How to Combat the Lib-Guilt Blues

RUSH: Billy in Denton, Texas, you’re up next, sir. Thank you for calling.

CALLER: Greetings, El Rushbo. Mega carbon-emitting, fat Santa dittos from Texas.

RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.

CALLER: After my parents, you’re pretty much my number-one hero.

RUSH: I appreciate that. I really do. Thank you. Even when I’m in a blue funk?

CALLER: Even if your blue funk. That’s what I’m calling about, because I’m in a bit of a blue funk myself. I’m blue about being green. I recently graduated from college, and I’m pursuing a dream of being a television and film writer, and I’m really happy. I’m hard working, but now I have to deal with the threats of oppressive environmentalist regulations, and I’m just a regular guy. I’m just a guy. What can I do?

RUSH: Wait a minute. This is interesting. You feel in a blue funk over the coming oppressive environmental regulations. So that means you’re not being persuaded or propagandized by these messages into thinking that you have to get on this train of sacrifice and tax increases and rolling back your lifestyle in order to be a good person?

CALLER: No, sir. I’ve been blessed with clarity of thought, and I see through it. It’s just politics. It’s the recent wave of politics that we’re hearing, and it’s something that… I’m afraid. I feel like the environmentalists are using terrorist tactics of fear to try to get me to change, but I’m not going to change because it’s not true.

RUSH: Well, that’s right. Okay, they are using tactics of fear. They are. You are exactly right. Now, their target is people like you and others who, you know, don’t pay all that close attention, who are not really independent thinkers the go-along-with-the-crowd crowd, and the go-along-with-the-crowd crowd is typified by last night’s football pregame show.

CALLER: Yeah. I watched the game last night. I couldn’t believe it — a studio in candlelight — and I just graduated with a degree in radio, television, and film, and our studios are humming. So no matter what lights they turn out, the desk had two huge LCD screens operating right under the desk.

RUSH: Oh, I know. The lights are irrelevant. Well, the klieg lights are pretty powerful. It was just a show. But the target audience watching a football pregame show you would have to say is average people, people who live their lives. So here comes this giant sermon in a football pregame show! You know damn well that they are the target, just like you feel the target. You ask what to do?

CALLER: What do I do?

RUSH: I’ll tell you exactly what to do. It’s what I do and what I advise everybody, for example, if they start talking about a recession: just don’t participate!

CALLER: That’s what I’m trying to do.

RUSH: Well, just do it.

CALLER: People are making me feel guilty, and I just want a new car, and —

RUSH: Don’t give them that kind of power. Why should you let these people make you feel guilty? Guilty over what?

CALLER: Well, I’m just a struggling guy, just got out of college, and I have enough to deal with, but with this on top of it, it’s —

RUSH: You —

CALLER: — just another layer of —

RUSH: Billy?

CALLER: Yes, sir?

RUSH: If I were there, I’d grab your shoulders and I’d start shaking you to the point that child services would come and haul me away.

CALLER: (chuckles) Well, I’m glad you’re not here.

RUSH: Do not let this affect you that way! You are giving these people more power than they need to affect the way you think about yourself, the way you think about your future and your mood overall. Don’t give them that power. You don’t have to participate in this stuff. It’s like me. You know, I watched this pregame show. When I saw that last night and they urged me to turn off the lights, what did I do? I went and turned a bunch on.

CALLER: Exactly. That’s what I want. I need —

RUSH: And I feel better about it.

CALLER: I want a way to counteract it. I want a way to show it. I feel like the voice of the rational and the reasonable is not being heard — besides your program, of course — but I feel like a mouse against the current.

RUSH: It’s like anything else, Billy. There are more people out there like you than you know.

CALLER: I hope so.

RUSH: Believe me, you just got out of college, and I have been doing this for 20 years and I’ve had calls from people about different subjects, usually the news media, and they wanted me, ‘You’ve gotta point out the lies and the bias that are on the news!’ I said, ‘I don’t really need to point it out because more people saw it and believe like you do than you possibly know. It’s just people like you are not covered,’ although you are now. There’s a whole New Media movement that gives voice to the things that you believe in.

CALLER: That’s right.

RUSH: But just as a general rule, this is stuff that not only should you not allow yourself to be made to feel guilty by surrendering that kind of power… Guilt is a horrible thing. You know what you’re doing? In all candor, you are self-suffering, and there’s no excuse for self-suffering. There’s enough suffering in life brought on by real events without you telling yourself stories that you can’t possibly know, and start suffering over things like that. Self-induced suffering deserves a slap in the face. Wake up! It’s not good. It’s not productive. It doesn’t do a damn thing for you, and it’s not necessary here. The second thing is, don’t participate in it. You know, I don’t have to join the crowd. You don’t sound like a guy that joins the crowd anyway.

CALLER: Rush, here’s the thing. I’m working to be a television and film writer.

RUSH: So? What’s this got to do with this? What am I missing here? I might be missing something.

CALLER: Make I’m not clear enough. NBC is now going green and doing these things, and I feel like that my affect my chances of getting a gig.

RUSH: Why? Because you don’t subscribe to the things they want written?

CALLER: And I’m a conservative.

RUSH: Well, hey.

CALLER: I’ve got great ideas and I feel like I want to put them out there, but I don’t want somebody standing in the way just because I don’t subscribe to Algore’s movie.

RUSH: Okay. There. Then cross NBC off your list.|

CALLER: (laughs)

RUSH: Look, why go someplace you wouldn’t be wanted anyway? Why go someplace that every day is going to be a struggle and a fight that you’re end up losing and alienated? There’s so many other opportunities. You know, this writers strike going on ought to scare you more than that.

CALLER: It is scary, and it provides an opportunity for me. I don’t really know what to do right now because I want to be heard and I want to be noticed, but now eventually one of my goals is to be in the Writers Guild —

RUSH: Wait —

CALLER: — but I don’t want to cross the picket line.

RUSH: That’s the wrong goal. What you’re telling me is, you want fame. Let the fame come from achievement. You should be focused on, ‘I want to gather work, and I want to do the best I can. I want to write the best stuff that’s been written, and I want to write the funniest’ or whatever, and let that get you noticed, if your objective is to get noticed, if your objective is to be heard.

CALLER: Well, my objective is to get work first. (laughs)

RUSH: Well, okay. Good. There are going to be plenty of places to get work. This is the United States of America, and if worse comes to worse, start your own writing shop and start writing stuff, and sending it out, and find clients. The opportunities here are limitless, as long as you have that attitude. I’m way long on a break. I’ve gotta go, but listen to what I said to you.