I finally figured out why I find the FOX
commentator so objectionable.
It's not so much what he is saying--bizarre though that can be--it's what is happening as the result of it. By holding his listeners in a state of perpetual churning resentment, he is siphoning off people who still have a role to play in building this nation's future. We need his listeners--older white men mainly--to be part of this new world. Rush is holding them prisoners to their own resentment.
That's why I don't respect him. In the interests of his own profit, I see him depriving the rest of us of these men, and as a nation we need them.
I came to this realization the other night when friends from our RV days, George and Valerie, stopped by on their way through town. George ran for office once an has an acute sense of what is wrong with the nation. He sympathizes with some of the positions taken by the Tea Party because he sees the malaise and selfishness that riddles this country. I have to respect that he at least believes in something, even if it is just a past that looks better from a distance than it was.
By listening to him, I realized how incredibly cynical I have become. Everywhere I look, I see corruption. Religion, politics, corporations, hospitals, universities, the military, civic organizations--there's nothing left to trust. Our lives are now completely run by corporate interests--food, medicine, newspapers, entertainment, education, transport, and even Congress, the one place that is supposed to take care of us. Every thing is for sale, and everything is for profit. Capitalism unbridled. Our world is shot through with special interests and their money and the general population is not much better.
Bleak though this picture is, it is also where I respectfully part company with George. He listens to Rush and told me that Rush had "never lied." This interests me, because everyone else has, sometimes under oath. He trusts Rush and dreams of reinstating a time when people took responsibility for themselves.
Most of us could be attracted to that vision if were not for some of the rather ugly truths that lie behind it. The Jeffersonian small farmer has long gone and even that was often built on the back of slaves and, in many cases, of women who were often considered chattel. My grandfather, for example, refused to educate my mother because he said it would be giving something to another man.
I am not among the government bashers, because imperfect and coopted as it is, the government is the only place that tries to serve the nation rather than itself. Were it not for the government and the nation's laws, I would not have the education that I do today.
The conclusion I come to, then, is that this nation is in desperate need of a call to higher meaning. George is right there. Some people thought that Obama was going to provide it. Nothing short of a new political Messiah can do the job because the whole lot of us need to be called to something larger than ourselves and our tribal tendency to take sides on issues as if we were rooting for Super Bowl teams. We need someone to come forward with the almost religious message that our nation and the human race is larger than our individual grubbing--and we all do it, "rounding" on our income taxes and greedily standing outside the government's door with our hands out--and that includes not only the Apples, Starbucks, and Halliburtons but also any of the other big pretenders who hire the pricey lawyers to cheat the taxpayers left and right.
Where can such a leader come from? Certainly not from Limbaugh who will find no interest or profit in looking to the future and saying, I see the world is changing. We can't stop it. How can we shape what is coming to preserve the best of the past? It will have to come from us and from the people like George who have looked at the political process first hand.
In fact, this process of redefining our future as a principled and ethical nation is the one that Limbaugh destroys by taking from us the very people who could help us best.
It's not so much what he is saying--bizarre though that can be--it's what is happening as the result of it. By holding his listeners in a state of perpetual churning resentment, he is siphoning off people who still have a role to play in building this nation's future. We need his listeners--older white men mainly--to be part of this new world. Rush is holding them prisoners to their own resentment.
That's why I don't respect him. In the interests of his own profit, I see him depriving the rest of us of these men, and as a nation we need them.
I came to this realization the other night when friends from our RV days, George and Valerie, stopped by on their way through town. George ran for office once an has an acute sense of what is wrong with the nation. He sympathizes with some of the positions taken by the Tea Party because he sees the malaise and selfishness that riddles this country. I have to respect that he at least believes in something, even if it is just a past that looks better from a distance than it was.
By listening to him, I realized how incredibly cynical I have become. Everywhere I look, I see corruption. Religion, politics, corporations, hospitals, universities, the military, civic organizations--there's nothing left to trust. Our lives are now completely run by corporate interests--food, medicine, newspapers, entertainment, education, transport, and even Congress, the one place that is supposed to take care of us. Every thing is for sale, and everything is for profit. Capitalism unbridled. Our world is shot through with special interests and their money and the general population is not much better.
Bleak though this picture is, it is also where I respectfully part company with George. He listens to Rush and told me that Rush had "never lied." This interests me, because everyone else has, sometimes under oath. He trusts Rush and dreams of reinstating a time when people took responsibility for themselves.
Most of us could be attracted to that vision if were not for some of the rather ugly truths that lie behind it. The Jeffersonian small farmer has long gone and even that was often built on the back of slaves and, in many cases, of women who were often considered chattel. My grandfather, for example, refused to educate my mother because he said it would be giving something to another man.
I am not among the government bashers, because imperfect and coopted as it is, the government is the only place that tries to serve the nation rather than itself. Were it not for the government and the nation's laws, I would not have the education that I do today.
The conclusion I come to, then, is that this nation is in desperate need of a call to higher meaning. George is right there. Some people thought that Obama was going to provide it. Nothing short of a new political Messiah can do the job because the whole lot of us need to be called to something larger than ourselves and our tribal tendency to take sides on issues as if we were rooting for Super Bowl teams. We need someone to come forward with the almost religious message that our nation and the human race is larger than our individual grubbing--and we all do it, "rounding" on our income taxes and greedily standing outside the government's door with our hands out--and that includes not only the Apples, Starbucks, and Halliburtons but also any of the other big pretenders who hire the pricey lawyers to cheat the taxpayers left and right.
Where can such a leader come from? Certainly not from Limbaugh who will find no interest or profit in looking to the future and saying, I see the world is changing. We can't stop it. How can we shape what is coming to preserve the best of the past? It will have to come from us and from the people like George who have looked at the political process first hand.
In fact, this process of redefining our future as a principled and ethical nation is the one that Limbaugh destroys by taking from us the very people who could help us best.
No comments:
Post a Comment