Though culturally unnerving, I thought it might be spiritually helpful, in an ironic sort of way, to share a few short clips from the American Right, which I unavoidably ran across on Twitter in what seemed like an artillery barrage. Pounding dreck like the following is so rife on Elon Musk's hobbyhorse, no weeding out was needed in selecting these particular gems. They appeared in tight, rapid succession. Just turn on Twitter, and there it is, in all its freakish eccentricity: The American Right.
First we have Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire, an online asylum co-founded by prominent knobtwat Ben Shapiro. (Campbell is with Media Matters.) Walsh also, of course, has his own podcast. In this 1.5-minute clip, he tackles one of the Big Issues of the day: Should Ron DeSantis have eaten pudding with his fingers? Matt fearlessly dives in:
Matt Walsh defends DeSantis eating pudding with this fingers: "I see it as, really a microcosm of what makes him an effective governor in the first place" pic.twitter.com/FujPe5JGbm
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) March 17, 2023
That video is so bizarre, Matt Walsh is so bizarre, I find that no comment is recommended.
Next up is one Michael Knowles, also of the Daily Wire. Here, in two minutes, he urges the resurrection of public crucifixions — or something similarly ghastly.
The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles calls for bringing back public executions: “It would be good because people just don't see death period anymore”https://t.co/NOvqKSiqne pic.twitter.com/jQTCiTZTfm
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) March 17, 2023
Mr. Knowles asserts with unflagging confidence that public executions "would do a lot to bring back the deterrent effect of capital punishment." I would remind him that before England outlawed public hangings in 1868, pickpockets — then subject to that precise penalty — would ply their trade throughout the assembled, gawking crowd.
I also checked "the deterrent effect" on U.S. murder rates when public hangings were a town attraction. The National Academy of Sciences notes that there were "Remarkably high [homicide] rates during ... the mid-19th century, and on contested frontiers and in the late 19th and early 20th century South."
Knowles then flies into a creepy, centrifugal frisson about "death" being one of the four final things: it, judgment, heaven and hell. This is offered as fact. And from it he concludes: "So yeah, public executions would also help us to have a little momento mori" ("remember, you die"). Knowles' preferred method of reminding us is to string someone up in the town square.
This final, 17-second clip is one of Donald Trump trying to outdo Michael Knowles in creepiness:
This dude is ON SOMETHING. pic.twitter.com/YJ8w3KOHaH
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) March 17, 2023
Enough said on that.
Here we have just three of the leading yet dim lights of the American Right — from the Big, Confounding Question of spoonless chocolate pudding to screwing your kids. But I disparage Twitter unfairly. This sort of right-wing "thinking" is hardly confined to that site. It is, rather, the common currency of what passes for intellectualism among America's anti-intellectuals. These people make Bill Buckley's bigoted rants in National Review seem cognitively sophisticated.