RUSH: Rapid City, South Dakota. This is Jim. Thank you for calling, sir. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Rush, you know, I think my take on the unemployment problem in this country is, I think, due to the fact that the typical man in this country is just worn out from a war on real men. I guess I site Camille Paglia’s article. The state of health in this nation is directly related to the health of guys. I’m unabashedly a guy. I have no problem saying I’m attracted to women. I like to work. I’m a manly guy, and everything that seems to be something I like, I’m being told isn’t good, you know? All our manufacturing is being shipped overseas, mining for coal, drilling for oil is bad. Yet undocumented citizens from other countries can come here under the table and take those jobs from me. You know, I don’t wear pajamas, never have since I was four years old. I guess I just feel like it’s an attrition. Heck, we like to kill our enemy and blow up things, and yet we’re told that women can do that just as well. Everything that makes a guy a guy we’re being told you can’t do that. Well, you know, sorry, but that’s the problem. I think a lot of guys are dejected and they’re kind of going a little bit soft. So I think you’re seeing that to some extent in the unemployment —
RUSH: Well, look, I understand some of it. I don’t think there’s any doubt. That piece that you cite by Camille Paglia, I agree with it a hundred percent. There is and there has been, and it’s part and parcel of the modern era feminism, an attack on masculinity. Masculinity has been portrayed as the problem in America. Masculinity, male power is the reason there are so many wars. Male power is the reason so many people get hurt. Male power is why women and children are not safe in marriage. Male power equals predatory behavior. All of this was either stated directly or an undercurrent of modern feminism and there has been and there continues to be an attack on masculinity. You know, I jokingly, humorously refer to it as the chickification of our society. But tell me again, how do you think this is affecting you finding a job?
CALLER: Well, it’s not affecting me directly, but I just speak for men in general. I think guys are worn out, because we’re told that all the things we like to do, men like to build, men like to work outdoors. There’s no Keystone pipeline being built, and the things that we could be doing in this country to make us strong and independent, like drilling and mining, we have been told for the last 20 years is wrong, it’ll hurt mother Gaia.
RUSH: Not just that, you’re destroying the country, you’re destroying the planet when you do what you really want to do as a man.
CALLER: Exactly. Hey, I unabashedly call myself a lesbian in a man’s body, and if that’s the way I have to talk PC, fine.
RUSH: Don’t laugh. This was the first program to actually discover, in 1990, male lesbians. And it’s a direct offshoot of the feminist movement.
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RUSH: No, I’m gonna… I had it, and I filed it, and I gotta go find it. This would be an ideal time. There was a story earlier in the week that I vowed to get to, and it’s in the New York Times, and it’s about how seeking success is unhealthy. It will dovetail nicely with this guy’s call, but I had it in the Stack here. It kept growing, the Stack of Stuff I didn’t get to, and it got so big yesterday, in a fit, I just trashed it all.
So I’ve got it as part of a massive file that I’m gonna have to spotlight surgery. I’ll get it in due course, but it will dovetail nicely. It’s the New York Times story on how seeking success, working hard can make you sick. It can be unhealthy. It’s just absurd. Now, earlier on the program, we had some discussion about unemployment and things that people can do, people turning out of the workforce, and there were some solutions given by well-known leftists as to what you can do.
I’d rather focus on Bernie Marcus (he’s the Home Depot cofounder) rather than listen to Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer’s out there suggesting that, well, this unemployment is today! This is so bad, we’ve gotta really, really start working now on extending unemployment benefits — and that’s what Obama’s doing. So here we are in the midst of an absolute human tragedy, the US economy — and I don’t think there’s any other way to look at it. There’s no other way to describe it.
It is a human tragedy, what’s happening, in the United States of America, six years in now — and by design, it’s getting worse. It’s by design and on purpose because exactly what Obama and the Democrats want to happen is happening. It’s gone beyond depending on government. People are now being supported by the government, and they’re okay with it. There are 92 million Americans not working!
For this to be the design of the Democrat Party, it’s not hard to understand. Growing government, supporting more and more people is never-ending power. You create all these people dependent on you; they’re gonna keep voting for you. So the human tragedy here that is taking place, that’s occurring, is something the Democrats want to occur so they can profit from it in their own way. They can benefit from it.
But I’m listening to Chuck Schumer and Obama, and their solution to this is more unemployment benefits? The solution to the crumbling job market is more welfare?
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RUSH: Now, here. I found the story on working hard makes you sick. It’s dated January 4th. It’s by Gregory Miller, Edith Chen, and Gene Brody. “Can Upward Mobility Cost You Your Health?” Now, what in the name of Sam Hill…? Thirty years ago, this kind of concern would never even occur to anybody. “Upward mobility” was the personification of the American dream. Upward mobility is simply improving your standard of living. Upward mobility is simply making a better life for yourself.
And I don’t care where you live, every human is trying to do that in his or her own way. But only in America are we gonna sit here and start trying to say that to do that might make you sick. Why in the world…? What kind of convoluted thinking would even give somebody this premise? It is critical thinking that allows me to conclude that something like this is done and conceived in order to cover for the absolute rotten economy given us about the modern Democrat Party and Barack Obama.
Because there isn’t any upward mobility. Much like in the early days of the Obama Regime, we got stories on the blessings of unemployment and how it could actually improve your life. They came up with a term to characterize it, “funemployment,” and we actually had stories about how being unemployed was the greatest thing could happen to you, because you’d get to stay at home.
You got to relearn what it’s like to be at home with your kids and you’d be closer to your family, all of this absolute lunacy, the benefits of being unemployed. Funemployment. Anything to cover the disaster being given this country by the Democrat Party. It was like in the nineties when Bill Clinton was lying every time he opened his mouth. We got stories in the media about how lying was good. It protected people. It prevented hurt feelings.
Everybody does it, just like everybody has sex — and as long as it doesn’t affect your job, it’s nobody’s business — and on and on and on and on and on. Now, “Can Upward Mobility Cost You Your Health? — Americans love a good rags-to-riches story. Even in an age of soaring inequality, we like to think that people can still make it big here if they work hard and stay out of trouble. The socioeconomic reality of most of the last four decades — stagnant wages, soaring income and wealth inequality, and reduced equality of opportunity — have dented, but not destroyed, the appeal of the American dream.” Now, that is an absolute crock.
Four decades of this? The last 40 years, stagnant wages. The last 40 years, soaring income and wealth inequality. What do they think? That there is some committee that’s assigning wealth to some people and poverty to others? No. It’s another disguised attack on capitalism. People who have more ambition are gonna likely do better than people with less ambition. People with more desire, people who work harder, who study more, who learn what it is they love, who discover what it is they love, who educate themselves on what it is they love, those people are, by definition, gonna do better than people that don’t do those things. And this is called unfairness?
It’s not inequality of wealth. It’s simply the difference in human beings. It’s the difference in desire, the difference in ambition. And, yeah, there’s luck thrown in there, but luck is simply where preparation meets opportunity. That’s all luck is. Reduced equality of opportunity? When has opportunity ever been equal? When has wealth ever been equal, anywhere in the world, under any system? It never has been. When have wages not been stagnant for somebody? Wages are stagnant for all kinds of people who are not qualified, who aren’t prepared, who don’t do good work. Sometimes wages are stagnant for union members, because that’s all the latest contract gets ’em.
But, no, what we have to do now, we have to blame America for it. And then we have to add to it, to try overcome all these obstacles is just gonna make you sick. Which is just flat-out absurd. “Those who do climb the ladder against the odds,” it says here, “often pay a little-known price. Success, at school and in the workplace, can take a toll on the body that may have long-term repercussions for health.” Now, what in the name of Sam Hill — who in the world thinks this way? And, by the way, this isn’t new. Success is the result of hard work, and there is stress involved.
There’s stress involved in the success track. There is stress involved getting there. There is more stress involved staying there. You know why? ‘Cause everybody wants what you’ve got. Everybody, at least in the immediate arena where successful people compete, everybody wants to be the best. Everybody’s trying to be. It may be a universe of 10 people or a hundred or whatever, but there’s always competition. And that is stressful. Some people don’t do as well with competition as others. Some people thrive on it, some are intimidated by it, some ignore it, whatever. We’re all different.
Whoever had the idea that success is pain free? Whoever had the idea that success doesn’t have consequences? Everything does! Where do you think the old adage, “Money isn’t the route to happiness” came from? It came from people who ended up earning a lot of money and were still not happy, for other reasons. And they weren’t happy because of stress or because of — well, any number of things. The idea here somehow is that everybody thinks success is a daily red carpet and the after party, and then the awards show, is that what success is?
The media loves you and everybody wants your autograph, and everybody wants their picture with you, and every holiday you’re either on a beach in St. Barth’s or Hawaii or somewhere in the Caribbean or Florida, and you’ve got a supermodel on your arm, that’s what success has always been? Is that what it is? And then people start looking for success and find it and they find out, just like Woody Allen said, one of the greatest things Woody Allen ever said (paraphrasing), “All success is, is that you get rejected by a different class of woman.” He’s right on the money.
It’s a classic line. Stop and think about it. Things don’t change no matter what your economic circumstances are, and having success is not something that erases everyday problems or stresses in life, but yet people must think it does because a story like this ends up getting published. “By the way, don’t worker too hard, it can make you sick. Don’t work too hard. It’s not what it’s made out to be.” This is the absolute wrong kind of thing to be saying, particularly now, because the route out, the way out of these dire economic circumstances a lot of people find themselves in is hard work.
The best way out is hard work. It’s not extended unemployment benefits. It’s not Social Security disability checks. It’s not Obamacare. The way out is what it’s always been, ambition, drive, desire, singular focus, and hard work. An added bonus is if you find something you really love, then all the rest of that stuff is much less difficult. ‘Cause if you’re really doing what you really love, the rest of that stuff doesn’t matter. If you’re doing something you don’t like and you’re successful at it, then the rest of that stuff will be a bigger problem. But people who have found what they really like don’t even think they’re working. They think they’re just getting to do what they love every day, whatever it is.
So you love to get up, and the first thing you do is get on a computer and start learning things, or whatever you do, first thing you want to do when you get up is jog, whatever the first thing you want to do every morning is, find a way to get paid for it. That’s what a lot of people have done. The idea, though, that seeking success is going to make sick, it says here, high stress, you’re gonna become obese, and it’s not what it’s made out to be.
“Among American children there are wide socioeconomic gaps on many dimensions of well-being: school achievement, mental health, drug use, teenage pregnancy and juvenile incarceration, to name just a few. Despite the risks that lower-income children face, we also know that a significant minority beat the odds. They perform admirably in school, avoid drugs and go on to college,” and they get sick. Even they get sick.
“Several years ago, we began studying these resilient young people, trying to find out if their success stories also translated into physical health benefits. We reasoned that, if disadvantaged children were succeeding academically and emotionally, they might also be protected from health problems that were more common in lower-income youth.”
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RUSH: So it seems to me that the left has decided that the main problem, the biggest problem people face is getting sick. I guess it stands to reason, what, you’re all one illness away from bankruptcy. You’re one hospital visit away from poverty. I mean, they’ve just been throwing this at you. So now even success can make you sick. They studied a bunch of kids, young people who were achieving success by all conventional markers experienced deteriorating health.
So what? Don’t do it? So, make sure you’ve got your Obamacare policy? See, everything makes you sick. Let me tell you what else makes you sick. Poverty makes you sick. Laziness makes you sick. Unemployment compensation for two-plus years can make you sick. Everything, anything can make you sick, if you sit around and wait for it and you’re not gonna get a program for every damn one of those things.
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RUSH: Now, let me clarify something that I said in my monologue moments ago, in pointing out that there is a lot of stress in success. There’s a lot of pressure in success. It manifests itself in all kinds of ways that you can’t imagine until you become successful. And by that I mean when you’ve reached whatever success is to you, when you’ve reached your goal or you’re getting close to it, I guarantee you it will be different than you think it is. That’s not bad or good. It’s just I’m telling you it’s gonna be much different than you think. Success is gonna have a far different reality than what you think it’s gonna be.
The stress of competition is different than the stress of despair. The stress of working at peak performance levels and earning money, there’s a lot of stress in that. You get yourself in a circumstance where a lot of people are depending on you for their own lifestyles, there is a lot of stress in that. But it’s far healthier than the stress of be being out of the game.
The idea that the stress involved in success can make you sick? Fear is one of the greatest motivators there is. And since there’s stress and pressure in everything, including retirement, I would just as soon have the stress that goes along with success as opposed to the stress that you get when you’re in despair. I would much rather have the stress that comes from competition than the stress and pressure that comes from not even being in the game.
Have you ever noticed, folks, speaking of upward mobility, have you ever noticed how under capitalism the rich become powerful, and under socialism the powerful become rich? It’s amazing when you look at it that way. Under capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under socialism, the powerful get rich. They exploit others. They get rich by taking from others, by using their power. In capitalism, the rich become powerful. It’s a minor little distinction. It’s one of those little pithy bullet points that is just shy of a profundity.
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