Disturbing as it was to hear Milo Yiannopoulos describe then-president Trump as “Daddy” a few years ago, it’s even more alarming to hear much more mainstream media figures referring to Joe Biden as our new national dad. Thinking of the president as America’s sole controlling authority, in whom all power and decision-making rest, is a confident first step on the road to serfdom. We may speak of “founding fathers” of the past to acknowledge our debt to our predecessors, but it’s a very different thing to frame breathtakingly unconstitutional orders from a sitting president as valid because the president is the head of our family. No, he is merely the temporary head, subject to removal, of one of three branches of government.
A popular podcaster with 175,000 followers on Twitter says:
Hearing Biden finally draw the line with the morons:
Dad came home and let the kids have it, for wrecking the house, drinking all the booze, stealing mom’s jewelry, and draining the bank account. pic.twitter.com/Ia5x1X9b6Q— Stephanie "LB" 🟧 (@LincolnsBible) September 9, 2021
MSNBC personality Matthew Miller salutes Biden’s latest grotesque overreach (via Twitter) in these words: “Enjoying the angry dad vibes from this Biden speech. He is turning the damn car around.” In another tweet, Miller praised Biden for saying, “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin” and “Show some respect” because “Dads know. (Moms too of course.)” In another tweet, Miller said, “Bold stuff. The WH is clearly done messing around and isn’t afraid of the Idiocracy ideologues on the right.” “Messing around,” in this context, means adhering to the Constitution and/or federalism, or admitting that the presidency does not confer supreme power to do anything, even to steamroll over state governments. Jen Psaki and even Joe Biden acknowledged this until recently.
This is a recurring problem whenever a Democrat is president; party voters lose interest in norms, niceties and the Constitution and start to insist that Americans must do whatever the chief executive says because we’re all like a family and a family must have a ruler. A family, of course, is not a democracy. “The president and the First Lady are kind of like the mom and dad of the country,” comic Chris Rock said during the Obama Administration. “And when your Dad says something you listen, and when you don’t it will usually bite you on the ass later on.” I doubt Rock, or many other Hollywood stars, thought they were any under particular obligation to listen to or comply with the urgings of President Trump, or any other Republican president.