Earlier this week, Tucker Carlson spoke for 30 minutes at the RiskOn360 Global Success Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. In that relatively short talk, he looked with foreboding to 2024.
“I’m just telling you, once again, what you already know, which is — this is going to be — the next year is gonna be, I think — I’d bet my house on it — really like nothing we’ve ever seen in the country, and everyone can kinda feel that,” Carlson told the audience.
At the same time, however, Carlson offered a remedy for the anxiety — a remedy, in fact, that would have appealed to the great 19th-century abolitionist-turned-civil-rights-leader, Frederick Douglass.
In our present “volatile moment,” Carlson acknowledged that everyone has good reason to feel “angry and paranoid.”
In fact, when he posted his speech to the social media platform X on Tuesday, Carlson emphasized the role of intuition in understanding the situation we face.
“Always trust your gut. If you feel like they’re lying to you, they are,” the former Fox News host tweeted.
WARNING: The following video contains language that some may find offensive.
Always trust your gut. If you feel like they’re lying to you, they are. pic.twitter.com/zkKYtRUbrf
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 21, 2023
Carlson then spent several minutes summarizing and trying to make sense of current events.
For instance, everyone can see that President Joe Biden has suffered cognitive decline. Thus, a “cartel” of sorts runs the White House while the president serves as a figurehead.
Meanwhile, every time the cartel indicts and arrests former President Donald Trump, the former president becomes more popular. This means that the cartel members are “desperate” to get rid of Trump, and they neither know nor care what ordinary Americans think.
It feels ominous.
“All I know for a fact is that this can’t be resolved in an orderly way. And it won’t be. Period,” Carlson said.
Instead of offering specific predictions, however, Carlson encouraged his audience to think clearly about the situation we face.
He explained, for instance, that we should not even think in political terms. This moment has nothing to do with the ordinary give-and-take of politics.
“What’s happening is bad behavior for its own sake,” Carlson said.
This brought him nearer to the heart of the matter.
Bad behavior often involves sins, like greed or lust. While we would not approve of those sins, we at least understand why human beings succumb to those particular temptations.
The present moment, however, involves something far more sinister: an active detestation of all truth and a corresponding devotion to every demonstrable falsehood.
“It takes a very rare person to lie in the way that we’re being lied to, and it takes a very rare moment to see lying at this scale,” Carlson said.
“But the final fact that makes this moment different is that they’re not just lying. They hate the truth,” he added.
The people who govern us hate the truth. Thus, they cultivate an atmosphere in which people only tolerate lies.
Here Carlson ventured into territory that Douglass once described with such clarity.
Born on a plantation in Maryland, Douglass escaped to the North as a young man in 1838. He then wrote multiple autobiographies, trying to explain slavery to those who had never experienced it.
In short, lies sustained slavery. For instance, many white Southerners considered their slaves happy. After all, when a stranger of any description appeared on a plantation and asked a slave about the master or mistress’ treatment toward him or her, the slave always replied that he or she had the kindest master or mistress in the world.
Of course, slaves had little choice but to answer that way. Slave masters had been known to hire informants and root out potential troublemakers from among the slaves. Those who told the truth risked being sold to a distant sugar plantation — away from family and friends forever. Stories of such sales circulated in Maryland and no doubt elsewhere.
Thus, as Douglass explained it, compelling a person to lie constituted a central feature of the master-slave relationship.
Carlson amplified this message.
“I think the only way to stay alive and fully human in a moment like this is to resolve that you are going to tell the truth in every and all circumstances,” Carlson said.
Indeed, “you should never allow yourself to repeat anything that you know is not true. That will destroy you. That is the mark, not of a free man, or a citizen, but of a slave.”
In short, everyone has good reason to look forward to 2024 with intense anxiety. Demonic forces — those that prefer lies to truth and demand that you do the same — sincerely wish you harm.
Happily, the antidote lies in speaking truth at all costs, for truth always comes from God.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
