Lost Norms, Flipped Meanings, and the General Derangement of American Political Discourse

further thoughts on the vicious evil of that monster tucker carlson

In 2001, I was a nominal infantryman assigned to some exceptionally tedious duty at Fort Benning, Georgia. That spring, the Chief of Staff of the United States Army decided to symbolically make the whole army feel elite by changing the uniform and putting everyone into the black beret that had been unique to the Ranger battalions. See, now you have a special hat, so morale and esprit de corps and stuff.

And America’s enemies quivered in terror

Because I was in the infantry, surrounded all day every day by infantrymen, I can report the absolutely rock-solid consensus in the combat arms branches with complete confidence: we wondered why we were being led by idiots.¹ Quietly, but not quietly enough, we said things like, “See, the lethality of a combat force is tied directly to the quality of its fashion design.” A series of impromptu briefings and formal training sessions reminded us that we were not allowed to express open contempt for our senior leaders, so shut up about the dumbassery with the berets.

In retrospect, I think history shows us that new hats really were the most pressing challenge facing the American military as we rolled into the summer of 2001, but whatever.

So Politico, the most reliably wrong publication in the history of the known universe, reports this week that the Department of Defense is rejoicing that Tucker Carlson has been driven off of Fox News.

See, Tucker Carlson was an authoritarian, a Trumpian protofascist. For example, he criticized the leadership of the military, who therefore rejoiced in his departure. Anti-authoritarianism, on the other hand, is when the leaders of the armed forces have a hand in shaping the culture and deciding who’s allowed to speak in the public sphere. Fascism is open discourse, so we need the military to say who should be on television so we can have freedom.

Anyway, the reason the Pentagon is happy to see Tucker Carlson go is that he hates women, and pay close attention to all of the narrative choices here:

From maternity flight suits to diversity policies to Ukraine aid, the military was a favorite punching bag for Tucker Carlson….

Most memorably, Carlson’s remarks disparaging female service members in March 2021 prompted a rare rebuke from then-Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby.

After President Joe Biden announced new efforts to recruit and keep women in the service — including designing new body armor, updating requirements for hairstyles and the nominations of two female generals to become combatant commanders — at a White House ceremony, Carlson accused the commander in chief of making a “mockery” of the troops.

“So, we’ve got new hairstyles and maternity flight suits. Pregnant women are going to fight our wars. It’s a mockery of the U.S. military,” he said.

In response, Kirby took a rare swipe at the Fox News host.

“What we absolutely won’t do is take personnel advice from a talk show host or the Chinese military,” Kirby said during a briefing with reporters, adding that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “shares the revulsion” of others who criticized Carlson’s remarks.

The comments yielded another rarity: The Pentagon’s in-house news service published an article focused entirely on the dust-up: “Press Secretary Smites Host That Dissed Diversity in U.S. Military.”

See, it’s good when the military “smites” civilian critics and expresses “revulsion” for them. In fascist countries, critics of the military are just allowed to speak freely. The culture has gone full Alice In Wonderland, and freedom is compliance.

But then take the claim that Tucker Carlson was “disparaging female service members” when he discussed the military focus on hair and maternity flight suits. “So we’ve got new hairstyles,” he said. Scroll back to the top and compare this specific piece of derision to what soldiers said in the army when we switched to new hats: is it about women?

Love it or hate it, the function of the military is lethality. We have armed forces to kill enemies. Mocking a focus on hairstyles and maternity suits is a comment on the degree to which an institution has lost focus on its core function, full stop. “Pregnant women are going to fight our wars” is about the combat focus of a combat institution, not a claim that girls are yucky.

So every piece of the Politico analysis is wrong: the military can’t be criticized, military officials are brave and righteous for attacking critics and narrowing the public sphere, and the view that the military exists for the purpose of delivering organized violence is mean to women. They set poor interpretation on a foundation of false fact claims, then pile weird premises and dumb principles on top of an already broken narrative structure.

They can’t even aim their manufactured controversy in a vaguely American direction. Hell yeah, the military is attacking its critics! Suck on that, fascists!

1. See also the switch from BDUs and ACUs.