Tucker Carlson is at it again

I gotta stop doing this.

Watching Tucker Carlson, I mean.

I got 5 minutes into Tuesday night’s show before turning it off.

That’s 3 minutes earlier than Monday.

First, the positive. On occasion, Carlson’s essays function on actual government excess. I don’t know if he writes his own stuff, but the essays sometimes approach brilliant exposition, if you can ignore the fact that they are filled with lies, distortions and jaw-dropping distortions.

As you know, I seek information from all sides, and relish in calling bullshit. I have done it for centuries. (That’s known as rhetorical excess. It’s not a lie because anybody still breathing knows it’s not a fact.)

But Carlson increasing explodes facts and, well, he lies. Increasingly, he seems to be living in a psychotic world of his own invention. He needs an intervention. Maybe that’s why I’m here.

I’ve written about this before, as recently as Feb. 24.

That column details some of Carlson’s lies and his inexplicable infatuation with Russia and Vladimir Putin. We all remember he had a years-long crush on a guy named Donald J. Trump. He has a crush on strong men, because he is not one himself.

I called him Putin’s pet poodle because for weeks before the war, Carlson nightly insisted there was a “war machine” in the government that was beating the drums for war — a dog whistle only he heard — saying U.S. troops were poised for Ukraine, while President Joe Biden was saying exactly the opposite, as were most Republicans.

You can follow the link for more.

Last night, Carlson was holding another master class in deception. Even as the U.S. refuses to declare a no-fly zone, Carlson insists we are spoiling for a fight.

Here’s a blow-by-blow, point-by-point analysis.

He opened with a familiar theme, that face masks were not about health, they were about government control. But he seems to have a faulty memory.

This is the two-year anniversary of the Covid lockdowns, he said. So much has changed. Before Covid, there were three things you knew about America: It was a free country, it was middle class and it was constitutional. “So it was a happy place,” he said.

Aside from the skyrocketing murder rate, street riots resulting from social unrest (BLM) or economic unfairness (Antifa), and what he himself called “endless wars.” If we were that happy, Carlson wouldn’t have a show.

That we are still free is proven by the fact that he has not been clapped in jail. And I am not saying he should be. I believe in free speech, especially any form of political speech or criticism of the government. 

The way free speech works is when he fabricates, people like me get to call bullshit on it.

Face masks, which he likened to shock collars, were the first step in a government — both Democrats and Republicans — grooming citizens as if they were pedophiles. The idea “was to teach Americans unquestioning obedience,” he said, and “it worked.”

Well, not entirely because lots of people questioned the mask mandates — some governors refused to go along with them — and 15% of Americans have refused vaccinations.

Maybe Carlson’s ego is so large he thinks he was the only one in opposition. 

Then, he said, millions of Americans reflexively changed their Twitter avatars from mask up, to the Ukrainian flag. It was very partisan, he said, with a straight face.

That, of course, offended the candidate for the Order of Lenin who had to be forced, screaming and kicking, to admit that, yes, Russia had started the war.

I admit I changed my Facebook profile picture to include the Ukrainian flag, not because some bureaucrat told me to, but because the case is so clear except to mooks  like Carlson, who knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

It was the largest political flash mob in history, he said, with Democrats, Republicans, the media, big tech and Big Bird all on one side. (I added Big Bird.)

Everyone being against him does not cause him to stop and reflect. The Earth is flat, dammit!

Dissent of any kind was banned, he said, as he dissented on Fox News, with a head-scratching lack of self-awareness.

Some might be threatened with indictment, or arrest, he said without a shred of evidence to support his paranoia.

Then he aired a clip of former Sen. Claire McCaskill “threatening  this show, just last night.”

On MSNBC, McCaskill said, “Tucker Carlson and others are really close to treason in terms of what they’re saying and parroting what is Putin’s dream.”

Where was the threat? I realize Carlson is not the most manly man out there, but why is he acting like the ”snowflakes” he often derides?

McCaskill is just a little old lady with an opinion millions share.

Yes, he is parroting Putin’s line. That is not treason. It is that free speech thing again, the thing I depend on. Carlson has the right to be wrong, the right to be a dupe.

Tucker’s defensive response: “Oh, so defending our country from your recklessness and unwise decision-making is treason.”

McCaskill’s recklessness? What?
The treason McCaskill unwisely talked about was siding with an enemy of our country, which Carlson does nightly.

“Declare your loyalty to Ukraine, or you have committed a crime,” he said, pulling that notion out of his ass.

McCaskill was not talking like that two years ago, he said. “No one in public was talking that way.”

Here’s the faulty memory part. Doesn’t Carlson remember skewering Democrats two years ago for saying Trump was a tool of Russia and that he would destroy American democracy?

They even impeached him. How’s that for an Unhappy Meal, Tucker?

So, yes, people were talking that way before Covid and that’s where I had to turn Carlson off.

He’s got to go in for a memory tuneup.