Imagine the kind of human who dislikes the Chauvin verdict. Tucker Carlson, host of Fox’s White Power Hour, gives us an idea of what one looks like, at least the outward part. The inward part which causes sounds to come out of his mouth hole has offered up some interesting floaters. Ahead of the verdict, it was that “facts no longer matter… when BLM’s founding myth is at stake”, interesting since that’s been his modus operandi since… ever. Or channeling his inner Lester Maddox: the trial is a “lynching” by media. His line now: “the jury was too intimidated to render any other verdict”, fear of the mob the only reason for the outcome. A bolus of hatefulness has filled in him the vacuum left by the absence of human decency, and he seems to be decaying on air in real time. Long gone is the bow tie cleverness, he’s become BFF’s w/ the kind of folk who smear excrement and blood on the walls of the nation’s capitol building. Indeed, what he’s doing on air isn’t any different.
I avoid Fox like I do a burn pit at a dump- there is no Febreze for the feculence of those brothers and sisters from the same blisters- but the Chauvin trial has highlighted this George Wallace-wannabe’s venom to the point that ignoring it seems dangerous. He’s a slightly more urbane Alex Jones, a high school vocabulary in place of splutter, without the default feature of primate feces throwing. He’s still not housebroken, just passingly subtle as he leaves stinking piles behind, presenting well enough to get invited to upper crust cocktail parties, at least once. In another time, he’d have come as the guest of also-urbane Josef Mengele, chatting comfortably with other attendees before leaving to join the doctor in his abominable experiments on humans.
Carlson and other Republican’s “fear of the mob” view reminds of the reality facing plantation owners in the late 1700’s. They were ill equipped to put down a concerted uprising, as states then had little power to come to the rescue. The one successful rebellion by African slaves, the Haitian Revolution won in 1804, struck fear in the hearts of slave owners everywhere, especially those in America. It’s no wonder firearms achieved such a lofty place of reverence in the minds of some- the power of the gun made minority rule possible, and to this day, they haven’t relinquished the infatuation with controlling others by generating fear. No Shirt, No Shoes, No AR, No Service said no establishment owner ever. Check that- I believe it’s on the door at Lauren Boebert’s Shooters Grill.
Republicans are again fearful of mobs, but instead of addressing the root of this nation’s systemic abuse of humanity, you know, Carlson’s idea of BLM’s “founding myth”, cities lean more and more on military style mobilization, while regressive leadership grandstands and decries the need for it. Nothing like having your hate and eating it too. Chauvin verdict or no, every city is now a little like Haiti: folks are f**king fed up, and the Carlsons of this woebegone country quake in fear at what they’ve wrought. No matter, he just keeps fouling the air, as do all of Murdoch’s mouthpieces of mendacity. Fox: where stinking comes before thinking. When the white right is wrong about pretty much everything pertaining to the treatment of others who don’t look like them, one would think it was a time for reflection, but to borrow a line from one of the GOP’s most powerful purveyors of retrograde ridiculousness: nevertheless, they persist. It brings to mind a bastardization of the famous line from Erich Segal’s 1970 Love Story, without any of the love: minority rule means never having to do the right thing.