Some people hate their enemies so badly that fairness doesn’t matter

By David McElroy · March 5, 2012

Rush Limbaugh has been a polarizing figure for years. To many of his adoring “dittoheads,” he was a political god. To many Democrats, he was the devil incarnate. His bizarre comments last week that law student Sandra Fluke is a “slut,” though, surprised many of those who love him.

Limbaugh’s apology Saturday was meaningless and perfunctory. With many of his allies condemning his remarks and sponsors pulling out of his show, he didn’t have any real choice. I don’t think anyone believes there’s any sincerity to the statement, any more than there typically is when a parent forces a child to make an apology to an adult for being disrespectful.

It would be easy to pile on Limbaugh here, because he’s an easy target and he deserves the derision. (I’ve made it clear in the past that I have no use for him.) But Limbaugh is just a symptom of an ugliness that stains our political culture. It’s not something unique to Republicans or conservatives. I’ve seen it from progressive leftists and libertarians, too.

It’s a hate for their enemies that’s so strong that truth and fairness don’t even matter to them any more. What’s worse, they don’t even recognize their double standard. I can’t imagine how corrosive that hatred must be for them on the inside.

When stories such as this one with Limbaugh happen, those on the progressive left are smug and self-righteous. Many of them are no more fair and honest in their reactions than Limbaugh is. Consider this graphic offered by the progressive left website Daily Kos for readers to use online in attacking Republicans over this issue. The headline on the graphic says, “Republicans hate women.” It’s a lie, of course, but the truth doesn’t matter when you hate your opponent. Honest disagreement becomes “hate.”

The truth is that the social conservatives and progressive leftists have very different opinions about several issues related to the whole matter of Fluke, contraception and health insurance. If you start with the assumptions about reality that each side makes, it’s understandable why they’d come to the conclusions they come to. So even if you disagree with the other side, you should be able to civily disagree.

It seems convenient for the progressive left to forget for the moment that one of its heroes was attacking a Republican woman last year in very crude terms. Bill Maher called Sarah Palin a “cunt” in an interview last spring. And on his own show, Maher called Palin a “dumb twat.” (Just in case you’re not sure, look up both words. You’ll find that they’re both vulgar terms for female genitals.) Maher’s language betrays a juvenile inability to make points without resorting to personal insults and an intellectual shortcoming in not being able to make his points without obscene language.

So did the people at Daily Kos make up graphics lasy year saying, “Democrats hate women”? Of course not, because attacking their own party didn’t fit with their political agenda. So Maher’s comments were mostly ignored. They certainly didn’t get sponsors pulling their ads from his television show, as has been the case with sponsors pulling out of Limbaugh’s show.

I wish more fair-minded folks would get upset with people such as Limbaugh and Maher, but not for political reasons. I wish more people would start holding others accountable — even people they agree with politically — just on grounds of honesty and fairness. I disagree with Fluke’s position when it comes to her demand that employers be required to pay for contraception, but I’m not going to call her a slut. (I have no reason to think it applies, and it would be ridiculous to say in this context even if I had reason to believe it.) I disagree with Palin about most things and I think she’s one of the less-bright politicians on the American stage today, but I see no reason to call her obscene names.

This sort of dishonesty and unfairness is done by individuals, not by entire political groups. It’s not a conservative thing or a liberal thing or any such thing. It’s about petty-minded and hateful individuals, whichever group they’re a part of. You turn it into a group thing when you have different standards about how you react to it depending on who says it.

As long as you justify the dishonest and unfair things that your own allies say — by saying, “They do it too!” — nothing is going to get better. Public discourse is just going to get worse.

Limbaugh was very wrong to say what he said last week, but he’s just one symptom of a very deep sickness in our political culture.

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Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

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