From: kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu (Dr Nancy's Sweetie)
Subject: Re: Thanks for the Rush
Summary: Don't make the same mistake he does.
Organization: Rowan College of New Jersey
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 03:48:28 GMT


Dan Graham criticises Rush Limbaugh, and the conservative Christian
political movement, in pretty harsh terms.

I am no fan of Mr Limbaugh, and I consider his popularity to be irrefutable
proof of how education has suffered under Reagan and Bush.  [ 1/2 8-) ]
It is not that Mr Limbaugh is particularly stupid; I would say that he is
about as smart as most US citizens.  But US citizens in general are not all
that bright, and Mr Limbaugh, who is no smarter, considers himself some sort
of genius.


However, I do not think he is particularly evil; or at least, no more evil
than anyone else.  He is a political commentator, and political commentators
often get galvanised so that they start imagining their ideas not only RIGHT,
but OBVIOUS.  They delude themselves into thinking that anyone who disagrees
with them is either self-deceptive or really stupid.

Here is an example: last September, I had a discussion about what one should
do if transported back to Germany in 1920 -- would you kill Adolf Hitler if
you could?  One participant said something like "The best thing would be to
talk to him about the Gospels and avert the disaster without killing him."
This exact same person, less than two hours later, referred to Bill Clinton as
"a tax-and-spend liberal sh*t".

Adolf Hitler wasn't a bad guy, and only needed Christ to straighten himself
out, but Mr Clinton was referred to with a profane term for excrement.

The person I'm talking about is not particularly evil; he's usually nice to
people that he meets, and (most of the time) he's a good host.  But because
political issues are so volatile, he used vulgar language about someone he has
never met.


It takes a lot of patience and care to look at political positions and
understand that one's opponents have reasons for disagreeing.  For example,
Anti-Abortion activists are not trying to enact fascist control over women;
Pro-Choice people are not in favor of slaughtering babies.  Both groups have
reasons for the positions they take, but their opponents paint them in
unflattering terms because they don't understand what those reasons are.  Many
members (of each group) are knee-jerk reactionaries who don't even know what
the arguments are for their own positions, but that doesn't mean no arguments
exist.  I would guess that MOST members of both groups are influenced by a
"siege mentality" and imagine themselves under attack; few if any have even
tried to understand the reasoning of those who disagree.

Such people are not evil; they are just ignorant.  Their opponents are not
trying to ruin the world or mislead Christians or ruin the United States; but
because they don't understand the reasons for their disagreement, they assume
that some hostile force is at work.

And that, in the end, is Rush Limbaugh's problem.  He's not a bad guy, I don't
think.  He's just woefully ignorant of the things he talks about.  He does
slant the truth with an amazing bias -- if any of the `liberal media' did
their job as badly as he does his, he'd never let up on them.  But he does not
do this intentionally; he's not trying to mislead people.  It's just that he
himself is so utterly confused about what's going on that he can't help but
confuse others.

He honestly believes that his ideas are obviously correct to anyone who takes
a serious look at them.  Whether this is because he is too lazy to try and
understand his opposition, or he lacks the brainpower to understand different
perspectives, I don't know.  (I suspect it's a combination of both.)


What one should be careful of is making this same mistake.  It's easy for us
to say that Mr Limbaugh says what he does because he's dishonest, just as it
is easy to for him to say that Bill Clinton is dishonest.  But we should not
yield to that temptation; superficial analysis may be simple, but it's often
useless.  We need to do the hard work of thinking that Mr Limbaugh neglects.


Mind you, this doesn't mean Mr Limbaugh is harmless; many people take him
seriously, and believe the nonsense that he dishes out.  Every day they open
their brains and let him pour in whatever gobbledygook he has dreamed up the
night before.  I don't readily predict any dire results, but neither do I rule
them out.  "If a blind man leads a blind man, both shall fall into a pit."


Darren F Provine / kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
                                          -- author unknown (at least to me)
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