Listen:
i’ve intentionally not blogged about politics since we won the election by a landslide for a number of reasons. 1) i can be an a-hole about it. 2) i have a severe amount of conservative/republican friends. 3) i’ve not kept up to date fully on whats happening in D.C.
But last night, i was flipping channels and saw him speaking to an entire group of his followers.
The most influential man in his party, although not officially a member of congress, the house, a Governor, or a Mayor. He is a hate monger. He leads a group of people who follow his will even against their own good sense or instinct to help their fellow man. His words are law in his follower’s minds. His words in reality are usually close to poison with a just a hint of division and fear. Brilliant? Yes. But so was Nixon in his own way. Stalin too.
He has his key words and phrases that send adrenaline flowing through the veins of the lemmings attracted to his jovial voice. He places a “small government” here and there, followed by a couple of “liberal media” and tops it off with a dash or two of either “U.S.A.” chants or the Game, Set, and Match crowd pleaser, “Drill, Baby Drill.” Most of these catch phrases are dead to most of the world, but the lemmings love to chant, and dammit, they’re gonna chant.
And they love to “boo on command” anything that even shares any of the letters with the word socialist.
His party has failed to find a leader, causing him to step out from behind the safety net of a studio where he can call everyone a “terrorist” or an “idiot,” because he never has, nor will he ever be called upon to make a tough decision that affects someone else’s life; he’d rather let an unqualified, brain dead Governor from Alaska make those decisions for him.
Ya know, because she’ll keep “the gays” from getting married.
What he and his Lemmings have failed to learn is that division is no longer as accepted as it was when Karl Rove was running the show. America has gotten a little bit smarter since we (myself included in ‘04) put Bush Jr. in office. Trying to fire up your own troops by proclaiming your desire for our President to fail is no way to keep this country moving forward. Silly me, i thought the country’s desire to move on was pretty evident by the landslide victory in November and the fact that the Democrats run almost everything in Washington now (for better or for worse). People are tired of division. Are their not bigger fishes to fry right now than how unfair MSNBC treated Ann Coulter and her nose on a couple interviews?
Hate begets hate. Division begets division. I’m sorry Mr. Limbaugh, but your time is up. People don’t want to sit back and watch another Presidential Administration fail miserably. We’ve seen that. We want to look forward now. While You, sir, and your Lemmings sit on your hands, dying on your “tax cuts for the rich will make everything better” hills, the rest of us will be paving our own way; trying, although sometimes failing, to do our part to help this country out of the proverbial “poop storm” we find ourselves in. We’ll be helping out our fellow man in whatever way we can. We’ll start community gardens and car pool or take the bus to work. We’ll travel to third world countries and serve others who need to be served. We’ll adopt orphans. When we have extra money, we’ll share it with those who need it much more than need to expand our savings, even if our 401K is tanking. We’ll pray for the sick, we’ll give out towels, toothbrushes, soaps, granola bars, water bottles, and mouthwash to the homeless. (because they’ll just spend our cash on booze or drugs..right Rush?)
If everything mentioned above sounds lofty and tree huggy of me, it may be. The truth is that every one of those things is happening today in my own immediate circle. This isn’t UNICEF or the One Campaign or anything else. This is off the top of my head, little (or big) things that my personal community is active in.
In the same way that Hate begets Hate, Love begets Love. Compassion begets Compassion. Unity begets Unity. Hope begets Hope. Love begets Love begets Love begets Love.
Cheers!
Please understand that being a conservative does not mean blindly following someone like Limbaugh. The things you mentioned that are happening in your personal community, selflessly serving your neighbor, typically come out of a love for Jesus and not a person’s political party affiliation.
i know dave. dont wanna lump everyone into one group. i mean less about conservatives and more about the Limbaugh lovers. i think there is still a difference.
First off, Limbaugh looks like they were somehow able to re-animate Marlon Brando’s bloated corpse. He is consumerism run amock. At the end of the day, that’s his mantra: greed, greed, greed, money, money, money, consume, consume, consume.
Second, watching the GOP right now is morbidly fascinating. Their mantra of small government, de-regulation and greed has run the country into the ditch and they have no plan for correcting what’s wrong. Their solution is more of the same that caused the problem in the first place. They seem to be completely unaware that their brand was soundly defeated in November, at the local, state and federal level. If Obama had been a white guy named Barry Dunham and possessed the same intellect and oratorical skill, McCain might not have even been able to carry Arizona. That Obama is a black man allowed the GOP to paint him as an “other” and scare stupid voters. They are irrelevant now but seem furious about it and unable to process their own duplicity in their own demise. Just today Limbaugh and Michael Steele got into a shouting match about which one of them actually runs the party, which right now is like fighting over who gets to coach the Washington Generals (speaking of basketball, how badass was it to see the Prez at that Wizards game?). Nero fiddles while Rome burns indeed.
I stand mouth agape at how Evangelicals got duped into being Republicans.
drill, baby drill!
“So here we have two systems,” Limbaugh said. “We have socialism, collectivism, Stalin, whatever you want to call it, versus capitalism.”
And that’s it. Obama and the Democrats represent Stalin, and Limbaugh and the Republicans represent capitalism. Take your pick.
But doesn’t it make you kind of wonder why the American people picked Obama and the Democrats last November?
“Please understand that being a conservative does not mean blindly following someone like Limbaugh. ”
I completely agree with this statement, in theory. But right now what we are witnessing is the complete inability for conservatives to stand up against Rush Limbaugh’s vision for the GOP. As Nate pointed out, Rush would have everyone believe that there are only two sides, and if you even hint at trying to intellectually chart a new direction for the GOP, you are automatically labeled a traitor of conservative values. Remember that Ghandi quote, something along the lines of “I would be a Christian if it weren’t for Christians.”…? I’m sure there is an increasing number of conservatives who are saying “I would be a Republican if it weren’t for the Republicans.”