Rush Limbaugh, the original misinformation spreader on the right, has died at the age of 70 from lung cancer.
Limbaugh who spent his conservative life duping "the low-information voter" - his words, not mine - into believing that the right wing in this country are the victims. He made these Republicans believe that they were the aggrieved parties of affirmative action, social security, Medicare and Medicaid, unemployment insurance, the Affordable Care Act and alike, and scapegoated blacks, Hispanics, women and any other group you could think of to lead "conservatives" to believe that these marginalized groups are the reason that they are not successful in life.
The reality is that the Republican Party as an institution and the right wing have made it a certainty that all Americans, white, black, Hispanic, women, and everyone else was doomed to failure because of their support for corporations and fossil fuels. It is Limbaugh's, and by extension the right's, thinking that has kept people down. The GOP wants to cut social security and Medicare, but will hand out billions of dollars per year in corporate welfare to fossil fuel companies that make billions. Look it up.
They are still doing it. As recently as 2017, the Republican Party, who was in complete control of the government at the time (House, Senate and Presidency), passed the biggest corporate welfare bill in American history to corporations so they could buy back stocks, but are reluctant to give the taxpayers (all of us) $2,000 of our own money back. How dare they.
There is no question that Rush Limbaugh used his platform to promote racism and sexism. You can listen to him in his own words, but it is the lies that he spread on that nationally syndicated show for decades, which reached 43 million listeners at its peak, that might have been his most destructive contribution to American life.
I don't wish ill on anyone, but he has fostered a safe space for people to truly foment hate for the "other" through his broadcasts. His show, and I listened everyday for over 2 years because I had a boss that like to stew in that bile, perpetuated the idea that you should hate democrats like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama because they were evil.
Much of the Republican agenda does not appeal to me, especially these culture wars they like to talk about all the time, but I try for the most part to stick to the "policies" I disagree and why they don't work. I try not to refer to Republicans as evil, unless I am referring to Donald Trump, because he is the epitome of that word as was evident by his failure to ever gain 50 percent of support for his job approval for even one day of his presidency. His dereliction of duty led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and worse of all, it was on purpose for the most part.
Limbaugh, the mouthpiece of this "us against them" mentality can probably be best summarized in the following video. Listen to Limbaugh's listener's devotion to the rhetoric that has been drilled in to him over decades.
Limbaugh has spent years indoctrinating the right wing, and telling them that they should be mad, but his party had complete control of the government for two years and passed a tax-cut for the wealthy that further put this country in debt and what else? Limbaugh's listeners should be mad, but they should be mad at Republican Party.
The Republican Party told us for years that if we deport everyone, than everything will be okay. President Obama deported more people than any other administration, and that didn't solve the diddo heads problems. Republicans told us that if we simply repealed Obamacare everything would be fine, but when given the first opportunity to do so, they couldn't come up with a better plan. They are not interested in governing, but instead just determined to maintain power. Be mad at that Limbaugh voter.
In his last few years of life, Limbaugh spent his time in full support of the nation's most corrosive, destructive, and corrupt President. Not surprising to me, but now he has a lot to answer for before God. Good luck Mr. Limbaugh.
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