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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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Should we just forget people’s utter hypocrisy? That’s the so-what. In my opinion, Tucker Carlson has been one of the handful of the top most norms-damaging individuals in the United States over the past 5 years. He has shown he is a liar and not trustworthy, so why should we take anything he says now at face value?

Nobody actually cares about people's utter hypocrisy. I have been extremely consistent in my belief that any news organisation or political figure which advocated in favour of the Iraq war permanently destroyed their reputation and legitimacy. The Trump years were full of the same - a mixture of both blatant falsehoods and artful deceptions. Nothing Carlson did even comes close to the WMD case, or the outright lies given professional gloss during the Biden Laptop saga.

That said, if you want to start holding media figures and organisations to account for peddling falsehoods and lies, I'm right there with you - as long as that's your actual motivation rather than some kind of partisan concern.

To Tucker’s credit, he loudly and publicly says “I fucked up on Iraq and it is my biggest mistake.”

Maybe there are others but I think most media just move along. I appreciated that he owned his failure. Maybe it’s an act but he seems to have really taken it to heart. He was probably the only person on Fox that criticized Trump over Solemni (sp?). He was probably the only person on Fox at the start of the Ukraine war to pump the brakes. Maybe it doesn’t come from a well thought out place but being burned on Iraq seems to have made him reflexively against any foreign entanglements.