When Michael Steele, the hapless chairman of the Republican Party, lost his bearings and called Rush Limbaugh's style ugly and incendiary, everyone knew it was the truth. But it was a perfect example of an inconvenient truth. The right wing has long used ugly, incendiary speech the way baseball players use steroids: to artificially pump themselves up. Limbaugh has taken to saying that he wants Obama's policies to fail because they spell the end of an America based on personal freedom. This isn't just a grotesque exaggeration; it disguises the very thing the right wing has been doing when it curtailed civil liberties in the name of national security.
Yet I know people who listen to Limbaugh every morning. They don't believe a word he says. They deplore his rhetorical sins. They detect the whiff of hypocrisy. Basically, they tune in out of sheer incredulity.
Limbaugh has been plowing the field of moral outrage for decades, but unlike Billy Sunday and the other hot-headed radio preachers who cashed in on social resentment in the Great Depression, Limbaugh threw out God. With no religious tradition to anchor himself, he can swing wider. Anything Limbaugh judges against is condemned, not by scripture, but simply by him being pissed off. Whatever Limbaugh hates -- however petty, personal, and arbitrary his animus -- is ipso facto wrong.
This represents a huge social shift in American values. Before the Eighties there were a handful of right-wing outlets on the air; now there are well over a thousand. They exist purely as steam vents. The common citizen gets to be pissed off by the millions, unrelentingly, without cease or solution, and in return, he is praised. To be outraged is to be morally superior.
The Limbaugh effect fueled the anti-morality of the Bush years. Under ordinary morality, the wretched plight of illegal immigrants, for example, must be considered along with the fact that they are breaking the law. Being poor, illiterate, and desperate, their human condition makes them more sympathetic than ruthless lawbreakers would be. But under anti-morality, if you hate immigrants because they are foreigners who don't look American enough, the argument is over. Your anger strips away tolerance, sympathy, and regard for "the other." Hence the almost imperial bearing of Limbaugh, the bland certainty that because he never stops being angry, he never stops being right.
The same goes for a wide range of "others" who mightily tick off Limbaugh's listeners: Muslims, feminists, people of color, gays, and environmentalists. There's no need to understand them or try and accommodate their views. Just put them through the wringer of Limbaugh's perpetual judgment and, poof, there's no problem anymore. Of course, the whole scheme is delusional. Problems aren't solved by remaining perpetually ticked off. Accords can't be reached when you demonize the other side.
By any sane account, Rush Limbaugh is dead weight when it comes to finding a solution to anything. Like Sarah Palin, his spiritual bride, he lurks in the shadow of the human psyche, expressing the dark anger, resentment, jealousy, and vindictiveness that society can never escape. And yet, the next time you tune into Limbaugh's censorious circus of insensitive scurrility, give him a kind thought. As far back as Mark Twain, the American character has been ornery. We secretly love rascals, bank robbers, tricksters, swindlers, hell raisers, and outlaws. And when we feel so inclined, we laugh at them. Rush Limbaugh may represent a toxic form of entertainment -- and the bile he spews bears no resemblance to true morality -- but the fact that America makes room for him is something to be proud of. I don't pray that he goes away. I pray that we can keep laughing, even if our grin is crooked, at the pranks of the eternal shadow who is our companion for life, whether we want him or not.
Follow Deepak Chopra on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DeepakChopra
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Actually, it is not even social conservati
The death of this movement can happen in only two ways -- the 20 million will dwindle to a point of irrelevanc
It is clear that as the Republican Party degenerate
We cannot underestim
And I do think you should listen to the program a time or two to get the full measure of it. Not really to understand the host, but to grasp the sickening enthusiasm and incredible stupidity of the callers who breathless
When you add Faux News their army may reach 100 million, while Obama has just 3-4 million wired. It may take him campaignin
When it comes right down to it, our pocketbook is the ultimate reality check. One can vent and foment at perceived wedge issues all day long, but a quick as it takes to get a pink slip, miss a mortgage payment or lose your 401k because of mounting medical bills you'll vote for your self interests immediatel
The voodoo, trickle-do
Question really will be, "how long before we wise up and rise up to the occasion, disregardi
I would nominate this for a "huffpo pick" if I knew how.
You are "spot on" in what the right wing has spawned. The "disinform
There is another Blog on HuffPo that notes that a recent study concluded that a vast majority of voters find Limbaugh offensive and state that they do not agree with his comments. What the cited study failed to consider (I believe) is how many of those same individual
With the promotion of the "wedge issues" that the Republican Party has encouraged
Really good point. I live in the mountains and don't get the radio out of Boise that carries Limbaugh, but when I lived in the valley I tuned in regularly while I was driving, simply because talk radio always has something new instead of the thousandth replay of "Stairway to Heaven" I'd get on other stations. So I'm one of the alleged "20 million listeners" that Limbaugh claims - but I listen only to laugh, deride and ridicule what used to be 80% and now is 100% of what he says. So even if one accepts the audience numbers he claims, huge numbers of those are not dittoheads - they're the opposite. He influences a nominal audience that is becoming smaller all the time. However, as he goes further off the farm those few are becoming more frightened and vengeful. Now it's a race between how quickly he can alienate so many he becomes irrelevant
The best way to get rid of this hate is to stop the money going to the people who are paying to have this guy on, money talks; of course someone would have to write down a list of these companies for those of us who stopped listening to this guy years ago.
Love, light and kindness,
Eleni
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If I would have to give up to give up civil liberties, I would rather do it for national security than for socialism.
I love Rush! Frequently
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