The Mother's Mask and the Father's Fist: On the Gendered Topology of "Tyranny"

I watched this video from Jon Stewart’s February 9, 2026, Daily Show, and I identified with its message much more so than I usually do Stewart’s smarm. He’s best when he’s incisive and indignant, not smug.

During COVID, conservatives protested mask mandates, social distancing, and shutdowns as tyrannical government overreach. In recent days, many of those same people have cheered as masked government thugs pull people off the streets, deny them access to lawyers, and deport them without trial — to say nothing of the physical violence and death inflicted along the way by those same masked goons.

One would be quick to call this simple hypocrisy, but if we peel back the onion a bit, we find it is much much more. And we begin to make sense of conservative ideology not as politics-as-usual, but as pathology.