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Quote of the Day: Tucker vs. the Blob
“It might be time to start to reassess the terms we use to describe what we’re watching…. I don’t think we’re watching a debate over how to get to the best outcome…. When the Treasury secretary stands up and says, “You know what you can do to help the economy? Get an abortion.” Well, that’s like an Aztec principle, actually. There’s not a society in history that didn’t practice human sacrifice….
Well, what’s the point of child sacrifice? Well, there’s no policy goal entwined with that. No, that’s a theological phenomenon.
And that’s kind of the point I’m making. None of this makes sense in conventional political terms. When people, or crowds of people, or the largest crowd of people at all, which is the federal government, the largest human organization in human history decide that the goal is to destroy things, destruction for its own sake, “Hey, let’s tear it down,” what you’re watching is not a political movement. It’s evil.
— Tucker Carlson in a speech to the Heritage Foundation, April 21.
Days before his ouster from Fox News, Tucker Carlson delivered the keynote address for the Heritage Foundation’s 50th-anniversary gala. Vanity Fair claimed the speech’s theological overtones pushed Rupert Murdoch to cut ties with his network’s most popular personality.
Other outlets published their own theories for Carlson’s surprising exit, but the Heritage speech created quite a buzz across social media. And for good reason. He’s sharing a concern Americans of all political stripes have discussed for years now, but the DC political class shuns and often tries to silence.
These are no longer the days of Beltway think tanks competing via white papers or senators sparring in good faith on Sunday morning chat shows. Government is no longer a discrete institution jostling with big business, entertainment, and academia for popular attention. Today, all these powers have conglomerated into a power-mad blob, pushing a unified message that’s as destructive as it is censorious.
The Blob suddenly and unanimously pushes certain issues with religious fervor and an inquisitor’s intolerance. No public debate is allowed. Climate Change, #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Ukraine, and Covid lockdowns, masks, and vaccination were all pushed in lockstep via politicians, legacy media, Hollywood, and corporations. Just as quickly, the issues are dropped for a new one, the latest being trans mania.
There are few voices fighting the Blob from within. A Congressman here, a CEO there. Each is targeted with ferocity. Carlson is just the latest victim. So, he’ll keep up the fight from outside, where he might be more effective.
There’s a reason behind the vast popularity of Joe Rogan, Russell Brand, and countless other outsider commentators. Even an odd duck like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pulling 19% in the polls against the sitting president.
They get big numbers for questioning the Blob. Often for merely noticing the Blob exists. Their listeners often don’t agree with their conclusions, but are just glad someone else is seeing what they’re seeing.
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Published in General
And we need more of them who will speak out!
Expect the need for a Ministry of Truth to be announced any day now.
Truth is like lighting a candle in a crowd in the dark. Maybe it will inspire someone else to light their candle. And the more candles lit, the more will be lighted.
Jon gets it. Tucker gets it. Why don’t Reagan -loving, never-Trump Arizona lawyers get it? Tip Oneill’s Democrat party no longer exists. It has been replaced by something evil.
Trump fought it too.
What, again?
This would not be happening if Ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton was President.
Didn’t that already happen almost exactly a year ago? It has been put on the backburner for the moment but it’s tanned, rested, and ready to go.
There truly some asleep blockheads in this Administration.
It is inadvertent, almost certainly, but the pressure of the Blob forces us to at least consider a realignment of who we define as allies. Tucker said something to this effect. We are in the midst of an age where it is, for a time, not going to be right vs. left. This struggle is freedom vs. force.
Force is a tempting thing, borne of power. We created an unprecedented prosperity. That prosperity led to conflict, unsurprisingly. Someone on the outside said this prosperity was a corrupt thing in and of itself, which it wasn’t, but for people who didn’t share in it, the empowerment of that resentment was persuasive. They attacked us more than once; they attacked us wherever we were in the world and then at home.
Our response was to take the prosperity and give more of our authority over ourselves and the ways we communicate with each other to a power center, our government. This was necessary, it was said, to protect the prosperity, and yet since we did that, the prosperity hasn’t been the same. Since we did that, the only thing that grew was the power. And the power became the corrupt thing. It became that because, just as we sought to preserve the prosperity, the power seeks to preserve itself.
This is the conflict that is before us, and not enough are aware it is even happening because they’re rewarded by the power for seeking to subjugate their fellow citizens. They act, unwittingly, on behalf of the power because it gives them the illusion of authority, and the illusion of moral superiority.
What is our nature? Is it to subjugate or liberate? Here, in this land, we have always liberated. We did it imperfectly, but our corrections always took us in a better direction. Freedom has its say, and here it has always said “more.” Suddenly, we find ourselves nodding at the words of Bill Maher, Jimmy Dore, Brandon Straka, and the others Jon mentioned. Freedom is casting about for its allies and finding powerful voices, some old, some new.
This is the crucible, this is reaffirming the promise. It is the beginning of a new light, and of course it takes a struggle in the dark. It always has.
They won’t stop pushing it. They were getting memed to death. So they’re in the process of criminalizing memes.
There is something of value in this paragraph. It contains a glimmer of what is required to change direction and regain America’s prosperous state, state not meaning government but truth and goodness instead of lies and evil. Every noun used to name a group or movement in Jon’s paragraph above represents an anti-American destruction of personal choice replaced by an evil command structure that is unacceptable and the evil perpetrators must be brought to account for that.
The personal choice I mention above is found in the words of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. Before editing by the Committee of Five and other founders Jefferson’s original wording is reported to have been:
The specific value that I place on this concept and the important words contained therein is my effort to understand the meaning of life, my life on this earth, and every individual should have that opportunity.
The Blob is in the way and is an obstructive force to human life.
I think that you’re incorrect. If you forbid the use of force, you forbid government, good or bad. The result is anarchism. That isn’t good, either.
@arizonapatriot Are you familiar with the meaning of the word “limited”?
Let’s wait a bit and see if these numbers hold up:
Fair comment. I understand Lawrence Jones is one of the ones who will be given a try out in the time slot. He has a lot of potential and could appeal to the demographic Fox is looking for. Watters has a congenital unseriousness that I don’t think is going to cut it (although entertaining at times). Jones would be better if he can grow into the role. Tucker came to the slot with a very mature pundit presence that Jones has not had the opportunity to develop.
Nowhere did I propose it, and I agree. Right now, the force of government is unchecked, Jerry. People are being prosecuted for making memes. This is what we’re fighting.
Asleep and awoke.
They already tried that. Remember Scary Poppins?
When the Treasury Secretary touts the economic benefits of abortion, and she herself waited until 35 to have her first and only child, are we allowed to ask whether abortion played an important role in her own professional and economic success? Or is that rude? If so, why should it be?
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Several noteworthy media have given different reasons for the Murdochs (both) showing Tucker the door.
This is the first I’d heard about religiosity playing a role, so I read that Vanity Fair article. Must say I wouldn’t call Rupert Murdoch any kind of unnerved anti-religionist. This guy not only puts Laura Ingraham on the air every night in prime time; employs EWTN’s fine news director and anchor Ray Arroyo as a contributor; lets the lead-in to Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday show tell viewers to “go to Church”; and more. The comments about Murdoch’s ex-fiancee Ms. Smith were interesting gossip — I’m just reading Unscripted about Sumner Redstone’s unfortunate encounters with younger women in his dotage — but I’d still put more credence in other matters as weighing more heavily against Carlson.
It’s a formidable list: evidence of Carlson using “the c— word” and disrespecting management; his tilt away from Ukraine; guests from the fringes given airtime, while management’s editorial notes are given a hard time; concerns about getting ahead of future nasty work environment lawsuits, with which Fox is long acquainted; his daily platform for the 2024 election, a source of discomfort upstairs at Fox; and a sponsor lineup heavily dependent on Mike the Pillow Guy.
As a former note giver myself, I’ll tell you that there’s a long, honorable history of ignoring network supervision, cf. Rob’s Martini Shot podcasts. Hit shows are particulary successful at this. Shows which repel advertisers, less so. They get iced like your dermatologist freezing off a precancerous growth.
I’d prefer more of a journalistic approach at 5PM (PT), like Bill O’Reilly used to do, a “fair and balanced” newscast with commentary, but that’s the voice of a bygone demographic speaking. Fox used Carlson (as they will his successor) not as a newscaster, but as a pundit act to stir the kind of emotions that drive streaming subscribers to Fox Nation. Tucker appeared to be doing that job well, so why? As Joubert the assassin said to Redford in Three Days of the Condor, “I suspect he was about to become an embarrassment.”
Megyn Kelly doesn’t like her either.
I don’t think she’s on Megyn’s Christmas card list.
No. Wrong.
The problem is not excessive government use of force. The problem is that government power is being used to promote evil ideas and evil practices.
The force of government ought to be used to secure our border and expel people who are here illegally. Do you think that the force of government is unchecked on this issue? Of course not.
The force of government ought to be used to punish perversion and immorality. Sodomy isn’t just rampant, it’s actually protected by the force of government. Castration of perverted men, and voluntary mastectomy of perverted women, is also protected by the force of government. The use of government force to promote traditional values and virtues is not unchecked. It’s almost non-existent.
I also haven’t heard of anyone actually prosecuted for making memes. There is a twisted cancel culture, supporting the depraved and wicked ideas of the Wokeists. I like cancel culture on the other side, like we used to have, when fornicators and adulterers and perverts were shunned by decent people.
Douglass Mackey Convicted for Vote-by-Tweet Meme
It is sad, to me, that such a silly response got 3 “likes” already.
Yeah, Bob, I understand the English language. What does the word “limited” have to do with any of this? Nothing, other than your general rule that leads to anarchism — smaller government is always better.
Under our original Constitution, by the way, there were almost no limitations on the powers of the state governments. The government that was limited was the federal government. That ended in the 1930s, pretty much, through an expansive reading of the Commerce Clause.
There were a few limitations on the states — no treaties or alliance, no letters of marque and reprisal, no creating legal tender other than silver or gold coins, no bills of attainder or ex post facto laws, no impairing the obligation of contracts, and no titles of nobility.
Exactly so.
Tucker’s aired a 2 minute video on Wednesday Apr 26th:
Calif is ignoring the prohibition of establishing nobility, by going full swing ahead on reparations for African Americans. To the tune of hundreds of thousands of bucks per any self-proclaimed descendant of a slave.
Tucker developed as a person due to his assignment to the Iraq war.
On his way over there, he attended some fancy pants dinner affair where a 3 or 4 star general offered that the war was won and the nation had been secured by US efforts with democracy about to flower forth.
Once on Iraq soil, Tucker immediately realized that the exact opposite was true and that about the only thing we had secured was the creation of tens of thousands more terrorists than we faced at Shock and Awe’s inception. (This was due to the absurd way our military and the Bush Admin had defined our objectives. If we had ended things in Germany the way that we ended Shock and Awe, we might still be fighting German partisans in the hills of Bavaria.)
I think for an individual to be a successful, truth-oriented journalist, a person has to come face to face that about every meme the US government puts out there is part of a Big Lie.
Tucker learned this the hard way when Iraqi terrorists attacked the “safe house” he was stationed in.
His enthusiasm has since been tempered with quite a bit of cynicism.