Ship of Fools

Ship of Fools by Tucker Carlson

Please give a helpful vote to my Amazon review - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1FA7KO0VEKXSZ?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp


This is a worthwhile book for understanding the present moment.

We are in a period of cultural-political crack-up. The conventional wisdom no longer holds. People who we put into one camp or another no longer stay comfortably in their category. Things we rooted for as conservative or liberals, we now abhor.

How did this happen? How does it make sense?

For a young man, Tucker Carlson has been around the movers and shakers of Washington DC for a long time. He is also willing to depart from the conventional wisdom of his tribe to describe things as he sees them which appear to be the way things are.

I find Carlson's perspective interesting and challenging. His current position is a kind of anti-elitist populism. I've been decrying the incompetence of our elites for the last decade. The theme of elite incompetence is the main point of this book, along with the anti-democratic tendencies of our elites - both Republican and Democrat - to ignore the actual concerns of the majority of the American people.

Carlson's perspective makes for interesting reading. For example, despite the fact that Americans have never supported American immigration policies as they have existed. Republicans and Democrats have conspired against the American people for their different reasons. The result has been a populist rebellion leading to the election of Trump, but the elites in their arrogance and incompetence blame anything except their own incompetence.

Carlson's discussion of the Democrat volte face on immigration was fascinating. I had forgotten that the Democrats were the anti-immigration party. I probably never knew that Cesar Chavez sent UFW goons to the border to beat up on Mexicans who are now called “immigrants” but Chavez called “wetbacks.”

Wow!

Of course, the Republicans were no better, favoring unlimited immigration in order to lower business costs.

A theme of Carlson's book is his regret that Democrats are no longer liberals. Once they could have been relied on to stand for the middle and working class by arguing against the reduction of their income through unlimited immigration. Once they could have been counted on to argue in favor of free speech. Once they could have been counted on to demand due process in all cases.

Now, not so much, which means that they join the Republicans, who were never strong in those areas, to expand the power of the state and undermine the middle class.

Ironic.

Carlson's point seems very conservative - he wants Democrats to return to being Democrats because the country was well-served by principled disagreement, rather than by a Democrat party that appeals to feelings and views America as a problem to be handled through the replacement of its population.

This is an informative book.

I recommend it.