Tucker Carlson has spoken publicly for the first time since his departure from Fox News. He didn’t say anything about the remarkable move by the network — but he did say what most Americans intuitively know about modern political debate: Much if not most of it is pointless.
That somewhat reprises the message in the speech he delivered at the Heritage Foundation’s 50th Anniversary gala last week. That was the speech that, according to Vanity Fair, inspired Fox chieftain Rupert Murdoch to fire Carlson.
Wednesday’s message was brief: 2 minutes, 16 seconds. Carlson suggested that he has decided that working within the confines of the leftist Mainstream Media is a waste of time, that he has moved to the hard right, and that he plans a new venture of his own.
Again, that’s consistent with his speech before the tuxedoed elites at the Heritage party.
Carlson is red-pilled.
Important Topics Left Undebated, Undiscussed
When “you take a little time off,” he said, you notice “how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are. They’re completely irrelevant. They mean nothing.” And so they’ll be forgotten within five years, he continued. “Trust me as someone who’s participated.”
Instead, he said, important topics are left undiscussed:
And yet at the same time, and this is the amazing thing, the undeniably big topics, the ones that will define our future, get virtually no discussion at all. War. Civil liberties. Emerging science. Demographic change. Corporate power. Natural resources. When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues? It’s been a long time. Debates like that are not permitted in American media. Both political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what benefits them, and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it. Suddenly, the United States looks very much like a one-party state.
But, happily, the orthodoxies with which the uniparty circumscribes debate to acceptable topics won’t last, he said, because “they’re brain dead. Nobody actually believes them. Hardly anyone’s life is improved by them. This moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue, and it won’t.”
After that nod to what economist Herb Stein said about economic trends — “if something cannot go on forever, it will stop” — Carlson suggested that the Deep State elites who control the debate and what we see in the leftist Mainstream Media are, in the end, doomed:
The people in charge know this. That’s why they’re hysterical and aggressive. They’re afraid. They’ve given up persuasion; they’re resorting to force. But it won’t work. When honest people say what’s true, calmly and without embarrassment, they become powerful. At the same time, the liars who have been trying to silence them, shrink, and they become weaker. That’s the iron law of the universe. True things prevail. Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren’t many places left, but there are some, and that’s enough. As long as you can hear the words, there is hope.
Heritage Speech
Carlson delivered that message — American political debate is, as a practical matter, worthless — last week, the same day Murdoch and his son Lachlan decided Carlson had to go.
Speaking to the Heritage crowd, Carlson called American political debate “irrational” because the two sides in that discussion no longer share the same goal: to make the country more prosperous and to protect the freedoms all Americans enjoy.
Instead, as Lewis Carroll’s Alice said, we are asked to believe six impossible things before breakfast: That two members of the same sex can “marry.” That a man can become a woman, and a woman can become a man. And that men who are crazy enough to masquerade as women should be permitted to share restrooms with little girls.
“If you have people who are saying, ‘I have an idea, let’s castrate the next generation, let’s sexually mutilate children,’ I’m sorry, that’s not a political debate.”
“What’s the outcome we’re desiring here?” he continued:
An androgynous population? Is that, really, are we arguing for that? No, I don’t think anyone could defend that as a positive outcome. But the weight of the government and you know a lot of corporate interests are behind that. Well, what is that?
It’s irrational.
A better word for it is insane.
Yet that speech and his post-firing Twitter video suggest that Heritage itself is part of the problem, because it is a major player in the debates that Carlson says are meaningless.
That aside, Carlson has had enough, and believes that much if not most of American political discussion is pointless because, again, the topics are absurd. Consider what schools and corporations jam down the throats of students and customers, and what the cognoscenti and lowing herd on Twitter discuss with a straight face. “Transgenders” are not mentally ill and should serve in the military. Men should compete in women’s sports. Twelve-year-olds should be permitted to mutilate themselves. Drag queens should perform for children and on military bases.
The two talks suggest two things: His views will harden and become even more politically incorrect, and he will build his own media empire to fight and dismantle the media monopoly for which he toiled and which manages the irrational debate he decried.
It’s about time Carlson left the political matrix in which he’s been trapped. It’s too bad it took him so long, when he had to have known the truth a long time ago.