Amerika

It’s a rare night when the TV news tells you anything intelligent. It’s rare that any social critic actually criticizes any of the depredations enacted by the major corporations and political benefactors that fill his particular begging bowl. Tucker Carlson, while his shadow will never darken the door over at Red Lobster, will forever be a welcome exception to that odious trend.

Why do I venerate some guy many view as a loud-mouthed, dry-baby hack, or even worse, a saboteur? Probably because TuCa is way more intelligent then I claim to be. He is a speaker of forbidden truth.

For that reason, I think that he is mocked because he reveals some truths they don’t ever want expressed in a public forum:

1. A big pile of money is neither necessary nor sufficient for happiness.
   

   The answer used to be obvious. The overriding goal for America is more prosperity, meaning cheaper consumer goods. But is that still true? Does anyone still believe that cheaper iPhones, or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China are going to make us happy? They haven’t so far. A lot of Americans are drowning in stuff. And yet drug addiction and suicide are depopulating large parts of the country. Anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be summed up in GDP is an idiot.

2. Happiness is probably an absolute precondition for any of the exterior manifestations of success that our “wise men” consider both necessary and sufficient for happiness.
   

   The goal for America is both simpler and more elusive than mere prosperity. It’s happiness. There are a lot of ingredients in being happy: Dignity. Purpose. Self-control. Independence. Above all, deep relationships with other people. Those are the things that you want for your children. They’re what our leaders should want for us, and would want if they cared.

   Which then tees up point #3.

3. The people who promise you happiness in return for power over your life are promising you what they perceive as their own happiness. They have no stake in yours and will go to no effort whatsoever to genuinely help you pursue it.
   

   But our leaders don’t care. We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule. They’re day traders. Substitute teachers. They’re just passing through. They have no skin in this game, and it shows. They can’t solve our problems. They don’t even bother to understand our problems.

4. They knowingly and disingenuously justify this unconcern via the demonstrably untrue Clinton’s Law: “It’s The Economy, Stupid!”
   

   One of the biggest lies our leaders tell us that you can separate economics from everything else that matters. Economics is a topic for public debate. Family and faith and culture, meanwhile, those are personal matters. Both parties believe this.

So what’s the real point here? If you need more than three bullets to hit the target, then you probably aren’t the most accurate rifleman at the range. This needs to be further distilled. Its existence precedes its essence, but the essence is the prerequisite for legitimate and useful meaning. Leave it at just what Carlson said in his monologue, and you get something really smart and hard to process and act upon. You masticate for hours before you digest, derive energy, and then have the capability to act. It remains bovine Moldbugism.

So what is Tucker Carlson telling the Right to do here? He wants a Right that rejects hard, over-determining materialism. You are more than your material possessions. Your life is more than these possessions. Your worth is far beyond what is measured in hard currency. That which is good is beyond that which is sensed and scientifically enumerable.

A Right that has no aesthetic measure of Good is playing 2D Chess on a 4D board. A Right that only values that which can be mathematically scaled will never integrate the full value of what makes for a good life. A Right that only expresses that which can be logically or scientifically reified won’t possess the capability to express all that needs to be said, regardless of their honesty noble spirit and condign intent. A Right that can’t even explain or lead us towards a good life might as well do us all a favor and go straight to Hell.

In short we have been both enlightened and warned. This Carlson’s correction to Clinton’s Law. Unless you are Stupid, it’s more than just the economy. Materialism is useful, but even Karl Marx was too intelligent a man to fetishize material commodities. Materials are tools, not the sum of a well-engineered product. Nor is materialism the sum of a viable and usable philosophy or ethical system. Materials are what God made. They are not God. Run from the heretical sinner who ever claims that they are. Thank you Tucker Carlson for breaking some legitimately useful news.

Tags: clinton's law, materialism, tucker carlson