TUCKER CARLSON SAYS, "HANDS UP! DON'T SHOOT!"

Tucker Carlson, who kind of reminds one of a WASPy version of Jonah Goldberg (i.e, an amiable, but slightly smarmy persona, who has  through the years inclined towards a generally neoconnish, gatekeeper-esque point of view) has penned a surprisingly interesting and insightful article at Politico.com, well worth checking out.

In the article, entitled "Donald Trump Is Shocking, Vulgar, and Right," Carlson scathingly lambastes the  insularity and hypocrisy of the Washington elite (of whom he is clearly one) for their smug condescension towards, and willful failure to comprehend, the Trump phenomenon.

Perhaps Carlson has had a sincere change of heart, or maybe he senses that soon he and the rest of his "kind" will soon be under the proverbial gun... and he wishes to send an earnest plea to the angry mob about to storm the D.C. Bastille: "My hands are up, don't shoot!"

A sample from the article:

On my street in Northwest Washington, D.C., there’s never been anyone as unpopular as Trump. The Democrats assume he’s a bigot, pandering to the morons out there in the great dark space between Georgetown and Brentwood. The Republicans (those relatively few who live here) fully agree with that assessment, and they hate him even more. They sense Trump is a threat to them personally, to their legitimacy and their livelihoods. Idi Amin would get a warmer reception in our dog park....

On immigration policy, party elders were caught completely by surprise. Even canny operators like Ted Cruz didn’t appreciate the depth of voter anger on the subject. And why would they? If you live in an affluent ZIP code, it’s hard to see a downside to mass low-wage immigration. Your kids don’t go to public school. You don’t take the bus or use the emergency room for health care. No immigrant is competing for your job. (The day Hondurans start getting hired as green energy lobbyists is the day my neighbors become nativists.) Plus, you get cheap servants, and get to feel welcoming and virtuous while paying them less per hour than your kids make at a summer job on Nantucket. It’s all good.

If Trump is leading a populist movement, many of his Republican critics have joined an elitist one. Deriding Trump is an act of class solidarity, visible evidence of refinement and proof that you live nowhere near a Wal-Mart. Early last summer, in a piece that greeted Trump when he entered the race, National Review described the candidate as “a ridiculous buffoon with the worst taste since Caligula.” Virtually every other critique of Trump from the right has voiced similar aesthetic concerns. 

Why is the Party of Ideas suddenly so fixated on fashion and hair? Maybe all dying institutions devolve this way, from an insistence on intellectual rigor to a flabby preoccupation with appearances. It happened in the Episcopal Church, once renowned for its liturgy, now a stop on architectural and garden tours. Only tourists go there anymore.

Read the entirety of the article here.