Jesse Watters is what Fox News has used as a Tucker Carlson replacement since the latter pundit made himself too toxic even for them. He has no problems with men opining over women’s pregnancies but says older woman who can’t get pregnant should shut up about abortion bans. He blames the collapse of one bank on them celebrating Pride Week. He claims if presidents aren’t immune for crimes committed in office, Biden can be convicted of child trafficking. His commentary is what you get when your job is to keep viewers hooked by feeding their biases, not doing serious thinking.
And as Fox viewers back Trump, no surprise Watters’ latest non-thought is that dictatorship is good: “We’re so used to empty promises that the idea that a politician could get elected and deliver the policies that people voted for quickly and efficiently is so foreign that anyone who promises real change on day one has to be a strong man. They sound terrified that Trump might secure the border, stop crime and drill. Now if you believe that you want to put America first, you’re a Nazi, according to them. If you want America not first, you’re a patriot. See, they’re conditioning us to be ashamed of making our country great.”
First, let’s state the obvious: Watters doesn’t want a dictator (assuming he’s speaking any truth at all), he wants a dictator who’ll enact policies he’ll like. Which is true of everyone who wants a dictatorship, even liars like Curtis Yarvin who claim he wants a dictatorship that will benefit everyone.
Second, “policies that people voted for ” — at no time has a majority of voters supported Trump’s policies. He lost the popular vote in both elections, much as he keep lying about it. Hell, 2004 is the only election a Republican president has won the popular vote since 1988. But that’s why Republican toadies like Watters want a dictatorship: the majority are against them so they can’t get what they want if government responds to the people.
Third, Trump had a Republican Congress behind him the first two years of his presidency. Did he deliver the better-than-Obamacare health plan he promised? Nor did he bring back business to the US. He gave a huge tax cut to the rich but most voters weren’t clamoring for that.
In conclusion, Watters spoken argument isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
Next, Matt Walsh, a raging misogynist, ragingly anti-trans Christian authoritarian who thinks America was better-off when everyone smoked, and asserts the racist great replacement theory is fact. He insists Nikki Haley has never been teased about being a woman of color because she’s not dark enough. And that buying your wife a gift ahead of time instead of grabbing something at the last minute is completely gay.
Now he’s arguing we need to be less tolerant and resume judging people’s private lives: “We need to normalize, once again, judging people for their private lives. Especially considering that for most people, everything you do is part of your quote-unquote private life. In a sense that if you’re a private citizen, your whole life, you could argue, is your private life. So, if you can’t make judgments about someone based on their private life, that means you can’t make any judgments about them at all.”
This does not make sense but hey, it’s Walsh. Anyone who listens to him and believes him isn’t big on rational argument so why would he try to construct one?
What it appears he’s trying to do is get around that old argument that one person’s right to swing their fist ends where someone else’s nose begins. Or as Jefferson said, one person’s choice of god neither picks their neighbor’s pocket nor breaks their neighbor’s leg — therefore let them worship as they choose.
That’s a reasonable approach: people’s lives are private until they infringe on someone else’s life. In practice, figuring out where the infringement takes place gets more complicated: we don’t allow people to drive drunk even if they haven’t hit anyone yet, for instance. But still it’s a good starting place. Contrary to Walsh not everything is part of our private life: beating your spouse up isn’t private, even if you do it behind closed doors,
That, however, works against Walsh’s desire to hound and torment LGBTQ people, therefore the standard has to go. It would also inconvenience his efforts to brand any woman as a slut if she has sex before marriage (see the first link) and to reject consent as a standard. If a woman feels bad after rape, it’s because she let a man use her as a “masturbatory aide,” not because she was really, truly raped.
Walsh, of course, already judges people’s private lives if they’re gay, sexually active women, etc. (to his credit, he judges Trump for his long history of adultery too). Maybe he’s just butt-hurt from people criticizing him for it.
