Alexandra Petri: Forget Hungary. Tucker Carlson is all about Mordor now.

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I certainly did enjoy my fun speaking engagements in Hungary and quality time with Viktor Orbán — a man some call “increasingly autocratic" but I call a nice guy “whose views would have seemed moderate and conventional [just a few years ago]” and whose only crime is thinking “families are more important than banks.” But that is all behind me now. I’ve found a place I like even more. My next travel will take me to a land I find infinitely more congenial and consider in even better keeping with the new tendencies of the conservative movement.

I am honored to announce I will be speaking next week at the Mordor Summit in Barad-dur at the invitation of Dark Lord Sauron! This is the future of conservatism, and I’m excited to throw open the Overton Window and let in the nazguls.

It was wonderful to spend time in Hungary, a country Freedom House describes as “sliding into authoritarian rule” — but why stop there when I could be in a land Freedom House describes as “under authoritarian rule for two-and-a-half thousand years"? That’s two-and-a-half thousand times more aspirational! That’s 10 times longer than the United States has been a country at all, and hundreds of times longer than we’ve been deliberately sliding away from at least theoretically embracing representative democracy.

Freedom House says that in Hungary, “authorities have … interfered with opposition figures’ peaceful political activities” and that the country suffers from ”unequal access to the media”; Freedom House’s report on Mordor states that “opposition figures have … been eaten by the great spider Shelob." Freedom House warns that the governing coalition in Hungary has “worked to close or acquire critical media outlets since 2015,” but in Mordor, Freedom House reports, “there are no critical media outlets, only the battle cries of the fearsome Uruk-hai.”

More at link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/11/tucker-carlson-hungary-trip-mordor/

Petri is a treasure. I'm in the middle of reading her fantastic collection of essays and columns from the TFG years, titled Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why. Her combination of gut-busting humor, white-hot rage, and bizarre surrealism always makes for an entertaining (albeit sometimes pretty dark) and cathartic read. Absolute genius.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. Given my old user name (Gothmog) I am amused

[Tommy Carcetti]

2. Petri's satire is sublime.

I love Borowitz and The Onion, but Petri's satire is truly an art form.

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5. It is indeed.

Sometimes, after I’ve stopped laughing, I finish one of her pieces just shaking my head in awe-struck admiration.

[empedocles]

3. As a longtime Wapo subscriber and Alexandra reader - good to see her

recognition growing.

[Pinback]

4. Yes. At first I appreciated her for her humor --

which is amazing — but the more I read, I saw her reliance on satire as a tool to illuminate darker truths. She’s still frequently hilarious, but (especially in the Nothing Is Wrong book) it’s like the viewpoint of a person who’s smiling to keep from screaming.

It’s great to feel you have a kindred spirit whose work expresses the feelings you didn’t quite realize you had.