Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity: Poisoning Democracy with Vitriolic Hate

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG
by Mark Karlin
Editor and Publisher

April 27, 2008

Dangerous or Laughable?

It was no surprise that Limbaugh would call for riots at the Democratic National Convention in Denver to embarrass the Democrats. Limbaugh -- and his fellow purveyors of hate on the airwaves -- are dangerous demagogues whom pro-democracy Americans too easily dismiss as poltroonish shills for the entrenched powers.

It's a regular staple of the millionaire right-wing echo chamber to use the explicit or implicit language of violence. In fact, the entire "frame" of everyone from Sean Hannity to Bill O'Reilly to Rush Limbaugh is to convince their listeners that people who don't agree with these "pundits of patriotism" are the enemy and dangerous to America.

And that, dear BuzzFlash readers, means that we are -- and we are not exaggerating here -- enemies of the state in the minds of many of the extreme right wing. That is because the notion of democracy is anathema to the paid mouthpieces for the entrenched status quo of wealth and empire. You're either with them and agree with how they define "patriotism" or you, in their rhetoric, are enabling "terrorism."

This is a concept that is so inane and stupid to people of reason that many of us dismiss it as mere nonsense, and shrug it off with a patronizing grim laugh.

But it is serious business, very serious indeed, and has severely exacerbated the great divide in America today. Because intrinsic to the Grover Norquist concept of starving government and drowning it in a bath tub is that we are not one community as a nation, but rather the haves and the have nots (the latter who are on their own as you see in many third world nations).

Caught in the crossfire of this war for whether or not we are indeed a democracy where the vote of people who are wealthy is equal to the vote of those who are not are the displaced working and middle class. They are looking for answers as to why they lost their jobs and benefits. Even the lucky ones with jobs want to understand what happened to cause such a severe decline in their standard of living.

And instead of dealing with the truth -- that they have been mugged by a massive redistribution of wealth to the richest .5% of Americans in the nation, globalization without fair play, and the rise of multinational corporations whose interests supersede national sovereignty -- right wing media celebrities distract the victimized working and middle class with demagogic scapegoats. The deteriorated economic condition of the "Middle Americans" becomes fodder for a magician's trick of bait and switch distraction by Limbaugh and the crew. They would have the economically dispossessed believe that their condition is not due to the master class stealing their money and jobs away (through tax cuts for the wealthy and moving jobs offshore); rather the blame is placed on the "other": black, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Muslims, peaceniks, bleeding-heart liberals.

And the "frame" for all this distraction is one that involves implicit or explicit potential violence against the enemy, which includes us. This is what demagogues do, and for the most part it works, unless it is loudly and unrelentingly exposed and denounced -- and more importantly, unless the economic conditions are improved for the declining middle class and the poor.

In this context, "Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Launguage of the Right Poisons American Democracy" -- a just released book by Jeffrey Feldman, in the spirit of George Lakoff, nails down how "political debate in America has been severely limited by the violent language of the Right....The result is the creation of a shrill discourse that silences opposition and destroys the chance for serious, civil debate."

Feldman pulls the fire alarm on the threat to the Republic that the right-wing echo chamber poses: they are holding up a lighted match, and all that is needed is another terrorist attack or civil disruption to make anyone who disagrees with them and their corporate-government backers enemies of the state.

As we noted in our BuzzFlash review of Feldman's book:

Demagogues create a following by appealing to our basest emotions and nativistic instincts as homo sapiens. They create the feverish violent emotions of a lynch mob.

It is astonishing that advertisers sponsor the programs of such poisonous spewers of venom.

Until this assault on basic civility becomes unacceptable to advertisers who subsidize this pollution of our public commons, we run the risk of becoming despised and hunted enemies within our own nation.

That may sound sensationalistic and exaggerated to some, but you -- and we -- ignore it at our own risk.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

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