Long MAGA
I was all fired up this morning to write about Tucker Carlson’s latest shoeshine work for Vladimir Putin, a topic I addressed back in December, when it became obvious to me — admittedly I might have been late to the party, since I would never actually watch a Fox News show on purpose — that Carlson was an overt propagandist for Putin, and hence, as I said at the time, Putin’s most valuable American asset since Donald Trump.
Carlson, I now see, has taken sycophancy to a tyrant to new depths, no longer merely presenting Putin’s case against NATO as he did in December, but directly claiming this time that there is no reason why Americans, or by implication anyone else in the West, should draw any moral distinction at all between Putin’s Russia and Ukraine. “Wait a minute,” he said, “why is it loyal to side with Russia, but disloyal to side with Ukraine? Kinda strange.”
Kinda strange, if you are historically illiterate and have an IQ under 70, I suppose. Or if you are working for the Kremlin’s propaganda office.
So as I said, I was about to write again about this Pravda employee who is the number one cable news host in America, directly feeding Russian rhetoric to millions of Americans who used to call themselves conservatives. And then, just as my fingers touched the keyboard, this thought occurred to me: To whom would I be writing this commentary?
Could anyone outside of Carlson’s audience fail to recognize the significance of America’s most popular political pundit openly defending a murderous dictator against a nation that was previously subject to one of the largest forced famines in world history at the hands of that dictator’s nation, and which is now facing the nightmarish reality of being gradually re-annexed by said dictator? No. So why bother making the case?
On the other hand, could anyone who still watches Tucker Carlson and thinks “He makes some good points” even hear what I would say on the subject, let alone have the mental independence to understand it? No. So once again, why bother making the case?
Carlson, Fox News in general, and for that matter most of the American “conservative media” and “Republican voters” have all had the Trump virus so deep in their souls that they are clearly suffering from a terminal case of long MAGA, and there is nothing we can do for them now.
I hear a little angel whispering, “A few of them might be saved, don’t give up yet.”
Fine. To those few — who of course will never read this — I offer this olive branch:
Turn off the damned television and the talk radio, start going for long walks in nature, strike up a friendship with someone who has never seen an episode of Tucker Carlson or “The Five” and never will, and try to begin the slow, difficult process of thinking about the world with your own brain again. You have been hooked up to the Trump-pump for too long. No one can save you now, unless you have the courage and dignity to save yourself. Start today.