Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, Candace Owens counted herself among those sinister leftists who actually care about such silly matters as science, equality, journalism, education and pluralism. But then she, in her words, “became a conservative overnight”, joining forces with the (her words again) “bat-shit-crazy antics” of right-wing extremists, and made it her life’s work to demonize the progressives she’d been aligned with formerly. What brought about this severe and sudden transformation? Well, she was bullied online and she blamed it, without evidence, on leftists, which led her to conclude that “liberals were actually the racists”.

All of which brings up three interesting questions: (1) How intellectually shallow do you have to be to make a near-instantaneous 180-degree reversal of all your values? (2) How bigoted and judgmental do you have to be to make a broad generalization about a very large group of people based upon a few supposed cases for which you have zero proof? (3) How petty and egocentric do you have to be to make a life’s calling out of getting even with a large group of people based on the actions of a supposed few — for which you have zero proof? (Note: it was actually right-wingers who were harassing her. Shhhhh!!! Don’t tell her, whatever you do.)

No matter. She’s now furiously mouthing insane and hateful rhetoric attacking “the left”. She also has said that Hitler would have been okay if he’d stayed in his own country — it was globalism that was his real sin, not tyranny or genocide. (After a few days of fallout and outrage when her comment became public — weeks after she said it — she declared that she’d been misunderstood.) She has said that racism is obviously a thing of the past because she personally has never been a slave. And many, many other incredibly stupid things.

And oh yes, she’s a starry-eyed cult devotee of the Forty-Fifth White House Occupant, whom she recently was berating even to the point of ridiculing his tiny dick.  But now, suddenly he’s the “savior” of the free world and western civilization. No, really. (Did we mention that this savior believes carbon dioxide is the basic building block of life?)

She’s flying high now, earning much more money and attention than she ever could have hoped to as a bleeding-heart liberal. Despite being a person of — shall we say — modest credentials, she has been catapulted into the right-wing limelight. The probable explanation isn’t hard to decipher. She’s black, female, young and pretty. Exactly the kind of media puppet the right wing has been desperately seeking for a long time. Going full-throttle, she’s even organized a movement called Blexit (black exit, get it?) touting the slogan “black people don’t have to be Democrats”.

It’s a pretty good indication of how much disregard she has for her fellow African-Americans that she feels she needs to tell them how to vote. Actually, it’s even worse: she displays supreme condescension by saying that black Americans have been “brainwashed” to vote Democratic, indicating that she thinks her entire ethnic group is prone to gullibility and being manipulated. Except for her, of course.

Well-informed African-Americans, however, must cringe every time she opens her mouth.

Among other problems with this tweet, Candace, it’s called the Democratic Party, not the “Democrat Party”. It’s pretty hard to destroy the enemy if you can’t even identify them. And a dam is not a damn. Well, maybe unless it is indeed broken.

She’s also attacked journalists and indeed journalism in general because one reporter was trying to get to the bottom of false and negative statements her fellow winger Charlie Kirk made about her own relatives. To which she commented “I stand by Charlie’s sentiments, even if he mistook an uncle for an aunt or a sister for a cousin.” Go ahead, just try to wrap your head around that. I dare you.

She’s been a prominent speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual premier orgy for wacko conspiracy theories and spittle-flecked rants. She appeared on the even kookier Infowars, the Alex Jones creation, which has aired a theory that the earth is being invaded by interplanetary lizard people. She allowed Fox “News” to exploit her as a guest host. And now, she’s willingly and eagerly being exploited by Dennis Prager with her own show on the PragerU website.

The first episode featured guest Roseanne Barr, who was axed from a TV sitcom after making a racist tweet — making her an immediate noble martyr to the reactionary crowd whining about “political correctness” and “leftist censorship” and “liberal intolerance”.  They spent a large part of this train wreck portraying women as lying sluts and “conniving wimps”, to quote Owens yet again. It didn’t seem to occur to either of them that they’re females themselves — you can’t expect these people to think of everything, can you?

They ridiculed and insulted survivors of sexual assault and harassment, whom Roseanne called “hoes”, and likened to white supremacists and wielders of “white woman privilege”. She even suggested they should be imprisoned for speaking out — at least if their assailants are privileged white men. And just for the heck of it, she smeared California senator Kamala Harris, dubbing her “Kama Sutra Harris”, and asserting that she “slept her way to the bottom” because Harris once openly dated the mayor of San Francisco. This, mind you, was all in just the first episode.

Not surprisingly, right-wingdom responded with overwhelming praise for both Owens and Barr. Owens, they declared in one voice (literally — it seems suspiciously like many of the effusive comments on Twitter were either written by one person or parroted from the same Russian bot) was smart and courageous and funny and sure to be the next big thing. Some in the media, however, weren’t quite so lavish in their praise. No problem, she has the perfect response to their lack of accolades — obviously, it was a conspiracy by the fake news librulmedia to silence conservative voices. She has learned well from her cult master in the White House — if your positions conflict with reality, just assume that reality is rigged against you.

Most tellingly of all, perhaps, is that she haughtily asserted the librulmedia were just upset because “we’re taking over the culture”.  Think about that for a moment. Consider all the nutty claims she could have made about what she believes she is accomplishing: maybe she’s getting the “truth” out there, or trying to advance “conservative values”, or creating “balance”, or whatever. Instead she says that she is “taking over the culture”. Just think about that.

Note, however, that it’s probably a mistake to conclude that Candace Owens became delusional and vacuous and petty and bigoted and narcissistic when she jumped ideological horses. Most likely, she was delusional and vacuous and petty and bigoted and narcissistic all along. But now, she is operating in an arena where those qualities are not only allowed to go unchallenged, but are actively encouraged and nurtured. She has found her true home.