Wait a moment, did you just compare Tucker Carlson to Joseph Goebbels?

Fox political columnists at work.

Why yes, I did. Thank you for noticing.

I did that here:

German poster in Dutch, part of an effort to recruit occupied Europeans to German arms out of fear of Communism.

German propagandist Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary

The anti-Bolshevik theme is the best horse in the stable.

Goebbels' comments are something that are frighteningly relevant in our current society.  Communism was the enemy of mankind, but so was Nazism.  Indeed, they both shared the common trait of mass murder as a central element of their ethos, which gave the regimes an odd sense of being constantly imperiled by huge plots, in their view, which necessitated murder, in their view, which in turn made millions of people culpable, and therefore loyal, through guilt.  

Victory or Bolshevism was the theme of this poster, which ironically portrayed starving Germans in the manner of which recalls Holocaust victims.  After 1943 the theme of this poster was in fact becoming increasingly true, although victory was no longer possible, as the Red Army was now advancing toward the German frontier.  Germans would have recalled that being a threat during the Russo Polish War of the early 1920s, when Trotsky seriously imagined entering Germany after defeating Poland, but now it was rapidly becoming an inevitability, which the German government implicitly acknowledged through this poster.  In fact, the German government would take no action to withdraw the civilian population from Prussia, although individual German commanders sometimes did, which mean that thousands of German men were shot and tens of thousands of German women raped when the Red Army entered the country.  The final months of the war would be a combat blood bath as German soldiers often went down fighting attempting to let the civilian population get out, a situation which was brought upon them by a barbarous Nazi government.

The Nazis, right from the onset, portrayed themselves as the cultural defenders against Communism, which made many forget, and then adopt, their radical views which were not "conservative" in any real sense. After reaching an accord with the Soviets just prior to World War Two, this was downplayed, but it was ramped back up again prior to Operation Barbarossa and kept at a fever pitch through the remainder of the war.  The message to Germans was that the Nazis were the only defense of Western culture against an "alien" Communism, although Communism itself was originally a German movement.  The message was sufficient for many Germans, including high ranking ones, to put aside their doubts about Nazism on the basis that it seemed to be, based upon what they were hearing, their only alternative to Communism.

Of course, for millions of Germans, the end of the war and Germany's fighting it out past mid 1943 would bring Communism to them.

By way of contemporary analogy, millions of Americans today have been listening, and continue to, to populist propagandist who spread lies and whip up panic over their being the only alternative to "wokeism".  Tucker Carlson and his ilk portray the far populist right as the only means of combating a host of truly concerning liberal ideas.  By espousing lies, they bring those ideas closer to implementation.

Oh my, some are thinking, how could you compare a "conservative" "news" figure to an um. . . conservative government figure. ... who, um, is listened to by millions even if his version of the truth isn't the truth, to a person who was listed to by millions whose version of the truth. . . 

Now, a couple of things.

I'm a conservative.

But I have a brain, value the truth, seek reality, think for myself, and accept the truth is the truth, and there's only one truth, not shades of it.

I'm shocked by how some very serious, well-educated people, listen to Tucker Carlson.  He's a propagandist for Trumpism and has openly spouted lies. He still is, and people, amazingly, are still listening to him.  And as I noted, people rightfully scared of some propositions that progressives put forth, such as that DNA doesn't matter, and you can be what you self identify with, are being led down the primrose false path that only Donald Trump, and his band of followers, can save the nation.

Not likely.  Indeed, if history is any guide, extremism ends in the opposite extreme.

Nazi Germany gave us the German Democratic Republic.

Russian Imperial retrenchment gave us the Bolsheviks.

Napoleon Bonaparte gave us the restoration of the French monarchy.

And yet people sit down at the Fox lunch counter, are served up a steaming bowl of scat, and declare it to be delicious prime rib.

How does that happen?

Probably a variety of ways, but perhaps there are three chief amongst them.

One is, and it's probably the majority reason, is that a lot of people conclude things emotionally.  Most people, in fact.  So they base their decisions on that.

The GOP and the Democratic Party ignored the working class in the country for decades, and came to ignore the middle class. And the Democrats grew used to rule by the courts, not democratic rule.  People knew that they didn't believe that Bobby could become Bobbie chemically or that unrestricted immigration didn't help them, or that they personally weren't evil because they owned a gun.  Trump told them that they were right, and that progressives were part of an evil conspiracy of dunces.

So when Trump told them that the conspiracy had stolen the election, even though there was no theft, and he simply lost, having never won the popular vote in the first place, they believed him and some still do.

The way that works is that "I know that I'm right, people who tell me that I'm right are right, so Tucker Carlson must be right".

For some, it isn't even that advanced. They love Trump as he told them what he wanted to hear and they'll go to their graves believing that Trump is some sort of hero.

None of that changes this basic fact.  Whatever the merits of conservatism, or populism (and the latter is not only conservative but liberal as well, both in a radical way) are, Trump is a threat to democracy and without democracy all values are in danger.  People like Trump, or Greene, or Boebert, are threats to the well-being of the nation, and frankly their values, when examined, are swimming in the shallow end of the pool.

Tucker Carlson, however, is something else, entirely. . . .well not entirely. Frankly, a lot of people associated with Trump stink from what they shovel, and Trump certainly does as well.

Tucker Carlson, major league liar.

Recently he was confronted in a fly shop somewhere:

Liar Carlson confronted by irate large customer.

Fair?

That's an interesting question.

Here's something revealed about Carlson the other day:

Among the documents released Tuesday as part of the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems was an email from Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott that the organization was “Still getting mud thrown at us! … Maybe Sean and Laura went too far.”

Two months after the election and just days before Jan. 6, 2021, Fox host Tucker Carlson texted with an unknown Fox employee about how badly he wanted to stop covering President Donald Trump.

“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson texted Jan. 4, 2021. “I truly can’t wait.”

“I hate him passionately,” Carlson added.

Dan Eggen, Washington Post.

Given that the man is a lying tool, exposing his vile nature in front of his daughter, who would not, it should be noted, be a child, while extreme, may be warranted.  

If your brother sins, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.

If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’

If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.

Mathew 18:15.

Carlson is an Episcopalian, married to the daughter of an Episcopal priest.  He claims to "hate" much about the Episcopal Church, while remaining a member.  The Episcopal Church has, in its mainstream, diluted much of the Christian message and in fact incorporated within its institution in some places those who openly endorse things St. Paul openly condemned.  But it doesn't condone lying.

Maybe calling Carlson a liar in public, and perhaps in front of his family at that, is warranted.  

Maybe it's time to call more of these anti-democratic liars what they are, liars, while at the same time being blunt to politicians and public figures about the other falsehoods they adopt.

For that matter, in public discourse, maybe its even time to do the very difficult. Which would be, for instance, "that Liz Cheney sure is a liar, eh", to say "no, she told the truth, people didn't want to listen" and or "man alive ol' Biden sure caused the price of gas to go up" to say, um, no Putin did..

And with Tucker, all the more so as he's now going on to lie about the nature of the January 6 insurrection.

At some point, the only way to address the publicly vile is to confront them to their face and make the disgusting nature of their behavior known to them publicly.  Carlson's not an idiot, he's lying to people intentionally for some sort of personal advantage.  When there is no advantage to him personally, he'll cease.  

And perhaps he'll repent.

Or he can just go, the functional equivalent of being treated like a tax collector.

Joseph Goebbels shoved out crap for the Nazis, which at least he partially believed himself.  While he didn't loyally serve his wife, having serial affairs, he loyally served Hitler and shoveled out the lies for him.  He and his wife had six children together.

Goebbels, through his propaganda, helped convince the Germans to keep on keeping on in a war which brought the Red Army all the way into Berlin, destroyed Prussia, the largest and most dominant German state, resulted in the rape of perhaps 2,000,000 German women, 100,000 in Berlin alone, and the enslavement of eastern Germany in Communism for decades.  All of this in perpetration of a series of lies, although he no doubt believed some or maybe all of them about German racial superiority and the inferiority of others, particularly the Jewish people.  He and his wife, both of whom cheated on each other, murdered their six children as Berlin collapsed.

Lies have consequences. All of them do.

Big lies have big consequences.