I received today an email sent to alert readers to the danger posed by Tucker Carlson, described as “the most dangerous demagogue since Donald Trump.” The notice focused on Carlson’s espousal of the “white replacement theory.” The theory is absurd, but it is a dandy BIG LIE that can delight xenophobes and racists by giving them a reason for their misdirected resentments and will increase those resentments very considerably.

Tucker Carlson calls to mind a remark by, if I remember correctly, Albert the Alligator: “That’s what you gets when you invites a pig into the parlor.” It is Carlson’s porcine qualities that give him so great an appeal with the “Trump base.” They feel that he is no better than they are and so will not “look down” upon them. The perception that he is “no better than they are” is created by his assuming a persona not unlike the persona assumed by people like Trump or Josh Hawley: down-home, good-old-boy, old-timey, straight talk masking vast cynicism and overweening ambition.