RUSH: Jeffrey, Mount Laguna, California. Welcome, sir. Great to have you with us. How are you doing?
CALLER: Doing great. Thanks, Rush. I got two quick comments. And I know this hypocrisy and double standard stuff is just as futile as it can possibly be. But here’s another example. When the bomb went off in New York City months ago, Donald Trump was immediately criticized for calling it a bomb and for not waiting for all the facts to come in, jumping to conclusions, not being cerebral. And here he makes a very nice statement minutes after the event. We didn’t even at that time know who this guy was, and he’s criticized for it. And my second comment is what Obama would get away with. He was thought of as cerebral or thoughtful for not naming who the group is. Whatever you do, don’t say radical Muslim —
CALLER: That’s right. And I believe this young man also — I’m not even beginning to try to make an excuse, it would work on the left, I believe there’s a report today that stated that he has a history of schizophrenia and has been on medications to treat that. Whether that’s true or not, it doesn’t excuse it, but it certainly would if it was on the other side.
RUSH: Since you bring that up — and can we have a red flag note here, caller brought this up, you know, for reference on the website, caller brought this up. Since you bring up schizophrenia — how many — let me just ask you a question out there, Jeffrey. I’ve got 45 seconds. You ponder the answer. How many young men today in their twenties and early thirties do you think have been on some mind-changing drug since they were in first grade? ADD, Ritalin, you name it, how many?
CALLER: As a pediatric physician for 35 years, I’m gonna estimate 25 to 35%.
RUSH: You are a pediatric physician?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Well, then your estimate is informed. Twenty-five to 30% you would guess have been given mind-altering drugs of some kind?
CALLER: At some point.
RUSH: Jeffrey, I have to go. I wish I had more time but we’re out of it. That is Jeffrey, Mount Laguna, California. Gotta take a quick time-out. Food for thought here on the EIB Network.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We had a caller, our previous caller — we didn’t even know this ’til I just randomly asked him a question, and he turned out to admit that he was a child pediatric physician. And he had made the point that he had seen some reports that the guy who drove the car into the crowd at Charlottesville had been schizophrenic. And, according to a report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, one of his teachers said that he had been treated for schizophrenia as a child.
The teacher also says that he’s been a Nazi fanatic since he was a very young boy and confided to the teacher that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was younger and had been prescribed an anti-psychotic medication. The teacher’s name is Weimer, also says that James Fields was a big Trump supporter, which will be all the Drive-Bys need to take away from the interview of the teacher who once had this kid in class.
But theoretically this should be over because Trump, he did a do-over. He went out there and did his statement, and he condemned the Klan and the white supremacists and the Nazis, and so it should be over. Well, of course it won’t be. Let me give you an — (interruption) Well, no, no, I can build on that if you want. I asked the caller how many kids, how many young men he would estimate have been drugged since youth, since grade school, and that’s when he told us that he was a pediatric physician. And he guessed 25 to 30%. And we’re thinking of things like Ritalin and other drugs for attention deficit disorder and who knows whatever else, hyperkinetic attention deficit disorder.
All these drugs are designed to basically zone you out because kids were too active and hard to control, and they didn’t have any attention span, and they weren’t learning. And so we decided we need to calm them down a little bit. I think young men in this country of all persuasions have been — what’s the word? Not treated unfairly, but with so much identity politics going on — we have to admit here, folks, the left, the Democrat Party, one of the reasons they’re losing elections is identity politics.
You know, they abandoned the traditional support base that they’ve always had, blue-collar, working people, abandoned them. They actively, purposely — they even announced that they were doing so in — instead of them, they were focusing on putting together a coalition of as many different minority groups as they could, because they had come to believe that that number would secure national elections for them because they have been busy trying to make everybody think they’re victims of something. And what have they been using in their efforts to victimize people? Their identity.
What are they victims of? Well, the large umbrella answer is victims of America, victims of the American founding. The American founding enshrined inequality, they tell people, enshrined unfairness. The American founding enshrined racism and bigotry and homophobia.
So that’s probably gonna sell pretty well when you’re out there trying to make as many victims as you can. But one group is prohibited from ever being in the victims club, and that is white men. Plenty of white women are welcome in the victims club. Who are they victimized by? White men. White men have become predators and rapists that are constantly on the prowl.
So let’s say that you are an uneducated, relatively IQ average or below, and now you can’t escape politics because it’s all over social media. You got Facebook, Twitter, nowhere you can go. Video games have politics in ’em, movies have politics, you can’t escape it. So if you’re on the victim side, how many years have you been reading and listening and watching that you have been taken advantage of, that you are discriminated against, that you are treated unfairly, and that there’s no solution except violence and outrage and anger and voting for the Democrat Party.
Well, that group of people is gonna be pretty screwed up, if you ask me. That group of people is gonna be unbalanced. They’re gonna be perpetually angry and enraged. Happiness is not going to be possible when they are forever told that they’re victims of something, when they’re never treated to anything positive, when they’re never given positive talks. They’re never given attaboys. They’re never told, “You can do it.” They’re never enlightened. They’re never inspired. All they are is victimized every waking moment of their day.
This also serves to excuse their failures. It’s not their fault. Now combine this with, in some cases, the way people are raised. “You’re special, little Johnny. You’re wonderful. All you have to do is continue to grow up, and the world will be yours, little Johnny, because you’re special.” How many kids have been told that?
So you’ve got people on the left who I would maintain, from all walks of life, who are in a constant state of anger, rage, depression, defeatism, hopelessness. I mean, this is what the left does to people, while promising them somewhere out there a panacea end to all of this. But what has to happen for that to happen? Well, the victimizers, the enemy have to be vanquished.
On the other side of this is a very, very small group of people, and they are the victimizers. And according to the Democrat Party and the media and the people that run the show on the left, who are the victimizers? Well, I hate to tell you, but that’s white men. So let’s put you in this group. You’re in a group of white men, and nobody wants to cut you any slack, because you’re the reason everybody else is deranged, unhappy, unsuccessful, depressed, and angry. Why? Because you have had unfair privilege. Why? Because you’re white.
Who are these guys? These are people that can’t find jobs. They’re not going to school because they don’t want to be preached to by a bunch of feminists. They at the same time look at a future that’s bleak and hopeless, who are they blaming? They wonder, how in the world did we become responsible for all this? How in the world are we responsible for all of the messes out there? ‘Cause that’s what they’re told. Everybody else is victims. Nobody on the victim side’s responsible for anything that happens to ’em.
Quite the contrary. They’re victims, and so their rage and anger is legitimate, in their minds. Their depression is legitimate, in their minds. Their belief that they have no control over their own lives is legitimate. They’re told this. And over here, this relatively small group of people who are responsible for all of it, white men. Not all white men because some white men are liberals who understand that white men are trash, and as long as they come out and say such, then they will be accepted by the feminists. These are average Democrat politicians and media types.
What you’re left with is the same disaffection, the same disconnectedness, the same anger, but for different reasons. They’re angry and frustrated and ticked off because they’re being blamed for the plight of all these other people who they supposedly are keeping down, discriminating against, hating, being bigoted against. Well, this sets up a monumental clash that I think a lot of people have seen coming and are seeking ways to take advantage of the clash, because the clashes keep happening.
There doesn’t seem to be to be any sincere desire for all this to end, despite what people say, despite what all the politicians in the world say and despite what the media, when they wring their hands over each of these incidents, “It’s so bad. Why can’t we all come together,” but we never do, do we? And I maintain it’s because there are people who benefit from this in many ways.
It’s just that the people over here that are the victimizers all come from one group. You’ll note that no black men, no black women, no Native American men, no illegal immigrant men, they are not creating the problem. They are all victims. So if you’ve been drugged for a lot of your life under the pretext that there’s something wrong with you to begin with, that you’re too rambunctious, that you don’t have a big enough attention span, that you’re not nice or what have you, if you’ve been drugged and you’ve had your mind altered, and then you spent a lot of years hearing how you are responsible and your dad, your granddad are responsible.
And then you hear how that guy Robert E. Lee, whoever he was, are responsible, gotta take down his statue. Hey, I got an idea. I have an idea. We like to help here. What do you think of my theory here, Mr. Snerdley? I mean, in everything I’m describing, there’s no solution, there’s no middle ground here. People benefit. It’s so easy to be a victim.
Just like it’s easy to be a liberal. It’s one of the most gutless choices you can make. It’s easy to have built-in excuses. It’s easy for everybody else to be blamed for your plight. And it’s easy to have a political party claim to be your representative and your bulwark, the people that are gonna help you, which, by the way, they never do.
Take a look at all these groups to see how little they are advancing after 50 years voting Democrat. And over here the small, little group that claim to be responsible for all of it, and they gotta be just as confused. How in the hell is some guy who is 20 years old that can barely afford a jalopy and can’t probably and doesn’t have anything, doesn’t have two sticks to rub together, is to blame for all this? Well, it doesn’t compute; it doesn’t make any sense.
And then we’re told all these white guys from the past going all the way back to the founding, and the the Confederate Army, and Robert E. Lee.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Identity politics in the Democrat Party is a primary factor in where our culture is today. Everybody talks about identity politics, but who really knows what it is and what it has become? And so there are a couple of pieces on this today. One of them is by a guy named Mark Lilla. He is a professor at Columbia University, and he wrote a book, and the book is called… I think it’s Liberal Crackup. No! The Once and Future Liberal After Identity Politics.
It’ll be published tomorrow by Harper, and that’s owned by the Journal — the Wall Street Journal, News Corp, the Murdochs. The review of this book (excerpt, actually, of the book) in the Wall Street Journal on August 11th, Friday last week, over the weekend. This guy is a liberal, Mark Lilla, professor of humanities at Columbia, and he writes scathingly of identity politics and fears that it is the end of the Democrat Party. He fears that it is creating circumstances which will forever prohibit and not permit unity.
“I’m a white man, so you should listen to absolutely nothing I say, at least on matters of social justice. I have no standing. No way to relate. My color and gender nullify me, and it gets worse: I grew up in the suburbs. Dad made six figures. We had a backyard pool. From the 10th through 12th grades, I attended private school. So the only proper way for me to check my privilege is to realize that it blinds me to others’ struggles and should gag me during discussions about the right responses to them.”
Now, wait. This is exactly… he has just spelled out exactly the way this stuff is enforced. It is all-day “intersectionalism.” We have discussed this on this program. Intersectionalism is the theory that every victim on the left intersects with each other and that there is a common denominator in all these different victim groups. Intersectionality. Keith Ellison from Minnesota — he came in second, I think, to head the Democrat National Committee — is now suggesting that it become the primary belief principle and set of agenda items (platform, if you will) of the Democrat Party. Intersectionalism.
It essentially tries to say that white privilege is the root of all victim status: Racism, bigotry, homophobia. All of these groups have sprung up because of white privilege, and there’s some racism that is part of the intersectionality. So this guy, Bruni, in this first paragraph nails it. He’s not qualified to enter discussions with Social Justice Warriors ’cause he’s white. Therefore, he has absolutely nothing to say on matters of social justice because he has no standing, because he can’t possibly relate to poor people or people of color or women or feminists. He says, “My color and gender nullify me, and it gets worse: I grew up in the suburbs.” (paraphrased) I really don’t qualify, can’t relate. “Dad made six figures!” (scoffs) That makes me out of touch with everybody else.
We had a backyard pool. That further disqualifies me. I attended private school. I’m really losing ground now. The only proper way for me to check my privilege is to realize that it blinds me, that I cannot possibly understand anybody else’s grievance because I have never shared them, I can’t possibly understand, so I should shut up.
Next paragraph. “But wait. I’m gay. And I mean gay from a different, darker day. In that pool and at that school, I sometimes quaked inside, fearful of what my future held. Back then — the 1970s — gay stereotypes went unchallenged, gay jokes drew hearty laughter and exponentially more Americans were closeted than out. We conducted our lives in whispers. Then AIDS spread, and we wore scarlet letters as we marched into the public square to plead with President Ronald Reagan for help.
“So where does that leave me? Who does that make me? Oppressor or oppressed? Villain or victim? And does my legitimacy hinge on the answer? To listen to some of the guardians of purity on the left, yes.”
And he’s exactly right. This is exactly how they disqualify. This is modern identity politics, and it’s what Mark Lilla writes about in his book and this excerpted chapter. Lilla is even quoted in this Frank Bruni piece. But in the event, Bruni condemns this stuff.
“I question the wisdom of turning categories into credentials when it comes to politics and public debate. I reject the assumptions — otherwise known as prejudices — that certain life circumstances prohibit sensitivity and sound judgment while other conditions guarantee them.”
Whether you know it or not, folks, we’ve faced this all of our modern lives. I can remember in the early days of this radio program, in discussing the defense budget, for example, I’d get a call from some loco weed who would say, “You didn’t serve in the military. You’re not qualified to talk about this.” And of course I was taken aback and shocked at the sheer stupidity of such a claim.
And so I evolved philosophies to respond to this. Of course they were met with dead ears. Are you really trying to tell us that just because we haven’t lived a certain experience, we’re not qualified to comment on it? This is what they have sought. This is nothing new. This identity politics is nothing new. What is new about it is how it has come to control and define the Democrat Party.
And it explains snowflakes on college campus. It explains people who don’t want to hear anything they disagree with. It explains the utter loss of critical thinking. It explains the ability of the left on college and high school campuses to thoroughly propagandize students. Because not only are there no opposing views, the opposing views that are out there are automatically disqualified because the people who hold them are illegitimate.
Remember the Year of the Woman in the United States Senate when five or six women were elected? Even then we were being told that women and only women can represent other women, and that the Senate being a mostly male institution was inherently discriminating and unfair because how can a bunch of old guys understand the plight of modern American women?
And so the seeds were planted for discrediting and disqualifying anything that came out of any institution where there was a preponderance of white males, pure and simple. In this way they didn’t have to deal with the intellectual aspect of arguments, because they can’t. They didn’t even have to enter the arena of ideas. They just disqualify whoever holds an opposing point of view on the basis that they’re not entitled. It survives today, and it’s growing. And this guy, Mark Lilla, is worried that it’s going to greatly damage — it already is — the Democrat Party.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. Welcome back. One other thing I want to get in here before we go back to the phones. This idea that we have a whole, I don’t know, generation, maybe not that large, we got a group of young men that are wandering aimless through life for whatever reasons. We’ve got the men victims over here that are not white. And we have the white men over here, the young, who are being blamed, they are the victimizers. They’re the ones responsible for all the pain and suffering of everybody else.
Well, the normal ways, the places that young boys could go to release all their energy and take a stab at challenge and maybe overcome obstacles was sports! Fans and players. They could escape. They could learn skills, challenges, at the same time get exercise, be part of a team, learn about leadership, learn how to handle losing and winning, the benefits of hard work. But all those things have been erased. Sports has now become politicized itself. And now what are young boys told about sports?
It’s dangerous. It could kill you. You could die. It’s aggressive. It’s not fair. It’s privileged. You’re not good enough anyway. So they sit in the basement and they fantasize and they play video games, some of them violent. So why not? I mean, look at all they’re missing. They’re missing camaraderie. They’re missing human interaction. They’re missing the normalization process that used to be part of growing up. Not all of them of course, but the ones we’re talking about oftentimes end up as loners. They don’t have any money. Therefore they’re not independent. And they certainly don’t have a positive outlook on life.
So it makes all those things that are missing that happen to show up in other people — a positive attitude, confidence, that becomes attractive. And some end up gravitating towards it. All because many things that used to be normal and part of growing up are now not permitted or they’re condemned or people are warned against them because of the inherent danger. I mean, look at what’s being done in the NFL now. You think the NFL’s days are numbered? They are. Don’t know how many. Don’t know what form. But the NFL definitely has a limited future out there.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
I want to get back to this identity politics article excerpt from the book by Mark Lilla, again a professor of the humanities at Columbia University.
This essay prints to about six pages. I’m not gonna read the whole thing, don’t worry. Adapted from his new book, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics. The guy does not like it. He thinks it’s hurting the Democrat Party.
He says: “It is time to admit that American liberalism is in deep crisis: a crisis of imagination and ambition on our side, a crisis of attachment and trust on the side of the wider public. The question is, why? Why would those who claim to speak for and defend the great American,” middle class, the great unwashed, why should those people “be so indifferent to stirring its feelings and gaining its trust? Why, in the contest for the American imagination, have liberals simply abdicated?
“Donald Trump’s surprise victory in last year’s presidential election has finally energized my fellow liberals, who are networking, marching and showing up at town-hall meetings across the country. There is excited talk about winning back the White House in 2020 and maybe even the House of Representatives in the interim.
Help me out. When did Republicans stymie Obama? There must be something. Right-leaning Supreme Court. That must be when Kennedy votes with our side. He said: “Ronald Reagan almost single-handedly destroyed the New Deal vision of America that used to guide us. Franklin Roosevelt had pictured a place where citizens were joined in a collective enterprise to build a strong nation and protect each other. The watchwords of that effort were solidarity, opportunity and public duty. Reagan pictured a more individualistic America where everyone would flourish once freed from the shackles of the state.”
Jumping forward he says: “There is a mystery at the core of every suicide, and the story of how a once-successful liberal politics of solidarity became a failed liberal politics of ‘difference’ is not a simple one. Perhaps the best place to begin it is with a slogan: The personal is the political.”
I’ve gotta come up on a break here, but let me share with you — because this cuts to the chase. “As a teacher” — remember, he’s professor of humanities at Columbia — “As a teacher, I am increasingly struck by a difference between my conservative and progressive students. Contrary to the stereotype, the conservatives are far more likely to connect their engagements to a set of political ideas and principles.”
In other words, conservative students critically think. They know that what they think is tied to core beliefs, political ideas, and principles. But he says, “Young people on the left are much more inclined to say that they are engaged in politics as an X, concerned about other Xs and those issues touching on X-ness. And they are less and less comfortable with debate.”
So let’s translate the X, what he means here. Young people on the left are much more inclined to say that they are engaged in the politics of let’s say homosexuality. And they are concerned about other homosexuals and those issues touching on them, and that’s it. And they don’t want to debate it. They identify as X, and that’s all they care about.
“Over the past decade a new, and very revealing, locution has drifted from our universities into the media mainstream: Speaking as an X…This is not an anodyne phrase. It sets up a wall against any questions that come from a non-X perspective. Classroom conversations that once might have begun, I think A, and here is my argument, now take the form, Speaking as an X, I am offended that you claim B. What replaces argument, then, are taboos against unfamiliar ideas and contrary opinions.”
So in this translation, “Speaking as a gay man, I think” whatever, “and here is my argument. Speaking as a gay man, I’m offended that you claim” whatever. That’s meant to shut you up. Nobody is engaged in argument. Nobody is engaged in debate. Your identity is your defining thing, and if anybody doesn’t recognize it, then you shut them out and shut them down and you do not talk to them about it because they become unqualified.
And his belief is that this is isolating instead of unifying all these disparate minority groups in the Democrat Party. There’s no unity. There’s no solidarity. There’s no togetherness whatsoever. They are bifurcating, they’re Balkanizing themselves, and they’re disqualifying anybody and everybody that’s not one of them for being able to talk about what they think or what they do.
It is, in my words, extreme cowardice, and it’s been allowed to prosper. And this is what the Democrat Party has thrown in with. This is where the Democrats have decided their future victories are. And this professor is worried to death that it means the exact opposite.
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