Sneering at the Childless

Is dabbing on DINKs worth concrete political failure?

Recently I’ve observed that a lot of Tradcons really enjoy sneering at childless people—so much so that they’re willing to expend significant political capital (and seriously jeopardize policy objectives they claim to prioritize) just to continue doing so.

Obviously this tendency has existed among Extremely Online rightists for ages now, but this past week it drifted into normie consciousness when JD Vance came under fire for his comments about Kamala Harris being a “childless cat lady.”

I’m not sure Trads realize just how big an unforced error it is for someone on the ticket to talk like that. Expressing naked contempt for a huge chunk of the electorate accomplishes literally nothing, and in all likelihood will massively increase opposing turnout while negatively polarizing thousands of swing voters against you.

We all remember Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” and Romney’s “47%”—will Vance’s “cat lady” comment go down in history as a similar fuckup? Even if it doesn’t cost Trump the Presidency, it could easily lose the GOP crucial downballot races.

And don’t think for one second that Trads are merely alienating ultra-liberal feminist wokescolds with this sort of behavior. Take a look at how Babylon Bee editor Joel Berry recently approached Dave Portnoy (the original Barstool Conservative):

Portnoy is a tremendously influential figure with significant media talents and a huge audience. Alienating him for the short term dopamine hit of dabbing on degens is clearly retarded—not merely because Portnoy himself is a useful ally to have on your side and very irritating to have as your enemy, but because he’s a cultural champion for a particular Type of Guy who’ll feel personally attacked when you say shit like this.

Unlike “childless cat ladies,” this type is a natural GOP constituency and you have to work hard to lose his vote. But if anyone can accomplish that it’s fellers like Berry.

Trads should frankly be a lot more disciplined in pursuit of their goals, and ought to remember that every GOP vote lost means more power for the faction that wants to sterilize children and dismember infants in the third trimester.

If they genuinely care about those things they need to ask themselves whether it’s worth it to negatively polarize potential allies just to insult rich and charismatic men who occasionally have consensual sex with much younger women.

…particularly because this description perfectly matches Donald Trump—a man virtually all Tradcons have come to deeply admire despite his famously degenerate lifestyle and obvious lack of interest in religious faith. If you can tolerate Trump’s sleazy comments on Ivanka’s body, there’s literally no reason to burn bridges with the likes of Portnoy.

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As I see it there are two distinct issues undergirding this tension.

First is the relatively boring policy debate over the extent to which society should deliberately create a material incentive structure that rewards having children.

Second is the increasingly nasty and resentful identitarian struggle that’s brewing between people who have kids and people who don’t.

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It’s important to begin this discussion by noting that as it stands the state already creates a pro-natalist incentive structure—both implicitly in that childless people pay taxes to finance services they never use (like the public education system), and explicitly in that families enjoy a significant child tax credit.

Together these factors amount to a substantial wealth transfer from the childless to parents—something the vast majority of childless people are basically fine with! Virtually all educated adults understand and accept that society has a legitimate interest in subsidizing procreation to maintain a healthy demographic mix and ensure the long-term solvency of our pension system.

Now obviously we could take a page from Orbán’s playbook and push things *even further* in this direction, but that would be incredibly expensive and (based on my reading of the data coming out of Eastern Europe and East Asia) wouldn’t be that effective. It’s incredibly hard for the state to directly manage the fertility rate.

That said, I wouldn’t necessarily oppose expanding the child tax credit for pro-natalist reasons. We’d obviously need to determine a sensible limit to account for diminishing returns, but in principle I’m all for celebrating parents and giving young people more reasons to settle down and start a family.

The issue with this is that instead of playing up the positive angle Trads frequently come at this issue from a completely toxic direction of wanting to “punish” childless people or deprive them of political power. This is a fantastically retarded framing when it comes to something as personal as family policy, and a great way to alienate many millions of swing voters who would otherwise agree with you on cultural issues.