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It is so fitting that Rush Limbaugh is proclaiming there can't be peaceful coexistence between conservative and liberal America. Because he is 100% right. He knows it because it's the state of affairs he has labored hard to create for 30+ years. He has finally succeeded...
When I was young and stupid and fresh "off the boat" and utterly susceptible to the prevailing Russian emigre philosophy ("GOP is against Communists, Democrats are against GOP, ergo Democrats = Communists, and also black people will get our money"), I listened to Rush. A lot...
I didn't find him tremendously exciting, because my conservative passions didn't that deep after all. I cared about sports more. But I could see how effective he can be in exciting people committed to his ideology. He was extremely combative, adverse to the notion of compromise..
His worldview was extremely stark ("We are good, liberals are bad, they are bad at everything, they are terrible, bad, bad, bad people, and all they do is bad by definition"), and I was shocked to discover how strongly it resembled the propaganda I grew up with...
But there was another thing that was hard to miss: there was nobody like him on the other side. There were no Democratic ideologues passionately pulpiteering an uncompromising view of the right and painting the political process as a biblical battle of good vs evil...
Rush Limbaugh (and later, his clones on the right) were unique in that regard. They saw profit in riling up excitable conservatives with faux-intellectual arguments that offered zero constructive solutions but served up heaping piles of rage, white grievance and extremism...
And, tragically, due to America's pitifully low voter turnout, the extremist part of the voting base came to exert outsized influence over the GOP, eventually making Limbaugh éminence grise of the party and shoving the party itself off the right edge of the map...
The notion that the left can't be talked to, compromised or coexisted with has been Limbaugh paycheck for three decades. He has been tremendously successful in turning it into his party's orthodoxy. And now, he is about to go to his grave satisfied in achieving his goal...
Of course, if the war does come, he will be safe in the ground by then. It won't touch him. He will rest on Herostratus' laurels, the fucking bastard.
Nobody should ever mourn his impending death. Pissing on his grave is too good for him.
Nobody should ever mourn his impending death. Pissing on his grave is too good for him.
PS. One episode stands out the most in my memory. It was in 1996, as the election season was heating up. He had a caller, a middle-aged (extremely) white woman with a well-bred Connecticut-ish mode of speech who was quite, quite hysterical... Like, on the verge of tears...
... at the thought of Clinton getting reelected. "We can't have 4 more years of Slick Willy! WE JUST CAN'T!"
At that point, Rush interrupted her and said: "Wait, you are not gonna jump off a building, are you?"
He could smile at the dumb bastards he was radicalizing back then...
At that point, Rush interrupted her and said: "Wait, you are not gonna jump off a building, are you?"
He could smile at the dumb bastards he was radicalizing back then...
Now, he is more likely to be the one leading the charge off the ledge.
A truly despicable person. There are simply no redeeming qualities at all. And Trump is basically a distillation of everything Limbaugh has exuded all these years.
A truly despicable person. There are simply no redeeming qualities at all. And Trump is basically a distillation of everything Limbaugh has exuded all these years.
