Shiny, Happy, Horrible People

The "Strict Father Family" is just an excuse for abuse.

Linguist George Lakoff, in his seminal volume, “Don’t Think of an Elephant,” writes about the two kinds of social structures that underly political views in the U.S.

The “Strict Father Family” emphasizes the centrality of a male figure who sets the rules, and a family that obeys them.

The “Nurturant Parent Family” emphasizes the role of parents or leaders as guides, who listen as much as they speak. 

I’ve come to realize since this book came out in 2004 that what we’re talking about is “controlling intelligence” vs. “emotional intelligence.”

Or the bully vs. the bullied.

Or men vs. women.

Or all of the above wrapped in fundamentalist religious beliefs.

Not that all women are emotionally intelligent, and all men aren’t. But the traits of each role Lakoff explores are the stereotypical traits we lay out for men and women.

Right now, our political culture is overwhelmed by the strict father stereotype, which is openly scornful of the nurturant parent family.

We see it in the rise of fundamentalist Christianity vs. humanist Christianity, as Kristin du Mez describes in her book, “Jesus and John Wayne.”

We see it in Justice Samuel Alito’s Catholic dogma, which he twisted to justify state regulation of our bodies.

We see it in the Southern Baptist Convention’s sexual abuse scandal, and CPAC’s sexual abuse scandal, and the Christian camp sex abuse scandal, and, and, and…

We see it in the Republican presidential primary.

People who want a more pluralistic society, with an emphasis on growth and enlightenment, who reject the idea that we should fear our leaders… those people are hated by the top-down authoritarians. We are weak. And weak = women. Weak = not cruel.

Insurrection as Apotheosis

This week, four members of the Proud Boys were sentenced to 10, 15, 17 and 18 years in prison, respectively, for their role in the January 6 insurrection. This comes three months after Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years. Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio will be sentenced Tuesday; prosecutors are asking for 33 years, but he will likely get around 19 or 20.

The white supremacist values embodied in the violent men, and some women, who breached the capital is the apotheosis of the top-down, strict-father family social structure Lakoff wrote about. And many of them, like Rhodes and Alex Jones - who was in the Willard Hotel “command center” on January 6 - have a history of abusing their families.

Which brings us to Ruby Franke.

On Wednesday, Franke and her YouTube partner Jodi Hildebrandt were arrested for child abuse of Franke’s children, after Franke’s younger son climbed out of a window at Hildebrandt’s Southern Utah home and ran to a neighbor’s house asking for food and water.

The New York Times reports that the document charging the pair with six counts of child abuse noted that the 12-year-old “had duct tape on his ankles and wrists, as well as open wounds. He appeared to be emaciated and malnourished.”

When police were called to the home he had escaped from, they found his 10-year-old sister with the same injuries.

The Washington Post quoted a statement from the county attorney, Erik Clark, that the two children were subjected to, “a combination of multiple physical injuries or torture, starvation or malnutrition that jeopardizes life, causing severe emotional harm.”

Here’s the thing. Franke made a name for herself with a YouTube channel called “8 Passengers,” a biblical allusion to Jesus taking the wheel. On her channel, Franke preached her top-down parenting style, including punishing her children by starving them or taking away their beds. At its height, the channel had 2.5 million subscribers.

This is not surprising, though it is distressing. Millions of people think top-down, punishment-style parenting is good for their children and for society. They are taught this in their fundamentalist homes, in their fundamentalist communities, in their churches. 

Lakoff details in “Elephant” that he first realized the reasons for the strict father linguistic framing after a couple of Christian linguist friends steered him to James Dobson. 

Dobson. Everything seems to come back to this guy.

His name is synonymous with the organization he started, Focus on the Family, after writing a book in 1970 that advocated for harsh corporal punishment for children as young as 15-months old. 

Dobson also popularized the “daddy-daughter dating” phenomenon, which he said was meant to model heterosexuality to young girls, but instead modeled the idea that fathers could do anything to their daughters, who had to obey. 

Dobson made millions of dollars selling tapes of his interview with serial rapist and killer Ted Bundy. He was famously a supporter of Roy Moore, the former Alabama Supreme Court justice who faced sexual harassment charges so odious that this deep red state picked a Democratic Senator in a 2017 special election.

Lakoff characterizes Dobson’s views on corporal punishment as: “When children do something wrong, if they are physically disciplined, they learn not to do it again.”

Now let’s look at a quote from Ruby Franke in Business Insider in 2020: 

"There are natural consequences to every choice we make, and if we communicate these when children make poor choices in behavior, the learning is profound. This way the child learns their choices have a direct impact."

Her children had choices. Starve or obey. Those are choices?

When Does It Become Abuse?

After viewers became concerned Franke was abusing her children, the YouTube channel dwindled and was eventually taken down. It’s not clear if Franke canceled the channel or YouTube did.

But before viewers became concerned about Franke going too far in making sure her children obeyed, they were perfectly fine watching her channel and taking her parenting advice. I guess the definition of “too far” or “child abuse” isn’t set in stone.

Franke’s sisters - who are also parenting influencers with a Jesus bent - posted on Instagram that for the last three years, they had “kept quiet on the subject of our sister… for the sake of her children,” but were fighting to “make sure the kids were safe” behind the scenes.

Followers skewered them for knowingly allowing their nieces and nephews to stay in a home that was unsafe.

Franke’s oldest daughter, in school at Brigham Young University, posted on Instagram with the word “Finally,” referring to her mother’s arrest, adding, “We’ve been trying to tell the police and CPS for years about this.”

NBC News’ Kalhan Rosenblatt interviewed two of Franke’s neighbors, who indicated they, too, reported her to Child Protective Services and the police “multiple times,” without much of a response.

What strikes me about the NBC story, though, is that the two neighbors didn’t want to give their names. They were afraid.

What kind of top-down, authoritarian hell is this that makes people afraid to step forward to help children they know are being abused? One that, perhaps, is filled with people who believe in the teachings of James Dobson or some other abusive authority figure hiding behind religion?

It’s worth noting that Franke lives in Springville, Utah, just 50 miles south of Salt Lake City, but she was arrested in Ivins, Utah, 260 miles south, near the Arizona and Nevada borders. It was the authorities in Ivins who took action. What is the issue with the authorities in Springville that is different in Ivins?

Timid Journalism

The way this story is being portrayed is that this is an outlier, not a step too far down an already treacherous road.

We still, as journalists, think it’s parents’ choice to be controlling of their children. And we have not, as a group, come to grips with the idea that control is a form of abuse.

And so we miss the point when we report on, say, Moms for Liberty. We first miss the point that this is a small group with outsized funding. The only people I see looking at that are Teddy Wilson and Judd Legum.

Journalists usually amplify the voices that are already loud, without asking where they got their megaphone.

But the story I think we’ve missed with Moms for Liberty and other groups is that banning books and attacking teachers is about control. And trying to control other people is abusive.

Journalists, of course, are human. And some of us come from families where control is the working dynamic. Many of us bring that “leadership style” into our work environments.

You don’t have to starve or beat your children in order to be abusive. Shutting down their minds and their will is enough. You don’t have to sexually harass your employees to be abusive. Micromanaging and demoralizing them is enough.

All we report on, all we see as a society, are the extremes. At some point, we need to take a hard look at how we allow those extremes to happen.

But that requires us to look at ourselves.