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Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Rush to Judgment

Not going to waste much time or effort on this, because he really isn't worth it, but it is a fine larf to see some of the usual dopes entreating us to "be best" or whatever, with Rush Limbaugh's supposedly terminal diagnosis. (I thought he was stage four -- which, in my understanding, generally means "there's nothing more we can do" -- back at the beginning of the year.)

I could say something shitty, like hoping that every breath he continues to draw is more agonizing than the previous one, something like that. But the fact is that you have to care about something or someone in order to hate it (them) sufficiently. And I just don't care, at all.

I assume that most people, once they hit a certain age, begin having those little existential conversations with themselves. What kind of mark will I make? How will people remember me? What part of me will live on, and for how long?

Obviously, for 99.9999% of us (not an empirically proven number), the answers are, in order:  Little to none; fondly (at best) for a while, then less and less; very little, and not for very long. Even for people with large families and/or large groups of friends, they all move on at some point.

Limbaugh has made hundreds of millions of dollars over the past several decades by poisoning the well of what passes for American political discourse. People reflexively point to him calling then thirteen-year-old Chelsea Clinton "the White House dog" early in his career, but the fact is that that's one of his more harmless bits.

He's always been a cheerful prevaricator, a passer of rumors and innuendo, the orchestrator of an endless campaign of calumny and fear. Basically his show and his schtick have been an ongoing false-flag operation, distracting his rube audience with fake misdeeds from the Democratic villains of his passion play, while his Republicon saints robbed the country blind and stupid.

Here's what he had to say about Ruth Bader Ginsburg a couple years ago -- or has he memorably dubs her, Ruth "Buzzi" Ginsburg. [Ed:  Hi-yooooo!] You can see where Genius Q. Dealmaker swiped his splendiferous gift for nicknamification. Truly, this is inspired stuff. And he couldn't even wait for the body to get cold before he was clamoring for a (fascist) replacement to be installed in the seat.

It goes without saying that the people who will have anything positive to say about Limbaugh are the same sort of arm-dragging troglodytes who will miss Trump when that final Double Whopper finally takes him to hell. Limbaugh's impact is arguably larger than Trump's, and in fact, it's clear that the life's work of the former was to set the stage for the latter, to keep people dumb and angry and eager for the next day's outrage pill, like the Skinner-box rodents they really are.

Like I say, I don't really give two shits whether Limbaugh keels over tomorrow or ten years from now, because his legacy and operational principles will be the same either way:

  1. The herrenvolk are entitled to their own set of rules and customs, which (as Frank Wilhoit so memorably put it) protect but don't bind them, while simultaneously binding but not protecting everyone else.
  2. Hate and bullshit are easier to digest -- and more profitable! -- if you stuff those turds into a handful of cheesy "jokes" and nicknames, all of which are meant to be taken with utmost seriousness, while also being used as a shield to deflect the opposition's "humorless" rebuttals.
  3. The bigger the lie, the more they believe it.

The one thing I actually do hope for Limbaugh is that, in his quiet, more reflective moments, when the microphone and lights are off, when he sits in his vast, empty mansion with his cat and his current wife, that he really thinks to himself about whether the life he chose to lead was the life he had dreamed of when he was younger, and if not, what might have gone differently.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, and it sure doesn't hurt for everyone to take note that Limbaugh got a much fairer shake out of life than most decent people, and that whether we're "good" or "bad", we all end up the same.

So you might as well do something you can actually talk about in polite company, something that you don't have to be ashamed of. Carrying water for monstrous billionaires pays well, but the fact of the matter is that after a few weeks of grief kayfabe, they'll shove Charlie Kirk or some equally useless sack of shit in the chair to carry the water and poison the well, and Limbaugh will be completely forgotten within five or ten years, except for those who spit when they say his name, like Father Coughlin or Lord Haw Haw. Some legacy.

The main thing for liberals and Democrats is not to let themselves be gulled into this "let's be nice" high-road sucker's game. You have no obligation to forgive your abusers or their enablers, nor to mourn their demises. The fact is that they seek this absolution only as a way of minimizing the abuse and its effects. They don't actually care if you "forgive" them or are "civil" to them; it's just a cynical ploy to keep you on your back foot, to remind you that they will never give you the courtesies they demand from you at every turn.

Keep that in mind in the weeks and months (and even years) to come, because the bigger the landslide, the more you're gonna hear this "reconciliation" bullshit, this Rodney King can't-we-all-just-get-along rhetoric, as a hasty attempt to cover their real-world efforts to undermine the Democrats -- and more importantly, democracy itself.

Never forget what the true endgame is here -- making sure only the right people get to have a say in how their world runs. Limbaugh was an important voice in distilling that toxic brew down to a level where the average Keystone Light swiller could latch on to some talking points, and never have to worry about whether they were accurate in the least.

3 comments:

Craig Allen Heath said...

My better nature has a blind spot: cruelty - intentional or negligent. He is not only a cruel man but he fanned the flames of cruelty in this world for half my lifetime.

Yannow about the psych complex where you hate most in others what you hate most in yourself? Yeah. Cruelty.

Fuck that guy.

Heywood J. said...

That's true. We all have the capacity to be a Limbaugh or a Trump -- vain, shallow, venal, cruel, aggressively stupid, sociopathically indifferent to others' suffering.

I guess the difference is that, fortunately, most of us have the basic decency to keep those beasts in their proper cages. The reward is that we get to suffer the indignities wrought by the handful who refuse to cage their beasts, and their well-paid hype-men, such as Limbaugh.

Here's a modestly interesting counter-factual: Keith Olbermann, of all people, once noted (he had spent some time w/Limbaugh back in the day) that what Limbaugh really wanted to do was be a baseball commentator. He loves baseball, and his knowledge of the game is apparently quite extensive.

He really just wanted to be the next Vin Scully, but found out that all the Koch brother types who really run this banana stand were willing to leave wheelbarrows of money outside his door in exchange for silly songs and nasty nicknames.

I don't think it changes anything -- there's always dozens of these dirtbags waiting to take the chair and the money -- but again, I like to think that knowledge of what might have been has nibbled away at him for decades. Limbaugh is a lot of things, but he isn't stupid. He knows what he is, and what sort of people he serves, and that in the end, the only people who think well of him are people he wouldn't give the time of day to.

Brian M said...

Check out the current blast from the past on RUTHLESS REVIEWS Heywood. A classic hate screed!.

On another note, I don't know if you ever read the fading remnants of the Sacramento Bee? Somehow, it is still publishing. Anyway...a classic Cletus Safari focusing on some of our less salubrious citizens. I am talking, of course, about California "conservatives". Who are so sad that fundamentalist Christianity and Republican Party racism are no longer the 100% default, legally enforced social mandate un the Blackened Golden State! My favorite was the rocket scientist who burbled that since he moved to IDAHO he can talk freely about his deeply held faith. In guns. "I can actually talk about the Second Amendment here". One family traded "crowded busy Sacramento" for...TWIN FALLS. TWIN FALLS for the win! LOL.

Too many people in California. I think the State should subsidize relocations, myself. More fiscally responsible than trying to fund "affordable housing" construction!