Carlson - Ship of Fools

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Free Press

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Copyright 2018 by Tucker Carlson

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Free Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Free Press hardcover edition October 2018

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Interior design by Lewelin Polanco

Jacket design by Tom Mckeveny

Jacket illustration by Gary Locke / Wilson Creat Ives Group Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Carlson, Tucker, author.

Title: Ship of fools : how a selfish ruling class is bringing America to the brink of revolution / Tucker Carlson.

Description: First Free Press hardcover edition. | New York, NY : Free Press, 2018.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018032028 (print) | LCCN 2018037852 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501183683 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501183669 (hardback)

Subjects: LCSH: Elite (Social sciences)United States. | Political cultureUnited States. | Right and left (Political science)United States. | United StatesPolitics and government2017 | BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / Conservatism & Liberalism. | HUMOR / Topic / Political.

Classification: LCC HN90.E4 (ebook) | LCC HN90.E4 C37 2018 (print) | DDC 305.5/2dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032028

ISBN 978-1-5011-8366-9

ISBN 978-1-5011-8368-3 (ebook)

For Susie

I magine youre a passenger on a ship. Youre in the middle of the ocean, weeks from land. No matter what happens, you cant get off. This doesnt bother you because there are professional sailors in charge. They know what theyre doing. The ship is steady and heading in the right direction. Youre fine.

Then one day you realize that something horrible has happened. Maybe there was a mutiny overnight. Maybe the captain and first mate fell overboard. Youre not sure. But its clear the crew is in charge now and theyve gone insane. They seem grandiose and aggressive, maybe drunk. Theyre gorging on the ships stores with such abandon its obvious there wont be enough food left for you. You cant tell them this because theyve banned acknowledgment of physical reality. Anyone who points out the consequences of what theyre doing gets keelhauled.

Most terrifying of all, the crew has become incompetent. They have no idea how to sail. Theyre spinning the ships wheel like theyre playing roulette and cackling like mental patients. The boat is listing, taking on water, about to sink. Theyre totally unaware that any of this is happening. As waves wash over the deck, theyre awarding themselves majestic new titles and raising their own salaries. You look on in horror, helpless and desperate. You have nowhere to go. Youre trapped on a ship of fools.

Plato imagined this scene in The Republic . He never mentions what happened to the ship. It would be nice to know. What was written as an allegory is starting to feel like a documentary, as generations of misrule threaten to send our country beneath the waves. The people who did it dont seem aware of what theyve done. They dont want to know, and they dont want you to tell them. Facts threaten their fantasies. And so they continue as if what theyre doing is working, making mistakes and reaping consequences that were predictable even to Greek philosophers thousands of years before the Internet. Theyre fools. The rest of us are their passengers.

Why did America elect Donald Trump? It seems like a question the people in charge might ask. Virtually nobody thought that Trump could become president. Trump himself had no idea. For much of the race, his critics dismissed Trumps campaign as a marketing ploy. Initially it probably was.

Yet somehow Trump won. Why? Donald Trump isnt the sort of candidate youd vote for lightly. His voters meant it. Were they endorsing Trump as a man? His personal decency? His command of policy? His hairstyle? Did millions of Americans see his Access Hollywood tape and think, Finally, a candidate who speaks for me? Probably not.

Donald Trump was in many ways an unappealing figure. He never hid that. Voters knew it. They just concluded that the options were worseand not just Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, but the Bush family and their donors and the entire Republican leadership, along with the hedge fund managers and media luminaries and corporate executives and Hollywood tastemakers and think tank geniuses and everyone else who created the world as it was in the fall of 2016: the people in charge.

Trump might be vulgar and ignorant, but he wasnt responsible for the many disasters Americas leaders created. Trump didnt invade Iraq or bail out Wall Street. He didnt lower interest rates to zero, or open the borders, or sit silently by as the manufacturing sector collapsed and the middle class died. You couldnt really know what Trump might do as president, but he didnt do any of that.

There was also the possibility that Trump might listen. At times he seemed interested in what voters thought. The people in charge demonstrably werent. Virtually none of their core beliefs had majority support from the population they governed. It was a strange arrangement for a democracy. In the end, it was unsustainable.

Trumps election wasnt about Trump. It was a throbbing middle finger in the face of Americas 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 dont 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, Americas ruling class withdrew into a defensive crouch. Beginning on election night, they explained away their loss with theories as pat and implausible as a summer action movie:

Trump won because fake news tricked simple minded voters.

Trump won because Russian agents hacked the election.