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Whether in Chicago last week or Milwaukee last month, the obscurity of American politics these days makes one turn to illuminations from the past. Trump expatiating lengthily on his injured ear during his speech at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee called to mind some lines from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. Returning wounded and victorious from war, Coriolanus enters a Rome searching for a new Consul. The people need to be convinced that Coriolanus is the man for the job. Among other things, they expect him to fuse his will with theirs and show him his physical injuries, a bonding rite between leader and people. One Roman citizen says to the other: “for if he [Coriolanus] show us/his wounds and tell us his deeds, we are to put our/tongues into those wounds and speak for them.” In other words; “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
A few weeks later and another line from the English canon sprang to mind. At the Democratic convention in Chicago, the TV audience watched Gus Walz, Tim Walz’s 17-year-old son, who has a non-verbal learning disorder, turn frantically around, overstimulated, anxiety and uncertainty on his face. Tears ran down his cheeks as he clearly mouthed the words “That’s my Dad!” to his father, who stood on the stage accepting the nomination as Kamala Harris’s running mate. I have an experience of people with non-verbal learning disorders. Involuntarily, out of the depths, Milton’s immortal line from “Lycidas” came into my mind: “Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth.” Politicians are fond of quoting Lincoln’s “better angels of our nature”, especially Obama, whose almost obsessive identification with Lincoln is provocative, to put it mildly. But the angel America needs is not an admonitory angel. It is an angel whose gaze starts from the mortal core of being human, groupless, as it were, and irreducibly particular, and guides society from that place.
The media distracted itself with some vicious MAGA types, who mocked Gus Walz’s display of vulnerability. Right-wing agitator Ann Coulter posted a picture of Gus with the comment: “Talk about weird.” It was good to expose these social atrocities, if only to give a glimpse of the moral atmosphere that will prevail should Trump clamber once again to the top.
Other people have written about their own experiences with children who, as Tina Brown movingly put it in The New York Times, “struggle with being different”. Brown did not use the term “neurodivergent”. That was admirable. “Neurodivergent” is a precious replacement for some blind, ugly slur. At the same time, why should people who are unquantifiably different be quantified with a clinical term that establishes their “difference” irrefutably, narrowly, scientifically, for all time and on every occasion? Brown ended by gratifyingly calling for national attention to be paid to human beings like her son.
There was also another way to regard the revelation of Tim Walz’s son. He is what progressives have desperately needed. Gus was not vulnerable because he belonged to a racial, or biological, or sexual group; he wasn’t vulnerable because the planet is in jeopardy; he wasn’t vulnerable because history had been unfair to people like him. He was vulnerable because he was entirely, specifically, uniquely human. Cyril Connolly once quipped that imprisoned in every fat man is a thin one wildly signaling to be let out. Well, imprisoned in every supposedly “normal” person is a person like Gus. Mortality and circumstance guarantee that inner person’s eventual emergence.
At the heart of the “caring” society put forward by Harris is a long tradition of moral imagination, beginning with Christ’s injunction to do unto others what you would have them do unto you. That runs through Kant’s precept of acting as though what you did everyone should do, to John Rawls’s “veil of ignorance”. Rawls’s concept is a thought experiment in which you imagine that you know nothing about yourself: your abilities, your class, your race, your sex, your nationality, even your taste. What you do know is that all those qualities are distributed unequally in the hard, brutal world. The experiment requires you to create a society based on your ignorance of your situation, and on your knowledge of the cold, cruel world. Of course, any rational person would create a society based both on Christ’s injunction, and Kant’s precept.
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SubscribeThe author may be a wonderful, well informed person, but I absolutely despise this type of writing. He litters his essay with useless references to Shakespeare, Milton and Kant. I get the impression he’s more interested in parading his well-read wisdom, rather than making a coherent, articulate argument.
By the way, the conservative pundits I follow had nothing but praise for Gus Walz. He was the only authentic person at the convention.
I struggled with the first paragraph, the second paragraph completely lost me, so jumped straight to comments: I guess that I am just ‘different’ from the author.
Precisely. I ended it when I came to this pompous railing, “ It’s a thought experiment that the MAGA tough guys, the sophisticated conservative liberal-eye-pokers, and the hillbilly elegists would do well to perform.”
Oh, thank you mighty great one for enlightening us knuckle draggers.
You missed a lot because the last paragraph is great:
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“The fact is that in America, both Left and Right has forgotten how to care. Therefore, let both sides gaze upon Gus Walz’s face at the convention, reflect on his exclamation, “That’s my Dad!” and melt with ruth. In a time where God is absent, we are all, whether we know it or not, searching for that moment of grace.”
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I rushed to the Internet to find out more about this episode, and immediately found an article in USA TODAY with the title “Gus Walz broke the internet with his tearful love for his dad. Then the bullying began“.
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The phrase about bullying calmed me down, there are still many sane people in America.
What?!
Be thankful you aren’t a bag of wind.
Articles like this regularly appear at Unherd. American politicians, writers, cultural commentators are very good at standing on the shoulders of others with no connection except the way they contrive it. So reference to European philosophers, Shakespeare, Homer, Greek and Roman architecture, Roman senators, English literary critics and of course Christ. Gee, it’s as if America had no culture to fall back on.
Well then, Brett, let’s put it in good old American literary vernacular from Mark Twain. When Huckleberry Finn is faced with betraying an uneducated and utterly vulnerable companion or facing eternal damnation, he says: “All right then I’ll go to hell.” Could anything — anything — be more distinct from Trump’s manic loyalty to no one but himself, and to his mockery of the vulnerable and disabled?
Can’t wait for all the thumbs down.
Good…Here’s one.
And here’s one back.
“Trump’s manic loyalty to no one but himself” is a really weird line that’s frequently used by people who don’t really think about it.
Trump could be taking the easy life in retirement. Instead he’s been prosecuted and pursued, his businesses fined more than Boeing, name smeared and slandered, censored, impeached (twice), the subject of hoaxes and media lies, lost money while the president, and he’s been shot at and one inch from being killed. But he’s still running. If he’s in it for himself, then he is one hell of a masochist.
Or, hmm, a narcissist.
This is what I don’t get from the TDS crowd. Brett never mentioned Trump. No one in this comment thread has mentioned Trump. Yet out of nowhere you think this is about Trump. Funny that.
The author mentions Trump in the second sentence. Then goes on to talk about MAGA acolytes extensively. Of course this article is about Trump and his supporters.
I didn’t mention Trump or MAGA at all. Are you sure you’re referring to the right comment.
Brett, you don’t mention Trump. The author does, in the second sentence, and of course the article is about MAGA. I’ve edited my post.
Okay. Thanks for clarification.
And don’t forget the ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ allusion.
Yes, in modern fashion, the answer for him is “compassion.” In earlier times, the answer was “virtue.” The challenge the modern world faces is to establish that compassion can do the work of virtue. We’ve been waiting a long time for modernity to prove as much.
He’s either completely ignorant of history or wants to repeat it.
Any rational person would have a look at what happens in such societies, and would quickly decide they’d be better off not living in them.
Cambodia under Pol Pot? Cuba under Castro? The Soviet Union under Lenin or Stalin? Venezuela under Chavez? No thanks.
You may know this already, but Allen Bloom savaged Rawls’ book. I don’t know that any other book has taken quite such a beating.
Yes, I had to stop reading to avoid having to throw up. It’s good to see I’m not the only one who was put off by the writer’s indulgent style. Unherd can do better.
Increasingly I’m beginning to wonder if it can.
Can it?
I will not be renewing my subscription.
Walz is your typical Stolen Valor type, meaning a liar. He left the National Guard when word got around his unit was going to be deployed to Iraq. Afterward, running for office, he claimed he was a warrior comfortable with gun in hand. He also wasn’t a sergeant major, another lie. And he has paid 33 trips to China so far, way more than even Hunter Biden and his business associates put together.
He wouldn’t have been sent to Iraq or any combat anywhere, because he had a hearing loss. Also, he spent years training soldiers how to use weapons, so yes, he knew how to handle a weapon.
No. He’s parading his (well-warranted) sense of intellectual inferiority. Only the culturally insecure arriviste types feel the need to namecheck every kitchensink on the bookshelf.
In short, i fully agree with you; only reiterating your demure British backhanded compliment in my savage continental European delivery.
As for the article – “non-verbal learning disorder” is a somewhat convoluted neologism for oligophrenia.
Hardly.
Do you not think he’s being used as a prop? A 17 year old. TV producer at a huge choreographed rally has a cameraman on close up, clearly pre-planned since the camera operator was in place metres away (he wasn’t the only child they were filming for a reaction), to show the image of what is a strong, genuine emotional reaction to his Dad on stage. The media then rolls out the clip, gushing over how sweet it was. Writers then follow up with party talking points like ‘caring’ and ‘soft’ following the planned and orchestrated narrative.
This might sound unnecessarily cynical, but this is a party that organised the removal of Biden and installation of Harris without any involvement of votes from party members, that plays lawfare, runs hoaxes, smears and censorship and keeps Kamala in a cotton-wool box as far away from the few remaining journalists as possible. Skeptical? Just a little.
Do I think he was used as a prop? It’s a Democrat convention and it’s about a “caring” government. Cynicism is a reasonable response,
I’ll add that the January 6th protest was choreographed by an ABC television producer hired by Nancy Pelosi, whose daughter was there with a camera crew. When the crowd wasn’t spicy enough for the “riot” visuals, the feds heaved smoke bombs at them for panic and photo ops.
It’s all fake now.
We cannot tell for sure whether he was used as a prop or not, but my first thought when I learned about the story was that it was extremely ill-advised to take a minor with special needs to such a place. Exposing a vulnerable person (and more so, a minor) to such a degree of sensory overload and emotional strain is clearly fraught with a lot of risks for this person’s wellbeing.
I personally would not do it if I had the responsibility to care for such a person…
But the photo-op!
Yes, this might be the case, I agree.
I just wanted to share what my (almost automatic) thoughts were when I read about all this.
And what I thought does not rule out the photo-op/prop version, because my primary concern was about the responsibility one should have for vulnerable people, especially if they are minors. And especially if it was a parent making a decision to put their vulnerable child in a potentially harmful situation.
Yes, back off from Gus Walz
very good point, but maybe we ought to hope the parents knew him well enough. I’m also in agreement with those saying he was a prop. If so, that would underscore the author’s point, that if we cared equally, there would be no need for that pretense.
What I noticed was that Walz jerked his son’s hand a couple of times on the stage, when it was time for a photo op. Didn’t look like “a moment of grace”…
Fine words, but even from a UK perspective, we know that a Harris/Walz administration will be a catastrophe for your country and the world.
Walz, schmaltz.
“At the heart of the ‘caring’ society put forward by Harris …”
Give us all a break.
The only difference between Harris and Trump is that he makes the lies up as he goes along while she reads them on Autocue.
Good grief.
‘…and carapaced in rebarbative ideologies’
Hello!
A bit of whataboutery: Wasn’t Trump’s young son (about the same age) the subject of nasty comments when he appeared awkwardly on stage after Trump won in 2016?
‘Rebarbative’ is a vey apt word for this article’s author.
Trump was nearly assassinated but for a slight turn of the head. Brushing it off as “expiating lengthily about his injured ear” whilst writing an entire article about an emotional teenaged boy is petty and small – in keeping with all of the articles I’ve read by this writer.
I skimmed the essay. One could tell it was blather after the first paragraph. The storytelling and meme crafting is nauseating. They also told us Joe was the ‘new FDR’. Now we’re being told that Kamala Harris is the second-coming, that she’ll deliver us from all the misdeeds and bad results of the Administration she’s now serving in. With the Democrats, it’s all smoke and mirrors. That Walz kid is just the son of a candidate, nothing more. There’s nothing to see here.
While I don’t have much time for Ann Coulter, Siegel either hasn’t realised or has ignored the current tactic used by the Harris/Walz pair, that Trump and Vance are ‘weird’: she’s just returning the ball. And I don’t think much of all Siegel’s blah about caring for the most vulnerable while the Dems are all in for abortion up to birth and, indeed, effectively after birth. In Minnesota, during Walz’s term as governor, eight babies were born alive in failed abortions between 2019 and 2021. Despite the law requiring they be given life saving care, none were. In 2023, Gov. Tim Walz signed legislation ending both the requirement to report such births and the requirement to provide life saving care to a baby surviving an abortion.
I had not heard of A. Coulter before the backlash against her tweet which I find nasty, regardless of circumstances.
However, to the best of my knowledge, she deleted that tweet once she was told about Gus Walzes’s specific condition.
Naturally, it would have been better for her not to make comments on the topic in the first place, but the fact that she deleted the tweet quickly enough should also be recognised. Despite this, the backlash against her continued for quite a while…
Off: I upvoted your comment just 15 minutes after you posted it and now all votes under your post have disappeared. I cannot even vote for it again, because the moderation system says that I have already voted. Am going to write to Unherd Support for twentieth time now, to draw their attention to the moderation system they use… [sigh]
Edited to add: now the votes have re-appeared, but the problem obviously exists…
UnHerd seems to delete most up or down ticks after 12 hours. No idea why they think that this is a bright idea.
Yesterday I received a reply from them that they contacted the head of their IT department (or someone equivalent, don’t remember the exact title) in order to address this issue.
As far as could see, there’s no fixed “deadline” for votes to disappear, it’s all hit and miss.
And this is just one of the many glitches in their moderation system. The worst one being that the comments might disappear for no obvious reason.
Today, I was reminded by UnHerd Support that this was because of “queueing for moderation”. However, I would believe that if someone is a paying subscriber (i.e. can be easily identified), esp. commenting under their real name, this should imply some “lighter moderation”.
In any case, I find it highly demotivating when my innocuous comments disappear for hours, sometimes for many hours, which renders them practically useless…
Disappointing, isn’t it?
How shallow, like the candidate this essay pimps for.
Give me a break. This is coming from the people who spent four years calling Melania every name in the book, fantasizing about subjecting Barron to rape gangs, and an endless barrage of other notable displays of tolerance. Out of the blue, a politician and the media (predictably) try to make a spectacle of a candidate’s learning-disabled son.
For someone unaware of Gus’s condition, it was weird. Because most of us don’t use our children as mascots, or worse, as bait in hopes of luring some over the top response so we can demonize the entirety of our opposition.
While I believe that I can entirely understand your logic, I would think that one should not stoop to the level of their opponents.
I know that this is difficult and sometimes the temptation is too big (I speak from my own experience here, too). Still, it is better not to resort to behaviour that is demeaning and shows no class.
Once again, easier said than done, I know, but still…
Noise canceling earphones would have shown that Gus’s parents cared about him. Maybe this was an intentional way to gain sympathy but a sad abuse of a child.
That was my point, too. Just something a responsible parent would not subject their vulnerable child to, in the first place.
‘…..your abilities, your class, your race, your sex, your nationality, even your taste. What you do know is that all those qualities are distributed unequally in the hard, brutal world.’
So no more harping on about ‘white privilege’?
Huh, most of us simply saw a kid being used as a prop, and some camo-capped schlub trying a little too hard to be “one of the guys”. The 2024 version of Michael Dukakis in a tank.
All that aside, this article is the most overwrought chunk of doggerel I’ve read in years.
What a load of self-pleasuring twaddle posing as serious exposition. The obscure – and mostly incoherent – Shakespeare reference was the moment I realized this guy grew up in a neighborhood where no one ever got his a** kicked for being arrogant.
“ It was good to expose these social atrocities, if only to give a glimpse of the moral atmosphere that will prevail should Trump clamber once again to the top.”
The economic, cultural, and civilizational atmosphere, however…
Having divided society by race and by gender and by sex and having destroyed families and communities, the Democrats ask where have all the caring people gone.
We are ‘carapaced in rebarbative ideologies’ and couldn’t care less, are we? This is all so pretentious and over the top. Have there ever been more compassionate and caring societies? There certainly haven’t been any that have sacralized those sentiments more, nor cynically used them to such a degree to mask their own ideologies. Be wary of those who make a great show of their goodness. Also of those who put the word normal in scare quotes.
And are caring and empathy ( supposing any real difference between those two ) the noblest of qualities, anyway? I don’t think so. They will round out a person’s character but not the ones you would choose above all others. They are embedded in nobler qualities like self-mastery, anyway.
The Rawls original position thought experiment is so over-used. It is an argument for the lowest common denominator, so far as I can see, and for dethroning not only the exceptional but also for ‘deconstructing’ normality itself. It is an argument for least harm. What greatest good has ever come from such an attitude? There are no risk-takers in the Rawlsian world. It seems like a bleak and featureless place. Progressive, you might say.
What is a ‘non-verbal learning disorder’ anyway?
It’s one of those diagnostic terms which sounds bad, because ‘learning disorder’ used to have a fairly unambiguous meaning, but has now come to encompass a wide range of children who are essentially perfectly normal by any historic standards?
It is not a diagnostic term. It really makes no sense.
Mocking Tim Walz’s son makes a person ignorant and hateful. He is clearly a loving son.
However, I find the fact that the Walzs don’t just say that Gus is autistic to be strange. I have an autistic daughter and I am a teacher with 25 years experience. The diagnoses the Walzs offer – Non-Verbal Learning Disorder and ADHD – together encompass all the diagnostic criteria for autism.
As a teacher, I often have students whose IEP’s (SENS for the UK folks) will say OHI – Other Health Impairment, and ADHD, Anxiety, Processing Disorder, etc. Then I will meet the child, and he or she is clearly autistic: social, language, processing, and sensory issues, trouble with emotional regulation etc.
All these diagnoses are just based on symptoms presenting, with the exception of the genetic research done on autism genes. But when parents shy away from the word autism because they fear a stigma, they only stigmatize autistic people more.
In its most severe form, autism can be heartbreakingly disabling. But in lesser degrees, it can also confer considerable gifts – amazing focus, high intellect, acute perception. Either way, every life is sacred – imbued by our creator by inherent, sacred value.
I wish the Walzs would embrace autism and by doing so help every autistic person.
The entire Democratic National Convention was an exercise in emotion as the basis for politics and policy. And their presidential nominee STILL hasn’t sat for an interview, and apparently will only do so for CNN if she has Walz with her as her emotional support person AND if CNN agrees to edit the interview prior to release.
Mr. Siegel is simply serving up more bathos.
Oprahism 101, and she was there at the convention.
Are the Democrats trying to invent themselves as the party of families?
Harris oversaw huge shortages of baby formula on her watch, and the price has increased by over 25% since she took office.
There are a lot more vulnerable children now that the Democrats have made it harder for women to feed their babies.
All very nice and pompous; but the the author of this messy piece misses the fundamental truth that the two Democrat candidates (especially Harris) are quite incompetent, and frauds really. If the USA finds itself with them in place next year as POTUS and VPOTUS, then there will be a serious price to pay.
“should Trump clamber once again to the top” – that was unexpectedly cheap & nasty again UnHerd. The 2nd time in a week – after the piece on Tommy Robinson.
“the protection of that figure of Gus deep within every person requires a powerful, protective state that seeks rational, peaceful authority”
Rarely do we see Progressive philosophy stated so honestly: Everybody is a child and must be controlled and protected.
People like Gus should be protected, but a government premised on the idea that we’re all as helpless as he is would produce only an abusive, controlling, punitive, “Mommie Dearest” state.
I appreciate your kind and thoughtful words. Thank you.
A timely reflection on our consideration for others, especially the “different” ones.
But not through the cynical machine of the Democrat party machine. That’s hard to swallow.
A deficiency of caring is not the issue in America. A denial of the harm caused by its cynical appropriation by the politically powerful is.
I admit it. I had to look up ruth.. that was the only thing I learned from this drivel and attempt to dazzle us with bullshit. Walz used his child. as politicians will. anyone remember the berating Trumps son took ( and still takes).. Clintons daughter ( the chinless wonder). Palins downs son.. etc..and like so many others. I looked homeward.. to the end of this hubris
okay, so a bit over-wrought, but there is a very vital para: Maybe the next time they hold a convention, they’ll discourage splintering the human experience into a thousand tales told by a thousand different identities.
Exactly; if we’ve split society fairly in treatment, then we just get on with society. We don’t do all that masturbation about caring and hating.
Gus Walz is a bawling dumbass-er, neurodivergent. Dad’s DNA doesn’t fall far form the turkey-baster he was conceived with (Walz lied about IVF as well). The author seems to forget that Timmy “Tampon” Walz supports infanticide (abortion up to and even after birth) in his state. Typical leftist that loves humanity but can’t stand humans.
Damn, I thought this was really well done. I’m not sure we all default to our inner Christian, my respect for Kant (and so Rawls) notwithstanding. But I wish we did. Liberalism (in that sense) undermined itself in practice in the second half of the twentieth century, leading to the bifurcation you address, and make it hard to address the human in the particular, unless perhaps our child. But there but for the grace . . . yeah. Something I’m struggling to write about, fwiw. Anyway, both this and your Barbie/Openheimer take were very well done; please keep up the good work.