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Why I Remain Bullish on America — Despite the Unrelenting Negativism of the Left

by Rush Limbaugh - Nov 21,2018

RUSH: Folks, it’s Thanksgiving, and I remain ebullient and optimistic and very bullish on our country and our future. I really do, and I want to spend some time talking about that today. That’s not to be blind; don’t misunderstand. But I am struck by a couple of things I’ve encountered the past two days, and it’s really nothing new. It’s out there every day. I see it every day. But, for some reason, I want to spend some time on this today. As a setup, I want to remind you of the call we had last week from the 13-year-old girl that was in Ohio.

Her name was Delia and she wanted to know from me if I thought… This was a school project. It was last Thursday, and she had a project for the next day, which would be last Friday. She wanted know if I thought that it should be difficult to become a citizen via legal immigration. I told her I thought it should be because it’s worth it and that everything worthwhile is hard, takes application, takes focus. In the process of answering her, I spelled out why I think it’s worth it (i.e., why America is singularly the greatest nation ever in the history of humanity and why it should be preserved).

Many of you… I’ve never gotten more feedback. Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve had as much feedback to anything that happened here as I had on that call. So, if you heard that and you remember the elements that I explained to her about the greatness of the country, that’s the foundation here. Despite the ups and downs that we experience and feel on a day-to-day basis, the United States of America remains the United States of America. It’s very risky. We are precariously balanced.

We are under assault from within by the American left and the Democrat Party. But we persevere, because there are still more of us who treasure the United States of America as founded, there are more of us than there are of those who wish to undermine it. But their numbers are growing. We know it. I’m not sitting here denying it. I’m not getting all Pollyannaish on you. But I want to focus on, “Why are so many people so down on America?” How it has happened, what the shame of it is, why it’s so totally unnecessary, and why it’s destructive.

Exhibit A. As you know, I have a hobby, and that is technology and staying up to speed on it. It’s one of the ways that I use to escape all of this so that my mind doesn’t fry with constant exposure to these things like these two things I mentioned today that literally tick me off. I mean, I’m not like the left. I don’t want to go through every day, all day, enraged, angry, outraged, loaded for bear. So I have outlets that de-stress. Golf is one. Staying up to speed on tech and gizmos and gadgets, learning how to use them, getting the most out of them.

These are sybaritic pursuits of mine. In the process, I have to read a lot. So I have access to an omnivorous selection of blogs and websites, and these are all populated by 30-ish-year-old Millennial types, male and female. It turns out they represent a case study on what education has done to our country, what your kids entering the education system are facing, and at the same time illustrates the task we have, ’cause these people’s minds have literally been corrupted and poisoned. They have been indoctrinated. They’ve been perverted. They have been propagandized.

I never want to mention the name of a specific blog or writer because they’re all the same. They’re all identical. I mean, they don’t differ. This is another… Whatever blog and website you go to, if they’re talking about Apple, they all think the same thing, with rare exceptions. If they’re talking about climate change, they all think the same thing. So it doesn’t matter the name, and I’m not… I don’t want to focus attention on any one person to have them react to it and have a phony feud created. I want to focus on the actual substance or content.

If you go look it up and find it, which will not be hard, feel free. Have at it. But my point here is not to do what is popular here in media, create these phony personal feuds which seem to be a staple of so much programming. But here’s the headline: “The Worst Year to Be a Human on Earth Surprisingly Isn’t 2018.” (interruption) Now, see, everybody on the other side of the glass is laughing. I used to laugh, but you read this stuff every day and you find out they really think this.

These are 30-, 32-, 35-year-old people that really think this. How must it govern the rest of their lives? How must it govern the way they vote, what they think of other people, how literally brain-dead they are, and what they’re missing? Can you believe the thing that really troubles me about this is that it is one of the greatest privileges — it is one of the greatest opportunities as a human being — to be an American. To be alive today, and especially in the United States of America, is to live like no other human beings before us even had the chance to live.

Despite the political disagreements and the angst, the human life expectancy has never been better. The standard of living — not just in America, but around the world — has never been higher. One aggregate on average… You can always find pockets of despair and poverty that disprove it. But on balance — and if you want to just talk about the United States, it’s not even close — life is better today than it was yesterday, than last year, than last month, than last decade.

That’s what the fight is: To keep that fact alive, to keep that going. Everybody wants their kids to have a better life than they had, and America has been the place for that to be possible. And it still is, and it’s still happening. Medical discoveries. Yeah, we got expensive prescription drugs. You can always find something to be mad at. You can always find something to be angry at. Always find something to be depressed about.

But if you step back, there is no way anybody alive today who thinks about it would trade life today for life before the automobile, for life before electricity, for life before airplane flight, before life before space exploration. There is no way anybody would trade it. Some way they would, but they didn’t actually live it. You want to go back to the Old West where the streets were dirt, filled with horse manure? Talk about sanitation? There simply is no way to compare and think that today things are worse than ever.

But how many young people have been taught it and thus believe it and live it, and they themselves are depressed, they themselves are despondent? Young people today believe that because of a nonexistent scientific hoax — man-made climate change — that this planet may not be habitable by the time they’re 65. In many cases, that’s 30 years. I mentioned the story the other day that Bill Nye — who is not a scientist. He wears a white lab coat and appears on PBS, but he’s not a scientist, Bill Nye is not a scientist.

He came out the other day and he said to people (paraphrased), “Let’s get serious. We can’t colonize Mars. There’s no food there, it’s too cold, and there’s no air. There’s nothing to breathe.” You would not believe the rage and anger at this guy on the tech blogs, because prior to this he was a hero. I mean, these people literally think that their only hope is colonizing Mars or an asteroid. Their lives are being wasted.

They’re never gonna reach the potential that they could simply because they have been implanted with attitudes and lies and miseducation, maleducation, ill-education that makes it impossible for them to factually face reality and even be optimistic about things. “The Worst Year to Be a Human on Earth Surprisingly Isn’t 2018.” Why would somebody think…? That’s just the headline. Wait ’til you hear some of the details of the story. Why would somebody think that 2018 would be the worst year to be a human on earth when, by any measure you want to make, it’s the best?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Young people today have been so… I don’t know. What’s the word? Abused. They have been so dis-serviced by media and by their education. The one human life that they all get has been shrouded in angst and fear and pessimism over politics, left-wing, liberal hoaxes. Try this headline, if you don’t believe me. You’ve all heard of the science magazine called Nature. Well, you may not have heard of it.

We quote from it here frequently. It’s been around for a long time. They just ran an article and the headline of the article: “Assigning Gender by the Genitals One is Born with ‘Has no Foundation in Science.'” In other words, you’re born and the doctors look at you and they see your genitalia and pronounce you a male or female. That now has no basis in science, according to a magazine called Nature.

That is accredited and has all kinds of peer-reviewed gobbledygook BS in it. Nature finds “Assigning Gender by the Genitals One is Born with ‘Has no Foundation in Science.'” All of this to make transgenders feel normal and welcome, and this is a microcosm of what’s happening to all of America: Destroying institutions, traditions, scientific fact, all to make some people who have some mental problems feel not so bad.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: And remember, we had the piece yesterday that Eastern Michigan University has decided to cancel all production and all performances of the Vagina Monologues. You know why, Brian? (interruption) Because not all women have vaginas anymore. Who knew? So now Nature says, “Hey, just the genitalia your born with? That’s never been the way we determine gender! That’s never been the way.” Back to the story here: “The Worst Year to Be a Human on Earth Surprisingly Isn’t 2018.” Here’s the opening paragraph:

“If you take a look at recent events you might imagine that scientists searching for the worst year of human existence would have a hard time topping 2018. I mean, there are mass shootings every other day (and sometimes every day), wildfires destroying huge areas, hurricanes wiping communities off the map, and a planet that is slowly dying because we can’t stop messing stuff up.” The planet’s not dying. We can’t kill it. The earth is being used in greater ways than ever before for the advancement of the human condition.

The standard of living, however you measure it — in economics, in prosperity, whatever — today has never, ever been better, and particularly in the United States of America. Now, this is important to me, because we’re here on Thanksgiving, and we have focused efforts to destroy even that that are commonplace each and every day. One of the reasons why so many people are so negative and obsessed with this stuff is media — and education is, of course, another factor. I just hate seeing people throw their lives away.

I hate… You know, we all only get one life, and I know that we’re free to do with it whatever we want, and if these young people want to buy into all of this nonsense and run around not even get close to reaching their full potential? Fine. We have the freedom to do that. I just hate seeing it. I hate seeing such blatant ignorance actually (chuckling) surviving in the guise of superior education. Here’s the last paragraph: “Humans as a whole did, of course, make it.”

The worst year, by the way, in this story — the worst year — was 536 A.D., with bubonic plague and all that, according to science. Scientists have determined 536 A.D. was the worst year ever. Tell that to somebody who lived under the boots of the Roman Empire. Okay. But 536 A.D. was the magical worst year ever to be a human being. So the final paragraph: “Humans as a whole did, of course, make it. We survived incredible hardships and that’s why we’re still here today. The Earth, on the other hand, may have preferred that we didn’t.”

So the earth really doesn’t like us being here. Nature would be much better off, every other living organism would be much better off if we weren’t here. It’s not an insignificant thing, folks. All of this is an illustration of how effective the left has been in corrupting, I mean, literally polluting and corruption young minds. And then Fredo Cuomo had a show on Thanksgiving that he did. I think this was last night, and he says, “Celebrating Thanksgiving at a time of illness, depredation, like the Pilgrims.”

All wrapped up into one quote from Fredo Cuomo. You know, liberals — and this is a problem. They’re never happy, they’re never optimistic, they’re never even content. Thanksgiving and the history of Thanksgiving is routinely distorted, made filthy and dirty. Fredo’s history, Fredo Cuomo’s history is so perverted he actually thinks it’s okay to compare Trump to the horrors of the Civil War where 700,000 Americans killed each other.

He thinks it’s perfectly fine to compare Trump to the times in America when the Pilgrims landed to flee religious persecution on a tiny little boat. They almost died of illness and starvation. The Depression when there were no jobs, no income, and much misery. Pearl Harbor. These are the kinds of things that Fredo Cuomo is trying to tell his audience that America’s in worse shape than it’s ever been this Thanksgiving. All because of Donald Trump.

So this litany of pessimism and negativism is never ending. You can avoid it. Turn off the news. It’s not difficult at all. Just turn off the news. Try it for five days. Turn off the news. My sole point here is that — and look. I know you may think some of this hypocritical because we ourselves here spend a lot of time talking about these issues that do have everybody angry or filled with angst. We do so from the standpoint of hoping to overcome them, to defeat them and to improve things.

But at the same time while all this is going on, it is undeniable that there remains tremendous opportunity for anybody who wants to go for it. They haven’t destroyed this country yet. They haven’t come close to it yet, no matter how hard they’re trying — and the evidence is all of the people succeeding each and every day. There are lots of people who don’t watch the news, folks. There are a lot of people who don’t get involved in politics. A lot of people are fed up with it, don’t want to be depressed by it.

They’re out there living their lives. It can be done. If you know how to do it, you can do both. I have mastered it. I don’t let this stuff ruin my day or ruin my life. Other people are unable to escape it. But on this particular day, the day before Thanksgiving — tomorrow, specifically — I just think it’s crucially important to remember how fortunate we all are and what great opportunities we all still have. Being optimistic is hard. Being positive is hard. Seeing through all the noise that leads to pessimism and negativism is hard to do.

It’s so easy to capitulate and say, “We’re screwed. We’ve had it. It’s over!” It’s easy to do that. But there are a whole lot of people not even thinking that way out there, and they’re the ones who make America work. They’re the ones that we need to learn and idolize, maybe emulate and so forth. I also want to get started on phones earlier than usual since it’s our last program for a while, be back on Monday. And I want to start in Peoria.

Mark, it’s great to have you. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, thanks for having me.

RUSH: You bet, sir! Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.

CALLER: Oh, yeah. Back at you. I’d just like to say I couldn’t disagree with you more about young kids, ’cause I go out to like music festivals and such. So many of them are positive, hate Hillary. Women, young women did not want to ever see her get in office. I mean, it’s just what you saw on the media that’s changing them. They’re really not that bad. Sure they’re lazy, but they’re not their fault. That’s (unintelligible).

RUSH: Wait a minute. You know a lot of young people that hate Hillary?

CALLER: Oh, yeah! Yeah! I don’t deal with the internet. I deal with people. I work in person. So the ones I see cannot stand her, they were saying “Hillary for Prison!” (chuckling) You know, and you could see it in Trump’s rallies before the election. You know, there were young people there too.

RUSH: No, I understand all that. I’m not denying any of that, although I never said that hating Hillary is a requirement for being optimistic —

CALLER: No. They were positive about, “Hey, you know, this is as good as it’s ever been,” you know? They’re all problems but I just see a lot of young kids who are not down in the dumps. You know, the media wants to project them as that way, but I don’t spend a lot of time with the media other than football — and how about those Steelers?

RUSH: (chuckles) The Steelers have a tough schedule ’cause the Steelers have the Chargers. Who else they’ve got? They’ve got the Saints. The Steelers… We’re gonna find out if the Steelers are really. They’ve got a five-game stretch coming up that’s gonna be a real difficult thing for them. We’ll find out. Look, about young people. Every time I get into this there’s some people that misunderstand. I’m not issuing a blanket statement. It’s why I specified the kind of people I’m talking about.

I try to chronicle the success (for lack of a better word) of the left in polluting and corruption people’s minds. I don’t think we can just ignore it because it’s all part of the battle that we have and that we face ’cause it’s all about the future. I just cringe. I just personally cringe when I run into this stuff, and it’s not uncommon. I mean, universities today are overrun with this kind of thinking. You may want to sit there and go your music festivals and think everybody there is a great patriot.

I’m not denying that that is the case. But… Look, can I boil this down? We live in the greatest place on earth, we live at the greatest time in human history to live, and to have so many Americans believe the exact opposite is just a crying shame. It’s just an unfortunate shame. That’s all. That’s my only point. It’s so unnecessary, and it is so destructive for them and everything they get involved in and touch. It’s so unnecessary. It’s so untrue. I hate people being successfully lied to, and the left has this down to a science.


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