The Friday Thing
Long days, short nights, big fights
Jun. 20 - It’s hard to say which fight sucked up more oxygen online this week: Israel versus Iran, Donald Trump versus Tucker Carlson, or Tucker Carlson versus Ted Cruz.
So let’s lump ‘em all together.
Infighting on the American right gets a lot of attention because the leftist media is always eager to make hay out of any wedge dividing the right. The right is always more fractious than the left because there’s vastly more diversity of opinion on the right than the left. A study from 2023 that suddenly went viral this week says that’s akshually a Scientifical thing:
Though the findings have gone viral in the past few days, they originate from a study published in the summer of 2023 called "Attitude networks as intergroup realities: Using network-modelling to research attitude-identity relationships in polarized political contexts."
The study noted that "the cluster reflecting the Democrat belief-system almost exclusively contained extreme attitudes as indicated by strong disagreement with each of the eight items," including abortion, immigration, gun control, and gay marriage.
But at the same time "the cluster reflecting the Republican belief-system contained a wider range of attitude responses ranging from mild disagreement to maximum agreement."
"Not only does the presented data suggest that Democrats embrace more extreme viewpoints on the selected issues compared with Republicans, but also that the Republican cluster includes some surprising issue positions that (under interval assumptions) might be assumed to fall into the Democrat cluster," the study continued.
For better or for worse, the researchers found that "normatively acceptable viewpoints for Republicans on gay marriage, abortion rights, and environmental protection through business regulation range from mild agreement to extreme disagreement, hence, providing a potential space for political negotiation."
But such diversity of views was much less prevalent among Democrats.
“Water is wet” pretty much sums it up—there’s a pro-life and a pro-choice right, a free-market libertarian right and an Evangelical Christian right, a neo-con right and an isolationist right, .
On the left, there’s. . . the left.
For the last twenty years or so, the left’s price of admission has been total and unconditional acceptance of their reigning orthodoxy—which probably isn’t as tedious as it sounds because it seems to change from week to week. (“If you don’t like the Democrats’ positions on things,” Mark Twain famously tweeted, “just wait a minute.”)
Lockstep is the word I’m looking for. American Democrats are marching in lockstep to a tune that keeps changing.
I shouldn’t overstate the case: there’s obviously room on the left for some disagreement. Is Trump Hitler, Mussolini, or Ghenghis Khan? Should he be impeached, exiled, imprisoned, impoverished, assassinated, or all of the above? These are legitimate areas of disagreement on the left.
But the sexy femininity of Dylan Mulvaney, the profound wisdom of Greta Thunberg, and the glory of unlimited abortions for everyone, the absolute necessity of draq queens everywhere children gather—such tautologies are not to be contradicted.
But let’s get back to. . .
STEVE HARVEY: We asked 100 American Republicans to complete this sentence: “Any American military support for Israel in their war against Iran would result in. . . blank.” Mr President?
TRUMP: No nuclear weapons in Iran.
STEVE HARVEY: No nuclear weapons in Iran. That’s. . . maybe a little too specific? You sure you want to—
TRUMP: No nuclear weapons in Iran. Maybe it requires our involvement, maybe it doesn’t, haven’t made my mind up, to be honest, we’ll see, I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. But if we are providing military support, if we do, and believe me we could, it’d only be because that’s the only way to ensure there are no nuclear weapons in Iran. So that would have to be the answer. In fact it’s the only answer. I should know: I’m the president, I decide. No nuclear weapons in Iran.
STEVE HARVEY: Okay. And. . . survey says?
** Ding! 58%! **
STEVE HARVEY: What? 58%? That’s pretty good.
TRUMP: Of course it is. It’s the best. He can’t beat it. No one can.
STEVE HARVEY: But he gets a chance. Tucker Carlson, we asked—
CARLSON: World War Three.
STEVE HARVEY: You got to let me finish the question.
CARLSON: I know the question, and the answer is World War Three. It’s the obvious answer and more importantly it’s the right answer.
TRUMP: You can’t beat 58%, Tucker. Don’t be so kooky. There’s only 100 Americans, so you can’t beat 58.
CARLSON: You think there’s only 100 Americans? Seriously? You don’t even know how many Americans there are? Ha! Haha! Hahahahaha! But it doesn’t matter how many say what: what matters is what’s right.
STEVE HARVEY: Have you seen our show before, Tucker? Because the way it works—
CARLSON: World War Three, come on, show it.
** Ding! 25%! **
I’ve started thinking of Tucker Carlson the way I think of milk that’s been in the fridge just a little too long. You’ve got to give it a sniff before you pour, because even though it’s probably okay, that thing is right on the edge of turning.
Up until he was fired by Fox, Carlson had a good long run as the mouthpiece of mainstream conservatism. He was never Rush Limbaugh, but he was pretty good. Since going off on his own, he’s drifted away from the mainstream in some pretty weird ways, most famously (but by no means only) by giving time to Darryl Cooper, a man he introduced as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States” and who used his time with Carlson to explain how World War II was really Winston Churchill’s fault. Also that the Holocaust was really just a consequence of bad logistical planning by the famously disorganized and spontaneous Germans.
Are such opinions tolerable? Every opinion is tolerable. The issue for those on the right who found it creepy, as I understand it, wasn’t that Cooper had a novel and stupid theory of the second world war, but that Carlson had given him a platform without any pushback. (And had described this obvious crackpot as the best historian in the United States.)
Limited pushback is understandable when interviewing a figure like Vladimir Putin on his home turf, which Carlson did. But pulling your punches while “the best and most popular historian” blathers a lot of provocative nonsense about the Nazis not really having been as bad all that, old sport, to your face is—well, an interesting and disappointing choice.
A legitimate choice, sure: Carlson’s show, Carlson’s rules. He wasn’t giving Cooper high-fives. But. . . weird.
This week’s public disagreements between Carlson and Trump, and Carlson and Cruz, and Carlson and Ben Shapiro, aren’t symptoms of a growing divide within the MAGA movement. They’re symptoms of a healthy party debating a profoundly serious issue.
That’s probably why it got so much attention: we’re just not used to it.
And some on the right caught yet another weird whiff of Carlson and seem to have decided: sumpin’ about that milk just ain’t right.
Speaking of Viewpoint Diversity
Former President Barack Obama had some thoughts on viewpoint diversity this week. He’s all for it, but he’s profoundly against disagreement on facts.
He was speaking at The Connecticut Forum on June 17th.
I've said this before, but I always repeat it. You and I can have an opinion about this little side table. You know, you might not like the design, you might not like the color or how it's finished, but we can have that discussion.
If I say to you this is a lawnmower, you'll think I'm crazy. And if I really believe it, I'll think you're crazy. And we're now in a situation in which we are having these just basic factual arguments.
What if you say, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor?” — knowing it’s a fact that you cannot keep your doctor?
What if you say of Joe Biden’s (infamous) performance at the (infamous) debate that ultimately caused the (infamous) campaign coup: “Bad debate nights happen”? — knowing it’s a fact that Biden hadn’t been up to his job for years?
But never mind Obama’s own hypocrisy: he seems to think the phenomenon of misrepresenting the truth is a purely right-wing thing:
So it doesn't matter if a candidate running for office just is constantly, just hypothetically, saying untrue things, or if an elected president claims that he won when he lost and that the system was rigged, but then when he wins, then it isn't rigged, because he won. It doesn't matter if everybody believes it. It just matters if everybody starts kind of throwing up their hands and saying, well, I guess it doesn't matter.
And that's what's happened. That's what's happened in one of our major political parties. You have a whole bunch of people who know that's not true, but we will pretend like it is.
He gave these remarks this week.
The idea of any Democrat, much less Barack Obama, saying that the Republican party is just going around saying untrue things—
Wait. Hold on.
Rereading the text and. . . Hey!
He never actually says he’s talking about Republicans or right-wingers or MAGA or anything. He just says “one of our major political parties.”
Since he didn’t have the courage to name it, he obviously meant the Democrats.
In which case he’s spot on.
Wily Obama!
Dept. of ICYMI
Monday’s Almanac was about Bloomsday, Blaise Pascal, and a whole lotta Waterloo.
On Wednesday it was just a quick The Demonstration Skit, which was excactly what it sounds like.
On Thursday I wrote about the alarming boom of hitboys in the Nordics, in Vaas, Scandi Style.
But the really interesting news comes from…
Dept. of Rotator Cuffs
This will be the last Substack from me for a couple of weeks. I’m finally having surgery for my rotator cuff next week. (It was just scheduled this afternoon.)
I therefore need to spend the time before the surgery to line things up at home and at work, and then I’m going to need some time to recover.
Enjoy the summer! (As much as you can without me. . .)
And an early happy Skt. Hans to you Danes!