TDS of the disabling variety

The New Neo Posted on by

Not sure why this guy is so surprised:

Most of the people I know – men and women – seem to detest Trump with a passion. But only a very few are emotionally disabled by it. Those are the true sufferers from TDS. For the rest, it’s a sort of parlor sport that may darken their mood at times but usually doesn’t affect their lives all that much. But for those few with true TDS, it’s very disabling. And I bet quite a few therapists suffer from it, too.

I know, I know; you say, “Cry me a river.”

But to me, it’s become a sad and fascinating topic. Among the people I know, the ones with disabling TDS have other sorrows in their lives that are also bringing them down. TDS represents a sort of straw that breaks the camel’s back.

NOTE: By the way, when I was a child and I would hear the expression “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” for many years I pictured it as a camel laden with drinking straws. Why a camel would be carrying that particular load was beyond me, but there were (and are) a lot of puzzling things about the world.

Et tu, Megyn? – battles on right and left

The New Neo Posted on by

This isn’t really primarily about Megyn Kelly, but I mention her because she’s somehow gotten herself involved in the entire Fuentes/Owens/Carlson/Shapiro brouhaha. It’s hard to write about any of this without sounding like a junior high school gossip – “he said then she said then he said then they said then he lied and she lied and he attacked her and she attacked her and he denied … ” or something like that.

So I won’t go into the Megyn Kelly part in any detail except to say that she seems to be taking the tack of “I have no responsibility to say anything bad about Owens or Carlson – but hey, that Shapiro is quite the liar” – when he really is not. If you want to get up to speed on it, just watch (to take one example) this video, which goes into the ins and outs. Suffice to say that Kelly has been either disingenuous, uninformed, or downright mendacious – or some combination of those things.

As I said, I’m not getting into the details here. My point in writing this post is that lately I’ve been pondering whether I’ve been surprised at the feet of clay of so many pundits on the right, such as Carlson and Kelly and Owens (there are others). The answer is: no. They are not people I’ve ever especially admired or looked up to, or trusted. I certainly used to think more highly of them than I do now – but trust? No.

That thought made me wonder which people, among the pundit class, I do trust – if anyone. Both of the names which immediately came to mind are (or were) also in academia: Thomas Sowell and Victor Davis Hanson. I assume they have said things in their lives with which I might disagree, but if they have I can’t think of it offhand. They have earned my respect over the years and seem to be people not just of extremely high intelligence, but of integrity. The same cannot be said for Carlson, Kelly, and Owens, although I don’t think they are dumb. But they are in the influence business and in the click business, and that doesn’t bode well.

There is a war of ideas and propaganda going on in both parties. On the Democrat side, it seems almost finished, and the extremists on the left have won in the sense of driving out moderates. On the right, we’re in the middle of a battle that rears up periodically – the last time featuring Pat Buchanan. On the right, it hasn’t been resolved – and probably won’t ever be resolved in the permanent sense.

These things are part of politics and of human nature. It’s interesting, also, that a tool of the extremists on both sides is Jew-hatred – this time, clothed in the disguise of Israel-hatred and double standards. Jew-hatred is an old old story, too.

NOTE: Here’s another video worth watching, with James Lindsay – who apparently foresaw the battle on the right before it was apparent to most people.

Whatever happened to Tucker Carlson?: Part III

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I here.
Part II here.]

I originally was going to write a two-parter about Tucker Carlson, which seemed like plenty – more than enough. So to all of you who think I’ve gone on way too long about him, I understand. I almost agree with you.

That “almost” is because it’s hard to get the flavor of what’s going on with Carlson – or with Candace Owens for that matter, who comes up quite a bit in relation to him – and I think it actually is rather important. Perhaps I’m being alarmist. But for many years I’ve been spending an awful lot of time looking around online at political sites, and I’ve seen this movement grow and grow and take over a lot of places. It’s creepy in every sense of the word: offensive, and spreading like a weed.

Maybe it’s bots. Maybe it’s paid shills. Some of it undoubtedly is. But it seems organic to me, and although small, very vocal and quite poisonous. I believe their goal is to split the right and ultimately take over from more rational heads. Whether they will accomplish that or not, I don’t know. But it’s a real danger, and I’m trying to raise awareness.

So a conversation in the comments here made me think one more post on the dismal subject would be in order.

Commenter “Gregory Harper” wrote:

I think Tucker’s views about spirits and demons have everything to do with his foreign policy views. He thinks we’re in a battle against demonic forces which he believes were behind the world wars and are currently pushing us into a war with Iran. He hasn’t gone as far as Candace in explicitly saying that the Jews are being controlled by demonic forces but that’s clearly what he actually believes.

Tucker has long been an isolationist but his descent into conspiratorial madness is something new.

And commenter “Brian E.” replied:

“He thinks we’re in a battle against demonic forces which he believes were behind the world wars and are currently pushing us into a war with Iran.”

That’s not controversial according to the Bible (except the part that demons are pushing us into a war with Iran). Obviously a failed prophecy – since that didn’t happen.

“He hasn’t gone as far as Candace in explicitly saying that the Jews are being controlled by demonic forces but that’s clearly what he actually believes.”

I’m not sure why you would make that connection. Have you read/heard anything by Carlson that indicates he believes the “Jews are being controlled by demonic forces”?

I know very little about Candace Owens. I’d be interested in a link were she said Jews are controlled by demonic forces in so many words.

I think there’s plenty of things Carlson has said about the government of Israel that are problematic/wrong without going there, unless he’s actually said that.

Actually, Carlson’s modus operandi isn’t saying controversial things outright, at least not usually. It’s showcasing people who say such things, nodding along with a thoughtful mien, and failing to challenge them. So no, I very much doubt he’s called Jews demons. Nor do I know whether he’s showcased anyone who literally calls all Jews demonic, although he’s showcased many people who lie and lie and lie about Israel.

As for Owens, I wrote a previous post on her that featured a few of her many tweets that certainly imply it – as well as Israelis as Nazis – for example:

Gaza is a concentration camp where an open genocide is taking place. It has taken Goebbels levels of propaganda to try to convince the world it isn’t happening but it is. Just like Adolf Hitler, Bibi Netanyahu is an ethnocentric imperialist monster and we will make sure the world remembers what all of you supported when God has his vengeance.

With enough time, I’m sure Hitler would have been very open to similarly running a sophisticated global blackmail ring with Jeffrey Epstein and perhaps would have even orchestrated the assasination [sic] of a sitting U.S. President or conducted a false flag or 2 to demand our allegiance.

Let me know how horrified you are by this comparison, and I’ll let you know how little we care. I will never stand with genocidal maniacs, who are committing an open holocaust and trying to usher in WW3, all while purporting to be eternal victims.

Israel rapes and murders innocents, (including their own countrymen) steals land, and then uses sexual blackmail to force leaders of other counties to accept deals with the land they’ve stolen.
Synagogue of Satan.
Christ will win.

Is “Synagogue of Satan” close enough to “demonic”?

If not, perhaps this will suffice (from 11/7/2025):

Candace Owens’ history of spreading vicious and dangerous lies about Jews was on full display during a 25-minute interview this morning on @CNN. She repeated her false claims that the U.S. government is occupied by Zionists, called Zionists “demonic” and “literally possessed by demons,” and that Israel’s war with Hamas was a “Holocaust.”

So, Zionists are literally possessed by demons. And I assume she would include the “Christian Zionists” who incense Tucker Carlson “more than anyone.” It strikes me, and not for the first time, that the existence of Israel has given Jew-haters the perfect cover. They can say just about anything they want about Israel and Israelis, however foul and however mendacious (often involving Nazi comparisons), and they can deny that what they’re saying is about Jews themselves. Then they use strawman arguments like “criticizing Israel isn’t anti-Semitic,” which of course is true; but people aren’t calling them Jew-haters because they criticize Israel. They call them Jew-haters because they focus on Israel obsessively to the exclusion of far worse situations in the world, they apply completely different and far harsher standards to Israel then to any other country, and they very often lie about Israel.

I found a video of a Carlson interview with Owens, which apparently took place about three months ago. During it they talk a lot about what brave truth-tellers they are, and they also mention their traffic numbers and how big they’ve gotten, especially Candace (who is now one of the most listened to podcasters on YouTube). A comment there like the following isn’t unusual; most of the commenters seem very admiring:

While looking at this video I had the sensation of witnessing a conversation between two giants. Thank you, Candace and Tucker.

The interview is about two hours long. A lot of it concerns Owens’ balmy views about Brigitte Macron being a man, something of which Owens is convinced. I didn’t watch every minute of the video but I watched about half, and if you want to get an idea of Carlson’s extreme deference towards Owens and admiration of her, just watch some of it – especially the latter parts. For viewers previously unfamiliar with her – and I hardly can blame anyone for not wanting to immerse him or herself in this fetid stuff – I have prepared a few clips. They’re only partly about Owens, though. They’re here because they’re also very much about Tucker Carlson – about whom he wishes to platform, about what sorts of ideas he fails to challenge, and about what he himself adds.

I’ve cued up several clips from this interview in order to demonstrate the form the insinuations both of these people take. Each segment is quite short.

In this first clip they discuss Nick Fuentes; this was months before Tucker interviewed him, and they both seem to have detested Fuentes at the time this video was made. Here Tucker seems to be advancing a theory that Fuentes is actually a neocon plant paid to attack the anti-neocon right (including Carlson and Owens, whom Fuentes had been criticizing at the time):

This next clip is about their mutual detestation of Seth Dillon, the head of the Babylon Bee, who criticized Candace and Tucker after they deigned to be oh-so-very-nice to him. I include this clip because it also shows Tucker and Owens lauding Darryl Cooper, that “historian” who thinks Churchill is the villain of WWII. I also included it because of Owens’ unchallenged remark that Israel supporters sadistically cheer the murder of Palestinian children. It’s also the case that, after Charlie Kirk was assassinated (the video is from before that event), Seth Dillon was one of the people Candace Owens accused of being part of a vague but sinister conspiracy around Kirk’s death:

This next clip, however, is the one most directly relevant to the blog comment thread I quoted at the beginning of this post. Note Candace’s repeated statements that Israel is demonic, and Carlson’s reaction (or non-reaction) to that. It’s also an excellent example of how conspiracy theories blend together. For example, when this clip begins they had both been talking about the need to release the Epstein files (she has said Israel is involved, natch), then she segues into a statement that Israel assassinated JFK, and then she implies that there’s something terribly nefarious about Israel’s Birthright program (a program which gives – not every American Jew, as she claims here – but young American Jews free trips to Israel in order to help them see for themselves what it’s all about). Have a listen:

[ADDENDUM:

Part I can be found here.
Part II can be found here.]

Formatting angst

The New Neo Posted on by

I thought I was finished with my work on formatting the poetry book by Gerard. I sent the PDF to the printer a couple of days ago – hooray! – and got back a proof that alas, didn’t look quite right.

It turns out that formatting poetry in order to create a print hardcopy book is much more difficult than formatting prose for the same type of book. I won’t get into the descriptive weeds here and detail the problems it presents, and why. But suffice to say that, for example, if you look at a poetry book, not only do the lines have to be just so, but the margins can change dramatically from poem to poem in the book. Writing and book formatting programs often have unforeseen problems with this – unforeseen by me, anyway. For most of my life I’ve been reading poetry books and never noticed the intricacies of their printing. I sure do now.

I think – accent on the think – I’ve found an acceptable work-around. But it will take quite a few more hours.

I’m just venting here.

Antifa: terrorists, domestic and foreign

The New Neo Posted on by

The administration has decided that Antifa is a terrorist group, the better to move against it. Here’s the declaration about Antifa in the US:

Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law. It uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals. …

Because of the aforementioned pattern of political violence designed to suppress lawful political activity and obstruct the rule of law, I hereby designate Antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization.” All relevant executive departments and agencies shall utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations — especially those involving terrorist actions — conducted by Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa, or for which Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa provided material support, including necessary investigatory and prosecutorial actions against those who fund such operations.

And this order does something similar regarding Antifa abroad:

Today, building on President Trump’s historic commitment to confront Antifa’s campaign of political violence, the Department of State is designating German-based Antifa Ost, along with three other violent Antifa groups in Italy and Greece, as Specially Designated Global Terrorists and intends to designate all four groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, effective November 20, 2025. The designation of Antifa Ost and other violent Antifa groups supports President Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, an initiative to disrupt self-described “anti-fascism” networks, entities, and organizations that use political violence and terroristic acts to undermine democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental liberties. Groups affiliated with this movement ascribe to revolutionary anarchist or Marxist ideologies, including anti-Americanism, “anti-capitalism,” and anti-Christianity, using these to incite and justify violent assaults domestically and overseas.

When the Democrats were in power, they mostly looked away or actively encouraged Antifa – or denied its existence except as some sort of idea. That approach has ended – for the moment, anyway.

It will be interesting to see what practical effect this new policy will have on the movement. Antifa’s adherents seem mostly to be those disaffected young men everyone seems to be talking about these days, whether on left or right or the fringes where left and right seem to resemble each other in chaos, rage, and rebellion.

Whatever happened to Tucker Carlson?: Part II

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I can be found here. I also plan a Part III.]

In Part I, I discussed the background to Tucker’s profound isolationist advocacy and his hatred of “neocons” as having their origin in his deep anger and embarrassment at having initially supported the Iraq War and then backtracked on it. Although I’m not saying that this was not the only reason Tucker took the pro-Russia anti-Ukraine stance he did when Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, I am convinced it was one of the major driving forces. Even the fact that the US was not putting boots on the ground there didn’t seem to reduce his ire, much of which has been focused on Zelensky. I believe he sees Zelensky as very much akin to those nefarious neocons (commonly defined as either Jews or Jew-adjacent in rhetoric, although Carlson is pretty careful to refer to them just as neocons). His animus towards Zelensky is personal, visceral, and intense. I mentioned this Carlson quote about Zelensky in Part I, and it’s time to revist it:

“Now you see [Zelensky] on television, and it’s true you might form a different impression. Sweaty and rat-like, a comedian turned oligarch, a persecutor of Christians, a friend of BlackRock.”

Sweaty and rat-like – but what’s this “persecutor of Christians” business? (Zelensky is Jewish, by the way.) Carlson’s accusation is related to Zelensky’s ban on certain Eastern Orthodox clerics, although that was done not because of their religion but because they are pro-Russian propagandists in a time of war waged against Ukraine by Russia. There was no persecution of Christians as a whole in Ukraine; almost all Ukrainians are Christians:

Tucker Carlson recently claimed that Zelensky has “banned the Christian faith in his country and arrested nuns and priests.” Though purporting to speak on behalf of religious liberty, in reality Carlson is playing fast and loose with the truth and endangering the lives of Ukrainian believers.

The Moscow-backed clergy being arrested in Ukraine are not neutral, but actively working for the Kremlin, some contributing directly to the deaths of hundreds of Ukrainian women and children. These arrests are not merely a whim of President Zelensky either: Eighty-five percent of Ukrainians polled favor the government taking action against these representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church who are causing mayhem in Ukraine—66 percent of Ukrainians want the Russian Orthodox Church banned completely in Ukraine.

Or, as Google’s AI says:

Tucker Carlson claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “banned a Christian faith” (referring to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, or UOC) in the country and arrested its priests and nuns.
However, this claim is misleading and inaccurate. The Ukrainian government has not banned the entire Christian faith or all Orthodox Christianity. Instead, it has taken actions against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), a specific denomination that has historical ties and alleged administrative links to the Russian Orthodox Church, which explicitly supports Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Key points regarding the situation:

Targeted Actions, Not a Total Ban: Ukrainian authorities have not banned the entire Christian faith, which is the predominant religion in Ukraine. They have targeted the UOC based on national security concerns, specifically its affiliation with the Moscow Patriarchate.

National Security Justification: The Ukrainian government and a majority of Ukrainians justify these actions because some UOC clergy have reportedly spread pro-Moscow propaganda, housed spies, and actively worked for the Kremlin, actions viewed as a threat to Ukraine’s sovereignty.

Later, after October 7, a major theme of Carlson’s programs has been that it’s the Jews of Israel who are targeting Christians. That’s a similar message to the one he broadcast about the Jewish Zelensky back in 2022. Tucker is and always was a Christian, but he seems to talk more openly about his Christianity these days. His focus is on Christians as being under increasing threat, which they certainly are in some corners of the world: but from Islam and from the left, not from Israel. He doesn’t seem to pay attention to those threats; he concentrates on what he considers the threat to Christians from the Jews of Israel – one of the only countries in the Middle East that allows Christians to worship freely.

Tucker has interviewed a number of guests who convey that message loud and clear (please see this for details). I believe that’s part of the origin of Tucker’s rage at “Christian Zionists” which he expressed when speaking recently in his interview with Nick Fuentes. That’s not just my speculation, either; he explicitly states as much. It’s well worth reading the entire linked article, but here’s an excerpt:

“I did say something [in the Fuentes interview] that I really regret saying that I didn’t fully mean. I said it because I was mad… I said something to the effect of, ‘I despise Christian Zionists.’ And I’m just sorry that I said that, because I don’t… Some of the nicest people I know are Christian Zionists… I want to be very specific about what I was talking about. In at least a couple of different occasions, the Israeli government bombed churches in Gaza and killed a bunch of Christians. And not an accident, of course.” …

There are tragedies in every war, but Carlson’s “not an accident” claim—used to excuse his tirade against Christian Zionists—turns unintended collateral damage into an intentional crime. It mirrors Hamas propaganda: take one image, strip away context, and weaponize it against Israel.

By alleging Israel “bombs churches” and kills Christians deliberately, Carlson revives one of history’s oldest antisemitic tropes—an updated “Christ-killer” story for the social-media age.

In reality, two very different incidents occurred in Gaza. In October 2023, an Israeli airstrike targeting a Hamas command post struck near the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Porphyrius in Gaza City. Hamas terrorists had been operating nearby, and debris from the strike collapsed an adjacent building, killing civilians sheltering there. On July 17, 2025, Israeli tank shrapnel from a Hamas-initiated firefight hit part of the Holy Family Catholic Church in Zeitoun, injuring several. In neither case was the church itself targeted. Israel expressed regret, investigated, and presented evidence of Hamas activity in the area.

This is what happens when a terror group fights from residential blocks, hospitals, schools—and yes, churches. The blame belongs to Hamas, which uses its own civilians as shields, not to Israel.

There’s also Carlson’s high praise for Holocaust-denying (that is, he thinks the Holocaust was accidental rather than purposeful on the part of the Nazis, a claim that flies in the face of facts and the timeline) Darryl Cooper. Cooper apparently also thinks Churchill rather than Hitler was the villain of WWII.

I believe that Carlson now sees just about everything in foreign affairs, and some things in domestic affairs, through that filter of “Jewish warmongering neocons who are out to murder Christians.” It all fits together in his mind – his upset about the Iraq War, his subsequent fondness for Putin and hatred for Zelensky, his recent accusations that Israelis are murdering Christians on purpose, his showcasing of someone like Fuentes, his anger at any US intervention in any foreign country, his rage at Jews in the US he sees as promoting war because of “dual loyalties,” his ire at Christian Zionists, and on and on and on in that same vein.

Many people seem to think that Carlson’s main motive for all of this is money, and that it’s a relatively recent development. I disagree, although Putin and Qatar may indeed be paying Carlson or boosting his algorithm with bots, or both. But Tucker does not need the money and never has; he’s independently wealthy. Not that he minds getting more money, but his motives are and always have been power and fame, influence and clicks, and the aforementioned anger at “neocons.” He may also have presidential or at least political ambitions, although I have no evidence for that.

I also watched some of Carlson’s speech at the Charlie Kirk memorial, as he compared Kirk to Jesus and said that Jesus was murdered by “a bunch of guys” in power, whom Jesus had criticized, and who were “sitting around in a lamplit room” in Jerusalem “eating hummus, thinking about what do we do about this guy telling the truth about us” (then loudly) “We must make him stop talking!!!” “And there’s always one guy with the bright idea – and I can just hear him say ‘why don’t we just kill him? That’ll shut him up; that’ll fix the problem.'” Then giggly loud laughter from Carlson, with his face scrunching up. It’s really a sight to behold:

So I contend that there is nothing mysterious about this “evolution” of Carlson’s, which has been going on for over twenty years.

And make of the following what you will: Carlson also claims to have been molested by a demon, an occurrence he dates from some time in the spring of 2023. He describes the incident here; the article appeared in November of 2024, although he said the event had occurred about a year and a half earlier. It’s even better to watch this short clip where he explains what happened and adds that it transformed him. He immersed himself in reading the Bible after that, something it appears that he’d not done much of before:

Then again, perhaps it was the dogs? Did he not let sleeping dogs lie?

[Part III coming up … ]

[ADDENDUM:

Part I can be found here.
Part III can be found here.]

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Here’s a surprising development – Israel is on the brink of passing a death penalty law for terrorists:

A bill to impose the death penalty on convicted terrorists, who committed murder, passed its first reading in the Knesset plenum on Monday night by a vote of 39 to 16. It must pass three readings to become law.

“A terrorist who is convicted of murder out of motives of racism” and “under circumstances, in which the act was carried out with the intention of harming the State of Israel,” per the bill, “shall be sentenced to death.”

The obvious reason for the law is to prevent more hostage-taking in order to free the most dangerous terrorists in Israeli prisons. I wrote about the lack of an Israeli death penalty about a month ago.

(2) Democrat corruption in California charged:

Dana Williamson, former chief of staff to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, was arrested Wednesday morning, charged in a 23-count federal indictment with conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct justice, subscribing to false tax returns, and making false statements. The charges are related to an alleged scheme between Williamson and at least three other prominent California Democrat political operatives “to divert approximately $225,000 in funds from a dormant political campaign to an associate’s personal use.”

That’s not the surprise. This is the surprise:

The investigation began under the Biden administration, and the charges are the result of a nearly three-year investigation.

(3) The last penny:

The penny has been part of the U.S. currency since the very beginning. It was first authorized under the Coinage Act of 1792.

Back then, you could actually buy something with it. Even when I was a kid, penny candy was still sold – and for all I know, maybe it is today. But pennies cost four cents to make these days, aren’t used much, and there are so many in circulation – 300 billion – that we certainly don’t need any more. A penny saved is a penny earned, and stopping their production is projected to save fifty-six million dollars. That’s not chump change.

(4) Jack Schlossberg, Caroline Kennedy’s son, has decided to run for Jerry Nadler’s House seat. Schlossberg is a very weird duck, but he’s got the chiseled cheekbones of his Kennedy ancestors:

Schlossberg, a mentally deranged internet addict who cracks jokes about guzzling “Jew blood” and “male jizz,” has sought to inject the storied Kennedy brand with Gen Z flare.

Schlossberg is undeterred by the fact that no one really wants him to run for Congress—not even his own mother.

The rest of the article goes on to describe some of his weird and offensive antics, and it’s just plain sad. Of course, it would be even sadder if he got elected.

(5) Student visas for foreigners are big business for universities in the UK. They charge them up to three times what citizens pay. Plus:

The Home Office projects that about 500,000 recent international graduates have remained in the country even after their visas expired.

There is also evidence that the student route is being misused. As Migration Watch has reported, cases have emerged of applicants inflating bank statements or pooling funds to meet visa requirements. Some enrol in courses with little intention of studying – nearly half of all asylum claims made by visa holders now come from those who were admitted as students.

(6) Keir Starmer might be finished soon as prime minister. But don’t get too excited; he’ll just be replaced with someone else from his party.

Reflections in the early dark

The New Neo Posted on by

It gets dark here so early these days that, combined with some of the news, I sometimes succumb to feeling gloomy. Some days it just seems like there are so many lies circulating in the news – so many lies that so many people believe – that I feel like I’m playing whack-a-mole, and my arms are getting tired.

I was just out taking a little walk, and not only was it dark but it was cold and nippy. I actually liked the cold, because – except for snow and ice, which is a big “except” where I live – I find cold exhilarating, up to a point.

So today I don’t want to give a whole lot of time to news like the fact that the left has decided to take up the “Trump and Epstein” cry again, although the “news” is not really news nor is it incriminating. The spin is, but spin is enough for some people.

And although I’m glad the shutdown is almost certainly about to end, the whole thing was a tiresome charade orchestrated by the left because they thought, with the help of the MSM, they could frame it as “mean old Republicans doing their mean old things.” For some people, that seems to have borne fruit, as last week’s election probably demonstrated.

Jew-hatred is on the rise, too. This should be no surprise – the history of the world demonstrates the cyclical nature of one of the world’s oldest hatreds and calumnies. But it’s nevertheless depressing – and the rise is among young people especially, which bodes ill for the future.

And one of my best friends is waiting for the results of a biopsy for something potentially very bad.

I tend to get happier after the sunsets start to get later.

Last night I was up late, sending the PDF of the Vanderleun poetry book to the printer. It’s a new printer, chosen because they also do the mailings (with the essay book, the mailings were a problem). But this printer had a form for me to fill out electronically, and it had inadequate instructions; therefore it took me about two tooth-grinding hours to figure out how to complete it and sign it. I’m amazed I figured it out at all.

I’d been hoping to get the book out by November 1, because of Christmas season coming. But I estimate it will be another week or two before that happens. Finishing both books, essays and poetry, is a bittersweet moment for me; mostly sweet but also partly sad, as I think you’ll understand.

Whatever happened to Tucker Carlson?: Part I

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s a question many people have been asking. This post is my answer – or Part I of my answer, because the story is long and there’s a Part II.

However, at the outset I want to say that, although a lot of people give the answer “It’s the money, stupid,” I don’t think that’s correct. Or, rather, although that may be part of the reason Carlson says and does what he presently says and does, it is not the main reason, IMHO. Tucker not only has quite a bit of other money, but I think he did not sell himself (to Qatar, for example) and do some sort of reversal for pecuniary reasons because it isn’t all that hard to trace the evolution of his thoughts in a rather straight and consistent line over the last twenty years or more and arrive at where he is today.

Commenter “chazzand” wonders:

The fall of Tucker Carlson has been so disheartening and surprising. And in such a short time. … It’s like someone who was a great friend who then went off the deep end. You can’t bring yourself to rip into him but you let it be known that a wide chasm has formed and puzzling things have to be answered before (if ever) it goes back to normal. I wonder what caused it?

Actually, I don’t think Carlson’s descent was especially sudden, although it may appear that way. I was never a big Tucker fan nor was I a big TV news watcher, network or cable, but I used to watch TV news more than I do now – which is just about never. So, over the years, I’ve watched Tucker Carlson many times in all. For years I considered him okay on many domestic issues, although he always had a smirky snarky quality that seemed juvenile to me, accentuated by the fact that he has consistently looked young for his age (he’s 56 at present).

However, I never thought Carlson was particularly good on foreign affairs; he started reminding me of Pat Buchanan a long time ago on those issues. But I didn’t think too much of it. I considered him a paleocon and an isolationist, but really didn’t think about him all that often for a long long time.

Carlson was still on Fox News in early 2022 when Ukraine was invaded by Russia, and from the start his stance was isolationist. That would not have surprised me; it was in keeping with the general approach he’d had to these things for many years. But that’s not all he was. He was a noticeable Putin apologist and perhaps even admirer, and seemed to hate Zelensky with an intense venom right from the start, which seemed strange considering that Russia had done the invading. At the time, I was only tuning in to Carlson every now and then, but I saw several examples of Carlson’s hatred of Zelensky; I no longer remember the exact quotes, and I didn’t witness this particular episode, but it’s a good example of the genre:

“Now you see [Zelensky] on television, and it’s true you might form a different impression. Sweaty and rat-like, a comedian turned oligarch, a persecutor of Christians, a friend of BlackRock.”

There’s a big clue there. But to explain it, I’ll need to go back in time.

I think I first saw Carlson on CNN’s Crossfire, which he co-hosted from 2001 to 2005. Those were the bowtie years for Tucker, if I’m not mistaken. He seemed a fairly typical conservative at first, and one of the things I recall fairly vividly was that he supported the invasion of Iraq during the Bush administration, but then changed his mind. He felt he’d been duped into supporting it, and he was both angry and embarrassed about that. Not a good combination.

Please take a look at this from 2004, when he said the following [emphasis mine]:

I think it’s [that is, the Iraq War is] a total nightmare and disaster, and I’m ashamed that I went against my own instincts in supporting it,” he said. “It’s something I’ll never do again. Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine who’s smarter than I am, and I shouldn’t have done that. No. I want things to work out, but I’m enraged by it, actually.”

Obviously that was a huge regret of his, and a source of anger towards those he believes talked him into it. It’s become customary to use the word “neocon” to refer to the people who urged Bush to undertake that war, and although many of them were not the least bit Jewish (nor were they “newly conservative,” one of the original meanings of the term), the phrase “neocon” rather quickly became a kind of code word for “Jew” and even “warmongering Jew.” I believe that in Carlson’s mind, the term “neocon” came to stand for all the people he was angry at because he believed (and continues to believe) that they had led him astray into what he considers his major error of judgment on Iraq, and he thought many of them were Jews and were working on behalf of Israel’s interests.

I’m not going to re-argue the reasons for the Iraq War here; I’ve got plenty of posts on the subject already and the subject is well-aired. But the reason I am bringing it up now is that it seems clear to me that for Tucker, it was an intensely painful turning point. I date his reaction to that war as the start of his more extreme stance of isolationism, and his distrust of anyone with even a hint of advocacy of American entry into wars or even financial or political support of wars. These people were automatically suspect, and he also identified a great many of them with Jews, or with non-Jews sympathetic to Jewish and especially Israeli interests.

Recently Carlson had Jeffrey Sachs on his program and showcased Sachs’ point of view, which is that Israel – and Netanyahu – has pushed the US into many wars, including the Iraq War. Sachs – an economics professor at, yes, Columbia – is a Jew himself but primarily a leftist, and as such he falls into the category of those who detest Netanyahu with a passion, thinks Israel is committing genocide, is a China admirer, and is one of Soros’ allies. However, while it is true that Netanyahu did indeed initially support the Iraq War, so did much of the Western world (including Carlson), and Netanyahu was speaking as a private citizen at the time he spoke in the US Congress on the topic. However, people in the Bush administration who were involved in talks with Israeli government officials in the buildup to the war (Sharon was prime minister at the time) claim that the Israelis warned against attacking Iraq. You certainly won’t hear that from Carlson, who focuses on Netanyahu’s statements prior to the war.

I don’t think it’s possible to overemphasize how important the Iraq war was in forming Carlson’s point of view toward “neocons,” Israel, Netanyahu, and even American Jews whom he believes have “dual loyalties.” But when he was still hosting his show at Fox News, for a while he kept those things somewhat under wraps for the most part. To the best of my recollection, he focused more on domestic issues, and Israel didn’t come up all that often. That may have been mostly because his bosses at Fox kept him in line in that regard – or he himself felt he had to keep in line – and not get too rabidly anti-Israel. Plus, things were relatively quiet in that region compared to now, post 10/7.

In a quick search, the only relevant article I found about Carlson’s isolationist views in those Fox News days but prior to the Ukraine War in 2022 was this one from 2018, when Tucker interviewed Colonel Macgregor (a man who later became a pro-Russian “expert” on the invasion of Ukraine; see this). In 2018, during Trump’s first term, Carlson’s interview with Macgregor was about the idea (incorrect) that the US was about to go to war against Iran. Much later that became a big theme of Tucker’s, who said (incorrectly) prior to the more recent US strike on Iran’s nuclear facility that it would cause a huge and costly war that would kill many Americans. But he was already singing that tune in 2018, interestingly enough:

On 1 May, Tucker Carlson of Fox News Channel interviewed retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor on Fox News about Iran’s relations with the U.S.

Macgregor endorsed the horribly flawed Iran nuclear deal and essentially implied that the U.S. is but a puppet for Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Disappointingly, Carlson made no effort to challenge Macgregor’s statements and contributed with some straw man arguments of his own that appeared to back up what Macgregor was saying.

The straw men start to appear at the :45 mark of the 5 minute video below when Carlson asks the question of Macgregor, “Is it in our strategic interests to have a conflict with Iran?” …

Carlson then essentially accuses U.S. U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley of calling for war with Iran, something that she never said. Carlson goes on with this line of reasoning by claiming that “many Republicans in Congress and a lot of Democrats believe that it is essential that the United States goes to war with Iran.”

Carlson is either profoundly confused or he is dishonest. No one in Congress has said or written anything close to approaching that it is essential that we go to war with Iran.

The template was certainly set already for Carlson’s present point of view.

The next turning point for Carlson was Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when some of these same themes came together and intensified in Carlson’s coverage. Unlike previously, he focused on Ukraine and made many of his shows revolve around the topic of that war, and that’s when most viewers probably first noticed his extreme isolationism. But it had already been well-established.

That’s it for Part I, but there’s much more. To be continued in Part II …

[ADDENDUM: Part II can be found here.
Part III can be found here.]