Rush Limbaugh held forth yesterday on the subject of Robin Williams's suicide. Most of his critics are seizing on one aspect of what Limbaugh said -- that the Williams suicide was linked to a left-wing "worldview" of "pessimism and darkness" -- but I think Digby was right to refer to Limbaugh's pronouncement as "Palinesque word salad." It's not just hateful -- it's hateful and incoherent. A sample:
Now, what is the left's worldview in general? What is it? If you had to attach not a philosophy but an attitude to a leftist worldview, it's one of pessimism and darkness, sadness. They're never happy, are they? They're always angry about something. No matter what they get, they're always angry. ....This comes shortly after an even more incoherent rant from Palin herself, on her new TV channel, in response to an Elizabeth Warren speech calling for better pay for fast-food workers:
He had it all, but he had nothing. He made everybody else laugh but was miserable inside. I mean, it fits a certain picture, or a certain image that the left has. Talk about low expectations and general unhappiness and so forth....
Well, that is a constant measurement that is made by political leftists in judging the country. It's outcome-based education: 2 + 2 = 5. "That's fine until the student learns it's 4. We're not gonna humiliate the student by pointing out that he's wrong. If he figures it out, cool. We're gonna take the fast learners and we're gonna slow them down so that they don't humiliate the kids that don't learn as fast as they do. It's just not fair."
"We believe"? Wait, I thought fast food joints...huh. Don't you guys think that they’re like of the Devil or somethin'? That's what -- Liberals, you want to send those evil employees who would dare work at a fast-food joint that ya just don't believe in, thought you wanted to, I dunno, send them to Purgatory or somethin’ so they all go vegan and, uh, wages and picket lines, I dunno, they're not often discussed in Purgatory, are they? I dunno, why are you even worried about fast-food wages because.... Well, we believe an America where minimum-wage jobs, they're not lifetime gigs, they're stepping stones...."
But possibly the most incomprehensible right-wing rant I've encountered in the past couple of days is this one, from ex-Navy SEAL and current NRA spokes-hunk Dom Raso, which is a couple of months old but was plugged on Twitter this morning:
It's no secret that most liberals want and love peace. Guess what? I'm not a liberal, but I want peace, too. I'd love for the world to have less tragedy in it. I'd love for American citizens to never have to fear someone shooting up their workplaces. I'd love to leave my doors unlocked because I know I'll never have to face an intruder. And I'd love to be able to send my kids to school knowing they're absolutely safe.So, um ... what? The enemy of all True Patriots is ... Facebook? Or craft beers? Or pot? (Because we know no one but a liberal ever smoked a pipe with something other than tobacco in it, just as all of Facebook is liberal.) And I guess if everyone in the free world had a private arsenal, not only wouldn't there have been a 9/11, there wouldn't have been a Madrid train bombing, or the 7/7 attacks in London, or the Boston Marathon bombing, or any attempts at blowing up airplanes or Times Square with explosives, because open-carried handguns and AR-15s would have prevented all of that. Right? And liberals don't call for gun control because of school and workplace massacres, or an epidemic of routine shootings, but to appease the terrorists. Have I made some sense of this rhetorical mess?
Every true warrior wishes for peace. Unfortunately, that's not the world we live in. I don't care how many love and harmony parades you've walked in, I don't care how many Facebook posts you've made about guns being evil, or how many ying-yang [sic] bracelets you've wrapped around your wrists.
Put down the peace pipe for a second. Right now, all over the world, dangerous people are dreaming up new ways to kill you. I'm not talking about crazy people. I'm talking about the most cold-blooded calculated killers you can imagine, ruthless people who wake up every day hating the fact that you're alive, hating that our country exists.
Did you know that? Or do you only think about the things that directly affect your life? It's easy to walk back in the kitchen and pop open your microbrew and get distracted checkin' Facebook to see what your friend had for dinner and forget about the world's realities, because obviously there are much more interesting things going on. Yeah, that's what I thought.
Wake up, America. You think taking guns away from people like me is gonna make our enemies hate us less? You think they're gonna wake up one day and go, "You know what? Cancel that attack. They got rid of the Second Amendment"? Hell, no.
I've had the great fortune to travel and see places all over the world. It's a dangerous place. There are people everywhere who are determined to harm others -- especially determined to harm people from a country that enjoys greater freedom than theirs: America. It's no fun to think about, but it's the truth.
Of cxourse I'd love to have peace. But that's only possible in a dream world. I want to be able to protect myself and my family from people who threaten us -- and that means I'm keeping my guns.
I think I know what's going on. Day in and day out, right-wingers are are fed so many negative impressions of liberals, on so many subjects, from our ideas to our leisure choices to our purchasing preferences, that when they think about us they're filled not merely with rage, but with multi-level rage. Robin Williams makes them think about "outcome-based education"! Elizabeth Warren sticking up for low-paid workers at McDonald's makes them think of our tyrannical anti-meat-ism! And pretty much everything makes them think of us as pusillanimous hippie pothead metrosexual effeminate hedonists!
At this point, it's like the end stage of a celebrity drug addiction, where the addict is not just hoovering up powdered drugs but washing them down with Jack swilled by the liter and chasing all that with weed, prescription painkillers, bath salts, and hallucinogenic plant derivatives\. It's not enough for these guys to be angry at us concerning one thing at a time. THEY NEED MORE.
4 comments:
That's because they're not angry at us. They hate us. Big difference.
It's all the conservative movement is, has been or ever will be, and they've run out of other things to pretend they're about.
Rage junkies, just like heroin junkies or coke addicts, need ever more doses of rage, in ever increasing quantities, to reach the same high - and then, exceed it!
Sadly, they won't kill themselves with an overdose - not that I wish that on them.
What they want, is to dehumanize liberals so much, that like Native Americans, Kulaks, Jews, and other victims of holocausts, they can feel righteous in eliminating "inhuman vermin."
Scary times.
Oh, and if you want to see the most perfect example of "Projection" possibly ever, look at Rush's statement one more time:
"Now, what is the left's worldview in general? What is it? If you had to attach not a philosophy but an attitude to a leftist worldview, it's one of pessimism and darkness, sadness. They're never happy, are they? They're always angry about something. No matter what they get, they're always angry. ...."
Yes, it's because it's we liberals who are afraid of Agenda 21, Sharia Law, who whine about wanting 'our country back,' while carrying around assault weapons.
Sheesh...
Parody and satire are dead.
R.I.P.
I thought this was the most "interesting" part of Limbaugh's rant:
"They are animated in large part by the false promises of America, because the promises of America are not for everyone, as we see each and every day."
He really does hate this country, doesn't he, unless he loves that "the promises" (Whatever they may be.) are kept from certain people?
Rush Limbaugh has "everything". He's made 100s of millions of dollars.
Now, I dunno that a bunch of ex wives and a pill addiction are signs of being empty inside, but that seems a point of faith on the right. Immorality and all that.
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