Among other things, Mr. Carlson's monologue helps explain how we became stuck with President Trump. Yes, the Republicans don't really seem to be concerned with the plight of working class Americans; that's not surprising. But what is surprising is that the Democrats don't seem to be all that concerned either, and it's nice to hear someone say that out loud.
In 2016 a billionaire con man ran for president, claiming he was on the side of the working class, and calling for things like reopening the coal mines in West Virginia and the steel mills in Pittsburgh. This was a fantasy, of course, but it made for a nice visual. This should have left the door wide open for the Democrats to advance their real plan for the working class—except either they didn't have one or they were thrown off their game by Trump's craziness. So all they could do was to talk about how awful Trump was and identity politics, and enough of the working class navigated to now-President Trump to enable his narrow victory. Of course, his thinly-veiled appeals to racism also helped.
If I may finish with a promo for another Times story, see "Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two" from the other day. This article does a great job in explaining what we're up against. Maybe one of the parties—or, ideally, both—will take on this challenge before it's too late for our whole country.
51
Day in and day out, Tucker Carlsen spews anti-immigration venom and hatred in fierce competition with the others on his network to see who can be the most cruel and pander to the most extreme in the Republican Party. One day he decides to engage in some Trumpian demagoguery about caring about the little guy, and all of sudden he’s a deep thinker on the right? I don’t think so! First Douthat and now Edsall drinking the Carlsen conversion kool-aid. I challenge anyone commenting on this column to watch 5 minutes of Carlsen’s show and then let’s talk about how “profound” the guy really is.
55
Perfect storm of gobbledegook. He says everything yet nothing. He is against that for which he supports. Hmmmm? Sounds like tucker is really describing the Republican establishment. Which is to sow confusion then push your tyranny under the door. He probably should cut back on the booze when he writes.
26
America is vastly underpopulated. 83 million Germans could comfortably fit inside of Washington and Oregon.
America’s standard of living depends on asian professionals and hispanic laborers.
The future is clear and the future is bright. The only people who have a problem with it are uneducated rural white people.
Why are the rest of us supposed to care?
15
If Carlson really thinks all that, then why does he support a "Bernie Madoff" type like Trump? There's some kind of psychosis going on here.
11
A snide rich kid always knows best
18
He says he doesn't have free reign on his show but how many here who disagree with the Fox line on illegal immigration can register what he said about the two parties? Do you understand what he said?
4
What does Tucker Carlson know? If he wants to have a future in TV after Trump he better start distancing himself now. He is thinking about ad dollars and ratings long term. He doesn't care about the poor and middle class any more than Trump. He just wants the poor and middle class to stay glued to his program after Trump is humiliated by the Mueller report. Carlson doesn't want Trump's humiliation and failure to be his own humiliation and failure. The rats are leaving the sinking ship.
12
I personally think of Tucker Carlson one of "the people who don't care", a "mercenary" without obligation to anyone or the truth.
"They cant solve our problems" - does Carlson not know he is part of "they" to most of America??
14
Interesting, but a deeper analysis, on this case on the Yellow Vest Movement in France can be found at
https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/alain-finkielkraut-ueber-die-gelbwesten-und-macrons-grosse-debatte-ld.1455336
I think the basic message of these people is very important. They told the President: Our country is not just a big global startup, there's an older world here, too, and you have to expect that. At the beginning, the "gilets jaunes" demanded their dignity. And in a completely surprising way, a section of the population, previously unorganized or otherwise organized, has joined forces. "
9
Markets server the rich *only when people don't actually pay for what they get.*
The problem is that so very many people take for granted all sorts of things that they did not earn and yet feel extremely entitled to:
- inheritance. Why should you get money you did not earn?
- citizenship. What gives you the right to US citizenship, that your parents earned it? Give me a break.
- race. The lighter your skin, the more advantages you have in life. You didn't earn that.
- sex. Being a big strong man is A MILLION TIMES easier than being small and/or a woman. You didn't earn that.
- good looks, height, even intelligence is inherited: you didn't earn that.
And pile all that on top of:
- carbon pollution: burning fossil fuels creates extremely bad external costs for everyone, and yet there is no means by which those that burn the fuel are made to (re)pay the cost.
- limited liability: FREE insurance for corporate owners. Why are we giving insurance for FREE to corporate owners.
A market only works when you PAY for what you GET. In so very many ways, people get something for nothing. So yeah, we have market failure. No kidding.
Tucker is a frat-boy huckster selling resentment to entitled whiners. If all his lazy listeners actually had to earn what they had... they literally could not. They are blessed immeasurably and have no idea...
9
I thought Tuck made fun of victim mentality, snowflakes, and government assistance. Why is he then talking about rural America being victims and that the government ignored them?
We humans just love that victimhood message as long as it pertains to us. The political hacks use it because we can’t help but buy into it. This message works for any race, gender, generation etc.
11
"High demand for settlers" led to a "variegated population" early on? Seriously?
Those regions of "high demand" had already been settled by a variegated population (variegated from Europeans) for thousands of years. Please let's not forget that this "high demand" for settlers was created artificially through government-funded programs of ethnic cleansing and genocide waged against this particular "variegation" in America's population.
The goverment and private enterprise can accomplish enormous feats by working hand-in-hand.
10
There isn't a media shock-jock or right-wing tabloid that doesn't have bloviators, called columnists, and all of them are capable of composing Carlson's rant, in one form or another. There's virtually no grounded solution to these problems included in the rant, because a solution requires analysis of world economy, and state planning via social consensus. In other words, the rant is pure Donald Trump.
Actually, Randolph Hearst published this kind of stuff 120 years ago. Eyebrow-raising that it's being taken at face value in the NYT.
6
Carlson doesn't know much about anything, let alone the GOP. Everytime he mistakenly invites a liberal guest to his show he has to run for cover by snickering and blustering. He cannot debate at all.
7
Rich people worship will destroy democracy.
6
As I recall Tucker Carlson was compelled to make that January 2nd monologue on American identity because he was already losing advertisers over previous remarks about the government shutdown.
7
No hint here that up to the 1970s moderate immigration, far below current levels, was a fundamental plank of the Democratic Party, which was then still in touch with its core constituency, working people, rather than ruled by the poverty pimps and others who claim to represent that constituency.
No hint here that African American leaders from Frederick Douglass to Barbara Jordan, and Latino American leader Cesar Chavez, opposed mass immigration because of its negative impact on black and Hispanic citizens.
No hint here of the real history of mass immigration as a cheap labor scheme and a weapon of class warfare from above, useful for multiplying, dividing, and conquering underclasses.
Just "the more immigration the better" vs. "a wall to exclude them all," two battling insanities to keep America from achieving greater social justice and less income inequality.
13
Carlson is starting the attack on the Elites. It is part of the dictators playbook. You can't see that?
3
"O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"
Free enough to understand that our nation is built upon the backs and shoulders of those that were new to us. Brave enough to understand that fighting for a "united states" is worth the fight.
Tucker Carlson is a cheap minded barker who is being paid extremely well by Fox to remind us all about how a Fox viewer should think and feel. It is not just his job, it is his adventure.
He is there to remind people how it might have one day been, how to scare them into thinking that those poor souls fleeing Central America are going to come rape and kill them, taking their jobs and their daughters.
He doesn't understand at all what sacrifice for country is all about. Nor does he have a grain of understanding of what was once the American dream of Liberty. I doubt for a moment that he could even recite the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. Give us.....more of your money?
Tucker Carson isn't a conservative, he is anti-American. He cares about as much for an addicted Appalachian as he does for a mother and child at the southern border. To him, the difference is that they are both uneducated and poor. Oh sorry, there is no difference except that maybe Tucker might get one of them to vote for "his" way of life.
We now live in a time in which we desperately need Patriots. If Tucker thinks he is one, then he should really work on his rhetoric because if Fox likes him, he is not.
4
Wow, Tucker… who knew you, a left wing theorist, infiltrated Fox?
"…How, Carlson asked, “did this happen?”
Well…
Follow along-
In 1981, after almost 40 years of unprecedented wealth accumulation that had total middle class assets well ahead of the super wealthy (you could say it was a time when the country was great), Ronald Reagan had a dumb idea.
Called "Supply Side" economics, or "Tickle Down" as it is known.
Slash taxes on the wealthiest by half while simultaneously increasing government spending - mostly on the military.
And, the middle class would reap the benefits.
The result?
The national debt (accumulated debt in over 200 years of America) tripled(!) in just eight years of his administration.
Tripled.
Look it up.
Then, America got less great.
Budgets from federal to local were cut to make up for lost tax revenue.
Hitting the average American hardest.
(Your kid's underpaid teacher in the crumbling school alongside the pothole riddled street? That's a symptom of the disease that Reagan started)
But the rich?
Well, we all know what we see today.
They got fat.
And with their wealth they bought our political system which kept giving them a little more, more, more.
Just a year ago… the Trump tax cut.
40 years after Reagan and it still goes on.
The Russians endured 70 years of a dumb economic idea called Communism.
We're 40 years into Reaganism.
Tucker sees it. Americans suffer it daily.
It stinks and only the Democrats care to change it.
14
The GOP is married to the 1% ruling /donor class since Citizens United that class buys the government that favors them and enriches them further and they buy more government. Oligarchy is where we are now fortune 500 ceos buy back stock get huge bonuses and tax cuts allowing them to write the laws ,regulate the industries like TRump has installed the lobbyist that regulate the industries the agencies would oversee. It's like having your mommy give you your end of year review no surprises in the self dealing that goes on at the TRrump hotel in Wash DC or in the Moscow Trump Tower planned for 2020.
2
Perhaps Carlson is a new class of conservative?
One that through blind loyalty to party over country whatever the issue, has now seen or been awakened to a certain lucrative advertising sector Fox's Largely Fake news cabal has ignored but now sees as a new target to exploit.
Carlson is a pure ideologue, full stop. He constantly traffics in racist stereotypes and regularly gets schooled on facts by his guests.
Can he get his fan base to drink this latest batch of Kool-AId?
Who knows. Remember most of his fan base swam in O'Reilly cesspool of lies for years. They'll never be rid of that stench.
2
It's hard not to look at rural white communities and say "you did this to yourself". These are the same people who blame blacks in urban environments for their drug problems, out wedlock births, their poverty; not taking into consideration the economic forces that created these circumstances. But yet, we are supposed to be sympathetic to white rural communities for the same reasons. HOGWASH. This populism victim-hood is just that victim-hood. The very things they complain about they cheered during Reagan and Trump. Trumps tax cut has not raised anyone out of poverty. Reagan's did but he crushed unions and any other organization that benefited the white working class. Immigration blaming can only go so far. I do not see white people applying for jobs as trash removers, dish washers, janitors, fruit pickers, street sweepers, nurses, caregivers. But they can sit in bar and make sneering commits about NFL players kneeling or any non white person who succeeded in this country by the very rules they set up to prevent others from succeeding. America First is rooted in racist dog-whistles dating back to the early part of the 20th Century (KKK, Charles Lindbergh, etc).
8
Marx's critique of capitalism during his day was damning. Unfortunately the results of communism have ranged from unsatisfactory to outright disastrous. Some might argue communism as Marx intended has never been properly implemented but I would reply that that is because it is impossible to properly implement it.
Despite Marx's dire warnings, liberal government policies (taxes, labor law, environmental law, anti-monopoly law, social safety net) mitigated much of capitalism's faults and capitalism became the engine of growth that brought us to where we are today.
Due to deliberate weakening of those liberal government policies and the effects of globalization, unrestrained (relatively) capitalism is again causing serious negative side effects that are not so dissimilar to Marx's times.
If Carlson thinks capitalism's faults can be cured by cutting immigration, he is either stupid or deeply cynical. The solution is the same as before: taxes, labor law, environmental law, anti-monopoly law, social safety net. Reforming the immigration system would be helpful for society but that by itself would hardly make a dent in fixing capitalism.
4
Three secret private meetings with Putin. Why?
One Trillion dollars stolen from our Grandchildren in a fake tax reform bill.
The Repeat-acon party blocks Congressional votes, and individual voters from their Constitution privilege to vote...why?
100 equal Senators, and one prevents the others from performing their Constitutional duties. Who is he representing?
Newt Gingrich, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Rupert Murdoch, Sheldon Adelson, Steve Bannon, Rebekah Mercer, Mike Pence, Mitch, Paul, the entire Freak-show Caucus, and President Bone Spur himself...does this look like God's team to you?
And poor Tucker is mad? He really is a whiner.
6
The market did not end slavery. Lincoln did. The market did not end Jim Crow. MLK and LBJ did. The market did not win the two world wars; the US government did. If the US had been left to the market, slavery would be legal in a society run by Nazis.
6
Tucker's audience has changed. He is trying to hold onto his job.
Movement conservativism isn't going anywhere. It's paymasters have gotten nearly all that they paid for. Tax breaks, cheap labor and docile union free workers.
Just give the surfs some fentanyl and a Tiki torch. They'll be happy.
3
The political parties, particularly the Republicans, chase the ultra-rich and ignore everyone else for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: because that's where the money is." And that's why the Republicans killed a proposed constitutional amendment to regulate money in politics.
3
Reminds me of the current Virginia Governor's advice about wearing makeup: Black shoe polish is hard to remove. Forever.
1
How can Carlson be so right about the causes and so wrong about the only solution is more republicans. We just got rid of a bunch of them last Nov. and it will take decades to undo the damage they inflicted on our country.
Democrats are not perfect but I have more hope for the people's will and benefit with the new members than I have had in a loonnngg time. Its up to us, the voters, to keep this moving forward towards the 2020 primaries and election.
I am 65 yrs old and see the youth and women's movement as essential to fixing, keeping and maintaining our Democracy for all citizens.
6
Many years ago in a place I no longer recall I read of an encounter between Howard Fast, the Communist/Socialist/blacklisted author of “Spartacus” and many political tracts and H.L. Mencken, the great newspaper reporter and social and literary critic, who met at a Progressive Party political convention in 1948.
Fast was approached by Mencken -- who liking one of Fast’s books -- advised him to stay away from the Progressive Party because he believed its policies and practices would destroy him. Fast, not wishing to hook up with either Democrats or Republicans, replied the he had no better place to be than with the Progressives.
Mencken’s rejoinder to Fast has stuck with me all of my adult life. He said the best political place to be is always by yourself, as a Party of One, making your political mind up about things one day at a time, essentially participating in politics as an observer, without ever making a permanent commitment to either of our major political parties.
Fast never took Mencken up on his advice, but I did, leaving me free to get off the Republican train as soon as the Trump train came along; and here I am today a registered Democrat and full-time believer who is still looking forward to a future of something better than Democrats if and when it ever comes along.
3
"What does Tucker know that the Republican Party doesn't?"
Nothing. Until recently the Repubs ran the WH, the House and the Senate. 60% of Governerships were in Republican hands, as is the Supreme Court.
Both Carlson and the Repubs think that the solution to the failures outlined by him is to elect more Repubs.
2
Tucker Carson is uttering anti-establishment rhetoric to save the establishment.
Dean Baker's comments could have come out of my mouth. I find myself in rare agreement with most Tucker Carlson's commentary.
2
Ever the Duh moment!
But no matter our situation, ya gotta admit - Edsall’s darn good at exposing the small point where disparate experts collide in a concordance that our political elected leaders fare not see.
1
Mine is a minor quibble with Carlson’s divisive message: What is his problem with substitute teachers? All schools need them, and they are required to have the same qualifications as permanent teachers.
As for Will Wilkinson’s pablum claim that “godlessness” is a societal problem, it is possible to be an atheist and also a good, moral and kind human being. Religion is for the morally weak minded, who need a framework of punishment and reward to keep them on the path of what is referred to as “righteousness.”
2
Lets not forget that Fox is immigrant owned. We never question if these owners and commentators are legal immigrant or desendents of legal immigrants because they are very rich 1%. Trump included since his family has a history of lying about their immigration status and hiring illegal immigrants.
It sounds good, as did Trump's infrastructure comments in the SOTU. But, it is a calculated act. It is propaganda to get Trump re-elected. There is no sincerity whatsoever. You certainly can't trust them.
3
When Tucker Carlson speaks about the middle class in America, he is on fire. No one else defends the middle class in the MSM. The main stream media is just a Babel of voices defending elite interests. He is absolutely spot on. Which is why, of course, the elites hate him.
3
The greatest distraction would be if we repeat history and blame the poverty of the poor on immorality - like good Christians did a hundred years ago.
Eventually they discovered that poverty was caused by lack of money, not lack of morality.
Get onboard! It's time to restore the progressive taxation that built America's world renown middle class.
2
The immigration issue is a red herring created by the conservatives or Republicans as a convenient excuse for their racism. Interestingly that is hardly mentioned here. But there is a lot going on under the guise of nationalism. If these writers can prove that whites will gladly take the hand-to-mouth subsistence jobs such as fruit picking, toilet and hotel room cleaning etc done by illegals then they have a legitimate issue. Instead they relentlessly and viciously attack those who can not defend themselves. Compare the non-college white workforce in the rustbelt to the highly diverse and educated workforce in major US cities. You will find resentment that is child's play to exploit.
My Asian-American son-in-law and his wife are each earning six figures in five years because of education and hard work. It took me a long time as an educated boomer immigrant to get there. But I did and couldn't be happier for my son-in-law and daughter.
I have a problem figuring out why native born Americans in the heartland miss the bus of opportunity in the land of milk and honey. They are easy prey for charlatans, grifters, and pseudonationalists populating the current Republican Party.
Carlson claims that nobody even tries to defend immigration. That is false - obviously false as a matter of simple fact. Many defend immigration. Do they make good arguments? I think that many of them do. Immigrants make our nation greater and wealthier.
Carlson is a child of privilege. His daddy bought an ambassadorship. His step-mom was heir to the Swanson food fortune. He has not experienced, and cannot imagine, what immigrants do for America.
2
Carlson pointed specifically to problems faced by rural white America, the crucial base of Republican voters: “Stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male unemployment. A terrifying drug epidemic.” How, Carlson asked, “did this happen?"
Well, when it's inner-city blacks facing these same issues, the GOP base quickly points to these breakdowns as ills caused by a broken welfare culture and a lack of a quality Protestant work ethic. What's the excuse when it's white folks? Where's the bootstrap logic of the rugged individualist?
9
Workers themselves have created part of their own problem. They have allowed Unions to dwindle and in many cases fought against them. They have bought into the notion created by their capitalist bosses, that if they worked hard and played by corporation rules they would be awarded with higher wages for their efforts. But just the opposite has happened as they have been considered by employers as just another part of the machine. The idea of working together as workers to insure better wages and other benefits has been lost. Carlson does not mention any of this as he continues to accept the corporate lie even as he criticizes unfeeling corporations, a criticism I am sure will change nothing. Workers need to reclaim their destinies through unity as they reclaim their due recompense.
4
Why have a two party system at all ?
It is a prime source of derision. Do away with money in our politics.
All candidates should be backed with government funds.
Each to receive equal amount for their "campaign" so they had better run it efficiently.
This will provide an early look into their organizational ability.
Do away with the gigantic donors from Vegas, California and New York who are paying for their own agendas.
Our national elections have become -moneyball.
We can do better that that.
"Our country shouldn't be involved in financing elections" you say to yourself"
Answer: In 2015 NASA had a budget of 65 Billion dollars.
Answer : Our last presidential election (2016) 6 1/2 billion.
Answer: We should and can do much better than that.
Final question: Which is more important--Going to the moon and back OR having a practical, fair presidential election ?
Our citizens should become independent voters, no party affiliation and vote (finally) for what makes sense to you.
Judge Judy says "If it doesn't make sense, i usually isn't true"
Our last presidential election(2016) cost a fortune and provided us with Donald Trump.
That "Doesn't make sense". We must do better than that.
1
Bravo Mr. Carlson, Welcome to the Resistance! But no, not the knee jerk Anti-Trump resistance that is, among the self styled Liberal cognoscenti, as much a fashion statement as a political position-But the humanist focused resistance that refuses to equate fortune or success with a sort of divine intervention (be that intervention on behalf of Liberals, Conservatives or the nondescript).
We Humanist embrace the fragility of the human condition and understand that at any point in our lives we could lose whatever favor or fortune we as individuals maybe currently enjoying, to the vagaries of fate. What matter most to us in our Humanist Resistance Movement is the knowledge that we must love one another to survive as a species, and we will resist any attempt from the Right or the Left to pass policies that reduce individuals to plots on a graph. Welcome, but be prepared for blow back!
3
Maybe someone has already asked this, but how is Carlson not a member of this so-called ruling class? I'm pretty sure he makes more than the median income across the country.
2
Quoting Cass, "Their labor-market policy could best be described as one of benign neglect".
Neglect means neglecting all the depredations of corporate profit-driven ethics-free decisions,
Neglect means leaving workers and the community at large defenseless against exploitation and contamination.
That neglect is not benign, it is malignant.
Only the laws, programs, and regulations stand in the way.
2
From Edsall
"in the struggling Syracuse metropolitan area (Clinton 53.9 percent, Trump 40.1 percent), families moving in between 2005 and 2016 had median household incomes of $35,219 — $7,229 less than the median income of the families moving out of the region, $42,448."
Exactly, what have the Democrats , in one of the most democratic States in the US, in control for decades, in a State that contains more billionaires than any other State, done for workers ?
NADA, NADA, NADA
3
Once the birth control pill was invented, it gave females freedom, to not have to stay home with unlimited numbers of children, and they could have a life outside of the home. This was good for women, not so good for the family, the children, the marriage, and the future health of most generations going forward. I am older, and literally saw divorce begin to be the norm, the working female, and the obesity epidemic in our small town starting about 40 years ago. I had gone to college, and then worked in New York before marriage, so for me the idea of the outside of marriage narrative wasn't a drawing card. I, also liked the cooking, gardening, sewing, model, that was the Martha Stewart model. I was the one who paid the bills, did the taxes, made sure the appliances, and auto were serviced, and working. Since, I cooked everything from scratch, I saw those working women put dozens of frozen pizzas on the conveyor belt along with soda, which became the standard diet for several nights every week. It is the snowball affect, of the ball as it takes on more snow, rolling down the hill, and then what happens when it hits something. That is what the culture did to the family, which set up academic failure for too many children, many raising themselves, with more homes without fathers. Then, we had the behavior problems, acted out, because of cultural changes, which created more special education, and increased taxes. Then, it became a world economy, and here we are.
5
Finally, democrats should clean up their ranks, and step ahead with any bad news on their records.
The most important goal for the democrats is to be honest and authentic, just like Stacy Abrams was yesterday.
Americans lost trust in their government, this is grave and dangerous times.
The fragmentation of everything doesn't help, we need to find the way out of morass to some clarity and trust...before it's too late.
2
Rather than prepare the next generation of native Americans through education it has been determined its cheaper to
import already educated workers. They are smart but don’t have the American work ethic. In tech, especially mainframe/legacy systems i am training older workers and that is its own problem with learning styles, physical ailments/limitations etc. This was the first time i agreed with Tucker on anything. The ruling elites don’t care about anyone but themselves and maintaining their place in society. They have infected all aspects; government, academia and entertainment. The people of this country need to recognize that and stop worshipping them in a sad attempt to be like them.
9
Tucker Carlson is just playing to the base. Saying the free market should be controlled by the government to make room for American workers but wouldn't be caught dead using the S (socialism) word. Like Trump through his tariffs making American consumers pay higher prices for the label "made in the USA" so that American workers who can't compete with foreign workers get the job through the government's manipulations. Some might call this worker welfare.
Then again the true blue ploy to find someone else to lay the blame on. Attack immigrants who are taking our jobs. Irrespective of the fact that unlike many immigrants the unemployed Americans would not travel thousands of miles to perform back breaking work usually in the hot sun while earning less than subsistence wages.
Always blame someone else (government, immigrants, the free market, etc.) when frustrated that life didn't go your way and your less than positive choices resulted in your less than satisfying life.
5
The lesson of the shut down was that many middle class workers (in this case gov't employees) are 1 paycheck from the breadline. We may be the richest country, but the wealth is concentrated among only a chosen few, protected by gov't policies.
6
"You’d think our ruling class would be interested in knowing the answer. But mostly they’re not. "
They are NOT a ruling class, they are a governing class, acting in trust for the people.
A ruling class is the landed gentry in England, or the 'Von"s in Germany--hereditary, titled, etc. Is it too much to ask that people stop using the verb "rule" when they mean govern?
3
@paredown
But that's what they do, they do not govern for people benefits, they rule like the landed gentry, without any consideration of citizens issues and interests.
They rule for their donors interests to be fulfill.
Regression to feudal society in full bloom.
NOBLES, KNIGHTS, AND SERFS.
5
@paredown
Do you seriously think we are being "...governed with our consent..." as opposed to being "...ruled..."?
3
I have to take exception to Mr. Edsall's comments that the shift in the thinking of Republicans is what led to the election of Donald Trump. What actually led to Mr. Trumps elections was the fact that he, the second worst candidate in presidential history, was facing Ms. Clinton, the worst candidate in presidential history, really nothing much else was in play. Trump defeated the cast of thousands in the Republican primaries for largely the same reasons, the candidates were not willing to forcefully go after issues that are obvious and important to voters outside of our major cities and metropolitan areas. Carlson positions are largely in line with this type of thinking, the persons who voted for Trump were voting in their own interests, interests that were ignored by the Republican primary candidates.
4
On those evenings when I watch cable news, I've gotten into the habit of watching Tucker, and then switching over to Maddow an hour later. It makes for an interesting evening.
3
American Capitalism demands goods produced by cheap labor either domestically or imported from the Third World. We practice both.
We might like it to be different, but the truth is that I saw you on line at Best Buy and you were buying goods made in China.
2
What rules through a class of people is capital, which itself transcends national boundaries as reported on another article in today’s paper. The tax cut reform passed by previous congress and signed by Trump continues to protect and foster international corporations’ profits being stashed away in shelter islands. Corporate capital continues to rule and augment itself with the collaboration of this administration. Therefore the talk against immigration is a smoke screen that veils the reality of corporate profit origins and the maneuvers to hide them and avoid their taxation. Immigrants don’t cause inequality and poverty. There’s a solid evidence of 200 years to demonstrate the opposite. What causes mass poverty and inequality is the same cause of concentration and centralization of wealth and income in fewer hands.
3
What Carlson knows is what every other thinking American suspects or is saying out loud - that the elites in both major US party establishments collude with our 1% to destroy the American middle class, via working to divide and conquer our society along race, gender and ethnic lines, and so erase the melting pot unity that they correctly believe might be able to form a big enough consensus to stop their greedy reckless crusade of "global economic integration", corrupting and enslaving integration with the 80% of the world whose majorities have low/no human rights. And the mass delusion that the Left or the democratic party care any more about the welfare of the "people" than the Robber Baron 'anything goes to make more money' corporatists has been the greatest mass media propaganda deception success in all of history! While the truly base reality is that all human elites have been and still are convinced of their God like superiority. And, therefore, they believe they have a right to rig societies for their own benefit, and whatever self-justifying delusion of paradise they happen to dream up to impose on the rest of us in the inferior common herd. The contempt for the masses of the few percent One Party oligarchy that oppresses China is identical to the contempt of the our 1%, the descendants of Cortez Latin American elites, Middle Eastern sheiks and various African group leaders for majority of all of us - to them us many inferior "baskets of dispicables".
6
There's another pretty obvious explanation for Carlson's comments. It needs to be noted that Carlson delivered his monologue just a few days after Mitt Romney published a piece in the Washington Post arguing that Trump was unfit morally to be president. It looked for a moment like Romney -- who made his millions in "private equity" -- might lead a damaging movement in the GOP that would split the Wall Street faction from the working class white faction. Carlson's response -- which bitterly criticizes the economic shenanigans of Romney types -- can be seen as an attempt to defend Trump against the Romney insurgency. Carlson, I believe, saw a threat to the GOP and wanted to stop it, mostly by encouraging Romney to shut up.
What was most notable was that Carlson ended his monologue by saying that voters had no choice but to support the Republican party! In the end, it was a defense of the GOP just as GOP support is crumbling because Trump is so unpopular. His goal was to try to keep the Romney types on board with the race-baiting and anti-immigration agenda. Carlson did not propose or support any policies which would truly help the working class.
8
"Perhaps he’s best described as a charter member of the same ruling class that in his monologue he indicted..."
Bingo! Carlson is part of the ruling class. But it's not just Carlson who rants against a group of people to which he himself belongs. The NYT's own Paul Krugman every now and again decries "elites," yet Paul Krugman is the textbook definition of an elite.
2
not surprising. once in a while views on foxnews are actually balanced though usually not... Doug Schoen: What Trump did (and didn't) do with his State of the Union address -- And the real test ahead
another example - some in Republican circles see things for what they are
Weird dynamic: Tucker says things that actually are fact-based, truthful, real, painful and very, very human ... yet continues to shill for Fox and all its sycophants.
Maybe the closest comparison to this sudden outburst of reason by TC that I can make is an appearance by Frank Luntz (major R player for decades now) on Christiane Amanpour's hour program several months ago.
He was interviewed not by her, but another reporter on the program, in the last segment of the hour.
Luntz seemed to have a genuinely stricken conscience in the interview, speaking movingly about young people, and especially those of color, who he stated will never have a fair shot or a get a leg up in this society and have given up hope.
He compared this against when there was a real middle class, factory jobs, etc., etc. and the United States stood for so much more -- and more positives -- than currently.
He said what had shaken him so of late was going into schools and talking with students ... had really opened his eyes, and shaken him to his core.
Wow, I thought watching, Frank Luntz has seen the light? The guy who likely planted the seeds of 'alternate facts' with his wordsmithing for GW and others, a buddy of Rove; again, a guy steeped deeply in R politics forever.
Am I watching a new and changed Frank Luntz?
Well, maybe on some personal and inner level ... but he still runs his focus groups and he still tweets very pro Republican. So ... what to make to TC's monologue?
Maybe not that much.
3
If markets exist to serve us but their nature is to serve themselves and make us serve them, then what forces are available to make them go against their nature? Preaching will prompt markets to spend more on public relations in order to avoid more expensive changes; we preach now and this is what happens.
Unions and governments can be antimarket forces that compel markets to behave unnaturally, but market forces generally manage to neuter them and eventually enlist them as junior partners or flunkies in business domination. So from a conservative point of view, markets raise problems for which there are no solutions except to cover them over, ignore them, and wait until their festering explodes.
1
Blaming immigrants for the crimes of rich corporations and right wing think tanks and of course Reaganonomics is quite literally insane.
Yet here we have Carlson and of course Trump, both of whom talk a good game about the woes of the white working class male then instead of fixing the problem by realizing who caused it they turn around and demonize poor people and Democrats.
I ask you.
277
The role of a representative government in a capitalist society is to protect us from exploitation at the hands of the rich.
6
Is American conservative thought, what's left of it anyway, a political philosophy or just a means of believing and adhering to the idea of largely unfettered markets where those who deserve to win do so, consistently? I suggest it is an economic position first and last and all the other elements, however they might be derived, are in service to enterprise capitalism. This is one factor in allowing those who call themselves conservative to take positions all over the map, so long as the ability of people to grab whatever they can from our rich nation is preserved.
There are no conservatives in America, certainly not in the classical meaning of the term and, increasingly, not in any meaning. It is impossible to be in or vote for the Republican party and call yourself a conservative, but that useful fiction, the screaming falsehood, remains for its usefulness.
Political expediency and complete malleability are the guideposts and so...VIVA TRUMP! Forget about principles.
3
Restricting immigration to workers with skills rather than unskilled workers has strange results. Unskilled workers often do jobs that native workers are reluctant to take or do well, and their low wages make goods and services cheaper for the rest of us and/or raise profit levels. Skilled workers are welcome if there are in fact shortages of such workers, but remove the necessity of spending money to educate native workers to do these jobs. And if there is no shortage, they take jobs from native workers and reduce pay levels and promotion opportunities.
These days, immigration has other dimensions, since it relates to global population levels and climate change. With any other species whose population has done what ours has done, we would be expecting a population crash at some point. Malthus ruled out birth control as immoral and therefore not worth considering as a solution to his problems, and most of our major religious leaders continue this trend. So we are blissfully unprepared to even think about what we will do about the coming crash, guaranteeing that when it happens it will be as morally ugly as possible.
1
I just read the entire Tucker Carlson Monologue. Its well written and definitely worth and read. I am a bit shocked to see this at Fox news, but its a wake-up call and may explain the populist trends in both the Republican and Democratic parties.
1
Carlson is right, that you cannot continue on the path of greed based market capitalism while ignoring those who are being hurt by it. He is also right that the GOP and its 'the markets float all boats' lie and the Democrats, specifically the Clinton/Larry Summers/"New Democrat" idea that globalization would float the boats of working class people in the US as it took away jobs they once could rely on, and part of the problem is both of them have this idea that everyone in this country gets a lot of money from the stock market, when relatively few do. The GOP's response to the loss of economic security is basically the Ayn Rand "well, if you don't benefit, you must be a loser", while the Democratic response has been a bunch of position papers with 60 points that in the end, don't do anything either. And Carlson is right in that the GOP likely has to solve this mess, because the people most affected by the economic problems of income and wealth inequality, after years of being told it was all the fault of affirmative action and regulation and taxes, only trust the GOP, as odd as that is. Like Nixon with China, if the Democrats proposed things like income support, EIC increases, massive job retraining, getting rid of the favorable tax status of stock income, they would be called socialists; if the GOP did it, they would be 'doing the right thing'
4
As interesting as this speech might be- how many constructive proposals does it contain? Sarah Palin was good at criticizing (in plain folksy languages), but people didn't seem to think she could actually accomplish anything, nor did she propose to.
3
Summing up the debate and discussion reality confirms our form of capitalism merged with our practicing democracy fails to ordinary people, ignores their plight. Increasing wealth, further concentration, corporate executives paid to increase share prices, leads to political power accelerating the concentration of wealth. Current example the Tax Bill. Meager individual benefits not made permanent. All you need to know about American Plutocracy. Citizens United another clear reflection one man one vote is a myth. A pile of papers filed with the Secretary of State in Delaware is a person and money is speech, simple really and it serves the interest of wealth. Consider the 107 million dollars raised for the Trump inaugural now in the spotlight. Mind blowing fails to describe the magnitude of the excess.
2
'these view of break down and hurt have been well chronicled by others. capitalism is blamed. what is missed is that capitalism when firms were more locally owned or at least in one country whose borders were the market borders is remembered as the time when corporations were ok. Now corporations are truly global and markets global, the corporations boundries and their markets are not the same as any government, and there is no global government. roots are gone, loyalties once there are gone. The EU, US, Ruissia and China rivals seek to control the corporations but can only influence them by denying markets. Worker of no country have much control and none of the mega companies sees any one community as their own. Companies have outgrown the societies which nurtured them. It is capitalism that causes the disconnect but governments that do not span the same space and populisms. With countries so wedded to old identies, it may never happen. And with Carlson and the authors and commentators here, there are not answers because we deny the problem. It is our clinging to old forms, and denying that technogy already demands world government
2
Two changes that would enhance the world immediately is to outlaw all forms of lobbying and PACs. With our elected officials getting no outside pressure and/or payoffs, they might be more inclined to represent the people who elected them and not special interests group or the top 1% who think, perhaps rightly, that they can buy whatever they want. Our capitalism is a wonderful thing, but too much of anything is no good. We worship the dollar to the point where it’s hurting us. We’ve squeezed very last cent out of workers and benefits, just to keep quarterly profits steamrolling ahead. We have done so at the expense of our middle class. Without a middle class, the US as we know it is doomed. Democracy struggles in the face of income equality — just look at The Trump Administration and his ghastly Cabinet and the abuses that have occurred. Another change I’d institute immediately is to take away that wonderful and for-life free insurance for our congress members and their families. They might actually begin to care about what’s available, as well as things like pre-existing conditions, affordable prescriptions and so on.
3
Republicans trust free markets and do not want to deal with the fact that powerful players can make more (in the short term, at least) by dominating and rigging markets. They trust free markets to preserve themselves when in fact it is only political actors who can identify and maintain the better outcome of preserving free markets. Market players are concerned with winning, not with preserving the system, and the greatest victory is the victory over government and the rest of the economy. Russia and our health care system are examples of what happens when markets are left to their own devices. The conservative condemnation of government ignores this; otherwise it would have to admit that government is necessary to free enterprise in other ways than just enforcing contracts, thereby opening the door to empirical investigations of what these ways are and making the size of government a practical and pragmatic matter.
1
Carlson is right, but like most of the talking heads and politicians out there, he hasn't fully grasped the problem, let alone the answers. We are heading for what a friend of mine called the Star Trek world, where thanks to automation, AI and machine learning, we are making more and more jobs obsolete, but we haven't created the other end of that world, where people don't have to work because there is no money and everything is in fact free, but they also have things to do with their lives that have meaning to them. People don't want a universal welfare state, no matter how generous, they want something meaningful, want to feel like they have accomplished something.
The real problem is on the other side, that unlike the working people, you have those who see the decline in labor, not as a problem, but as a way to make more and more profit (mostly through stock ownership),which to them is a good thing. What the Carlsons of the world have to do is convince Harvard Business School and the stock market analysts it spews out, and corporate CEO's, and rich shareholders of the top .5% whose income soars as jobs disappear, that this isn't a good thing, that shareholder capitalism is rapidly becoming, not based in reality, but in a fantasy bubble that will end up taking everyone with it when it bursts. How can a company stock price soar, when fewer and fewer can buy what they make or provide?
3
@bill d Agreed. Many blue collar workers associate their job as part of their identity. They are self reliant & seek to be productive. Yet when some engineer creates a machine that can automate a task previously done by a person; society will celebrate the engineer, he will have a profile piece in Forbes, he will reap the benefits of capitalism & become a millionaire; whilst on the other end the blue collar guy gets the can and the humiliation of being replaced by a machine. Society forgets him & casts him aside - he is disposable & his identity takes a hit. This is the emotional part of capitalism that Tucker gets right. Capitalism is brutal and can eat men and women alive. But its the democrats who want to nerf the brutal elements of capitalism by offering food stamps, unemployment benefits & various offer social programs. Republicans by contrast perpetually seek to destroy the welfare state which means those caught in capitalism teeth get chewed up. Tucker gets this right, but he is delusional thinking the republicans are better on the issue.
2
He acts like he has stumbled on some key to unlock a better America. When actually such positions (appropriate regulation of big business, minimum wage & opposing perpetual war) have been part of the democratic party for at least three decades. Although he wont switch sides, as he is still invested in believing illegal immigration is the source of all ills in America. And really, that's the glue that keeps the GOP together. The GOP can have an isolationist president with a neoconservative national security adviser, a protectionist president with a free trade economic adviser, and its all swell, because all they want, is a wall on the southern border.
2
Carlson won't switch sides for two reasons. The first is that Rupert has made him rich, and the glue that holds the Republicans together is money. The other reason is that he is either a xenophobe and a racist, or he is learned enough to realize that xenophobia and racism are ubiquitous, endemic in America, and serve as the lever with which the rich move the world.
2
While the diatribe by Carlson has gems of truth about the state of our white citizens, what Carlson and his ilk (and this article) refuses to acknowledge is the inevitable march of technology. Technological advances especially AI will only further disenfranchise the people who make up the majority of his viewers. Technology will continue to change our culture and our demographics, disrupting the American Dream of middle class growth and reverting to the Middle Ages. Instead of the barons and churches owning all the wealth (the land) with their fiefdoms and the destitute and slaves, we now have the investors and the relatively few educated gentry and their growing GIG workers and the ones who are left behind. What we need is a new political model to address this cultural phenomena and not the politics of division.
1
I stopped reading when I got the part about Cass wanting to bar or deport the *least* skilled immigrants and allow the most skilled in. I have to laugh. This is not a good recipe. This is clearly not "optimal". Certainly not for the skilled americans who'll see wages decrease. Or americans who'll see the cost of many services go up. I can't pretend to have an answer, but this is not it. Obviously any type of limit on trade, whether of labor, goods or services, will, in the short run, increase costs. Its like argument that tariffs are filling government coffers. Of course! They're a tax! Filling coffers, but at what cost?
3
"market capitalism is not a religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. " "We do not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite."
I'm going to sue Tucker Carlson for copyright infringement!
My theory:
Unlike his coworkers at Fox, Carlson senses that conservative ideology is nearing the end of it's lifespan and a major transition to the left is approaching - similar to what happened between 1929 and 1932 (yes, that dramatic and with the same cause). He's just maneuvering to survive that transition rather than getting wiped out. Trump = Hoover!
1
Interesting that some conservatives feel the need to address the problems of economic inequality, and the failure of the "invisible hand" of the market to solve these problems.
Of course, we don't really have a free market. We have oligarchy. Which these conservatives aren't willing to mention, much less confront.
5
What is stunning to me is that the lesson and the cure that Cass, Carson and other nationalistic minded conservatives on immigration is exactly the wrong one:
The United States should limit increases in its supply of unskilled immigrant labor. This new approach would require first and foremost that criteria for allowing entrance into the country emphasize education level — attainment of a college degree, in particular.
That is foolish and short sided. If we are going to preserve and protect the middle class and help more people join and surpass it, that can't happen with low wage low skill jobs. If we put barriers to immigrant workers at all it should be on highly skilled workers who command high wage jobs. Those are the jobs of the future. Those are the 'dream' jobs that a college education promises. That same education that has so many young people in debt. Leave the low income jobs for others and help Americans get into the skilled economy. I'd happily give all the crop harvesting jobs to others if my children get STEM careers.
3
Tucker Carlson's Ship of Fools is a detailed and incredibly informative narrative of the last fifty years of Western democracy. His basic point is completely valid and backed up by looking back at history. A ruling elite whatever their politics, and that elite means all the main heads of society, politicians, media, academia, business, etc has slowly but surely with the help of technology and the globalization of commerce managed to accrete most of the wealth to itself. The result is a disaster for a functioning middle class and those below who need the opportunity and means to join it.
6
The Repubs don't give a damn about the planet and the weather, they're after Social Security and Medicare, they're OK with the weakening of the middle class, they practice vote suppression, but we're better off with them than the Dems?
The Dems have their issues, but they understand that people like me exist, and that we have our hopes and dreams.
8
Tucker Carlson and the Manhattan Institute are tools for Republicans to win elections. Carlson's personally-held level of insincerity for the plight of people is matched by his insincerity concerning a time-has-come, widely applicable, LASTING solution.
Mr Edsall neatly wraps the rhubarb:
"Contemporary political polarization reflects the intensification of the endless struggle to integrate America and, more recently, to assimilate millions of newcomers, some legal, some not."
Unwrapped, the problem resides in America's suffocating embraces of two incompatible viewpoints. So, loosen-up that grip. Legislate onerous penalties onto the employers to extinguish the carrot forever.
Relax, Dreamers are Americans. Go slow, their parents arrived AFTER Reagan's amnesty. Work permits and clawing back some of the benefits that they paid taxes into -- will have to wait for America's collective uniform embrace of "No papers/no work or employer goes to jail".
Carlson makes good (if obvious) points. But his logic stops working when he identifies the harm imposed on us by free-market fundamentalism, but then tries to argue that Republicans are better equipped to bring us back from the downward spiral that's resulted from decades of worshipping the free market.
What makes Republicans remotely more qualified to do that? Carlson would probably say they are the ones who champion family values and self-improvement. But it just isn't so. Studies show that when it comes to lower divorce rates, education, and income, blue America is far ahead of red America.
3
RE Don Baker : .., he is absolutely right that the leadership of both parties has largely embraced an agenda that serves the rich with little concern for average workers
But why ???
Here are the top campaign contributors of the two leaders of the Democratic Party
Charles E Schumer
Top Contributors, 1989 - 2018
Goldman Sachs
Citigroup Inc
Paul, Weiss et al
JPMorgan Chase & Co
Credit Suisse Group
Nancy Pelosi
Top Contributors, 2017 - 2018
Facebook Inc
Alphabet Inc (That is Google)
Salesforce.com
NONE of above has any economic interest to improve the earning of American workers
The lower the wages, the more money Wall Street and Silicon Valley corporations can reap
12
Some here is a bit off-topic . .
The immigrant vs. native workers vs. low-wage jobs argument is about 50 years too late.
The 1960/70s, alas, were the time to have this discussion and devise creative solutions. As the cliche goes . . that train has left the station. Our immigrant workers are here to stay.
As a liberal Democrat I blame my party just as much as the Republicans. My party was always about amnesty to create more Democrats. The Republicans were always about cheap labor to bust the unions. They both opened the gate for their own reasons, and we are reaping the whirlwind.
Well, the Republicans busted the unions and got their mass of low-wage workers and the Democrats got a few, but not enough to matter, Democratic voters.
* Working men and women must have strong labor unions that will fight for a reasonable share of the pie.
* Corporations must pay their fair share of taxes. No more "tax refunds" for the Exons of the world.
* We can afford education and infrastructure for the 21st century, Medicare for all, and a strong social safety net. We have an ALMOST bottomless pit of money to finance it. It's called the "Defense" Budget.
Let's use our collective . . there, I said it, "Collective" wealth to raise up all workers. We can still finance a formidable defense with what's left over.
9
The global marketplace is here whether the US wants to be part of it or not. Whether Tucker Carlson wishes it would go away and blame the world market and the drive for global competitiveness for all the ills in the US.
The reality is that America isn't #1. It hasn't been and hasn't kept even the ranks it does have over the past few decades.
Why? It isn't because the US has necessarily fallen behind, but rather that the rest of the world has caught up and is passing the US by with regards to less corruption, productivity, life expectancy, education level, median quality of health care, cost of social services,
In less than 5 years, the US economy will no longer be the largest economy. A decade later it will no longer be the currency exchange is based on, at that point, it will suffer the fate of many countries and for the first time have true austerity facing it as it fails to provide the products the world wants to buy from it.
The world is tired of war and tired of arms dealers like the US, a nation who has been at war (either directly or via proxy) for all but three and half years of its existence. The Americans are tired of war and paying for it in lives and tax dollars.
Many of us expats have seen the writing on the wall, and many more are looking to emigrate. The US needs to worry less about immigration and more about the reasons driving emigration before it becomes too late.
1
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@James Wallis Martin, How much consensus do you have on your predictions? :
"In less than 5 years, the US economy will no longer be the largest economy."
"A decade later it will no longer be the currency exchange is based on..."
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@MinisterOfTruth China was one-tenth the US GDP ten years ago, today it is just over 75% the US GDP and even if its growth rate were half its current rate, it would surpass the US GDP in the next five years, roughly three and half it it maintains its current rate. Pretty much every bank economist is in agreement that it will happen (I worked for the banks).
When the average US college graduate will earn roughly $2 million dollars in their life time, it is hard to see how every US taxpayer can afford to cover a tax debt obligation of $1,000,000 (and rising).
I don't see Washington or the media addressing the underlying issues of a non-sustainable economy. You can see the numbers on www.usdebtclock.org
Not what I would have expected from Tucker Carlson, but it sure sounds like European social market economy.
1
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@JR, maybe its stealth socialism via regulation.
The existence of that would mean the US plutocracy has lost significant power --
a step down from its triumphal rule after the USSC voted to validate the Koch-backed Citizens United ruling, and allow massive campaign donations w/ few strings.
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The fact that this trust fund baby pretends to be a 'man of the people' is hilarious. And how often does he leave his comfortable home to actually mingle with working class rural voters? Has he spent even an hour in rural Ohio or Indiana?
And it's not a mistake that he exhorts people of color to lift themselves up by the bootstraps but white rural people are simply victims of capitalism and must be coddled gently. Give me a break.
9
@R.G. P.—ironies of ironies, when conservatives _finally_ notice the white rural poor, they want them given a helping hand they think non-whites don’t deserve.
1
I agree with most of the analysis in the NY Times picks of comments. I might be overly superficial, but I can't move past a man named Tucker Carlson -- almost a parody of a patrician name were it not real and sincere (his brother's name is Buckley) -- who went to St. Georges and Trinity College, opining about what's good for the common American man or woman. His monolog reminds me of a speech an early 20th-century dowager might have made to a rally for the poor outside City Hall. That night she would have gone to bed enormously pleased and self-satisfied -- she got that conversation rolling! -- smiling to herself as she applied night cream. After turning out the light, she would dream happily of flying.
3
@James
What about Teddy Roosevelt?
I hate to say it, but I have to, even though I disagree with his assertion that only Republicans / Conservatives can right the ship.
If Carlson sticks to this message, and he runs, he will be elected President.
5
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@Moehoward, TC is sporting that "presidential material" look now :
a younger, more left Ronald Reagan ---
a moderate middle American morally offended by the run-away greed and callousness of what he seems to say is the bi-partisan elite of the US.
He's like John Galt come down brave and clear-eyed from the mountain to rescue us confused, scared and angry potential Useful Idiots of the elite.
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Many of those ideas look good but the details are missing as they often are with misleading conservative proposals. They should be expected to give details as to how there policies would help the poor, the middle , class, our children, grandchildren, and be acceptable to a large majority so they are not be reversed by the next administration.
1
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@Wayne, re: income levels, I prefer to say middle and low income, rather than middle and low class;
and low income rather than poor.
Those words can be stigmatizing & alienating
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It would be refreshing for social theorists to focus on the consequences on technological changes that are shaping human culture. Putting an inordinate about of attention on shifting populations is akin to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. While we fret over the arrival of new peoples in our society, society in general is being and will be reorganized by technology at an ever faster pace. AI, robotics, 5G, 3D printing etc. call into question the utility of workers, both professional and blue collar. I would love to hear a future president talk about the coming changes and what that might mean for us. How will we fit into the big picture? Arguing about things like the utility of walls and protecting ourselves against the wolves at the gate is a waste of time and focus.
2
@Dan, I think not -- I think new peoples, and millions of them, and most from the 3rd & 4th worlds and eligible for welfare, and for having anchor babies,
have by far the most profound impact on a nation, not specific items of tech like 3D & 5G.
Rome changed from an empire to an occupied territory shared w/ barbarians.
.
1
Carlson seems to be just thinking out loud, both in these quotes and in most of his pensive monologues. His views also seem to be more rapidly evolving in the past month or two than they were in the prior year or two. I would therefore not spend too much time trying to analyze and rectify today's snapshot of his dystopian world view. It will likely change significantly soon, and it's usually safe to assume that next month's dystopia will be darker.
What does seem highly significant is what he appears to have left behind. He can cite all the liberal examples he needs to appease his bosses, but the "ruling class" that he is now bitterly accusing of ignorance and indifference means the President, other WH officials and members of Congress, including Republicans. Trump's successful persuasion of poor and middle class voters outside coastal cities was the central trick of his 2016 campaign. Carlson is at least flirting with an open admission that Trump never understood or cared about those people and never will. That view would doom Trump in 2020 and it's certainly not what Hannity will be selling tonight.
1
@Sad for Sailors, I think what dooms Trump is Mueller forcing his resignation Nixon style, and maybe adding a prison term.
I expect him to be outa the Pres in 2019.
Why do concerns regarding numbers of immigrants flooding into our country or any other automatically reflect racism? Every country on planet earth with a 7.8 billion population is crowded with over-used and depleting resources. Global climate change has decreased availability of land to live on, affordable, arable land with sufficient water and forests to help air condition the planet, grazing lands that don’t destroy forests, water supplies, lands for drilling and mining for energy needs, space for roads and highways, farming practices that don’t destroy nature’s pollinators that make our fruits, nuts and vegetables possible for our survival and support trade and industry, land for housing and business development, resources to deal with monumental mountains of trash and plastics, and so many other necessities that include tourism and escape from the pressures of twenty-first century existence? When all mammals including humans are crowded together as more of us are, the pressures and strains of survival do not bring out the best in us, or any other mammal or bird or living thing on this earth.
6
@Richard Maes - Years ago Prof, Gerald O'Neill of Princeton, showed us how to build space colonies. If we had spent as much on them as we spend on "defense," we would have them today.
"While teaching physics at Princeton, O'Neill became interested in the possibility that humans could survive and live in outer space. He researched and proposed a futuristic idea for human settlement in space, the O'Neill cylinder, in "The Colonization of Space", his first paper on the subject. He held a conference on space manufacturing at Princeton in 1975. Many who became post-Apollo-era space activists attended. O'Neill built his first mass driver prototype with professor Henry Kolm in 1976. He considered mass drivers critical for extracting the mineral resources of the Moon and asteroids. His award-winning book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space inspired a generation of space exploration advocates. He died of leukemia in 1992."
2
Mentioned in passing in this article is the desire of some to create immigration policy that attracts higher educated and highly skilled immigrants here to drive our 21stC economy.
We already have tens of thousands (or more?) highly-skilled, college educated (some from America's best universities), native-born American citizens who are under-employed, unemployed, or working multiple, low-paying jobs--actively looking for one of our 21stC "good jobs."
And yet the President and others say we need additional highly skilled immigrants for the "increasing number" of "good jobs" that are supposed to come from being "educated."
There is a huge pool of ready-to-work immigrants waiting and borders everywhere who would take nearly "any job' in America; would-be immigrants dying (literally!) to work, given the chance; who would be thankful to mow our lawns; clean our bathrooms; pick grapes, buss tables, cleanup at hospitals, and the 100s of other low paying jobs that Americans find too menial for their superior education/genes/birthright/sense of self worth to take on.
Meanwhile our president wants better educated immigrants to join our own better educated American citizens. Citizens who are already on food stamps and unemployment.
A policy/theory that encourages immigrants to come here and compete with our existing pool of educated and skilled American citizens for our better paying jobs of the 21st C is not only stupid, it is ignorant and half-baked, as well.
2
"On Dec. 4, Carlson told viewers that 'a new analysis of census data shows that sixty-three percent of noncitizens in the U.S. receive some kind of welfare benefits,'"
Thanks for linking this claim to actual evidence that shows the analysis to be skewed. Upon further reading it includes things that do not qualify as welfare benefits and groups residents who have legal citizenship together with those who don't based on household. Wouldn't it have been better to correct it the bias fact within the article so readers don't believe it to be true?
7
If you think Tucker Carlson’s words can be taken at face value, you haven’t been paying attention. Sure, this guy is happy to take free marketism to task... in the name of demonizing immigrants. But any plea for helping the working class that doesn’t call out the obvious elephant in the room — the conservative-led wealth transfer from the middle class to the 1% that’s been ongoing since at least the Reagan Era, is no serious plea. Carlson’s willing to blame the working man’s woes on immigrants (never mind that many immigrants ARE the working class, and a big chunk of the working poor), but let’s see him advocate for billionaires to pay higher taxes to patch up the frayed social safety net and make social security solvent. Let’s see him advocate for strong unions. In your dreams.
4
I agree with Carlson's assessment: "Culture and economics are inseparably intertwined. Certain economic systems allow families to thrive. Thriving families make market economies possible." But then, what economic system would he support that would solve the problems of "stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male unemployment. A terrifying drug epidemic"?
The problem I have with all conservative talking heads is that, they circle back to immigrants (legal or illegal) taking jobs from Americans. Don't tell me for one second that, a white man is going to pick fruit or clean a toilet for less than minimum wage.
5
@Judy K
"Don't tell me for one second that, a white man is going to pick fruit or clean a toilet for less than minimum wage."
There's your problem, of course they aren't and there's no reason that they should. And there's no reason that it should be allowed for someone to work for less than minimum wage, and surely off the books. It's your basic Econ 101 supply and demand of labor. Labor shortage, business has to compete for labor, wages rise. Labor surplus, labor has to comepete for jobs, wages fall. It's in the interests of business to keep the labor pool slack. Easiest way to do that it import as much labor as possible, cheap and desperate.
(nb - yes my friends and i worked as chambermaids in high school. But not for less than minimum wage.)
@Judy K, and the problems he mentions are rhetorical sticks he and his fellow conservatives have been using to blame non-whites for the latter’s purported lack of worth and humanity.
1
@Judy K, no, the "white man" you posit will demand a saving wage to do "his" job.
We the Workers fought and won this battle during the Depression & then the consequent New Deal of Dem Pres Franklin D. Roosevelt, FDR, starting w/ his election in 1932.
Since then w/ the rise of conservism, We the Workers have been greatly looted of our assets :
http://tinyurl.com/ktvaov9 Nytimes Apr 2012
.
Americans’ home equity was devastated by the housing bust [of the recession, Dec 2007 – June 2009,]
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$7.4 trillion [no typo] was wiped out since home prices peaked in 2006…
.
“for most families, home equity is the most important store of wealth…”
-
1
Carlson is quoted as saying our leaders don’t care about us; “Our leaders don’t care. We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule.”
Carlson also is quoted as saying economics is not everything: “Culture and economics are inseparably intertwined. Certain economic systems allow families to thrive. Thriving families make market economies possible.”
Carlson, however, does not appear to believe our leaders need to interfere with the market, example: regulation. They just have to avoid being “mercenaries” and clear the road so some “economic system” can succeed that will “allow families to thrive”.
Altogether a bit of a strange incomplete grasp of just how capitalism can be implemented to achieve the goals of a people exhibiting “Dignity. Purpose. Self-control. Independence. Above all, deep relationships with other people.”
I’m left thinking Carlson’s understanding of a deep relationship is a good business plan. The failure of our leaders is that they are just flunkies who don’t grasp the plan but robotically follow orders not adequately implementing the objectives.
Actually, that is indeed the GOP leadership, supine lackeys of a few billionaire Oligarchs.
3
@John Brews ✅✅, Try looking @ TC's speech as a campaign speech and I think more pieces of the puzzle will fit.
And many will excuse the illogic there for the needs of electoral politics: rhetoric and motivating the base.
---------
The campaign finance laws have been written very loosely :
http://tinyurl.com/2sxyrj boston.com
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“On Nov 5 2007 Ron Paul raised about $4.2 million in donations in 24 hrs, mostly over the Internet.”
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“Today, Dec 16, he raised $2 million by 10:30 a.m”
.
“He hopes to collect a total of $10 million by Sunday.”
x
What he’s advocating g is National Socialism. Which didn’t end well.
Paine is still right. American national identity is civic and cultural, and immigrants from everywhere have assimilated to our culture and adopted it. That must continue, or we will become like France, where non-assimilating immigrants have created enclaves actively hostile to France.
3
.
@Jonathan Katz. This is a good example of Robert Reich's telling observation:
“Most political analysts are always looking in the rear view mirror,”
.
“they’re not seeing how the current political economy affects people’s opinions, their politics, their economic status…” :
----------
That's a fatal blind spot -- fatal bc not seeing that invalidates their world view.
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Robert Reich, Sec of Labor under Clinton, author & analyst,
.
Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at University of California, Berkeley.
-----------
Too many people believe america used to be "Pleasantville". It only was in the fantasy of self-righteous white conservatives.
4
Who is Tucker Carlson? And, whoever he is, why should anyone care about what he says or thinks?
5
@Jonathan Katz, I barely kno a thing ab him;
but I will care bc of the hint the nytimes gives me :
"we'r devoting this amt of space to TC."
So on that note, I think he's worth some consideration.
.
Don't know who wrote this for Tucker, but one can be certain he didn't. Shrug...
1
You lost me at Fox "News"
1
@MoneyRules, But FN is facing big changes : Founder & patriarch Rupert Murdoch, 80-something, recently turned much control over to two of his sons.
Also gone is Roger, "the Aryan," Ailes, long-term CEOgre of FN.
Also here we have what SEEMS to be a defection from conservism by TC.
TC needs a broader base now that he's testing the waters for a Pres run --
that can be very profitable bc of how loosely the campaign funding laws have been written.
------
http://tinyurl.com/2sxyrj boston.com
*** “… the Pauls’ personal ambition to profiteer from election campaigns: ” ***
.
“On Nov 5 2007 Ron Paul raised about $4.2 million in donations in 24 hrs, mostly over the Internet.”
.
“Today, Dec 16, he raised $2 million by 10:30 a.m”
.
“He hopes to collect a total of $10 million by Sunday.”
.
The Niskanen Center, like the Cato Institute, is an offshoot of the Libertarian Movement, which was funded in large measure by the Koch brothers. What you hear from its leaders is the sound of panic setting in as right-wing populism threatens to undo the anti-tax, anti-regulatory agenda that has marked the alleged "center" of American politics since the time of Ronald Reagan. That the likes of Tucker Carlson are now pointing out how market freedom allows the rich and powerful to screw over their workers is much scarier to them than the same words in the mouth of Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist. Libertarian intellectuals know that if they lose the Republican Party and Fox News they lose the country, and not even the deep pockets of the Kochs will enable them to buy it back.
4
@Stephen N, if the Libertarian intellects are that close to the GOP and Fox News,
how do they differ from the various stripes of the GOP?
.
Tucker Carlson needs to realize that the Republican party also is not a religion. He is right that the working class has been screwed, but immigration is not the reason. It has not been government regulation and immigration that has done it to them. Once Carlson gets done also attacking the Democrats he is left with nothing substantial. No good ideas. The unions, really? The unions got us here? Try union busting is what got us here. The workers have to fight for their piece of the pie, that is what the unions do. That is what made working class middle class. Oh well, Tucker don't get it. Maybe if he squints a little harder and talks a little faster...
3
Et tu, Mr. Edsall?
Mr. Carlson's sole interest? Self-promotion.
Now he is into victim porn; the poor working class American (overdosed, alone, jobless, with lots of kids) who expects first dibs on gummint handouts (the same gummint he hates), and wants all those that do not belong in an ethnic nationalist America - gone. His next huzza will be about the sorry state of middle class suburban whites, the glorious victims of MS 13 gangs, violence by black people, and socialist policies of democrats.
You think he is nobler, rendered virtuous by his descriptive retelling of sad sackery.
He is not.
He is the mouthpiece, part of the propaganda machine of a party that wants an ethnic, religious nationalist state with welfare for those they think who belong. He wants the rich to have all rights to cheat, swindle, rob everyone else. He cheered when the courts allowed mercury dumping. He was plain chortling over with joy when Flint residents (blacks) were drinking poison water. Had you asked, he would have recommended they drink Perrier and stop complaining.
Carlson lacks a moral core; his shameless opportunist behaviors show him up. Social media propaganda is making him less relevant, so he comes up with descriptive (sans analysis) tripe that is designed to manipulate people into taking him seriously.
When this doesn't work, he will come out as the defender of children, the champion of women, and the preserver of all things apple pie. Bah humbug.
6
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@Kalidan, that sounds plausible. I think TC wants to craft his new ideology & image as vehicles to enable his broadest appeal to voters and w/ that broader base his fundraising for a pres run will be more profitable.
.
Its not just about economics but market culture also. Out popular culture today is harming people and making young people depressed.
Teen pop stars like Cardi B who have hit records that describe graphic sex acts and who give performances at hardcore pornography award shows. Misogynistic rappers that win Grammies for calling women all kinds of awful degrading names.
Internet forums and social sites that use algorithms to promote the worst most insulting comments and name calling. High rated TV shows that make fun of traditional values and talk show hosts and celebrities who tout porn and drugs .
We live in a very cynical cultural that is perpetuated by lowest common denominator ratings and sales figures.
No more peace, love and understanding or trying to produce a virtuous pop culture ....Hate and cynicism is what sells today and it all cycles back around effecting everyone in it's path. We live in an unhealthy culture because "What we want and what we need has been confused".
"How did this happen?"
Useful idiots and Fox News propagandists like the odious racist Tucker Carson told people to vote for Republicans.
That's how it happened.
5
@Ignatz Farquad, close to being right, but that analysis ignores the fact the Electoral College, yet another tool of the plutocracy,
is what selected the loose-cannon plutocrat, Trump
Both Tucker and Trump sound like they've had their "come to Jesus" moment where they now want to shower benevolence on the working class. Funny how Jesus finally comes to them after lower ratings and falling poll numbers, and a major defeat in 2018.
Let's get real: both men were hell bent for two years taking away health benefits, giving huge tax breaks to the wealthy, and making all illegals, children included, into monsters. Trump kept cozy with Putin, and Tucker kept cozy with Trump sycophants. Now these leopards are donning new spots.
I don't know about you Trumpsters, but I wouldn't bet my or my children's future on what either of these guys have to say.
One thing I can say for Rachel, and grudgingly for Hannity, is that they both have stayed consistent. Not so with Tucker. He blows in the breeze. Always has.
2
@Sherrie, correction: they want to shower benefits to the white working class.
1
Sorry. Tucker is a racist, a fascist and a total nut case. This nonsense is just trying to make his hatred and ignorance seem somehow intellectual. it's not. It's raw fear mongering. Why does The Times seem desperate to normalize fascism?
8
What I can't understand is why these guys can't put 2 and 2 together and realize that the more you restrict abortion, the more "out of wedlock" children will be born. (I also don't understand why "out of wedlock" children are such a problem for Carlson and his ilk but that's beside the point.)
1
In his book, Cass blames the Democrats for being influenced by "its coalition of labor unions, environmentalists, and identity groups."
Let's take them one at a time.
When unions were strong, wages moved in lockstep with productivity.
Workers had hopes of their children moving up to middle class. A good example of what happened is the meat packing industry. Once it was centered in Chicago with strong unions. Then the Rich owners moved it to the desolation of western IO, KA, and NE and housed the workers in dorms and lowered their pay.
The regulations sponsored by unions were mainly safety regulations and regulations that prevent workers from being treated like a commodity as they are today.
What about the environmentalists? Would Cass ignore climate change? Where will he go when the Manhattan Institute is under water? Has he ever lived in a polluted town where the kids are getting leukemia?
As for identity groups, I have had first hand experience. I grew up as a Jew in a DuPont company town during a time when DuPont did not employ Jews. When my father ran for the school board, a letter was circulated telling people not to vote for the "nigger loving Jew" because my family had helped the children of the black family whose sons had worked in our store to go to college.
I am 80 years old. In 1948, my father said to me, "Leonard, the Republicans are the party of the Rich. The Democrats are the party for the rest of us."
That is still true.
6
@Len Charlap, well-said. Thank you. These guys are amazing when it comes to trying to smother real history in right-wing rhetoric.
3
He nailed me. I'm "ideologically ambidextrous." Old line FDR liberal, but many positions of "the left" get me frothing.
Immigration and capitalism share a common trait. Both are best when well regulated. Part of the reason the American Dream came to fruition from the 1920's through the 1960's was recent immigrants no longer had to look over their shoulder. The gangplank, if not pulled up, was made narrow. Labor is a commodity. More of it, the lower the wages. Those that made it were refugees or brought skills. None of this "family reunion" wet eyes crap. You wanna reunite your family? Return to were you came from. And, BTW, those elderly, non-employable family members DO get federal assistance.
Carlson's comments on do we work for the markets, or, they for us, was heard 15 years ago when I listened to Thom Hartman. TC nailed that very liberal position.
Surely there are more Rockefeller Republicans out there who at least had a bit of sympathy for those less fortunate. And when Dems can get back to economic issues instead of PC, gender, victim, identity politics, they will win elections. The big Democratic winners and almost winners like Beto ignored that trap.
6
@Jus' Me, NYT - Yeah, we pulled up the plank in the 1920's and what happened in 1929?
@MRod,
I could not agree more with the points you make and in particular the question you pose ending your response. So tell us Tucker, does your outrage extend to all Americans who need a helping hand or just Americans that tune into your program?
In his State of the Union speech President Trump highlighted the fact that men have obtained only 42% of the new jobs. Actually, that is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson might do. President Trump had the good sense to celebrate the identical statistic about the identical facts by celebrating the good fortune of women who have obtained 58% of new jobs. The white clad women of the new Congress stood up and cheered, but they actually applauded the continued decline of men.
President Trump had the good sense to limit his mention of abortion to the third trimester and the gruesome policy of destroying the unborn days before natural birth. Tucker Carlson may be the only cable opinion maker that would dare to mention a man’s right to procreate and the natural right to refuse consent to the abortion of his child. If women have a right to procreate, so do men.
Tucker Carlson is a traditional family man and has often railed against the feminization of boys and men. Feminists have protested outside his home because he is on to the misandry. Some of it is evident in the discussions of the MeToo movement.
It all comes together with family wealth. Upwardly mobile couples may start out in debt, but they manage to raise children and retire with a million-dollar net worth. The tax code needs to help hard work pay off without excessive handouts.
2
The Republican mantra reduce the taxes for the rich has brought down this country for the middle and poor class. No matter how you slice it that is their main agenda. Everything else can get destroyed, social security, Medicare , affordable health care you name it. They hide behind their theory that when you feed the rich the others get benefited which has been proved to be false. But you know what, people who suffer the most keep voting for them because they want to get to the Anerican dream which is slowly turning into a nightmare
1
The people who follow Carlson live in white male dominated areas of the country. Live in a city (Trump-like tower dwelling doesn't count) and you find your neighbors, the people who work around you, the people who provide services are of every stripe. Those who live in white silos need to get out more and see how interesting and non-threatening the rest of the country is.
Imagine if America had no human inhabitants before European exploration and then was settled only by British. How boring our culture would be, how complacent in our thoughts and ideas.
Governor Northam may be a tone deaf politician but he had the good taste to admire Michael Jackson's music and recognized a cool move when he saw it. The fact that he didn't recognize how his black makeup might offend is because of that white silo. Open your eyes people, America has never been an all Anglo society from day one. Those living out in Trump country, come do the moon walk with the rest of us.
As far as the poor, under employed Republican voters in red states, it isn't the Feds who are your problem, it is your state representatives who turn down Fed programs that would help you, cut state budgets and manufacture fear around social issues.
What happened to manufacturing jobs? Check in with the robotics revolution. What happened to the everyday goods manufacturers? This is a free country, the choice to shop at Walmart is anyone's to make but it comes with a price that can't be blamed on the Federal Gov't.
1
I believe Michael Massing's take on Carlson to be the most accurate:
"Overall, his show continues to transmit Fox’s toxic blend of race-baiting and reality distortion, through which it has done so much to poison the American mind. What, then, to make of Carlson? Is he a cynic? A hypocrite? A headlong pursuer of ratings? Perhaps he’s best described as a charter member of the same ruling class that in his monologue he indicted for working so intently to divide and confuse the American people."
Carlson seems to be keenly focused on his audience, and...in continuing to absorb as much of his former colleague O'Reilly's fan-base as he can. Numbers translate into influence/ratings/money. The bottom line is...The Bottom Line.
246
@scratchy To restate your point in other words: "any conversation with the other side is a non-starter". To this, I most vehemently disagree.
9
@Gary R
The great philosopher R. Stewart once said, "But there ain't no point in talking. When there's nobody listening.".
11
@Gary R
So how would you characterize Carlson and his aims then?
4
The failure is on both parties. One can quibble about who is more responsible on the margins. The fact is we do not have free market capitalism in many of our markets. Most markets today are state supported monopolies or duopolies. Especially true regarding employer based health insurance. One can go down the path of racism and that's true enough, but doesn't change the trajectory of the increasing divide. Populism be it from the left or right is always the response to economic dislocation and the circle is enjoined via more socialism.
Carlson is another Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes and my guess is that, if he jumped ship to the 'other side' (MSNBC or CNN), he'd adjust his delivery to appeal to that audience.
That being said, the main problem with this country is that the people who could fix things are also the people benefiting from the current system. While he was still hosting "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart did a montage of John McCain (may he rest) saying, "The system is broken." Nearly 20 years worth of that. And the system remained broken and McCain sounded like a broken record.
The fish rots from the head down. So, if you want to truly fix things, start at the top. What I think would be an effective solution is that no one is allowed to serve two consecutive terms in national office (House, Senate, as President is already limited). That would mean there are no such things as incumbents who go into most elections with an unfair advantage and who linger around until they shrivel up and die and, also, they can't feed at the donor trough on company time because they can't run for another term at any national public office until after they sit one out.
Start there and see what happens. But I'm not holding my breath waiting.
1
Great article, but I hope a future article would help explain why the modern conservative movement believes that the best way forward (vis-a-vis employment) is to establish in the United States a secure aristocracy? More importantly, how is it that middle/working class republicans come to earnestly believe this?
2
This is hopeful. Conclusory language, narrative thinking, and purporting to read the mind and heart of “the other” has probably been doing much more harm than good.
Makes sense to me that we’d be willing to do a deal on immigration. Perhaps the broad outline could be that Dreamers get an easy path to citizenship, they were brought here as kids through no fault of their own, what’s past is past, and they’re fully American in every sense but citizenship status; and on the other side of the deal, all employers larger than a mom and pop store must henceforth use E-Verify.
Prices will probably rise if wages and working conditions for the working and lower middle class improve. As to that, I think a lot of people were happy to support fair trade practices when they thought cheaper coffee and fruit meant more misery for people in other countries. And we’d better keep an eye on whether, as a result of our political deals on policy, prices at stores where the working and lower middle class shop rise more quickly than working and lower middle class wages and subsidies for child care.
1
The comment of being almost afraid to agree with Tucker Carlson struck home with me. As someone who is European centre-left, arguing with a true liberal the other day, I made the argument that the market is a weapon.
Carlson's claim of a large number of non-citizens receiving some kind of welfare is disingenuous. These "non-citizens" are legal residents of the United States, with the right to live and work in this country.
Illegal immigrants do not receive and are not entitled to any welfare support. Any assistance they may receive is non-governmental, from faith-based charities and pro-bono legal advice.
2
Brilliant article by one of the Times' best columnists. {Recall Edsall was the first mainstreamer, least far as I know, to introduce Thomas Piketty's income inequality tome to general readers.)
I do object to one piece of commentary by Edsall that's emblematic of more biased columnists in the Times':
"One of Tucker Carlson’s own primary concerns is immigration — and, as a likely subtext, race."
Why do we have to assume a strong immigration policy is racist? If you're tough on this subject -- which means following the rules -- you want to see every visa over-stayer booted out of the country just as much as you want to see illegal crossings stopped.
3
The column is a directionless and motley assortment of quotes without context. What is the author's purpose? What is his argument? Fault me if it's there but I am not discerning it. If his purpose is an evaluation of Carlson's ideology, it veers off the rails soon after it's presented.
The column glides superficially over questions of the structural development of capitalism and its interaction with cultural and ideological forces that have long preoccupied sociology and other disciplines, which have created far more powerful theoretical tools than journalists use.
1
I have a colleague in my office who I consider to be the barometer of the alt right. I thought it was odd a few years ago when he was heaping praise on Putin. Now it makes sense to me. Yesterday he came into my office to chat. He was espousing the benefits of raising the minimum wage to $15 and a 70% tax bracket for the uber wealthy saying that he considers himself an economic populist. I challenged his betrayal of free market capitalism to which he responded perplexingly that his views were not in any way a pox on capitalism. I told him he was brainwashed (he accused me of the same and perhaps there's truth to both our accusations). It's all lining up now. The Tea Party has been replaced with conservative socialists (?), can that even be a thing? I wonder if these so-called economic populists find the Democratic Party so offensive, they can't seem to reconcile that what they want possibly already exists?
as to the question, is there such thing as a "conservative socialist." yes, it's fascism. national identity, cultural unity tied to an economic policy that excludes and demonizes certain kinds of people in this case immigrants and the undeserving poor to promote a contrived "white christian" hegemony while at the same time protecting the power and privilege of concentrated wealth is the program of fascists.
3
I was unaware the Democratic Party was against restricting immigration or deporting illegal immigrants. Please provide documentation.
3
@andhakari
a simple Google search of "Abolish ICE" and another of "Sanctuary City" will show that while the Democrats are smart enough not to say it outright they in fact fully oppose both restricting illegal immigration and deporting illegal immigrants.
1
The members of the white working class in this country are in the situation they are in today because they listened to people like Tucker Carlson. With predictable results. All the crocodile tears in the world from Carlson and his right wing cronies will not change that cold hard fact.
2
Tucker Carlson's rant was refreshing, shocking even, in that it came from the right. But his is just the more well known critiques of market adoration that have come from the right in recent years.
Has anyone noticed that the Reagan era, consolidated by the Clinton era, is formally over? Both rank and file Democrats AND everyday Republicans are rejecting the Libertarian-Darwinian approach to economics.
There is an historic alignment right now happening in our mutual understanding of economic fairness. Normal, apolitical people are finally in agreement the fact that the game is rigged, that our fights are really about economic power and class, not cultural issues.
Please, liberals and Democrats, seize the moment. Don't reduce our electoral power by looking for every reason to call other Americans bigots, haters, bumpkins, rubes, sexists, misogynists, fascists, idiots, hicks, backwards.
You get the drill. Stop obsessing over "diversity." Stop posing for just a moment. Stop preening your moral feathers in public.
Instead, promise a fairer deal to every single American - even the unwoke. And Win.
6
When Cass et al., talk about limiting immigration only to the college-educated, what they are saying is, "No more poor people," as if poor people are a category of humanity whose descendants will always be poor. Also, of course, poor people won't be reliable Republicans. But one can look back in sarcasm and say, "Right, we never should have let all those poor Jews, Irish, Vietnamese, Chinese, or Italians into this country. After all, what good did all those poor people ever do this country?"
2
Or we have correctly identified a desperate need for diversity in our Anglo Saxon gene pool to correct apparent flaws.?
Illegal immigrants provide a good scapegoat. Problem however is that chasing low skilled jobs now requires much more mobility than in the past. Put another way, how amenable are rural whites to moving in search of job opportunities?
1
Actually I should add that there are many fewer such opportunities, the result of globalization and automation.
Maybe the 1950s were an anomaly - the fact that the rest of the world was essentially rubble enabled widespread US prosperity.
1
The headline is inaccurate. It should be:
"What Does Tucker Carlson Know That America's Leadership Does Not"
If the readership here could get over their hate of anything related to Fox and go to YouTube and listen to his diatribe, they would be impressed. And they'd realize that what he describes is a National problem that is not being properly addressed by either party.
5
This otherwise thoughtful essay credits Carlson for starting a long overdue debate, but perpetuates a despicable, deliberate smear of Carlson by the mainstream media that immigrants make America "dirtier." Carlson did a segment on the environmental consequences of mass illegal immigration--in terms of litter, trash, refuse, strain on sanitation and infrastructure. Focus was on Tijuana, and also some parts of U.S. Southwest. In closing remarks he wryly quoted lines about how "diversity makes us stronger" and added that it also makes us dirtier--with regard to the environmental consequences, NOT the immigrants themselves. It is time to stop this lie.
4
"They don’t even bother to understand our problems."
“Our” problems? Is Tucker implying that he is just another everyday Main Street Joe American like the rest of us? Where does he get off trying to distance himself from the very privileged class that he is disparaging? I resent his very existence. "Our" problems. Give me a break.
1
@arusso
Hmmm. Remember Teddy Roosevelt?
This monologue by Carlson is the same one I've had the past 4 years with conservative and liberal friends alike.
I would ask "How can both political parties sell out the working men and women in America for cheap labor, more electoral power (illegals count in Census #'s which determine political power), rabid globalization (instead of organic), and a student loan scam operated by the federal government that now has created a financial services bubble bigger than 2007?
I would get a "meh" from the left and a "meh" from the right.
Hillary Clinton promised 8 more years of what we just had with Obama, even though 75% of the people polled in 2016 said we were headed in the wrong direction, which was the same 75% who said the same thing after 8 years of Bush.
Hence, it wasn't Democrat vs. Republican. Look..Trump hijacked the GOP nominating process. Sanders did the same thing to D's..but HRC and DWS knee-capped him (along with Donna Brazile..who is really good at knee-capping).
Trump didn't beat Hillary Clinton.
He beat the Establishment, and THAT...is the reason Tucker said what he said..and it still rings true today.
The reason Republicans are the only one's who can fix this is obvious.
Democrats still think they lost to Republicans in that 2016 election. They are still in denial about why he won. We've come to grips with it. We've conceded our role...and are ashamed to watch Democrats continue to reject any complicity in the decline of America.
Tucker is spot on!
6
The difference with Carlson is that his starting point is ethnoreligious, not economic or even civic.
Put another way, while his criticism of modern capitalism might resonate for many groups, his concern is only one - white Americans. The fact that the economy may not work for many other groups is in fact a feature, not a bug, for Carlson. It's only when it impinges on his vaunted core constituency does capitalism deserve to be his whipping boy.
So in other words, with respect to Carlson, even a stopped watch is right twice a day, but I would hardly expect him to show any real evolution on the subject; rather, this is just more parochialism on his part masquerading as thoughtful commentary.
3
Michael Massing, as quoted in Edsall's piece, asks: "What, then, to make of Carlson? Is he a cynic? A hypocrite? A headlong pursuer of ratings?"
Yes, yes and yes!
Low skilled immigrants do not compete with low-skilled Americans or hurt them. This is a well established fact within economics at this point. I live in Ohio. Immigration had nothing to do with the destruction of the rust belt or the decimation of the Ohio working class. Instead, we must look at two alternative factors. 1) globalization of capital. This was a policy choice by the United States, to force open the global boarders of capital and sit idly by as America capital flowed elsewhere. 2) High skilled immigration. What is the point of investing in the education of workers in Ohio when you can just import any engineers or technicians that you need? High skilled workers are the reason our low-skilled workers have no jobs in the long run, because there is no reason for the rich to care about them. They are just a nuisance. Think outside the box a little bit and get away from right-wing dogma.
2
Historians, economists and sociologists will point to the period from 1945 to 1965 as being the apex of the American middle and working classes as well as being an aberration in America’s social and economic history.
Beginning with the desegregation wars, then the voting rights and civil rights wars, many white middle/working class voters would consistently vote against their own best economic interests. They continue to do so fifty years later with the same results.
In the '80s Milton Friedman presented a new corporate view of the economy that posited corporate directors had a single obligation: maximize shareholder returns. Obligations to employees, customers and the community were old-fashioned and unprofitable.
What economists call “human capital”, i.e. investing in people, is a key to long-term growth.
To be competitive in the 21st century is to have a highly educated labor force, one with college and advanced degrees. Instead, we are short changing our future as an educated nation.
The key to strengthening employment along with limiting the need for immigrant labor is to invest heavily in education and retraining so that Americans will be able to compete for jobs in the present AND future economy.
But, no. Conservatives have chosen to regress. Education funding is being cut. Scientific research funding is being cut. Retraining programs are being eliminated.
3
"Center right," "radical left," "progressive," "moderate Democrat," are all becoming meaningless terms. While party dogma continue to be more and more entrenched, actual useful responses to problem are less tethered to party. Hence we have Tucker, Trump, Schultz, and others who don't fit into a left/right continuum in any meaningful way. We need new ways to talk about these things.
Maybe just identify problem and possible solutions? and quit trying to discern if those solutions fit into left/right/center or whatever.
4
Let me suggest a somewhat deeper dig:
1. What's going on is the movement of thinkers who are eluding the efforts (mostly by the incestuous New York-centric media) to jam arguments into tidy right/left packets . If you listen carefully to Carlson, there are indications that he has read and absorbed non-categorizable thinkers such as Jordan Peterson ("12 Rules,") and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, even to the point of copping the title of Taleb's remarkable book, "Skin in the Game."You have to wonder why Edsall didn't cite those influences, instead settling for a spin of the usual think-tank Rolodex.
2. That Carlson would utter bits 'n' pieces of apostasy is the best indication that something big is happening deep within the Murdoch dynasty, something that time and biological clock will finally resolve--but Fox is in play as it shakes off the last vestiges of the Ailes era and tries to position for a post-Rupert future.
3. Carlson could, and should, get ready to run for President.
1
As to #2, you wish, in your dreams, I have a nice bridge you might be interested in purchasing . . .
Thanks, Mr. Edsall for a really thoughtful read.
In my view, over the last 35 years, the think tanks paid for by the very rich (e.g. Scaifes, Mellons, Kochs, Murdochs) have managed to reshape the semantics of discourse re governance away from the consensus of the New Deal and toward "Godless capitalism", laissez-faire, and free market worship. I see a new semantic shift in progress which I associate with the free-thinking of the Millenials, and driven by the emergency of anthropogenic climate change. Carlson's diatribe fits into this shift (though I saw no mention of the climate change emergency I percieve). I think the shift will be helpful: I am hopeful. But the next few years will continue to be turbulent.
RE: Republicans have generally trusted that free markets will benefit all participants
NOT JUST REPUBLICANS . ECONOMISTS TOO !!!
From the NY TImes 1993
"A Primer: Why Economists Favor Free-Trade Agreement
"Paul Krugman, a trade economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that for the United States, the agreement is "economically trivial." Professor Krugman supports the treaty, saying he thinks it will help to keep free-market reformers in power in Mexico.
He sums up the war of words this way: "The anti-Nafta people are telling malicious whoppers. The pro-Nafta side is telling little white lies."
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/17/us/a-primer-why-economists-favor-free-trade-agreement.html
The TRIVIAL consequences for Syracuse were to list justs its biggest pre-NAFTA employers that left GM's Fisher plant on GM circle closed , Carries Air conditioning closed, New Process Gear Works (Magna) closed ,moving some 10 000 jobs to Mexico
Forward to 2018 To cite Edsall " in the struggling Syracuse metropolitan area (families moving in between 2005 and 2016 had median household incomes of $35,219 — $7,229 less than the median income of the families moving out of the region, $42,448."
Syracuse once a prosperous city is now a death spiral of ever increasing poverty. Paul Krugman is now a highly paid opinion writer in the NY Times
Credits : Upstate Lisa
1
The obsession with immigration and associated changes to a "national identity" is driving today's division of ideologies.
We all are immigrants. All "Americans" came from somewhere else. In fact we are "illegal" immigrants since we did not ask the indigenous population if we could enter. Nor did the indigenous population of 1620 ask the earlier inhabitants for a visa. It is a surprise to many that the only truly native people are those descendants of early hominids in central Africa who are still living in the homeland of their ancestors. Everyone else on Earth flowed out from that region to their adopted homeland of today. We need to acquire a little perspective and a good amount of humility to better understand and accept our place in the flow of humanity.
Can we have a national identity that is "civic and ideological rather than racial and ethnic" as Wilkinson describes Paine's thought? How can we not? That is America. I know no other homeland.
We have always been racially diverse. And while we imagine that there was little difference between European groups, they certainly didn't see it that way. The Lutherans and the Catholics fought wars that make ours seem short. Certainly intermarriage between them was at one time highly problematic. This seems silly to us now. But this has always been the process and challenge of being American. There is always "the other" and they are us also. We are all in this ship together.
We can keep our cultural identity. No one tells us we can't dance to polkas, or drum circles, or worship as we wish. But when it comes to our civic responsibilities, these are not based on race or ethnicity but on democracy, government transparency, justice, rule of law, and so on. This is the America I know and want to know.
5
@JK
Well we used to have a national identity that was based on the melting pot where new immigrants were expected to both absorb/assimilate and contribute/enhance. But then the Left said that assimilation was racist and the current population partaking in the contribution is appropriation and therefore racist. So here we are.
The democratic party is trying to defend undocumented immigrants because most make much less than most average american workers, and will not assert any workplace rights because of the risk of deportation. They are slaves by another name, even the ones that work in high tech. These ongoing problems appeal to their donor base. Most immigrants come from countries destabilized as a result of our foreign policy. The immigration debates in congress are just theater, they don't have any intention of solving the problem. Now Trump has an approach to solve the problem and everybody is up in arms about his solution. Well, they have had years to solve this issue. I have been a democrat all of my adult life, but Tucker Carlson was spot on. Democrats give lip service to average american's problems. Globalization has turned Mexico into a Narco-state, and it looks like that is what's getting ready to happen in Venezuela, another stream of refugees depressing wages and pushing more americans into poverty. I am a black man. I have to ask why are black men still in the democratic party? They have NOTHING for us. I have nothing against immigrants, I can identify with them for trying to better their lives, but if we were not destabilizing their countries, they would be in their own countries. These people are desperate, because our foreign policy made them that way. No Kamala Harris, or Corey booker is going to make me vote to bomb more poor people and take their resources.
2
@mo
Let's be clear. Most business owners who hire illegal immigrants are Republicans (ag industry, construction, manufacturing, hotels). Your beef should be with them.
Democrats work to hold these employers accountable and support programs that ensure these immigrants receive humane treatment while they are here. Democrats also want them to have a path to citizenship which the Republicans have blocked for years. They don't want illegals to become legal, because then they would have to pay them more, provide them with benefits, and ensure their safety at work. All costly endeavors.
So I urge you to read up more on this topic and put the blame where it's deserved. The problems are much more complex than what the pundits can explain.
2
The democratic party is trying to defend undocumented immigrants because most make much less than most average american workers, and will not assert any workplace rights because of the risk of deportation. They are slaves by another name, even the ones that work in high tech. These ongoing problems appeal to their donor base. Most immigrants come from countries destabilized as a result of our foreign policy. The immigration debates in congress are just theater, they don't have any intention of solving the problem. Now Trump has an approach to solve the problem and everybody is up in arms about his solution. Well, they have had years to solve this issue. I have been a democrat all of my adult life, but Tucker Carlson was spot on. Democrats give lip service to average american's problems. Globalization has turned Mexico into a Narco-state, and it looks like that is what's getting ready to happen in Venezuela, another stream of refugees depressing wages and pushing more americans into poverty. I am a black man. I have to ask why are black men still in the democratic party? They have NOTHING for us. I have nothing against immigrants, I can identify with them with trying to better their lives, but if we were not destabilizing their counties, they would be in their own countries. These people are desperate, because our foreign policy made them that way. No Kamala Harris, or Corey booker is going to make me vote to bomb more poor people and take their resources.
Why isn't our national identity simply our commitment to a secular democracy?
4
God, I'm sick of this Thomas Edsall. I'm white. I'm American. I'm male. I don't like PC crap, but I'm so tired of white male grievance. Dude, we have it pretty easy. Look at the composition of the Congress, of the Senate. If you're a white male and you feel you're problems spring from the fact that you're white male, geez man, look in the mirror. There's something else happening.
I don't even really like racial identity politics. I believe class is more important.
Tucker Carlson is a stone cold racist. Why you would even talk about him is sickening to me.
3
Carlson is receptive to rejecting markets only to favor white people. If someone lectured him that markets were not serving blacks or immigrants, he would respond that those that blacks and immigrants are lazy, welfare queens, drug addicts, and promiscuous. But if we are talking about rural white people, then he is concerned. He is just another fascist white supremacist.
3
Is there really much difference between using immigration to fill low skill jobs and the export of low skill jobs to ultra-low-wage countries? It has always seemed to me that the latter has been far more harmful to the middle class, though much more profitable to the ruling class than immigration has ever been. It's a sleight of hand trick that uses immigration as a whipping boy to distract from the far more devious export of what could have been reasonably decent jobs, and it profits only the wealthy.
1
I think what Tucker is trying to say is something like this:
"Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation [define our era].... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."
Well that's Marx, of course, describing in 1848 what we now call capitalism. Has anything, in terms of social relations, really changed? He goes on to exactly describe what is ailing Tucker:
"The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere."
One of those everywheres is the family Tucker cherishes, a point Jurgen Habermas made about the needs of Capital decades ago. But Tucker then turns to ethno-fascism by blaming it all on damned foreigners taking "our" jobs to the benefit of our "ruling class." It's not everyday when a Fox talking head refers to a ruling class instead of a vaporous "elite," but I guess it's a step. Now maybe he will read Piketty on the ruination of so much of the country due to rising inequality due to the rise of rents at the expense of wages. Or maybe he could discover why Keynes called for the euthanasia of the rentier (i.e. the functionless investor). But I doubt he will. No ratings in that.
Weak.
We're really supposed to be impressed by anything a smug, elitist, silver spoon jerk named Tucker has to say?
4
Reading about Carlson struck a chord. Before he moved to LA, I met weekly for coffee with a very conservative guy in his mid-thirties. I’m a 70 year old FDR liberal, so our conversations were sometimes heated. At one point we agreed we would each read a book recommended by the other. I gave him Jane Mayer’s Dark Money; he handed me Charles Murray’s Coming Apart. It took much coffee to fuel my slog through the census bureau statistics he cites to illustrate why he thinks the white working class is coming apart. Murray being Murray, he ignores folks of color in the discussion. He bemoans his view that the white working class now resides in the formerly the exclusive hell of others. But In the end he rails against the lopsided CEO/worker income disparity. Perhaps conservatives, or at least the subset of social conservatives, are having a Wizard of Oz moment respecting the curtain of anything-goes-greed-is-the-highest-good-unbridled-“free” enterprise-capitalism. One can almost envision Ayn Rand furiously pulling the chains and pressing the levers of the great smoke machine as the curtain falls away. Then again, perhaps my optimism is making me foggy me here. Nevertheless, when my younger friend was back in KC last Thanksgiving, I caught a noticeable whiff of change. Formerly a climate change denier, he has now become a relative tree hugger. Maybe our meetings, reinforced by a little left coast koolaid, have helped. I know sharing our thoughts hasn’t hurt me.
2
@Dale Irwin, conservatives only care about white people getting crushed by unbrindled free markets. Everyone else—well, they just don’t work hard enough and should bootstrap it.
1
Carlson must had been drinking to make those clear eyed remarks.
1
Well, there's a lot to quibble with in this article.
The main one, for me, is the continuing unhelpful attempt to consider the main issue to be left vs. right.
No. The issues are many, and should be considered without regard to their consistency as left or right (or right-center blah, blah, blah).
Should workers be paid a living wage? Yes.
Should health care without regard to preexisting conditions be a right? Yes.
Should there be gerrymandering? No.
Etc.
Please, could we get past this unhelpful preference of the punditry (including unaccountable experts in the think-tanks) to avoid dealing with issues rather than their categorization as left and right?
3
Never thought I would agree with anything Tucker Carlson had to say. More importantly, what do his fans think about these comments? Never lauded for their critical thinking (especially by those of us to the left) will they now recognize that there are forces at work driving them into the lower levels of society over which no one is taking control? And especially not those who have control?
Maybe. But mostly the Fox wing of the Republican party seems more animated by Tucker's inflammatory comments about the "others". Best exemplified by Trump supporters wearing T-shirts that say "better Russian than Democrat". In their minds, Trump, with all his warts, is preferable to the alternative.
@Bruce”never lauded for their critical thinking by the Left”. With a comment like that Bruce how do you ever expect people to the right and to the left to ever
Agree on anything ?
1
This is the central dilemma Republicans face: their electoral support comes increasingly from the working class while their financial support comes from the 0.001% (and from Russian mobsters and kleptocrats.)
While Trump ran as a champion of the "forgotten" white worker on a platform of opposing immigration, the Koch brothers and the think tanks they fund (some of whom are quoted in the column) all want more immigration in order to keep wages depressed and to keep the workforce disorganized.
Which faction will win: the Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Ann Coulter, Steve King, Steven Miller faction; or the Koch brothers, Chamber of Commerce, American Enterprise Institute, Manhattan Institute faction? With any luck, the two factions will rip each other to shreds, the Republican Party will go they way of the Whig and the Know-Nothing parties, and democracy will be restored to America.
3
I too, find myself agreeing with much of what Carlson has said, however let's dispense with any notion that he believes any of it; he is a political manipulator working for the plutocracy.
What is scary about his latest messaging is how politically brilliant it is. The mainstream Democratic party has never had greater entanglements with corporate wealth or more dissatisfaction among the progressives in their base. They will be fighting an outright war with progressives during their own upcoming primaries.
One of the primary rules of perception management is that if you are guilty of a crime, or massive corruption, you should accuse your enemy of it first. The right has always worked to benefit wealth and power at the expense of the rest, and now that the Democrats also have their hands dirty in that regard they are vulnerable to this preemptive strike.
In this latest message, Carlson is trying to usurp the growing pain of the middle class and the resurgence of populist reforms for the right....casting them in a protective role that once clearly belonged to the Dems, but is now laughable to be ascribed to either party.
Make no mistake, these concerns will evaporate once the election is over, but for now it is a masterful stroke of psyops, because the abandonment of labor and the lower middle class by the core of the Democratic party is becoming obvious to everyone.
1
I love a good intellectual debate as much as the next person. But at some point, these authors need to consider who's going to harvest our crops and work in our slaughterhouses. Because study after study shows the vast majority of Americans won't do these types of jobs.
2
@Dave Wilcox
"Because study after study shows the vast majority of Americans won't do these types of jobs."
Never mind that there aren't enough of these jobs to employ a "vast majority" of Americans. What study after study show is that employers can't find a legal workforce for these jobs at the wages they are offering. Democrats used to understand that unfettered illegal immigration depressed wages.
4
The critical quote from Mr. Carlson, referring to our politicians, states that "They can’t solve our problems". The quandary that American politicians face is that this statement is true. They can't make America great again, bring back a bygone era of prosperity or effectively tackle our most significant economic and social issues because they don't know how to do so within the constraints of the limited resources and knowledge that we possess. Yet the politician that goes out and says to voters that I can't fix your problems will lose the election. The politician that says that he can fix your problems may win the election but cannot keep his promise.
Republicans seem intent on creating a permanent aristocracy, where wealth and power are acquired by birth, rather than talent and effort. This results in distortions like the Koch brothers and the Walmart heirs. The better solution is very high estate taxes, mocked by the republicans as “death taxes”. Who better to tax than the dead? They will never feel it. Republicans want to eliminate estate taxes entirely. If they succeed, Farewell America, as we know it.
3
Carlson strikes a lot of right chords in his rant, but he's off-base with blaming immigration as the main culprit. In fact, it's the conservative ideology that spawned the worship of The Market, and belief in "trickle down" economics that has eviscerated the working and middle class that comprise 90% of America.
But the Democrats shouldn't be secure in their place either, as for the past several decades they've played along with this upside down philosophy, which is why many in the working and middle class have turned on the party, as a long-deferred response to their abandonment by the party. They had better hope that no one in the Republican party listens to Carlson and adopts his message. On the other hand, there is almost no chance they will because that message - economic populism - goes against their bedrock philosophy of "of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich".
We are at a crossroads. Both parties have been out of touch with the majority of Americans for years, and have been focusing on serving the donor class. It's questionable whether either party can resist the pull of wealth and change. So then what? If Americans get tired of waiting for the leaders offered up by both parties to represent them, they'll eventually ignore the political and opt for more direct means of change, as we've witnessed around the world with Arab Springs, Brexit, Yellow Vests, and more. In a sense Trump is a version of that. The next political shock might be even greater.
Tucker, listen carefully, conservatism never solved social problems of working and poor Americans. That's why we have liberalism and progressivism. They have ready to use policies.
We have too many Ayn Rand followers and way too few of FDR in our government. You, as an devoted Ayn Rand follower yourself not that long ago, you have finally seen the light. Libertarianism has no practical use in any modern society and has never been anything but a adolescent fantasy.
2
@CarolinaJoe
If liberal policies could solve the social problems of working and poor Americans, Seattle and San Francisco would be beacons of success at all economic levels. Instead they are completely unaffordable for all but the wealthy and have massive problems with homelessness and open drug use.
2
@I want another option
THE TECH BILLIONAIRE OF THOSE AREAS ARE AS LIBERAL / SOCIALISTIC AS TRUMP. TH EREIN IS A MAJOR PART OF THE PROBLEM.
When did asking for immigrants to arrive in this country legally become “highly controversial?” This idea appears to be the absurd crux of this essay. I believe most Americans would like to believe that their needs have a higher priority for government services than an illegal immigrant. Now our betters instruct us that this is a racist and unconscionable attitude while they seek to flood the country with cheap labor to pick their crops, cook their food, mow their lawns and care for their children. What balderdash! Tucker Carlson has it right.
6
Sadly, many readers of this column will fall for the Right’s false narrative that it is searching its soul to find the answers to Americas problems. Tucker Carlson’s, an others’, scripted and mild critique of his fellow Republicans is just smoke and mirrors. One need look no farther than the this glaring clue: when talking about white males occupying the top rungs of the social and business ladders, hiring only their fellow white males, no mention is made of identity politcs. When uppity women and people of color demand that society’s upper reaches be open to all, based on merit, not sex and skin color, Republicans close ranks and start screaming at the top of their lungs about identity politics. Cleverly designed speeches notwithstanding, the Right has not changed.
1
@Renee Margolin
Society’s upper reaches are open to all, based on merit, not sex and skin color. Liberals need to stop claiming that inequality of outcome is proof of inequality of opportunity. e.g. As long as over 80% of Computer Science graduates are male, the vast majority of employees at tech companies are going to be male.
The Republican Party was long ago taken over by the right-wing media. It's just in the last few years that elected Republicans and the billionaires that bankroll them have figured this out. Trump is the ultimate, impossible-to-ignore sign of the state of the party. So, now, cue the post mortems. Tucker Carlson gives his take.
Carlson's impulse - and actually his perspective - is not at all new for conservatives. Rather, it is lather, rinse, repeat of the tired way that they lie to themselves every time conservatism, as they've fashioned it, 'seems to fail.' They say, 'conservatism didn't fail those rotters who've brought the house down around us. No, those rotters have failed conservatism. If we just get rid of these pathetic losers who are giving conservatism a bad name, well, then we'll have all the power and success that our model promises.' And so, Carlson gives us the latest version of this - 'It's not conservatism,' he intones. It's the hard-hearts of its power brokers that is at fault.
To people like him, the conservative platform of Reagan can never fail. Only those who are 'not conservative enough' can fail. To him, no 'true conservative' would do the things he's criticizing.
In the immortal words of that great philosopher, Pogo, however, they 'have met the enemy, and he is' them. Et tu, Tucker. You have all done this, both to yourselves, and more importantly, to the rest of us. 'True conservatives' have done it.
1
Arnold Toynbee, in one of his long books, asks the rhetorical question, "What of the sin of the poor?". Well, what is it? Refusal of self-responsibility. What is the great insight of capitalism? That if you free productive people they create economic surplus. What is the insight of the left? That lazy, unfocused people don't succeed, if productive people don't carry them large numbers of them will end up in the gutter. What is politics? Society's endeavor to compose the needs of these two groups to avoid excessively wide social divisions that risk political chaos. Who should have the leadership role in society--the wealth producers or the wealth consumers? The left is on the wrong side of this argument, whenever they get into power they throttle the goose that lays the golden eggs, the society fashioned according to their tenets collapses, it returns to capitalism--rinse, repeat--but they don't learn! Why is the left so vocal and energized today? Because capitalism is succeeding so well, not because it's failing. Why don't leftist layabouts get the message and get to work? Because they are who they are--self-responsibility refuseniks--it's the besetting sin of the poor.
A bit of a left handed monkey wrench of a reply here.
"Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt"
This proves to me what I always thought and makes me hate Carlson more.
No we know without doubt that Mr Carlson is smart enough and articulate enough to have known these things all along as he promoted the GOP propaganda that got us to here.
Isn't tucker talk just bannon babble without the five o'clock
shadow and grunge black jacket? There is no one in their alliance of pseudo populist wannabees who is
seriously interested in or capable of challenging the legal foundations of global capitalism, financial industry hegemony over national economic behavior, or collapse of working class (of all ethnicities) social and family structures.
To pretend otherwise is to engage in media babble talk that is
merely useful for generating buzz in very limited segments of the mediaverse.
The devil is always in the details, no less so here. Carlson's points are intriguing at the surface, but dial down, and it becomes the same old immigrant bashing, race-baiting, class-baiting, and yes, capitalism as a religion, approach to republican politics.
1
There should be no sympathy nor protections for Detroit crack addicts or West Virginia tweakers.
1
Tucker Carlson either got hit over the head with a hammer or is trying to raise his ratings over Sean Hannity's.and Rachel Maddow. Maddow, at least, is clear eyed about our Leaders and their flaws, as well as their virtues .
The mere fact that Carlson uttered any words of truth (rural Americans hit hard), is more than surprising. He is playing the same old game of divide and conquer as the Republicans and Trump.
Wilkinson has not accepted the fact that our real American identity is Multi-cultural, multi-economic, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and Democratic, despite Republicans and conservatives trying to paint another picture. We have much more in common than others would like to believe. This country has invited all comers in the past. Why now we need to start building walls against this makes no sense. Legally Immigration is the better way to go about it. But a lot of noble and hard working people ended up here illegally, as did one of my own relatives. All taxpayers, not takers.
What most of the population in the United States have to figure out is that many of the wealthy and politicians who serve them are quite satisfied with the status quo of division and rapidly declining economic well being of the average citizens. Less for you means more for them.
There are exceptions of course, Warren Buffett and Tom Steyer for instance. They believe in leveling the playing field for those less fortunate than they are.
Time to stop listening to the other side.
2
I walk into the same midtown office tower as my now departed father -- same floor where we have run our family clothing company since 1947. I am not alone and see many of the same people as I have for 30+ years. One major change -- none of those people I see everyday makes anything in NYC like they once did ...in-fact, nothing in the USA. They make money as they always have ... as do I. But, the vast majority have no connection to the people in the rest of the country .... You know those Trump voters that for 100 years made them and their families wealthy .. so they can go out east in the summer and take a car to JFK and fly away.
Tucker is not wrong ... we have had three other times in our history where immigration numbers approached 15% -- it's always caused issues. It's not a surprise -- there is no reason not to talk about it ... and yes, it is the cause of some problems. but -- we will get through it as a nation as we always have.
The problem of the middle class is another problem -- you can't tax a stone. The debt figures keep growing ... entitlements that many on here want more of are growing at rates not sustainable. Who can you tax ? Take all the money from the 1% -- it's not nearly enough.
I'm not overly optimistic ...
1
Whoa! Jewels from an unexpected place.
Rural white America isn't the only America and I get tired of people acting like it is.
5
There isn't one single manufacturing plant in the country that closed due to immigration. The market closed those plants. There aren't any low skilled undocumented immigrants working the assembly line in shuttered Ford plants.
Not one single two-parent family was destroyed by feminism. The market did that, too. Even without feminism, women needed to work outside the home because the market devastated one-income families. Feminism made it possible for women to work outside the home; the market made it obligatory.
Not one single church closed down due to same-sex marriage. The market closed many of those churches because they didn't have a product anyone wanted to buy.
Gay people didn't rob pews of butts: Gay rights freed gay people; markets destroyed the church the same way they killed the mom and pop store.
In short, Carlson is right that there has been incredible social change in America--and that the market is largely responsible--but he goes too far when he alleges that the ill effects of these changes had anything whatsoever to do with gays, immigrants and feminism. Once again, even when they've identified the correct problem, the right can't help but attack the least culpable people they know--and everyone but themselves.
2
@Steven Harrell
You left out a lot of the problems ..
And there are many undocumented workers working in many plants across the country -- and this does hold down wages.
The wealthy "service class" benefits when goods are produced with cheap labor from abroad and unnatural cheap labor at home.
We benefited when the :services class" was food to pay more for those goods made by workers making a living wage in the USA.
I'm in manufacturing .... my family company was started in 1892.
@Steven Harrell
The plants were shut down due to increased government regulation. The ones that remain open can currently choose to hire an illegal workforce, pay them under the table, then tip of ICE right before payday if they have a bad quarter. Any plant who hires an American, God forbid Unionized, workforce can't compete.
Gay rights jumped the shark when Obergefell was used as a hammer to force religious conservatives to celebrate gay weddings rather than a shield to allow gay's to live their lives in peace.
He must have just read and taken to heart "Hillbilly Elegy," the book by J.D. Vance in which Vance describes his childhood among the Trump base.
Tucker Carlson meets Henry Wallace. Aw, shucks !
Heresy Sir! How dare Tucker suggest that the Party of rampant laissez-faire capitalism capitalism and devotion to the philosophy of Ayan Rand could possibly express a shred of altruism for the “working class.”?
Don’t worry though, within days Tucker will be back to rants against socialist Democrats and bemoaning the loss of “personal responsibility” by the very same middle Americans he cries crocodile tears for today.
Tucker is nothing more than that same entitled white rich kid you found obnoxious in college supported today by rich white entitled billionaires.
2
Hmmm, racist xenophobes appropriating class-consciousness to try and siphon disaffected white working-class support from the left. Where have I seen that before?
I am also shocked by how much of what Carlson said I agree with.
But here's the worry for me. I know conservatives really well, and all that boiling anger against "elites"? Well, they like to gin it up. But somehow, the flamethrower never winds up aimed at people with real power or real wealth.
Nope, the meaning of "elites" is real, real slippery. It very quickly takes a turn, and becomes just another word to use against people the right-wing already hates.
Scratch a bit, and "elites" in practice does not mean "the guys at Davos" or "my Republican Senator whose net worth has quintupled after a year in office." Nope, it means "uppity" black people. It means women with the gall to have a better job than my husband. It means people who live in cities. It means people who read too much or watch boring fancy films.
In the Republican Revolution, the pile of heads under the guillotine is going to be mostly social workers, adjunct professors of the humanities and climate scientists.
2
Tucker Carlson is trying to pose as a "smart person" in the community of "dumb persons". Ultimately, he still wants to be accepted by the community which employs him.
Sorry, but Tucker Carlson is a millionaire twice over from his stake in the Swanson Food Company, and he has gotten even more major dollars from his propagandist, yellow journalistic, Hannity-esque "show" he does on Fox every evening.
He is no more qualified to speak about inequality and the plight of the middle class than I am about quantum physics.
1
“Carlson is right in his diagnosis, but only my tribe has the answers - his tribe doesn’t.” “Carlson is right about everything except unlimited unplanned lopsided immigration is a great thing - very American.” It all sounds to me like “Carlson has cooties and we won’t play with him.” “Carlson wants to bridge the artificial divide between different political sides of the middle class, but we lefty oligarchs can’t have that any more than the righty oligarchs.” United we stand, divided we fall. See you at the barricades.
It as if no one on the planet had ever heard of or experienced fascism.
Edsall is reliable as usual.
White elite boy Tucker lives high off the hog of his priveledge. The White GOP full of hate has reaped what they wanted. Destroyed the American Indian stole their land and has systematically killed them via racist policies. Who was running slavery in this country the northeast bankers who were white and elites.
Tucker has a great deal to account for with his fellow haters. How many Russians has he talked to this week.
The country has changed and he realizes his elite life might not be there for his children oh how sad.
Jon Stewart called Tucker out years ago for not caring about the country.
To little to late we know who you are and this messenger can not be trusted because he just doesn’t care about Americans.
1
“Stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male unemployment. A terrifying drug epidemic.” How, Carlson asked, “did this happen?”
Good grief, this is as easy to follow back as footprints on new snow.
---The Southern Strategy first to divide Americans.
---The busting of Unions and further division between Rural and Urban Americans. Lowering taxes on the wealthy.
---The howling insanity and destruction of Right Wing wigged out Radio and the evil deliverance of Fox News and their dog-whistles and code words to further alienate these folk.
---- Anti- academics and anti-science to further lock our system into arguments about verifiable facts.
Tucker Carlson doesn't get this? Won't admit this? No wonder we have become the pawns, both Right and Left,
of the "Market," a colony of the worse parasites who have ever lived.
That's how, Tucker.
“...Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You’d have to be a fool to worship it...
So are government taxation and regulation – but when Socialists have those sledges in hand, everything else looks like a nail...
"Swift and dramatic cultural changes can leave us with the baffled feeling that the soil in which we laid down roots has somehow become foreign." Yes, just in 2 or 3 years we now have Nazi's parading around like its 1936. We have a government agency ripping babies from their parents. We have a president who lies so often and with such scope that truth itself is "debated". We are in a cyber war and our government doesn't acknowledge it or defend against it. Science is "debatable" Yeah, I don't feel at home here after 63 years. And then the Times prints propaganda like this for the rich Democrats Neoliberal Wall Street status quo. As soon as Trump is done and replaced by democrats, the democrats will prove to be better at truth telling, better educated, more palatable but still just propaganda spewing "centrists" because their rich backers, (who will instantly shift from Republicans and Trump to the other side) will do anything to keep the evils of "socialism" from the US. Trump even announced it last night. Its a big deal to the rich. Edsall couldn't find the center with a protractor.
Minus a viable social conscience and policies to match, Carlson's talk could come from any populist fascist.
1
My god, an actual “think piece” instead of a rant by one side against the other. Thank you.
Tucker Carlson as defender of the working class? You must be joking!
1
“You’d think our ruling class would be interested in knowing the answer. But mostly they’re not. They don’t have to be interested. It’s easier to import foreign labor to take the place of native-born Americans who are slipping behind.”
Our ruling class? Is this a reference to elected officials or to the oligarchs who own them? And is the problem an influx of immigrant workers, or is it the abandonment of American labor by corporations chasing a “free market” advantage beyond our borders? Follow the money.
Cultural changes in the US, most notably the end of slavery and the empowerment of women and people of color, are truly the bane of economic conservatives of all kinds because the lowest possible cost of labor is central to securing economic advantage. Carlson’s assumption that what has been lost in America is some glorious, unregulated interplay of capitalism and culture is bogus. It never existed. There is no easy nexus between capitalism and culture because left to its own hungers, the former will suck the life out of the latter killing both in the process. Liberal Democrats shifting rightward with the Clintons may have lost sight of this essentially parasitic relationship, but Conservatives simply refuse to even consider it and will continue to do so because the glory of the unfettered market is the temple at which they must worship. They will never change. The only option is to strip them of power by voting out their GOP sycophants.
Just some more slight of hand from the russpublicans.
2
Carlson simply dusted off a British history book, and regurgitated Disraeli's "compassionate conservatism" almost word for word, with maybe a few thesaurus synonyms
1
Looks like the rat is ready to jump the sinking SS Trump Titanic.
He used to be a respected establishment moderate conservative, saw the opportunity to make money off the ego maniac, pathological liar bigot demagogue Trump and became one of his lackeys.
He sees the end is coming for Trump and is joining, albeit still a trickle the number of Trump republicans jumping ship and returning to establishment conservative preachings imo.
1
Edsall’s column again justifies the NYT subscription price
1
Carlson is the Republican equivalent of a willow tree: he sways which ever direction the wind is blowing.
1
In other words, Tucker Carlson just figured out what Liberals have been saying for 40 years.
Mr Edsall is always great value. An NYT treasure. Just a shame that he, rather than the current Tokyo bureau chief, is not the paper’s correspondent here in Japan. That would allow the NYT to cover this country in a less shallow, more thoughtful, manner.
You lost me at, ‘’Tucker Carlson said...’’
1
Fake Revenge Porn is news to Tucker Carlson. That is the nature of his website. That is how he treats women.
The thing is Mr Edsall doesn't care about anything like that. As long as he can pull something out of a Republican he likes all other sins are moot.
But then if they aren't male and white, like Mr Edsall. Like Tucker Carlson....Like Ross Douthat... Everyone Mr Edsall quotes white and male. That is his world. The actual one isn't so limited.
1
Headline needs to be abbreviated to “ What Does Tucker Carlson Know?”
1
I think what he knows is really about the Democrat party and the poison they have infused into daily life. He knows they judge people based on superficial characteristics (skin color) or sexual orientation rather than matters of substance. He knows with virtually few exceptions their “policies” are designed to manage outcomes rather than opportunity. He knows they have disregarded due process whenever the accused is a white male. He knows that school choice is part of the solution. He knows the anti fascist groups are in fact hate mobs celebrated by the Democrats. He knows there is something morally wrong with abortion policy of conception to crowning.
If this was a college paper I would give it a D. It is 75% quotes with brief commentary. What does the author really think and how would he remedy the situation? One expects more from a NYT contributor.
1
Tucker knows that bow ties make you a little kooky. A fabulist.
Capitalism is facing some serious problems that are outgrowths of its own internal contradictions, and establishment players within both the Democratic and Republican parties are scrambling to head off a groundswell of anger, frustration, and resentment among a diverse and divided working class that has given rise to both right-wing and left-wing populism that threatens to upend their control over the political system. Neoliberal capitalism as ideology and program is under fierce attack from below and has mostly lost any popular credibility. Carlson represents a right-populist interpretation of the crisis that correctly critiques the destructive effects of the neoliberal capitalist order but proposes a nationalist solution that addresses the fears and biases of older, white, lower-middle-class men. On the other side of the spectrum folks like Ocasio-Cortez present a social democratic analysis of the system's failures that stops well short of the kind of socialism that involves workers' self-management of production. The kind of political polarization we've seen so far has been a strictly partisan divide between the two pro-neoliberal parties, but if the next economic downturn is deep the kind we may see soon is between classes, a species of division that threatens to split both bourgeois parties internally and issue into a period of intense class struggle and perhaps a reorganization of the American party system that is historically overdue. We can always hope.
So clearly written. I flashed on the silent German film Metropolis as I read this. The themes repeat here.
All of this talk about "free markets" is nonsense. Mostly Republican politicians and judges have tilted the playing field dramatically in favor of capital. They have systematically weakened workers' rights while simultaneously giving corporations new political, legal, and economic rights and benefits. And if the suffering white people of rural America understood that they have more in common with poor and working class people of all races, ethnicities, and genders throughout the country they would stop supporting the Republican fat cat agenda and we would really make America great again without the silly red hats.
3
a tangential thought on the very complex issue of lives, community and culture within the overall organizing gospel of capitalism and profit...
Trump's SOTU touted more women working than ever.
I assume he meant more women in the work force.
All women with children "work".
The work and challenge of raising children is only recently being recognized as a value when new parents discover the very high cost of decent childcare. But when either of the parents do this "work" it is not considered work.
For a long time priorities and values relative to raising children have been very strange.
Since, historically, women have been the care providers, how different would the status of women have been if childcare had been recognized as necessary and important as whatever working men were doing...
Today, thankfully, it is acceptable for either parent to do childcare, but their contribution should be reflected in that utterly inadequate GDP concept.
Nowadays, in lower and middle income families both parents have little choice, but to be in the recognized workforce...
and yet that may be responsible for many societal problems...
Tucker Carlson is right when he said "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society."
This needs to be discussed!
5
The solution is simple in theory, but difficult to imagine.
Since the Age of Reagan, as Elizabeth Drew chronicled, the GOP essentially put up a "for sale" sign on policy. By the time of our dear friends the Clintons, the Dems were hellbent to catch up. McCain-Feingold was doomed.
Democracy is dying under a political system where voters are duped and lied to, and as soon as the votes are counted, the donors set to work on THEIR agenda. Political victory used to be issue-based. Now it is measured by campaign war chests where the fruits of victory go to those paying their way.
The problem is not elites, per se. It is that elites are no longer restrained. Government, in the time of FDR, promised to make wealth accountable for its excesses and the Great Depression. Then a twinkle-eyed Reagan burst upon us to tell us we could all be rich with no restraints. The adults in the room just knew that no restraints meant those who had power would get more and the majority less. To the children present, the pied piper had arrived.
So how to get the corrupted to vote out the current system when they take the gold?
Last week the House proposed electoral reform to bolster democracy. Mitch said it was a Democratic dirty trick.
I am stunned when anyone thinks the GOP has any chance to promote democracy any more than corporate Dems. The donors would demand a refund. Like our Progressive forebearers from a century ago, it is up to us as citizens to organize for change.
3
This is a remarkable essay for the NY Times.
It is important that people understand that there are rational positions that can be held by Republicans. It is important for the ruling class to listen to Tucker Carlson and others who try to explain why many of the poor whites feel so estranged in US politics.
In some sense, the rise of Donald Trump, or somebody like him became inevitable, when liberals ignored messages that they could have heard directly from America's poor if they were only listening.
Essay after essay in the NY Times extols the virtues of poor immigrants from Mexico or Guatemala who struggle to come to the US to start a new life, and some eventually succeed.
But the NY Times chooses which stories to tell. There are fewer stories of the poor whites in middle America who die early because they could not afford cancer screenings.
And there is an underlying value judgment. Somehow the poor from Latin America are more worthy than American citizens who have fallen through the cracks.
This is implicit in the slogan, "illegal immigrants only take jobs that no American would take." A slogan which might be false.
It also rests on a mistaken belief that the US possesses and infinite supply of resources.
There are almost 17 million residents of Guatemala, millions more in El Salvador, Honduras, and points south.
The poverty of Latin America is not solved by admitting a few thousand more each month from a migrant caravan.
Meanwhile the US poor become poorer.
6
I am one generation off the farm in a region where most of the farmers went bust due to a short growing season and marginal soil. My grandfather sustained the small farm by diversifying into a feed and supplies store as well as equipment sales, rentals and service. Despite his best efforts at persuasion, 4 of 5 of his sons left the farm, earned degrees and raised families in the suburbs across the US.
This economic transformation is ongoing. Eastern WA State, with some of the best wheat and orchard land in the world, is full of once prosperous small towns, high unemployment and Trump signs. Immigrants do most of the hard manual work and tax dollars from western WA fund scores of tiny school districts, government, health and social services, while agriculture, mostly large scale, enjoys generous Federal subsidies.
Geographically, it is a short trip to western WA, high paying jobs and free college education for modest income families. But culturally for some, it might as well be the Moon.
Larger towns like Yakima are already majority Hispanic and beginning to find their political voice at the polls. If the rest of the country is anything like eastern WA, demographics are going to change rural politics, in favor of the many workers over the few owners, who are supported only by lobbyists.
1
Approximately 26 people have more wealth than 50 percent of the planet. We are one of the richest countries in the world and our people feel this inequality. Imagine what that feels like elsewhere. The world political system is tilted to favor these people, how do we obtain an equilibrium that is more fair? This will get worse as automation continues to grow and jobs that pay livable wages continue to dwindle. The pie is bigger than it has ever been, but too few get a slice they can live on. Future trade agreements should include livable wages and equitable taxes.
1
There is absolutely nothing original in Carlson's analysis. Free markets aren't the answer to everything, neither are government programs. This is common knowledge, or at least it used to be.
1
I give Edsall credit for consistently strong and thoughtful pieces. As for Carlson and his ilk, I can only say one thing: you just noticed the detachment and venality of the two capitalist parties? Where have you been?
1
Like Edsall. Pieces are usually thought-provoking. But they're way too long.
It's a column, not a term paper. Cut the length by 1/3 and sharpen it a little. They'll be more memorable and impactful.
1
One must wonder: Carlson's comments that the leaders of the country should do something about "stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male unemployment..." among presumably white voters. When those same miseries were used to characterize the black community did conservative mouthpieces also say that "leaders of the country" should help them, or did they say "what is wrong with those people?"?
Please refresh my memory.
5
goodness gracious...this might be the beginning of end times.....
1
The contrast between the white rural Republicans Carlson describes and the Hispanic immigrants he scorns couldn't be more clear.
The immigrants don't have drug problems, go where there is work, take jobs white rural Republicans won't and the primary reason they're here is to better their families. So their children will have better opportunities. Many pay taxes like SS and Medicare with no expectation of ever receiving benefits. They plant and harvest our food, clean buildings and help build houses.
Terrifying.
3
Oh, please. Now that it's obvious to all that the Republican party elite and their .01% masters are working against our best interests, Carlson fights a rear guard action in saying "well, both sides are bad". It concedes the obvious (Republicans are bad) but lies to keep people from voting for Democrats (Democrats are bad too). Carlson may save himself from the coming destruction of the Republican Party, but he still can't stop hurting America.
3
Though ridiculous to suggest the GOP—which has been a root of the problem all along—will magically morph into a solution, he raises valid points of which many of us in the real world are already aware.
Still comes off a bit like a Fox News version of the Washington Generals—a foil for radical right wing colleagues. Also interesting that he’s competing with Hannity and Maddow.
Treating market capitalism like religion is what led to the huge increase in the price of insulin and of epi-pens. People who need these things and have the money, buy them at whatever cost because they're life or death. People who need them but don't have the money, die. The companies who make them find the sweet spot that maximizes revenue, because of the almighty Shareholder Value, all other values be danged.
I'd love to see an end to the worship of market capitalism.
As a very American client said to me the other day,
"Americans are fat, lazy and stupid"
When I have repeated this to others they completely agree.
Look around and compare us to the rest of the world and its a rather valid observation.
I love market forces, to a certain extent. But the benefits of regulation are clear. The benefits of education are undeniable. Don't get me started on how broken our "healthcare" system is.
We should be ashamed and reinventing many areas of our rapidly decaying country before its too late.
Our future depends upon it.
4
I always wonder why it takes republicans so long to see the damage that they are doing. I've seen Tucker Carlson say the most inane garbage in support of trump's inane garbage. In this case he says, "They (our leaders - actually his leader) can’t solve our problems." Well, well - Tucker Carlson's is now identifying his problems with "our" problems. Too late Tucker can't see how your whining about "our" problems to the base of the republican party will solve your ratings problems.
3
Mr. Carlson is playing the populist agenda game. He can thoughtfully explain why white Americans are suffering and then identity a scapegoat. It’s the “ I understand your plight and can fix it” strategy. Democrats have been incompetent and naive in their efforts, while Republicans have used the opportunity to gain power and implement policies that hurt those they claim to be helping.
2
What “ American National identity “ are we talking about? The one that allowed nativists in the 1840’s to hate the Irish? The hatred for Southern Europeans and Jews that drove Main Street politics from the 1890’s to the 1940’s. The continuing hatred of blacks, Asians and Hispanics (except of course for the anti-Castro Cubans) that continues to this very day?
5
Tucker Carlson said this on Jan 2nd?
Was he hung over?
"But first, Republican leaders will have to acknowledge that market capitalism is not a religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You’d have to be a fool to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite."
Am I missing something? You are truly living in the bubble if this is the first time you have heard that many of the 1 percent- 5 percent and the corporations they serve do not acknowledge the wake of destruction they have created through working and middle class America nor do they care to. How many times does someone have to tell you they have alliegence to their shareholders above all before you actually belive them?
Unions have and are saying it. Andrew Hacker said it. Even the movie Wall Street and now infamous character "Gordon Gecko" said it. Many of the newly elected reps are saying it. But it is a testament to the real problem of who is listened to in this country by "you" over what is being said. We all know we have a problem which will not go away. The need for new economy jobs. When will we take off the blinders. Who remembers the 2008 housing crisis and the resulting foreclosures epidemic? It that just a vague memory? I do not believe that it was the immigrant community that unleashed that sunami. How did we get here? There are literally fingerprints and a roadmap to follow as to how we got here from the drug epidemic all the way to Tucker Carlson.
3
Carlson is exactly correct but the problem is, in my opinion, that the currently far left Democratic party has gone to the other end of the spectrum with its complete embrace of open borders, over-the-top feminism, free college tuition for everyone, abortion on demand no matter what and LGBTQ promotion. We now have two extremist political parties in the USA. God help us. Whatever happened to moderation in all things?
1
Just for the record and at risk of repeating what has been said many times, Democrats do not support open borders. That is what Republican propagandists say that Democrats say. Please stop regurgitating falsehoods and go find out for yourself.
1
@MJM
Okay, point made. But the rest is true, is it not?
Cass and Carlson remind me of scene in a movie where a pair of sadistic thugs invade a family home smash the father's knee cap with a golf club. Then in the most sincere voice offer to help the father with his injury "my buddy is really good at helping with this type of thing." Destroying the bargaining power of workers in America has been the Republican agenda Full Stop.
3
Taking anything that Tucker Carlson says seriously is a mistake. He's nothing more than an empty partisan hack.
1
Tucker has only recently become involved in the Intellectual Dark Web, which itself has only been forming in past five years and named only in 2018 by still professed far-left professor Eric Weinstein. Eric, a math professor, is brother of Bret Weinstein. Both Bret and his wife were drummed out of tenured positions at Evergreen when he objected to a "day without white people at Evergreen State College."
I suspect Tucker got many of his ideas on the Dark Web.
Interestingly, probably 60% of contributors are former or even current far left thinkers thrown out and mostly ostracized by regular opinion outlets once they objected to or refused to go along with far left PC dictums.
YouTube is main, though increasingly host for many of these forums that run 30 minutes to 2 hours.
Prime example is Rubin Report, hosted by Dave Rubin (Tucker was a guest). Dave is a gay former member of far-left Young Turks, and hosts fascinating discussions on array of subjects.
There is vigorous debate. Most are atheists, but refuse to accept straight jackets of current "liberal" thinking on women, sexual identity, minorities, Muslims, immigration.
Other noted hosts are Gad Saad, Joe Rogan and of course Jordan Peterson.
NYTimes liberals who think they know everything ought to spend some time watching brilliant minds discussing difficult subjects free of tut-tutting college mobs and mainstream news editors.
2
Tucker Carlson has a good handle on what drives white working class resentment, but he doesn’t support any of the policies or leaders who have real answers. He is just a flame thrower who wants to keep the flames high and hot. That’s his real job. Get them mad, keep them mad, drive them to the polls where they vote against their interest as their representatives support policies that hurt them.
2
The right tries to divide Americans based on race, and by the "undeserving poor" from everyone else. The real divide in America is the concentration of wealth by the upper 5-10%, from the rest of us. Fox and right wing talk radio have traditionally done a good job demonizing the poor and immigrants, and distracting their viewers from looking too closely at wealth inequity, by broadly vilifying any attempt to raise taxes on the rich as that demon, socialism. All designed to protect the wealthy.
1
Carlson is absolutely right. Too bad the point he's trying to make serves some larger, neo-Fascist fantasy of an egalitarian society comprised of white people safely ensconced behind a wall.
But here's my question. Had we not the levels of immigration - legal or otherwise - that we currently have, would we then not have an opioid crisis? Would Americans start tripping over themselves to pick strawberries from a field under backbreaking conditions? Would those fifty-plus white Midwesterners be coming home from a day of scrubbing toilets at the local Best Western?
I highly doubt it.
1
Boy these white men are having a rough time dealing with the loss of their power. The gyrations and "intellectual" gymnastics in which they engage makes one's head spin.
Tom what is your point?
In America, market forces are king. It is unrealistic to think that employers will opt to hire citizens when an alternative pool of illegals are available.
Employers hiring illegals can avoid payment of : health insurance, social security, disabilty, sick leave, vacation time, etc. This results in an immediate saving of 40% of an equivalent wage for a citizen.
Recent illegals crossing our southern border have low skills and and limited literacy. The bulk of them only qualify for the lowest wage jobs.
It is also unrealistic to think that the pool of these low skill jobs will expand endlessly to accomodate an unrestrained influx of illegals. Eventually, the lower tiers of the economy will be saturated and they will be unemployable. Automation will soon further decrease their opportunities.
The wages commanded by illegals are so low that they are obliged to draw upon our social safety net in order to survive. Similarly, they are invisible to taxation, i.e. they do not contribute to it.
It is not xenophobic to recognize these truths, nor does it “blame the illegals.” It is simply factual.
Further, it is a fantasy to believe that the flow of these migrants has no impact upon the poorest of our citizens. They are “priced out” of the job market.
Makes one wonder if Tucker Carlson has grown a conscience, and, if so, what will become of it and him at Fox News.
Another Meghan Kelly??
1
In this day and age, ignorance sells.
1
Tucker Carlson: what is his vehicle? Fox News. That says it all. Plus, I’ve heard him spew enough lies to disbelieve anything writen for him.
1
Trump is a tool all right as for the GOP money is everything along with Me they could care less about Us if you do not have it it"s your fault and that will not change.
Democrats are backed in a corner, unable to talk about lower class white despair because that will anger their non-white, identity oriented base.
Republicans are backed in a corner, unable to talk about lower class white despair because they will be labeled racist.
1
Dear Mr. Edsall
Less quoting and more analysis, please. Your columns promise much, but then one goes lost wandering through all the block quotes. You're like a first year law student, who learns that block quotes exist, but not actually how to use them properly. (i.e., less is more.)
I would say it's also a lazy method for an opinion writer, but that might be considered rude.
I’m glad Tucker finally got rid of that bow tie.
Same old GOP garbage with a token bit of Democratic populist rhetoric on top like a cherry on a melted ice cream. I don't see anything different here. Same old immigration taking the blame for GOP policy desecration of workers. Every pundit quoted here are pure flim flam con men.
Tucker Carlson - champion of the working man!
Yeah, right.
1
Carlson hasn't been relevant since Jon Stewart exposed him as a fraud years ago.
1
Tucker Carlson benefits greatly from the Market. He could have ditched class if he didn’t like the substitute. What a whiner! Why write about him?
Where you stand depends on where you sit. Native born Americans must be supported as the tides of global change come in. But not at the cost of racist xenophobia. Ever.
Tucker Carlson is a frat boy huckster. He peddles whatever line gets him headlines and airtime. (He was nothing like this during his time on the ill-fated Crossfire.)
"The United States should limit increases in its supply of unskilled immigrant labor. This new approach would require first and foremost that criteria for allowing entrance into the country emphasize education level — attainment of a college degree, in particular."
There's a large disconnect between what Cass is saying here and the claims coming from Cass and Carlson both that no one cares about the adversity faced by members of the working class. Although never acknowledged, what they are saying is that the way to save America workers is to make sure there is a big pile of menial jobs available for them. Doesn't matter if those jobs are picking veggies in fields far from where they live or if the jobs hold no future. Nothing matters but that we "save" the American worker by making sure there are menial, no- or low-skill jobs he (and she?) can have. Let's not bother educating our young people for the jobs of the future; let's not bother training them for jobs that will provide--as has traditionally happened in this country--a better life than their parents had. No. let's IMPORT people who have the education that is too expensive and too much work to provide our own young people. They ignore the absurdity of their own rhetoric.
"Stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male unemployment. A terrifying drug epidemic." Now that this condition is prevalent throughout rural WHITE America, Tucker Carlson and some of his wealthy, white, male peers are taking notice, but the fact that this is and has always been the condition of most black communities in America does not seem to register with him. Now that these problems plague so many white Americans, it is a problem with the economic system and bad politicians. When is was mainly the condition of black communities it was believed by many members of the commentariat to be a result of their moral inferiority. They were amoral animals living in ghettos like savages. They were lazy and violent. They were welfare queens. They did not care about family, education, or God. What about those communities Tucker Carlson? Do they get to be part of your critique of what has gone wrong?
884
@MRod.
Exactly. Not to mention the utter hypocrisy of legal Cannabis now, while generations of black people sat in prison for the same crimes that white people got a slap on the wrist for, and now is the hottest thing in the stock market since internet boom.
82
@MRod
In an interview with Jane Coaston on Vox, Tucker acknowledged what you are saying. He said that when it was 12% of the population going through it, it was easier to write off as a cultural failure, and that libertarian economic propaganda prevented him from seeing through his assumptions about economics.
42
@MRod
You're right. But it's very good news that he and other conservatives are finally figuring it out. Let's congratulate and encourage them, celebrate their waking up, rather than excoriate them.
Okay?
39
It all, always, comes down to tax policy. What happened to the discussion of eliminating the favorable tax rates on carried interest? That policy is what has created Wall Street billionaires and the huge inequalities that are so unfair. In that light I agree with the democratic candidates’ tax policy suggestions in order to reverse decades of poor tax policy. Plow that money into improving public education and it will go a long way to improving lives.
1
I've said this before, and I'm gonna say it again:
Just 20 years ago we were on a projectory, at least economically, that had both the feel and th appearance of an ideal sense of being. The fact that President Clinton was well into his 2nd term caused apprehension among the conservatives, cons, that this sense of national comfort would leave Pres. Clinton with a legacy they could not bear to live with. So we ended up with W. Less than a year after we brought in a new century under such a fine atmospheric light, nearly half the electorate decided a different course was necessary.
A majority of those, doing th suffering that Tucker Carlson is pointing to, are those who decided on a different path; both in 2000 and 2016! The reason no one wants to go back to th late 90's is simply because no one wants to talk about RAISING TAXES! Our economic-societal problems just may be as simple as that.
2
Throughout most of its history "capitalism" has been a cold-hearted means of controlling the economy, at all costs. Sure there were periods where some capitalists actually served the national interest. Usually this happens after they get caught for doing something illegal or immoral. Sometimes it's to protect their interests. But, in almost all cases, it's consent from Congress, SCOTUS or the White House that empowers capitalists to redirect wealth and power to themselves. Collective failure of governance is shared among the rich and powerful, while the 90% share the pain.
4
I find it interesting that the problems attributed to the inner city during the "crack epidemic", ie, “Stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male unemployment. A terrifying drug epidemic” have now commuted to white rural america.
However, instead of increasing the penalty for opioid derivatives possession to a mandatory 25 year sentence, all we hear now is how many external forces have conspired to create a problem state in rural america.
Entitlement anyone?
8
Yes you nailed it. Entitlement and racism. Glad you pointed it out. I wish more people with national platforms would address this.
After reading many of these comments here, I think I discern three types or categories: (1) optimistic, (2) pessimistic, (3) realistic.
Group 1, the optimists, are Democrats: Things are bad, but we can fix them if we follow Democratic economic and social guidelines and principles. We just all need to agree to work together and help each other. It's very possible with the right legislation. FDR succeeded.
Group 2, the pessimists, or Republicans, seem to proclaim that we can't bring heaven down to earth; the poor, unfortunately, will be with us always. Yes, some people will thrive and some won't. It's just how it is. So let's render socialism to the dustbin of history, as St. Ronnie said.
Group 3, the realists, see incoherencies or logical fallacies in both of these groups, in fact, in all political and economic theories. Sometimes, for a near-infinity of unseen and unseeable reasons, economic and social conditions improve and vice-versa. No one really knows why, but, raging and grasping for explanation, one group points to one large set of factors while the opposite group disagrees: The truth is on the other side, they say. In fact, realists understand that no one understands where we are exactly, how we got here, where we should go, or how to get there. (But, admittedly, that is more reality than most of us can bear, myself included; therefore, I live and breathe and have my being in Group 1. It's my guiding fiction, and I'm sticking with it.)
4
The article & comments address (in a mixed broth) two issues. (1) As automation displaces more American jobs the wealth that is created is paid to the owners of that automation and not to labors. Yes somebody has to build the machinery but those workers are insignificant when compared to the multiple workers displaced. Manufacturing use to be the step that combines raw material, labor and capital and automation is eliminating the labor segment, so how are we going to utilize the labor? This needs to be a national discussion and if it is framed as being focused on everybody it should not be dead ended by left/right finger pointing. (2) We have a social systems that depends upon there being enough next generation workers to pay the living costs of their parents and grandparents. Yet we have a declining birthrate. I think that is it Steve Bannon that argues we need skilled workers. But skilled workers are needed everywhere and for the most part they don’t emigrate. So why don’t we recognize that a country gets skill workers just the way we have for the last 150 years. You welcome workers that will do any job but are really only skilled in making babies. Then you add good schools and perhaps some social services so families can subsist. 25 years later you have a segment of the next generation with the professional and trade skills to be your dreamed of ‘skilled for the modern economy’ worker immigrants, except they are native born citizens.
2
@TommyB
Thanks. Using the past 150 years of economic and population growth in the US is not a sustainable model, given where we are at now in terms of our natural resources, population size and environmental degradation. The effects of automation on the labor market has been used as an excuse for leaving our workers behind. The massive demographic changes that have been occurring in China are driven by real jobs, often in industries that left the US. Also, if the true cost to the enviroment (current and future) of implementing industrial automation, in terms of resources and energy used, it would be even less of a factor. We need to appreciate our culutual resources and the added value to society of human, over machine, generated activities.
1
I find the piece interesting and thought provoking.
The questions I have are : How can you reverse the transition of our economy to not become a service one?
How can you raise the overall education level of rural white and urban minority classes so they can take part in an economy that can provide a "middle class" lifestyle?
Accepting the fact that globalization is here to stay, where is America's place in that formula?
Immigration is not the real bogeyman. In my world, I have seen 2nd generation immigrant Asian kids succeed at college and become professionals. Latino and African Americans are making strides but not anywhere to the percentage that their Eastern counterparts are. Culture?
What I have observed is that immigrants take the jobs at the lowest rung of the ladder; gardeners, construction workers, slaughterhouses, maids, car wash attendants, to name a few. Where would or who would take those jobs if there were no immigrants to take them. Automation won't.
Automation already has decimated much of the middle class attaining manufacturing jobs. How will it be possible for large scale movement from low income jobs to higher paying ones?
These are just a few questions that no one is really willing to address. We need leadership and the political will that can provide answers to these questions , at the least
2
adding to my earlier comment
Jan.2, in a shockingly refreshing monologue, Tucker Carlson rants, "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having."
And he makes a good case!
A case I am sure that Senator Bernie Sanders would agree with!
This opinion piece morphs away from that uncomfortable questioning of US capitalism to take on the more acceptable
issue of blaming immigration that Carlson very rudely does on Dec. 4.
Of course it is so acceptable to bash immigration bashers, but God forbid, do not question capitalism and the sacred profit motive.
The profit motive as the organizing principal for life, needs to be questioned.
Thomas Edsall, played it safe and turned the page.
1
I am happy that critiques of capitalism and its god-like status have become a part of American political discourse, but Carlson falls back on another ideological trope with almost equally mystical weight--that of the nation--in a profoundly disturbing way. It's as if, in his rejection of capitalism, he feels the need to compensate. If he were to think past this, his understanding of community could be extended beyond white middle America to include those who have been marginalized here for a much longer time, as well as those around the world who have been made to suffer under the institutions of industrialized capitalism. Nationalism is not an antidote to global capitalism, it is an intensification.
3
Tucker's piece is provocative but diluted by having posted at Fox News, with obligatory gratuitous slams of Democrats (who among other things are said to generally support " making "the world safe for banking, while simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars") as well as soft-stepping around criticism of Trump himself (only the "rich people" who run things and don't care about anybody else said to be the culprits). His big hope in fact is that Trump as savior will "reverse the economic and cultural trends that are destroying America" even though Carlson is a big critic of the Trump tax plan.
@Brendan McCarthy
Fact is most elected democrats support making "the world safe for banking, while simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars." Campaign contributions for the best democracy money can buy, may be the reason.
Ordinary voters, democratic, republican and independent generally are against foreign wars, but they don't have clout.
"Despite this failing of conservatism, Carlson contended that only the Republican Party can lead the country back to salvation". He concluded, "All we need is longer-handled shovels."
"Over the course of the 21st century, the conservative movement, and with it the Republican Party, has fallen ever more deeply under the sway of an illiberal and nihilistic populism — illiberal in its crude exploitation of religious, racial, and cultural divisions; nihilistic in its blithe indifference to governance and the established norms and institutions of representative self-government. This malignant development made possible the nomination and election of Donald Trump, whose two years in power have only accelerated conservatism’s and the GOP’s descent into the intellectual and moral gutter."
Well said.
I suspect Carlson's come to Jesus moment occurred when over a dozen sponsors dropped him. Because no one's ever heard Carlson spout this left wing stuff before.
1
Tucker Carlson's monologue is right on, and needs to be discussed with ideas for implementing change at the forefront.
Some lefty Progressives have written about the profit motive being a ridiculous way of organizing society.
But they have never gotten a platform.
Carlson has a big platform and is making waves. Great!
I wish that it had been a Democrat with high visibility saying what Carlson said.
Senator Bernie Sanders comes close. But all Establishment types and Their Media do their utmost to treat him as too far "out there" with ideas that are impossible and dangerous.
Of course, times are changing!
Though, in Paul Krugman's 2/4 opinion piece, he concludes seeing the strength of Republican populism, but he is way too Establishment to see the strength of Democratic populism as represented by Sanders.
1
So where does Carson stand on Trump’s wall? If in favor, why? If not, also why?
1
Solution - resume closure of military bases and fortifications. Close thirty of them NOW!
1
"Despite this failing of conservatism, Carlson contended that only the Republican Party can lead the country back to salvation."
Darn, just when I was starting to think that Carlson was recovering from his Koolaid poisoning.
2
The transfer of wealth away from those poor white rubes that Carlson feels so tender about has gone so far that even 70% marginal income tax rates cannot correct this bad result. The only first step is a capital levy to redistribute the gain in overall wealth of the past 2 generations to all the people who generated it.
It can work. Venice did it and did not decline from it.
i do not believe it can be accomplished but if it isn't, nothing else matters and we are proceeding to the status of France in 1789, where the rich paid no taxes at all.
1
Oren Cass writes:
“The United States should limit increases in its supply of unskilled immigrant labor. This new approach would require first and foremost that criteria for allowing entrance into the country emphasize education level — attainment of a college degree, in particular.”
You have to ask yourself what percentage of Trump’s rabid “white” base have a college degree or even a 12th grade education. Based on their “lock her up” and “USA” rallying chants at staged Trump rallies, I’d say very few.
How many unskilled “white” supporters would work the fields, mop floors, empty trash cans, wash cars, wait on tables, baby-sit children, chauffeur the rich, etc. for pocket change pay and no insurance coverage for you or your family. Hardly anyone.
3
@buffnick I don't think that it is intended for Trump's supporters to ever do these jobs. IMO, they want Black people to go back to doing this work so that working class whites can move into the jobs they think Blacks have unfairly taken from them, most likely via affirmative action.
In other words, get rid of immigrants and send us back to the cotton fields. This will restore order to the universe.
1
Capitalism, globalization and liberal democracy would work just fine for more people if it wasn't being undermined by racist reactionary conservatism. Strong unions, social security, expanded Medicare, expanded subsidies for higher education paid for by taxing the undertaxed wealth of the top ten percent of Americans would improve the prospects for less fortunate Americans. There are plenty of jobs, the problem is they don't provide health, retirement benefits or opportunities for advancement. These things can be provided by government, but not when you have 2/5 of the country with lopsided voting power voting for government obstruction by continuing to support the republican party. Rural white nostalgia, stoicism and stupidity frankly are destroying this country with a suicidal "if we can't have it no one can" mania. Racism is at the heart of this misguided self destructive behavior. They're willing to sacrifice their own well being to prevent non-whites and immigrants from enjoying the benefits of American progress. The same thing is taking place in Europe.
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@vtlundy - Truth.
If I could pick a word that defines the root of the problem it would be 'tribalism'. The wealthy and powerful have been using this human trait to divide and conquer for millennia, and have it down to science today.
To those who say that humans have always been tribal and always will be, I say "wake up and EVOLVE!"
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@vtlundy
Very well said. Very well said, indeed. Exemplary!
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@vtlundy
Agreeing 200%
... can I add two more please!
(a) Forever, foreign wars
(b) Big Fat defense and MIC budget
16
I've read a few columns about Carlson's segment, but I didn't waste thee time to actually read it.
Why not?
Because talk is cheap. Even Trump can put on a fake mask of caring and civility, spew a few feel-good lines mixed among lies, and then wait for the accolades.
But one oration does not make an actual agenda. Unless the words are backed up with consistent action, then they're nothing other than empty platitudes (which is a nice way of saying "lies").
After all of the divisiveness and hatred that carlson has spewed and fomented over the years, we're suddenly supposed to believe that he's come to his senses and found a core sense of humanity? Yeah, right.
For now, all it appears to be is gratuitous opportunism (whcih is exactly all that the Conservatives have been doing over the past 20 years).
Let's see what he says/does over the next 6 months to a year. Will he pull a Glenn Beck, and offer up teary mea culpas for a year, then go right back to spewing lies and hatred? Will he be more like David Brooks, i.e. actually embracing humansitic liberal ideals (even though he can't admit that they've come from the dreaded Left)? Only time will tell.
But Carlson doesn't deserve to be put on a pedestal yet. Talk is cheap and easy. We all know that the Trump that mouthed the SOTU last night wasn't the real Trump. I bet we'll see the same with Carlson, i.e. he'll show himself to be nothing more than an opportunistic, self-serving hypocrite.
3
Agree completely. This only came to pass after he got hit in the gut watching more than a dozen sponsors pull their support from his daily spewing of vile racism. Spoken entirely ‘from the teeth out’.
I didn't read it all, but wonder just what transformed Tucker Carlson, although I won't complain.
1
I don’t automatically discount anything Tucker Carlson says on FOX News any more than I automatically discount what David Brooks or Ross Douthat (or Mo Dowd) writes in these pages. Those who comment on “America is lost” sound much like President Trump in his State of the Union where he ended with a tribute to WW II, which can be typical for people of his generation. For them, it was the last time America really felt its’ oats. The end of of World War II was the last time you could define that “good” had defeated “evil”.
I do notice that none of the opinion pieces Edsall quotes here discuss wage disparity or corporate stock buy backs. A rising tide has not raised all boats. The pace of change has left many — especially those over 50 — without much in the way of prospects. Wind generated electricity, coupled with solar, has put coal on the brink. Where do coal miners go now, especially if they want to remain near their families in West Virginia? WalMart doesn’t pay what coal mining did (even with the attendant risks). That’s something Hillary Clinton either didn’t understand or refused to address. If you are 55 and “that’s all you knew” it’s cold comfort to be told “well, you could drive for Uber”. Really?
Meanwhile, the rich just get richer. Howard Schultz is a billionaire because he mixed hot water with beans and built stores with overstuffed chairs and soft lighting. Tell me how someone in Middle America is supposed to relate to that.
3
This is not the Tucker Carlson of the bow tie variety that I am accustomed to hearing. Shows he is capable of independent thought. Won't stay long at Fox! Or maybe the Rockerfeller Republicans still exist. If so, it's about time.
1
The most important and thoughtful opinion writer in the New York Times today, Mr. Edsall should be required reading!
Carlson is providing the requisite whiplash to the Fox News listeners that renders them confused but loyal followers.
1
One of the more interesting articles I've read in a while. Thanks.
1
This guy is just another Trump hack posing as someone who cares about the rest of us folks. All he wants is to get his sponsors back so he can justify his salary.
Carlson is a Libertarian. That is to say a right wing liberal. The comment about immigration making our country poorer and “dirtier” shows his true colors. To be sure, he isn’t talking about European and Asian immigrants.
3
The fundamental flaw in Carlson's understanding is: citizens (and residents if not always citizens) of the United States expect to be governed, not ruled. We vote, not bow to a monarch or an oligarch member of a ruling elite. We appeal decisions in courts, not bend to some autocrat's wishes.
I am a liberal D who very much wants a responsible, intelligent conservative viewpoint in our national discussion. Please, responsible conservative people, rid us of the current Republican garbage so that we can get on with being a great multi-viewpoint democracy again. Please.
2
"The party’s actual agenda centers on the interests advanced by its coalition of labor unions, environmentalists, and identity groups. Its policies rely on an expectation that government mandates and programs will deliver what the market does not. This agenda inserts countless regulatory wedges that aim to improve the conditions of employment but in the process raise its cost, driving apart the players that the market is attempting to connect."
As a very liberal AOC Democrat I can agree with much of this. However, Democrats have done this because the capitalist ownership class has neglected and destroyed the working class. They killed the goose that laid the golden egg.
1
Leaving aside any moral or ethical problems, the economic problem of making "unskilled, illegal immigrants", the bete noir of what ails the white rural, middle class, over 50, is that the children and grandchildren of "Trump's base" will not do the jobs that the much-maligned "unskilled, illegal immigrants" do every day.
Carlson is correct about the native-born, opoids-stoned Americans -- of course, they are unemployed because they are too stoned to work.
And the much-despised "welfare system" that Carlson and his ilk love to hate is keeping stoners and the teenage mothers and their out-of-wedlock children alive.
Mr. Edsall, your phrase "ideologically ambidextrous" sums up Carlson and Friends perfectly.
Kind of amazing that you could be like "working people are suffering" and then support the party whose sole guiding principal for the past 30 years is to punish the poor.
1
@Roger The poor they want to punish are Black people, who they see as moral failures. Poor whites are victims of a failed system.
Carlson's talk suggests to me that he along with some other conservatives are not blinded by ideology (Ayn Randian, perhaps) and do not believe that the "market" is an answer to all problems.
If that is true, and yet they hew to that line nevertheless, then they are charlatans and liars.
I don't know who is worse, people like him or the true believers.
Carlson should have given the Democratic response to Trump's SOTU.
1
Trump obviously doesn't believe in this concern for all. His "demand" in SOTU speech was that America never be "socialist" as in NEVER. Surely a fear that healthcare and other factors would no longer be $$$$ institutions. GOP roared their approval, white, male, angry etc.
At least Dems only gave the slightest polite applause to this "trap" Trump was trying to set,
Wonder what Tucker was thinking.,
“What, then, to make of Carlson? Is he a cynic? A hypocrite? A headlong pursuer of ratings? Perhaps he’s best described as a charter member of the same ruling class that in his monologue he indicted for working so intently to divide and confuse the American people.”
It’s easy to figure out trust fund baby and rich elite snob Tucker Carlson. He’s a relatively smart guy who believes nothing that he says. That’s it.
2
Apparently the staff writers for this tv personality have figured out that Sherrod Brown is correct.
By coopting Brown’s stances (and tincturing it with R poison about immigrants), Carlson is laying pr groundwork for Rs to retain the blue collar vote.
2
I cannot believe we are even discussing anything by Tucker Carlson, a silver-spoon brat who postures for the Fox viewership but has no known credentials in either journalism or punditry. What's next, parsing the drivel and hate spewing out of LIngraham or Hannity? We need to stop interrupting actual governance by adults with 8 years (or this time, thankfully, just 4?) of slogans, oil-based foreign policy, and right-wing judicial appointees.
1
I agree that in Carlson's case the immigration of his ancestors to our country was indeed too expensive considering the damage he has done over the years to American values.
He should be deported immediately to the country of his family's origin. We just can't afford any longer to give his divisive and destructive rhetoric a pass. Out you go, Tucker.
2
Here's what irks me about the Republicans.
They offer no positive solutions when it's poor black working class Americans. As an example, their answer back then to drug addiction - throw them in all in jail.
But now that's it poor white working class Americans, they start to pay attention.
The racist dog whistles are blatant. As an example, Trump wondered aloud why the US isn't get white immigrants (i.e. from Finland), while denigrating immigrants from countries whose populations are predominantly people of color.
So the populist message only kicks in when the disaffected look like you?
1
Globalization has caused a major historic change in the economics and politics of the world. It has concentrated wealth and power in the already rich and powerful. The Ds and the GOP both have their wings. Edsall made the point that the E and W economies have been very successful and the middle has been the area where the nasty social media driven Trump people were very successful. The problem is the SCOTUS has taken the laisse faire side lessening regulation of the economy and the environment. Citizens United is the poster child of taking political influence away from voters to the uber rich dominating elections. With Bill Clinton's election the Ds have moved away from social democrats to corporate democrats. Clinton is partially responsible for the 2008 recession with the mantra that freeing up finance capital because that would be the bridge of economic growth into the 21st century. Bernanke and Obama's Quantitative easing was the Feds effort to stimulate the economy in the face of austerity. Which was a the blast that has caused the stock market boom and further growth in income disparity. The banks ended up following their own interest. The current economic recovery has begun to have some effect to help the middle class but the vast amount of the benefit goes to the wealthiest. Trump's one truly populist maneuver his trade war seems likely to reduce growth. So the economic policies promoted are geared toward capital and the rest must wait for trickle down.
Case wants to limit immigration to those with college degrees. Many of America's younger generation can't afford a costly college degree, so how does importing immigrants with less costly college degrees help our situation?
If college was affordable - like free for at least public colleges - this would be preferable.
3
Wilkinson says, "rapid cultural change can make a truly common national identity hard to come by, if not impossible..."
.
I'd propose that rapid technological change has changed the U.S. culture more than the influx of Mexican and south American immigrants.
.
The internet and especially social media has changed everything radically, and I think we haven't realized how radically because it happened so very fast.
.
Our country is not so different because brown people are entering, trying to find work and not (always) speaking English perfectly at first - our culture shifted and continues to shift because our attentions are now scattered and split, and it can't be discounted how much that smart phone in your pocket changed it.
1
Of course "national identity" is changing, and the older one is, the harder it is to adjust to change, any change. Nonetheless, change is necessary, its opposite is stagnation. It may be instructive to compare the New York City of today with what it was in the 1970's and, more important, how it managed to emerge from that terrible decade. The specifics are inapplicable to other situations with their own particularities, but the generalities bear examination.
Capitalists earn money by using their cash to produce real goods or services. For a long time just about everything that American capitalists invested in had to be produced by American workers. So supply and demand arranged for those workers to share in the fruits of productivity.
Price competition forces capitalists to comparison shop for labor, but foreign countries, especially those with cheap labor, lacked the essential infrastructures of stable government, contract law, education, electricity, and transportation. And, of course, they were far away.
Recently however, in China and India communist and socialist beliefs self-destructed - just about all they needed to become viable labor markets. Unlike our European and Japanese friends, these countries are seriously poor, with unquenchable numbers of workers. It’s going to be a long, long time until their labor will be priced close to ours and of course, they are no longer far away.
American jobs are being auctioned, and, competing against our American standard of living, 2.3 billion low wage Chinese and Indians want them. If American companies reject foreign workers, price competition will destroy them. But why worry?
How refreshing: an op-ed that actually discusses opinions and data from both ends of the political spectrum.
While I am a man of the right myself, I'm not oblivious to the contradictions and problems with the Republicans somewhat incoherent approach to many public policy issues.
I feel, of course, that there are, on balance, many more -- and more serious -- contradictions and problems with the way Democrats, and particularly the self-named Progressives, approach those same issues.
That said, Edsall's column helps expose the flaws of both sides and may, in some small way, contribute to their respective reductions.
2
GOP politics promotes excuses and avoids real unavoidable solutions. Look at Carlson's list. Environment to them is not fresh water resources, solar panels, or flood plain planning, etc., it is a desire to avoid regulation of any form on pollution and damage to long term benefit to the populace. Unions are not about training and retraining in skills but hostile push backs to CEOs golden annual bonus. GOP morality is about castigating but not helping. Educated skills are needed but suspect (uppity hard workers who undercut the "entitled") and ultimately just a commodity of the corner office. The GOP message is "good little slacker" (like Trump) who should get a free pass over women, degrees, anyone not ultra white, and a anyone speaking up rather than obeying to their own detriment.
Carlson identifies the problems facing working class Americans quite well. This is surprising only because he is repeating what Democrats have been saying. His problem is he is required by his position at Fox to ignore that Democrats have much better solutions.
1028
We need to stop this 'us' vs. 'them' cycle of insanity. It starts by avoiding sweeping statements like "Democrats have much better solutions". This may come as a surprise, but this is only true some of the time. If we cannot get into pragmatic dialogue then we're only contributing to divisiveness.
If divisiveness continues to intensify, then (to paraphrase Lincoln) we will eventually get to a point at which "our house cannot stand".
41
@Barry64 Yes and no. Democrats have been saying some of the same things, but by and large they talk the talk without walking the walk. Other than Obamacare, the last Dem administration proposed nothing that would make a dent in the problems of average Americans. Neither did Hillary. Does anyone think reducing the interest rate on student loans (one of her proposals) will change the lives of many people? No. There are still many Dems in Congress who favor "incremental" change. "Incremental" translates as "not going to make a major difference in most people's lives."
Why don't Dems propose real change? Their donor class doesn't want them to.
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@Tom
Actually "Democrats have much better solutions" is true most of the time, because Republicans either have no solutions, or their ideas don't help anyone except the 1 - percenters. After all, the only "solution" they ever seem to come up with is "lower taxes on the wealthy" for every single problem. That's not much of a solution as the events of the last 30 years have proved it false.
93
"A country that forgot its people" is how a friend of mine describes our current plight. Who cares which party wonks point it out, as long as the message gets across.
1
After nearly 40 years of trickle down conservative economic policies that have eviscerated the Middle Class and resulted in a Robin Hood in reverse economic system, is it any wonder that the American people are disillusioned with their politicians. As long as our political system and its politicians can distract the American people with smoke and mirrors (e.g., abortion, immigration, America First) and encourage hatred and bitterness among divergent groups, the real issues affecting the prosperity of the poor and Middle Class will never be addressed - - well paying jobs and fair wages. We extol capitalism as the be all and end all of all economic systems; however, when a system creates 2 classes of individuals, the ultra wealthy (1-2% of the population owning more that 80% of capital and the remaining individuals living off of the crumbs of the ultra wealthy, it is time to re-evaluate the direction of not only that economic system, but the political policies adopted and implemented by that system.
Another wonderful piece by Mr. Edsall. Thomas Edsall in 2020!
I have just two things by way of comment.
First, let's give credit where it's due to Mr. Carlson. His criticisms of the GOP's market idolatry are spot-on. But his aside that cities become "dirtier" as immigrants arrive is a shameful piece of race-baiting. If the economic facts support his argument for lower levels of immigration, then he doesn't need these mephitic appeals to racial hatred.
Second, the repeated use of the word "centrism" bothers me. I am not interested in splitting the difference between Democrats and Republicans or between conservatives and progressives. I'm interested in understanding when new solutions are needed because the problems themselves are new. "Socialism," "welfare liberalism," "capitalism"--- much of what we associate with these concepts is rooted in the largely nationalistic, manufacturing-based economies of the past. We can't solve 21st century problems by recycling rhetoric from the Industrial Revolution or the New Deal. If shrugging off stale ideas when they've ceased to be helpful is "centrism," then by all means put me down as a centrist. But let's not confuse that with the kind of "down the middle" bargaining that just serves to underwrite the status quo. We need intellectually serious, creative engagement with our problems or we face more of the same--- more division, more suspicion, more tragedies and more Trumps.
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@Kim Messick
So well expressed, Ms. Messick. Great job!
17
While Carlson and others are dead-on in pointing the finger at both parties for this state of affairs, that hasn't been the case since the 2016 primary season when Sanders tapped into populist rage at the establishment. From that point forward, the Democratic party has been moving steadily from the center to the left - where it belongs.
Trump simply tapped into that same vein of sentiment, except that he had no serious intentions, let alone a plan, to turn his promises into reality.
As of now, it's the Democratic party, in both words and soon to be actions, that have stated loudly and forcefully that "market capitalism is not a religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You’d have to be a fool to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite. Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society."
What's undeniable is that the entirety of the GOP is still back at the temple, worshiping the golden calf with the rest of the money-changers. And they show absolutely no signs of leaving.
197
The difference between Tucker Carlson and the Truth is that for all the hits taken by social security, health care, education and low wages, he blames immigrants. In reality, the culprit is this decades-long transfer of wealth from the middle- and working-class to the wealthy, started during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Although some have come close, no president since has properly addressed this issue.
1244
@Will
Your analysis is too simplistic. The real culprit is globalization; with open borders for people just a subset of that agenda. After NAFTA, and particularly once China became part of the WTO, there was a global surplus of labor. This resulted in lower wages for American workers, particularly the unskilled and semi-skilled, and much higher returns for capital. If the country was willing to pay the price (higher prices for imports and the loss of some export markets), we could turn back the clock by imposing high tariffs on goods manufactured in countries that don't have adequate protections for workers and the environment. Unfortunately, the rentier class has captured both major political parties. Capitalists love the status quo since they have reaped the lion's share of the gains from globalization, so you can expect them to skewer any candidate (Republican or Democrat) who strays from the religion of free trade.
59
@Earl W. - Your time frame is way off. The divergence between productivity and wages started in 1973 well before globalization entered the stage.
Furthermore immigration today is piddling compared to that in the early 1900's. From 1900 to 1915 , about 15 million immigrants entered the country, and the population in 1900 was only about 76 million. According to your theory, the economy should have cratered.
America has always been a nation of immigrants.
140
@Len Charlap Do you think there is more habitable land in the US today than there was in 1900? Have you read about water shortages in the west, or climate change making much of the US uninhabitable? What about automation, which will eliminate literally millions of jobs? That wasn't a problem in 1900.
32
It is probably hard for most Republicans to admit that the economic system of capitalism is not 'baked into' the Constitution of our country. What we have is a system that seemed something better than what we had in England.
Arguably, it mostly works. And it probably got support because the patriarchal system of Christianity dictated many of our cultural norms. Jesus said to take care of widows, orphans, the imprisoned and so we 'know' we need to take care of the 'least among us'. And, historically, the US has a good record of finding ways to take care or these 'least'.
But is seems to me that we have lost our way as far as norms of community and caring for one another goes. I don't blame religions. I think an individualized faith system is beneficial for everyone. However, greed seems to be the motivator of all 'worthy' endeavors these days. We have glorified having more wealth over the humans (and other critters) than is healthy. Our political class has allowed this to happen.
Why else are social workers with advanced degrees and teachers paid a pitiful fraction of what a hedge fund manager makes? I know which jobs are harder.
A healthy, functioning democracy needs people of some means in the middle and a safety net for the impoverished. The wealth distribution in our country is not the big bell curve we learned about in math. Redistribution of some wealth is not unAmerican nor sinful.
213
@Blue Girl, re "Why else are social workers with advanced degrees and teachers paid a pitiful fraction of what a hedge fund manager makes? I know which jobs are harder":
YES, to which I'll add "I know which jobs are more important."
27
@Blue Girl
For the most part I agree with your analysis.
But if you think teachers and social workers are denigrated and devalued in this culture, spend a month working with a skilled framer or a roofer - folks who know their trigonometry and algebra better than most of the professional class in this country.
Let’s face it - America worships a mythology of rugged self - reliance when in reality most of us wouldn’t trust ourselves to change a set of spark plugs - much less rebuild a load-bearing wall in our house shot through with dry rot.
This disdain for craft has carried over into our consumer habits on a massive scale. We used to be a nation OFFENDED by the corporate cynicism of planned obsolescence - now we don’t even keep our personal electronics (or much else) long enough to find ourselves NEEDING to fix them anymore.
In that kind of environment, it’s darned near impossible to expect our ‘educated’ citizenry to cultivate a healthy respect for folks who get their hands dirty for a living. And in turn, it makes it pretty difficult for Joe the Plumber to have much regard for the idea of a ‘merit’ based system, when proponents of that system openly mock him/her as a knuckle dragger.
In more a enlightened society, the teachers and social workers would be trained to see themselves as advocates for these people instead of using them as a cautionary tale of what happens when you don’t stay in school.
19
@Chris Coughlin
God bless the laborer, the tradesperson. They are true artists. Unlike the money-grubbers, their art will live proudly.
5
When the Supreme Court declared that corporations are people, the foundation for the GOP’s move from it’s alleged support of the middle class was set. Money is people, and those who have it can sit at the table and make the rules, while those without are forced to watch and catch whatever crumbs get thrown to them. Both parties are guilty, but the president and his party are the major beneficiaries. Mr Carlson has supported these people and their programs whole heartedly, and it seems to me that his sudden introspection is masking another agenda, where their game of confusing the facts in order to stay ahead is their way of controlling those they supposedly want to help.
3
Worker solidarity has been on the downturn for many years. In many businesses & industries through the 1960s the possibility existed to be hired without a college degree or advanced training & to rise in responsibility & income through on the job training or by attending night school. It was not uncommon for department heads to have started at the bottom.
The acceleration of disparity & the breakdown in employee cooperation happened during the yuppie explosion beginning in the Reagan era. Disparagement of those in the rank & file by phalanxes of greedy, arrogant Geckos, always present previously, but now greatly expanded, led to dissolution of an egalitarian structure based on strong labor unions.
Today with outsourcing, automation & largely unrestricted immigration leading a race to the economic bottom, the service sector will be the only place for millions of Americans. With every passing year, however, memories will cease of better times & the young will have no reference other than the historical record of another way.
64
Sounds like Tucker's been reading the 2016 Democratic Party Platform.
Of course, he adds a couple dashes of both-sider sauce and 2 cups of xenophobia. He also left out any idea of how to turn things around (he skipped past the policy recommendations in the Democratic platform.
So: No cookie, Tucker.
127
@Bystander, Spot. On.
8
Tucker Carlson's ideas are hardly new in American life. They are almost completely in line with those of Pitchfork Ben Tillman, the "Great White Chief" James K. Vardaman and other Southern populists of the turn of the 20th century. The basic idea is that capitalism and commerce controlled by outsiders (sometimes in league with wealthy natives) are not to be trusted and must be resisted in the name of white racial solidarity and economic opportunity for native whites only. As for immigrants or blacks, they are to be excluded from the country in the first instance and either chased out or fully repressed in the second. There is really little difference between these men and Carlson, except for updated media and different accents.
1
@Pierre
I don’t remember Tucker ever saying non-whites should be excluded. Maybe you can point to some reference supporting your theory?
I don't watch TV (unless the Patriots are on) so I don't know anything about Carlson except what I've read in this newspaper, but he seems to have placed himself in the almost empty theoretical space in which both parties' anti-blue collar policies can be recognized.
Outsourcing and anti-union laws hurt American workers. So do the practically non-existent enforcement of the laws regulating the employment of unauthorized migrants and the movement to make all migrants authorized by the simple act of declaring them asylum seekers.
I didn't have to watch the condo salesman's speech last night to know he's my enemy. But I watched Stacy Abrams's rebuttal on line this morning, and I didn't hear a single line in it addressed to people like me.
1
Whenever I read stuff like this, my instinct is to say "Yes, much of what you say is true. But it probably will not be true a few years from now." We are in a period of transition, and a segment of the population, mostly older white Americans as the article makes clear, want a magical solution wherein all the brown people suddenly vanish. Everything about this transition is corrupted and coarsened by the ubiquity of computer networks and the lack of gatekeepers. (Imagine if the Internet existed during the 1920s when the KKK was ascendant -- there would have been lynchings just about everywhere.)
I am married to a Mexican. She is sweet and smart and very skilled at lots of things. Her favorite activity is to sit with a bunch of women, white or brown, it does not matter, and talk about the world, talk about their families, maybe do a little knitting. These women quickly become her "comadres," her godmothers. I have never seen a single one walk away angry or alienated after an hour with my wife. The Hispanics I know are not just good people, they are excellent people, relentlessly family focused and hard working. I trust that all this animus will vanish in a few years because I simply cannot imagine how it will not.
2
Many of the same problems described by TC have also been described as happening in big city minority neighborhoods, out of wedlock births, drug use and high male unemployment. There are available jobs in big cities so perhaps not having jobs in both cases can also be caused by lack of a good education for today’s job market. Rural America blames it on immigrants taking their jobs but I have never heard the same from low income minority communities
So you have a Trump supporter and sycophant like Tucker Carlson identifying many of the truths of how a political elite defined by and in service to wealth disregards the welfare of roughly 80% of all Americans. Then he trots out an ethnocentric nationalistic free market dogmatic answer in response. Even the truth can be twisted to serve the bad ends of faithless people. Trump didn’t just appeal to the despair of people trampled by a predatory capitalistic system that commodifies their very existence. He appealed to the human impulse to scapegoat others very much like themselves in everything other than race or ethnicity for their situation. Carlson like Trump offers a cure far worse than the disease it claims to address. We’ve seen this before in for example Russia, China, Germany and Spain. Its happening in Europe and South America right now. Its being advocated by extremists of differing political postures like Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil. Its the siren song of the authoritarian strong man come to cure all ills and punish “other” people and the results are always horrific. We need better answers to important questions like the balance between free (not monopolistic) market capitalism and government. Answers to the domination of wealth over both market, government and society without straying into the oppression of Stalinism or Maoist communism. Those of us not in servitude to either extreme need to make common cause and better answers, soon.
1
Left and right come together at the authoritarian extremes.
1
Americans of average means far, far outnumber the plutocrats and could elect a government that would serve their best interests. Instead, they elect a government that caters to the plutocrats. The average voters are just getting what they are unwittingly asking for. The plutocrats are much smarter.
As always, this columnist brings so much to the table, attempting to move past the stuck narratives of American mind, both confused and calculating. As for Carlson’s performance, isn’t it more like a Trump set piece, mouthing one thing but arriving at the same old extreme-right dead end, preposterously, of the GOP as savior?
1
''...How, Carlson asked, “did this happen?” - well...
It is really hard for me to take anyone seriously (anywhere that they may be on the political spectrum) if they are not consistent and wish to be only selective when it suits them.
One of the greatest tricks the republican party has achieved for over a couple generations now, is to pull to the extreme right continuously, and then pause for strategic moments here and there. The press then falls over themselves to call anyone that does as a ''moderate''. (even though their voting records clearly show said extremism)
This President has taken it a few steps further. (shown in the SOTU address last eve) In the same sentence he offered ''bipartisanship'', but threatened ''war'' if the investigations into his possible corruption and conspiracies continued.
I suppose I can quote the old maxim of: ''trust, but verify''. That is exactly what the Democratic Congress is going to do, and follow the law wherever it may lead.
If it leads to the White House door, then so be it .
2
The idea that only college educated immigrants should be allowed in the US is dangerous. I have several friends whose college educated American kids can't find good jobs. Now we want them to compete with educated, highly motivated immigrants? Not a good plan. Uneducated immigrants do the work that white Americans don't want to do. If want your caesar salad and your hotel room cleaned, you want these immigrants. Not to mention the human need.
Carlson's rant is just to appear "fair and balanced" and compete with MSNBC for liberal viewers. It's not ideology, it's ratings.
1
Bill Clinton claimed it was the "end of big government". We needed NAFTA. International trade as all costs. And it cost labor and environmental safety! It cost us unions and lots and lots of jobs. And its not just Clinton of course. Its GATT and WTO and the globalization of currencies. Capitol can travel the world with a key click, but labor is tied to country and jurisdiction. Capitol is laundered between crony oligarchs while labor stands in the mud.
it is carlson like TV anchormen/populists are problems. they have a role but for the rating competition and they do and say anything for that. Infact, they compete with each other as well in the same Fox news channel. Lou Dobbs and Hannetty fall in the same category
Bill O'Reilly's numbers (Carlson's time slot) are still somewhat better than Carlson's numbers, which goes to show that Fox could put a box of rocks in for Carlson and still get the same numbers.
1
Someone knows the precise percentage of the different factors since 1979 that produced today's inequality.
The NYT should make a pie chart of those percentages and post it on the front page every day. The political smokescreens around the inequality issue are tearing this country apart. We need clarity. We need facts. Media has failed us on this one.
1
Bait and switch. I was shocked with how much I agreed with him about how capitalism, "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having." Then he went right to Dems and immigrants. Same ole, same ole.
1
Having spent his young life in privileged circles seeing none of what he finally is talking about, and having spent his entire adult life promoting the very politicians and ideas that caused this problem, Carlson comes very late to the "reality" party.
My impression is he sees the Republicans as failed, and that his chosen candidate Trump is a criminal talk show host fool surrounded by criminals, and he is distancing himself for the eventual fall.
He's an opportunist of the first order and has no credibility.
2
When Carlson talks about "family," he is just regurgitating pure Pat Buchanan economics -- preserving the traditional family requires that Dad earn enough to be the breadwinner-patriarch so Mom can afford to stay home, raise the kids, and keep the house.
1
I can understand Tucker Carlson’s resentment of the ruling class. After all, Fox only pays him $6 million a year. Who better to speak on behalf of the homeless and dispossessed?
1
So, trickle-down economics is supposed to save the middle and lower class, eh? Exactly how many middle and lower class members have retired early and wealthy? Can I see a show of hands? Hmm, not seeing any. And yet, blue-collar workers continue believing that Republicans and their trickle-down economics will save them. Why? Oh, and GM fired — oops, sorry, I meant laid off — some 20,000 workers in November, and how is that working out for the Masters of Industry? Great, apparently, because today’s quarterly report beat estimates. But how did it work out for those 20,000 workers?
2
Work has changed and the norm now is low productivity work in the Red States that will never pay well again. The memory of the well paid manufacturing jobs of the post-War 50s/60s manufacturing boom haunts us all, but nowhere more than there.
2
Amen, Tucker. What is different now is that the rulers of America want power, and they want money. Our Founders had money and power - what they wanted was honor. We need a few leaders who are competent, courageous, and who seek the honor of serving, not the power that comes from pandering or leading a mob or buying off a group of voters. Only honorable people can stand the idea of a limited government of free people. Sadly, our current crop of rulers cannot and is not any of that.
5
The election results of 2016 provide ample evidence that a large number of working Americans believe (correctly) they have been abandoned by both major parties. Carlson is simply stating the obvious, which is sadly not very common today. However, his insistence that our problems are caused by immigrants rather than a government serving the oligarchs at the expense of the majority is simply nonsense.
3
The problem is that it is far easier to get a million dollars from a single person with a billion in the bank than it is to get a single dollar from a million different people who have $1000 in the bank. It will always be this way, so the political parties vying to govern will always pander for their lucre. The only difference between them is who they pander to.
What a thoughtful and insightful column. Context here can also be gained by considering the concept of “paradigm”, popularized by Thomas Kuhn. It is difficult to reason beyond or outside of the particular paradigm that we operate in. “Paradigm shift” results when community’s do move outside their existing reasoning, with results unsettling to norms and standards. Mostly, however, we don’t understand or sympathize beyond our own particular constructions.
What we need is a national service program in which ALL people spend a year or two in service to their country and its people. Could be military, social service, whatever. Need to do this to build a common national culture based on service rather than race, regionalism, education, or socio-economic status.
5
Excellant article. If Democrats don't embrace some of Oren Cass's views soon they will fully give up their working class constituency, for a long time, IMO.
Brink Lindsey is off base in his belief that Trump is a product or representative of the Republican Party. This is nonsense. He brought a VERY reluctant party over to him - and most in it would gladly leave him if they could. This reality is difficult for the Democrat establishment to accept, since they need a villainous opposing party to consolidate their own power.
1
Tucker's points are completely sensible, but are not really that groundbreaking.
Economists have pretty much always justified free markets and free trade on utilitarian grounds based on the assumption that while there are necessarily winners and losers in free markets, the winners' gains outweigh the losers' losses.
And then (this is crucial), the winners would share some of their gains with the losers so all are unequivocally made better off (what is called a Pareto improvement in Econ 101).
So when all domestic furniture manufacturing moved from North Carolina to China in the 90's, tens of thousands of domestic workers lost their jobs, but hundreds of millions Americans got cheaper furniture, with enough gains left over to compensate the laid off workers.
The pertinent question is how to we accomplish this second step. I think most Republicans would agree that (long term) welfare transfer payments are not the solution--people need to feel the accomplishment and satisfaction of being productive at work. A bunch of people collecting a check isn't going to foster a rebirth of small North Carolina towns.
Republicans would say that Democrats are more interested in creating dependents (i.e. Democrat voters) than actually helping people help themselves.
So we need some better ideas. Job training and education, yes. But really. Like a Manhattan project for the left behind.
3
The overriding theme of right-wing propaganda in the past 40 years has been, "Yes, you have problems, and they are the fault of immigrants, feminists, GLBT people, unions, teachers, and people on welfare, especially dark-skinned people on welfare. and by extension, all dark-skinned people."
The mission of these shills is to take the justified anger of the working and middle classes and direct at precisely the people who are NOT at fault and away from the people who ARE at fault: the corporate types (and their bought and paid-for politicians) who hold the self-serving belief that a company's only duty is to make money for the shareholders by any means necessary, no matter who gets hurt.
Ideally, they want to develop Stockholm Syndrome among the middle and working classes, so that if a person complains about long hours and low pay or unsafe working conditions, his or her fellow employees will respond with, "You should be glad just to have a job."
2
If it's true that we are now seeing the highest percentage of foreign-born residents since the turn of the last century, then in basic sociological terms how can that not be destabilizing? It's not specific kinds of Other; it's sheer numbers of Other. Fine-tuning the flow would seem to be in best interest of cohesiveness, unless of course you are enjoying this populist moment.
3
Tucker Carlson should not malign substitute teachers, many of whom follow the absent teacher's instructions and lesson plans and are dedicated to making sure that the students continue to learn and progress in their subjects in the absence of their regular teachers.
7
Good article. If the "choice" is between the lady or the tiger, one has a 50/50 chance. If the choice is between a tiger & a lion, both ravenously hungry, there is no real choice. The poor have limited choices; usually none. Most welfare systems as set up destroy families. Married couples rarely receive assistance, but the abandoned mother may. Men & women born into poverty have little hope of higher education; no hope of employment in professional or skilled labor that pays enough to thrive. Vocational trainings in high schools have pushed girls into low paying caregiver jobs to work as home health aides, child care workers or nursing home laborers all of which carry great responsibility but pay horrifically low wages. Men cannot graduate from high school & get a job other than roughnecking in the oil fields, if lucky. Even truck driving requires some higher education now and, short of a gruelling schedule which destroys families, barely pays the monthly bills. In short, we live in a society that eats & spits out all that makes life meaningful. Our villages and towns are gutted ghosts at their cores. On the subject of skilled immigrant labor, the absurdity of the oft spoken desire to import people with advanced degrees rather than to increase domestic educational opportunities, is self-evident. The absurdity of denying entrance to immigrants with varying degrees of labor skills but with low levels of formal education who want to work hard seems also clear.
2
People matter but MY business matters more. This is the fundamental hypocrisy of the right.
3
Part of the problem is not what Carlson knows but what America in general does not know. It's as if nothing that happens in America has never happened anywhere else. And few Americans would look abroad for lessons-learned or for wisdom. In different ways, Scotland and Ireland have shared the problems of societies left behind by change. Some call it progress. I grew up with the phrase "save the west" as applied to the west of Ireland. I also got to know the music of the popular folk group, the Bothy Band. A bothy was a Scottish cabin where migrant potato diggers (tatty hokers) slept, many of those workers being from my county, Donegal. Unemployment, alcoholism, petty crime... these are marks of a community left behind. Some such communities were never part of the mainstream, such as American tribal reservations—but those problems were ethnic and not systemic, no? Now Carlson suddenly discovers that man lives not be bread alone, and that GDP is a very inadequate measure of the success of a society. I don’t yet applaud Carlson for his awakening, lest it be a flash in the pan. But he strikes me as someone who was exposed to some form of education. How could educated people all be like Gordon Gekko or Donald Trump?
7
It was very well said.
Culture and relationships within it are the most important. Being connected to your history and future is equally important
1
There is one and one thing only that can begin to repair the disruption of the working class...education. Pay teachers more, a lot more. Reduce class size; a lot. Improve facilities. Improve access. Lower the cost of post high school education. Make graduation rates 100%.
10
@HT
Not everyone has the innate intelligence to be a software engineer or management consultant. We need working class jobs in America and shouldn’t outsource all of our labor to foreigners.
2
Substitute teachers?!
I'm a 25 year veteran of teaching (9 years in independent schools, the rest in public schools). Now, because my Social Security and pensions are so minimal (less than $1,500 a month), I have to keep working and I choose to work as a sub rather than as a classroom teacher. Why? Because the responsibility of being in charge is just too much.
Our lawmakers and executive branch folks are not even as good as mercenaries, who are simply soldiers hired for pay.
These guys are beholden to the 1% and the giant corporations who have shown, along with their bought-off lackeys, that their capacity for greed has absolutely no limit. No matter how much they have, they just want more, even if more drives the rest of us, the 99%, into penury.
12
What a sticky wicket. Read, for example, the analysis that Mr. Edsall links with "a new analysis of census data," which is a highly nuanced mess of fact and value judgements. What constitutes government assistance? Who gets it, and how is it quantified? And who should?
Perhaps in a time of obscene and increasing income and wealth inequality, we should agree to do something about THAT, instead of engaging in zero-sum arguments pitting poor immigrants against poor citizens.
When we argue about scarce resources and who should get them, we seem to forget where the real resources reside in great abundance, and that they are available.
2
It was back in 2015 that the Case-Deaton report came out, reporting increasing mortality among low education whites. It is inexcusable that over three years later the Democratic Party is still largely gnoring the problem (except for opioids, merely one facet of the working class's many problems). Mark Lila's analysis is accurate, unfortunately. The obsession with issues of identity politics has distracted politicians and activists from issues that are important to ordinary working class white Americans. Identity politics distracts from a focus on the common good that the Democrats once had (with the honorable exception of ObamaCare. No longer can anyone say with a straight face that the Democrats are the party of the ordinary Joe. I'm not working class, but I do care about the common good, and the Democrats have alienated me. If the Republicans heed Tucker Carlson's jeremiad, I might consider voting Republican for the first time since 1976, especially if Trump leaves office.
5
@Cynical Jack, I agree with your comments about the Democratic party. However, I sure don't see the Republican party making any attempt to actually help working class Joes or Joans either. Actually, I quit the Republican party in disgust for their fiscal irresponsibility and policies that have actually hurt the middle class and poor (tax cuts skewed to the rich and multi national corporations). While I am no fan of identity politics or allowing illegal immigrants or economic asylum seekers to into the US (mostly because I feel that 315M people are plenty), I just cannot get behind the Republican agenda of austerity for the middle class, welfare for the wealthy, and the abstinence only/anti sex nonsense.
2
Modern society improvements like universal health care can help stem teenage pregnancy, AIDS, and other major problems. Regulations like food safety help insure quality control for consumers and the providers business survival. Sensible gun regulations can prevent all kinds of unnecessary tragedies. It is government’s role to provide some groundwork for a healthy economy. Business and commerce provide the goods and services.
2
We really need to stick the fork in this notion about the efficiency of free markets. Adam Smith's model is almost completely irrelevant to an modern, industrialized economy. Point one: Adam Smith insisted on the importance of their being a very large number of buyers. Almost every aspect of the American economy is dominated by a monopoly or virtual monopoly which can manipulate the market to the benefit of the wealthy owners of the means of production, and to the detriment of the hapless consumer. Point two: Adam Smith insisted on the importance of ease of entry and exit from the market. His point was that a potato farmer would switch to selling peas next year if he saw peas were more profitable. Unfortunately, someone who works as a cashier at a supermarket can't set up a car company next year because selling SUVs would be more profitable. The end result is that wealthy captains of industry get a useful lie to sell to the American people (less regulation = the American dream of freedom) while the American worker/consumer gets the shaft. No, deregulation only benefits the most powerful in society. For the rest of us, regulation is what gave us the five day work week, the 8 hour day, guaranteed sick pay, a right to an education, access to health care, social security, consumer protections, environmental protections...
8
And so it begins. I always said it’s not Trump we need to worry about, it’s the guy who comes after him. The Republicans will re-frame the Democratic message of “we hear you downtrodden worker class.” And this is far more dangerous than Howard Schultz running for President.
2
Surprising words from Tucker Carlson! The article touches on but fails to frame another issue for why undereducated immigrants will continue to be sought—Americans refuse to consider certain jobs. From CA farmers who can’t find enough hands to pick their produce, to parents who indulge their grown children in unemployment because said “educated” workers refuse to take openings at Target or Starbucks while continuing to look for work in their field.
Another not so secret issue is the interdependence of many corporations on government contracts and/or policies—from Medicare’s inability to negotiate lower pharma costs like insurance companies do, to direct fees for services, from outside consultants to military purchases. The GOP refuses to recognize that our corporate culture and “American” way of life depends on migration and government “consumers” of corporate products. And both parties sidestep that we’ve been a socialist democracy since the New Deal and social security was instituted. The system, co-created by capitalism, policy and law, aids and abets all.
1
I thank Mr. Edsall (and the NYT) for an article concerning ideas, not just dogma. Food for thought would be a cliche; but, close to a fine description of the content.
Reading the comments on the article is very discouraging, in the sense that the commenters are expressing less 'thought' than emotion. And political emotion at that, absorbing any thoughts (or opinion) other than one already holds is abandoned, for willful ignorance of anything outside one's 'political' identity.
Unless one approaches what one reads, encounters, or is exposed to outside a set political identity is, and will always be, self limiting.
Edsall offers differing takes on important issues from a spectrum of thinkers, the commentariat. Even in those mentioned, certain base ideas on the American experiment are shunted aside: equality and freedom are but two.
Until we abandon the manufactured construct of "race", and we have been working on that since our founding; we will suffer achieving equality among all Americans. We profess we are not a class based society, yet we use adjectives to multiply the classes (middle, working, or even just elite) to divide us.
The Constitution gives the individual all the rights, then we elect a representative to effect a democracy.
America has improved over the long term, there are setbacks at intervals; move forward as Americans. Not all of the Founders were Native born, we are a land of immigrants that are all equal, native or not.
2
It appears from Thomas’ quotes that many conservatives feel their approach is fundamentally sound, but has been inadequately applied.
There isn’t any doubt that the ideals expressed have not been implemented, and that the failure is due in part to the indifference of the well-to-do.
But what none of these speakers allow is a role for government. They universally fail to see that the profit motive is usually short term and aimed at competitive advantage. It has no interest in “floating all boats” or the commonweal. No matter its benefits to themselves, it does not benefit only themselves.
Government is left to address public concerns: health, infrastructure, rehabilitation, education, affordable housing, environmental protection, child & elder care. So far, Congress and the White House are neglecting these responsibilities in s furor over trivia.
2
"Trust is the true coin of the realm".
As long as money is speech, and those with money choose to convince people to vote against their own self-interest, social trust decays, and we get Trump and Fox News, exploited illegal immigrants, opioid epidemics, millions without access to even basic health care, etc.
Solving problems in a democracy requires consensus. Distorted "facts" that result from distorted "speech" - sourced from monied interests, or Russia, leave the average citizen poorly served by democracy. Russia knows this and works to increase disfunction; people with money believe democracy is working just fine as long as they continue to increase their wealth.
The outlook of too many hardworking Americans suffers.
To equate money with speech distorts and damages our democracy.
Tucker Carson is a good commentator and newsman. However, in evaluating Carson’s commentary, the article here quotes a multitude of individuals and organizations such as Will Wilkinson, Brink Lindsey, The Niskanen Center, the Guardian, Michael Massing, Brookings Institute, Salon Review, Samuel Hammond, Oren Cass, Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research and Kyle Smith.
These names sound cliquish and may mean something to eastern pseudointellectuals but not to the common man. Quoting them reminds me of the old trick of academicians in the ‘publish or perish’ world. You cite me in your writing and I cite you in return- a clever strategy for gaming the citation index. I guess, columnists appear to practice the same trick.
Those of us who are on the right side of the political spectrum, wear our pants one leg at a time, go to work, believe in traditional family and have a clear view of man, woman and God as well as human anatomy and the purpose of body parts. We also resist forced charity or attempts to confiscate the fruits of our toil for nefarious social giveaways.
You may call us conservatives, right wingers or by the many derisive phrases that have become acceptable since Secretary Clinton got whipped in the election.
The fake commentary from the various people and organizations cited does not matter. The impact of Mr. Carson is measured by how people like me agree with him rather than the criticisms of pseudointellectuals.
Mr. Carson is just terrific.
2
America and the EU are in the same boat in the sense that national identity has become a chimera at best and a truly ridiculous almost insane concept at worst. The demographic makeup in every Western nation is like the UN General Assembly. As TR feared, America is now a squabbling hodgepodge of hundreds of nationalities. Personally I don’t mind so long as there is hyper polarization and the resulting tribalism. It’s like our politics are regressing to 18th Century Scotland. I prefer tribal Scotland to hyper capitalist Scotland which obliterated Scottish culture in favor of English. In America a house divided cannot possibly fall. It will preserve American culture. We’ve been this way since 1865 for God’s sake.
I’d to think Tucker Carlson was perhaps reflecting on Ghandi’s Seven Social Sins, for there was a time when Conservatives around the world understood and held our leaders accountable to such profound wisdom. The world will only be a better place when we accept that a free market needs to be governed by such a code of conduct by its leadership.
Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Religion without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.
1
Tucker is trying to mix American Conservatism with some aspects of socialism and is getting a coplete ideological gibberish. It manifests itself as whining over the plight of white working class. You just can't solve economic problems of working class within conservatism that idolizes "free markets" (whatever that means, including rigged markets). Universal health care, access to good education for all Americans, and continuing infrastructure re-buiding that would ease transition to more educated wotkforce able to deal with the next wave of automation. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to admit that we need to raise taxes to get there. Money don't grow on trees for God's sake! With tax cuts we are going the opposite way.
Democrats have been very shy to stake their ideological framework. Rather, they have been focusing on specific polices, health care, education and infrastructure investments, particularly in urban and rural areas.
Unless Tucker lays out specific policies, that would address economic hardship of the working class, all he does is just whining. But that may just make him a socialist and he is not going there. But then, as all other conservatives, he is in a pickle of not offering any practical solutions. Instead, to rile up his followers, he is focusing on guns, abortion, one sided view of immigration and acusing democrats of socialism. That is a dead end of American Conservatism.
1
It is argued that a common culture is necessary for national cohesiveness. Perhaps what is required is a reset, a new definition of what comprises a/our common culture, our national identity. We, as Americans, would be wise to put our collective thumb on the scale and extol (sing the praises of) the virtues and benefits of diversity, of race, of ethnicity and of opinion.
4
The idea that opposing immigration is 'racist' is absurd. Who can't find a job because of competition from illegal immigrants? By and large, it is not white men. Most whites have jobs that illegal immigrants could never qualify for or aspire to. And that, in fact, is the reason why the wealthy globalist establishment supports illegal immigrants - it doesn't impact them, or their families and friends.
For American citizens who are minorities at the bottom of the economic totem pole, the picture is much different. Employers prefer to hire illegal immigrants because they believe they will work harder for less money - and they are right!
4
Republican gerrymandering of voting districts and voter suppression to exclude poor people from the voting booth, make any 'referendum' on the definition of the American Identity less than inclusive, to say the least.
Fear drives Republicans: fear that they will lose their beloved wealth, fear that they will lose their beloved 'superior' identity, fear that they will be called upon to support a country that doesn't reflect their values.
Hope, optimism and a desire to include others are the general driving factor for Democrats.
Fear generally trumps (hah!) hope. That is why Machiavelli instructed the Prince to keep his country continually at war.
Carlson needs to listen to himself, then ask 'How does the Republican Party of today in any way align with these goals? How can a Free Market restrain itself and still be free? Who are these Ruling Elites? For the last 2 years, they were all Republicans.
The 'Free Market' is a mythical ideal. Actual markets are highly tribal. Adam Smith's 'Invisible Hand' is Caucasian. Markets favor family, friends, and "people like me" over those who are different. Race and class determine opportunity and advancement in almost every case. Fair business practices and safe, enviro-friendly products are too expensive. The SEC, FDA, EEOC, EPA, labor unions, etc. did not emerge from collectivist conspiracies. They were responses to abuses by the Markets. Markets in the real world do not tend toward a fair deal for all. Instead, unregulated markets tend toward oligopolies or out-right monopolies, as in the Gilded Age.
Unless he can show how the Republicans can solve the climate change they pretend does not exist (or is caused by God?) he needs to look elsewhere to fix the problems he describes.
8
The minute conservative business owners stop employing illegal immigrant laborers is the minute our illegal immigration "problem" will be solved. And not a moment, or a wall, before.
24
I almost never hear this argument.
All of the players in this game fail to mention that this situation is due to hiring undocumented workers.
If there weren’t people and companies willing to hire undocumented workers illegally, they would not come.
Why are the ‘job creators’ never vilified in the same way as the workers looking to fill the jobs?
They’re breaking the law and contributing to lower wages and committing illegal acts too but one side refuses to acknowledge these facts.
4
They wouldn’t need to employ illegal aliens if the labor market weren’t perverted by the artificial construct that is the left’w beloved wage and labor law. Contrary to leftist dogma, an hour’s work is worth what an employer and employee decide it to be. Market forces and the expense/difficulty/desirability and other factors affect this. Wishful thinking and unicorns and rainbows agendas have no place in the marketplace.
@Michael
For the first time last night Trump talked about companies hiring illegal immigrants to save money over American workers - Carlson's talking point. Fine companies and it will stop.
Carlson calling immigrants dirty is classic nativist hate-nonsense. Each group that has come over has escaped grinding poverty and then worked hard to build a life. Shall they come in a tux? Their children always learn English to fit in and they go to school. This "dirty and stupid" rap was said about the Irish, Italians, Germans, etc. It's damn dumb.
"Both sides miss the obvious point: Culture and economics are inseparably intertwined. Certain economic systems allow families to thrive. Thriving families make market economies possible." This is the fallacy that both sides are guilty. Many, many of the Democrats that won this time campaigned on those ideas, Republicans campaigned on bigotry and anti-immigrants as the cause of all ills. Democrats are certainly guilty of paying too much attention to the rich, but it's a matter of scale here. In the case of immigration, what's ignored is the negative birthrate/high death rate in the country. Without some immigrants, we'll not be able to sustain any economy. And despite what the rich think, the economy is supported by consumers.
3
Mr. Edsall brings to the stage a sensitivity we all should attempt to cultivate—an appreciation for the distinction between ideology and ethical persuasion, but also for the complexities that arise when both are simultaneously exhibited in the pronouncements of public figures.
This Mr. Edsall is one smart dude.
4
Choice is a function of social context. If a family or individual is born into poverty- lack of educational opportunities, lack of access to a living wage,or lack of access to healthy food- makes real choice illusory. For middle class Americans with access to functional choices- access to functioning schools, access to a living wage, and access to healthy food- choice is likely to maintain their current socio-economic place in society, not advance it. Even so, the destruction of labor unions, and skilled employment still limits choices to advance under the current economic paradigm. The only citizens who have a real choice in American society are wealthy Americans whose assets exceed the cost of living. For the vast amount of Americans wages have not increased relative to the cost of living. For those born into poverty, economic advancement is forever out of reach.
4
10% of your book brings in 80% of your business. Therefore, serve the 10% and let the 90% go hang.
I was taught this doctrine during my career in the brokerage business, and it explains a lot. Businesses now use computers to serve the 90%, and only the top 10% get hands-on human attention.
It's where we are as a culture: Robo-Society for all but the very wealthy.
2
Poor Tucker Carlson, the beneficiary of the Elite’s indifference to poor and middle class. Starts out on a populist footing and then devolves into foolishness.
Of the libertarian commentators, I think Wilkinson is the most helpful.
Wilkinson’s description of the competition between the impulse for a racially and ethnically pure country and the impulse of getting rich is insightful. As is his pointing to the Paine concept of civic and ideological identity rather than racial and ethnic. The oft-used political term “American Values” comes to mind. American Values are not ethnic or racial but universally applicable (even if our Founders were limited by their own narrow, homogenous upbringing).
When the wreckage wrought by the Trump Administration is removed and the unreasonable fears are tamed, perhaps we can have a discussion of what American Values are and use those as the guideposts for evaluating assimilation.
4
That's why conservatives were so wrong about the ACA and its Medicaid expansion for the working poor in rural areas with financially troubled health systems. The "elites" didn't deny them the dignity of having a health insurance card in their wallet health by refusing to expand Medicaid. Red state governors and legislatures, following Fox-fueled Republican dictates, did.
8
But the governors socially identify with these elites. There's def a racial element here, but I think class gets overlooked here most of the time. Bobby Jindal, for example: slashed LA state budget, slashed taxes for LA companies and wealthy, fought for "voucher" programs instead of supporting the existing public school system...all while being the first brown governor ever elected in Louisiana(though his puritanical evangelicism, mixed with a free market zeal fits well with white Louisianaians no doubt). Guess my point is the fox comes in all shapes sizes and colors, but the damage they do affects us all(not equally, but all negatively).
Carlson found the achilles heel of the Republican Party. The majority of the party's constituency has economic interests that conflict with those of the party's national elite. The latter is solidly aligned with the most powerful elements of U.S. finance and industrial capital which favors large tax cuts for U.S. corporations, free trade internationalism and a neoconservative foreign policy opposing traditional global U.S. adversaries, Russia and China. Trump's economic nationalism is part constituency support and part old fashioned racism and xenophobia. Carlson has taken that Trump thesis and formalized its tenets. He wants state action to defend marginalized white communities who simply are not on the receiving end of benefits from globalization. Trump would be a traditional conservative internationalist if it worked for his base. But his base rejects Wall Street and the multinational corporations who control most of the American economy. Carlson has listened and understands the internal conflict. The contemporary political climate in the United States requires Trump to think in purely nationalist terms. Tucker Carlson, wittingly or unwittingly is the messenger.
1
Political party aside, the country is playing to Wall Street and corporations. There were times that places like IBM, HP, others cared about their stakeholders, inclusive of employees.
We have now decided that the unsustainable gap between the classes is okay. But it isn’t. And it is not sustainable. When parents can’t take their kids to the doctor, we are beyond broken. The short term perspective of Wall Street and business is destructive.
We have lost any moral compass. It has become a game of win and loss, and we have lost sight of what matters. Putting kids in cages is truly the exclamation point of our incredibly lost ways.
7
The companies that incorporate employee interest into their business model, regardless of purpose, get trounced for it. When Walmart announced an improvement to its PTO policies and incentives for those who do not use the full amount, the market responded with a brisk 2 1/2 % drop in share price, meaning a $225,000 loss of market cap. That’s the market punishing you for doing something wrong.
@From Where I Sit
Should read $225,000,000
Given my liberal leanings, I have read Cass book, and find some interesting ideas/policies that would be worth pursuing. But, this is problem, no party in Congress is examining these ideas or offering legislation that experiments with different approaches to health care, education, wealth inequality. The GOP is stuck in Reagan era supply side economics, the democrats are stuck in FDR lite policies. We face a whole host of 21st problems that resist 20th century remedies. And certainly, having a President whose sole policy goal now is to build a concrete wall is a comical, if not tragic, diversion from a thoughtful examination of problems we confront.
14
As always, great piece. I like that Edsall ended with Wilkinson's quote because its telling:
"cultural change can make common national identity hard to come by, if not impossible...it's not clear to me how important it is to have one"
But Wilkinson's wrong. It is ESSENTIAL to have a common culture because otherwise people will resist investment (both monetary and social).
Why don't we fully fund the safety net? Because we're concerned the "wrong" type of people benefit.
Why don't we have Medicare for All? Because then "less deserving" people may got to the front of the line (and the government could mandate behaviors as a cost cutter...but that's a fight for another day).
Without truly seeing your fellow citizen as your kin, there is no incentive for collective action.
Progressive identity politics creates a Gordian knot; you simply can not pull on both the collective good and the micro-segmenting of various grievance groups and expect to get a good result. Those two impulses are diametrically opposed.
4
@Arturo - The real reason we don't have Medicare for all is that we'd need another two trillion in taxes, hitting everyone with a very large tax bill.
@Jonathan
The real reason we don't have Medicare for all is that the money to fund it was given to billionaires and multinational corporations in tax breaks.
Agree with Carlson on most points except for the "importing of foreign labor to take the place of native born..."
The people HAVE jobs, they are just currently the working poor. When Trump & others remark about the economy being in great shape, the working poor know for who that means.....those that have stock in the markets. If only half of the economy has stock in the market, and the other half has no stock in the market....why would anyone say the economy is doing great? The DOW went up? Great, but only half of us benefit from that.
The poor know they are poor. The rich, knowing that they are rich, can't/won't/fear the fact that half the population is working, but poor.
That is the state of our union. It's average, all the time.
4
@M. You hit the nail on the head. As much as I vehemently disagreed with everything about Jesse Jackson’s early-80’s candidacy, one thing he got right was the need to highlight the plight of the working poor. They get up every day and go to work, often to 2-3 jobs to try to make tomorrow a better day for their children.
1
Carlson is wrong that people do not worship capitalism. Just recently I heard someone say that General Motors and Chrysler should have been left to go bankrupt so that they could then strengthen themselves. Three others chimed in agreement. Had they gone bankrupt, economists said, 1 million people would have quickly lost jobs, plus health insurance. The damage and pain would have been immense. People would have died. A simple, non-capitalist government loan, that has been largely repaid, prevented that. These four people worship capitalism.
7
That government loan distorted the market and caused two poorly run companies that produce largely shoddy products to survive when they should have been liquidated. A clean and swift bankruptcy would have allowed new opportunities to grow from their carcasses.
Not being an observer of Fox News, I was quite surprised to read Carlson's quoted critique of Capitalism.That aside, I do often feel that one aspect of the racial component to immigration is that only Europeans can properly understand democracy since of course we "invented" it. All these non European immigrants will be bringing their illiberal beliefs that will eventually erode our institutions. This view not only insults the intelligence of whole groups of people, but belies a fundamental lack of faith in democracy as a desirable system of government. Perhaps a deeper truth is that these people, "yearning to be free", leaving despotic, failed regimes will become democracy's greatest defenders. Several articles I read on the "caravans" indicated a strong democratic impulse in there organization; leaders elected, committees formed, regular consultation with all the participants. The irony is that in the very attempt to politicize immigration we are degrading the democracy we claim to be defending. As we drift toward oligarchic authoritarianism and one party rule through a monetized political system, voter suppression, and the stoking of fear, I often imagine that those we are told to fear will be the very ones to preserve democracy. Tucked away in small out of the way countries, the people we demonize now may provide the seeds for democracy's rebirth, an idea born in a small Greek city state that eventually bore fruit in much of the world.
13
Both parties are NOT equally complicit in the neglect of the working class. The Democrats, over the course of my 30 year voting life, have consistently supported programs that would be an antidote to the heartless capitalism global juggernaut. Democrats have supported unions (and union wages), day care, affordable health insurance, family leave, and other programs that would directly benefit the working class. Why the white working class has chosen to reject that in favor of blaming brown people I will never know. If it matters I am a white woman.
20
This feels like progress. I like the bit at the end about Thomas Paine. This country was founded on great ideas. I believe they apply to all humans. Very few of our leaders seem to respect these ideals. One side tells me they're really fascist the other cynically use them for their own purposes. I actually believe we should try a niave approach. Read common sense and the declaration take a leap of faith.
1
Carlson has been wrong for years. If one looks at his endless list of jobs he has held, but never for very long, one can see a record of failure. Additionally, his books are utter drivel. His mentor, Dick Cheney sponsored his on-line misguided right wing site, "The Daily Caller" and has pushed him into various positions. When Cheney meets his maker, Carlson is over. One can only reinvent oneself for so long before it becomes old hat and no one cares.
It's fascinating to observe the rare, lucid statement, such as market capitalism being a tool, not something to be worshiped, issuing from Mr. Carlson's mouth. The fact that it is aired via a rabid, right-wing propaganda network with no use for reality or good faith debate, and the incongruity is maximized. Interesting to say the least.
5
@Alan R Brock
Not interesting. I've noticed more than a few Trump supported backing away very slowly from him as they're seeing he gets nothing done, is likely a criminal, and is not a change agent but a stooge for the money class.
An authoritarian, charismatic politician could take Carlson’s intoxicating message and build a new majority around it. Trump’s let-them-eat racism fake populism limits his polls to the upper 30th percentile, and only Republican cheating could re-elect him in 2020. Carlson’s marriage of xenophobia, racism, and anti-ruling class populism, Steve Bannon’s original message, has the potential to steal Trump’s base, energize, and expand it. The historical moment is here, as shown by polls that overwhelming favor taxing the rich, and all it needs is a messenger. Only progressive anti-racist politics stand a chance of beating it.
2
Absolutely true, as David French says, that the choices you make determine your life. And the most important choice you'll ever make is picking your parents.
4
“...the [Democratic] party’s actual agenda centers on the interests advanced by its coalition of labor unions, environmentalists, and identity groups.”
Labor unions favor higher pay, job protection, an increase in the minimum wage and better living standards in general, for workers. In short, reform of capitalism and leveling the playing field for workers to have a stake in the system.
Environmentalists want clean air, water, and non-toxic soil. Reversing the imminent global warming disaster is also one of its interests. Victims of environmental disasters tend to be stripped of their dignity.
“Identity groups” is Carlson’s scare word for anyone who is not a white, straight and middle class male—and who by any historical reckoning , have been, and are currently ill-used and humiliated for not being straight, prosperous white and male. What are their “interests”—if not dignity?
All three “interest groups” represent the very people Carlson wrings his hands about being left out—but to whom he credits not one good idea or acheivement —instead, he blithely dismisses them as self-interested phonies or dupes of the Democratic Party on nightly basis.
He has nowhere to go with his musings and nothing to offer . His questions have been asked and answered.
2
Mr. Carlson was born into high privilege and attended an exclusive prep school and college. His only contact with common laborers was likely the maids and gardeners his parents hired. So, it fair to ask whether he has (boldly) positioned himself on the right as a “neo capitalist” simply to outshine his much less astute colleague Sean Hannity. Why is this important? Because it’s a maneuver! Indeed, having championed these interesting ideas, which are not his, he hedges his bets with the Trump base and Trump himself by promoting a nativist and uninformed view of immigration.
If I were a Democratic politician or pundit, I would trumpet his criticisms of capitalism and seek common cause. But then he has already inoculated himself against this by declaring the Republicans the only ones who can implement the rebirth of capitalism. That’s because Republicans have a long tradition of questioning the tenets of capitalism. Think Regan, Nixon, Bush, Trump, Marx, Engels.
Carlson’s populist critique of modern capitalism is absolutely correct, and that’s what makes it absolutely terrifying. Mixed with his xenophobia and blatant appeals to white identity politics, it sounds less like a well-meaning critique and more like the kind of heterodox politics that was characteristic of fascist movements in the interwar period. Like fascists - especially in the 1920s and 1930s - people like Carlson appeal to both the far left and the radical right. That partially explains the many misguided appearances on his show by Glenn Greenwald, who has offered only minimal pushback against Carlson’s racism.
Purely for reasons of historical accuracy, I won’t call Carlson a fascist. But he’s a 21st century counterpart of the fascists of the 1930s like Father Coughlin, and anyone from the right and especially the left who lends him credibility is complicit in his pushing an extremely dangerous vision for this country.
1
We should shoot for a nation-state, not a state full of different nations. The U.S. could be the first multi-racial nation-state, if we give the system time to assimilate people, and beat back the idea that diversity is our strength. "Diversity" tears us apart, and puts people into their boxes.
Best solution -- cut immigration, reform the system to bring in the educated and easily assimilated, and focus on bringing up wages for Americans. We need a pause like after the last great wave of migration to allow for assimilation and acceptance.
A government should protect its own first.
4
Mr. Carlson is an employee of Fox News, itself but one cog of the giant Murdoch media Empire, one of the six or so capitalist corporations that dominate media on our planet. As a worker, Tucker generates profits for Fox, who sell the airtime of his show to advertisers, who are seeking the viewers attracted by his opinions, so they can sell them their products and make more profits. When Mr. Carlson ceases to attract viewers and thus make less profits for Fox, he will be let go--the same as any steel worker in Pennsylvania . . . . The same is true of all the other ponderous pundits you quote at length. Speaking as if from some lofty perch above the system, in fact they are very much part and product of the same dog-eat-dog profit seeking economy . . . . Of course the crisis of inequality cries out for a Marxist, class analysis and, in any other nation but America, that would be the first reaction of any intelligent person. But a Marxist analysis is exactly what is forbidden in America.
2
Tucker Carlson is a racist and his arguments are nothing but a thin fig leaf to intellectualize and justify that racism.
"Real Americans" have always attacked immigrants, from the Germans in the 1830's and '40's, the Irish following the potato famine, Asians in the West, and the Eastern and Southern Europeans from 1880 to 1920. The argument is always they same: "They are taking jobs!"
A local general contractor said this to me a few years ago about his preference for unskilled and skilled construction labor:
"I'd rather hire a Spanish guy than an American guy. The Spanish guy shows up every day, works hard every day. The American guy may show up late or hung-over, from booze or drugs, or not show up at all. He may or may not work hard, complains, and I can't rely on him. I can rely on the Spanish guy."
Our landscaper mostly hires immigrants for the same reason.
Immigrants go where the work is, from Minnesota to Oregon to Georgia. They don't sit, like unemployed coal miners (the buggy whip industry of the 21st century) in their hollows complaining about how there are no jobs. They get up and go where they are. Americans did this in the Depression--my grandfather did it.
Edsall's article denies the magic of the melting pot, instead citing some imaginary American Culture that is White, Protestant, and European (mainly English).
But what makes us Americans is our agreeing to abide by the Great Contract, the Constitution. That's how George Will defined "Americans"!
6
@Dadof2
Or... illegal immigrants cross our border too frequently overstaying visas and will work for less money than US workers out of desperation. Seeing this, a US worker is angry his boss betrays him - a legal worker who is a fellow citizen - and decides working hard for the predator-boss is not such smart idea.
@AG
I'm talking fact, you're talking fiction, inventing a movie script, just like the President.
If we're at full employment, immigrants can't "steal" jobs. Find me Americans, especially Whites, who want to be migrant farm workers, picking fruits and vegetables by hand. You'll find more unicorns!
I'm so out of it. I thought the answer to your question, "What does Tucker Carlson know that the republican party doesn't?" was obviously that a president should not be looking daily at a TV personality and saying, "For god's sake, tell me what to think."
7
He's right that market capitalism is not a religion and you'd be a fool to worship it, but will he take that thought to its logical conclusion and advocate more regulation and oversight? Support of things like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?
2
I grew up in a rural community, and was lucky enough to escape. The people there were small minded, insular, and opposed to the other. If they are falling behind, that failure is theirs and theirs alone.
And so they cling to their guns, their religion, and their national identity and culture as a way to offset the fact that they are economic losers. And they wind up wrapping themselves in the same false security they hid behind when they were in high school, which was for many of them their peak - when they were popular, and athletic. When they landed that job at the plant or enlisted in the military or got married at a shockingly young age and everyone was so happy for them.
Now, fast forward 30 years and my kind are the winners and they are the losers. It’s uncomfortable and awkward. And I notice this whenever I have to interact with blue collar, primarily white skilled labor; behind every plumber and auto mechanic is this maddening sense of condescension and false superiority, because they finally know something that I don’t and now they’re in a position to look down on me. I also get this from police, nurses, and builders.
But I don’t get this from immigrant landscapers, childcare, Uber drivers, and cleaners. These people aren’t entitled, they are appreciative! They are free of resentment, and they escaped much harsher conditions to get here than the white lower classes that I described above.
So of course I am going to support them over the deplorables!
3
I have direct experience of how corporate America is crushing the middle class. When I hired on at Braniff Airways as a aircraft mechanic in 1978 I was making $18/hour with outstanding benefits including my birthday being a paid holiday. A crazy CEO killed Braniff.
I'm retired from AA now but my can't wait to retire friends are making $50/hour, hardly keeping up with inflation, their pensions are gone and the majority of mechanics that worked there in the overhaul department don't exist as all the heavy maintenance has gone overseas to the lowest bidder. Yes that airplane at any US airline had it's most intensive check done by unlicensed mechanics (understanding English is a requirement for a A&P certificate) by the absolute lowest bidder with no FAA oversight.
Happy flying.
My friend, a video editor at HBO is constantly harassed to retire because what was a job that required a apprenticeship with advanced training can be done by a kid with a laptop. The new hires are paid much less but at least his union protects him.
There may be more jobs, but there are more people and those jobs pay much less than the used to.
6
“Stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male unemployment. A terrifying drug epidemic.” How, Carlson asked, “did this happen?” This could certainly have been said for decades about minorities, especially those in the inner cities. The responses were pretty much always the same: blame it on their culture/decisions, ramp up the drug war and lock up the drug offenders for as long as possible, reform welfare requirements to make having babies out of wedlock less attractive, make it more difficult to be on the dole and more attractive to get a job, etc. Where was the humanitarian concern from conservative thinkers then?
18
What, then, to make of Tucker Carlson, indeed?
Carlson, the Frank Sinatra Jr. of Fox's talking heads, has always been a shallow, flame-throwing opportunist.
Engaged in a war for viewers, Carlson's words have no more meaning to him than their effect on his ratings. That anyone takes him seriously is yet another indictment of our current political state of affairs.
13
I dismissed his rant because it came from him. His good points should be considered. His prescriptions should not. The left is negligent in that we've allowed the right to outmaneuver us. Globalism is inevitable, water will find its level*. Standard leftist prescriptions would have treated the resulting malady but the left was out of power for much of the time that capitalism was spreading to the third world. That's on us.
* No Mr. Trump, you can't lower the level around others while keeping it up around yourself.
3
There lies the problem. Both parties have been in bed with big biz, banks, and the 1%'s. The USSC opened the flood gates allowing Corporations to be people; money poured into both parties coffers . And they went hungrily seeking more and more!
I for one, an upper-middle class retired white male has been disappointed, disillusioned with both parties since the 80's. The 'elite' in both parties only have their own agenda and wealth in the forefront.
This is a big part of the reason we are here today; I see this 'base' as part of a mob! SAD!
9
I would like to offer Mr. Carlson a "time machine" ride back to the era of Eisenhower. Nominal tax rates were 90%. Public subsidized housing and rent control flourished in big cities. The class warfare was waged by the rich and their Republican shills. Big corporate special interests were showered with big breaks, effectively looting our Treasury. Finally, Reagan lit the fuse for a chorus of "you are on your own" culture. Do you not notice a pattern of Republican leadership here. Or should I start quoting Grover Norquist?
4
David French of the National Review perpetuates the myth that destiny is a choice that explains the downtrodden in America. He conveniently ignores the social Darwinism embodied in so many American laws and cultural affectations that kept the Irish, Italians, Jews and of course our black and brown fellow Americans from participating in our economy.
How long ago was it that blacks were not allowed to own real property -- some deeds from that era remain in effect. That deprivation, on top of many others, still has effects on the distribution of wealth here.
And note, if you read obituaries, the numbers of blacks and women who are dying who represent the first of their categories to graduate from medical and law schools, the first to earn Ph.D.s in the STEM subjects.
Of course a complete identification of why some categories of folks are not competitive, or can't easily make it would require volumes. But at your next dinner party, ask about the parents of your guests and their upbringing, their college degrees, their head starts in life that so many others still do not have.
7
So - educated immigrants (who would compete with educated Americans) are okay but uneducated immigrants are not? Americans are going into debt paying for college in order to get better jobs, but they should compete with people whose education was probably subsidized by their native country? As I’ve long suspected, the goal of “conservatives” is to have a small group rule over the rest of us serfs.
15
Once in awhile I find myself agreeing with Carlson, much to my surprise.
2
Unimpressed. This is just more Fox News smoke. What seems like a breakthrough for the common man is just deflection. What Carlson and Fox News won't do is address the real Republican obscenity, which is its failure to deal with climate change.
Our children and grandchildren will see at least 4 degrees Fahrenheit increase by the end of century. Can you imagine? And 4 degrees is now a best case scenario. The impacts on our environment are clearly apparent. Our president denies that any of this happening, and the Republicans don't care. This is the maximum problem Fox News wants to shift your attention from.
The Democrats are being criticized as a collection of special interests, but this is a shrill attack by the fossil fuel interests. Fox News, whether by design or otherwise, is serving this industry.
The Green New Deal is real. It recognizes that we're in a five alarm emergency and need to act. We have to shift from a fossil fuel economy. We also have to come to terms with fact that we won't be able to do it in time, but we have to try. Fox News and the Republicans don't want this to happen, because there's too much money to be made now from fossil fuels.
Carlson is testing out ways fool Fox News viewers into believing that this network isn't a slime bucket.
6
Carlson is absolutely right about capitalism. But his rejection of liberal ideas is just a way to pivot the focus onto his usual xenophobia. What ideas does he have for addressing the negative consequences of capitalism? If not regulation or a functioning welfare state, then what? All he’s doing is setting up an argument for intensifying an anti-immigrant ethos that inevitably turns its crosshairs on the usual domestic scapegoats. If he has no ideas except to insist Democrats can’t be trusted, then he’s just going to reignite the old racism. I agree with him on capitalism but I am not buying what he’s selling.
208
@Joshua Krause
Scapegoating is indeed what's being sold. So, beside grumbling about it, or wishing that Trump voters did not exist, what could be done about it? There must be a way to explain immigration to people in a way that takes the air out of the scapegoating arguments. E.g. the economic benefits we all get from immigrants, the taxes immigrants pay, the jobs they're doing, the low crime rates, the truly modest amount of immigration occurring, etc.
11
@Joshua Krause Carlson is advocating a state that looks after the community of people who belong by protecting them against outsiders. There's a name for that -- national socialism.
13
@Joshua Krause
File this whole kerfuffle under the heading:
"FoxNews: billionaires paying millionaires to tell voters to blame poor people and immigrants"
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
14
Two phrases stand out. When anyone says “both sides” you can be sure that speaker or writer is a Republican trying to bring Democrat behavior down to the Republican level. For many years Republican congress people have backed legislation harmful to lower income Americans. Who can dispute this? And who can deny that true Native Americans were left behind centuries ago? But Carlson does not refer to them.
3
These rants by media pundits mean absolutely nothing. If you want change to improve your station in life, vote. And vote for those who have proven they are willing to serve the people. They are far and few between, so we all need to do our homework when these candidates tell us how they're going to help us.
And sometimes the best candidate is the one that had a life struggle, whether a family sickness, job loss, etc. They know what it's like to suffer.
7
The idea that older people have reduced ability to deal with racial and cultural diversity is baloney. I happen to live in an urban neighborhood that is gentrifying with post-kids couples moving in from lily-white suburbans to live side-by-side with people from all over the world, including substantial population of Moslems from North and West Africa.
It's interesting to see the careful respect that people from many sides automatically display as we make our way through everyday life together . . . and, then, of course, there's the restaurants. Fantastic.
When I think of the vision promoted by Fox & Company of fearful white people huddling together, nursing their grudges, it just seems so sad to me.
10
It's not easy for me to hear people taking Mr. Carlson too seriously. That show encapsulates all the damage Rupert Murdoch set into motion when he decided to found a television station that is essentially propaganda.
Tucker Carlson, in my opinion, is a horrible TV host and interviewer. The arc of his interviews with someone not aligned with his views is as pathetic as it is predictable. There's not much verbal exchange going on. Over and over we see Tucker greet a guest with smiles and pleasantries followed shortly by interruptions, insults, misstatements of facts and usually Mr. Carlson laughing like a 12-year old when he can think of nothing more to distract from entertaining others' points of view.
On the biggest news nights, I continue to switch over to Fox News' 8:00 - 11:00 PM Terrible Trio in a voyeuristic attempt to witness this alternate universe being cultivated. I'm never impressed. I'm nearly always disgusted.
247
Let me be brief today: Tucker Carlson is a strong supporter of the Trump presidency.
What precisely has the Trump presidency done to meaningfully improve the lot of even the white working class?
Not much - if anything.
IMHO, you cannot see Carlson's rant as anything other than an attempt to bolster the dubious "populist" stance of the Trump rebellion. You must see it the context of the political moment.
This is all theater - smoke and mirrors, sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Yes, the GOP establishment is bereft of ideas - but the answer is not Trump.
The answer to the defensible complaints of the white working class - and not all their complaints are defensible, particularly those grounded in religious, ethnic, and racial animus - are Democratic populists like Elizabeth Warren.
The white working class needs to turn off FOX, Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and the daily raving faux Christianity ministers immediately - instead look long and hard in the proverbial mirror.
If they look hard enough, what they see can set them free.
14
Carlson's ranting about people not caring and just passing through - this president has the largest number of 'acting' agency members of any president in modern history, and Mitch McConnell held hundreds of judiciary seats open for years rather than ease the burden of the courts by allowing people who were not reactionary right wing toadies to sit on any court.
4
Donald Trump campaigned as, and won the rural white voters, as a populist. Of course it was a Con Job, a lie, as we tried to warn them. But, the people who voted for him are still suffering and looking for someone to notice and take action. Tucker Carlson has a monopoly on the ears of Trump voters, the ones who are still suffering.
Trump can't run again as a populist, his record has proven that is "fake news." So, that means the populist appeals are left exclusively to the Democrats. The Democrats who run on helping the middle class, all of the middle class, make some real financial progress will win both the traditional democrat vote and the populist votes that went to Trump.
Tucker Carlson and Donald J. Trump seem to be orchestrating the same play as the fascists of the 1930's. They are playing to the uneducated rural whites and giving them a false sense of hope. A good dose of xenophobia allows the disenfranchised to blame the immigrants for their woes. Never do they ever blame the top 1 percent that moved jobs to emerging markets to save on labor costs. It will be interesting to see if they can win the presidency twice with the same message when they did not deliver any of their promises from the first election.
14
Edsall is the most interesting columnist in the Times. Thank for another genuinely thought-provoking essay.
5
Regardless of the disconsonence of his message compared to his Fox News medium, I’m happy to hear it there. Too bad it will be quickly forgotten by his viewers.
1
Well sir--that was most interesting. Thank you.
I never thought I would find myself agreeing with (of all people) Mr. Tucker Carlson. Will wonders never cease?
But Mr. Lindsay--and by the way, a thousands thanks for introducing us to all these names! Most of them I never heard of. I don't follow political writings all that intently.
Mr. Lindsay--speaking of an "illiberal and populist" conservatism--"crudely appealing to various ethnic or religious sensibilities"--culminating (of course) in the election of a man like Mr. Donald J. Trump--
--my goodness, Mr. Lindsay! You have hit the nail on the head. As accurate a diagnosis of the last--what? twenty five or thirty years--as I've ever read.
Oh that "left" and "right" would come together! I still call myself "a moderate Republican." There must be other "moderate Republicans" out there somewhere. Where are they?
Amazing though! how ALL these conservative--or neoconservative--or alt-conservative--or whatever! writers have come together. To declare (as with one voice)--there is TROUBLE in the land. There is profound selfishness at the top--the top including both political leaders and the honchos of big business.
And--in defiance of Ms. Ayn Rand (the secret idol in so many conservative temples)--these writers all declare:
PEOPLE MATTER.
That's what hit me most. People matter.
How can you possibly have a healthy thriving America--
--without healthy thriving Americans?
You tell me.
117
@Susan Fitzwater People will matter a lot more when there's a lot fewer of them. Nonchalance about global climate change, the potential for pandemics, loss of aquifers, strong storms, drought, famine; it's coming and it won't be pretty.
19
@Susan Fitzwater
In response to your question "There must be other "moderate Republicans" out there somewhere. Where are they? "
I also used to be a "moderate Republican". The takeover of the Republican party by right wing extremists back in the 70's and 80's drove me away.
Perhaps you forgot the "Litmus Tests" and RINO?
If any moderate Republicans still exist, surely they vote Democratic in protest to the extremism of their prior party.
15
@Susan Fitzwater "There must be other "moderate Republicans" out there somewhere."
We have a governor here in Massachusetts. He's probably not the only one. Probably.
1
Corporate America has spent millions warning people against the evils of socialism and 'big brother government'. Their goal is for the citizens to remove the shackles of the above mentioned suppressors of human dignity and initiatives.
Accept, instead, the caring, benevolent dictates of corporate rule. They, and only they, know what is good for you.
133
@FJG
There’s an old saying that if a leader is not appointed in a group, one will emerge.
Business does not want appointed leaders so they can emerge and do things their way. No regulations impeding how they treat employees, dispose of waste products, relating to product safety, etc.
11
@FJG
I'm hoping you're being sarcastic here. If so, I agree totally.
Corporations are on the path to destroying all government regulations (hence liberating their bad behavior even more) and are using the American citizen as pawn to do their bidding.
The shackles of corporations are the true tyranny here; they are "Big Brother." The government is the only tool that a citizen has against rampant injustice, economic & political.
13
Tucker Carlson no doubt is doing quite well financially and will continue to do so as long as he keeps his ratings up. In the end, isn't that all he really cares about ?
5
Condemning the ruling class and then directing all the anger at immigrants, the poor, and minorities is an old political tool. Carlson argues our problems are caused by the most powerless and poorest among us. The richest and most powerful are simply criticized for letting it happen, not designing and ruling the system. Carlson's solution to inequality and powerlessness is to let poor whites become farm workers, maids, and hotel service workers. He wants people to fight over welfare crumbs rather than reestablishing a healthy social safety net. Blaming the rich while attacking the poor and minorities is how fascism came to power.
400
@Jerry Harris
I have no idea what the Fox News and right wingers are ranting about concerning immigrants taking all the jobs. Most Americans these days don’t want farm, maid, hotel service jobs. And where I live in NEPA, there are signs all over by employers looking for workers.
21
@JKile
Of course Americans "don't want" those jobs. They pay very poorly, the working conditions are lousy and often hazardous, and many Americans' health and physical fitness is sufficiently terrible that they can't do the work anyway. Meanwhile the stateless immigrants, without recourse to unions, representative government, or affordable health care, and often not speaking the language of their overlords, are a readily exploitable underclass.
It all plays beautifully into the hands of the corporate employers who now run so much of our agriculture, hotels, chain restaurants, and construction industries. Divide and conquer.
56
@Jerry Harris
Poor and unskilled Americans of every color should become farm workers, maids, and hotel service workers, and they need to be compensated with a wage based on the true value of their work. The solution is neither to import an exploitable working caste nor to have the government subsidize artificially depressed wages by redistributing the stolen wealth of the middle class to protect the profits of the wealthy. The best social safety net is a job, and welfare can only provide "crumbles" as the connected protect their wealth and the rapidly shrinking middle can only be soaked for so long.
8
The comments and views presented in this column are all over the block. Clarity is missing because there's no debate or attempt to reconcile opposing views, either in the column or the world from which it is drawn.
Tucker Carlson knows the same thing Trump knows, and that is lies to Republican voters cost nothing. Faux populism.
5
Did he condemn the tax cut for the rich? No. If he wants to go back to 1950, top tax rate was in 90 per cent, unions had a big share of the labor force and Europe, Russia, Japan and China were economic light weighs. Carlson is nothing but a shill, speaking soon truth while giving a false answer.
8
Tucker Carlson captures a narrative that resonates across party lines and across America. He actually discusses topics with those who don't agree with him. His supposed adversaries appear with him because he has his opinion and they have theirs which he encourages people to speak their mind. It's not one sided.
You and other NYT reporters and Opinion writers should take a page from his book and actually try to explore what others are saying rather than the totally in-step one sided reporting and opinions in the nations most important newspaper. You don't have to agree with your opponents but at least have a discussion.
Tucker's conversations ring true because its well thought out. Give it a try.
@Matt You are responding to an article in the New York Times regarding FoxNews. I would say that this article is a good example of NYT having the courage to investigate viewpoints that don't necessarily mirror the opinions of its op-ed board.
1
While it is surprising, and even wonderful, to hear Carlson make these critical points--as opposed to the market fetishism that typically grips the Republican and conservative ranks--I am sad he feels the need to insult substitute teachers. Many of the former use that experience on their way to becoming actual teachers while many others are retired former teachers who've put in years and decades of service. In my mind, they make incredibly useful contributions to society and civilization (keeping the younger generation educated with the full-time teacher absent) compared to the leeching habits of day traders (and hedge fund managers). It's a shame he thought to lump them together.
Tucker Carlson is a Fox News bomb-thrower -- and a full-fledged member of the disinterested elite class he blames for getting us to this state of political partisanship and economic inequality. His anti-immigration rants are nothing more than a means of cementing his star in the Fox universe -- and bringing home his millions while the minions of the world suffer.
10
I have no idea where liberals are getting this “racial subtext” when it comes to immigration. It has nothing to do with race. It has to do with putting America and Americans first. If our government doesn’t want to do that, then it is time for it to be replaced.
1
@Greg because the entire focus has been on the Southern border and immigrants from Muslim countries, ie, exclusively on brown people.
Every so often, the NYTs and its editorial staff show a flicker of understanding that the times have changed. This article by Mr. Edsal is one of those flickers.
As the Firesign Theater declared decades ago....."Everything You Know is Wrong." That was wrong in the 1970s.....but now ... so true. so true.
the dividing lines in the Debate no longer make sense. Liberal vs Conservative has no real meaning in the 21st Century. Definitions that served to drive the Politics/Economics/Religion of the New Deal Era now seem ridiculously out of touch with Reality.
So called Republicans are now revealed to be little more than foils, enablers if you will, for the Democrats. While so-called Democrats are revealed to be little more than Ward Heels for the DNC Political Machine that protects and perpetuates an un-changing Status Quo, hypnotizing the easily controlled masses with messages like "Change you can Believe In".
Capitalism and Communism are corollaries of each other. Both require an 18th Century definition of labor and capital....completely out of touch with the 21st Century World of electronic data for sale and instantaneous round-the-globe communications.
Bravo Trump....for destroying the Republican Pillar that holds up the Status Quo....soon the DNC Pillar will falter, unable to prop things up unilaterally, and the house collapses, hopefully crushing Nancy Pelosi. The Democrats will regain their party...finally .... and a new opposition will organize under a new name.
The United States of America does have a cultural identity of sorts, which Wilkinson comes closest to getting right--it's identity is money-making.
Our original settlers were to a great degree Calvinist, adhering to the idea that they would be recognized as members of the God-granted Elect by their ability to accumulate wealth and possessions. And through our history, even to a great degree today, out attractiveness as a destination for immigrants has been about freedom from oppression, but more about entrepreneurial freedom; immigrants recognize here is their best opportunity to succeed financially.
There have always been enclaves of ethnocultrual identity, of course, but these have tended to be subsumed over time by the overarching capitalism of this society; immigrants assimilate by making money and using it to buy into American institutions (like college and the chamber of commerce).
The disquiet now among the white, non-college working class is actually an extension of the disquiet among other members of the working class who were often excluded from the capitalist identity due to restrictive work and real estate practices. The latter never were able to fully partake of it, and now those who once WERE able to cannot, for a host of reasons (automation, globalization, dissipation of unions).
The tension is that for all to make money, there needs to be recognition that a small minority shouldn't be allowed to make most of it.
17
De Tocqueville got it right,"As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?"
7
It's amazing how this article and the many authors that are quoted never mention the term " neoliberalism". But neoliberalism is precisely the economic and political path that both Republicans and Democrats have followed for the last 35 years.
There adifferences between the parties on social issues such as gay rights, abortion and civil rights. But on basic matters of political economy there has been little to distinguish them.
Clinton deregulated the banks and financial system. Reagan declared government the problem but then used it to manipulate the market to favor big business. And of course Obama, very liberal on social issues made saving Wall Street and creating a market based health care system the cornerstone of his administration.
Carlson rightly worries that the global capitalist order is in trouble. But he won't say so, just as he wont say that the neoliberal solution to its previous crisis has run its course because neither he or his fellow conservatives have a viable alternative.
His conservative critics argue we need more of the same failed policies. The liberal critics avoid the real crisis of capitalism and instead call Carlson out for his racism, thinly veiled as nativism.
What both Democratic and Republican critics fear is that this generation is living the crisis and knows that the old guard of both party's have no answers.
That's why the term Democratic Socialist, which once was discarded out of hand has now sparked serious interest among the young.
13
The fallacy of capitalism, absolute capitalism, as a pure and noble goal....implying it as a moral choice, is seen by our unquestioning worship of one stat: the GDP. Taken as the one overriding standard: if I pay someone to raise my children, I contribute to the GDP, but if I raise my own family I am invisible to this statistic. Yet, society benefits greatly, in fact cannot function from all the invisible family, charitable, and care taking work that allows paid workers to function.
In the US this invisible work has been devalued and not taken into account.....adding greatly to the stress most Americans live under.
13
Could the NYT editors please start a year long conversation / discussion on this topic in a fashion similar to the last several years conversation / discussion on race? There are a lot of social / economic overlaps of the two conversations which, if explored logically and as dispassionately as possible, will yield better insights across our socio/economic/ethnic/tribal segments.
The benefit of a shared national culture that strengthens people's belief in their quality of life, supports the opportunity for their family and confidence in their system of self-governance is too fundamental to be left to politicians and talking heads in 30 second sound bytes.
Kudos to Mr Edsall for starting the conversation on these pages.
10
The anti globalist jingoist populist right wing theme runs throughout this entire article. Thinking we can wall off our economy , culture and politics off from the world is folly. That anti globalist movement by conservatives and liberals in both wings of their parties only ensures a more rapid economic growth by China and other developing countries . Quality and economic skilled labor is at the core of economic growth. The developing world now has access to the same education and skill training as the United States. A developing country's workforce with its lower living standards is literally hungrier for work to support themselves and their families and their work performance reflects that motivation. The world's labor force economics is seeking to reach a more of an equilibrium for wages and living / working conditions . Placing artificial barriers to that economic reality with tariffs and trade barriers only makes the USA less efficient and ensures the long term trend of less US economically competitive blue collar labor efficiency and reduced long term US growth and prosperity .
1
Fabulous article and congratulations to Tucker Carlson for saying out loud what has been obvious for decades-that Republicans radical free market ideology has trampled upon the fabric of American families for too long. Too bad he then predictably tries to take our collective eyes off the ball and scapegoats immigrants as opposed to the conservative elite who march in unison to the Randian beat of sublime self interest. It’s a start!
17
I watched Carlson's monologue after reading Massing's article in the Guardian and was really impressed by it. He says things I don't agree with (women won't marry men who earn less than they do as a "fact", for e.g.) and I wondered if he had thought through what policies would be needed to implement the changes he was calling for (higher taxes, government regulation and unions seem to me to be the most logical ones - things I assume he is against).
Still - I saw it as incredible progress and a great sign that change is possible. It was decidedly non-partisan and shows that there IS a way for disaffected Democrats and disaffected Trump supporters to find common ground. If we can agree on what the problem is (income polarization, lost opportunity for meaningful work and upward mobility), then we can debate what the best solutions are.
The clue that Carlson is tapping into something genuine is how upset it is making people - especially the people who stand to lose from working and middle-class bi-partisan unity against a broken system. Who cares if he himself has benefitted from that system? That's just an ad hominem attack that distracts from the message which is more important than the messenger.
8
@Carrie
I think Carlson is trying to sound populist because Trump, Fox's cash cow, is losing some of his base, and definitely some independents who voted for him. The Republicans are desperately looking for a message that will hold onto them, and distract from the daily outing of the massive corruption of the Trump administration.
The middle way is usually the best way. You need both capitalism and socialism to maintain a healthy society. Once this is acknowledged, politics can be a non-zero sum game over where to draw the line.
17
Cass's quote and also proposed by Mr Trump: "This new approach would require first and foremost that criteria for allowing entrance into the country emphasize education level — attainment of a college degree, in particular."
This is a red flag for Americans in the middle class and upper middle classes. These future immigrants will work on the cheap further depressing American salaries but making $$$ for the stock holders. While business bemoans the lack of skilled workers on one hand they fire or make redundant our workers over 55.
24
"Older people who have largely lost the capacity to easily assimilate to a new culture can feel that the rug has been pulled out from under them."
You might put it that way. Or you could acknowledge that the Supreme Court removed issues from democratic control so people could not vote against the changes. It happened in 1973, not 1968.
2
@Charlesbalp
The problem is there is no longer even a rug. People of all ages are aware of the new rules of engagement in the economy and the workplace.
1
@marielle
" People of all ages are aware of the new rules of engagement in the economy and the workplace."
Yeah. Kowtow or be fired. I once work for a company whose CEO drove it into bankruptcy, but nobody dared mention what was going on.
I really enjoyed this commentary, but wish the author had raised the subject of income inequality. It is a crisis that needs to be addressed in the short term by meaningful income redistribution and in the long run by investing in infrastructure spending, education and an immigration policy that invites both skilled and unskilled workers to become members of this society.
20
@Joel Williams
Oh c'on Joel, you must know that there is already a large "meaningful income redistribution", one the trickles from the bottom up.
1
The idea of America as an idea has deep roots in the national psyche. For centuries the dominant culture was white and Protestant Christian. This succeeded, of course, because people of color didn’t have a seat at the table and were invisible. (For that matter, the same can be said for women of any color.)
One thread I see running through the history of the US and our mother country, Great Britain, is the history of imperialism/colonialism. As was pointed out, labor was conscripted or encouraged from the desperate and unfortunate, from the earliest days of Empire, into the Industrial Revolution, including as the source of free labor for the American South’s economic engine.
Like the poor who were traditionally the canon fodder for the wars of princes across the world, the poor were cogs in the economic wheel. From indentured servants to slaves to the Chinese laborers of the 1800s, the history of America, it seems to me, has always sought such cheap labor, yet denied the humanity of the people themselves.
I found Carlson’s call for the Republican Party to right the ship, after running it onto the shoals, is rich.
47
@Sandi It appears that your mind stopped growing about 1968. Your comment is completely contained within the revolutionary rhetoric of that era.....50 years ago. You fail to "count your blessings" and how much opportunity you take for granted in 2018/2019. And, if you're honest with yourself......those blessings and opportunities are indeed precisely because this nation is exactly protestant and anglo and white (which btw..is NOT a color, but in reality the Combo of all colors). Of all the societies on planet earth, it is the Anglos who have proven to be most successful in respecting INDIVIDUAL rights and PRIVATE property thru good ole "rule of law".............and please consider which former colonies are now the better places to live...its the British colonies....its aint the spanish ones or the french ones......ask anyone how that Russian domination worked out during the Cold War...or the Chinese 500 years ago or Japanese in WW2.
1
@Sandi
You analysis is spot on. Bravo.
You've uncovered the underbelly of the American economy from its founding to present day.
But most Americans believe the "exceptional" myth.
Thank you Mr. Edsall; the article was fascinating. I was undoubtedly impressed by some of Tucker Carlson's thoughts.
Our politicians are ",,,substitute teachers...they're just passing through....they can't solve our problems...they don't even bother to understand...."
How prescient his comments were.....as a Country we're clearly failing a large number of Americans.
It's not only "..rural white America..", but it's also the minorities and low income citizens in our inner cities.
- there are 49.3 million Americans living in poverty (15.2% of our population) of which 18.5 million live in deep poverty.
We all know the situation's not getting better - income inequality is getting worse.
What is Congress doing - what is the agenda of our politicians - is it to continue the infighting we've been seeing - to stall or water down legislation in order to find partisanship.
It's appears to be a game of sorts - a pathetic example of how to legislate effectively.
Our leaders have laden our Country with debt - we have $21 trillion with a $965 billion dollar deficit this year, and trillions more of over budget years to come - in 2019, taxpayers will pay approximately $340 billion in interest on that debt - talk about stifling growth and not caring about the future......
I don't listen to Mr. Carlson that often, but I can't ignore the points he's made above as it applies to all Americans.
I wish I knew the answer - sometimes I feel it's too late.
12
The United States has the single greatest healthcare rip-off in the world, a 17% of GDP economic crime against humanity that skims and extorts an excess $1 trillion of blood money annually each and every year from Americans.
This completely immoral and amoral system is a Christmas gift from America's radical, Randian, Republican right-wing cult of psychopathic greed that props itself up on the medieval racist fear, loathing, and religion of its heavily duped, propagandized and lobotomized masses.
Remember, the radical Republican Party still to this day wants to replace the ACA with nothing except tax cuts for rich people.
Can't every American see that their eternal 'take two tax cuts and call me from the morgue' drop-dead policy deserves observation in a psychiatric hospital, not public policy implementation ?
Modern Republicanism is a solutionless cult of greed, fear, stupidity, voter suppression, tyranny of the minority that deserves a swift burial before America's collectible IQ falls further below room temperature.
The 'free-market' is a sociopath, just like its psychopathic twin greed.
Tucker Carlson and the Republican cult have no solutions because they refuse to recognize society as a whole.
Taxes are the price of civilization and the right can't stand taxes or civilization.
Vote them all out in 2020 and replace them with progressives who will raise taxes, pave the roads, pay for healthcare and restore voting rights and democracy from the rotten radical right.
526
@Socrates
Absolutely correct. Healthcare is a right.
Good education hasn't been mentioned here or in the State of the Union. Curiously absent from both.
Plant a great public education system, including charters (no religious schools though), smaller classrooms, feed the kids breakfast and lunch and give healthcare as needed in the schools, after school care and enrichment, pay teachers a great, not good wage, especially in poverty areas, water for 50 years and watch the American Society blossom into multicultural, inclusive, physically and mentally healthy and informed population, ready to continue our heritage and # 1 place in the future global world.
59
@Socrates
Indeed, the US spending 17% per GDP with the worst health results of all advanced nations, is a crime against the American people.
By comparison:
France spends 9.3% per GDP for pubic healthcare.
Germany spends 10.3% per GDP on healthcare, divided by
7.3% spent in the public sector, while 3% are spent in the private sector.
(Germans with high income can chose to either have an extra private insurance - e.g. to pay for private rooms in hospitals, and/or can opt out of public insurance altogether)
37
@Socrates. The correction of voting and voting rights will not be achieved in our lifetimes with a Supreme Court and a Federal “Justice” system replete with Right wing support-your-local-autocrat Judges.
37
The obvious thing is, these conservative critics are lambasting the actual Republican Party, but a Democratic Party that is a figment of their bubble-grown imaginations. The Democratic Party has consistently supported their vision, adding in only that we should want all these benefits and virtues for people who do not happen to be straight Christian white males, too. And under the Constitution (while we still have it), the only way to provide these benefits and virtues for straight Christian white males is to provide them for everyone else, too. And that's where the current Republican base draws the line. They'd rather we all sink together than all rise together.
79
Anything Carlson does is just whatever he thinks will increase ratings or bring attention. Don't give it any more credence than that.
31
Scary to contemplate agreeing with any portion of what Carlson spews, but when he talks about the political leaders losing touch, he is stating empiric fact:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/15/government-wealthy-study_n_5154879.html
Since even a broken clock is correct twice a day, Carlson's status still doesn't cross-over into the truth-teller column.
G. Washington was right that the House of Representatives should be larger, so that citizens are closer to their representatives:
https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/enlarging-the-house-of-representatives/
We have a very clear "Founders' Intent" example here, besides the fact that James Madison proposed an amendment on this very issue that almost became part of the Bill of Rights.
We need a House large enough that it can't be bought off by special interests :)
10
@R. Law
I like the clock analogy. Apropo at the least.
However, neither party says what to do about the men and women, many rural or laid off blue collar workers,
who won't be hired for anything but menial wages ever again, especially if they are over 45. They can't support their families any more, furthering depression, poverty and opiod abuse.
These American and fellow citizens deserve a basic wage supplement, (having paid taxes for years)
health care and job training for years, to help them find a new and productive place in American Society.
Democrats need to support Americans more than immigrants. And I am a fervent Democrat. Stop talking , DO SOMETHING NOW.
3
And what will happen when the Democratic Party nominates a candidate for President, and demands that she speak the language of white privilege and intersectionality?
The issue of race, which underlies the issue of immigration, will be in full, ugly view in 2020. Democrats might be better served, strategically, by approving the wall - then they can fight on the battlefield of economic policy, instead of having to counter Trump's resonant immigration argument with the divisive rhetoric of identity politics.
15
@Patrick,
The Dems could, perhaps, trade wall funding for an equal or greater amount of other infrastructure funding, then, just in time for the 2020 election, brag about putting America back to work.
The process of working out this deal, with Trump and his people arguing about every penny spent on bridges and highways, would allow the Dems an easy way to drive home the point that Trump is not a friend of the working class.
1
It is curious to read the extracts from conservative writers. They seem intent to shift blame from market forces to Democrats. I am particularly amused to see a comment about labor unions and environmentalism as if the market ever treated labor well, or the cared about the environment at all.
Labor was commoditized in the industrial era. Unions fought back but are now defeated, and without regulations, or without effective regulations we get lagoons of hog manure and toxic sludge at coal mines leaking into drinking water.
What does Tucker actually know? Not much.
198
@Terry McKenna
Those who expect television stars to know more than others and to have greater insight into national problems and solutions end up with television stars running the country into the ground.
8
@Terry McKenna
Tucker is nothing but a frat boy actor looking to increase his ratings. This country is in this mess because of white conservatives and talking heads.
9
The idea of a market (invisible hand) based solution to everything is, of course, a utopian hope, not a description of anything that has been or is. Utopian hopes serve a purpose of questioning naive acceptance of what is, and a map, albeit vague, of where to go.
The same can be said for various forms of socialisms.
In all these cases a practical problem is how to get to that ideal from here. How to change the bad without affecting the good. How to be fair as the changes take place.
And that brings us back to politics, and the academic studies that try to supply us with information, understanding, and even wisdom.
If only we could discuss this all without the lies, distortions, misdirections, and rhetorical flourishes that confuse rather than inform!
13
@JustThinkin
The Government can use market forces to achieve political goals.
If we want American workers to earn higher incomes and get better benefits from their employers, we-the-people, the government, could double the wages of every worker we employ and give them free healthcare, the same healthcare congress gets.
For that one small change, every employer in America would be forced to raise wages and increase benefits or they will lose all their workers to the employer of choice.
Market forces could be used to improve our healthcare system as well. If every person had the option to choose Medicare then private insurance companies would have to match their quality and cost or lose their customers.
Let's introduce a little competition in the market place and see if it is true, as conservatives claim, that government just can't compete with for-profit organizations.
10
@JustThinkin Capitalism.....a concept thought up in the early 19th century to explain Industrial Development.
Communism.....another archaic concept thought up in the later 19th century to explain Labor Organization inside of a Capitalist Industrial Society.
So here we are in the 21st Century.....some 200 years later......debating which obsolete economic model is best suited to not move society into a future that is based on James Watts 200 year old Steam Engine that drives Micheal Faraday's 100 year old Steam Turbine to produce electricity. Still waiting on that BucK Rogers steam powered Rocket to carry us to the Moon and Back.
1
@Ronny
Seattle was one of the leading cities in the rush to raise worker wages to $15/hour. It did, people flooded to the city and rents went sky high. This morning it is 10 degrees in Seattle and hundreds of people are living under tarps on the streets.
Higher wages are not the answer. Lower prices are. Think about how to make that happen.
1
It is amazing how the years of work of Ruppert Murdock, the Kochs and Mercers resulted in the election of a grifting con artist and possibly the destruction of the American democracy.
There is a tribal element to human behavior that is fanned by those who accrue profit and power through division. They know that minority rule demands division of the majority.
To understand why the stage was set for a demagogue like Trump to take advantage of the power of fear and hate, just answer the question: What would the highest individual and corporate tax rate be if religious, race, guns, and social issue conflict were not dividing America?
46
We do need a national identity, or we will never overcome the zero-sum politics of sub-national identities - race, class, religion. Appeal to a foundational civic ideology would give us a way to argue to each other again, instead of only to our own respective bases. We are in sore need of re-unifying philosophical leadership, and a regeneration of ideals that are at once traditional (conservative) and aspirational (progressive). But we lack any mechanism, any office, for such a unifying leadership: religion and science are politicized, philosophy is scorned, the media is partisan and polyvocal. That we have to hope for unifying leadership from party politicians and cable news anchors is a measure of our cultural failure. We need a foundational renewal of fellow-feeling and ideas to transcend partisanship, but I have no idea who could possibly be trusted by both sides enough to provide it.
It's a long dark road and I don't see any light at the end. The one candle I'm clinging to is the beginning of election reforms, including ranked choice voting, which might enable more parties and ideas to flourish, promote coalition building, and reduce the tendancy toward two-party negative polarization (opponent hate).
14
@Patrick R
One thing progressives can do to reinvigorate a shared national identity is stop the unrelenting and unbalanced demonizing of the founding of our country/democracy through presentism identity politics. For all its racist, sexist, and elitist flaws, the US constitution's written guarantee of individual rights, shared power and checks and balances was a watershed achievement. It will be easier to get badly needed reforms to it and our democratic process if liberals can cast them as improvements to a historically significant document, and not as a reprove our past.
4
@Patrick R
We don't lack a national identity! We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights...
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- equal rights for everyone -- that is our national identity. Not long ago that identity was largely shared across political parties. And with the civil rights movement we moved towards a more perfect union by making racism the ultimate social taboo. I don't mean to say that racism was absent, but it was so toxic that even racists pretended not to be racist.
Trump, however, has broken those taboos and brought into question once again what American identity is. Are we a nation of ideals, that apply equally to everyone? Or are we a nation of white people, for white people (governed by white people, built by people under their thumbs)?
It is awful to find that question again under dispute. But fortunately, our founding ideals are still there, in the Constitution, for anyone to read at any time.
1
@MadWizard I agree - identity politics and wholesale rejection of the past as evil doom us to factionalism. Fixing the second of those seems a lot easier than fixing the first. The complaint that outcomes for a class of people are systematically worse than for others seems legitimate to me. But if voicing that is condemned as divisive identity politics, with a "you're not owed any particular outcome" chaser, I don't see how to get traction except to try to make the moral case that yes, actually we -do- owe it to each other to make sure we're not creating a system that perpetuates oppression of and bad outcomes for various classes of people. And I don't see anyone even trying to make that case publically - the left skips straight to "free stuff!" and the right rejects both of the required assumptions (systemic causes of injustice, and therefore, my responsibility for my neighbor's possible outcomes). We seem to have lost any forum where we could engage each other at this level.
1
Middle and working class Americans have suffered job and prestige loss for one simple reason: the re-set of business rules started by St. Ronnie.
The new vulture capitalism rewards senior executives with before unheard of payouts, far beyond their worth, for the increased productivity of their workers. Corporations adhere to the new rules of rewarding stockholders above all others, resulting in a race for ever-rising stock price and dividends. Sacrificing other constituencies: customers, community, suppliers, and employees- is encouraged. A major component of these new rules is cost-cutting, most easily provided by layoffs and sending jobs overseas where labor is dirt cheap, underpaying the employees you keep. One can also cut costs by operating on the edge or over safety and environmental regulations.
Wall Street monitors all this by looking at profits and ties them to stock price. Corporate executives are punished if stock price falls, so they do the obvious: short term fixes and elimination of long term strategy like research and new product development.
A simple fix,unlikely to happen, is to lower profit and stock price expectations, executive compensation based on profits, and increase worker pay, ignoring off-shoring jobs.
Today this seems like a fantasy, but that’s the way it was, admittedly four decades ago. Greed is so ingrained today that there’s a mindset, enhanced by government tax policies, that a change would be heavily resisted by those in charge.
48
Yeah sure, Globalism had nothing to do with it. Cheap labor and no regulations in overseas manufacturing had nothing to do with it. Dream on.
3
@Grey
In a world where corporate profits can be somewhat less, by a recalibration of what's acceptable, companies wouldn't have sent those jobs overseas to cheap labor. Innovative corporations find other ways to cut costs rather than firing people: new products, process controls to reduce waste and energy, innovative marketing, etc. I worked in corporate America for 30+ years and there were executives just like you who took the easy way out and fired people. The US could have participated in the global economy without just rolling over to cheap labor with all its inhumane and environmentally damaging practices. But that's not the new American Way, even now exacerbated by Trumpism.
5
@Grey
You've accurately described the legalized "grand theft" that's been going on for the last forty years.
1
The American economy is dominated by large corporations who deliver first rate goods and services for a profit. Skilled executive leadership and effective workers are a means to this end. Lower skilled jobs that can be reliably outsourced offshore at a lower cost—-are outsourced. A focus on higher education, healthcare for all and a society that more fervently embraces traditional family values where people who get married remain married and raise their children with love and devotion would help address many of our class problems—-along with required national service and reinstatement of the military draft. America’s social contractural balance can be improved since the very rich have overly benefited in the current era while the uneducated working poor as well as many in the lower and mid level middle class have struggled in part due to corporate leaders and business owners who overly emphasize profits at the expense of their workforce. The better educated and healthier the American people are the fewer who will be marginalized by a system that rewards hard work, innovation and self reliance. Our democracy thrives when more of us live happy, healthy, productive and fulfilling lives. We don’t all need to be rich but we do all need to be able to live good lives. Our government can take actions to pass more legislation that promotes an increasingly better America for all our citizens but ultimately it is up to each individual.
8
Tucker Carlson might talk some sense every now and again, but he sets up a false dichotomy by arguing that unskilled immigrants are to blame for the fallen fortunes of poorer and rural white Americans. It is an old and tiresome trap, refuted by study after study showing that broad immigration has been a net positive for America, both socially and economically.
But facts are powerless in the face of racial and cultural identity politics, it seems. Carlson's rhetoric fans the flames of division by suggesting that the United States as a nation and a government is incapable of addressing the needs of both long-time citizens and newcomer immigrants. This is far from the case, but achieving better life outcomes for everyone will necessarily entail bringing current levels of wealth inequality down, and THAT is the real "apostasy" in conservative circles, Carlson very much included.
89
When was the last time you saw 10 white guys on a non union construction site. All those rehabs going on in Cambridge surely you have windows in your ubers.
2
Mr Edsall continues the presence that "both sides are to blame." They're not.
While the Republicans pass massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, Democrats passed a tax increase in order to fund health care for lower-income Americans, an increase that resulted in 20 million more Americans receiving health insurance.
While Republicans refuse to increase the federal minimum wage, and oppose increases at the state level, Democratic state legislatures are increasing the minimum wage, while pushing for it at the federal level.
While Republicans destroy the right of workers to unionize in every state they control, Democrats fight for the right to join unions.
The big scandal is the continued attempts to portray both sides as equally to blame. Nothing could be further from the truth.
177
@Sean:
Bill Clinton gave us Globalization and "Welfare Reform". The voters remember that even if you don't.
20
@Carl Hultberg
The voters had better remember that Democrats Franklin D. Roosevelt gave us Social Security and Lyndon Johnson gave us Medicare, while the Republicans gave us trickle-down Reaganomics
and the Citizens' United "corporations are people" election-heisting disaster.
12
@Carl Hultberg - Sir, if you were alive during this Clinton "period' you should now see what was inevitable.
1
Competing notions of American national identity are coming to dominate American politics?
It's obvious to me that by science, technology and the humanities at their best the U.S. is at least on the brink of making what in certain fields is called a total systems analysis of itself, a troubleshooting sequence, and is approaching what is uncommon for a society: The capacity to rapidly and intelligently design and redesign itself.
But apparently the U.S. is also a deeply flawed, degenerate, cowardly, unintelligent society because even though a transparent analysis over the whole of society (the capacity to rapidly and accurately assess native ability and educational potentiality of different individuals and to organize them into optimal teams or solo projects) is possible, we instead use all our scientific, technological, humanistic advances to prevent this analysis, to instead operate in a negative and mirror image of the potential positives by breaking into quite primitive and often harmful tribal groupings and surveilling and controlling others while propping up our own image creating a grotesque masquerade next to gaslight society in which the object is to defeat the other's purpose.
We can see this battle between the potential positive course and the negative by people awkwardly and often inaccurately but often also with great truth going "off script" and then returning to the script itself, which is the managed, brand conversation, the usual game weaker by the day.
7
The GOP reaching down and addressing basic issues that affect its constituents salvation? That's like the pre-enlightened Ebenezer Scrooge giving Bob Cratchit a day off and a big fat goose. However, Trump's enablers really want more a level playing field, wages that support some vision of America, and/or entitlements, not a lesson on direction and morality.
If you were to design a meaningful life, I doubt you would start with "religious" leaders preaching a prosperity gospel and supporting a grifter in chief. If the truth will make you free, you need to accept that institutions that brought us to this day have been subverted and abetted by the very leadership Mr Carlson is a part of.
31
There is a delicious irony in a policy that would require immigrants to have college degrees. If implemented they would soon become the ruling class.
86
@UH
...or a college degree in order to allow you to work in the unskilled market pool!
@UH Well, that's why H1Bs are there, silly. To keep the highly educated poorly paid immigrants in their place.
1
History will be unkind to Mr. Trump except insofar as his election has forced the nation into a well-needed identity crisis.
The Great Divide amongst us must be bridged in order to create a new national identity that holds firmly to some shared principles. For two examples, although the two parties will have differing solutions, both must accept that climate change is real and a single-payer health system is a pipe dream. Republicans, rather than continued denial, must be part of the climate solution. They must accept that universal healthcare, not a single payer, is a human right. My Democratic friends must accept that they too are an integral part of the problem of the working class, who, they concurrently abandoned yet expected their vote. How could Mr. Trump appeal to a working class Democratic base if they were happy? When no one cooperates or compromises, nothing gets done. The people voted for Trump to shake things up. In that respect, it appears to be working.
8
So we are supposed to get rid of unskilled immigrant labor? Construction workers are highly skilled. Where did all the Mexican immigrants acquire those skills? Landscaping work is skilled labor. Tree trimming is highly skilled and very dangerous work. Why are these immigrants getting these jobs? Because employers can't find native born people to do the work. Ask them. It's not just about lower wages. There aren't enough white Americans who can and will do this work.
We used to have labor unions. They provided a pathway to acquiring job skills, from apprentice to journeyman. The unions and that labor infrastructure is gone, thanks to Republicans. This drove down wages to the point that white native born Americans refuse to do these difficult jobs.
The hospitality industry is mostly staffed by immigrant labor. Why? Why wont others do that work? Because it's hard work and it doesn't pay much. But the restaurant chains and hotels love their corporate profits.
The Republican market economy has left out a pathway from here to there. There is nothing people can plug into to acquire the skills to a brighter future. Oh, you can go to college and end up $50,000 in debt. You can go to some private corporate school like Trump University. Or you can throw up your hands in desperation and vote for Trump. Markets don't solve social problems. They just make a very few, very rich. A rising tide will drown you if you don't have a boat.
807
@Bruce Rozenblit
And many Americans are simply not good workers.
Son-in-law started a part time landscaping business with a friend. They worked in our yard. The friend, no longer a part of the business, was on his cellphone constantly.
22
@Bruce Rozenblit
" Construction workers are highly skilled. [...] Landscaping work is skilled labor."
I can't tell if this is comedy or not.
As this article addresses, a large proportion of unskilled laborers require our (citizen-funded) welfare safety net to subsidize their existence here, because they're working extremely low-income cash gigs that don't actually pay enough to live on. All while adding to the unskilled workforce which drives down those wages further.
The only upside of illegal immigration is for corporate profits and the limited trickle-down effects on stockholders. It has a large negative impact on unskilled/low-income citizens, for whom our safety net is wholly intended for.
12
@Bruce Rozenblit Don't forget Trump used to love hiring "illegals" to work at his luxury properties.
22
We have a national identity, bequeathed to us by great writers and speakers in our past:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
"that this nation, ... shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Have we always lived these ideals, this identity? Absolutely not. Can we do better? Yes, we can.
I will leave the last words to Abraham Lincoln:
"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right ... let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; ... to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."
21
@Leigh LoPresti
The words "With malice toward none; with charity for all;” really resonate today because we are seeing such hatred toward people of color, immigrants, and migrants who are desparate just to feed their children and keepmthem safe. That hatred has been deliberately stoked by hate radio hosts and media like Fox News, along with Internet sites that are vile. Until we embrace the sentiment behind those words we will continue to be a divided country that risks significant economic decline. The 1% already owns more wealth than the bottom 90%, and today’s tax policies ensure that the transfer of wealth to the 1% will continue. We have to ask what will happen to the economic viability of US families, especially the poor, if the 1% finally gain close to 100% of the country’s wealth.
8
The US has essentially zero unemployment; how can immigration, even illegal, be the root of so much evil? It’s not. It’s just another tool used by Fox News and Mr. Carlson to distract and divide. The reality is that there are simple solutions out there, mostly modeled in the highly functioning European models like Germany or any of the Nordic countries or Japan. Since most conservatives believe America in the 50s was idyllic, let’s give them the rules that made it possible: Strong unions, progressive taxation, a political system stripped of outside money.
457
Illegal immigration is not an issue?
Maybe for you
But tell that to the landscaper who keeps losing jobs to the illegal immigrant crew that can afford to work at cut rates because they don’t pay taxes
Tell that to the mother who’s child has 37 students in his class and 1/3 are the children of illegals
If all of the illegal immigrants were well funded politicians aiming to challenge incumbents we’d see a wall in no time
10
@Luciano This is a problem in London? Illegal immigrants in the United States are taking jobs from landscapers in London? Please explain how this works.
9
@Dave
You make a great point.
I am surprised that Democrats have not seized upon it.
Simply stated, we are essentially at full employment, NOTWITHSTANDING the alleged 'hordes' of 'foreigners' 'stealing' American jobs.
Who would fill the jobs 'foreigners' occupy if they all left tomorrow?
10
Carlson, like many on the right, accurately describes the problem.
However, when it comes to a solution, he is simply wrong. As I read it, his slogan would be a more explicit version of Trump's - "Make America White Again."
17
@John Graybeard
Carson has it all wrong when it comes to illegal immigrants. According to Pew Research, they constitute about 3% of the population but contribute about 5% to GDP.
That means they are working much harder than Carson and all the other accidental natives.
31
There is perhaps $150 TRILLION out there in the United States under asset management with one (1) goal in mind: maximized returns on these investments. This money is owned and controlled by the top echelons of the top 10% of the wealthy of this country.
Does anyone really think that any of these people really care about the damage this concentration of invested wealth is doing to the economy and the people who have to work for a living in this economy to make ends meet?
The Republicans are paid to look after the interests of the rich and they do it without question, and if pressed for explanations, they blow them off, take offense, or play dumb. Or they simply don't "understand the question." Democrats, on the other hand, are paid to be weak while facing moneyed interests. When pressed for explanations, they talk about race, gender identity, student loans, immigrants, abortion rights, etc., in order to avoid the direct question.
The face that Tucker Carlson is right does not mean that anything is going to change. Bernie Sanders is sometimes right, so what?
Nothing is going to change as things stand today.
18
Capitalism is economics and not a political system. The checks on capitalism have eroded in a number of ways leaving Americans poorer in a time of untold wealth accumulation by a few:
1. Unions in USA have been neutered or died.
2. Corporations have no national identity or loyalty. For a penny to the bottom line they will move production, fight sharing profits with workers, oppose paying a fair share to local governments, declare war on the environment in the name of fighting regulation.
3. Artificial Intelligence, robots, computerization eliminating jobs while productivity increase.
One program from Carlson will not bring healthcare to America, fix our crumbling infrastructure, stop the food fight between localities for who gets the next factory- Foxcom fiasco repeated and repeated. And Carlson does not even hint at the basic problem of making all our citizens productive, responsible participants in the wealthiest economy ever seen. The thirty-five day shut down of government spotlighted what millions of Americans face daily in putting food on the table, decent healthcare, a place to live, good schools, and even savings for retirement.
Solution? Taxes. It is the fix for America but the outrage of the proposal drowns out the reality of taking the medicine to keep America a democracy. History is full of the wrecks of great nations failing and falling when the citizens are neglected for the few. When Carlson agrees to tax I'll give him credibility
131
@Sly4alan
You’ve articulated the state of capitalism quite well. But I would expand on the idea that “Capitalism is economics and not a political system.”
Everything in America is politicized. Neoliberalism, the unfettered free-market, argues that every aspect of society is subservient to the market. That’s political. Since the 1971 Powell Manifesto, a blueprint for corporate domination of American democracy, Reaganomics, Milton Friedman, and Goldman Sachs’ CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, who declared that the banking industry (while it was causing a recession) was “doing God’s work,” we have had neoliberalism posing as economics.
Neoliberal capitalism has infiltrated every aspect of American politics. The corporate lobbying industry’s raison d’etre is political; Citizen’s United, the repeal of Glass–Steagall, the failure to enforce antitrust laws, and recent tax breaks for corporations – all political.
American capitalism is virtually indistinguishable from politics. When Marx wrote about capitalism he did so as a political-social theory. When Fukuyama famously declared the end of history he meant that with the collapse of communism, capitalism triumphed and was now the dominant social and political force in the world.
Economic policies have political consequences. Capitalism has a huge stake in political issues like healthcare, jobs, and taxes. Even issues like voting rights are driven by economic considerations. Who you allow to vote may effect economic legislation.
5
@Michael
Great, intelligent comment.
You truly understand the connect between economics & politics. The American population has been so indoctrinated into accepting one economic model, that the only way they can see the connection is by pulling examples from history: for example how the economics of a 14th century feudal system affected the political policies of the age.
They need to see that free enterprise is not wedded to capitalism. They need to see that an enterprise can be structured in a horizontal, democratic way, unlike the autocratic, hierarchic structure of corporations (in fact the latter are structured as pyramids!).
They need to see that a healthy economy is made up mostly of small business enterprises, not mega-monopolies that kill competition and create huge inequality.
Lastly, allow me to paraphrase a famous dictum: money corrupts & absolute money corrupts absolutely. Large amounts of money translate into large amounts of political power.
4
Carlson, Edsall, and our politicians don't get it.
Rural and blue collar America businesses are collapsing for the same reason that most of our coalition partners cannot fight effectively with our military: their operations lack velocity and precision.
The lessons of Lean and netcentric software and systems led military to drive time and cost out of the kill chain. This effort requires the same mindset, skills, and continuous improvement methodologies that Toyota brought to the automotive sector.
This is foreign doctrine in most of traditional blue collar rural America. Today, it's not so much that these folks don't have answers; they don't even know what the questions are.
Unfortunately, although we have legions of corporate and military leaders and managers who have learned these lessons, we have unknowing folks (from Trump to Edsall) at the helm and sidelines.
4
@Mack Efficiency will not create one single job. If anything, dealing with the social blowback from your lean netcentric continuous improvement buzzword salad is the job of government, so that citizens will still be able to live with dignity and a roof over their heads when automation does everything.
5
The entire argument around Carlson's commentary ignores the success of the European model of Capitalism.
As travel guru Rick Steves put it, in the US government is for business in spite of the people, and in Europe government is for the people in spite of business.
For its citizens, I'd say Europe has been far more successful.
641
@Paul
Dear Paul,
The problem I have with the argument that Europe is doing a better job than the US is that unemployment, especially among the young, is horrific in Europe. Well educated young adults cannot find jobs.
The US does have a problem worshipping at the altar of the almighty dollar, but I am sure from close experience here in Europe that it is not better than the US just different.
7
@Paul: yes, it is awful to have a reality TV show host as POTUS, but instead we should take our political commentary direct from .... RICK STEVES, who hosts a travel show to EUROPE (so big surprise he likes/prefers Europe!).
What exactly are Rick Steve's qualifications for evaluating different government's policies again?
2
@gpickard
Germany's unemployment is at 3.9%.
They are known for high-tech manufacturing and they have faced the same globalization we have.
The don't have the poverty we have.
They have universal healthcare.
We have parts of the US with infant mortality the same as a second world country.
On the other hand, our billionaire class beats Germnay's billionaire class any day!
35
This essay reads more like a report. It does, by quoting, give a good idea of Tucker Carlson’s views. I encourage folks to listen to Carlson for a week, and just don’t take these quotes or what the Guardian says he says. Listen to him. He does not espouse populism per sae, but has thoughtful conservative commentary that speaks of corruption and destruction of our American culture and society from corporations, globalism and technology.
9
Nah! Carlsen is just another conservative hack spewing anti-immigrant venom and hatred every night. So one day he engages in some Trumpian demagoguery about caring about the little guy and all of a sudden he’s a visionary? Don’t believe the nonsense!
I am a registered Democrat and I commend and applaud Tucker Carlson. He said things that need to be said and that no one else is saying.
The Democrats were once the party of the working class, but they have joined the Republicans in kowtowing to the moneyed class.
Edsall and others of his ilk are so focused on the hot button issues of race and immigration, that they are see everything only through those lenses. They are simply unable (or unwilling?) to consider the challenge of economic security faced by most Americans (except those in professions that have managed *so far* to escape the hammer of globalization through immigration or outsourcing).
Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
This applies to the Democratic party as much as it does to the elites who reject the urgent warnings of Tucker Carlson, Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed), Anand Giridharadas (WInners Take All), Thomas Picketty, and may others.
23
Don't forget Elizabeth Warren (The Two-Income Trap)
3
@na
This is not fair to the ever thoughtful Mr Edsall.
@na: Nancy Pelosi, the new "Goddess of the Left" lately, gets most of her money from FACEBOOK and Mark Zuckerberg -- tens of millions of dollars a year.
Look it up. This is a fact.
Francis Fukuyama just wrote a really good book on this subject - Identity. One of his assertions was that in order to bring a people together they must have a common national identity . . . And one of the ways to do this was through a national service project.
If left of center politicians are going to ask more FOR the people, I think asking more FROM the people is a good idea.
31
@Jim cibulka
Thanks for this tip. It may be worth reading Fukuyama’s new book alongside that of his mentor the late Sam Huntington on the same topic, published two decades ago.
@Jim cibulka
Sounds like Communism or Fascism to me. Who gets to pick the service project? What if I prefer to spend my spare time with my family or helping out at church? Or recuperating from tearing up my knees laying bricks? Would the national service project be Spreading the News that Therapy Really Works? -- or that Diversity Makes Us Great? Distributing condoms to underserved youth?
1
I am a moderate Democrat. But I'd like to see merit based immigration akin to the Canadian system.
23
Canada also takes in tens of thousands of refugees not based on an education merit system. Also, Canada allows family members to sponsor other family to follow. Immigration doesn't work if it is a cookie cutter system.
National identity is simply theoretical. It is a myth based in the US coming together during times of crisis, like the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 9/11. The US is too large to have a true identity and that is ok. Part of US greatness is its diversity.
Carson is correct that markets serve people, but he is incorrect about the role of immigration. The contributions of immigration are too nuanced to be summed up by him. This is why Fox News, and cable news in general, is so dangerous. The pundits attempt to make complex ideas quickly palatable for the common viewer.
The economic issues of America run much deeper than simply immigration. There are historical problems that must be solved. There are massive problems with land prices that ultimately lead to mass homelessness. Why is there so much homelessness in San Francisco? Well, it didn't just happen. The problem has been around for a while. It became worse with the tech boom, but it has existed throughout the tenure of numerous politicians. Solving an issue like this takes leadership and a commitment to problem-solving that is much deeper than can be diagnosed by your average pundit.
39
@Anthony
Homelessness in San Francisco is mainly due to the mild temperature and giveaways of Government and faith-based organizations. Don't believe me? Try a night on a park bench in Minneapolis in January!
2
@Karl
Well, the windchill where I live is 3 degrees currently, so I get that aspect of it. But, there are fundamental problems with economics. The City can get cold, but not like midwest cold. If cold was really the issue, then many homeless would only live in LA. Faith-based organizations and local government supported low income housing are quite powerful in many midwest small towns, so that is not necessarily the key, either. It is cheaper to live in the midwest.
1
@Anthony
Wherever "property" rules, the "rentier-class" calls all the shots.
It is unfortunate that the "real estate-roulette" has become the only measure of wealth left for the middle class, in an era where savings accounts (when there is enough discretionary income to put aside) earn 10 cents a month, and free money to lend out at 10-15% interest is only for the banks.
And everyone is collecting in that great "real estate roulette" tulip fever: the sellers, the agents, the banks, each taking, like parasites, a (not too small) fee in the process. In short, these players all love and are invested in promoting overvalued, obscenely priced real estate. They are laughing all the way to the proverbial bank.
1
Carlson’s description of what ails our society, at least as it pertains to rural white non-professional America, sounds about right, but in true conservative fashion prescribes the same tired old right wing ideological answer; turn back the clock. When a nation conceived and established entirely through immigration decides it doesn’t want any more, it will wither and die. Trumpian conservative views on immigration and unfettered capitalism are unsustainable over the long haul, and essentially lead to a dead end. But for Carlson and others, at least for the time being, selling them to a gullible audience provides for a very good living.
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Tucker Carlson sometimes says something truthful, but that's like a broken clock being right twice a day. I heard him speak at a corporate function just before the 2008 elections, and he confidently made all kinds of predictions, all of which turned out to be wrong. But even pundits who are always wrong are still given air time. Reality seldom enters Carlson's ivory tower.
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Three words here "American national identity" sum up the animosity in the air that is relatively new to this 67 year old. In retrospect when I was growing up it was pretty well understood that there was a place of comfort for anyone willing to put in the work. The same is not necessarily true today.
Imo modern day corporate terms of defining the bottom line as more important than its effect on humanity is not the only, but probably biggest cog in the wheel of modern day life. The generations that follow mine thanks to anti worker efforts by money hungry corporate entities no longer enjoy the same comfort I did in knowing that if I worked hard and played by the rules all would be good.
The difference now is that the rules have changed and depending on what class you were born into there no longer exists any comfort in knowing that the future will provide a happy ending.
The reality here is that only one ideological entity here provides any effort at all to work towards what my generation took for granted and took comfort in. The other works very hard at providing the illusion that they do. It is that illusion that maintains the growing divide between jus and them. That maintains the ever increasing economic disparity.
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@Rick Beck
I am 65 and white. So we grew up at the same time. There was plenty of opportunity for us at that time. But please don't idealize those days. I believe it was quite different if you were not white. And it was a time of unfettered environmental degradation.
Corporations are not benevolent entities. They never were when we were growing up. They are designed to gather capital and pay a return to investors without any ethical restraint. They respond only to power, like unions or regulation. I am sure you are well aware of all this. The rules have not changed, the power structure has and the corporate options have.
I went out this past Fall and worked to help a democrat unseat an incumbent republican congresswoman. I am not patting myself on the back, it is the least I can do. Do you and I have the energy and courage to fight for what we believe? This is what I wrestle with: how to spend my time, mind and money at this point in my life. I imagine you do too.
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I largely agree with this except for a very LARGE caveat. Your analysis was only true if you were white and male, Trump’s core constituency. If you were Black or Brown, it could always be taken from you especially if you got “too” much. Witness the repeated destruction of prosperous Black neighborhoods and towns. Also, exclusion from the social safety net such as Social Security. This is why Black people have such a hard time attaining wealth. Happened again in the Great Recession with Black folks TARGETED for sub-prime loans when they qualified for a regular loan.
Now we start to see the same pathologies in white communities that have no economic stability much as we have seen in communities of color. But the answer from Republicans are work requirements where there is very little work. Good luck with that.
I also, think America needs some time to more fully integrate the new immigrants. I’m Black, but live in the Houston area. I can’t go anywhere without being bombarded by accents from literally all over the world. Hard to find an American born doctor. Something has to give.
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@Andrea Hawkins
Madam, these doctors with the foreign accents were trained at other countries' expense.
It is a bonus of being an empire, that people with skills will flock there.
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"Perhaps he’s [Tucker Carlson] best described as a charter member of the same ruling class that in his monologue he indicted for working so intently to divide and confuse the American people." This could have been written by Karl Marx, but why Fox News allowed it to air is indeed puzzling.
Carlson is no social crusader. He works for an organization that is as deeply invested in the splintering of the social contract as it's possible to be. The Right demand that their ideology hold sway over the executive, the judicial and, in particular, the legislative. I fail to understand how Carlson's false sympathy with the downtrodden is in serious conflict with his worldview of white domination and fear of the other (immigration). It could be argued that he is primarily incensed that so many white Americans have fallen victim to the same social-governmental-economic processes that first devastated African-Americans and then, in the conservative mind, defined them, from post-slavery to the present.
"Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society." About whom is Carlson writing? The clear answer is rural, forgotten, white America, a despair exacerbated by a lazy Republican Party that was, at first, horrified by a Donald Trump candidacy, but then quickly embraced a Donald Trump presidency. That is the evil of the Republican Party.
Carlson will emerge forgiven, his monologue forgotten. It's the GOP way.
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@Red Sox, '04, '07, '13, ‘18,
Forgotten white America includes the former Confederacy and the rust belt. I am a Democrat far removed from my backwoods roots and I agree with Carlson, much as he is offensive. Long forgotten also is the petit bourgeois shop keeper/professional class that serviced our rural and rusted out America. The fall can be traced to the corporate takeover of our government via Buckley v. Valeo and Reagan's tax policies.
However, our number one problem today is corruption. How can Carlson deny that immediate result of the Trump election was that the Russians benefitted? How can he deny that the corporate owned Republicans use government as a cash cow, as the super rich get richer via tax cuts and the vast majority get bupkus?
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