It’s a Tie! The debate heats up as Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson vie for the title of The Most Ridiculous Person on TV

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

It’s a close race to the bottom, as the competition heats up. Tucker took the lead, briefly, when he said the vaccine mandate is all about “taking over the military.”

He thinks saving lives has nothing to do with mandating a vaccine to stop a disease that’s already killed 680,000 Americans. Tucker has the inside scoop. He has concluded that the vaccine mandate is really designed to identify “sincere Christians…free thinkers” and “men with high testosterone levels.”

To what end?

According to Tucker, the result of this heinous scheme will be “the takeover of the US military.”

Here’s how it’s going to work. Biden makes the mandate, and those identified above (all of whom, per Tucker’s theory, are not fans of President Biden) will “leave immediately.”

Thousands of military personnel who have sworn to protect their country are just gonna walk away, go AWOL.

This will leave Biden with an entire military subject to his control.

(Side note: Biden is already Commander in Chief. He’s already in charge of the military.)

I was in the Army for four years. I shouldn’t have to tell anybody this, but you don’t get to “leave immediately” when you don’t like something. As for mandating vaccines in the military, I remember getting fifteen shots on the same day in Basic Training. We got vaccinated for every disease in existence, or so it seemed.

They didn’t ask if we wanted them, they marched us to a big stadium, pulled out a huge metal contraption that looked like something an alien might have created and used that to shoot multiple vaccines into each arm via sharp bursts of air. Then they ran us to a field and made us do push-ups. It hurt.

But we sucked it up because we were soldiers. Was Tucker ever a soldier? I think not, because if he thinks a soldier can wander off in a huff when they don’t like an order, or that a single vaccine can “take over the military” he’s delusional.

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Speaking of delusional, that’s where Laura Ingraham comes in, to tie the record for the most ridiculous comment ever made on television.

 “It’s not diversity that makes our country great, it’s freedom.”

It’s not so much the statement that is ridiculous as it is the context.

We have never been less free than we are now and it’s solely due to the actions of the Republican party—her party--the one she defends as if it’s her religion, which I guess it kind of is. 

Laura Ingraham in 2016. Robert Deutsch/USA Today

I just have a few questions for her.

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How are we free when anti-maskers are ripping masks off the faces of people who wish to wear them?

How are we free when doctors and nurses are harassed and threatened for sharing medical information designed to protect us from disease—in other words, when they are punished for doing their job?

How are we free when ignorant Republicans refusing to wear masks or be vaccinated are putting the lives of unvaccinated children and those with pre-existing conditions at risk?

How are we free when our hospitals are so full of Covid patients who refuse to get vaccinated that people dying from heart attacks and car accidents can’t get medical attention?

(What about Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness? How do we achieve that when we’re dead?)

How are we free when medical personnel are forced to work through second, third and fourth waves of this pandemic, working 12 or more hours a day to treat anti-vaxxers who wouldn’t need treatment if they weren’t so fucking self-centered?

How are we free when our election officials are being stalked and threatened for maintaining the integrity of our elections?

How are we free when Republicans in Congress block legislation most of the country wants?

How are we free when women are being denied their Constitutional right to make healthcare decisions about their own bodies?

How are we free when the former president and his followers are still trying to overturn a fair election and force their way to power against the wishes of the American people?

How are we free when voter suppression laws are spreading like wildfire throughout the states?

How are we free when her party’s former president and his cronies threaten violence against anyone who refuses to support him?

How are we free when the only way to avoid having a target on our backs is to comply with the ideas held by a small minority of maniacs like her?

Laura Ingraham claims she values freedom. How can that be when every message, tweet, action, and written word spewed by her party seems aimed at taking away our freedom?

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As Iñigo Montoya said in The Princess Bride “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”

Somebody needs to get that woman a dictionary.

Replacement Theory: Tucker Carlson has a point—he just doesn’t know what it is

 

Photo by Michelle Ding on Unsplash

Tucker Carlson is confused. He thinks Christian White men are supposed to be the ones in charge, get the best jobs, earn the most money. He doesn’t understand that in a true democracy, when the people in charge fail miserably, they get voted out. In a true democracy, dead weight doesn’t get rewarded—so if the White guy isn’t delivering and the Black woman is, the White guy should be fired.

This is what democracy looks like when it works—Tucker thinks that’s what it looks like when it’s broken.

Part of the problem is that we’ve never had a true democracy, so for those of us promoting it, we must rely to some extent on our own imaginations. How might it look? How do we make it happen? What thinking do we need to change to get there?

These are the questions the rest of us are asking. Not Tucker.

Tucker’s world is crumbling around him and he’s afraid. He’s starting to see women and POC getting more respect, earning more money, becoming more integrated into the higher echelons of society and it’s killing him. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be!

He’s trying to stop it, but he should realize you can’t stop something you don’t take the time to understand.

The problem isn’t that wicked liberals are conspiring to replace Christian White men with liberal women, POC, atheists and Jews. It’s that too many powerful Christian White men are woefully lacking in both self-awareness and an understanding of what a real democracy looks like.

They are cancelling themselves with their backward and ignorant rhetoric.

There is no conspiracy—they have failed us. They are going to be replaced because they are not adequate to the task of running our country.

They conveniently ignore the point of “Separation of Church and State,” as they attempt to strip away the right of a mother to choose whether to bring a pregnancy to term. The law guarantees us rights over our own bodies, according to legal precedent set decades ago. While pro-birth activists have the right to practice their own religion, the have no right to force the rest of us to comply with their values.

They are killing their own people by telling them to fight vaccine mandates. When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis threatened to withhold salaries of school officials who defied his prohibition of mask mandates, he had already lost so many of his constituents to Covid, that his entire margin of victory in the race that won him the election was wiped out.

Republicans are destroying any hope they have of holding onto their positions of power. If ever there was a self-fulfilling prophesy, this is it.

Women, POC, and others still in touch with reality and capable of critical thinking skills, have gradually seen incompetent men leave positions of power, both in corporations and in politics. They are being replaced by people who understand democracy and are willing to fight for it. It’s taken a long time, but the momentum is building and now it’s time for the deniers, liars, white supremacists, male dominating, ego-centric, imperialistic-minded men (and their like-minded women), who have trashed the planet and human rights and can’t quite grasp the new reality, to step aside.

Christian White men and women who can keep their religion where it belongs—church & home, not work or politics—and who can accept reality and support others equally, are welcome to join us. But there will be no more coddling.

We need people who can do what’s needed to rebuild our economy, repair our infrastructure, slow climate change and work toward that long-promised “more perfect union.” If you can help us with that, you can be part of it.

Otherwise, you will be replaced. And rightly so.