Gus Walz broke the internet with his tearful love for his dad. Then the bullying began
Gus Walz broke the internet with his tearful love for his dad. Then the bullying began
Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday is set to accept the Democratic nomination in the race against Republican former President Donald Trump.
A tearful, unscripted moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has unleashed a flood of praise and admiration – but also prompted ugly online bullying.
Gus Walz, who has a nonverbal learning disorder as well as anxiety and ADHD, watched excitedly from the front row of Chicago’s United Center and sobbed openly Wednesday night as his father, the Democratic nominee for vice president, delivered his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.
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Conservative columnist and right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter mocked the teenager’s tears. “Talk about weird,” she wrote on X. The message has since been deleted.
Mike Crispi, a Trump supporter and podcaster from New Jersey, mocked Walz’s “stupid crying son” on X and added, “You raised your kid to be a puffy beta male. Congrats.”
Alec Lace, a Trump supporter who hosts a podcast about fatherhood, took his own swipe at the teenager: “Get that kid a tampon already,” he wrote, an apparent reference to a Minnesota state law that Walz signed as governor in that required schools to provide free menstrual supplies to students.
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The summary doesn't even mention that the poor kid has a nonverbal learning disability, anxiety, and ADHD, and these clowns are mocking him.
It shouldn't matter whether he is LD. No one should be bullied.
Research shows that bullying behavior often stems from a combination of factors such as a desire for social dominance, a lack of empathy, or modeling of aggressive behaviors at home, said Kristen Eccleston, a former special education teacher and advocate for children with social-emotional needs.
Too bad some people just don't know about or choose to not follow the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
That’s because they’re “Christians” and nowhere in the Bible does it say to be kind to others, or to have empathy, or to respect each other… /s
Love thy neighbor
Edit: I stopped reading before the /s. My bad. This one's on me
I almost didn’t add that /s at the end figuring “surely nobody would think I’m serious”. Apparently my comment wasn’t dripping with enough sarcasm!
Case of not seeing the wit for the trees. In the topsy-turvy landscape of the last 8 years or so, the problem is that "dripping with" part. The weirdos do always go for the double-down after all, so adding more starts risking confusion with that tactic of theirs.
I thought you were talking specifically about the golden rule at first
I think many people in fact actively get a high from feeling powerful, and therefore doing the exact opposite of what they want done to them, and then are usually the people to whine the loudest when anything of the sort happens to them.
For example Trump’s speeches are like 85% insulting people, whining about those critical about him, etc. Huge middle school bully energy.
Yes and there was recently a speech he gave whining about how he was treated.
Recently? I can't recall a speech he's given since he started running for president where he didn't whine about perceived mistreatment
Lol. You're right
When you're a narcissist, "others" is nonsensical, because the only person worthy of agency and empathy is you. That's why the golden rule doesn't work - it's like if they were colorblind, they lack the capacity to even understand it.
You emphasized lack of empathy, but I think we also need to focus on "a desire for social dominance" because it describes exactly what these fascists have planned for America.
Agreed. It's interesting to me that normal, healthy people just go about their business, and those not so healthy want to impose their sickness on the rest of us. It's contagious, for the weaker among us, too, apparently.
It absolutely matters. It's like the difference between hitting someone who's weaker than you, and hitting someone in a wheelchair. When you're bullying, you're punching down. When your victim is an even more vulnerable member of society (disabled, poor, elderly, neurodivergent, etc), you're punching way down and are a piece of shit.
you're punching way down and are a piece of shit.
Bullying still makes you a piece of shit even if the victim isn't disabled, though.
The article mentioned a conservative talk-show host who called Gus a "blubbering bitch boy" and then retracted the statement when he found out the kid has a disability. No, either way, that is not okay!
Bullying makes you a piece of shit even if the victim isn't disabled.
I don't think anyone is suggesting otherwise. But like everything in reality, it's not black and white. If you can't see how it's worse when the person has disabilities, then I don't know what to tell you.
I suspect you understand it just fine though.
I do understand, and I think if the only reason a person isn't bullying someone is because that person is differently abled, that doesn't make the person who refrained only because the potential victim is differently abled a genuinely decent person, just that they know they are less likely to get away without consequences, if anyone else finds out.
Who are you arguing with? Nobody here (that I've seen) has said or even suggested that.
Lol. Replied to wrong comment. I'm human, it happens.
Yeah, we're on the same page: bullying is bad no matter what. But surely you agree it's worse to bully someone with a disability...?
Be best.
Most probably don't even think those things are real.
Correct. I was not diagnosed 10 years ago.
I can’t believe that the sudden rise in diagnoses’ is being seen as anything other than the first generation of adults that take mental health seriously finally reached a point in life where they had health insurance and disposable income to focus on their own mental health.
I have had ADHD all my life. When my mom died, I found letters in her things from my school counselor advising I be tested. I found letters from pissed off family members telling her to get me tested.
She didn’t do any of that. But I do remember the time she told me she never got my sister tested for dyslexia because she knew “none of [her] babies were retarded.”My dad would rather think he had a lazy, stupid, worthless kid than one struggling with mental illness, because somehow that would have been a greater reflection on him than my innate lazy, etc nature would.
Parents would find their baby child had been replaced by odd beings who were almost but not quite human.
However strange appearances aside it was their behaviour that marked them out - changelings were said to be either extremely badly behaved - constantly crying and prone to violence, or at the other end of the spectrum strangely docile, often mute and seemingly unable to comprehend anything about the human world they had been left in.
https://www.hypnogoria.com/folklore_changelings.html
Yep, totally a brand new thing that hasn't appeared throughout human history.
There’ll sadly be a lot of MAGA people who think those conditions don’t exist.
It shouldn’t even matter. The kid should be allowed to express his emotions without being mocked for it. Even if he didn’t have any disability, he behaved perfectly fine. Most folks actually found it touching. While it is cruel to mock someone with a disability, I also don’t want the disability to become a way for the media to “justify” his way of expressing himself. There is no need to justify it at all.
And on top of that it shouldn't even matter. I hope that one day my kids admire and love me the same way Gus showed.
Good catch. I’ve added it to the summary. Thanks.
Does that mean he's not verbal?
No he is verbal, he said "that's my dad!" the same way dads say "that's my boy!"
I think one of us should look up the labels of his disabilities and what they mean, but I've so far been too lazy.