RUSH: Folks, I gotta tell you, the level of incompetence at some of the formerly most trustworthy, reliable institutions is one of the greatest elements of this country’s — not destruction. You used to be able to count on things. There used to be institutions that were reliable, you trusted the people in them, you trusted when they came out and said something, especially if they were focused on public safety.

And now that trust just isn’t there. And the answer, the reason why is not that complicated. It is liberal political corruption of these institutions that has led to all this. Now you got people questioning what they hear about anything. For example, the left is serious about defunding the police departments. But yet there’s a poll out that shows most people don’t think that’s what they really mean. They do mean it.

Clearwater, Florida, they’re gonna get rid of the cops and they’re gonna replace cops with social workers. Clearwater, Florida. Or is it St. Pete? I’ll find it in a minute. But people don’t believe that the left is serious about defunding the cops. This is a Monmouth University poll, found only 18% of Americans believe the left and these Democrat cities and states and who say defund the police actually means defund the police.

Well, they are terribly mistaken. The anti-police are not shy about it. Black Lives Matter says on its website it wants to defund the police to invest in communities. They’re dead serious about defunding the police and replacing the police with themselves, social workers or what have you.

Look at this. “Seattle cutting the police budget by half.” Seattle city council now supports defunding the Seattle police department by 50% and sending that money to the community, whatever that is. That’s community organizer, Black Lives Matter is gonna get the money. It includes free housing and other economic benefits to minorities, which is already happening.

Let me find this real quick. It is St. Petersburg. Okay. St. Petersburg say they’re going to defund or close the cops and replace them with social workers. Yeah. Here it is. And we’ve talked about this. We’ve talked about how many cities and towns are planning to send social workers to respond to nonviolent emergency calls instead of the cops.

And I have told you, I have warned everybody that this is a way for the left to infiltrate normally conservative police departments with progressives, social workers, left-wing Birkenstock sandal wearing, longhaired, maggot-infested no underarm deodorant, little socialist day care workers running into your house pretending to be cops. I mean, who’s more progressive than social workers?

Anyhow, even St. Petersburg, Florida, is gonna do it. Never mind it means social workers are gonna have to deal with drug addicts and the mentally ill. And believe me, those kinds of people can become violent without warning at any time. This is gonna lead to the death of social workers. It’s gonna lead to massive lawsuits against cities and towns.

Here’s the Tampa Bay Times reporting on it: “Police in St. Petersburg to step back from nonviolent emergency calls — Soon, social workers will respond to certain nonviolent calls, not cops. Social workers will respond to calls in St. Petersburg about people who are intoxicated or have overdosed, people who are in mental health crises or are suicidal, homelessness, neighbor disputes and disorderly kids or truants. The social workers will be in regular clothes and will not be armed.”

Well, I don’t know, this is gonna be fun to watch. Oh, of course they’re gonna get a salary increase after defunding the cops. (interruption) Well, this is the thing. Mr. Snerdley, the Official Program Observer, just asked me how long do I think this experiment is going to last. And by “experiment,” do you mean the left-wing Democrat Party takeover of our culture? (interruption) Oh. You mean the experiment, the specific experiment of social workers taking over the role of cops, how long is that gonna last?

I have no idea. Obviously you think it’s not gonna last very long. (interruption) If social workers get killed in this mess, if that happens, who do you think is going to get blamed for it? (interruption) You think the social worker will get blamed for not doing a good job? So St. Petersburg is getting rid of the cops, the cops are not gonna deal with this, they’re gonna deal with the supposed violent stuff.

The social workers get to deal with mental insanity, drug addiction, alcoholism, all the other stuff, you know, family disputes, beheadings in the home, whatever happens out there, and they’re unarmed. If social workers get killed, you think they’re gonna get blamed for it? (interruption) Well, we’ll see.

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RUSH: By the way, you remember all the social workers that ran into the World Trade Center on 9/11, right? And the Pentagon. Nah, just being a little snarky.

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RUSH: Here is Leslie in Munster, Indiana. Great to have you on the program. Hello.

CALLER: Hi. It’s an honor to talk to you, Rush, and God bless you.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I will make it really quick and succinct. Two things. One: If Barr doesn’t want to criminalize politics and Durham doesn’t want to be viewed as political, I believe it’s time for a special prosecutor. My question is: How do we get one?

RUSH: Well, I don’t want to throw cold water, but if you go special prosecutor, you’re throwing away everything Durham’s done and starting fresh and you won’t get a result until 2024.

CALLER: Wouldn’t the special prosecutor be able to have privy to all of what Durham has done?

RUSH: No. He’d have to start from scratch. A special prosecutor would have to start from scratch, his own investigation.

CALLER: Too bad. The second thing —

RUSH: Anyway, even if a special prosecutor could start from where Durham currently is, you bring somebody new into this that doesn’t know what Durham…? Ohhh, no. That would kill it.

CALLER: Ugh! Frustrating, and it just makes you angry. But here’s my second: How do you feel about the Dems with their defunding the police? I mean, eventually, if they get enough power, they’ll use the military against Americans to keep them in line, and then it’s, “Welcome to Hong Kong.”

RUSH: Well, you mean if they win the presidency and end up running the federal government?

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: Ah.

CALLER: Then all the —

RUSH: You know what? I’ll tell you something. Normally I would say, “Nah.” With these people and who they have become and their quest for power being what it is, you can’t rule out anything like that that they would do with their power. Folks, they’re not interested in debate, and they’re interested in persuading you to have you agree with them. They’re not interested in having to work at making you agree.

They’re gonna force you — and if you don’t agree, you’re gonna be sent somewhere until you do. You’re gonna be intimidated. You’re gonna be relegated somewhere. This is Marxism with a capital M, and they don’t have time for people who don’t agree with them, whereas you may be the kind of person that you believe what you believe and you want a lot of people to agree.

So you come up with ways to try to persuade them, and you enjoy doing it. Pfft! That’s not the left. There is no persuasion. There’s what they believe and nothing else — and if you don’t subscribe to it, you’re an enemy of the state. You’re an enemy of the regime. They’re not gonna take the time to persuade you, largely because they can’t. They are a minority of the country.

Black Lives Matter and all of these other offshoot organizations and the Democrat Party are pursuing minority rule, on the basis that it’s unfair that they are the minority. (summarized) “It’s unfair that white supremacists are still the majority, and so we’re gonna overthrow that. We’re gonna just not gonna accept it anymore, and we’re gonna go for minority rule — and if we have to overthrow the Constitution to do it?

“If we have to overthrow the entire premise of democracy, then we will do it. There is no debate, there is no persuasion, there is no getting together and convincing people of the right way to do things. There’s simple their way, their opinion, and you’d better agree with it or else. We’re looking at it. If you’ve often wondered what Marxism is…

If you’ve heard the term and you don’t even know what that is. “Karl Marx? Groucho Marx? What is it?” If you’re wondering what it is, you’re looking at it right now with the mask off and no social distancing. Take a look at Seattle and that stupid CHAZ/CHOP zone. Take a look at any of these places run by liberal Democrats, states and cities. Take a look at the looting.

Take a look at the property destruction. Take a look at the taking over of police departments and defunding them and whatever that… It’s not defunding them. It’s replacing them. But Marxism is essentially the establishment of a dictatorial state using tyrannical powers to enforce conformity — and if you don’t conform, you’re an enemy of the regime, and action appropriate will be taken until you see the world the right way.

And if you don’t ever, you will become a political prisoner. You can see it in Cuba. You can see it in Venezuela. You can see it in China. You can see it in the old Soviet Union. The evidence of who these people are is abundant, and it has been your entire life. It’s not theoretical. It’s still happening in most places around the world. That’s why we are so exceptional here that we have not succumbed to it.

A simple piece of paper that people honor: The Constitution. For all these 244 years, we haven’t had one elected president attempt to subvert it, really. We’ve had a couple get close, but they’ve honored the piece of paper. We have reached the point today where it’s entirely possible that the next president will be of a party that no longer respects the piece of paper and wants to rip it to shreds — and the founders knew the day would come.

They write about it. They write about how hard it is to maintain freedom; that it requires blood, war, fighting, sacrifice. You would think that freedom would be the default. It’s like I never understood why you needed special film to capture color photographs when I was a kid, ’cause when I looked out and saw things, I saw color. I didn’t see anything in black and white.

To me, color was natural. But black and white is what you got unless you spent the extra money for color film and a camera that had a lens that could use it. It didn’t make any sense to me. It’s the same thing. Freedom? Freedom seems to me to be the natural existence. It’s how we’re born. We’re all born wanting to be free. It’s our natural state.

And yet the percentage of people who have lived on this planet since the beginning of time, who have had personal liberty and freedom like we have? It is in the one to two to three percents. Tyranny is the name of the game in the world. Tyranny and totalitarianism, authoritarianism, communism, Marxism. Even before it was officially invented by Marx, it had its vestiges. But to me, freedom is… That’s what we are.

You get up, you want to do something, you go do it. You think something; you think it. If you want to say it, you say it. Now people say, “No, better not do that! Better not say that! You never know who might hear it.” People instinctively go to the bathroom to tell something that they really don’t want anybody to overhear like they used to do in the Soviet Union.

So I don’t know. Freedom is not the natural state in which most human beings have lived. It has had to be fought for every time it’s been achieved — and, at some point, it has to be fought for to be maintained, and this is the question. Are we willing — at this juncture in our nation’s history — to fight to maintain freedom, or are we not? And we don’t know. We don’t know.

Do you know that every year the ChiComs — the Chinese government — kills more of its own people than the rest of the world combined? Every year! They do it for a number of reasons, but the number one reason is because they can. The second reason is they can’t feed them all. The third reason is that some of them are religious, and we can’t have religious people in a communist country because the official religion in a communist country is the state.