The writing on Tucker Carlson is spot on, he feels he has the entitlement “good American” because of his ancestry, which goes against everything America stands for. There is hope that this recent disgraceful Putin interview will sink him even in MAGA circles as he is irrelevant, certainly no rational American would take this guy seriously. He is slowly becoming an American joke, but not a memorable name because no one likes a tool.
My MAGA loved ones insisted Tucker does not like Putin, he merely takes him seriously, giving him the respect warranted someone serious and dangerous. Just like Trump does. Yeah. Okay. Pretty sure neither Tucker nor Trump are suffering in the least for being Putin's lickspittles.
Great job at the Principles First conference in Washington, D.c. this past weekend. Given the news of McConnell and the dimmed prospects of Trump’s criminal federal trials, would it be too hopeful for The Bulwark team to endorse Biden for president? Spurring you into action are the vast number of Republican hands raised at that gathering in response to the question of how many had voted, as Republicans, for Democrats in 2020 and 2022. Country over party.
So when are we going to start calling Carlson, et al. communists and blackards? A taste of their own medicine, backed up by video of his interview with Herr Putin, his relentless parroting of all things "news" from Russian tv?
The Vanquishing of McConnell is quite something, in my mind a really remarkable sign of strength and power. Anyone remember the days when John Boehner was the bad guy?
Your quote from Lincoln’s July 10, 1858, speech is one of his most important and I have used it many times in courses. It is not some blood relationship that justifies our American-ness. It does not matter whether we are descended from the Founders. We are bound together by a commitment to certain principles no matter who our ancestors were or where we came from. It is interesting that Americans never use the terms “fatherland” or “motherland”, which implies a relationship among citizens based on blood, ethnicity, or race. These have been well-used terms of both Hitler’s Germany and Putin’s Russia. In America one’s bloodline does not determine one’s belonging, one’s American-ness.
"So Carlson’s appeal to ancestry is foolish. But it’s also revealing of a certain mindset". It also shows what he's got in common with Trump. Trump loves to talk about good genes and 'great bloodlines' (an antiquated phrase he no doubt learned at his father's knee). It's all about blood and soil.
I recommend former Estonian President Toomas Ilves's terrific piece on NATO's revitalization in today's Bulwark for all those who need to clear the stench of Tucker from their nostrils.
Possibly the most important case ever heard: "BREAKING NEWS The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. Wednesday, February 28, 2024 5:17 PM ET The justices scheduled arguments for the week of April 22 and said proceedings in the trial court would remain frozen while they considered the matter."
Outrageous. At this point, odds are 80% that the only case that will even START before election day will be the Alvin Bragg case about Stormy Daniels hush money. This case will have zero impact on the election (or maybe give Trump a boost). The public will not read or hear any testimony about the racketeering, documents or election subversion case. And if Trump is elected, those cases will never be tried.
It's quite dismaying that a majority of justices would even entertain the idea that a president should be free to violate the law without consequence. I suspect that some of them would view it differently if the president were of a different political orientation.
If, however, they struggle in their deliberations over what should be obvious, as they are over whether or not a gun that can fire 800 rounds in one minute is a machine gun, we, the commonsensical, are doomed. We desperately need to increase seats on the bench to 15.
I have always been ambivalent about my ancestors who were patriots during the Revolution. Most of them lived in Massachusetts and helped drive the indigenous people out of New England in the hundred years before the Declaration was written and killed or enslaved most of them.
I was raised in the Anglican tradition and so have sympathy for the many members of the Church who could not in conscience break their oaths and loyalty to the Crown and were persecuted for this and driven North to Canada.
I have often wondered "what if "our country had remained part of the British Empire. The slave trade and slavery itself would have been abolished sooner. Is it possible we could have peacefully transitioned toward independence like Canada (1982)? Would we have a Parliamentary system not a two party duopoly? Could a good portion of the US be Canadian? Could Texas and Southern California be part of Mexico? Would Alaska still be Russian? Had there been no successful American Revolution would all the subsequent revolutions which have convulsed the world from France to China never happened? Or happened differently?
Like I say, totally ambivalent, about that and had I been alive at the time, knowing myself as I do, I probably would have been a loyalist.
The flash point of my Americanism is the Civil War.
One thing I do know is that 4 out of eight of my 2nd great grandfathers fought heroically for the Union. Two who died younger than they should have after the War, one imprisoned at Andersonville and only one who came away largely unscathed and he, his father and brothers participated in the Underground Railway before the war. My family links and lives lost to every war fought by the US from 1812 through Vietnam.
And they did not make the sacrifices they did so Tucker Carlson could proudly pall around with the likes of Putin.
"The slave trade and slavery itself would have been abolished sooner."
I don't know about that. Economic arguments have a way of suppressing moral ones. The British anti-slavery movement only began rising after Britain no longer held jurisdiction over the largest slave economy in its empire (but still received its produce).
"Tucker Carlson isn’t happy with those who accuse him of being a flack for Vladimir Putin. After all, he said yesterday on the Lex Fridman podcast, “my relatives fought in the Revolutionary War. I’m as American as you could be.”"
No, Mr Carlson, you are *not* as American as one can be. The fact that your ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War doesn't reinforce your verbal patriotism, rather it just points out your "white bread" WASP heritage. I don't believe that you contain more than one or two patriotic bones in your entire body.
Actions speak volumes while words are barely a whisper. You took it upon yourself to go to Russia for an interview that no one outside of a select few MAGAdroids thought was a good idea. You were nothing more than Putin's bitch, a total and complete tool, totally spineless when it came to push-back of Putin's obvious disingenuous spin and lies, and a conduit to the Fulvous Flatulence stating that, like in 2016, Russia has his back.
You have the audacity to compare a Stalin-era transportation hub to American mass transit facilities. Of course the Moscow hub has no homeless or people not quite entirely there mentally because those conditions will get you locked up in Russia, not get you help. If you really want a comparison then the San Francisco efforts to hide their homeless during Xi's state visit would be closer to the mark.
In all actuality, imo, outside of the MAGAverse you are considered to be a joke... a sick one at that. You are deserving of all of the opprobrium being heaped on you by a majority of freedom-loving Americans, as is your Emperor and G-d, the Mango Malignancy.
Please feel free to take any job offers extended to you by Russian media. I'm sure you'll feel more at home on Russian TV than here (other than on Musk's Xitter that is).
Excellent essay. The problem with a lot of the grass roots right wing is that many of them feel that they should matter more than other Americans. I've seen the same thing in the Polish neighborhood in Chicago. The Polish immigrants feel they deserve a special place in American society because they are LEGAL immigrants and they are White. Doesn't matter if the don't speak English and clean houses for a living.
IExcellent strategy to use Lincoln to counter Tucker Carlson. The Republican Party has often been referenced as the Party of Lincoln. Not so today.
The writing on Tucker Carlson is spot on, he feels he has the entitlement “good American” because of his ancestry, which goes against everything America stands for. There is hope that this recent disgraceful Putin interview will sink him even in MAGA circles as he is irrelevant, certainly no rational American would take this guy seriously. He is slowly becoming an American joke, but not a memorable name because no one likes a tool.
My MAGA loved ones insisted Tucker does not like Putin, he merely takes him seriously, giving him the respect warranted someone serious and dangerous. Just like Trump does. Yeah. Okay. Pretty sure neither Tucker nor Trump are suffering in the least for being Putin's lickspittles.
Maybe I am being too hopeful, that is depressing. I appreciate the dose of reality.
Great job at the Principles First conference in Washington, D.c. this past weekend. Given the news of McConnell and the dimmed prospects of Trump’s criminal federal trials, would it be too hopeful for The Bulwark team to endorse Biden for president? Spurring you into action are the vast number of Republican hands raised at that gathering in response to the question of how many had voted, as Republicans, for Democrats in 2020 and 2022. Country over party.
So when are we going to start calling Carlson, et al. communists and blackards? A taste of their own medicine, backed up by video of his interview with Herr Putin, his relentless parroting of all things "news" from Russian tv?
The Vanquishing of McConnell is quite something, in my mind a really remarkable sign of strength and power. Anyone remember the days when John Boehner was the bad guy?
Your quote from Lincoln’s July 10, 1858, speech is one of his most important and I have used it many times in courses. It is not some blood relationship that justifies our American-ness. It does not matter whether we are descended from the Founders. We are bound together by a commitment to certain principles no matter who our ancestors were or where we came from. It is interesting that Americans never use the terms “fatherland” or “motherland”, which implies a relationship among citizens based on blood, ethnicity, or race. These have been well-used terms of both Hitler’s Germany and Putin’s Russia. In America one’s bloodline does not determine one’s belonging, one’s American-ness.
"So Carlson’s appeal to ancestry is foolish. But it’s also revealing of a certain mindset". It also shows what he's got in common with Trump. Trump loves to talk about good genes and 'great bloodlines' (an antiquated phrase he no doubt learned at his father's knee). It's all about blood and soil.
I recommend former Estonian President Toomas Ilves's terrific piece on NATO's revitalization in today's Bulwark for all those who need to clear the stench of Tucker from their nostrils.
As Lenin remarked about people like Tucker, he is one of Putin’s “useful tools.”
I started calling him "Tucker the Traitor" long before he got booted from Faux News.
Possibly the most important case ever heard: "BREAKING NEWS The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. Wednesday, February 28, 2024 5:17 PM ET The justices scheduled arguments for the week of April 22 and said proceedings in the trial court would remain frozen while they considered the matter."
Outrageous. At this point, odds are 80% that the only case that will even START before election day will be the Alvin Bragg case about Stormy Daniels hush money. This case will have zero impact on the election (or maybe give Trump a boost). The public will not read or hear any testimony about the racketeering, documents or election subversion case. And if Trump is elected, those cases will never be tried.
It's quite dismaying that a majority of justices would even entertain the idea that a president should be free to violate the law without consequence. I suspect that some of them would view it differently if the president were of a different political orientation.
If, however, they struggle in their deliberations over what should be obvious, as they are over whether or not a gun that can fire 800 rounds in one minute is a machine gun, we, the commonsensical, are doomed. We desperately need to increase seats on the bench to 15.
Lincoln's take on ancestry would be more meaningful if it were still the Party of Lincoln.
I have always been ambivalent about my ancestors who were patriots during the Revolution. Most of them lived in Massachusetts and helped drive the indigenous people out of New England in the hundred years before the Declaration was written and killed or enslaved most of them.
I was raised in the Anglican tradition and so have sympathy for the many members of the Church who could not in conscience break their oaths and loyalty to the Crown and were persecuted for this and driven North to Canada.
I have often wondered "what if "our country had remained part of the British Empire. The slave trade and slavery itself would have been abolished sooner. Is it possible we could have peacefully transitioned toward independence like Canada (1982)? Would we have a Parliamentary system not a two party duopoly? Could a good portion of the US be Canadian? Could Texas and Southern California be part of Mexico? Would Alaska still be Russian? Had there been no successful American Revolution would all the subsequent revolutions which have convulsed the world from France to China never happened? Or happened differently?
Like I say, totally ambivalent, about that and had I been alive at the time, knowing myself as I do, I probably would have been a loyalist.
The flash point of my Americanism is the Civil War.
One thing I do know is that 4 out of eight of my 2nd great grandfathers fought heroically for the Union. Two who died younger than they should have after the War, one imprisoned at Andersonville and only one who came away largely unscathed and he, his father and brothers participated in the Underground Railway before the war. My family links and lives lost to every war fought by the US from 1812 through Vietnam.
And they did not make the sacrifices they did so Tucker Carlson could proudly pall around with the likes of Putin.
"The slave trade and slavery itself would have been abolished sooner."
I don't know about that. Economic arguments have a way of suppressing moral ones. The British anti-slavery movement only began rising after Britain no longer held jurisdiction over the largest slave economy in its empire (but still received its produce).
"Tucker Carlson isn’t happy with those who accuse him of being a flack for Vladimir Putin. After all, he said yesterday on the Lex Fridman podcast, “my relatives fought in the Revolutionary War. I’m as American as you could be.”"
No, Mr Carlson, you are *not* as American as one can be. The fact that your ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War doesn't reinforce your verbal patriotism, rather it just points out your "white bread" WASP heritage. I don't believe that you contain more than one or two patriotic bones in your entire body.
Actions speak volumes while words are barely a whisper. You took it upon yourself to go to Russia for an interview that no one outside of a select few MAGAdroids thought was a good idea. You were nothing more than Putin's bitch, a total and complete tool, totally spineless when it came to push-back of Putin's obvious disingenuous spin and lies, and a conduit to the Fulvous Flatulence stating that, like in 2016, Russia has his back.
You have the audacity to compare a Stalin-era transportation hub to American mass transit facilities. Of course the Moscow hub has no homeless or people not quite entirely there mentally because those conditions will get you locked up in Russia, not get you help. If you really want a comparison then the San Francisco efforts to hide their homeless during Xi's state visit would be closer to the mark.
In all actuality, imo, outside of the MAGAverse you are considered to be a joke... a sick one at that. You are deserving of all of the opprobrium being heaped on you by a majority of freedom-loving Americans, as is your Emperor and G-d, the Mango Malignancy.
Please feel free to take any job offers extended to you by Russian media. I'm sure you'll feel more at home on Russian TV than here (other than on Musk's Xitter that is).
fnord
Excellent essay. The problem with a lot of the grass roots right wing is that many of them feel that they should matter more than other Americans. I've seen the same thing in the Polish neighborhood in Chicago. The Polish immigrants feel they deserve a special place in American society because they are LEGAL immigrants and they are White. Doesn't matter if the don't speak English and clean houses for a living.
"those who do nothing but boast of being American are some of the least American among us" -- well put!