If you listen to the toxic talk radio voices of of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, ad nauseum, they have one clear pattern. They do the theoretical what-if game. Here's an example of it I noticed on townhall.com (a right wingnut op-ed and discussion forum site.) It's by David Limbaugh:
"How would things be different today if Al Gore's henchmen had succeeded in hijacking the election? How will they be different if one of the nine Democratic candidates or Hillary unseats Bush in 2004?
"Well, it's impossible to be sure what they would have done and would do in the future, but we can make reasonable assumptions based on positions they have already taken."
This is the basic game. They start off with some situation and then take off, guessing what Liberals would do. You can't imagine how many times I've heard this. So it ends up that the listeners are not hearing news, not hearing liberals, but hearing descriptions of "targets" exagerated, usually inaccurate, false or just plain lying characterizations of the left.
I'm not so sure that the left isn't guilty of the same thing. But it's easier for we lefties to predict what right wingers will do. They have such a simple set of rules and policy perspectives.
- Starve government and public services... I mean cut taxes
- Rape the environment... I mean allow corporations to make full use of natural resources
- Inject religious influence into government, into schools and health care. Force minority religions to hear and read fundamentalist Christian propaganda.... I mean allow God into all aspects of our lives and recognize that America as a nation under God..
- Establish a fascist, Nazi, rights-less state.. I mean crack down on crime and protect us from terrorists
- Wipe out media diversity and create a monopolistic or oligopolistic situation where friends of the government-- major campaign contributors run a media that rubber stamps administration policy.... I mean allow for natural economic forces to determine media ownership
- Allow corporations, racists, bigots and all kinds of haters to run rampant... I mean reduce or eliminate government and regulations
The sad thing is, if you take the more reasonable second statements on this list, they seem reasonable. The problem is our country has been hijacked by lying radical right wing extremists who have zero respect for democracy. Take a fair and reasonable middleof the road conservative approach and the far right wingnuts will distort it like a Coney Island twisted mirror, making the idea into a grotesque and frightening mockery of its original.
Matter of fact, that's what they're doing with our country. In a way, right wing talk radio was the first "REALITY" entertainment. It's not the same as the tamer advice radio, or sports talk. Right Wing talk radio takes emotions and intensifies and exagerates them, just as Reality TV tries to do.
Then we have the Neocons and their huge think tanks. There, billionaires with their old Oil money fund extreme far right wing Lex Luthor brainiac types who come up with sick ways to take the U.S. back to neolithic times, how to scrape power from the marrow of ordinary citizens, so they are left with huge debts, corporation plundered forests, cruddy, toxic air, bland, substance-free television programming, lousy schools (the glowing example Bush Held up in Houston has been proven to be a failed fraud, overflowing with hidden high school dropouts falsely labeled as transfer students.)
Bait and switch is the right-wing way. The amazing thing is how baldly bold they have become. Any person who has not come under their spell can see, a mile away, when a Republican in Congress starts to lie. When Powell gave his UN speech, I knew right then and there that he had sold out his soul, his integrity. He was lying for the "cause." I was going to say president, but it's not about Bush.
So there are two ways that right wing commentators act that reflect the way the right wing is running the country. One, they talk about a theoretical situation, then take it to a lying place or level. And two, they take reasonable, even noble goals, then use those as shills to pursue their twisted, criminal, fradulent, corporately corrupted real intents which are hidden behind the ever thinner veil of their pretty promises.
The thing is, the ugly troll, the reeking, puss infested dragon is showing through those veils lately. There's no handsome prince inside. We have a reeking. oozing, maggot infested, rotting, slimy garbage heap running the country behind that smirking (though less frequently, since the smirk's been "fixed." presidential countenance. We don't have to go "deep down inside." Right below the surface of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, and many of the leading senators and congressmen there are ugly, repugnant demons from hell who just love to take the far, far, far right distorted path that lies behind the noble chimera they use to mask their putrescent actions and intentions... hypothetically, that is.
