Friday, February 22, 2019

Not Exactly A Book Review: "Ship of Fools" by Tucker Carlson.

The complete title is: "Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution" by Tucker Carlson.

I was not always a Tucker Carlson fan. He was on "Crossfire" all those years and I disliked the who Left vs. Right, Lib vs. Con horseshit as I do now. A view I adopted early on is that the struggle is,was and possibly always will be insider vs. outsider.

Angelo Codevilla and others would express this viewpoint better than I was capable. Victor Davis Hanson repeats this theme. So too, does Donald Trump. Tucker Carlson is the last conservative pundit I would have thought would pick up this theme. He was so CNN, so "Weekly Standard."

Oh, and Carlson used to wear a bow tie. Need I say more?

I suppose a ruling class will always be with us. But for noblesse oblige, or whatever the American version of noblesse oblige happens to be, this particular vintage of ruling class has failed all of us. Carlson hammers this point home mercilessly.

The book is an easy and entertaining read. As one who finds insider-bashing to be highly enjoyable, it was too brief. But that's me.

Lew Rockwell did an interview with Carlson that I found interesting. In Donald Trump, many of us -- --including a tsunami of Evangelical Christian voters--recognized a fellow outsider.



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Rockwell:  Why do they hate Trump so much?  I mean, such bitter, bitter hatred that I’ve never seen in my lifetime.
Carlson:  Well, it’s not ideological.  And this was something that took me a while to figure out because I am ideological.  You know, I’m interested in ideas.  And I’m not a deep intellectual but I see the world through the lens of ideas.  That’s just my nature.  And so I was baffled by this for the first couple of months.  And during the campaign, it was like Trump, on the merits, is the most moderate Republican, most liberal Republican we’ve ever elected, that’s for sure.
Rockwell:  Mm-hmm.
Carlson:  He’s a casino owner from New York City.  Are you kidding?  So he’s the opposite of evangelicals.  That was always their fear that we would get a theocracy, that Pat Roberts would take control and turn it into a Handmaid’s Tale or whatever.  We got Trump instead and they hate him much more.  They like Mike Pence, the actual evangelical more.  Well, why is that?  It’s really simple.  It’s not about ideas, it’s not about policy.  They don’t care about that.  What they care about is evading personal responsibility for the disasters they’ve created.
So Trump’s main sin is the fact that they can’t control him and he’s likely to say anything.  Trump’s one gift – Trump is obviously not a deep thinker.  I’m not attacking him.  I’m not a deep thinker either.  Trump’s main gift is being able to smell what’s true, the obvious truth, and say it out loud or ask a question about it.


https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/02/no_author/the-american-ruling-class-2/

Summary: An informative and entertaining book. If we must have a ruling class, we can do better than these slobs.