Don’t Burn This Book

Dave Rubin, like many failed stand-up comedians and actors, has turned to one of the best paying gigs he could find: Koch-funded mouthpiece. That isn’t to say that he’s not funny. Rubin’s ‘reports’ and his book are hysterical, the funniest political satire since The Colbert Report. Rubin, like Colbert, though, needs that live audience to give him instant feedback and gratification to distract from the thinness of his jokes or, more frequently, insults, that he tosses off. Rubin trolls the shared dialogue of his audience, namely the conservative echo chamber that codifies the dog whistle references that most lay people won’t comprehend. And Rubin’s voice, like Colbert’s, does not translate well to the written page. Reading Rubin is like reading a draft of his act, where the conversational voice, rather than an analytical one, transcends the entire product. You almost expect him to insert spaces for laughs, applause and the old comedian’s trick of a rim-shot.

According to Rubin, his original concept for the book was to document why he stopped being a liberal. He wanted to document his ‘intellectual journey’ but instead, he is going to “impart… [his] wisdom to you” by providing a “ten-step guide for political authenticity” (though there are only nine steps…). Glancing through the steps, you see the key words straight out of the conservative spice shelf: ‘wake’ and ‘woke mob’, ‘free’, ‘outrage mob’, ‘hating America’, ‘fake news’ and ‘mainstream media’, ‘identity politics’, and ‘socialism’. As he writes, “I want to champion the values that keep people safe, sane, and free. The reason? These shared values are under threat.”

Values, Mr. Rubin? Such as? “[F]ree speech and tolerance… sensible grown-ups who dislike high taxes, oppose open borders, enjoy the free market, and harbor a healthy distrust of socialism… sane, decent people who happen to be fiscally conservative, classically liberal, libertarian, or—dare I say it—the worst thing of all: straight, white, and male.” Buckle up, dear readers, it looks like we are going to get a couple of hundred pages of ‘victimness’ or how the world is so mean to conservatives

Rubin’s journey takes us through reacting, from the conservative viewpoint to things around us rather than exploring the values he holds so dear. That would prove to be difficult because it would appear that cold hard cash is all that he values, rather than honesty, integrity and commitment to ideals that are a little more complex than his short-attention-span political ideology can stand. Rubin find any deep-rooted ideology just gets in the way of insulting people he disagrees with.

And scaring you too! These books need a healthy dose of fear.

“The left’s vision is a new social order that despises our hard-fought freedoms (eroding the First Amendment in favor of hate-speech laws), promotes socialism (through the redistribution of wealth), and denies scientific fact in order to weaponize the power of feelings (by asserting that there are more than two genders, for example).

“Worse still, they implement all of these things with brute force: violence, censorship, character assassination, smear campaigns, doxing, trolling, deplatforming, and online witch hunts. Tricks that are deliberately designed to leave people down and out. Ideally, jobless and without the resources to push back.”

Wow! It’s a good thing I chose to read this book instead of watching The Bachelor! I don’t want to left ‘down and out’! Help me, Brother Dave, help me!

I ask for mercy and he brings me none. I and all of his readers have been “programmed into us from a young age.” Everyone knows Speak and Spell was pro-censorship and violated my First Amendment rights because it wouldn’t say dirty words! And Barbra Streisand and Cher are in on it too! I should have listened to Chachi, Kirk Cameron and Chuck Norris for my cultural fulfillment, not the singers of such subversive anthems like “People (Who Need People)” and “Half Breed” that are indoctrinating the world to the evils of Socialism (whatever that is).

Rubin does rightly call out opinion commentators like Cenk Uygur who have personally and professionally insulted many people he has ideological disagreements with. I do await Rubin’s same scathing attacks on his colleagues and mentors, from Levin to Hannity to fellow failed comedians like Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters, who engage in such behavior on a daily basis. (I’m still waiting. After all, Liberal commentators like Ed Schultz and Keith Olbermann and Lawrence O’Donnell have been held accountable for similar personal attacks. Chris Matthews and Joy Reid have also been punished for uncivil behavior and comments.)

Rubin does accidently let his viewpoint out of the bag with this statement: “I should point out here that this tactic [shouting at and insulting someone with a different viewpoint] is typical of people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Instead of having a solid argument based on fact, they simply moralize their way through life—shouting people down and throwing loaded terms around as a distraction.” Mr. Rubin, the projection is all yours as we await your ‘solid argument,’ instead ‘simply moraliz[ing]’ through the pages of this book.

In Rubin’s criticism, he name-drops celebrities that usually triggers his audience: Cher and Streisand as well as Bill Maher and Ben Affleck. Those evil celebrities (at least the ones that don’t share his viewpoints) are subversives too! I will stipulate that relying on Cher or Affleck or any other ‘celebrity’ or in Rubin’s description, “an A-list Hollywood star” for political commentary is like relying on them for brain surgery or astrophysics. B-listers are okay: Kanye West, Kirsty Alley, Kelsey Grammer, James Woods & Chuck Norris get a pass.

But have no fear, you independent thinkers who want to follow the wafer-thin values that Rubin believes it. You may have lost a job because someone is better at it than you (hey, that’s how employment-at-will works). You may want to join a fringe political movement that is a tool of both the donors to it and the leaders who will subvert it. But it’s okay: you are “cooler” and “cutting-edge” and best of all: “sexy” and “more attractive.” (Another moment of projection: “See, groupthink is basic and that’s not hot! It requires absolutely no thought, no courage, no chutzpah.”) Because, of course, nothing says having values and a core belief system than the best superficial traits out there!

He wants like-minded ‘free-thinking’ young people to join the clown carnival. But just telling you that you will be sexier isn’t enough. He tells you he’s okay with marijuana as well. (He might need to watch his criticism of the alcohol and tobacco industries, being some of his biggest funders, but we’ll wink and ignore that pro-weed Rubin is as wildly hypocritical as most of the rest of the ‘family values’ right wingers.) But while criticizing drugs that “can inspire a whole host of criminal activity along the way”, he gives marijuana a pass because, I guess, these nice growers and nice traffickers from all over the world are providing a product of happiness while are engaging in criminal activity at the most brutal, dehumanizing levels. That doesn’t matter to Rubin because “[i]t is a fact that there has never, ever been a recorded death from smoking a joint.”

Better comedians than Rubin, such as George Carlin, have done a sufficient take down of the phony Second Amendment argument, so we will leave it at that. Like climate change, regulations, and environmental policy in general, conservatives play to the payer, twisting any argument to convince others. And in his bought-and-paid-for opinion, he certainly does not acknowledge the Trump administration’s relaxing of regulations on selling guns to those with documented mental health issues. In the end, he punts: “there’s no easy answer to this exponentially difficult issue.” Brilliant. I want my money back for this book!

To characterize Rubin’s economic arguments about the minimum wage and capitalism in general as infantile would be insulting to infants. “Remember when you were in fifth grade and your parents told you to save up for that bike you wanted? And how, after a couple months, you eventually saved enough money and got it? Yeah, let’s operate like that.” Case closed.

And what conservative echo book is not complete without the history of the Democratic Party (that’s the correct spelling, not Democrat Party, which seems over the last twenty years as a way to, in a childish way, not say the proper name. Grow up, Mr. Rubin) including references to the KKK and Wilsonian racism and overreach. It has been one hundred years since those events happened. I’m sure the Democratic Party no longer has any of those members. But let’s “[j]ump forward to 1964 and the biggest congressional opposition to the Civil Rights Act came from Democrats.” Fair point. Where did those Democrats go as they left the party? Tell us! Tell us about who opposed the Martin Luther King day holiday. Tell us about who opposed South African sanctions? Who considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist? Uhhh….

But wait, maybe I should not be so hard on our author. His hair might fall out. I don’t want him to end up with ‘bald balls’! After all, anyone who dares express disagreement with him is part of the mob. It’s okay to question the values of others, to question their patriotism, to smear them with the ‘S’ word (socialism), to hang them with the sins of 100 years ago of their political party, but don’t call out our dear snowflake. Sure, people are passionate and personal and there is no place for that. Anyone, left or right, who has to scream the ‘f’ word (figure it out) to make a point isn’t worth listening to. And guess what, no one side owns that. But is that cancelling free speech? I’m so confused. Tell me what to think, please.