Lies and Those Who Believe Them

I mentioned more than once that a culture war is impossible without tell endless lies and using vile smears and language. Rush Limbaugh's take on Fluke is a nearly perfect example. Today Rick Santorum insisted the University of California system no longer taught American history. It's not the lie that is so surprising its that he thinks, and he is probably right, that some small number, maybe 27%, will believe it. And what, I ask, does this tell us about a "culture war."

That in addition to vile, lying cretins a "culture war" need credulous, hate-filled louts who are willing to accept the silliest, mean-spirited lies directed at people they have never met.  This is no way to run a country and Santorum ought to be ashamed of himself and, ideally, someone on his side of the "culture war" will make the point that he should not lie with such gay abandon.

Controversial But True

Earlier I mentioned that Bill Maher erroneously conflated calling out, condemning, and boycotting liars with misplaced outrage arising from lying about one's outrage at anodyne remarks. Here is an example of a fine human being using potentially inflammatory language properly because every word she says is true. If Mitt Romney et alia want to be all outraged at this and seek to remove or boycott Rachel Maddow that would be wrong and should be resisted. What she did and Limbaugh did are not the same. Civility is one thing, lying is another.

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One of These Things is Not Like the Others

On the NYT opinion page today there is an essay from Bill Maher in which he conflates serial liar, blowhard, and purveyor of vile smears Rush Limbaugh with the ginned up controversies. He is right about the various tempests in tea pots over Robert De Niro's joke and the like. He is just flat wrong about Limbaugh or, for that matter, Anne Coulter.

It's one thing to wax wroth over something that if you squint hard enough might be offensive; it's quite another to object to careers built on lies and vilification of nonexistent enemies in the service of ruining the country.

Again With The Idiocy

First a video as a reminder:



It's not a series of political opinions or policy suggestions, Limbaugh's rantings over at least three day is just one of many examples of his use of lies to create a false image of an "enemy" in order to use vile language and vitriol to whip his ill-informed and willfully ignorant listeners and fellow "cultural warriors" into a frenzy.

So when Andrew Sullivan decries the boycott or quotes child-scribe Ezra Klein centrist Kevin Drum worrying about the knock on effect of the boycott on legitimate political discourse, it might help lay their fears to rest to remember that legitimate political discourse doesn't require lies, abuse, and horrid little men and women.

If the boycott tends convince pundits to stop lying or even just stop using vile language society will be a net gainer.

Thinking Ahead

Today one of the NRO buffla-heads discovers the horrible situation in Uganda. Way back when Obama sent troops to Uganda to help stop the horrific situation in Uganda caused by Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, horrid little man and vile lying lunatic Rush Limbaugh accused the President of waging war on Christianity.

It's not just his lies and vile rhetoric about Fluke and contraception, the man, if that's the word I want, is a walking talking example of all that is wrong, vile, and destructive in America's public discourse. And, whatismore, it is not a mistake that he is a conservative culture warrior. All that is vile, wrong and destructive in America's public discourse grows out of the need of the "cultural war" for lies, vile rhetoric, and wrong-headedness.

Rights, Responsibility, And Boycotts

This  vile, lying, cretin, both Maher and Sullivan, "think" ought not be punished because speech is a right. Liberty, the 18th century liberals and radicals, used to say is not  license. Here is a taste of his vile lies and bullshit:



Not one word he utters here about the pill or Fluke is true or has any basis in reality. He is a horrid little man.

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Culture War

Rush Limbaugh sort of apologized for being a vile, lying, cretinous bastard, which is to say a proud member of the Conservative Movement. In the course of that apology he continued to distort reality and consequently implied that that his cretinous and vile lies and language we're, in fact, the result of the target of his hate-filled lying and vile nonsense. Some see this as a step in the right direction; others think, rightly in my opinion, that the response is simply one more example of the shameless lying and vileness without which the "culture war" could not continue.

And this is, I think, the point that has to be emphasized: Limbaugh constructed a lie and then became enraged about his lie and consequently attacked an innocent human being in the vilest way he could think of. That he was telling one lie after another is obvious. As one example, there is no  correlation between the number of times anyone has sex and the amount of birth control pills needed. It's not, in other words, like condoms.

The fact of the matter is that there has never been a "culture war" in this country but rather a bunch of dishonest, vile, and contemptuous conservatives who fear freedom and liberty used one lie after another to whip up a  minority of the population.

This isn't, I know, news. It does, sort of, help to remember that the only way the Right wins is to lie in the vilest and most obvious way possible.