Tucker Carlson's Speech On How America Is Going Wrong

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/tucker-carlsons-galvanizing-speech/


This is an interesting speech to give.  Carlson, apparently upset by Mitt Romney's disagreement with Donald Trump's behavior, basically goes after the Rich Wing of the Republican Party and states that the only way to a happier and healthier America is the abandonment of tax cuts and wars and finding some way to increase pay for men, particularly for men in rural areas.

The part of the speech that is getting criticized is the call for women to stop working so much, go back to making less money than men, and (for God sake) please stop having kids out of wedlock.  Do like the wealthy do -- get married first and only then have kids. 

The difficulty with this approach is that it lumps in every sort of person into the category of "single parenthood is bad."  Is a woman who makes $200,000 and who has never been married going to be a worse parent than a "2 parent family" where one works, or neither works, or both cannot afford daily necessities for themselves or the child?  Certainly not.  And if you have a child out of wedlock, is that worse than the person who has a child in wedlock and then divorces when the child is 5-8-10 years old?  We know that 50% of marriages end in divorce.  We also know that many middle-income and lower-income non-custodial parents do not pay their child support.  How is that child better off?

I think that what Tucker Carlson is really describing is the lower-middle-class or poor 16-22 year old woman who gets pregnant by an acquaintance and decides to have the child and not give it up for adoption.  Yes, that generally ends poorly because the child lacks both attention and money.  This is the worst of al worlds. 

But Carlson uses the terrible results of this sort of relationship/condition to justify his position that women should stop making so much more than men -- since these men are not marriage material, and the wealthy women just have a kid on their own.  Again, I refuse to believe that a child raised by an affluent single mom is generally in a worse situation than a child raised in a divorced family, a family where a parent dies, or any of a number of abusive two-parent families.  I guess we could see the data, but you'd have to convince me that is true.

I'd like to say one last thing on that topic.  I grew up in a lily white county in western NY.  In the 1970s and early 80s, we were #1 in NY in per capita teen pregnancy.  #1.  And 90% of the teen preganancy was due to poor to lower middle class guys having sex with poor to middle class women.  It had nothing whatsoever to do with these teenagers seeing men as unworthy of marriage.  They lived a shitty life, they wanted something to do, they had unprotected sex.  We also know that out of wedlock pregnancies exist in poor urban areas where a majority of the population has never had any decent job.  So to blame women having kids out of wedlock on men having fewer manufacturing jobs seems like an awful stretch.

Anyway - Tucker Carlson's other points are rather weird ones for a Republican to be making:  1) Mitt Romney doesn't get taxed enough; 2) the tax code favors the wealthy, 3) government should do something to make sure working men get fair wages (he really doesn't say what, other than to say he opposes socialism or libertarianism). 
; and 4) we should stop waging foreign wars.

The Republican Party, as long as I have been alive (since 1964) has done everything in its power to defeat every single one of these things.  It is the party of huge tax cuts, huge favors for the wealthy, union busting, and endless foreign wars.  Every truly wealthy person I know is a Republican.  Every one.  There are some people who are worth $1-2M who hang in there as Democrats, but the people I know who are worth $5-500M are all GOP, and strong GOP.  I have attended conventions where these people gather.  The things I have heard just absolutely shock me.  I attended one presentation where the presenter bragged that he had convinced a group of minimum wage workers that their wages should never go up or they would all be fired.  He had them fill out form letters to send to their elected representatives arguing that any increased wages would cost them all their jobs.  I know people who make $10M a year and yet fight a $1 minimum wage increased because (they say) it would "bankrupt" them.  Again, these are all Republicans. 

The things that most help raise wages for the bottom rung of wage earners are 1) unionization, 2) minimum wage increases.  The GOP opposes these as if they were a bill to endorse widespread  introduction of The Plague.   So, exactly what Republican position is the GOP going to take that would make it so the white male in Lewiston, Maine who Carlson cares so much about can make more money?  Well, he needs givernment "help."  What is that?  That is unclear.  But we know that Carlson can no longer stand a world in which the millions of people who live in NYC and LA get more done for them than the 40,000 people who live in Wyoming County, NY. 

This seems an unbelievably odd position for anyone (Democrat or Republican) to take.  As someone from the sticks, I realized early on in my life that if I wanted to make something of myself that I needed to 1) do well in school, 2) get higher edication, and 3) take advantage of any scholarships or loans that favored me.  Then I had to move to a growing area where jobes were plentiful and my acquired knowledge would be worth money.

I was born into a family that made about $25-40,000 during my K-12 years.  My parents had five kids. That was my life.  I had a better life than 98% of people I knew where I grew up.  But that was not a life I wanted for myself.  I wanted out.  Everyone knew that, and many people sneered at that idea, that I was not content with my place in life and did not want to stick around and make the best of the area where I grew up.  But I really could not see myself ever being that person.  I got scholarships, I borrrowed money, I left.

I cannot accept, then or now, that as a lower-tier economic person I had some obligation to stay in a rural area where no one made any money.  While I am fully 100% aware of the derogatory manner in which city people treat rural people, and it sucks, I would never, as an educated person, suggest that the government owes my 40,000 person county the attention that it owes the 30,000,000 people in metro L.A. and NYC.  Carlson's suggestion that the person in a rural area should be given a greater chance than the people in areas close to jobs and industry is nonsensical.  It is like someone saying that 5'8" white guys from rural areas need a chance at the NBA, not just the much taller and more athletic players found almost entirely in the city and surrounding suburbs. 

So, if what Tucker Carlson is suggesting is that men need higher wages and more manufacturing jobs, he needs to support unions, increased minimum wage laws, and government requirements upon industries to keep and create jobs.  None of these are Republican positions.  If he wants tax increases on Bain Capital, that is a VERY easy fix.  There are under 20,000 people who game the system that way.  They have 20,000 votes.  If you pass a law, there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop it.  Again, the GOP under Trump passed an enormous tax cut.  Had they wanted to pass an enormous tax INCREASE on the super welathy and private equity companies, they could have done that in a snap of their fingers.  They did not, nor will they ever.

While I agree that the Poor Wing of the GOP should draw more attention from elected reprsentatives than the Rich Wing of the GOP, the only attention that Wing has received is tacit or not-so-tacit support for their rampant racism, and maybe a bone thrown to them for reduced sentences for opiod crimes.  Great.  Where are the jobs promised to these poor unfortunate rural white guys?  There are none.  And Tucker Carlson's proposal appears to be that we get General Motors to build plants it doesn't need in poor white rural areas......hiring only men.  Therefore, the guys I went to high school with, who had sired three children by the time they were 23, will now suddenly be deemed to be desirable target for marriage.  Their wives will agree to stay home and not work, and the world that has sucked since the steel industry went under in 1977 will suddenly srping to a glorius life. 

(Or else the company will pay them $10/hour, no benefits, and the sole shareholder will make $300,000,000 and ship their jobs to Mexico when they unionize.  One or the other.).