Avuncularity Now!

Optimism, uncles, and new vocabulary words

I learned a new word this week:

Avuncularity - noun. the condition of being an uncle

Avuncular - adj. suggestive of an uncle, especially in kindliness or geniality

In case you’ve been doing the probably healthy thing and tuning out national news recently, this is the go-to term most outlets have been applying to recently-selected veep candidate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Putting my own cards on the table, I like Walz. He represents, more or less, the type of liberal pragmatist that I am and have long wanted to see more of at the national level. He’s also one of the few Democrats who seems to really understand how to rhetorically push back against today's reactionaries. “These people are weird” seems to me like a much more effective response to resentful culture warriors like Trump and Vance than the “basket of deplorables” mishap from 2016. It’s no guarantee of victory, but it gives those of us who value humaneness and stability more reason for optimism than we had a month ago.

But this isn’t just a post about politics. I’ll leave that to the Noah Smiths and Cathy Reisenwitzs of the world. They’re better at it anyway. The thing that has my brain swirling right now is this new vocab word, avuncular.

Reason being, when I think of an uncle, I tend to think of someone much more like Trump or Vance, someone who goes out of their way to be as mean-spirited as possible, only to clutch their pearls and play the victim the moment you push back against them in any way. At least, that’s how my uncles were. Far from being fun and kindly, they were more like the people who made family interactions needlessly difficult and unpleasant; much closer to the archetypal “dickhead uncle who ruins Thanksgiving” than the meme I shared up top about Walz.

Still, I’m happy to add this new word to my lexicon. As someone who doesn’t have any kids (a heinous betrayal of American values according to JD Vance) but is quickly gaining more nieces and nephews, I feel like “avuncularity” is something I can aspire to, something I never got to experience myself.

To make one last meta-political observation here, I can’t help but notice how popular and desirable avuncularity seems to be right now, which I consider to be another good omen. I find it interesting that while both Walz and Vance are supporters of the expanded child tax credit (essentially a basic income for children), only Walz uses avuncular rhetoric (parenting is hard and expensive, so parents deserve a hand) to justify his support for it, whereas Vance uses spite to justify his, suggesting that childless people are bad and deserve to be punished for their wrong life choice.

My hope for this year is that avuncularity will win the day. I hope that Americans are sick enough of manufactured outrage that they’ll choose not to reward it like they did eight years ago. But only time will tell.