Speech

There is some predictable intramural squabbling over efforts by some to create a boycott against Tucker Carlson.  Carlson's career trajectory was George Will, right down to the bow tie.  He was a more or less middle-of-the-road neo-conservative partisan who had been scrubbed clean by his years at St.George's and Trinity College.  He was Marc Thiessen with a slightly less punchable face.

Upon landing at Fox, Carlson began has journey to dark, beating heart of Trumpistan.  He started with the usual bullshit Clinton scandals and the various oddball guests, but he wasn't full on Hannity yet.  Instead, as Trump's brand of vicious, racist, xenophobic politics ascended, Carlson hopped on for the ride.  While few people necessarily believe that Carlson believes everything he's saying, that somehow makes it even worse.  Jeannine Piro and Sean Hannity are open sewers of humanity.  They are simply terrible people.  Carlson actually brought his children to interview at our school and was warm and respectful, even to our resident Labour Socialist.

Carlson has moved into the language and cadence of white nationalism, just recently claiming that immigrants make America "poorer and dirtier."  Anyone with some historical literacy can see the parallels to the language of other ethno-nationalists.  Whether you're a Nazi in 1937 or a Hutu in 1994, you use the language that best dehumanizes your targets so that you can commit whatever atrocities you wish.

Carlson - and probably most Trumpists - probably don't want to kill immigrants.  I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on outright murder.  But the death of children doesn't bother them, because they have denied the humanity of people like 7-year old Jacklin Maquin, who died in the care of the Border Patrol.  They don't care about the impact of family separation.  They don't care about tear gassing non-violent crowds.

The language Carlson and others use matters.

As a result, groups on the left are trying to punish Carlson's advertisers.  This has made some people itchy.  On the one hand, it is trying to shut down a form of speech that some people find offensive.  That does present a "slippery slope" problem.  I would raise two counterpoints.

First, the Fox News phenomena is literally destroying American civic life.  Fear is the ultimate well-spring and fertilizer of authoritarianism.  Keep people scared enough, and they will believe any lie you tell them that both feeds and focuses their fear.  Fox has been a gusher of lies and fear mongering for years now.  Trump's rise and his continued support have their roots in the dark soil of Fox.  Pushing back against that is incredibly important, especially when it carries the terrifying roots of Nuremburg with it.

Second, one of the real problems in American politics right now is that there is a clear majority that favor Democratic policies and ideas.  This majority is centered in cities, but appears to be moving into the suburbs.  Because of the archaic design of our government, poorer, rural areas are drastically over-represented in the Senate and Electoral College.  Even the Blue Wave couldn't dent the natural gerrymander of the Senate.  Progressive political pressure - by default - has to be economic. 

Carlson will continue to get advertising dollars from catheter companies, orthotic shoe salesmen and doomsday preppers.  But if an insurance company or airline wants the business of younger, urban and suburban people, advertising on someone who uses racist language should be problematic for them.

This shouldn't be a "both sides" issue, it should be a wrong side/right side.  And if one side is echoing the language of dictators and fascists, then those people should be called out.  Richards Spencer and Milo Yannniwhatever should not speak on a college campus again.  There are, indeed, ideas too toxic for the public discourse.  Jefferson said:

If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

While that's laudable within the context of 1801, that precedes modern, mass democracy with its threat of demagogues and misinformation.  It's also an excuse that lead to Ft. Sumter.  Jefferson believed in reason, but we are discovering just how weak a force reason is on our politics.

Back during the states attorneys general lawsuit against Big Tobacco, they interviewed a smoker, asking them why they smoked with the warning label right on the package.  One replied that if that stuff was really true, they couldn't sell cigarettes.  Think about that.  It's that context that informed me that maybe some forms of expression are beyond the pale.  This is what leads a gunman into a newspaper office or a school or a pizza parlor.  This is what leads a lunatic to mail pipe bombs.

So, while I hear the arguments for free speech, right now is a crisis.  And Tucker Carlson is not owed anything by his advertisers.