(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Tucker Carlson did not grow a conscience! Do not give him the benefit of the doubt. Or Matt Walsh. [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2023-05-05

Just three days ago, it became common knowledge that Tucker Carlson sent a text message to one of his producers in the days following January 6th. In fact, it was sent the very next day. The text was part of the raft of information redacted in the Dominion defamation case to avoid public scrutiny. It was later leaked and is now available to all.

Since the news broke, I’ve encountered at least two people here at DKos who are more than willing to chalk what Carlson said to remorse, regret, or some sort of internal growth process. This is exactly mistaken, dangerously wrong. The text wasn’t self-reflection. It was self-deception.

The text message shows Carlson admitting to watching a video where three persons assault another, and Carlson describes the emotions and feelings coursing through him as he took in the scene:

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?

(New York Times, “ Carlson’s Text That Alarmed Fox Leaders: ‘It’s Not How White Men Fight’ ,” May 2, 2023)

Now, I’m no psychologist. My background is, however, grounded in social science, and I have devoted much time toward understanding psychology and social psychology in general, including psychopathology.

When I first read Carlson’s text, I was immediately struck by the language he chose. First he goes for the visceral—he’s describing the assault as though it were a prize fight in a boxing ring, where maybe he even has money riding on the thing. Otherwise, why does he have such an enormous reaction?

He talks about how he wants the victim to experience real damage, that he wants the victim killed. In fact, he could taste it.

Taste was the word that stood out to me, and that’s still the main driver as to why I believe that Tucker inadvertently revealed something about himself of which he had no idea of the significance.

The insula is where taste imagery is generated. It’s an ancient gray matter part of the brain that corresponds to all visceral sensation, and it’s been adapted with the advent of the neocortex to incorporate visceral sensations into social imagery. So when someone says, “That left a bad taste in my mouth,” that’s where that metaphor is arising in the brain. (Other body metaphors such as “That news was a punch in the gut” or “That voice was like nails on a chalkboard” are also translations that work through the “interpreter” of the insula.)

So it’s significant that Tucker acknowledged that the visual imagery that he saw in the video evoked taste. He felt that sensation bodily—it was not a feeling that he was contemplating abstractly. The bloodlust he felt fully registered for him.

It’s here that Tucker pivots from his own sensations. He begins observing himself, putting psychological distance between what he’d just confessed with what he knows, in a moralistic sense, what he should have felt.

But note that doesn’t mean he actually feels these things now. He remains aloof from his own body. He doesn’t express remorse or regret, only that he knows that he should have responded differently.

This type of self-speech received a thorough examination by David Shapiro in his essay “On the Psychology of Self-Deception,” a fantastic read. Mr. Shapiro describes the contours of self-deceptive speech and how it differs from normal speech (held by two persons in discourse, in a circuit):

This kind of speech is unusual in several respects. Above all, it does not seem to have the communicative aims one ordinarily assumes of speech. Its aim is not so much to communicate with the listener as to affect the speaker himself. ✂️ There is another characteristic of this kind of speech, noticeable to the listener, which seems to confirm its essentially noncommunicative nature. When the speaker says, "I know I did the right thing!" or some such, with an exaggerated emphasis, one does not have a sense of being addressed. … His attention seems inward, in the way of someone listening to himself, like a person who is practicing a speech. ✂️ At the moment of self-deception, the person who deceives himself cannot consider the situation before him in the ordinary objective way. He is driven instead, by his relationship with himself, to show something, to prove or disprove something, to feel something or be something, in relation to that situation. The formulations which he produces are not expressions of what he feels or believes in regard to that situation. They are discomfort dispelling formulas. It is for this reason that these utterances are so often self-reflexive ("I feel . . . ," "I think . . . ," "I know. . . ," "I hate . . . ").

As I put it elsewhere, Tucker shoulds upon himself. This is how he effects distance, and at least one other observer, A. O. Scott of the New York Times, noted this stance, too. It’s here that we can see this two-step occurring, where Tucker is considering himself as an object, someone who should perform in this moral way but does not.

He’s lying to himself, out loud, in front of another person.

Shapiro goes on to say:

[S]elf-deception is identified as a regular, probably central, symptom of all psychopathology.

So if we needed confirmation that what Tucker communicated is far outside of the norm and in fact into abnormal territory, we have it here.

So, in essence, Tucker gives us the two sides of his inner coin: the visceral, plugged-in self that takes in the world in a rather ravenous fashion; and the cool, distant, self-examining viewpoint that criticizes and admonishes the self. There is a gulf between them. It is there in that gulf that we see the missing person, the gap that defines Tucker’s apparent sociopathy.

And don’t take just my word for it. Look at Carlson’s language itself:

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?

Make no mistake: the text message is proof positive that Tucker Carlson is depraved and disturbed. It’s a window into his inner world that we never had before. He has real problems if the reward centers in his brain lit up at the sight of live violence.

And none of what I’ve mentioned here has to do with his fully demonstrated racism.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/5/2167635/-Tucker-Carlson-did-not-grow-a-conscience-Please-do-not-give-him-the-benefit-of-the-doubt

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/