Elite Toddler Culture Is Drowning Us In a Puddle of Fake Tears (Updated)

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Donald Trump is a mean man. He’s a bully!

Oh no SCARY, he’s trying to BULLY the Supreme Court! I wrote at the Federalist this week about the stupidity of this argument — what is he implying he can do to the life-tenured justices, for crying out loud? — but I suspect I undersold the underlying sickness. Adults don’t use the word “bully” to talk about other adults, arguably outside of a few very narrow spaces involving things like domestic violence. It’s a preschool word. The easy recourse to toddler language at the New York Times is a sign of cultural regression. But it’s also a sign of habitual and persistent dishonesty. They’re pretending. I suspect they’ve pretended so much that they’ve forgotten they’re pretending, and the mask has become the face, but at root, they’re pretending.

We have fictional characters like Willie Stark and Frank Underwood because no one on the planet is dumb enough to think that politics is nice. The federal government spends $7 trillion a year, and the lure of that bucket of money brings out a bunch of throatcutters. This is possibly one of the most obvious realities of human existence. Politics is a knife fight.

Quite famously, members of Congress who suggested that they would oppose the legislative priorities of President Lyndon Johnson would get phone calls in the middle night from the man himself, waking them up and letting them know that they were dead men. He’s supposed to have said things like, “I’m gonna cut your balls off, you cocksucker,” though it’s not like anyone had a stenographer on the calls to nail the quotes. He was threatening and nasty on all days ending in -y, and got bills passed by, among other things, actually, physically intimidating people who didn’t roll over. He was a leaner. He got in faces, constantly and openly.

You gonna pass my bill [insert string of highly personal threats and profanity], or is your political career over? Pressure, threats, and horsetrading are the default behaviors, the normal stuff. Andrew Jackson got the Indian Removal Act through Congress by handing out government sinecures. The premise that I can take care of you or I can go to war with you, and it’s your choice which one happens is…politics. The make-believe story about Mean Donald Trump bullying the Supreme Court by tweeting at them or sitting in a chair where they could see him is playtime, clutching at Fisher-Price pearls. Somewhat remarkably, Trump appears to bully institutional opponents quite a bit less than the historical norm, and Lisa Murkowski can do whatever she wants without consequence. I am personally calling for Donald Trump to start actually bullying some people who have it coming, but be sure to have a fainting couch ready in the newsroom at Times Square.

If we have high-cultural-status adults who think that ordinary criticism and disagreement are bullying, then we have an infantilized and feminized culture. We’ve replaced firmness in debate with bitchy tone-policing. The “oh, that’s not appropriate” maneuver is everywhere, and it’s a cancer. Screenshot, but click this link to play the pathetic video:

The bitchy speech police have the self-awareness of a lump of dirt, and see also this story about professors at UCLA maneuvering to prevent Bari Weiss from appearing on campus. Actual email message from a political science professor: “I think it is disappointing that we are platforming a woman who has helped drive the narrative that universities are not places of academic freedom and, thus, has helped drive the attacks on the very university we work at.” They prevented her from speaking because they’re outraged at her false claims that professors prevent people from speaking. They canceled her because she’s a liar who claims that cancel culture is a thing. Chris Bray responds to the existence of 2026 academia, actual footage:

In other work at the Federalist this week, I wrote about the competing premises that are driving the war in Iran: “The Iran War Is Splintering.”

Speaking of thumbsucking toddlers, I wrote about the dumb thing: “The Latest ‘No Kings’ Protest Is The Sound Of A Tired Old Thing Trying To Not Die.”

And I wrote about the evidence regarding the seriousness of federal fraud prosecutions in the land of the Quality Learing Center: “The Fight Against Blue State Fraud Is Probably Going Better Than It Seems.”

Of course, I probably shouldn’t have written about any of this, and I’m sorry for being a mean bully.

ADDED:

I forgot to mention that Mean Chris Bray had a recent conversation with Mollie Hemingway and Kylee Griswold, and you can watch it here: