Taking a bullet.
The highly recommended CalPundit put his money where his mouth was on the whole cocooning thing, the echo chamber stuff, and spent 40 minutes he’ll never get back listening to Rush.
It’s a good thing he did. Those who doubt the vast right-wing conspiracy alluded to by Gore (if Krauthammer says I’m crazy, I don’t ever want to be sane!) should note how Rush has picked up on those unbelievable lucky duckies from the Wall Street Journal editorial page. (Paul Krugman lays out some more of the possible logic behind this bizarre assertion that’s seeking traction in the echo chamber: the man behind the curtain is letting his velvet glove slip. —Thanks to Kevin Moore for reminding me to check in with Krugman.) —Following Kevin Drum’s selfless example, then, I held my nose and plunged into rushlimbaugh.com, and saw the numbers game they’re stacking up to follow in the wake of lucky duckies—and it’s not so bizarre, anymore. It’s scary. They’re serious.
Christ. I’m thinking about the anthropic principle and Buffy and Robin Wood, I want to finally get started writing about web comics, which is one of the other purposes of this blog-thing, I want to think about Jo Maguire and Ysabeau and the City of fucking Roses and the crew of the Catalina de Erauso, and this comes along. I’m lazy and tired and no good with numbers and worse with policy—I’m a propagandistic hack, ladies and gentlemen, a glib farceur who can turn a phrase with a twinkle in my eye and a snort up my sleeve. —I can spot a number of places where holes can easily be kicked in this chimerical nest of deeply disingenuous nastiness: note the vague language with which the supposed canard all wealth is inherited is supposedly overturned: “Most of the rich have earned their wealth… Looking at the Fortune 400, quite a few even of the very richest people came from a standing start, while others inherited a small business and turned it into a giant corporation.” (Emphasis added to flag turns of phrase which really ought to be more specifically defined before taken at all seriously.) Payroll taxes are utterly left out of the equations, as they have been ever since the lucky duckies were first drafted. The enormous (and growing) disparity in wealth between the top 1% and the bottom 50% isn’t even mentioned, except in passing, alluded to as if it’s a falsehood we’ve already dispensed with. Stretching the numbers to include the top 50% is a stroke of necessary genius; it allows Rush to reach the vast majority of his audience, and coddle them into thinking they’re rich, they’re targetted by the Democrats, when in fact the Bush tax cuts would barely touch them, and will end up torching public services they depend on—this isn’t a sincere disagreement due to differing views of human nature and a just society; Rush is shafting his own audience of loyal dittoheads and laughing at them the whole time, and—!
But I’m tired. I’m tired of the rank, thug-eyed hypocrisy, I’m tired of the greed no longer even cloaked in a token veil, I’m tired of watching the Mayberry Machiavellis breeze by with a wink and a nod while blowdried newsbots give them hummers in the backs of limousines for exclusive pre-processed infonuggets. I’m tired of the cranky, mean and spiteful things they make me want to say. I’m tired of yelling at headlines and ducking the mid-40s on the cable channels, where the 24-hour news networks hang out. I’m tired of the clench in my jaw and the ache in my fingers and the fizzing anger at the base of my skull and thumping through my veins and even though I know there’s a good fight to be fought, I—
I start whingeing on about myself instead of looking for more. Goddamn. Links.
Anyway. —This is maybe why I at least tend to cocoon. More often than not. Rage and fear, and the Spouse gets worried about the blood pressure.
But if anybody out there has the numbers and a sharp piece of logic, and the time and anger-management skills, could you please fisk this tax-the-duckies bullshit into the oblivion it deserves? —I could use some decent talking points. If I’m going to go pick fights and all.
(“Most people have a particularly strong tendency to ignore views that they disagree with and are presented rudely.” Heh. I can’t even get that one right.)
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