Tucker Carlson Interviews Dr. Naomi Wolf
Renowned author recognizes what most prominent liberals are unable to see.
Tucker Carlson just had a fascinating conversation with Dr. Naomi Wolf about her new book, Facing the Beast: Courage, Faith, and Resistance in a New Dark Age. The entire conversation is gripping, but what I found most intriguing was Carlson’s question about why Dr. Wolf was virtually alone among prominent liberal democrats in recognizing the pandemic response for what it was—that is, one of the most illiberal set of policies ever inflicted on the American people.
The question reminded me of the last line of Moby Dick, in which the narrator, Ishmael—the sole survivor of the destruction of the whaling ship Pequod—says, “And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”
The line is an allusion to the Book of Job in which a series of disasters strikes the man’s property and family. Each time a messenger arrives to break the bad news, he concludes with the line, “And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”
Like Herman Melville, the character Ishmael is curious to understand the reality of human nature and the reality of his own character, and he has no trouble recognizing the fact that much of human nature is savage. Being confined on a vessel with rough men who slaughter whales for a living is the opposite of living in the polite drawing room society of 1840s New York City.
The Swiss psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, once claimed that Moby Dick is the greatest American novel that expresses the most profound psychological insights. Jung believed that moral maturity can only come to those who recognize that all of us have a dark side or Shadow. As he put it:
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Though I am indulging in speculation, I suspect that many of Dr. Wolf’s former colleagues and friends who ostracized her when she spoke out against Covid tyranny are lacking consciousness of their own shadow, and are therefore lacking self-knowledge. Because they reflexively (without serious examination) think of themselves as good and virtuous, they are incapable of recognizing that they have endorsed and participated in a corrupt and tyrannical enterprise.
Accompanying their lack of self-knowledge is an equally profound naïveté about the people and institutions they assume to be good. Their naïveté renders them unable to countenance the infernal depravity that Wolf’s research team has exposed in The Pfizer Papers.
A dramatic variation of this idea was expressed in the 1995 film, The Usual Suspects, when the anti-hero says, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn't exist.” In Herman Melville’s day, this idea was expressed in an 1836 pamphlet titled “Quakerism Examined.” As author John Wilkinson remarked, “One of the artifices of Satan is, to induce men to believe that he does not exist."
Carlson and Wolf touch on similar ideas. I recommend listening to their conversation.
Those who enjoy it will also enjoy reading Dr. Wolf’s essay, Chatting with Tucker Carlson about Good and Evil.
Something we all want to know... Why couldn't they recognise the evil?
I saw this interview and was very impressed with the depth of feelings and insights both expressed. I was particularly interested in their conversation about good and evil. I, too, think we are experiencing that evil in the world today. Killing babies because of their inconvenience, sterilizing and mutilating children, forcing experimental gene altering shots on people and forcing small businesses to close and people not to work is all pure evil. Thank God some are talking about the moral and ethical breakdown of our world, not just our country. We need a moral compass and I fear it has been lost in our secular country and the west.