The Voting Bloc Against Bossiness

The Voting Bloc Against Bossiness

The Dontells don’t want to be told what to think, what to say, or what to do.

Andy Kessler, WSJ

Jan. 8, 2023 12:35 pm ET

Meet the Dontells, sure to be a political force in the next few elections. Their mantra is simple: Don’t tell me what to do, hence the name. Their telltale sign is an obvious case of ODD. What’s that? Oppositional defiant disorder, which, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine, is a behavior disorder, often in children who “are uncooperative, defiant, and hostile toward peers, parents, teachers, and other authority figures.” Yeah, I’ve got that.

Also add: Don’t tell me what to say, to think, to pay. Backlash was inevitable against the metastatic absurdity. Use only paper straws. Don’t tell me what to do. You can’t say “master bedroom” anymore. Oh yes I can. That 6-foot-tall dude winning all the NCAA women’s swimming meets is really a woman. I don’t think so. Every threat is existential. Maybe to you. No abortions ever. What? Your taxes pay people not to work. Make it stop!

Tea partiers and red-hatted MAGA supporters pushed back against Obama-era bossiness. They didn’t want high taxes to pay for open-border welfare, gun confiscation or being woke poked. Heck, they even supported a blundering bloviator for president. That’s how desperate their Dontell dedication was. Note, there is a fine distinction between the Doncares (I don’t care), the Leavmis (leave me alone), and the Dontells. The first two groups rarely vote. But Dontells vote in droves, on both sides of the aisle.

Amazingly, the whole Dontell thing still comes as a huge surprise to self-important city dwellers on both coasts. Yes, most big-city progressives like to be dominated and enjoy being told what to do. Walk/Don’t Walk. Mind the gap. Wait in long lines. Alternate-side-of-the-street parking regulations. Calorie counts in doughnut shops. Confiscatory taxes. New York’s (unconstitutional) ban on large sodas. San Francisco’s ban on Happy Meals. The seemingly mandatory use of words such as “positionality” and “performative” in conversation.

Liberals, implied in the name, say they are for freedom, but are they? The progressive wing is full of authoritarians telling others what to do or how to think: America is a racist country. Wear a mask. Limit charter schools. Bees are fish (in California). “A drag queen for every school” (Michigan’s attorney general promises). ESG. CRT. DEI. I could go on. Meanwhile, Dontells are fed up with submission.

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Elon Musk, who tweets about a “woke mind virus,” became a card-carrying Dontell in 2020 when California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lockdowns closed his Tesla factories. He eventually moved Tesla’s headquarters to Texas. Last year 340,000 others left California. I would bet most are Dontells.

So far, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a Dontell hero—he checks all the boxes. He got rid of lockdowns and mask mandates. He stood up to Disney’s pushback against a law requiring classroom discussions of sex to be age-appropriate. The state still levies no income tax. His appeal, I think, is that he wants voters to make up their own minds about what to say or do.

There is going to be a fight for Dontell swing voters in 2024. In 2021 then-Gov. Doug Ducey said, “Arizona does not allow mask mandates, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports or discrimination in schools based on who is or isn’t vaccinated.” Pity he was term-limited. Dontells piled on to support Glenn Youngkin after his Virginia gubernatorial opponent, Terry McAuliffe, said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

Stanford University provided a list of forbidden words with its Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative. C’mon man. Sorry, I mean: C’mon person. Corporate America also plays along. In 1992 we had Rockette Barbie and U.S. Presidential candidate Barbie. Pretty cool. For 2022, Mattel introduced Chief Sustainability Officer Barbie, part of its “Eco-Leadership Team” line of “certified CarbonNeutral® products.” Don’t tell me what to think!

Many Dontells rally around the yellow Gadsden flag with its coiled rattlesnake and declaration “Don’t Tread on Me.” In 2016 a controversy raged over whether the Gadsden flag was racist. Really? There’s that insulting implicit bias again. Dontells hate the thought police.

It’s about freedom. Are Dontells libertarians? Not necessarily. There is a deeper psychology of freedom that runs through society, way beyond Ayn Rand fanatics or Cato Institute donors or even crypto-crazies. This is especially true in Silicon Valley, even though its residents won’t admit it. Disruption almost by definition is not listening to what others tell you to do.

We no longer live in a nanny state, but a bossy state. You must express the prevailing opinion or face mockery. Do this, don’t do that. Instead, let’s eliminate ODD in our lifetime. The Dontells’ philosophy is simple: How about you live your life, and I’ll live mine. Don’t tell me what to do, say, think or pay. Oh yeah, and don’t tread on me . . . because I vote.

Write to kessler@wsj.com.