Last night Fox's Tucker Carlson did what may have been the most amazing thing that has ever happened on American television. As the drums of war beat louder than they have in years, Carlson stared right into the camera and did the exact opposite of what every mainstream US pundit is doing right now: he told the truth.
He told the truth about Syria. He told the truth about Yemen. He told the truth about the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma. He told the truth about the bipartisan war machine which drops all pretense of opposition the instant it's time for bloodshed. He told the truth about what war is, what it costs, and what it does to our world.
He stood in stark, unequivocal opposition to the trajectory the Trump administration appears to be moving along. And he did it on Fox News.
I have a deep and abiding hatred in my heart for Fox News and all things Murdoch. I will never forget nor forgive the key role the Murdoch press played in deceiving our world into the unimaginable evil that was the Iraq invasion. But if I'd held a reflexive rejection of anything with the Fox News logo in the corner, I never would have seen Carlson's epic monologue, never would have shared it with my social media following, never would have embedded it in this article, and this bright flash of truth would have been diminished by that much in the impact it was able to have on public consciousness.
And I know that there are many leftists who declined to help spread awareness of that Carlson monologue based solely on the fact that he's a conservative pundit on a conservative network who has said things they disagree with in the past. This is stupid. We should be able to throw any weapon at all at the war machine, not fight with one hand tied behind our backs just because we don't like conservatives.
Check out the comments from my lefty followers when I shared the clip. Look how astonished they were to hear a clear voice on this issue coming from the right. Being willing to share useful weapons against the war machine lets in that much more light. Why would we want to deprive ourselves of such weapons in a fight to oppose what could very well end up being a third and final world war? If someone from an opposing ideology organizes an anti-war march or puts together a video debunking a war narrative, why deliberately halve its influence and impact at such a crucial time?
I always get raked over the coals when I say this, but god dammit I'm right: when it comes to important issues where our interests converge, we need to be absolutely shameless about collaborating with people on either side of the ideological divide.
Gateway Pundit's Cassandra Fairbanks and I stand on opposite ends of the political spectrum on many issues, but when it comes to crucial matters like this we are in total agreement. I reached out to her for comment when I saw her making the same argument I'm making here from the other side of the divide, urging her conservative followers to be willing to collaborate with leftists against this war.
Fairbanks provided the following statement:
"We can squabble all we want about domestic policy, but none of that will even matter if nations with nuclear capabilities decide to flex their power. The establishment Democrats and Republicans in DC have already united to make this a potential reality. If the anti-establishment right and left don’t, temporarily, do the same to loudly oppose this then we are as guilty as they will be. We have to remember that our friends and neighbors, people we interact with every day, have different political ideologies. The people on Twitter and at protests are those same people. I really hope for a momentary ceasefire in our Twitter wars to prevent a real one."
I agree with and co-sign every word of this.
Whenever I bring this up I get lefty echo chamber cultists shrieking at me that people like Fairbanks are alt-right/Nazis (which is absurd and ridiculous) and saying that the left and right don't need to work together on any issue at all; that the left can just do its own separate, fully segregated thing on its own side of the divide while any anti-war right wingers can do their thing far away somewhere else.
Which of course is brilliant: let's divide ourselves up into echo chambers where we are completely isolated from anyone who disagrees with us about anything, and launch our protests against World War Three from in there. And let's be honest, these people won't just stop at cutting off conservatives; most of them will cut off leftists like myself who are open to interacting with them as well. They'll wedge out anyone who doesn't have the correct opinions about Bernie Sanders, about trans issues and sex workers, about this or that conspiracy theory, about DemExiting vs DemEntering, until they're all fragmented up into little impotent sects with no hope of ever launching any of their ideas into mainstream consciousness. Nobody does vitriolic sectarianism like the left.
For that reason we also need to stop attacking each other. People keep telling me I need to denounce Glenn Greenwald for advancing the mainstream narrative about chemical weapons and Bashar al-Assad, despite the fact that he's been consistently and aggressively opposed to western interventionism in Syria. We don't have that kind of luxury, people. We don't have the luxury of rejecting anyone who's willing to stand against the war machine, let alone a fellow leftist with a large and influential voice. We need all the help we can get.
I stand with anyone who will oppose the assault on Syria, a nation long targeted for regime change due to its resources, strategic location, and the ambitious agendas of its leader, as well as its refusal to bow before Israel in its border dispute over the illegally occupied Golan Heights.
I don't care if you oppose a war while still believing the fairy tale that Assad is a baby-gassing Dracula. I don't care if you only oppose interventionism because it will allow jihadists to eliminate the nation's Christians and exacerbate the refugee crisis. I don't care if you only oppose war in Syria because you hate anything Trump does. As long as you oppose this attack on an already brutalized nation which could lead to a third and final world war, we're on the same side on this issue, and I'll proudly fight the war machine shoulder-to-shoulder with you.
This obviously doesn't mean compromising on our values one iota or abandoning our ideological principles. It just means when Tucker Carlson delivers a lucid anti-war monologue, we help it go viral. It means if Cassandra Fairbanks helps organize an anti-war demonstration, we go and add our voice to it. We can still work to advance all the other important issues that we are passionate about while working side-by-side against this one world-endangering threat.
The culture war games were fun for a while, but playtime's over. We are staring down the barrel of events which could lead to a direct military confrontation between NATO forces and Russia and its allies; you don't get any more points if you can "trigger the libs" or make a viral tweet mocking a conservative pundit. It's time to grow up now. Let's do this thing.
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