Mark Sumner at Daily Kos has a post this morning that says what I've touched on a lot here: pissing off liberals is so embedded in the right's psychology that they are more than willing to willing to screw our environment, and the earth, if it will bitch slap liberals.
If you are so unlucky as to have seen an episode [of Rush Limbaugh's TV show], you may remember a charming segment devoted to cutting down trees. Not harvesting timber or splitting firewood, mind you, just knocking over trees. In this repeating bit, cameras focused on some little pine or oak, often bearing a sign with a message to "tree huggers" or a personal note for Al Gore. Then, with a roar of chain saws and a nice cloud of two-stroke smoke, the tree was dispatched.
Killing a tree for no visible purpose never failed to generate guffaws from Limbaugh and his audience. Perhaps they pictured liberals as shivering in front of their televisions, biting their lips in horror as the poor-widdle-twee went boom. Perhaps they thought it made Al cry. Whatever they visualized, the point of the nightly tree-felling was clear: they ran the bit not because they thought it helped anyone, but because they thought it would be painful to those who cared about the environment. it was the video equivalent of pulling the wings off flies.
There have been many moments since then where Republians have demonstrated their addiction to despoiling, but it was those clips on Limbaugh that made me understand the hard right. They don't shout "drill, baby, drill" because they think it will make gas cheaper. They don't create signs in which cap and trade (a program designed by Republicans of a different era) is bracketed by a hammer and sickle because they think capturing carbon will cost jobs. They do it because they think it will piss you off. They do it even when they know what they're doing is causing real and lasting damage. They do it because hurting liberals is more important than doing the right thing. Hell, as far as today's GOP is concerned, hurting liberals is the definition of doing the right thing. If you like it, they're again' it, even if "it" is breathable air, clean water, or a climate not racing toward irrevocable harm. They've generalized the idea that liberals are pro-livable planet. So Republicans have given screwing the Earth a priority position on their to-do list. [emphasis mine]
It should be noted that Limbaugh and his lemmings are generally life's losers who abhor thinking, are insecure, and are scared of change. They know they are looked down on by sane, open-minded, smarter people - especially those in universities and the cities. However, opportunistic GOP politicians have found that they can get elected in the fly-over states by assuring these insecure voters that THEY are the ones with all the wisdom, that THEY are the REAL Americans.
The problem for those politicians is that once these voters are convinced they are the wise ones, they get ever more loony, and they begin lurching further and further to the right, rejecting science (evolution, climate change), hugely successful programs and practices (social security, medicare, and popular elections of Senators), and even common sense (failure to raise the debt ceiling would have no adverse affect on our economy!).
Someday they will finally go completely off the rails and the Republican party will be seen by all as the party of lunatics. If Barack Obama had recognized his election for what it was, a huge repudiation of the Republican party, and had pushed Democratic values rather than treat the adolescent Republicans as adults, this wouldn't be happening today. In late 2008 the Republican party was on the ropes and America was eager for change. [Letting the defeated Republicans get back up and even get the upper hand again (in less than two years!) will turn out to be Obama's biggest failure as President. He might even lose the Presidency in 2012 because of it.]
--Trakker
So you bashing others seems to okay.
Maybe Limbaugh did the tree bit because he thought it was funny.
Maybe he thought those on the Far left don't have a sense of humor.
Lighten up before your hate eats alive.
Posted by: Dan D. Doty | September 26, 2011 at 01:42 AM