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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 26, 2026

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This is a month old, but Tucker Carlson had a bizarre interview with a Jeff Elofson.
TW if you're an elderly teacher with a sensitive constitution.
In it, Tuckers asks 'Why does algebra put letters into numbers?'
His interviewee concludes that those who use 'fake math with letters' are 'good little goyslaves'.
The clip is both baffling and hilarious, it reminds me of these memes I've seen, and it's almost surprising that it did not come with an Onion logo in the corner.

This clip looks so bad that I had a hard time making sense of it. Carlson is clearly an educated guy, but now that I look at his wikipedia page, he barely graduated. So it is perhaps possible that basic math has somehow escaped his understanding.
On the other hand, this may be part of a strategy to connect with the lower classes 'we love the poorly educated'.
Another possibility I could see is associating some basic ignorance with the kind of people who unironically use the prefix 'goy' as in 'goyslop'. Not a good look.
My preferred explanation is that Tucker is tired of all his success after getting fired from Fox News, which if I recall correctly had to do with the release of his text messages critical of Trump's low-brow appeal. So he's trying to tank himself, somehow.

Maybe I'm extrapolating too much, but this kind of public attitude is worrying for the future of America.
On one hand we have the math-computer wizards and their AI(SI?) transhumanist revolution and on the other hand we have this.

It's just engagement bait. Carlson essentially says during the discussion that he himself has used algebra for the course of his work but that his is a fake job and goes along with the implication that nobody in real jobs like carpentry needs it.

Carlson made his bid to lead the right when Charlie Kirk was killed and failed. Because he went at the king and missed, there was nothing left for him but to embrace the grifter role fully.

How is that good engagement?
'Teehee I was just being retarded' is not good content. Unless he's trying to attract an audience who operates on that level.
Or an audience who would get offended by it, which means he'd have to come up with more intellectually-offensive content in the future, which does not seem sustainable, especially with the competition.