Earlier: Why Does Mentioning Latino Littering Trigger Liberals Into Rage?
One of the more hilarious aspects of The Mainstream Establishment worldview is their fervent belief that the single WORST thing Tucker Carlson (and Amy Wax) have ever said is pointing out that Latino immigrants tend to litter more. Thus, the New York Times, in launching an enormous three-part attack on Tucker for being, of all hateful things, an “American Nationalist,” leads off with the most terrifying and genocidal thing Carlson ever dared utter: that Latino illegal immigrants tend to litter a lot. From the NYT “news” section:
AMERICAN NATIONALIST: PART 1
How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable
By Nicholas Confessore
April 30, 2022This is the first article in a series on Tucker Carlson. Read Part 2 and Part 3.
Tucker Carlson burst through the doors of Charlie Palmer Steak, enfolded in an entourage of producers and assistants, cellphone pressed to his ear. On the other end was Lachlan Murdoch, chairman of the Fox empire and his de facto boss.
Most of Fox’s Washington bureau, along with the cable network’s top executives, had gathered at the power-class steakhouse, a few blocks from the office, for their annual holiday party. Days earlier, Mr. Carlson had set off an uproar, claiming on air that mass immigration made America “poor and dirtier.” Blue-chip advertisers were fleeing. Within Fox, Mr. Carlson was widely viewed to have finally crossed some kind of line. Many wondered what price he might pay.
The answer became clear that night in December 2018: absolutely none.
When “Tucker Carlson Tonight” aired, Mr. Carlson doubled down, playing video of his earlier comments and citing a report from an Arizona government agency that said each illegal border crossing left up to eight pounds of litter in the desert. Afterward, on the way to the Christmas party, Mr. Carlson spoke directly with Mr. Murdoch, who praised his counterattack, according to a former Fox employee told of the exchange.
“We’re good,” Mr. Carlson said, grinning triumphantly, as he walked into the restaurant.
I’ve been writing frequently about Latino Littering as a socially constructed problem for almost a decade, since an April 2013 visit to the Stony Point park in the northwest San Fernando Valley, where I went rock climbing weekly in the summer of 1977:
Rock Climbing and Latino Littering
… Yesterday, I went back to Stoney Point on a lovely spring day. It’s still a beautiful place on a macro scale, but on a micro scale, the graffiti, trash, and broken glass everywhere were a drag.
The remaining rock climbers organize clean-up days (here are pictures).
But, despite the altruistic efforts of old-timers, like a lot of particularly beautiful places in Southern California, such as Malibu Creek State Park and the upper San Gabriel River, Stoney Point is inundated by the bad habits of picnicking Latin American immigrants and their kids.
But, it more or less worked. White people felt shamed by the crying Indian and therefore littered less.
Racial shaming remains popular and effective, but the only allowable target hasn’t changed since the early years of Earth Day: white people.
Yet, the Hispanic population now numbers over 50 million and represents a major source of littering, but it’s difficult to find any acknowledgment in the media of the fact that Hispanics today contribute disproportionately to littering.
How about: If you want amnesty, you’ve got to stop littering first? Maybe if somebody ever dared to ask Latinos to stop littering so much, they’d feel embarrassed and knock it off. Who knows? Nobody has tried.
Race pretty much overrules everything else these days on who? whom? grounds, even petty nonsense like trashing a natural wonder.
“Latino Littering” Isn’t Actually a Metaphor for Anything Other Than Latino Littering
One of the weirder and more revealing obsessions of the conventional wisdom is the widespread assumption that anybody who mentions America’s obvious problem of Latino Littering, such as Tucker Carlson, Amy Wax, Ann Coulter, or myself, must actually have in mind something unspeakably more evil than littering: we must be accusing Latin American immigrants of Ritual Pollution or Corruption of Blood or the Taint of Amalek or something. “Littering” must be a metaphor for something deep and dark.
But, no, actually, when I point out that Latinos tend to litter a lot, what I really mean, deep down, is that Latinos tend to litter a lot.
In fact, as I’ve said many times over the years, littering is about the most socially constructed problem imaginable and we know we could socially deconstruct it, because white people deconstructed their own tendency to litter a lot about a half century ago. In fact, the most famous anti-littering public service announcement, 1971’s “Crying Indian” TV commercial specifically engaged in racial shaming of whites as pointing out that we were uglying up with our littering this beautiful country we took over from the American Indians.
We could probably do something similar with shaming Latinos into not uglying up this beautiful country so much, except that the whole concept that Latinos litter too much is considered, by the conventional wisdom, to be some kind of genocidal dog whistle.
Why this insanity?
I think because progressives tend to have a lot of deep dark racist thoughts that they feel like they can only suppress with an immense effort, like Dr. Strangelove’s urge to shout “Heil Hitler!,” by projecting all their racist disgust on to extremely sane and positive-minded people like me who see problems and think about ways to ameliorate them.
Latino Littering vs. Black Littering
Latino littering is more noticeable because littering is linked to population density, and Latino neighborhoods tend to grow in density over time, while black neighborhoods tend to depopulate over time.
It’s really hard these days for followers of the conventional wisdom to think in terms other than of Good People and Bad People. Good People to do Good Things, so if undocumented workers (definitely some of the Good People) are littering and Tucker Carlson (a very Bad Person) is criticizing them for it, then littering must be good. Or if littering is bad, Carlson must be hallucinating in accusing the Good People of doing a Bad Thing. Or let’s not think about it and get Carlson banned from television so we don’t have to ever think about it.
Interestingly, in the 1980s the State of Texas started an apparently successful anti-littering campaign focused on the less bourgeois folks who hadn’t been persuaded by the Crying Indian PSA. “Don’t Mess With Texas” took a conservative, masculine, defender-of-the-home-turf approach, using Texas heroes like Dallas Cowboy football stars and ZZ Top, to persuading young men—white, Hispanic, and blacks—to not throw their beer cans out the windows of their pickup trucks: .
In other words, we actually know how to do something about Latino littering. It’s not that hard. Just redo old “Don’t Mess with Texas” PSAs in Spanish using local Latino heroes.
And have the cops give out more tickets for littering.
But all that’s unthinkable during the Great Awokening.
That reminds me that I typically don’t go out of my way to cite my influence on Tucker Carlson, in part because I don’t want to get him cancelled. Also, because I’ve never met the man nor can I recall exchanging any communication with him directly.
On the other hand, obviously I’ve had a substantial impact on Carlson’s 2016 show onward, from my having generated a vast amount of data and insightful analysis over the years, plus my modeling that you can be realistic, well-informed about forbidden facts, sane, good-tempered, and public-spirited. In fact, it’s easier to be mentally healthy if you don’t try to lie and censor yourself.
With that I’m going to wrap up my April 2022 triennial fundraiser. I gotta go work on my 1998 Infiniti to figure out whether it’s work fixing one more time.
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