Being John Fetterman
Daddy Issues
The ogre of Braddock has done it yet again.
Don’t bother looking it up; you know it’s true. John Karl Fetterman, the forever beleaguered Pennsylvanian Senator, has within the last 24 hours either crashed his car yet again, driven a staffer to tears or resignation, fantasized about mass murder, or some other gross combination of those three. It wouldn’t be hyperbole to say that Fetterman is a danger not only to himself but also (and mostly) to others.
Alone, that would be enough to remove him from office, but I recently pieced together a truth even more disturbing than unsafe driving. We will need to first diagnose the source of his retrograde opinions before we can conclude why he has turned so much more aggressive in his presentation of his views. For it his aggression, plus his political views, that put together, paint a picture of a man who very desperately needs to not only be booted from the Senate but also given over to the care of medical professionals.
The data speaks for itself. Pennsylvania is a pure purple state, one that surely benefits from his outsider veneer yet Fetterman doesn’t just act like an outsider, he acts and votes like a far right Floridian Senator. You will not find any other Democratic Senator who supports as many of Trump’s nominees as he does, nor will you find one who backs Trump’s insane mass arrest and deportations scheme. Fetterman even dares to outflank Trump on the right and support a military intervention in Iran!
Fetterman being a far right nut would make more sense if the state he represented was further to the right. As it stands, he is inviting a potentially fatal primary challenge in 2028 and a definite defeat in the general election should he eke out the mildest of victories in the former. Remember that the Democratic base, such as it is, will vote like they did in 2024 for Harris: with their feet planted firmly far away from any polling booth or ballot.
I don’t think the stroke made him conservative: he’s always been this way. He’s always backed Israel to the hilt, for example. All proffered counter arguments to the contrary, such as his support of weed legalization or gay marriage, just defines him as being on the libertarian side of the Republican Party. By every definable token, he is a member of the Republican Party. He only runs as a Democrat because he can, and because of the time he chose to get into politics. For the former, that is a known and real tragedy of American politics. We have very weak parties. Anyone can be anything. There’s no party dues, no ideological checks, nothing. It’s a free label, a legal nicety that can anyone can wear.
That this Democrat In Name Only would run as a Democrat would be nonsensical if you don’t know his history. He entered politics in 2006, right when the GOP brand seemed defeated for all time, tainted by Bush’s failures with Katrina, Iraq, Afghanistan, and more. I think the evidence for that is plain, and that had Fetterman entered politics four years later, he would’ve been a Republican. The question of ‘are you a Blue Dog Democrat’ or are you a ‘Tea Partier’ quite often boils down to the very simple question of ‘did you enter politics in 2006-2008 or in 2008-2010’.
Just look at his background if you need further proof. What other party outcome could you expect from the son of a rich insurance executive, who parlayed Daddy’s money into a personal cachet of wealth, and then later used that same wealth to buy his way into power in Braddock? Fetterman’s capture of the town’s politics reads less as effete liberal meritocratic oversight and more highly conservative and parochial overlordship.
And thus we have solved one essential puzzle of John Fetterman. The next and final puzzle is to turn back and ask why this brute has turned so much more personally repulsive in recent years. And indeed: how repulsive has he become?
Consider the Gaza Genocide. Fetterman being a Zionist is not shocking. Most of Congress is filled with Zionists. Biden is a “proud Zionist”, in his own words. But even Biden in his worst days wasn’t muttering “kill them all”, especially not over and over. Very few Gentile American Zionists utter such Kahanist phrases; you’ll find them in the screeds of the West Bank settlers, but very rarely in the halls of American power, and never on the Democratic side of the aisle. Nor will you find Israeli-flag-wearing Senators, or Senators with walls still plastered with pictures of hostages taken on October 7.
It’s obvious and even he has admitted that the stroke changed him. My read on it is that the stroke simplified him. It made things more clear, more direct, less complicated. The challenge for me had been what had been simplified? Yes, he was more aggressive, more thuggish: but to what end? Did he have an end? Was he just a rabid beast, filled with unquenchable rage? I was stuck, for months. That’s why I didn’t write this article till now. Because now, we finally have an answer:
If the above is true, then John Karl Fetterman is guilty of political malfeasance and of being a traitor to his electorate, of being a Manchurian candidate, beholden to a constituent of one, his father Karl Fetterman, the aforementioned insurance executive.
This may be difficult to understand for some who had a different experience growing up, but I can say for a certainty, for myself at least, that the approval of a father is something that can be pursued to insane ends. My own experience is not Fetterman’s, but I think it can be illustrative of the lengths a child can go to please their parents. Consider:
[FACT]: My parents belong to the far right, Latin-rite Catholic sedevacantist orthodoxy. They hold all the retrograde views on church and state one would expect from those who reject Vatican II as a moral betrayal of the Church.
[FACT]: I yearned for my parent’s approval across my life; some choice examples: getting a second Bachelor’s degree when I didn’t need to, moving out of my Berkeley dorm when I didn’t need to, and joining conservative club in High School when I especially didn’t want or need to.
[FACT]: I also delayed living my authentic life: didn’t admit I was bisexual until I was 21, and I delayed transitioning my gender until I was 30.
[FACT]: Despite all that: I stayed close with my parents despite that even though it destroyed a long-term 6 year relationship.
My parents are not good people. They never, not even to this day, accept me for who I am. The last time I tried talking to them, my dad told me that I was going to burn in Hell for all eternity. Not a nice thing you tell your child, certainly. And them being not good people is not just my subjective analysis. Nobody liked them! They had very few friends outside church and most of those were work colleagues (as in, people forced to play nice with my parents).
We fought constantly, and I had to suffer through hours of them ranting and raving about gay people, about women, about dirty Mexicans, about endless tirades of unlimited grievances daily. I remember the wars on Christmas. I fought on the frontlines. I bled for ACORN and Obamacare. Put yourself in my shoes. Imagine fighting over ‘should gay people have human rights’ seven days a week for 15 years. That was my life. Whining and yapping the days away.
Yet I still stayed close and tried to be on good terms with them. I tried for 30 long years, and I failed. But what if I hadn’t failed? What if I hadn’t fought at all? I didn’t have to resist, after all. I could have chosen not to. I could have accepted everything my parents told me. That not only is Jesus Christ our lord and savior but that each Pope since Vatican II is an illegitimate usurper. That there in fact has been no Pope since the 60s, that we are Sede Vacante. That attending the Church in Latin Mass is the only way I can go to Heaven, which is also a real thing that definitely exists. That the only books worth reading are those found in the 16th Century Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible. I can even see, in a future askance, a different version of me: one who kept her gender on lockdown, who married a proper Catholic woman, who became a Senator, and who eagerly awaited her father’s approving calls every night
I’d rather die than live that world, of course. Fetterman though, is a man. He didn’t need to choose between whatever values he possessed and his identity. He was free to adopt his parents’ conservative mold.
Yet it all does sound incredibly childish, doesn’t it? As if a five year old mind occupied an adult body. Maybe it’s something I would do in my 20s (as I did do) but definitely not in my 30s (now estranged) and by my late 50s? That would be insane, for a cis or trans person. But that’s just it, isn’t it: I didn’t have a stroke. Fetterman did. And while I’m sure he’s been trying to impress his Republican, Fox News-drunk father his whole life, now he just takes it to 11 because he assumes, likely not incorrectly, that he is saying stuff his dad would like to hear.
In other words, Fetterman pre-stroke understood that saying ‘kill them all’ is what his dad wanted to hear but he still knew better than to say it out loud, where other human beings might listen. Fetterman post-stroke is the honey badger: he literally does not care. This is what I meant by the stroke simplifying him. His vision has narrowed down to his important relationship, that being the one he has with his father. That is the only constituency that matters. His dad likes it when he says ‘kill them all’? Fetterman the son will loudly repeat it to any who will listen. Because that’s what dad wants. And what Daddy wants, Daddy always gets.
This is appalling, and I hope people share my concern. Fetterman holds the title of Senator for six years in total. That means the people of Pennsylvania are stuck with him until January 2029 unless something happens. This means that the vote balance of the Senate is dependent on a guy whose lodestar is what he thinks someone mindblasted on nightly Fox News reels wants.
I think if you asked people in 2022 if that’s what they wanted when they voted in Fetterman, they’d say no. If you asked Democrats, they’d be even louder in shouting no. And while Karl Fetterman may indeed be the body politic of Pennsylvania digested down into a single man, I highly doubt that to be the case.
I don’t think the Senator is fixable. You can’t fix someone this broken. Though, if we had to try, I’d start with his car and work our way down the problem list. First, no more cars: he’s banned from driving ever again (remember: his unsafe driving nearly cost the lives of several people!). Next: Pennsylvania needs to step up and reject Fetterman entirely.
They must denounce him. If they can recall him from office, they should. If they can place him under a legal or medical hold, they should. If they can force him, through the courts or whatever other measures, to capitulate and resign, they should. They should not stop opposing Fetterman until he has departed fully from public life. Then: he needs to be given the proper medical and mental care he so obviously and desperately needs.
The alternative? Watch and wait until the tragedy of John Karl Fetterman reaches an obvious and tragic ending. I think we can all do better, if not for him, then for his family, and the millions of other families around the world that are being hurt his words, his actions, and his votes.