cheering her on? I'm not saying she can't disagree with it, I'm objecting to the fact that she contstructs an entire framework, with very little justification, where the centrist Dems are the powerless underdogs and the people to their left are inherently violent woman-haters. While she must be aware that in real life the power dynamics are entirely the other way around, right? I mean, who is scapegoating whom here? I'm a lady Bernie bro and I found it slanderous when Hillary Clinton tried to use my gender against me, when Elizabeth Warren did it, but they did it for primary votes. I honestly don't understand why Natalie would do it. She is much better at it, too, and that's what is so disquieting. The only reason I could gather from the video is she felt personally "bitter" about the fact that the left refused to get behind Kamala (her words). I don't know whom she was talking about, but it sounded like annoying online tankies to me. Fine, those people are insufferable. But most of the people who couldn't get behind Kamala in 2024 were Democratic voters who simply couldn't endorse the genocide that the Biden admin was perpetuating. For some people, the choice was between picking a candidate who had signalled no willingness to stop sending bombs to be dropped on their families in the middle-east, or take a chance on someone just crazy enough to be willing to stop it cause he caught a vibe or something. For some of us, genocide is a red line, and not because we're all raging misogynist. It's the Democratic party that failed to move on this issue, and the Democratic party that put up candidates that had little appeal against Trump in 3 separate elections. The weakness of these candidates was self-imposed and in two of these primaries the left whole-heartedly backed another person _within the democratic party-political process_. It was because we saw that the centrist politics of people like Clinton had lead to the rise of someone like Trump. Yeah, we saw this stuff coming before most resistance libs probably. Because it's in our books, if you're interested. What do you think "socialism or barbarism" means? It's an analysis, not a threat. We're on the left because we think capitalism leads to fascism, not because we want to say slurs so bad. This gender-mythology framework completely buys into the Democrats' self-imposed helplessness and absolves them of their repsonsiblity to respond to their base's need for an alternative to neolib politics in the same way Republicans _were_ willing to do. God forbid people make demands of their representatives. This is the same Democratic party that, btw, when the election was over, started a whole "we lost because we did too much trans stuff" conversation. That's the kind willful obtuseness and tendency to run right that drives leftists like me crazy about establishment Dems. I just don't understand why Natalie isn't mad at them too, but would join them in blaming the left instead. You can think what you want about my motives, but these are legitimate concerns that I would not be bringing them up otherwise. I don't usually go around caring if content creators I like don't share my politics. But these are some serious allegations, and these are serious political circumstances, and I don't see how I or other Marxists wouldn't be equally upset if we saw a leading voice on the left doing something like this at this particular junction if they happened to be male.

Darren DM

I don't understand why you think Natalie is, as you say, a "leading voice on the left".

Sep S.

1) Is she on the left? I guess we can quibble about definitions, but is it fair to say that the pre-Trump Republicans are center-right and everything left of the most dead-center Dems is the "broad left"? I just figured that, since she is the OG and most prominent "breadtuber", and did all that social justice deradicalization work drawing people into leftwing spaces, and she made a few videos talking about why capitalism is bad, that puts her somewhere on that spectrum. 2) Is she a major voice? I don't know how big her Patreon is, but I think historically she has served as a lot of people's first encounter with leftist politics. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that many people get their political education from the content she puts out. I don't mind that she is not as left on that spectrum as I am. I don't mind her telling people she's a liberal and so should they. I do mind her constructing a framework that makes everyone to her left effectively a misogynist (I mean, see the comment above), including the democratic socialists who are as soft and system-y as socialists get. Or people who take to the streets because their grievances are not making their way up the foodchain through normal democratic channels. If anything, they're the social fluffy nurturing ones in this scheme, because they want more people to be enclosed in the warm bosom of the nanny state. But somehow in her theory, they become scapegoating irrational manboys who just want to do revolution and hurt beautiful mommy Kamala with their aggressive male demands. This, btw, from a woman who spent a good chunk of her second Rowling video explaining exactly why confrontational, physical politics like that of the LGBT movement in the 70s is good and necessary despite critics trying to pretend it was always super nice and peaceful. It's not that I disagree with her, I just find this entire framing dishonest and unfair. Which is why I'm shocked when I see so many comments calling this "her best tangent yet" and "perfect as is". I'm afraid that it's easy to nod along and think it's a cool new concept when you don't know that, like I said, she is basically recreating the "toxic Bernie Bro" smear all over again using some academic figleaf. She is demonizing entire sections of the left at a time where it looks like they're finally getting some traction. I worry people will take their cues from her and dismiss them out of hand. That people listen to this and refrain from looking further and attending protests or joining DSA or canvassing for Mamdani or supporting the next Bernie, because they've accepted this stupid blue-pink view of politics where everyone but the most anodyne, centrist, entrenched Democrats is icky and blue-coded. I hope I'm wrong, that I'm either overestimating her influence or that her audience sees something entirely different in this tangent than I see.

Sep S.

Did I make the "she can be a lib and disagree with me, but this is different" thing sufficiently clear? If not, maybe this example helps: When the Pod Save America guys, who are as Dem establishment as they come, talk about someone to the left of them, they say things like "I don't think that is economically feasable" or "I think that rhetoric is incendiary". They don't come up with an elaborate justification for saying "he and his friends all give me pedo vibes". See the difference? Misogyny is something this community takes extremely seriously (I assume). And Natalie just goes ahead and taints everyone with it whose politics don't pay enough fealty to the backroom decisions of the Democratic party. Like, just renders them off-limits. Maybe that kind of politics wouldn't have appealed to people on here anyway, but if they're going to reject it, I'd want them to reject it because they familiarized themselves with the ideas or the people or the movement and decided it wasn't for them, not because someone who's judgement they trust on such issues told them "Meh, the vibes are off".

Darren DM

Sorry, but I wasn't clear with my question. I meant why do you think her opinion is significant?She is after all, just a YouTuber. I would say her influence is so small as to be insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Sep S.

I mean, I tried to answer. I'll try again: I hope her reach is as insignificant as you say it is, which would limit the damage reasoning like this can do. But then again, which "grand scheme" are we talking about here? The socialist left is small, and I'm interested in it becoming larger. Natalie is a big influencer, maybe not compared to Oprah, but relative to others in this space. She is very good at bringing in new people and introducing them to political discourse in general, some of whom will hopefully go on and educate themselves more and become politically active or influencers themselves and draw more people to the left. It's important that she not give out disinformation at the door about how we on the left of her are all misogynist asshole babies and the only true alternative to Trumpism is whoever the democratic party elites say you should vote for. She says she doesn't want people to come to her content from the right and then choose communism. Ok. Then she should work on her communication and argumentation and go back in time and not borrow so many cues from the left to entice and build an audience hungry for alternative politics and create a communist catgirl icon and make "capitalism is bad" videos. But it's incredibly low to take the easy way out and cut off the path to leftwing politics for newly politicized people by implanting in them the idea that anything but the Democratic status quo is fash-coded. Does that answer your question? I guess none of it makes a lot of sense if you're not some politics nerd who cares too much about leftwing electoral politics. If that was what you were trying to say with your question, then yeah, valid.

Kay Wilson

an observation after watching this: in the uk there is the governess archetype, a cold unfeeling disciplinarian who’s job is to raise obedient children, traditionally either hired or within the school system (an example most americans might know is ms trunchball). which is basically a way for a small set of women to be engaged in daddy politics, mainly to the upper classes. which basically explains thatcher (and actually may as well), we occasionally we have a governess filling in the daddy politics role. there are daddies everywhere for those with eyes to see or whatever.

Kay Wilson

off topic, i imagine this is partly why there’s never been a woman president, woman in us politics haven’t really had a cultural way to grasp onto daddy politics (although i wonder if there’s an archetype that hasn’t been exploited yet). and it’s going to be a long time before mother politics is going to be so embraced by the us that a woman can do it.

JC

Oh wow this is a fascinating mini cultural analysis, thank you for this comment!

Rose Dombegh

Woah, I didn't mean to catalyze so much discourse ... I feel kind of honored, lol. Thanks you guys :)

Sep S.

Yeah really I appreciate you guys engaging, helped me elucidate my position & vent a little. Hopefully others got something out of it too.

Jen D

Just rewatched Justice and it occurs to me humans haven't figured out how to enforce a rule of law between countries... which means that hard masculinity from political leaders might actually be necessary (ugh I hate myself as I type that). Maybe part of the appeal of Daddy is confidence he'll give off those important "fuck with me and you will pay" vibes

sonorasgirl

It’s super interesting to me how much modern conservative Christians reject Christ; you mentioned that God in abrahamic religion is generally thought of as male, and that’s 100% true, BUT, Jesus himself used feminine metaphors and descriptors, such as describing himself as a mother hen, wanting to lovingly collect the Jewish people under her wings as his chicks. Jesus was, in the Bible, famously non-violent to the point that I honestly think most modern Christians are subconsciously ashamed of him and go back to punitive father god descriptions to distance themselves from the wimpy, mothering, self-sacrificing Jesus.

Coline Dumayet

EDIT : I haven't watched your AMA stream, but reading the comments below I realize you might have receive a lot of backlash from some leftists on twitter. I'm really sorry about that, and my comments weren't meant to fuel this. The conclusion of this tangent still made me angry though, so I stand by what I said, but I hope it's not perceived as insulting or personal? I still want to watch your videos or I wouldn't be there... It's just that this awful bullying shouldn't make arguments in favor of radical left less relevant... They are two different things... I hope you're fine, take care. **** I mostly agree with this comment, and I'm all the more surprised that studies about the authoritarian personality show that the more you're on the left of the political spectrum, the more you are susceptible to be far from the authoritarian personality. Especially if you're Marxist... So this is not only not justified but in contradiction with researches! Because of a personal feeling? Also I'm French and politics are a bit different here, I'm not sure about the kind of discourse Bernie Sanders has about feminism etc. But here in France the "republican" parties (by opposition to revolutionary parties) that are the most vocals about it are the radical left and the ecologists - who are the most leftists after them. They also are the most conscious of decolonialism, gender deconstruction, intersectionality... AND they take their fight against the far right very very seriously, making it their top priority. The NPA, a revolutionary party, has the same take and gave their support to the republican radical left during the last elections for that reason. I'm not saying that nobody on the left has a "class first" ideology. It's the case of the communist party... which despite it's name hasn't been considered as seriously leftist since the 90's. They have been booed in some leftist reunions because of that. The revolutionary party L.O., very traditionalist, is known to be class first too but even them are evolving.

Coline Dumayet

In France the equivalent of Kamala's democrats, the socialist party and Macron's party, tend to defend capitalism, if not in their discourse, at least in their actions. Some of them (more and more of them), have been openly Islamophobic (which is not very nurturing I think). So for radical leftists, their defense of feminism and homosexuality sounds a lot like queer washing, Israel-style. Most of them if not all are from the bourgeoisie, and they seem to defend egalitarian causes only as long as it doesn't seem to threaten their class. Capitalism, Islamophobia, Israel's defense... what do you find nurturing about all that? Their soft public IMAGE? Their way of communicating?? As far as I can tell, the main reason why they're often hated by more radical leftists is because of this hypocrisy. Mind you, radical and far right IS even more hated and despised by leftists in France. There are indeed some who say that they would rather vote for the far right to create a reaction, but as far as I can tell they are a minority (and fucking idiots - personal opinion). A lot of us voted for Macron and his party (whom we hate so so much and have fascist tendences themselves) when put against the far right because the alternative is even worse. And despite that Macron's party has allied itself with the far right several times since the latest election to get their bill passed and beat the radical left. They are also working very hard to make the radical left seem more evil than the far right. It hurts and it's scary. I understand why some people are fed up with this and would rather not vote at all than give their vote to those people. We feel betrayed.

Coline Dumayet

I liked a lot of the video and I find interesting the concept of "father's strict morality" and the link between patriarchy and parties ideologies. But the conclusion... All extremes become the same in the end?! OMG that's so awful. Sorry to be so blunt, I like your videos in general and you seem so cultured on a lot of subjects (which means I learn a lot watching them), but maybe you need a little refresh on sociology of voting and history of fascism. Given the context here - the demonization of radical left, redemption of far right - it angers me so much.

Rose Dombegh

That's such a good point! It's also ironic -- isn't the ministry of Jesus supposed to outline a good/Godly/meaningful human life ("A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another")? Isn't part of Christianity that God became human to show us how to be human?

Mia Burnett

Hey, I just wanted to say that I, as well as many nonzionists I know, really appreciated what you had to say about I/P. I know I still have my points of disagreement with you, but thank you for your words in this time.

Aristana Scourtas

If democrats are mommy and even male democrats are subject to this misogyny, then I can only see one way out: be the fun gay aunt. Queerness has always found a way to subvert those kinds of gendered expectations and I don’t think this is an exception

Aristana Scourtas

The fun butch gay aunt I think is the closest we’ll get! Can have some of the trappings of masculinity and be apart from the feminine without actually being a man

Rose Dombegh

I've been trying to think of a U.S. archetype but can't come up with one.

Rose Dombegh

Watching this again ... its making me realize that *wow* I have a great Dad.

Rose Dombegh

Punishing Father? "Inherent" masculine dominance? Don't all dads go on long walks with their kids to talk about feelings before caving & watching the ContraPoints videos their kids won't stop yapping about?

Michael Cusic

People like you make me walk away from activism.

Sep S.

I think if you read my comments carefully, you'll see that I'm trying to defend activists against charges that they're aggressive and unreasonable and unlady-like. But frankly I don't believe some random internet comment has the power to dissuade you from defending a cause you believe in. Maybe you're fed up with activism in general if this kind of thing is enough to push you over the edge. I obviously hope you stick with it, but I also know activist burnout is a thing. If that's what you need right now, I hope you take care of yourself.

Rae Moore

Is there a way I can buy this video as a download or something? There are people I’d love to share it with who I do think would watch but I could never talk them into a Patreon membership for access

Gnome Choomsky

It was Kamala's job to win! Hasan was right! We can't do their job for them better than they can! The problem with democrats is they don't know what the fuck solidarity means! They would have to crucify their fkn egos! But that might cost them their precious careers! When you crucify the ego, it resurrects in a new form! A form that recognizes that it is not the center of the fkn universe! The resurrected ego knows its only "career" is revolution and is not reluctant to practice self-sacrifice in order to bring this revolution about! 👀👀👀

Studioroom

Natalie, great post but you missed the biggest daddy-politics fetish -- GUNS --

João Guilherme Viana

Very good! Your comment addressed many issues without catastrophizing. Natalie is always a titan to listen to, but in this case I think her conclusions about infrastructure x superstructure were a bit too hasty. To a non-US person, it sounds like the conclusions someone would arrive at in a system where alternatives to the left are hardly even there to be found. It is a bipartisan system with no real organic parties other than a liberal and an extremist conservative one. So that adds an extra burden of plausibility to leftist arguments that sound perfectly pragmatic in places with well-structured and competitive socialist parties.

retrotom30

Thanks, Natalie for verbalizing many thoughts and feelings that have been gnawing at me for the past several months.

Murguly Mátyás

I think I have an answer to why "de-radicalised fascists are re-radicalised". The problem is not the radicalisation itself. I for example always held "radical" ideas about the world, but I thought that people have "come into sense" by their own experience, not by nagging them to oblivion. I had this kind of szittya stuff, which is an interesting mixture of granola fascism, pseudoarcheology, pop ezotericism and general cluelessness on societal issues (kinda Zynternet, but I am older than the Zynternet). After that I grow some clue, I became an anarchist. I still have some vestage of the inner turboturul* in a sense of attachment to folklore and communal liberation from systems of opressions**. So I felled for the anarchism of the fools (as communal work sharing/helping networks was a core folk tradition here until it was not taxed into oblivion). So I was radical (a fool one), and I am still a radical (maybe a little bit less fooler one who made peace with himself). But I am not a puritanical fundamentalist*** and I was never fond of neither puritanism (I like shiny things) or fundamentalism (ambiguity is normal). I think fundamentalism should be revised as it calls for scriptural strictness - but we see that they can say that "that version of the scripture is infected with woke and we have the true version". And it is influenced by this strict father morality, which makes their core narrative into a dualistic hellscape for the world and they make a whole set of purity culture to this, which culminates into "us versus them" narratives, and techinally erodes mundane/prophane by making everything into a sacred-blasphemous thing (see conservative zionist pundits like Ben Shapiro and meme-y salafist imams for non-christian form of this). This applies to politics, too. If you don't perform the perfect revolutionary, you will be shamed and vilified, you became satanic/haram/trefah/libtard/fascist/lizardmen with the aura of darkness who does not vibe with the dolphin frequency of the Pleiadians and who wil be incinerated by Ashtar Sheran's purification love lasers. And I think this have to do with our own self image, not with the world et all. Because we want to see ourselves as some pure beings (a good child). And we project this into the world as some form of supposed force of goodness, of healing pain or whatever. And Jung named the reservoire of this anxiety - the Shadow. So yeah, in conclusion, we are pretty much screwed. *Turul is one of our taboo-totem stuff from our pagan era. Technically a bird of prey, which was the messenger of the Sky. Turboturul was the nickname given by the sceptic community for Hungarian granola fascists who were into the new religious movement part of the stuff. Nowadays they call themselves as "Schytians" as they believe that Hungarians are actually Schytians, who came from Atlantis, etc. I was more invested in the chrystal waving/raving aspect of this, because the "seer" aspect of my identity was the core of gravitating towards this, which we call "táltos". **As time went on, I accepted myself, because I found people who accepted me as strange as I am, and this made me able to not reject everything on sight but embrace my own ambiguity, which sould be one point of the whole mystical stuff but you can't sell that... ***I call the phenomenon like this, but maybe others can come up with a better name to this brainrot. I am a queer biothechnologist rural sorcerer from the Petri-dish of Heritage foundation with a half Phd from Covid-19 related coagulopathy, not a philosopher or some religious studies scholar.

Emily E Crawford

I would love your analysis of word painting in the Messiah oratorio overall, let’s go!!!!

JoyOfResistance

I really like this approach to understanding the basic differences in values in the political spectrum, but the language/gender model seems a bit too perfect to be true (and very centered on an English speaking world). For decades, in the Netherlands, we had a very liberal system based on nurture (a marriage between left, center & right government) with very cheap healthcare, public transport, education and benefits and this was called "little father's state" ("Vadertje Staat"). It's the same flavor of masculinity I associate culturally with ending children's labour and the fight for equal education (and I think we're not the only country who recognises this form of care taking leftist fatherhood)

Kristina Foster

Would you say that the Netherlands has a rather homogeneous population?

JoyOfResistance

Do you mean: are our politics less divided?

Meghan Elizabeth

Surely solidarity and class consciousness is still possible despite all of this, right?

Shane

I think Natalie is of the opinion that class consciousness is to Marxism what piety is to Christendom. It is a secular rebranding of basically the same sociological phenomenon: seeing the world through the lens of one's preferred ideology is True, and there are the apostates who don't want to hear the truth. There is a grain of truth in class consciousness, as Marxist ideas often do. A typical person has more in common with a homeless individual in terms of material scarcity and gatekept opportunities than they do with a billionaire. Ironically, this concept has been reified where many Leftists see the possession of a large amount of money, in and of itself, without immediate and conspicuous efforts to rid themselves of that excess money, is indicative of a class traitor. Conversely, anyone who is poor or homeless is an innocent, noble person who needs protecting*. *(See Contra's "Envy" video)

Three Keys

It doesn't matter to the argument being made, but as a behaviorist I feel obligated to point out that what you described with regard to reward/punishment is operant conditioning, not classical conditioning. Common mistake, but I gotta do right by Daddy Skinner.

Tali

Interesting. I would note that there are lots of instances where G-d is female in Judaism. Being a bride, having a 'feminine name', lady wisdom. I think care should be taken to not say "Abrahamic" when you mean Christianity and potentially Islam.

Casey Maharg

Association of gender to G-d has always been weird. Considering that G-d rarely manifests in human form in the Tanakh, it’s odd to think that G-d would have the anatomy associated with sex or a role associated with gender. G-d is literally non-binary, as the Shema reminds us

mati johnston

Calling it that seems more like a stroke of PR genius by the politicians involved than a real difference in thought process. Surely that word, Vadertje, feels more feminine or at least gender neutral to you, linguistically, than whatever Dutch speakers would use to describe (sexual predator, misogynist) Trump?

JoyOfResistance

It's not actually, it's a historical term from the post-war era when our societal systems were built around care (cheap healthcare/transport/education for everyone, what later would be called "the nurture state" and destroyed by right wing politics). That's why I understand this binary Natalie is talking about, but don't think it's a universal concept, because I personally (in Europe) don't feel like caring/leftist politics is either a mother or father concept.

Annie Landis

Does this mean that Maggie Thatcher, Marine Le Pen, and Giorgia Maloni... Daddy???

Chris Oakley

the end of i saw the tv glow but it's tucker carlson realizing he wants to be vigorously spanked for being a bad little girl

zoey

not text painting! how have i been so late to the party?! new egg and classical music major = shooketh at Natalie talking about Handel's Messiah 😍

Alvaro Altamirano

The far-right is about to win the presidential elections in my country, heeeeeelp

Rose Dombegh

I wonder how someone like Tolkien's work factors into this moral system. Bc the political environment of Middle Earth is explicitly patriarchal, but Tolkien's entire vision of legitimate masculinity and legitimate male leadership is based around nurturance and care. He makes an explicit point that the male heroes and legitimate male rulers of his world (Aragorn and Faramir) prefer healing and gardening to warfare.

Whitters

I was hoping you’d expound on this idea in a future video after seeing Conspiracy. It was great to see this post!

Alex Moody

I was struck when you said that you got some pushback from feminists who believe that any repression of sexuality is wrong because sexuality is pure. Basically I think they're reifying sexuality as some kind of pure... force, or whatever, when in reality it is comprised of parts. There's a power part. There's an urge-satisfying/ relief part. And there's the pro-social and even loving part. (And more, sure -- I'm just pulling apart some threads... To speak METAPHORICALLY.) You can't distill sexuality into just one part, the wholesome part, but I think they make that mistake when they say that repressing sexuality is wrong/ unwholesome/ whatever. ... Maybe a moment of sexuality can be pure :) Sure, why not lol. But repression is necessary in other moments to prevent the dominating & instrumentalizing parts from causing harm! PS, It's nice that I've been out of the habit of watching video essays. Gives me some nourishment in this troubled time of rare Contrapoints content 🥲

feli

I listen to this rather niche podcast "As for me and my house" where youtuber milena ciciotti (who has become more and more extreme in her views) talks all things biblical with her husband. Her husband, even though being in the military (I think?) tries to embody the kind of masculinity you mentioned. In one episode they talk about how important it is to apologise to your children or that dads should cuddle their baby boys just like their baby girls, because babies are babies and need cuddles regardless of gender. Even though Milena and her man are as far right as one can be without openly supporting tr-mp, they protray some kind of soft "biblical" far right extremism that is more attractive to the political "middle". In my opinion, individuals like these two are very dangerous political actors because they appeal more to average women and especially mothers who are being radicalized by that kind of content.

bumper

After watching this, the idea came to me that certain online personalities are huge wankers in some direct metaphorical way. Like, since they fail at being real Daddies they resort to bullying dogs. Or, that they are so immature that they just bully people in general in overdone ways. They present themselves as "Daddy" in performative, uncalled for ways. Caricatures of fathers. Overall, fabulous work. Important, extremely insightful. To me, some of your best work.

Sabastian Q. Conour

The argument of the inherent paternalism of an authoritarian state is so authentic that you see it in practically all dystopian literature. The informer and torturer from 1984, O'Brien, is this archetype. Punishing, cold, withholding, but the character himself doesn't see his actions as naked brutality, he sees them as corrective.

Sabrina Penna

This tangent is aging very well.

Ale Kenward

I revisited this after the Minnessota shootings, only to comment on how quickly the "don't thread on me" libertarians rolled over to autoritarianism. It is as if they really yearn to be spanked.

Shaiyanne Mall

You taught me something about being a man in this one. A manly thank you to you, Good Madam. ❤️

illegal silly billy gal lily

thinking out loud but do we think there is a significant difference between populism and conspiracism? like, both rely on dualism (corrupt elite vs good common people). hostader coined the paranoid style of politics but it seems to apply to both. apparently in surveys results there is no difference.

Temates

Very interesting, I guess I'll need to sign up to the advanced class to understand Giorgia Meloni, campaigning on being a Christian mother while being super aggressive and asking to be called Mr. president

MogwaiTheBrown

I just watched this for the first time and the comment about Trump not being militaristic yet has aged like a fine wine.

Addi

My response to your question at 1:12:06 (Regarding Aristotle's claim that democracy is self-destructive, "What are we supposed to make of that? I don't know."). It means that we should understand the fragility of democracy as a necessary part of it, but not as a reason to abandon democracy. Assuming non-democracy is only either an authoritarian government or an anarchical, cruel, selfish "state of nature" (Hobbes I think), there is no possible political system better than democracy. Therefore, when democracy destroys itself, our goal should become to restore democracy. It also reminds us to value preserving democracy for as long as we can rather than letting it die because it is destined to die (temporarily).