Tucker's Manichaeism
We are sort of good. THEY are EVIL.
Today’s newsletter was supposed to be a softball critique of George Will’s latest take on “what’s wrong with higher education today”. He wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post last week that bugged me ever since. He covered the normal tropes: what about the men? what about the conservatives? what about the cost? what about cancel culture? I would have written about the problem of cherry-picking isolated instances at big-name universities involving literally dozens of students and treating them as indicative of higher education. I would have pointed out that the enrollment crisis in universities is demographically driven, especially when focused on white middle-class students. I would have shared this data from Deseret News showing that students value diversity of thought and don’t approve of shouting down speakers. This is not that newsletter, but you get the gist.
I was sidetracked last night when I saw a tweet referencing a Gabe Sherman piece in Vanity Fair. Sherman wrote that a source had told him that one (of many) reasons1 Tucker Carlson and Fox News parted company was because Rupert Murdoch didn’t like Carlson’s increased use of religious language.
A new theory has emerged. According to the source, Fox Corp. chair Rupert Murdoch removed Carlson over remarks Carlson made during a speech at the Heritage Foundation’s 50th Anniversary gala on Friday night. Carlson laced his speech with religious overtones that even Murdoch found too extreme, the source, who was briefed on Murdoch’s decision-making, said. Carlson told the Heritage audience that national politics has become a manichean battle between “good” and “evil.” Carlson said that people advocating for transgender rights and DEI programs want to destroy America and they could not be persuaded with facts. “We should say that and stop engaging in these totally fraudulent debates…I’ve tried. That doesn’t work,” he said. The answer, Carlson suggested, was prayer. “I have concluded it might be worth taking just 10 minutes out of your busy schedule to say a prayer for the future, and I hope you will,” he said. “That stuff freaks Rupert out. He doesn’t like all the spiritual talk,” the source said.
I retweeted the story with a note to my Religion News Service friends, using Liz Kineke’s phrase “religion is always in the room”. Sherman further references his May cover story (behind the paywall) in which he argues that Murdoch’s ex-fiance “had told people Carlson was ‘a messenger from God.’”
Having gone this far down the rabbit hole, I dove more deeply and clicked on the link to Tucker’s Heritage speech. I have great pity for whomever had to transcribe the talk. To say it was stream of consciousness2 would make Jack Kerouac or James Joyce wish they’d upped their game.
Yes, right off the bat he talks about praying for the country for ten minutes a day. He shares a story of pheasant hunting with the head of the Heritage Foundation:
God sends messages. We can’t immediately translate all of them. So, I can’t tell you what that meant. There clearly is meaning. The point is the man who runs Heritage is not false at all. In fact, my assessment of him was, he’s completely real. He’s an honest person. He means it. He’s not playing a role.
I’m not sure exactly what this means either. I should also say that there is a ton of projection in this speech.
Also an amazing pattern of contradictions, which can happen with extemporaneous speaking. He doesn’t make predictions but he says people count on him to now what is likely to happen. He says he just shares opinions that might or not be true but later talks about how he only shares what is true.
But the manichaeism3 is clear in his thinking. Consider this contrast between the people and the institutional leaders. The people are great. The leaders are weak at best and evil at worst.
The people remain noble and decent. So far as I can tell, I still live here. I’m never leaving.4 We have good people. We have terrible people in charge. And not just of our government, but of the institutions that I grew up in, the Episcopal church, my high school, I can just go on and on and on. They’re all run by weak people.
And it’s the same in marriage. Weak husband causes angry wife. Weak leaders cause an angry country. That’s true. And to see someone who’s not a weak leader at the helm of Heritage just thrilled me. So, I wanted to come for that reason, just being totally blunt with you.
Again, this is in the context of saying nice things about Heritage and its leadership. It’s also worth noting that he bashes the Episcopal church but later still claims that it shapes him. He praises Heritage for their “high standards of factual accuracy” and “intellectual honesty”.
After admitting he can talk forever about literally anything and the importance of being Swedish and taking saunas, he gets to this:
But here are two5 conclusions I’ve come to, which I think are slightly less depressing than the most obvious, which is the country’s really going at high speed in the wrong direction, yeah, no kidding, in ways that are just unfathomable.
Here is his manichaeism at its plainest: “There’s a counterbalance to the badness. It’s called goodness. And you see it in people.” His example of the badness involves people putting pronouns in their emails or attending DEI sessions at work. Then he really gets wound up.
Policy papers don’t account for it at all. If you have people who are saying, “I have an idea. Let’s castrate the next generation. Let’s sexually mutilate children.” I’m sorry, that’s not a political debate. What? That’s nothing to do with politics. What’s the outcome we’re desiring here? An androgynous population? Are we arguing for that? I don’t think anyone could defend that as a positive outcome, but the weight of the government and a lot of corporate interests are behind that.
Well, what is that? Well, it’s irrational. If you say, “Well, I think abortion is always bad. Well, I think sometimes it’s necessary.”
That’s a debate I’m familiar with. But if you’re telling me that abortion is a positive good, what are you saying? Well, you’re arguing for child sacrifice, obviously. It’s not about, oh, a teen girl gets pregnant, and what do we do about that and victims of rape. I get it. Of course, I understand that, and I have compassion for everyone involved.
But when the Treasury secretary stands up and says, “You know what you can do to help the economy? Get an abortion.”6 Well, that’s like an Aztec principle, actually. There’s not a society in history that didn’t practice human sacrifice. Not one. I checked. Even the Scandinavians, I’m ashamed to say. It wasn’t just the Meso-Americans, it was everybody. So that’s what that is.
This is where we cross over from political talking points (stupid pronouns!) to religious language. You see, these can’t be policy disagreements. Those (earlier weak and ineffective) leaders are forcing us to take these positions when we know better. We have Truth on our side and they are Evil.
They don’t want a debate. Those ideas won’t produce outcomes that any rational person would want under any circumstances. Those are manifestations of some larger force acting upon us. It’s just so obvious. It’s completely obvious. (emphasis mine)
Carlson says that he doesn’t know theology and is but a weak Episcopalian. But the argument he’s engaging in you don’t find in many Episcopal churches.
You do find it heavily expressed in many churches, especially those associated with the New Apostolic Reformation7. Political Scientist Paul Djupe had a piece today testing the relationships between the modern prophecy movement and Christian Nationalism. He opens with this quote from NAM music leader and protest figure Sean Feucht:
This is a biblical belief that every Christian should believe. We want God to be on the throne over America. We want holy ghost, spirit-filled believers that fear God to be in this building (the Texas state house).
You see, THEY cannot be trusted with government. We Christians8 must be in control. Paul and his colleagues do show that there is a correlational linkage, with high belief in the prophecy movement enhancing Cristian Nationalism. Here's Paul's conclusion:
These findings stand in accord with prior investigations posted on Religion in Public. For instance, we found that prophecy believers are more likely to back groups engaged in extreme, even violent actions. They express support for the potential need to use force to protect traditional ways of life. And they are much more likely to believe in election fraud dictated the 2020 election outcome for president. As I put it in that post, “Prophecy believers are likely to adopt Trump’s fraud claim because they strongly believe in the rightness of their choices as anointed by God.” When God’s mouthpieces are proclaiming the rightful president is the one who lost, that is a strong signal to prophecy believers that the forces of evil are active and winning. And the logical conclusion to that belief is what we see in this post – prophecy believers must stand on top of the mountain for God to prevail and for the devil to be vanquished.
Is Tucker Carlson really a manichean? It’s hard to say. On the one hand, he said this in his speech:
I’m a talk-show host. It’s like I give any opinion I want. That’s my job. That’s why they pay me.”
He also said this:
Tell the truth about something. You feel it every day. The more you tell the truth, the stronger you become. That’s completely real. It’s measurable in the way that you feel.
Honestly, I’m not sure he knows. But it does seem like his ongoing denunciation of Evil led him to believe that he was the voice of Truth standing astride the world. And maybe that all (plus the other stuff) got to be too much for Rupert to deal with.
It’s hard to say. It could have been because he had a habit of calling females (including his female bosses) the “c-word”. Or because he was the subject of a lawsuit from his former producer. Or because he said bad things about Trump. Or because of stuff that was in the redacted parts of the Dominion lawsuit materials. Or because of the Ray Epps interview on Sixty Minutes. Or because there are a bunch more defamation and stockholder lawsuits coming down the pike. Or, as James Fallows noted today, that he was going to cost Rupert money.
The host makes numerous references in the Q&A that was supposed to be the bulk of the appearance that he went on and on.
A dualistic philosophy that sees the world as equally divided between good and evil.
This is your moment to feel sorry for Tucker.
He tries numbers several times in the speech but never follow a one, then two sequence.
Of course, that’s not what she said.
That probably doesn’t include me. Probably should have said Right-Thinking Christians.