Listening to the Right

This is just what they do. They don't have to be against anything in particular. They just want to make noise and not sense.

I see three possible reasons for the vagueness of their anger. The first is that the people whose job it is to be angry -- the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks -- don't have anything big enough to latch onto, so they just rage against Obama and the Democrats generally. For example, after Bush, and in the middle of a recession/depression, massive government spending is neither new, uniquely liberal, or necessarily unwelcome by their audiences. So that alone isn't enough to work their audiences into a frenzy. The second possibility is that, for some of them, what they're really frightened of are things they can't state in polite company -- i.e., that Obama is a Communist / Socialist / Muslim / Black Nationalist / Antichrist. Take, for example, Rep. Bachmann and Glenn Beck's ravings about Obama's support for a "global currency." Putting aside the inaccuracy of the charge, the subtext for their rantings is either that (1) Obama is going to put the United States under the control of the United Nations or (2) Obama is, or is a pawn of, the Antichrist. But they're unwilling to out themselves as bigots, Birchers, or dispensationalists, so they remain vague. The third possibility is that, after the failures of the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress, the only way they can get people to return to the Republican Party is to convince them that the Democratic Party is going to do something worse than getting us into unnecessary wars, failing to protect our food supply, letting Wall Street run amok, politicizing the Justice Department, betraying our ideals, etc. That pretty much just leaves threats of an end to our national sovereignty or the apocalypse, doesn't it?

Police: 3 officers killed in Pa. shooting Suspect, wearing bulletproof vest, reportedly was ‘lying in wait’ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30043893/ But Malkin, Beck, Rush, et al won't loose a seconds sleep over those 3 dead cops.

Also conservatives will always insist the Democratic and Republican parties are really just the same thing, two brands of the same conspiracy. So, having heard a lot from the Left about how evil Republicans are, when now they are in the opposition, they blithely begin mimmicking what they have heard of themselves the last eight years. Except it a) actually is true of them and b) when these people get the notion something must be done they leap to the nearest hysterical conclusion c) proving it is actually true of them.

how else to explain how they've been able to get so many people to vote against their own interests for so long?

Kevin, I'm only 42, so you have a longer personal time frame for reflection, but I respectfully disagree from where I sit. The ranting I heard from John Bircher-types growing up in Idaho in the 1970s sounded pretty much the same as what we are hearing from AM radio and Faux News today. They didn't like the "Soviets" back then, but they were just as agitaged over illegal immigrats, Arabs, European weakness, the UN and "world government" as they are now. "Soviets" and "the welfare state" have mostly dropped off the list of existential threats to the Union (though there are still lots of dark references to the "Russians," which is what they usually called them anyway), and gay marriage has been added to the list, but the tenor remains pretty much the same as it has for a long time. The biggest difference I see is that before Limbaugh became nationally syndicated in in the late 80s/early 90s, there were only a few oddball cranks with a national platform for this bile (e.g. Paul Harvey). Limbaugh's appearance on the national scene was a big change, and there has been a profusion of imitators since then that have turned up the volume a lot. But the music is pretty much the same.

I listen to a fair amount of rightwing talk radio during the week-- sometimes for shits and giggles, sometimes just to see what they're talking about and often because it's just sort of a sick fascination of mine. Lately it does seem like Limbaugh and Beck have been especially unhinged about, well, everything and nothing. Both have been especially fond of words like "revolution" and warning/promising that it's indeed coming. They're truly full of rage, piss and vinegar and are being entirely scattershot about it-- there isn't anything going right these days. Except for their tea party protests, they're pretty jazzed about those. It's kinda sad, really. Forget Limbaugh and Beck, the real concern is everyone who calls in echoes their sentiments, they're just so darned angry because Obama/liberals/media are destroying EVERYTHING. The guys are blowhards for a living, so nothing they say surprises me, but the level of vitriol and helplessness and stronger than I've ever seen it and Obama hasn't even been in office for 3 months. So I do worry a bit about their angry, paranoid gun-toting followers. Especially right after something bad happens in their personal lives-- relationships, jobs, etc. They have a way of blaming all of their personal problems on external causes and then symbolically taking it out on the wrong people.

I understand their panic. I felt such an agony of things going all wrong since Reagon and I am sure that is what they feel now. Thanks to Bush, the country may be awakening to the deep changes we need to bring us into a brave new world. He screwed up so exquisitely well that people who never would have thought we needed change are galvanized into wanting it. Over the last 30 years the Righties assumed they were heading toward Utopia(aka Hell for the rest of us) only to awakened befuddled to the fact that maybe that is not the future. I am as befuddled to suddenly to be in a new land where my greatest concerns are now center stage and, for the first time in my 50 plus years(well, at least since adolescence), I feel actual hope. And I'm willing to work hard for it,too.

Their angst is not inchoate, it's tacit. Obama is blackity-black-black, and they can't talk about that in polite society. So they steam and fume and mutter and make no sense. With the rage junkies on the right it usually comes back to race. It's really that simple.

they're living their very own sequel to the "blair witch project"...

I too, have been trying (since the middle of the election really) to spend some time with both left and right-wing TV, radio and blogs etc., and I have to say that we have all fallen prey to the manipulations of the elite purveyors of left and right ideology. What began as a "culture war" fabricated for political gain by the right wing has been gleefully enjoined by the left. As I see it, the left and right are talking past one another to no useful purpose, but to make ourselves feel better and make some rich people richer (Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone for example.) This is helpful to the elites on both sides who seem to be behaving in very similar ways. I am disoriented by the Obama administration's embrace of secrecy and cover-ups in both human rights and finance files. It seems he is compounding the abuses and errors of the previous administration simply by maintaining the status quo. I feel much less sanguine about the possibility of the Democrats doing what is right (prosecuting the war crimes, holding financial miscreants accountable and taking meaningful steps to avert theses sorts of tragedies in future). If progressive ideologies become as distorted and discredited as the conservative ones have been, all we are left with is the establishment elites versus everyone else. We are humans first, and political creatures second. As John Stuart so famously said on Crossfire, all this "us and them" bellicosity trumped up for ratings and profit is "hurting America". Obama's hands across the isle will continue to be slapped back as long as the population is whipped into a frenzy of loathing for the "other". I'm dreaming. But perhaps the FCC should impose rules for broadcasting similar to old-fashioned newspaper practices. News is news, opinion is opinion, ads are ads, and all are clearly labeled as such. We might start evaluating our journalists on the content and value of their reporting rather than on how much we agree with their conclusions. Opinionated blowhards could no longer pretend to be in the news business, but treated as entertainers. I, for one, would love to see the big media companies begin to uphold their fourth amendment responsibilities (work that is done well every day on MJ, Slate and a hundred other blogs for tiny audiences). If the country needs a firewall between banks, like the old Glass-Stegall, I argue we need a firewall between news and entertainment even more. The issues we face right now are just too important.