Yes. It's sad for Rush Limbaugh that he has been diagnosed w a life threatening disease & I offer my condolences to him & his family for what they are facing. But it doesn't erase or change the fact that there are few people who have inflicted more harm on American political
culture that Rush Limbaugh, who is a Founding Father of Fear Capitalism. Rush features prominently in my book The Fear Factory: How America Lost Its Mind. With the development of his talk radio show which premiered in 1988, Limbaugh learned early that sensationalism, fear, &
hate were remarkably lucrative, both in terms of money, but also in terms of power. As his talk radio empire expanded into more media markets & Rush recognized his "King/Queen maker" abilities, he began to strategically leverage his microphone to amass influence in the GOP, esp
learning he held leverage over Republican lawmakers (at every level, in every state & district) bc he had the single-handed capability of destroying their political careers. The results were 1. if Rush called, you took the call ASAP and 2. if Rush wanted it done, you did it. If
you failed to toe the line, you were destroyed. It only took a few EXs for Rush to make this power clear, probably the most infamous is the elimination of @bobinglis from Congress back in 2010. Inglis was singled out by Limbaugh when he committed the cardinal sin of contradicting
new (at the time) party-line that climate change was not only NOT man made (a departure from the party's position in the early and mid-2000s) it was actually a deep state hoax. Limbaugh (along w his allies on Fox) saturated Inglis in coverage to elevate their anointed replacement
a man you would come to know well, Trey Gowdy, the mastermind behind the GOP's brilliantly executed (4 years long) plan to use the investigative oversight power of the House committee's to smear the Dem's (obvious) 2016 nominee: Hillary Clinton. Hate the GOP all you want, but
you really should be in awe of their long-terms strategic planning, something I can confirm, does not happen within the Democrats (trust me Bernie people. The Dems can't even organize against the opposition, I promise they are not organizing against you). Anyhoo, the Great 2010
purging of the Republican moderates (via primaries) was a product of efforts by Limbaugh & his Fox allies flexing their muscles for the first time and revealing that the development of the Right Wing media environment would in fact, come with significant negative externalities
that the people who built it did not foresee. In other words, once that media environment was built, and the digital environment was added to it, the Republican establishment ended up losing control of their own messaging environment. The hosts of the various shows/blogs on the
internet, TV, and radio platforms had incentives to feed their audiences a steady stream of heated rhetoric, sensationalized coverage about minor things, always one-sided & distorted to massage a specific world view/ideology (its like putting on your PJs at the end of the day).
Indeed, the Fear Capitalists had to compete with each other for a fairly fixed market. They learned quickly that the reasonable shows, with smart dialogue and fair assessments got low ratings while the distorted sensationalized hyperbolic stuff got high ratings. Even among that
subset, you see an arms race develop, especially among hosts whose shows compete in the same time slot (across platforms). Watch Glenn Beck at the beginning & end of his Fox News career & its quite clear how the incentives drive host behavior. The hosts ARE 80% full of shit, but
not some much where party leaders can reign them in once a revolution starts (in 2009). The hosts are also true believers. They are ideologues. AND they now know they have the power of the purge. The purge lasts from 2010-2014 when the GOP moderates finally yell "Uncle" & relent.
The purge of Speaker-to-be, Eric Cantor, is the straw that breaks the camel's back. After that, the GOP resistance just crumbles apart. Brat had no $, which the media & traditional analysts always point to as the reason why Cantor's victory was "the best upset of all time!" It
wasn't that remarkable: Brat had the 1 asset that really matters in Republican politics today: the right-wing media machine. If you have that- you can do anything. You can elect Brat, you can normalize Donald Trump, you can normalize a monarchical presidency to limited government
conservatives. You can do that bc public opinion, nearly always, flows from the top down, a condition that has been exasperated by polarization & hyper-partisanship. If Rush, Hannity, and O'Reilly tell Republican voters to like something, they will like it. This would also work
on the Left although the Left lacks a total information control mechanism. For example, Pete Buttigieg's current woes getting support from black voters could be solved, would be solved, if the mainstream Dem talking heads and party figures, esp Obama) said THEY liked Buttigieg
for the nomination (or Bloomberg, or Warren, or whatever). Regular people are highly responsive to elite cues so when Republican voters are told by people like Limbaugh to vote for Dave Brat bc Cantor is a RINO (cantor, BTW was a solid conservative) voters are gonna respond.Which
brings me back to the terrible perversion of having Rush Limbaugh told that what he has done to enrich himself is a service to the country. It was not. Limbaugh is famous for his inflammatory rhetoric. He's a master "otherer" which turns neighbors against their neighbors, moms
against their children, children against their parents. He is an all-star dehumanizer, expertly reducing great swaths of his fellow Americans (and other humans) into "things" that don't deserve compassion, fairness, food, justice, consideration, and in some cases, continued life.
Indirectly, his pocket-lining & personal power increasing rhetoric has led people exposed to the poison of his words to commit acts of violence against their fellow humans & as far I know, he has never acknowledged (expect for perhaps to himself?) this inevitable & undeniable
byproduct of Fear Factory products: they drive people nuts and in some cases, they push people to do violent acts. Does that mean Rush Limbaugh caused these violent acts? No. But did his toxic product contribute to them? Absolutely. Like a cigarette manufacturer, Fear Factory
Capitalists manufacture a product with undeniable negative health impacts. In the case of rhetorical brain poison- the health impacts are largely on mental health but as mental health does impact physical health, there are certainly indirect physical health impacts. Limbaugh will
probably be gone by the time the book finishes and publishes, but I hop[e he sees this thread so that perhaps he can reflect on his real impact on American political culture and on the once proud Republican Party- which he helped destroy.
