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Media Research Center: Tucker Carlson: ‘As Long As People Sincerely Believe They Can Change Things by Voting, They Stay Calm’

The following video is a clip from Tucker Carlson’s opening monologue on January 6, 2021, the day of the massive Trump rally and the efforts by some (not all of whom were Trump supporters) to overtake the Capitol.

The Media Research center highlighted the latter portion of Carlson’s commentary with a video clip (below) and an article. A video of the full commentary is available here, and I’ve placed an audio file of the full commentary directly beneath MRC’s clip. The text is from the MRC/CNS article* showcasing the latter portion of Tucker’s commentary.

The only reason this country is rich and successful is because for hundreds of years we’ve enjoyed a stable political system. And the only reason that system is stable is because it’s a democracy, it responds to voters. Democracy is our pressure release [relief] valve. As long as people sincerely believe they can change things by voting, they stay calm. They don’t “storm the Bastille,” they don’t burst into the House chamber, they talk and they organize and they vote.

But the opposite is also true — if people begin to believe that their democracy is fraudulent, if they conclude that voting is a charade, the system is rigged and it’s run in secret by a small group of powerful, dishonest people who are acting in their own interests, then God knows what could happen. Actually we do know what could happen, it’s happening right now. It’s happened in countless other countries over countless centuries and the cycle is the same because human nature never changes.

“Listen to us,” screams the population. “Shut up and do what you’re told,” reply their leaders. In the face of dissent, the first instinct of illegitimate leadership is to crack down on the population. But crackdowns never make it better. Instead they always make the country more volatile and more dangerous. The people in charge rarely understand that, they don’t want to, they don’t care to learn or listen, because all of this conversation is a referendum on them and their leadership.

So they clamp down harder. “Obey, I tell you, obey!” This is the Romanov program. It ends badly every single time. But that doesn’t mean they won’t try it again, of course they will because it’s their nature, it’s how we got here in the first place.

Millions of American sincerely believe the last election was fake. You can dismiss them as crazy, you can call them conspiracy theorists, you can kick them off Twitter, but that won’t change their minds. Rather than trying to change their minds to convince them and reassure them that the system is real, that democracy worked as you would do if you cared about the country or the people who live here, our new leaders will try to silence them.

What happened today will be used by the people taking power to justify stripping you of the rights you were born with as an American. Your right to speak without being censored, your right to assemble, to not be spied upon, to make a living, to defend your family, most critically. These are the most basic and ancient freedoms that we have. They’re why we live here in the first place, they’re why we’re proud to be Americans, they’re what make us different, and they’re all now in peril.

When thousands of your countrymen storm the Capitol building, you don’t have to like it — we don’t. You can be horrified by the violence and as we said and we’ll say it again, we are horrified. It’s wrong.

But if you don’t bother to pause and learn a single thing from it, from your citizens storming your Capitol building, then you’re a fool. You lack wisdom and you lack self-awareness. You have no place running a country. We got to this sad, chaotic day for a reason. It is not your fault, it is their fault.

Carlson’s last sentence, “It is not your fault, it is their fault,” is apparently sarcastic, a reference to the delusional thinking of those in power who “have no place running a country.”

This page is part of a larger article.

*CNS stands for Cybercast News Service.