August 23, 2021
THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:
Tucker Carlson's Unpatriotic Nationalism: Those Americans embracing Victor Orbán and his spirit of "illiberal democracy" are rejecting something fundamentally American. (SHIKHA DALMIA, AUGUST 23, 2021, The Bulwark)
A strange spectacle has been unfolding among some factions of the American right in recent years: The more Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán suspends liberal democracy and turns autocratic, the more they admire him. But Fox News's top-rated host, Tucker Carlson, took matters to a whole new level earlier this month when he declared that he found it "embarrassing to be an American" during a trip to Hungary.In 2008 when Michelle Obama, stumping for her husband's bid to become the Democratic presidential nominee, noted that she was, "for the first time in my adult life . . . really proud of my country," many conservatives went berserk. Rush Limbaugh called her comment "unhinged." The Tennessee Republican Party took out ads featuring Michelle's remark interspersed with interviews with Tennesseans explaining all the ways they're proud of their country.Yet outside of Never Trump circles, no similar outrage ensued among conservatives over Carlson's remark. But it is not their hypocrisy that is worrying but that they seem to have given up on America itself.
Posted by Orrin Judd at August 23, 2021 12:00 AM