#jay mckenzie

"The Moon and the Maid" by J. McKenzie

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Whether or not Tucker was pretending to be a white nationalist for TV ratings and extremist adoration, it seems that Tucker played the part too long, and it consumed him. It’s a concept known as audience capture, wherein an influencer increasingly leans into the content his audience wants or responds most positively to. This means more clicks, more money and more fans, but what do the demands of the audience do to the man who adheres to them? Perhaps we should ask the same of Tucker as of Alex Jones, Tim Pool and any number of popular fringe and extremely online political influencers. Is there a risk here in apologizing for their horrific behavior by considering this term? Yes, there is, but make no mistake, this path required them to make conscious choices. Many of them. One horrible decision after another. That’s why I don’t feel any sympathy for extremists pushing hateful rhetoric that cause real world harm. Choices were ultimately made by these people along the way, and the cycle doesn't change until they choose a different path. Awful choices lead to more awful choices. But the right-wing in particular has to come to grips with the reality that they are getting high on their own disinformation product. They can’t simply keep expressing more and more extreme rhetoric in a vacuum and expect no real world consequences. Either they’re pushing their audiences off the ledge, or the audience themselves is doing the pushing. The result is the same—the herd eventually drags them off the ledge into oblivion.

Jack Teixeira came of age in the era of Trumpism. The “2016 energy” the right is trying to recreate for 2024 was part of his childhood. It shaped his worldview and reality. He grew up at a time when the president of the United States made calling the press FAKE NEWS seem cool. Distrusting the government was BASED. Thinking Russia is a better place to live as a white man went from a fringe far-right theory to a widely accepted view in right-wing America. Even repealing the 19th Amendment—thus revoking a woman’s right to vote—has become a position Republicans are openly discussing. Even if Teixeira was never interested in politics, he was part of Trumpism’s racist subculture, and it led him down the path to extremism and a decision to destroy his life for nothing.