Taking One For The Team. November 2, 2007
Posted by littlebangtheory in Politics and Society.Tags: ann coulter, ditto-heads, rush limbaugh
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Some years back, when I was Second-In-Command on a three person work crew (yeah, I know, where did I leave my scepter?), I had the opportunity to listen to Rush Limbaugh for an hour a day, five days a week. For this I will be forever grateful.
Seriously.
‘Cause you know, working between an insipid bobble-headed Follower of Whatever (my boss) and a rabid Ditto-Head (my subordinate) taught me a thing or two about The Right which had previously escaped me.
The “thing” was that a LOT of people believe every syllable of blathering ass-spray which emanates from the mouth-sphincters of the pompous, hypocritical liars who pass as “Right-Wing Commentators.” The “or two” was that even MORE people, faced with either confronting rabid, simplistic zealots or just nodding in agreement and letting the beasts run wild, will chose the Path of Least Resistance. They’ll do exactly what the proletariat in Germany did while Hitler whipped his Dogs of War into a froth: Shut the Fuck Up and keep their collective heads down, for fear of being the next ones facing the snapping jaws.
So as it happened, back then I was an opinionated little son-of-a-bitch, and inclined toward Speaking Truth to Power (thank Gawd I got over that! ) Nonetheless, I found myself really enjoying our cozy little hour with Uncle Rush, listening to his cadences, following his point-by-point journey from a Universally Accepted Premise toward an Unassailable Conclusion.
At first I was stunned, stunned I say, to find myself sitting there (yeah, sitting, it was a State Job) having been taken to some totally odious place by Rush’s series of hypotheses and conclusions, slack-jawed and without a rebuttal as Ditto-Head slammed the dash triumphantly and proclaimed Victory over All Things Left.
But after a while, I saw The Trick, the little piece of lead under the thumbnail of the Guess-Your-Weight Guy, the false bottom in the Rabbit Hat. I learned to wait for the increase in tempo, the rapid-fire series of If-Thans which left no time for consideration or objection, and to watch for the one logical non sequitur slipped into the mix, and to savor the gradual deceleration of ideas which gently deposited the unobservant mind in a Place of Darkness where bigotry rules.
Masterful, it was.
And I began to say softly, “There,” every time I heard the scribbling of the thumbnail-lead.
“What?” Ditto would ask.
“Just listen a minute, he’s not done yet,” I’d respond, making the frothing dog wait until after his gloating dash-slaps for my gleeful exposition of The Ruse for which he had so willingly fallen.
I don’t think he liked that much.
This went on for several weeks, with the balance of power shifting palpably, my expositions becoming more confident, Ditto’s dash-slaps slowly being replaced by shifty-eyed jaw-twitching (and a lot more cigarettes lit with shaking hands,) and Follower-Boss fixing his Third Man with the skeptical gaze of someone who realizes he’s been licking the wrong balls.
Finally, one day as we worked on the side of a busy road with the radio on for a little light diversion, Ditto heard the last “There” he could stand, and blew up. He began screaming in my face, then pushing me around, shoving with both hands as he gagged me with his cigarette-breath. And I, being a Diminutive Lefty Pacifist took it, moving backward as he screamed louder and shoved with increasing ferocity.
Until he shoved me out into traffic.
Then, adrenalin-fueled, I shoved back, hard. And Ditto went ass-over-teakettle over the guard-rail and down a bank into a swamp.
Follower-Boss stepped in to give me a written reprimand (guess I still wasn’t as intimidating as a Frothing Ditto-Head,) and I stepped out to take a better job… as boss of my own crew.
And once or twice a week we listened to Rush Limbaugh, and I said, “There.” And we all learned How It’s Done.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
So why bring this up now? Because now more than ever, we need to see how it’s being done. We need to know what the Lie Du Jour sounds like, to put a little effort into deconstructing the fabric of myths being woven by The Reicht. Because while few of his current-day clones have the Masterful Touch which Rush exhibited before he became a discredited, drug-addled dip-shit, a caricatured poster-boy for his own hypocrisy, the Ditto-Heads have changed as well. Their Bitch-Slap Push-Fests, fueled as they were by bigotry and fear, have been replaced by Blackwater and its thousand mercenary spawn-pods, fueled by fundamentalist fervor and poisoned by the kind of abject disgust for non-believers which brought Bin Laden to the point of killing as many infidels as he could.
Know your enemy, my fellow Americans. Know what they’re saying. Know what they want. And know what they’re willing to do to get it.
I just subscribed to Ann Coulter’s weekly on-line “news-letter.” And I’m goin’ in.
Dearest Runt, I know I’m usually waxing ecstatic over tomatoes in your space, but let me get more technical about Fred. He’s a bigot, we know this. He says unthinkable things about real people who don’t deserve what he says. And so far, he’s not responsible for any damage he inflicts–or at least that’s an argument that can be made.
But as bad as he is, and perhaps because he is so bad, I have faith that people with connections to their brains do actually see how bad this stuff is and have the teachable moment with themselves and their children (of course, some children are actually teaching their parents, but that’s to be expected…we’re just stupid adults after all who have to be told EVERYTHING. And an entirely different conversation.)
If we shield people from the worst, and let’s face it, Fred is no different from Hitler in the extremity of his views, how do they recognise it in their midst, and deal with it? What’s the social conversation about it? What’s the assumption about the intelligence of the general public hearing and analysing the stuff?
I say Fred, as disgusting as he is, is part of the conversation, and that he plays to our side if we let him. It’s the discussion that’s important.
My 2 cents. Big love,
Miz Lu
Sorry, I missed the Ditto assault in the previous reading. There. Nothing justifies that, but when it happens to you the only cold comfort is probably that it means you’re on the right (I mean left) track. He shoves you into traffic, and you get the reprimand for pushing back. He gets some indignity and poison ivy, and you face death for a moment. Love that logic. There. Right there.
Love your big brain.
Lu
Miz Lu, I have peppercorns from your stewed tomatoes stuck between my teeth.
I assume your first response was supposed to be in reply to the Fred post and got shuffled here. What a world!
I too see Fred’s value as a Teachable Moral Moment and an associative albatross around the spindly necks of The Christo-Fascists.
But your qualifying statement of “…people with connections in their brains…” speaks to the point I was trying to make (over there.) There are LOTS OF PEOPLE WHO LACK THOSE CONNECTIONS, either by the vagaries of fate or by willful, malicious intent. And Phelps’ oft-repeated rants WILL drive the engines of violence.
I stand firm on my position that it’s Hate Speech, with the premeditated intent of causing real harm, the likes of which it was NEVER the intent of The First Amendment to protect.
…And thanks for noticing the above post as well!
What a great post. I used to listen to Rush at work in the very early days. But my boss was a lib and we just kind of laughed Rush off. He was a little more palatable then, actually kind of funny and he used to take callers of all stripes. I used to like to know the talking points ahead of time so that I’d know what bar banter my conservative friends were going to come up with. But I can’t stomache any of it anymore.
You are brave for being able to read Ann Coulter. Like proctology, I imagine someone has to do it – but really do you want to spend all your time looking at assholes?
Jess, Thanks for commenting. It’s good to know that others take the “What do they really think” approach; I’m betting that, even as the foot-soldiers of The Reicht don their troll-suits to dump on us Lefty bloggers, they’re struggling with issues and questions of their own.
Then again, some doubtless become fully engorged by plugging into the feral feedback loop.
I’ll be posting on my observations over at Poor Annie’s Lair either tonight or later in the weekend, depending on how long it takes my feeble mind to digest what I ingest.
Pass the Tums, please.
This is my fault isn’t it, because of the Hell-o-scam ads, over which, I repeat, I have no control!
I know you have a strong stomach – due to your gastronomic posts – but please be careful down there in the intellectual sewers.
Will Do, Cuz. And rest easy, I’m a lurker “Over There;” no way am I going to confront Annie’s thousand or so Rabid Responders and leave a trail back to my peaceful little oasis. I really don’t have time to wrestle that many trolls, and I don’t know if the site could handle the traffic.
But as a teaser, you might want to know that I survived my first shit-boarding, and have a few interesting observations as of my first dunking.
Great post, man. Thank you for doing the heavy lifting for us. I look forward to your posted observations on words and thoughts of Ann Coulter.
Thanks indeed. A patient soul not unlike yourself saved me from mass-think Dittoshit years ago. He knew I could not deny my tree-huggin’, love makin’, pro choice’n, gay weddin’, Widespread-diggin’ hippie roots. But like Phydeaux says, be careful out there among them English.
Granted, Rush Limbaugh is a loudmouthed blowhard, and I am distressed by the amount of bad influence he exerts. But, I believe he is intelligent, and knows what he’s doing, and he’s doing it for the money. In other words, he has no soul and no heart, but he does have a brain. Now…let me mention the loudmouthed, blowing asshole whom I would like to banish to the hinterlands. SEAN HANNITY! I’m pretty darned sure that this man actually BELIEVES what he says. He excoriates the “Liberals” and “Democrats” as though they are the spawn of Satan. EVERYTHING the L’s and D’s say or write is stupid and/or evil. And so much of what he says is so blatantly hypocritical that I cannot understand how he doesn’t realize it. e.g. “The Libs want absolute power. They want to force their beliefs down our throats. They’re so convinced they’re right that they won’t listen to anybody else.” (These are not literal quotes, but summarize the essence of his rants.) Substitute “ultra-conservative’ religious-right-wing nut jobs” for “Libs,” and you and I can see that those characteristics apply even better to that camp. Of course, Rush makes equally hypocritical statements, but at least he injects some humor (though not as much as in his pre-druggy days) into his blather.
Does anyone here know why the Right Wing dominates the airwaves to the extent they do? The only liberal viewpoints I’m exposed to are in the blogosphere.
Great post – I agree it’s really important to know and understand the Enemy.
The reason the Right Wing dominates the airwaves and the liberal viewpoints are on blogs is that liberals know how to write.
OK, cheap shot. But perhaps we really are more comfortable with the written word?
That was a spot-on, brilliant fucking post. IMHFO.
So many great responses, and so kind in your appraisal of my little rant, I’m almost speechless.
But as a quick and easy thought which pops to mind (I’ll address the rest of you smart people later,)
mauigirl, welcome! My take: I think the reason the Reicht Wing dominates the airwaves is because it’s corporately owned, and the reason The Left dominates the blogosphere is that it’s the New Voice of The People.
Wow, saying it right out loud like that is a little uncomfortable. Like there’s some amount of hubris in there or something.
But I believe it, so I’m saying it. And unlike Fundamentalists of any stripe, I’m willing to discuss, and open to persuasion