Recently, Tucker Carlson suggested that the United States should "liberate" Canada. Max Fawcett writes:
Carlson may have been joking about the idea of "liberating" Canada, but he’s probably dead serious about the notion that Canada’s current government is actively infringing on the freedoms and liberties of its citizens. It was Carlson, after all, who helped elevate last year’s trucker convoy into a global phenomenon on the far right. “Find an enemy, create a crisis, stay in power forever,” he said in his Feb. 21, 2022, monologue. “It's the oldest recipe for tyranny that there is. If we don't recognize it in our own age, it's only because nothing like this was supposed to happen in a democracy, but it is happening, most clearly in Canada.”
There’s a substantial subset of his viewers, and a smaller slice of the American population as a whole, that takes this portrayal of Canada seriously. They genuinely believe we’re being governed by communists, that we’ve fallen prey to a far-left dictatorship, and our freedoms are being suppressed in order to advance the wishes of the World Economic Forum or some other tinfoil-laden conspiracy theory. The longer people are fed that sort of toxic nonsense, the more likely it is that it winds up in the head of someone who could do something about it.
Carlson has become a spokesman for wing-nut conservatism; and, therefore, what is funny -- because it's stupid -- is really no laughing matter. Carlson's brand of conservatism has found a home here:
And while American troops and tanks aren’t about to roll across our shared border, Carlson’s brand of conservatism already has. On any number of issues, from the merits of gun control to the perils facing free speech and the unimportance of climate change, Canadian conservative leaders like Danielle Smith, Scott Moe and Pierre Poilievre are in lockstep with Carlson. If the Trudeau Liberals keep sinking in the polls, his imaginary invasion might not even be necessary.
George Carlin warned long ago that we should never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.
Image: The National Observer
6 comments:
Just a few years ago, Stephen Harper was a keynote speaker at the World Economic Forum. Strange how the far right has turned on the annual gathering of the Masters of the Universe. I guess the WEF's stringent anti-covid policies rankled the anti-vaxxers who seem to have infected Cons with their special brand of lunacy.
The infection runs deep, Cap. That's why it's disturbing.
My thought is that it is best to ignore clowns like Carlson Tucker, Owen. He knows his audience: stupid Americans, and frankly, I have little regard for what they think of Canada. The same goes with the fringe right-wing rabble in Canada that suckles at the teat of such egregious ignorance.
The scandal, Lorne, is that such egregious ignorance is afforded such a loud microphone.
To continue our path to a never ending lust for growth the media have to inflame and exaggerate to entice advertisers and viewers.
And so it goes that we have Tucker Carlson's revving up the discussion on one hand and news that flies by almost unnoticed such as weather forecasts that predict ' atmospheric rivers ' rather than; heavy rain forecast tonight!!
Sensationalism abounds whilst common sense withers.
TB
Sensationalism and superstition, TB.
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