RUSH: Ron in Houston, thanks for calling. You’re next on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Mega dittos, mighty one. The reason I called, this has been a frustration for about the last three months right now. How long is everybody going to forget how many times the Democrats have tried to give away everything this country’s done? I’m to the point now, I’ll put up the money to basically put most of the Democratic Party on Ritalin because they’re becoming an out-of-control reality program. In fact, they may be the basis for the original reality programs out there. Can you explain to me how they keep getting away with the junk they’re putting out there and they do it over and over and over again. I watched it during Reagan, and when the huge threat of the Soviet Union was out there. The Soviet Union was kind of a rusty bucket ready to fall over, but until the day it happened, Reagan was looked at as a fool. I’m not particularly a big fan of George Bush, but George Bush can get the job done. Let him be president. I’m sorry. I want to just scream right now.
RUSH: Wait. If I understood everything you’re saying, and your call is a little distorted, you’re wondering how in the world people keep falling for the same Democrat trick?
CALLER: It’s the same thing over and over and over again. I’m an ex-Navy officer. I spent a lot of time out on US aircraft carriers. I spent a lot of time watching situations and I’m sitting there watching what’s going on and I’m watching what the media is spitting back out in the States, and there’s no correlation.
RUSH: Well, I explained this. Look, there’s so many factors in this answer. In the first place, public education system. Young skulls full of mush have grown up not learning about history. They’ve grown up being told that Bill Clinton was a great president, and that Abe Lincoln is worth one paragraph. They’ve, in many cases, grown up and been told that the white settlers of this country, the original settlers were racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes. They’ve been inculcated with conflict resolution that tells them that we’re the problem and we have to cave and give up. We also have a bunch of people here in a nation of prosperity and vast affluence who don’t have to pay attention to these uncomfortable thing if they don’t want to. They don’t have to, quote, ‘sacrifice,’ as such when the Democrats and the media in concert convince them there’s no problem. It’s something they’d like to hear, and so they believe it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
I just had a conversation with our official call screener today, Bo Snerdley, in his office. He says people on the phones are fit to be tied, particularly at Nancy Pelosi. They’re throwing the word ‘traitor’ around all over the place. It leads me to try to explain in a little bit more depth an answer to a question we got from a caller near the end of the last hour. He was beside himself, this former Navy man, and his perception is the American people buy everything the Democrats say, and he doesn’t understand it.
There is plenty of history that the American people don’t buy what the Democrats sell. The reason so many of you think that most Americans are is because of the Drive-By Media. Now, the Drive-By Media no longer has its monopoly but it’s still very powerful and it’s a one-note samba. It is pro-Democrat. It is pro-liberal. It is anti-Bush. It is anti-Republican, and it is relentless, and I want to remind you of something else. Everybody knows that the three nightly newscasts on the major three networks are not as large, singularly, as they used to be in terms of audience. Combined, they still reach about 30 million people a night, whereas Cronkite used to do that all by himself. There is a new media, and there’s an alternative, and it’s growing. It’s burgeoning, and it’s creating problems for the liberal Democrats, although those problems are not often recounted in their house organs, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Drive-By television networks, the cable networks.
So you’re looking for validation that they are weakening, and you don’t see it because what you watch on television, 90%, portrays the Democrats as omnipotent and powerful, all over the place, gaining strength, the American people love and support them, and that impression has to be considered somewhat valid, what with the election results of last November. At the same time, I don’t think it’s as pervasive as it used to be. But let’s talk about the people that watch the nightly newscasts for one second. Many of you in this audience are multitaskers and you access a whole lot of different sources of media. You listen to this program, and you go on the Internet. You watch some cable news. You’re all over the place. You read various different things. You would be surprised at the number of Americans whose only source of news is the nightly newscasts. Now, they’re primarily elderly, upper middle-age and beyond. You can see that by looking at the commercials — and I don’t mean this to sound funny, even though it is. But you’re watching a newscast and the commercials are burial plots here and Preparation H over there and heart medicine here and Lipitor over there. When basically 80% of the commercials are medicines to sustain your life for another five years, you know who the audience is, and that’s habitual.
They have not transformed into the new media. They are out there. These are people, too, that have landline telephones. These are people that have not moved into cell phones and the Internet, and guess who it is that pollsters call? Pollsters have a tough time getting hold of people with cell phones, and they’re having a tougher and tougher time getting hold of people that use landline phones. But this crowd that we’re talking about does; they still do. This generational shift has not been completed yet, and the people that produce these nightly newscasts are well aware of this, and they’re always making efforts here to try to lower their demographics. But they’ve got a problem, because their newscasts happen at the end of the day when a lot of people already know what they’re going to see when they turn on the nightly news. But those who watch it — and there’s 30 million of them every night, averaged, if you combine all three — it’s their first taste of the day, and they believe it. It’s hook, line, and sinker. It’s the Bible to them, and that’s it. So there’s a large chunk of it, and then you have, sadly, ladies and gentlemen, a lot of people who are just sponges, and they access the Drive-By Media, and they just believe it.
It carries with it this note of authority. You know from your own experience growing up: If you read it in the paper, it was true. It’s just like law enforcement never, ever falsely charges people. Law enforcement never screws up. If they say somebody did it, you think they did it. That’s just human nature. I’m not even talking politics here. There’s certain institutions in this country that have always enjoyed a tremendous amount of credibility and respect and very few people have ever questioned it, and the Drive-By Media is one of those. That’s really the root of the question. How in the world can people continue to believe this stuff, not just the media, but how can they believe the Democrats when time and time again everything the Democrats say turns out to be not true? Here’s a Navy man calling. ‘How can it be that people are not outraged over Pelosi? How can it be that they’re not outraged over the fact that the Democrats are trying to secure the defeat and un-fund, de-fund the United States Military?’ Why are there not massive protests in the street of anger and outrage over this? Well, there are answers to this, and they’re traditional. Most of the people that would do those kind of protests don’t ever protest.
The protesters are the malcontent leftists who make it their job. They go out and they secure rent-a-mobs and they try to create chaos and tumult and this is what the media is doing, and the Democrats, they don’t want you happy. They don’t want you content, not with a Republican in the White House, and certainly not with a Republican they think is illegitimate, and certainly not when the Republicans run the House and Senate or ran the House and Senate. They don’t want you happy. And then you’ve gotta factor in human nature. Sad to say, it’s much easier to be a pessimist than it is to be an optimist. It’s much easier to be doom and gloom. It’s much easier to think the worst is going to happen than to believe the best will happen, and most people’s experiences in their lives are that excrement happens, and good things are rare and they’re unique, and that’s why they’re rare and unique, because they don’t happen that much. So you factor all of these things together. You know, why is it is that Nancy Pelosi is not the equivalent of Jane Fonda, for crying out loud? She’s trying to undermine her own country for her own self-interests and the interests of her party.
I know it’s frustrating to watch this stuff and think that most of your fellow citizens are just a bunch of blithering idiot sponges soaking it all up. I don’t think it’s as bad as you think, but it is a problem. There are a lot of people who are not thinkers. There are a lot of people who are not curious. There are a lot of people who want to be mired in misery or doom and gloom. It’s a natural mind-set, and it’s fed to them each and every day. But, as I say, if you go back and look at the number of things, historically, the Democrats don’t win every election, and everything that you think is going to happen doesn’t in regards to their prominence and victory. I’m telling you, I know some of you just think I’m whistling Dixie here, but far more people in this country than you might believe or you might be aware of, are watching what’s happening and are just as outraged as you are, and when it comes time for them to express themselves, they will do so, and the Democrats are cruising for a major humiliation again. I don’t know how soon. It may not be 2008, it may be 2010 or 2012. I’m talking about electorally, but it is going to happen.
They’re reconstructing the exact circumstances they created post-Vietnam going into Watergate and that they think led them to the Promised Land. Of course they lost in a 49-state landslide with George McGovern as their nominee. Guess who Democrats are talking to about advising them for their future? They’re out there having conferences with George McGovern. They have a perverted sense of their own success. When it’s defined and when it happens, or how it’s defined and when it has happened, this is something that’s just going to take time to play out. The tough thing for those of you who are affected by this, is you never, ever see this even when they do lose. Even when they’re shellacked, you don’t see humiliation or embarrassment in the Drive-By Media. The minute they lose, they ratchet it up again. ‘Okay, what are the Democrats going to have to do to win?’ There is never credit for Reagan, never credit for Bush, never credit for victorious Republicans. They always slough it off to, ‘Well, again, the right-wing Christian hayseeds, you know? They came through. Democrats failed to,’ blah, blah, some other thing.
Victory is never legitimate. It’s because of some mistake Democrats made, and they start out trying to correct the mistakes and the media helps them out with this. It’s a one-note samba for the first time in the Drive-By Media. But it’s not as one sided and had as bad in terms of the perception of the majority of the American people as you believe, as you might think. Listen to the number of people who call here asking this question. You are not just lone voices appearing on this program. There are countless others, thousands, hundreds of thousands who are sitting out there and throwing things on the radio going, ‘Yeah! Yeah! Say it again! Say it louder!’ They’re just as irritated as you are. They don’t have an outlet, and they’re not interviewed by the Drive-By Media and so forth. News is a product like any other product that’s marketed and packaged and put on the grocery shelves or any other store shelf, for sale. I don’t care how lofty they think their position is because it’s constitutionally protected. I don’t care about any of that. These people put together an agenda.
There are people (they’re working right now) putting together these newscasts this afternoon and tonight, and don’t believe that they’re not putting these things together with their own agendas and their own desires and what they think will look good, what they think will get ratings in some cases. But for the first the most part, it’s not about objectivity or reporting real news or anything of the sort. Their worldview is what it is, and things that don’t fit in their worldview they don’t even see. So it’s buck-up time. (sigh) I hate to being an I told you so, but I warned everybody back in October, this was the kind of thing you’re going to have to put up with if the Republicans lose the election. It’s bad enough when they win, the Democrats are relentless — and the Drive-Bys. But now they won, and, of course, they’re puffing their chests out and they’re beating their chests like King Kong, Tarzan, Mighty Joe Young, whatever you want, and they’re just feeling their oats right now, and it’s that pompous arrogance and condescension that’s also offensive in the way they go about things. But you gotta have faith, folks. The Democrats have not totally triumphed, and they never will totally triumph.
There are too many of you who care too much, who will stop it. One other factor — and I’ve mentioned this before, too. Particularly when it comes to the war on terror, war in Iraq, the Drive-Bys have done one hell of a job of convincing enough Americans that there’s no threat. In fact, not only is there no threat, there wouldn’t be a threat at all if we weren’t attacking Muslims, if Bush weren’t in the White House. 9/11? Why, it was just a mere episode, and most people don’t want to remember it. Most people don’t want to be reminded of it. They don’t want to think that they’re going to be, their whole lives, constantly on a vigil protecting themselves and waiting for the next attack. That’s not what being an American is. Being an American is to be insulated from the stuff that happens in the Middle East, insulated from the stuff that happens in the Third World, insulated from the stuff that happens in places like Afghanistan and what’s going on in the Philippines now, and in some of Indonesia. That’s not what being an American is.
Being an American is about having as carefree a life as possible with the normal trials and tribulations, but it does not include getting up every day and worrying to death over whether another couple jets are going to go into another couple buildings and another 3,000 people be incinerated. If anybody comes along and convince the American people they don’t have to worry about that, then they’ll gladly take the bait — and, voila! It is happening, and because of our affluence and prosperity, people are able to go live their lives however they choose and pay scant or no attention to this whatsoever, and then, some of these people, after deciding that they don’t want to pay any attention to this and that they don’t want to live their lives under constant fear, constant threat that this could happen again, they don’t want to be vigilant about this, all it takes to add to that is everyday a pummeling of the president and the whole thing about the war on terror and how we’re creating circumstances.
Now the Iranians are doing what they’re doing because of us. They were peace-loving people before we came along! The Iraqis had been better off with Saddam Hussein. So you couple all of that natural mind-set of what it is to be an American or what it has been to be an American, with a desire for that to continue, and then you portray the ‘threat’ to being an American as living in the embodiment of George W. Bush. Well, you can see how some people would buy into that, because everybody wants to blame somebody other than themselves. You might say, ‘Well, why don’t they blame the Democrats?’ Because nowhere in the media are the Democrats being blamed, other than here. We’re not insignificant. We’re not small by any stretch. I’ll tell you, Fox News is what it is, but it’s a speck compared to the three networks, all the rest of the Drive-Bys and the magazines and the newspapers and so forth and so on. There are reasons for this. There are explanations for it. Solutions? Well, in my case I just rely on the ultimate judgment and decency of a majority of the American people, the vast amount of times, to prevail, and I still believe that.