F**king Mondays: The Insufferable A**holes

Jordan Peterson, Tucker Carlson, and the Tweet of the week!

Welcome to a more sweary than normal edition of “F**king Mondays!”

In the roundup this week:

Jordan Peterson: The art of insufferable assholishness

When he’s not crying (literally) over liberals trying to get "revenge against God for the crime of Being," Jordan Peterson now spends most of his days composing anti-woke poetry on Twitter:

Peterson’s brutalist free versing appears to be some sort of attempt to make his musings more forceful and masculine. To his fans this is further proof that he is a powerful “antidote” to the “chaos” of women/minorities having their own opinions etc. To the rest of the world, Peterson’s poetry just looks like the rantings of sad, deeply disturbed middle aged man incapable of controlling his increasingly erratic impulses.

Peterson recently lost his legal challenge over the College of Psychologists of Ontario’s directive “to undergo a social media training program to keep his license to practice psychology in the province.”

Peterson argued that his incendiary Twitter activity and political commentary was not under the CPO’s purview. An Ontario court rejected Peterson’s argument with the presiding judge telling Peterson that “the decision of the Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committee (ICRC) adequately and reasonably considered Dr. Peterson’s statements in the context of the College’s statutory mandate to regulate the profession in the public interest.”

Peterson is using this as yet further proof that there is a sinister globalist conspiracy to undermine free speech and has been busy martyring himself on Twitter with a crowd funding grift and….you guessed it, more poetry:

Unfortunately this is now what public discourse looks like as people hurl offensive memes and bastardized haikus at each other over a billionaires private social media network. Peterson has the Elon Musk stamp of approval too, so unfortunately we’ll be seeing a lot more of his poetry in the near future.

Good Christian Tucker Carlson loves Hungary

In Republican lore, you must never bad mouth the United States to another country. That is unless your country is run by a Democrat — then you can travel the world and tell people America is a sissified nation of degenerate welfare junkies:

As Newsweek reported:

Right-wing political commentator Tucker Carlson delivered a speech in Budapest apologizing on behalf of the United States over U.S. ambassador David Pressman's critique of the country's latest anti-LGBTQ+ crackdown.

Conservatives such as Carlson tout Hungary as an example of a successful right-wing government, but human rights watchers have raised concerns about democratic backsliding under the rule of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

The pro- Putin Orbán has been moving Hungary steadily towards a dictatorship since taking power in 2010. As Foreign Policy reported in 2022, Orbán and his cronies have not only made multiple amendments to Hungary’s constitution and changed election laws, but:

undermined the independent judiciary, hollowed out the media, targeted minorities, and siphoned European Union funds. According to the nongovernmental organization Freedom House’s 2022 report, Hungary is only “partly free”—the only EU member state to fall into the category shared with India, Pakistan, Serbia, and others.

Tucker Carlson and the GOP are huge fans of Orbánism and have made emulating his style of governing a key part of their strategy for 2024. As Axios reported in May of this year:

The far-right populism of Hungary’s prime minister is helping to inspire U.S. Republicans' agenda for 2024, a game plan that targets immigration, LGBTQ rights and — at least for some — the war in Ukraine.

Carlson’s apology tour is part of what seems to be a highly coordinated strategy heading into 2024. Ron DeSantis has met with Orbán allies, and Orban himself spoke at CPAC this year where he told the audience that liberals "hate me and slander me and my country as they hate you and slander you."

Carlson has about as much interest in Hungary as he does the Hells Angels, but he sees the nation of 9.7 million people as being of great strategic importance. Why? Because Orbán is a thorn in the EU’s side and supportive of Vladimir Putin. The new fascist (MAGA) wing of the GOP despises the European project and wants to break it and NATO apart. The more power and influence Hungary has in Europe they calculate, the more likely Orbánism can spread.

Right wing governments are already threatening to destabilize Europe, but Orbán’s brand of fascism is particularly appealing to the MAGA crowd. Hungary has the potential to play an outsized role in Europe due to its geographical and cultural position and is emerging as a bridge between Western and Eastern Europe. Hungary supports NATO while remaining friendly with Russia, and routinely defies the EU. With support from Republicans, Orbán can gain more leverage in Europe, and if Trump is elected in 2024, his power will grow immensely when talks with Putin begin.

Carlson sees all of this and wants to expedite the process. Because there’s nothing more Christian than supporting dictators, persecuting the LGBTQ community, and ensuring Ukraine loses against a brutal tyrant.

Tweet of the week

I’m spending far less time on Twitter than ever before, but stick around for accounts like the satirical NYT Pitchbot account. Case in point:

The University of Facebook

This is over a year old but doing the rounds on social media again as we head into a new Covid season. It’s brilliant and painfully accurate:

See you next week!

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