[guest post by Dana]

First, here is a memo from Fox Corporation’s executive vice-president Kevin Lord, who rightfully boasts about the vaccination rate of Fox staffers:

Good for Fox. It should also be noted Fox’s daily test is stricter than the Biden administration’s manadate which says that “businesses with more than 100 employees must require either vaccination or weekly testing.”

Now, here is Tucker Carlson, a Fox employee and character I normally ignore, but given his immense reach it seems important to point out any particularly imbecilic declarations he might make. Low-hanging fruit, I know. This time it involves the U.S. military and Covid-19 vaccines:

Tucker Carlson: "The point of mandatory vaccinations to identify the sincere Christians in the ranks, the freethinkers, the men with high testosterone levels, and anybody else who doesn’t love Joe Biden and make them leave immediately. It’s a takeover of the U.S. military!" pic.twitter.com/omOMx1fJet

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) September 21, 2021

“The point of mandatory vaccinations to identify the sincere Christians in the ranks, the freethinkers, the men with high testosterone levels, and anybody else who doesn’t love Joe Biden and make them leave immediately. It’s a takeover of the U.S. military!”

And then it got really weird.

You can read Carlson’s full comments here.

I’ll just leave you with David French pointing out that which Carlson is clearly unable to see:

Look, the quoted part is obviously deranged, but let’s deal with the part not quoted, the idea that the vaccine isn’t necessary because few troops have died. It’s not just death that makes an infectious disease harmful to national security. Serious illness degrades readiness.

P.S. How many of you don’t believe that Carlson himself is vaccinated??

P.P.S. Administering vaccines to members of the military has been a longstanding practice.

–Dana

CNN has published John Eastman’s plan to overturn the 2020 election:

John Eastman, a conservative lawyer working with then-President Donald Trump’s legal team, outlined in a two-page memo a scheme to try to persuade then-Vice President Mike Pence to subvert the Constitution and throw out the 2020 election results on January 6.

The memo was obtained by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, the authors of “Peril,” and which was subsequently obtained by CNN.

This was a carefully thought out and very detailed plan to steal the presidency from someone who had conclusively won it. There was no fraud greater than the picayune stuff that happens in every election. Yet the simple fact that a would-be strongman could not admit defeat was enough to set a machine into action to steal the election.

This is the six-point plan advanced by Trump lawyer John Eastman for VP Pence to overturn the election on January 6th.https://t.co/IkgmEuCW8b pic.twitter.com/CXWTVY1LL7

— Christian Vanderbrouk (@UrbanAchievr) September 20, 2021

My thoughts about what ought to happen to people like John Eastman, I will keep to myself. Minimally, I will agree with Sonny Bunch, who tweeted: “Any pol who would go along with this nonsense should be run out of public life on a rail. Any party that would throw their support behind a nominee who wanted to do this is fundamentally broken.”

An aspiring fascist does not write his own Enabling Act. He has a flunky like John Eastman write one for him. There ought to be some societal response — shunning and general constant shaming seems quite mild — pour encourager les autres. But I don’t see it happening. What I see is what Kevin D. Williamson sees. Writing in the New York Times, Williamson says:

In the normal course of democratic politics, people who disagree about one issue can work together when they agree about another. We can fight over taxes or trade policy.

But there isn’t really any middle ground on overthrowing the government. And that is what Mr. Trump and his allies were up to in 2020, through both violent and nonviolent means — and continue to be up to today.

When it comes to a coup, you’re either in or you’re out. The Republican Party is leaning pretty strongly toward in. That is going to leave at least some conservatives out — and, in all likelihood, permanently out.

Biden is doing a horrific job. His Afghanistan policy would be a joke if the consequences were not so tragic. The crisis at the border continues apace. He has his own fringe element to manage and he’s doing a terrible job of it.

Shall I return then to the creepy embrace of those who would destroy our system to re-install a lunatic? Nope. I am out. “[A]nd, in all likelihood, permanently out.”