The Dumbing Down Of Right-Wing America

Tucker Carlson pretends to be a mildly brain-damaged dog watching a magic trick. But he's really doing something else.

by Justin Rosario

When I was a child back in the distant past of the 1970s and early 80s, I started to dumb myself down for the benefit of the kids around me. I was a total nerd back when being a nerd was very very bad. Almost a mortal offense. Even as popular as 1984’s “Revenge of the Nerds” was, it would take decades for the stigma to fade (and let’s be honest, it still really hasn’t). 

By the time I was in 3rd or 4th grade, I had started using smaller words so the kids around me wouldn’t be confused or annoyed. I stopped talking about complicated science concepts, even science fiction because if it wasn’t something easy to understand like “pew pew pew” laser guns, other kids rolled their eyes and threw out the dreaded “nerd” label.

I did a lot of damage to myself with this performative ignorance, but I didn’t know any better. I know better now, which makes watching the professional right dumb itself down that much harder to swallow. I know they know better but, unlike the eight year-old me, the right dumbs itself down for entirely different reasons.

Be afraid

To watch right-wing politicians and talking heads for more than ten seconds is to watch, for the most part, extremely intelligent and educated people pretend to be grossly uneducated and easily confused. For every Donald Trump and Lauren Boebert, there are ten Tucker Carlsons and Megyn Kellys — people who put on a show of being confounded and uninformed in order to manipulate their audience.