Dakota Beacon

Summertime is outdoor time. Still, there is plenty of time to read. Idle conversation might lead to the rare question “So, what are you reading?” Don’t be caught short.

My recommendation may resonate with many readers. I recently read “Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution” by Tucker Carlson, (New York: Free Press), 2018. Yes, this is the same Tucker Carlson who hosts the Tucker Carlson Tonight show on the Fox News Channel. His background includes hosting shows on CNN, MSNBC, and PBS. In 2010 he co-founded The Daily Caller, a conservative news website based in Washington, DC.

His book’s title is a nice play on words – ship of state – with the fools being the ruling class. His message comes from the heart and is held by many people but articulated by few. Like Donald Trump, he stands in opposition to the political/media ruling class.

From the dust jacket: “Carlson tells the story of the new American elites, a group whose power and wealth has grown beyond imagination even as the rest of the country has withered. The people who run America now barely interact with it. They fly on their own planes, ski on their own mountains, and watch sporting events far from the stands in skyboxes. They have total contempt for you.

 “They view America the way a private equity firm sizes up an aging conglomerate,” Carlson writes, “as something outdated they can profit from. When it fails, they’re gone.”

Carlson’s message has a unique succinctness in his use of words and cut-to-the-chase arguments. His no-holds-barred rips into our new “overlords” as he terms the elite. As most people understand, the old-time liberals of yesteryear are long gone. In their place are the globalists wearing masks of identity politics. As Carlson puts it, “They’ll outsource your job while lecturing you about transgender bathrooms. Left and right are no longer meaningful categories in America. The rift is between those who benefit from the status quo, and those who do not.”

Because of his concise and pithy use of words, it is best to let Carlson speak for himself in his own voice. From the introduction: “Trump’s election wasn’t about Trump. It was a throbbing middle finger in the face of America’s ruling class. It was a gesture of contempt, a howl of rage, the end result of decades of selfish and unwise decisions made by selfish and unwise leaders. Happy countries don’t elect Donald Trump president. Desperate ones do.”

 “In retrospect, the lesson seemed obvious: Ignore voters for long enough and you get Donald Trump. Yet the people at whom the message was aimed never received it. Instead of pausing, listening, thinking, and changing, America’s ruling class withdrew into a defensive crouch.”

Of the seven chapters in the book, six deal with specific topics such as foreign escapades, political correctness, immigration, feminism, and environmentalism to name a few. The tech world also comes in for its well-deserved fair share of derision.

My favorite chapter was Chapter 4, “Shut Up, They Explained.” Donald Trump did not turn the American public against the media. The media did that to themselves a long time ago. The press, the elected members of Congress and the White House, and the unelected bureaucracy form a loose cabal of serious magnitude.

To quote from Carlson’s chapter, “If you are going to run a country for the benefit of the few, it is dangerous to let the people complain about it. The only way to impose unpopular policies on a population is through fear and silence. Free Speech is the enemy of authoritarian rule.” He continues later in the chapter. “Journalists had become handmaidens to power. Most of them despised Donald Trump and his party….But the main reason the press lost interest in holding the permanent government accountable is that they had more in common with its members than the rest of the country….The people in power are the neighbors and former classmates of the members of the press. On the most basic level the two have become indistinguishable.”

Carlson concludes his hard-nosed chronicle in his epilogue. “There are two ways to end this cycle [between those who benefit from the status quo and those who do not]. The quickest is to suspend democracy. If your voters can’t reach responsible conclusions, you can’t let them vote….The other solution to the crisis is simpler: attend to the population. Think about what they want….If the majority is worried about something, listen. Give them back some of their power.”

Now there is a blinding flash of the obvious. Ship of Fools is a must-read book.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).