Factions and the Carlson Conundrum

When you have been a conservative long enough, you know we can turn winning into losing at the drop of a hat.

All the brewing Tucker Carlson/Nick Fuentes/Heritage Foundation/CATO Institute/eGOP/MAGA drama fits into my “circular firing squad” idea from the other day.

It isn’t unusual, I would even argue it is inevitable, proven by the history of mankind.

Once the war is won, peace then must be won because when the big objective - surviving and winning the war - is achieved, then the factions within the winning side begin warring with each other for influence and control – all the different groups that agree on the critical 20% are now trying to get their piece of the 80%.

That is what we see on the conservative/GOP side now.

The Democrats are united in loss – they haven’t figured out what their critical 20% is yet, they are fumbling through the trivial 80% looking for it – but one of these days, they will find it, and they will be back.

Every war is fought this way.

Truth be told, wars are never won or lost, they simply mutate into some other shade of conflict as the tide between the land masses shifts and changes, new people take up arms, and the entire process begins again, sometimes with a higher intensity, sometimes in a lower intensity but like the tides, they never stop because they are shaped by opposing gravitational forces beyond the seas.

As far as the alleged antisemitism in the conservative movement, I believe that is total bullshit. For the past couple of decades, the left has been the repository of antisemitism as evidenced by their inclusion of radical Islam in their ideological formations. It may seem antithetical, but many Jews are self-loathing progressives who seem to put the emphasis on the progressive part over the Jewish part.

We are about five minutes from the Democrats crying “See! We told you the right were the real Israel haters!” and the media will jump all over that.

Israel, like America and every other nation in the world, is formed from competing interests. There is a political Israel, a military-industrial Israel, a religious Israel, and a social Israel. Each of those have different wants, needs, desires, and objectives and each can face criticism independent of the other. If you believe the political Israel has too much influence over America and is outing Christian Zionists here in America, you can do that without being an antisemite. You can love the Jewish people and still not like their militarism.

It is important to understand that all those different Israels are products of thousands of years of fighting for the very survival of the Jewish people. Look around the Middle East and the countries where Jewish populations once thrived – and now there are no Jews left. That substantiates the fact that for them, every day is a literal battle for existence.

So Christian Zionists or not, I’m inclined to cut them a little slack because, at least for now, my opinion is that Isreal’s interests parallel America’s interests in the region. We can argue to what degree that is true, but it is hard to ignore what destruction would be wrought if Iran became the regional hegemon.

I’ve lost a lot of respect for Tucker Carlson – not that he would give a damn about what I think – for platforming racist bigots like Nick Fuentes or crackpot “historians” like Darrell “Churchill was the Bad Guy” Cooper, people who try to wrap the American flag around their psychoses. My grandaddy told me that when you walk through the feedlots around the barn, you need to be careful not to get cow crap on your shoes because there is a lot of it lying around. Tucker has been taking a lot of strolls around the barn over the past few years and stepped in several piles of bullshit, some of which has stuck to his Sperry Topsiders, some of it was even deep enough to soil the hem of his Orvis khakis.

I get that Tucker is a free speech absolutist - and he is about letting people say what they are thinking – and that is helpful in outing these people so more understand how awful they are but the truth is that I can’t square the circle about Tucker – he has been an Israel supporter for a long time - but him palling around with people like Fuentes and Cooper is no better than Obama palling around with communists and Islamists, so I rely on my own intellect, principles and values to harvest whatever ideas Tucker has that make sense and discard the rest.

I would advise us all to follow that process.

But that is merely a fraction of the conservative side. As a practical matter, you can question Israel’s agenda without being an antisemite the same way you can support Israel without being a Christian Zionist. Israel has become the measure of whether you are a “good” Christian, a “bad” Christian, or even a Christian at all (Mormons are being attacked now as not “real” Christians).

Not for me to judge. The only thing I am master of is my own soul.

We are winning – and not the Charlie Sheen way of “winning”.

Let’s not let winning become a direct path to our defeat.