Tucker, Vladimir, and Cultural Vindication.

February 19, 2024.

Introduction. Despite the headline, I'm not going to spend a great deal of time on Tucker's view of the Moscow subway system or his take on food prices over there.

I will simply note that I found the whole thing embarrassingly naive and move on to my theme, which is how

cultural vindication works.

But lest I be accused of leaving Tucker out in the cold, I also want to note that many of the

responses to him are also in need of the same correction.

What is actually being said?

When the journalist Lincoln Stephens visited Russia in 1919 and he said, I have seen the future and

it works, he had not actually seen the future. What he had done was to use

his own ideology as a projector and utilizing his criticisms of his own country for a power source,

he projected the whole thing onto a screen.

And he did see that.

Some think Tucker Carlson is being the same kind of chump as Stephens was being.

I don't think this is actually accurate, although there is a bit of overlap.

Tucker is ostensibly pointing at certain good things in Russia,

but what he is actually talking about is the United States. And I would want to argue that while his points about

Russia are simply ridiculous, his critical assumptions about what is happening here are on point.

And I would say that Lincoln's observations were ridiculous in both directions.

For example, someone might visit the Moscow subway and report back that, unlike on the New York subway system, they felt entirely safe.

They traveled from one stop to another without ever once fearing for their lives.

Yeah, the reply might come. That is because you were not handing out

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