Grokked all of that. But what makes them different than a liberal who instantly recognized Limbaugh/Trump et al. for exactly what they are, and stayed a liberal? Why were they so willing to trade in their former ideals for such flimsy rhetoric? So easily swayed to the Dark Side? It just makes me wonder if they ever really had any progressive ideals in the first place.
I’d suggest there’s a difference between a liberal, a Progressive, and somebody who’s not a frothing RW. There’s lots of room between those categories. In fact it’s the mild slightly-leftist centrists that are RW media’s field of recruitment.
My late Mom was an example of somebody who fell down the Limbaugh rabbit hole in her retirement years. As I saw her personality and her originally left-leaning views, and of course simplifying mightily it worked something like this …
She believed the underdogs of the country deserve a helping hand. We do have an unfair system with both sorta-defensible things like positive feedback loops (“merit pays off”) such as wealthier parents can afford better schools for their kids, as well as indefensible things like overt racism and criminal corruption in high places.
She was always in favor of delivering that helping hand. In her early years she was tolerant. There was lots of room for one free bite, for a mistake to be seen as a mistake. She worked in the Courts and had no time for crazy ideas like draconian sentences for first offenses, and prisons without rehab as their main goal. That was unthinkably bad public policy. She knew of the scoundrels in the prosecutors office. That didn’t make the defendants lovely people, she had no illusions about them either, but it meant they were still Americans and we should work to improve them, not get rid of them. And yes, there were definitely incorrigible cases where a cage for life was the only way to stop their predations. But those were few & far between.
What Limbaugh et al did over the years, was persuade her that more and more of those mistakes weren’t mistakes. They were deliberate premeditated attempts at sabotage from the git-go. The message repeated over and over was “After that first bite then fuck 'em.” They freely made the decision to change from victim of the system to saboteur of the system.
As well, that instead of the ineradicable 2% of the population being saboteurs, it was more like 40% and growing. We’re drowning in them. The good people are being overrun by the bad ones. In fact the government through it’s ill-considered LW behaviors is actively encouraging the bad behaviors at every turn. So now we need to fuck 'em before they act out, because otherwise we’ll drown in the rising tide.
We can see some of that in various posters (octopus comes to mind, but he’s far from alone and I don’t mean to pick on him per se) who hold that the presence of a single looter in a large protest renders the entire topic of the protest not only irrelevant, but unworthy of consideration. “There can’t really be any legitimate black grievances; after all there are looters amongst them.” That’s the ultimate “Fuck 'em, … and all their works, relatives, and everything.”
Another orthogonal trick Limbaugh *et al* used/use is to assert that they, and only they, are the source for truth. e.g. CNN is part of the saboteurs. If some hypothetical somebody always had e.g. CNN & Fox on the TV simultaneously they could perhaps retain their equilibrium indefinitely. But once Fox persuades you to not only turn off CNN, but to actively shun any info not coming from Fox, well that's checkmate. Fox has a new frothing disciple; the only remaining question is how soon they'll hit the wall.
Here’s another factor. Humans have always loved narratives. We think in stories. The actual transcript of the daily lives of 330 million Americans and all the shit they get up to,both good and bad, is amazingly intricate and contradictory. Discerning any pattern is difficult. Whatever it is, simple and coherent it ain’t.
Limbaugh was/is a master storyteller. All the pieces fit together. The conclusions followed self-evidently from the “facts” provided. Which were repeated over and over during the broadcast until they seemed like ancient wisdom, not something you first heard 30 minutes ago. Nothing said was ever confusing, complex, or contradictory; nothing.
Human nature is eternal. But I submit that US society in 2020 (or even 1990) is vastly more complex than it was in 1930. Humans have always become incrementally more conservative as they’ve aged. I suggest the rapid increase in social complexity means an increasing fraction of the populace is in effect “older” than their years.
IOW, a 60 year old in 1880 doesn’t think his today is much different from the 1830s they grew up in. A 60 year old in 2000 thinks the world, or at least the US, is vastly different than it was in the 1950as they grew up in. The modern 60yo is more of an anachronistic misfit than was the 1880 60yo. That greater anachronism manifests as a tendency to greater conservatism at every age.
As well, people differ in their reaction to complexity in general. The more complex society is, the greater the fraction of citizens who will find it “too hard for them”. That fraction will seek a simplifying narrative.
Part of the reason that “LW radio” isn’t a thing is that LWism is all about accepting and embracing complexity and nuance, not running from it. You can’t construct a simple LW narrative and so you can’t attract the folks seeking a simplified narrative.
I do suspect some of that change came for growth up the economic ladder. Remember this change came over forty years. So 50 or 55 years ago some random young guy with lots of potential enters the workforce after a brief stint in the military (where perhaps he had occasion to interact with JFK and admired his liberal views), let’s call him Uncle Lorenzo. Uncle Lorenzo is a machinist who wishes we had unions out in the west like back home – but so far the company he works for is not a robber baron. Attempts are made to unionize the shop and other progressive ideas are floated but few stick. Uncle Lorenzo had witnessed blackballing back east and stays out of it as much as possible.
Five years later Uncle Lorenzo is upwardly mobile and at the lowest end of management. He tends to present the workers side to management believing the worker is more important than the business it serves. After five more years , Lorenzo is solidly middle management. Now he is adamantly anti-union. “You want us to hire a union electrician and pay him forty hours a week to change a switch once or twice a week?? Just repair the outlet even though you are not a union electrician and be happy you are one of the best paid and best benefited industrial workers in the state” is how he states his newer view.
A few years later he is called up to corporate on occasion to straighten out quibbles in the shop. He finds “the suits” are pretty reasonable guys who listen and understand the working man. He does not notice the working man they listen to just saved them from an expensive lawsuit or workers strike.
Uncle Lorenzo is a minor hero to both management and labor and has learned to speak the language of both. He is practical and doesn’t think in abstracts – in positions, he just solves problems and he is good at it. Simple if you are smart and reasonable. Soon after Lorenzo has an office in the corporate tower but still spends much time on the shop floor. Unbeknownst to Uncle Lorenzo, he has become a highly paid corporate fat cat. No one else notices either because he is still a worker bee in his heart and in his mind. But now he has a secretary who pesters him about all the meeting he misses to be on the shop floor and e-mails and he has a large budget he must administer. His time is forced to be spent with the rest of the suits. Rest of the suits?? Yes, he resigns to the fact he has become a suit. Now his decisions are also clouded by how a policy will affect his 401K and his stock options and his year-end bonus. He is still a reasonable man with a heart for the working man he no longer is.
Uncle Lorenzo retires knowing he has grown a little more conservative, but believes it is because he has had an opportunity to learn things the guys who retired still working in the shop did not have access to. (And he is right!) So he retires and keeps himself busy with projects around the house for less than a year, after which he listens to nut job right wing pundits incessantly and becomes one himself.
Two months later good old workin’ man Lorenzo gets out his shovel and pick to dig a foundation for his new passion, a flag pole so he can display his American pride. He works on it for about ten minutes before giving up and calling an illegal Alien to do the actual work. (We can call him Javier because that is his actual name – if he was not fictional.) Lorenzo pays Javier cash with a little extra because a new dependant is on the way, Lorenzo and Javier go back a ways. (A child of immigrants himself, Lorenzo still admires the working man and believes the hard working immigrant is one thing that makes America great.) Two hours later Lorenzo donates a similar amount of money to a group that is trying to build the wall and keep illegal’s out of our beloved country.
Too much verbiage to say that FOX News and Rush Limbaugh contributed to the problem – but so did economic success. The only difference I can see is that before FOX News and the others brain washed him, Uncle Lorenzo would admit to his inconsistencies and illogical decisions and be proud of his ability to see both sides and respond in a nuanced manner. Now he just becomes angry and does an impersonation of Yosemite Sam (or the late Charlie Daniels whom he resembles) while cussing you out and insisting it is all a commie plot.
Lorenzo was going to become more conservative anyway – but the propaganda machine made him an unreasonable asshole of a conservative. He is a fairly typical example of many conservatives in my area.
You sure are full of shit…thanks for wasting 5 minutes of my life on your propaganda
Why Jim, you silver tongued devil, you. Thanks so much for the comment; I am quite sorry you felt your time was wasted. I have never been very good at being concise and if only I was more gifted in that area, a smaller amount of your time might have been wasted.
Just for the sake of clarity, do you mind explaining to me what exactly I am propagating? What doctrines and principles am I spreading, and what person, group, or institution am I intending to harm? I mean, I hate to ask for a favor when you are already obviously upset, but perhaps I could avoid any future errors if you could explain the nature of my errors to me. This is a sincere question.