The Trouble With Conservative ‘Wild Cards’

The problem with a wild card is that you never quite know how the end product will reveal itself. In some instances, it will land you in court. In other instances, it’ll land you a No. 1 hit single.

On the latest episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, host Will Sommer and guest host Anthony Fisher, senior opinion editor at The Daily Beast, discuss the diverging fates of conservative voices, from Alex Jones’ upcoming Sandy Hook trial to the MAGA-inspired song by John Rich that is currently No. 1 on the iTunes charts, “Progress.”

“I think William Faulkner is probably wishing that he wrote such a touching tribute to the forgotten Southern working-class man,” jokes Fisher.

“My main impression is that it’s just unbelievable that this subset of culture has been screaming for decades that everyone needs to get their politics out of their art, out of their entertainment, out of their sports,” he adds.

“Really that’s always been kind of a ridiculous notion, but when they get the opportunity to put politics into their art, this is the effort that is put into it. There is no poetry or subtlety or metaphors. It’s all just ‘stick your wokeness where the sun don’t shine.’”

Sommer sums Rich’s hit up in one sentence: “He just does not want progress.”

Also on the podcast, Sommer and Fisher discuss the first of the Infowars trials over Alex Jones’ conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a false flag. The trial kicks off this week.

“I don’t know what I’m expecting to see, because he’s such a wild card,” Fisher says.

“I think in the past he or his allies have done stuff like have health scares that, you know, suddenly stop court proceedings in their tracks. And there’s always the chance of a last-minute settlement that ends the inquest.”

Fisher highlighted big conservative names including Joe Rogan and Tim Poole for “downplaying how sick and insane and cruel [Jones] is.”

“This guy [Jones] has under oath admitted that he’s a performance artist, that he’s a liar, that he doesn’t believe the things he’s saying. I believe that was in a divorce proceeding. His own lawyer has repeatedly said in public that he’s a performance artist. You shouldn’t take a word he says seriously.

“His half-ass apologies are worthless. And if he truly was repentant for the things he’d done, he’d go away. It’s good that he’s going to be put under oath and that witnesses are going to be taken to really lay out that not only did he spread sadistic lies that ruin people’s lives but that he continues to do so.”

Alex Jones Was Too Sick to Be Deposed by Sandy Hook Families, but Not Too Sick to Host Infowars

Elsewhere in the episode, Eiynah, host of the podcast Polite Conversations and, according to Fisher, “my intellectual dark web go-to expert,” discusses Jordan Peterson’s recent suspension from Twitter after referring to Elliot Page by his dead name and describing the doctors who performed gender-affirming surgery on the trans actor as criminals.

In the podcast’s “Fresh Hell” segment, the hosts discuss a group by the name of OUM Labs “who are a bunch of hackers,” Sommer says.

“They have discovered that the new world order is soon to implement what they call ‘the great reset,’” he explains.

“These hackers at OUM Labs, they claim the new world order has a computer that has categorized every person in the world. And it figures out what your place is gonna be in the great reset.”

Listen, and subscribe, to Fever Dreams on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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