The broadcast by Tucker Carlson of Fox News on January 3rd was featured by this author, and he seems to be in full approval. I've often wondered where (on the political spectrum) Zuesse is coming from, and now I think it finally appears in this article. Both Carlson's and Zuesse's commentaries are exceptionally designed clever pieces of propaganda to sell a new image for the Republican Party.
No decent, thinking person would disagree with the statements that Carlson makes up to approximately 14:40m of the entire 15:13m broadcast. But the remainder, a short 1:33m, or the final three paragraphs, is where the con (def. #4) is revealed. Notice just before the fourth paragraph from the end, Carlson relies on the fact that the ruling class have only permitted two capitalist parties to exist, and they control them both. Thus, he logically can claim that only the Republican Party can turn things around. Immediately following this point, Carlson summarizes all the earlier statements that make such a concerned impression upon us:
... first, Republican leaders will have to acknowledge that market capitalism is not a religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You’d have to be a fool to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite. Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society.Then he logically follows with the con in the final three paragraphs:
Internalizing all this will not be easy for Republican leaders. They’ll have to unlearn decades of bumper sticker-talking points and corporate propaganda. They’ll likely lose donors in the process. They’ll be criticized. Libertarians are sure to call any deviation from market fundamentalism a form of socialism.The corporate and ruling class experts of propaganda are selling a new version of the Republican Party wrapped in a more caring, sensible package that will appeal to all ordinary Americans.
That’s a lie. Socialism is a disaster. It doesn’t work. It’s what we should be working desperately to avoid. But socialism is exactly what we’re going to get, and very soon unless a group of responsible people in our political system reforms the American economy in a way that protects normal people.
If you want to put America first, you’ve got to put its families first.
It is well known that Fox News corporation backs the Republican Party, and Zuesse acknowledges this. He goes on to argue that Republican viewers were not personally offended by this broadcast; the implication being that they are too insensitive or too stupid:
At the website of Fox News itself, the comments are virtually all from Republicans, and they’re not nearly as happy with what Carlson said, as is the case at the youtube site; their comments are more focused on the strictly intra-Republican-Party feud, than on the nation’s welfare. Carlson’s central point was missed.Most Republicans know, what apparently Zuesse doesn't, that they can regard such statements from a Republican-backed media corporation with a "grain of salt" (def.). I think he is too smart to be taken in by such a pitch. Thus, I think Zuesse has in this article revealed what he has been up to for the past many months: a stealth propaganda agent for the ruling class in order to co-opt dissent, thereby control it and divert it into safe channels of activity--voting for "humanistic" Republicans (an oxymoron if there ever was one). I'm sure that the ruling class will see to it that such fake candidates will be available to run in the next election. I quote from Zuesse's concluding remarks:
That’s also similar to what Tucker Carlson was saying. He, too, was criticizing the ruling elites in the US and Europe, and for the same reasons. He, too, was saying that in America, there is a crisis of legitimacy.Last time they used Bernie Sanders to do this among Democratic Party voters. Will our masters once again fool Americans by steering them to the other candidates we are allowed to vote for-- Republican candidates?
Consequently, did Tucker Carlson, in his January 2nd commentary, open the way, finally, toward a New America emerging — a compassionate country, which blames no masses (such as ‘the failures’, or ‘the poor’, or ‘the Hispanics’, or ‘the Blacks’ — or any foreign country — not Russia, and not Iran, and not China, not any at all) for America’s decline, but which instead blames America’s billionaires — the people who actually control America — for the serious problems in America?
If so, he just might have delivered there the platform for a new third American political party, which could end and replace the Republican Party, just as Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans ended and replaced the then-existing Whig Party, from which they had sprung. In that case, a new third political Party replaced one of the two existing political Parties. It could happen again.
Is Tucker Carlson now running for President?