I listen to Rush Limbaugh every so often, here in Houston on AM 950.  I listen because I know that many people listen to him, and I want to know what they’re hearing.  I think that by hearing their teacher, I might better understand them.  But it’s not easy to listen to.  In my mind, there are no more prevalent markers of how far our country fell in the past decade than Rush Limbaugh’s influence.  You could add Sean Hannity, or Bill O’Reilly, or Ann Coulter, or Michael Savage, or any of these baleful, hateful people who thrive on the adulation that they receive from a confused audience.
 
There is a parallel universe on the stations that broadcast these men and women, one that I don’t recognize, that doesn’t match with my perceptions of reality.  In the run up to Tuesday’s election, I heard Limbaugh feature a medical article investigating purported recent drops in the testosterone levels of American men.  That, Limbaugh, concluded, must be what is causing votes for Democrats, why else would, as he said, “so many wimps vote for liberals?”  Limbaugh apparently prefers that people vote with their hormones, and not their brains.  He of course would say he’s just making a joke.  However, my wife, who is a psychologist, tells me that one of her profession’s maxims is that there are no jokes. 
 
Just in case, however, that people are tempted to use their brains instead of their hormones, Limbaugh, day after dreary, cynical day, does all that he can to fill those brains with garbage.  I heard Limbaugh extol science, especially for the benefits of the cochlear implant he now enjoys and that has preserved his hearing.  And then in the next breath he demonizes marine biologists who reach the conclusion that our oceans are in distress, a conclusion that he does not find convenient.  That is the essence of the regressive mind: accepting scientific conclusions that benefit you, and rejecting others that interfere with your convenience.
 
I have done shows detailing the terrible state that our oceans are in, especially the devastation wrought by industrial fishing methods to meet the human world’s insatiable demand for seafood.  The people that I have presented to my listeners are credible, including credentialed marine biologists.  Yet Limbaugh took an authoritative report the other day that forecasts doom for the world’s fisheries by the year 2050 and immediately dismissed it as part of a liberal conspiracy, his usual all-purpose bogeyman.  To prove that the report was nonsense, he pointed to another report that a remote island had been found in the ocean with many new species never before known.  The discovery of these new species was enough for Limbaugh to convince his millions of listeners that the warnings about the tragic declines in tuna, shark, swordfish, cod, and many other populations, was a liberal conspiracy.  For Limbaugh, one tiny, remote island of abundance disproves the overwhelming scientific evidence of ocean decline.  And in this, as in so much of what Limbaugh says, he confuses the exception being the rule, with the exception proving the rule.  Such confusion, if it goes on long enough, has tragic consequences.
 
How this type of talk is allowed on the air, much less how it is both financially rewarded and rabidly consumed, is beyond me.  I can only refer to the psychological concept of “projection” –a defense mechanism whereby one "projects" one's own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, or feelings — basically parts of oneself — onto someone else.  Every single thing that Limbaugh and company accuse others of engaging in – conspiracy, ignorance, venality, confusion, weakness, greed – I see in them in the most fundamental ways.  And the things that they seek to deprive others of – people becoming who they are - are the very things that they themselves deep down no doubt long for.  If you doubt me, look no further than the sad and cautionary tale of Reverend Ted Haggard, the closeted Colorado preacher who preached against himself all his life.  And so I conclude that their own sad unconscious souls know, even if they consciously do not, that all of the things they accuse others of, they in fact are guilty of: conspiracy, ignorance, venality, confusion, weakness, and greed.
 
Most of all, they are unhealthy, and seem to prefer it that way.  When presented with logic, they respond with nonsense.  When presented with healthy options, they prefer the sick.  Limbaugh, who has no children of his own, often disparages attempts by American parents and their progressive allies to bring about healthier diets in schools, stores, and in television advertising to children.  Healthy food, for Limbaugh, is just another liberal conspiracy.  It must therefore drive Limbaugh crazy to see an organic farmer, Jon Tester, a man who has dedicated his livelihood to growing healthy food by the sweat of his brow from the good earth, elected to the US Senate from Montana this past Tuesday.
 
The false parallel universes of Club Limbaugh are myriad.  I listen to Limbaugh and Hannity and Savage rail against the powerful liberal media, when in fact they have come to occupy some of the most central and powerful roles in the dissemination of information in our country.  They of course know this, but they don’t want you to know it, for fear that their conspiracy accusations will be seen for the lies that they are.
 
And so in the recent election it became clear that these people are in perfect symmetry with the very President that they worship and have worked tirelessly to elect and keep in power.  On Wednesday, the day after the Election, the President held a press conference and said directly to “our enemies”: “Do not confuse the workings of our democracy with a lack of will.”
 
And in so saying, The President demonstrated that his contempt for the American people is now total.  He is willing to offer such honest advice to “our enemies,” the terrorists that he wants you to see in your dreams, where for the past several weeks of campaigning, he was unwilling to offer the same good advice to American voters themselves.  Instead, the President implored Americans to understand a more confusing maxim, that a vote for Democrats, for other patriotic Americans who love their country, would be a vote for terrorists.  In the final analysis, it is Mr. Bush who has confused the workings of our democracy with a lack of will.
 
On Tuesday, November 7, 2006, it seems that many Americans awoke from their own rough slumber, from their own confusion, in order to publicly reveal that they are increasingly aware of who works so hard to keep them confused.  Many voted to continue their confusion.  But, almost miraculously, more voted to discontinue it.  For months, I had gingerly discussed in these monologues that it might happen.  And now I gingerly speculate that it might yet continue and even grow, that even those who on Tuesday elected to continue their own confusion, may in time elect to desert it. 
 
But if you’re considering it, please understand that you don’t have to wait for the next election.  You can start today, or tomorrow, by hearing the ignorance, greed, hate, and delusion of Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity, or Michael Savage, or Ann Coulter – and recognize that you are not hearing truth, but only someone else’s deep, personal, and very sad confusion.  You need not make it your own.  Nor should you.
 
I’m Leo Gold.  This is the New Capital Show.