The Wild Ones

The politics of spite.

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We’ve all grown to expect the unexpected in American politics since the vortex opened in 2015 and we crossed over into the Darkest Timeline. But there are moments that still bring one up short, demanding a moment of wonder and reflection.

Behold the state of the “law and order” party, embodied here in the person of its most-watched television host.

Carlson didn’t just attend. He addressed the crowd of bikers and reportedly became emotional. He paraphrased a letter Sonny Barger had sent to his wife and friends: “’Stand tall, stay loyal, remain free, and always value honor.’ … And I thought to myself, if there is a phrase that sums up more perfectly what I want to be, what I aspire to be, and the kind of man I respect, I can’t think of a phrase that sums it up more perfectly than that.”

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  1. Mathias

    Aside from the general theme of your piece ('spite' is a perfect designation for the dominant attitude on the Right these days), your analysis of Tucker Carlson's motivations is interesting. I am myself rather contrarian in mindset or at least contrarian-curious, and I am willing to consider that the assumptions and 'known facts' of polite society may be wrong on certain matters that would get me some rather narrow sidelong glances even among conservatives, if I were to list them all.

    Thus, I am initially sympathetic to Tucker's general urge to shake the tree, as it were. Maybe that's a temperament issue itself, and maybe it's a reaction to being treated as crazy when I don't think that I am particularly so. If they say that I'm crazy and dangerous, maybe I should look around at some other people who are also called crazy and dangerous, just in case they've been maligned too. In that way, perhaps it is the Left's demonization and marginalization of all non-leftist thought which has resulted in conservatives' willingness to examine previously-unthinkable ideas.

    Therefore, I am quite willing to question and have others question the general pieties of the age, PROVIDED that we are engaged in actual serious questioning and not a knee-jerk rejection of those pieties. Some of the liberal pieties may be wrong, and others may be right, and we won't find out which by either embracing them unthinkingly or resisting them unthinkingly. We should keep in mind that most of the time, the long-standing ideas and norms of a culture are there for a reason. (E.g. don't do drugs, drink wood alcohol, play chicken with a train, or hang out with motorcycle gangs or other people who could kill you if you cross them.) This means that after we've finished our examination of a particular concept or practice, the odds are very high that we'll end up agreeing with the general consensus.

    But spite corrupts all of this, and makes it impossible for us to seek the truth when we're blinded by the need to prove others wrong or hurt their feelings. The rebellious teenager who drinks, smokes and goes out partying each night, not because he especially likes drinking, smoking or partying, but because he's trying to shock his parents, is not going to be able to discern whether the habits he's engaged in are actually healthy or not. Maybe there's no harm in taking a glass of wine each day or smoking a fine cigar once in a while, but you'll never hear that argument from him because the actual benefits of his lifestyle aren't the point. Shocking his parents' sensibilities is the point. Rebellion is the point.

    The modern Right is consumed with a passion for rebellion. As is the modern Left, since the Sixties. And a nation composed of self-described 'rebels' is not going to live a lifestyle which is healthy; they are going to end up driving on the railroad tracks because nothing else will suffice to shock the bourgeoisie. 'And if I end up dead, well, at least then they'll be sorry for calling me deplorable.'

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    Dennis

    Those are fake Hells Angels pictured with Tucker. The guy on the left is holding a water bottle!

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  3. Randall Briggs

    Respectfully, you sound like an opposite-end-of-the-spectrum version of what I was until Trumpism took over the Republican Party. On everything that the Democrats do or have ever done, you are putting the best spin. On everything that the Republicans do or have ever done, you are putting the worse spin.

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  4. Andrew55

    Does 'The View' work in the politics of spite? Is Joy Behar trying to bring people together?
    How about Morning Joe? Don Lemon?
    The differences between these shows (and many, many more on non Fox stations) is that people want to watch Tucker, and he approaches most issues from the right rather than the left. If Carlson was doing monologues on the positives of an open border with Mexico or mail in ballots no one would be talking about spite.

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    David

    What I've always wondered about this is why? Why do people like Carlson want to condition the right wing to a new kind of politics? Is it just a lust for power?

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    Erroll Treslan

    Excellent piece. Thanks.

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    Joe Delanis

    I'm hoping Tucker was paid to appear at the Hell's Angels funeral.

    I don't begrudge a man for how he makes his money, provided it's not something obviously immoral (e.g , involuntary/exploitive human trafficking, theft). I don't watch his show - I have better things to do with my time, and more self-respect - but I really don't blame him for it. If a bunch of...well, I'll be polite and call them !#@&ing idiots...want to watch his idiotic show, and there are enough of them for his show to be successful, who am I to urinate on their parade?

    Tucker's savvy enough to know what and how to "sell" what they're "buying." That he has apparently re-invented himself just to appeal to his "new" Trumpy audience is understandable. (I remember watching him loyally shill for the George W Bush administration on "Crossfire" back when I was in middle school.) If his Pheonix-like reincarnation demonstrates a total lack of intellectual integrity, to the extent he's a man with a wife and kids and a mortgage and other bills to pay...I don't blame him. He's an entertainer, and an entertainer without an audience better have another source of income. And if you can't attract an audience on your own - in the way that Jonah, David, and KDW have attracted readers and subscribers to The Dispatch on the strength of their respective work products - then you have to be willing to go to where the audience is, and find some way to hold their attention. Whether that requires morphing from a Cato Institute fellow into a industrial policy-supporting NatCon to get the numbers necessary to hold down a TV gig, or getting flown halfway across the country to speak at a dead gangster's funeral.

    However, if Tucker appeared at that funeral *for free*...that would reflect quite poorly on him.

    Tl; Dr (bowdlerized): if you're a prostitute, don't prostrate for free.

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  8. Chanterelle

    Spite is destructive. It may or may not destroy the "opposition" but either way it definitely destroys the spiteful. This is one of the basics of wisdom. It is why you never want a bitter vengeful person in leadership.

    Perhaps Moby Dick needs to be required reading again?

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  9. Paul Kempf

    This Tucker-at-Sonny-Barger's-funeral theme encapsulates a certain MAGA blue-collar bad-boy ideal of the transgressive. Given the popular confusion between movies and real life, it'd be natural for MAGA to gravitate toward certain cinematic archetypes--outlaw, wiseguy (Nick's headline--I understand that he, atypically, writes his own--evoking as it does the 1953 Marlon Brando/Lee Marvin classic, is inspired)--as an expression of its alienation. With his Disney World and Martha's Vineyard stunts, DeSantis, once a conventional center-right public servant, is demonstrating that to make your way in today's GOP, being conservative in the Buckleyite sense, is worse than beside the point. It's inconvenient baggage.

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    Rajeev

    I’m loathe to defend the right wing populist movement but they clearly have a legislative agenda. The fact that they were unable to enact much of it is more of an indictment on their effort than their ideas.

    Trade protectionism, public infrastructure spending, reduced intervention in global conflicts and foreign aid, and harsh anti-immigration restrictions were all central to Donald Trumps campaign in 2016 and have been elements of grievance populism that everyone from Tucker Carlson to Peter Navarro have engaged in.

    I hate their agenda more so than I hate the left wing agenda (which I also despise). But to claim they don’t have ideological viewpoints and legislative priorities is untrue.

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