The end of Tucker Carlson’s time at Fox News coincides with Fox’s payout of nearly $800,000,000 to settle Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against the news network.
"His flaws notwithstanding, Carlson does a great job exposing and attacking wokeism in nearly all of its forms."
I don't think you understand the dynamics of the last eight years. Carlson has been a boon to wokeism, as has Trump's whole movement. Wokeism, specifically identity politics, thrives when people seek something to believe in and turn to exalting their individual identities because they see nothing inspiring in the United States of America. Pride in the country is the antidote to identity politics, and opportunists who persuade people not to love their country enable identity politics.
Until eight years ago, the trash-talking of America was the province of the left. Since then, however, Trumpists -- I won't honor them by calling them the "right" -- have taken up the cause of discrediting the country. Trump's inaugural address spoke of "American carnage." The movement, with Carlson in the front row, tells Americans, particularly white men, that America is no land of opportunity and that all institutions are corrupt. This is clearest in their treatment of the military. Trump has opposed every action the armed forces took in his lifetime, other than the ones HE ordered. In his view, they do nothing good and do nothing which anyone should take pride in. Hence his gushing talk of honoring veterans is empty. For what should we honor them? In other words, Trumpists lack patriotism. That is why white nationalism sprouts up in their wake. Without love for American values, people who think they are supposed to love their country look around for something specific to value, and the only thing left is their own identities, exactly what the left does with wokeism. Tucker Carlson advances this agenda when, for instance, he legitimizes Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and delegitimizes the American values of compassion for victims, outrage at evil, national honor, American influence, and resolve in the face of danger.
To illustrate the economic dimension, in 2019 I attended a dinner conversation with Jeff Sessions right after he found himself with extra time on his hands. He pointed to Alabama truck drivers as examples of people whose lives have been ruined by capitalism. I recognized that this was not just a financial issue, but that Sessions rejected Ronald Reagan's optimistic faith in America. When I objected that truck drivers' standards of living have risen in the past generation, he replied, approximately, "Well, you can indulge yourself in your ideology..." Sessions showed that he lacked the patriotism of Ronald Reagan, and sounded like the whiny Democrats who have run for office since 1968. He also showed that he isn't that bright; someone has been leading him down this path. Who has been leading? Try Tucker Carlson.
Nothing you say refutes the fact that Carlson has effectively attacked wokeness. You certainly don't demonstrate that Carlson has been a boon to workness.
How, exactly? Is the left pushing a woke agenda because of Carlson? I don't think so.
Did the woke agenda take hold in schools, corporations, and government because of Carlson? Of course not.
Would the woke agenda recede if Carlson supported the war in Ukraine? No.
Has the anger generated by Carlson's rants put the spotlight on aspects of the woke agenda and helped generate pushback and in some cases rollback? I think so.
If I follow your argument, you're saying that Carlson peddles a version of wokeness because he bad mouths the U.S. and causes some of his viewers to focus on their identities, as the woke left does. But Carlson's followers aren't woke by any reasonable definition. If anything, they are reactionaries, not progressives, and they don't support any of the measures associated with wokeness as that term is understood (except perhaps by you).
Your hatred of Trump and Carlson has caused you to come up with your own strained, idiosyncratic definition of the wokeism. Why not just articulate your grievances without engaging in the gymnastics?
Carlson does not promote wokeism directly. He disarms its opponents, leaving the country defenseless.
You write that "Carlson has effectively attacked wokeness." If you mean that he has denounced it, then I concur, but I do not think that denouncing something counts as an effective attack. I regard an effective attack as one which destroys the target; in a political conversation, this means persuading people. Has Carlson persuaded young adults, for instance, to abandon wokeness? I doubt it. Our discourse needs to offer an alternative, something to love. Saying over and over that America sucks does not inspire the left-wing majority of young people, already suspicious of their country, to love America. As for the right-wing minority of young people, he may persuade them to despise the woke obsessions of the left, but this leaves too many with nothing to embrace except white nationalism, which may not technically qualify as "woke" but is the mirror image of woke identity politics.
You write "Carlson's followers aren't woke by any reasonable definition. If anything, they are reactionaries, not progressives..." Here is the point: Progressivism is reactionary. Identity politics rejects the universal aspirations of the Declaration of Independence in favor of older, pre-enlightenment habits. Surely you recall the quote from Coolidge which Powerline posts every July 4th:
"If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers."
If the left says that America's foundational values suck, and the right -- influenced by Trump and Carlson -- can't speak up in favor of them, then the left wins. That is the key to your question, "Would the woke agenda recede if Carlson supported the war in Ukraine? No." That misses the point. If Carlson supported Ukraine's cause, it would be because he articulated the values of freedom, heroism, self-determination, and democracy, as well as America's historic role in aiding these causes. A Tucker Carlson who could say such things is a Tucker Carlson who would have spent the last eight years extolling American virtues and persuading the audience, left and right, to believe in a common set of patriotic values instead of their own identities.
More definitional gymnastics. You can call progressives reactionaries if you want to, but they aren't reactionaries in any ordinary understanding of the word, and they certainly aren't reactionary in the same way that right-wing reactionaries are.
Reactionaries vigorously oppose social experimentation and want to restore a nation's discarded practices and habits. Progressives clamor for practices with no roots in the past. They aren't trying to restore old habits. What old habit recognized more than two genders? Or preached CRT? Or defunding the police?
As for his effectiveness, Carlson has rallied many people, young and old, against woke policies. I doubt that any commentator has been more instrumental in facilitating the rollback of woke educational policies that we've started to see in several states. To my knowledge, no one did more to arouse indignation against wokeism in Virginia's schools. That indignation has led to roll back.
Arguably, Heather Mac Donald has done more than Carlson on other fronts in the battle against wokeism. But Carlson gave her the opportunity to reach two or three million viewers.
I know that Carlson hasn't spent the last eight years saying the things you want him to say about American virtues. Clearly, you can't stand the guy. I don't like him either. But your tortured analysis hasn't shown that he's been "a boon" to woke.
Nor do the people commonly labeled as woke agree with you. They see him as their enemy and they are right.
With this, I intend to bow out of the Tucker Carlson debate, and certainly out of any further defense of the guy.
Tucker Carlson was removed because he was the only journalist at Fox News critical of the Republican Establishment of which you are a card carrying member. It had nothing to do with Dominion.
"His flaws notwithstanding, Carlson does a great job exposing and attacking wokeism in nearly all of its forms."
I don't think you understand the dynamics of the last eight years. Carlson has been a boon to wokeism, as has Trump's whole movement. Wokeism, specifically identity politics, thrives when people seek something to believe in and turn to exalting their individual identities because they see nothing inspiring in the United States of America. Pride in the country is the antidote to identity politics, and opportunists who persuade people not to love their country enable identity politics.
Until eight years ago, the trash-talking of America was the province of the left. Since then, however, Trumpists -- I won't honor them by calling them the "right" -- have taken up the cause of discrediting the country. Trump's inaugural address spoke of "American carnage." The movement, with Carlson in the front row, tells Americans, particularly white men, that America is no land of opportunity and that all institutions are corrupt. This is clearest in their treatment of the military. Trump has opposed every action the armed forces took in his lifetime, other than the ones HE ordered. In his view, they do nothing good and do nothing which anyone should take pride in. Hence his gushing talk of honoring veterans is empty. For what should we honor them? In other words, Trumpists lack patriotism. That is why white nationalism sprouts up in their wake. Without love for American values, people who think they are supposed to love their country look around for something specific to value, and the only thing left is their own identities, exactly what the left does with wokeism. Tucker Carlson advances this agenda when, for instance, he legitimizes Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and delegitimizes the American values of compassion for victims, outrage at evil, national honor, American influence, and resolve in the face of danger.
To illustrate the economic dimension, in 2019 I attended a dinner conversation with Jeff Sessions right after he found himself with extra time on his hands. He pointed to Alabama truck drivers as examples of people whose lives have been ruined by capitalism. I recognized that this was not just a financial issue, but that Sessions rejected Ronald Reagan's optimistic faith in America. When I objected that truck drivers' standards of living have risen in the past generation, he replied, approximately, "Well, you can indulge yourself in your ideology..." Sessions showed that he lacked the patriotism of Ronald Reagan, and sounded like the whiny Democrats who have run for office since 1968. He also showed that he isn't that bright; someone has been leading him down this path. Who has been leading? Try Tucker Carlson.
Nothing you say refutes the fact that Carlson has effectively attacked wokeness. You certainly don't demonstrate that Carlson has been a boon to workness.
How, exactly? Is the left pushing a woke agenda because of Carlson? I don't think so.
Did the woke agenda take hold in schools, corporations, and government because of Carlson? Of course not.
Would the woke agenda recede if Carlson supported the war in Ukraine? No.
Has the anger generated by Carlson's rants put the spotlight on aspects of the woke agenda and helped generate pushback and in some cases rollback? I think so.
If I follow your argument, you're saying that Carlson peddles a version of wokeness because he bad mouths the U.S. and causes some of his viewers to focus on their identities, as the woke left does. But Carlson's followers aren't woke by any reasonable definition. If anything, they are reactionaries, not progressives, and they don't support any of the measures associated with wokeness as that term is understood (except perhaps by you).
Your hatred of Trump and Carlson has caused you to come up with your own strained, idiosyncratic definition of the wokeism. Why not just articulate your grievances without engaging in the gymnastics?
Carlson does not promote wokeism directly. He disarms its opponents, leaving the country defenseless.
You write that "Carlson has effectively attacked wokeness." If you mean that he has denounced it, then I concur, but I do not think that denouncing something counts as an effective attack. I regard an effective attack as one which destroys the target; in a political conversation, this means persuading people. Has Carlson persuaded young adults, for instance, to abandon wokeness? I doubt it. Our discourse needs to offer an alternative, something to love. Saying over and over that America sucks does not inspire the left-wing majority of young people, already suspicious of their country, to love America. As for the right-wing minority of young people, he may persuade them to despise the woke obsessions of the left, but this leaves too many with nothing to embrace except white nationalism, which may not technically qualify as "woke" but is the mirror image of woke identity politics.
You write "Carlson's followers aren't woke by any reasonable definition. If anything, they are reactionaries, not progressives..." Here is the point: Progressivism is reactionary. Identity politics rejects the universal aspirations of the Declaration of Independence in favor of older, pre-enlightenment habits. Surely you recall the quote from Coolidge which Powerline posts every July 4th:
"If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers."
If the left says that America's foundational values suck, and the right -- influenced by Trump and Carlson -- can't speak up in favor of them, then the left wins. That is the key to your question, "Would the woke agenda recede if Carlson supported the war in Ukraine? No." That misses the point. If Carlson supported Ukraine's cause, it would be because he articulated the values of freedom, heroism, self-determination, and democracy, as well as America's historic role in aiding these causes. A Tucker Carlson who could say such things is a Tucker Carlson who would have spent the last eight years extolling American virtues and persuading the audience, left and right, to believe in a common set of patriotic values instead of their own identities.
More definitional gymnastics. You can call progressives reactionaries if you want to, but they aren't reactionaries in any ordinary understanding of the word, and they certainly aren't reactionary in the same way that right-wing reactionaries are.
Reactionaries vigorously oppose social experimentation and want to restore a nation's discarded practices and habits. Progressives clamor for practices with no roots in the past. They aren't trying to restore old habits. What old habit recognized more than two genders? Or preached CRT? Or defunding the police?
As for his effectiveness, Carlson has rallied many people, young and old, against woke policies. I doubt that any commentator has been more instrumental in facilitating the rollback of woke educational policies that we've started to see in several states. To my knowledge, no one did more to arouse indignation against wokeism in Virginia's schools. That indignation has led to roll back.
Arguably, Heather Mac Donald has done more than Carlson on other fronts in the battle against wokeism. But Carlson gave her the opportunity to reach two or three million viewers.
I know that Carlson hasn't spent the last eight years saying the things you want him to say about American virtues. Clearly, you can't stand the guy. I don't like him either. But your tortured analysis hasn't shown that he's been "a boon" to woke.
Nor do the people commonly labeled as woke agree with you. They see him as their enemy and they are right.
With this, I intend to bow out of the Tucker Carlson debate, and certainly out of any further defense of the guy.
Tucker Carlson was removed because he was the only journalist at Fox News critical of the Republican Establishment of which you are a card carrying member. It had nothing to do with Dominion.