Dear Rush,
Greetings from a former Dittohead. Back in the early 90′s, I was an avid listener to your radio show. I thoroughly enjoyed your sense of humor and your willingness to lampoon and annoy politicians and public figures that took themselves and their causes a little too seriously. I embraced your brand of conservatism that held the idea that Americans could look out for themselves without the help of Big Government. I was 21 years old and in college. I didn’t need Government to help me get anywhere and I didn’t see how anyone else did.
Then I grew up.
When I was in college, I believed that the decisions and agreements that individuals made were the result of negotiations between two equal parties. I believed that people made decisions based on rational self interest. I believed that getting a job was just a matter of performing work for an employer to the best of my ability in exchange for a salary. I believed that it was in the company’s best interest to look out their employees because the employees looked out for the company’s best interests. I believed that buying a house or a car was simply a matter of determining how much you could reasonably afford, then negotiating in good faith with the seller to buy the house or car that you wanted. I believed that people were basically honest and fair, and that only a few bad apples were the kind of “bad guys” who made the evening news.
Then I grew up.
I lost a job that I had been in for years because someone else, who had no idea what I did, told the man in charge that he could save money by firing me. (“All he does is… I can do that!“) This very same person was on the phone a week later asking me how to do the very things that were my job responsibility. I had a house payment and credit cards to pay off, and unemployment insurance (there’s that Government thing again) was the difference between me staying in my house and having to foreclose or even declare bankruptcy. Government didn’t fix anything for me, but it sure as hell helped. My employer certainly wasn’t looking out for me.
I eventually picked myself up from that fiasco and became gainfully employed again. It was time for me to purchase a new car. I was smart enough to know that car salesmen aren’t the most trustworthy characters, but I had no idea… We had agreed on a financing package. The interest rate and terms were reasonable and we shook hands. When I double-checked the paperwork, the terms in the contract were completely different than what we had agreed on. If I had trusted the handshake deal, I would have been stuck paying an extra year’s worth of payments on a car, paying 5000-6000 dollars more than the car was worth. I would have had nobody to blame but myself, but it galled me that the person whose hand I had just shaken in agreement would try to rip me off so blatantly. These are the people who am I supposed to trust without needing the recourse of an effective government?
You see? When I was a dittohead, I didn’t understand what Government did well. I knew they funded roads and the military, and I knew that everything they touched turned into a monstrous bureaucracy. What good is Government when it comes to issues like health care, or employment law, or the environment?
Then I learned that rather than being “basically honest and fair”, most people are opportunistic jackals who will steal you blind then sell you a shopping cart to carry around the remainder of your worldly possessions. Doctors don’t prescribe drugs that are best for you, they push what the drug companies pay them to sell. Bankers don’t care that you’re out of a home. They just want to earn 400,000 dollars on a 30 year, 150,000 dollar loan. Employers don’t care that you have a wife and daughter that you are working to take care of, they just see you as a line on their payroll budget. If times get tough, they’ll cut (you) and run, taking the remainder of the company’s assets in the form of a golden parachute and leave you twisting in the wind.
Is Government any better? Not really. Government bureaucracy is a nightmare of byzantine rules that can result in paying 600 dollars for a toilet seat. But do you know what the biggest difference between government and the private sector is? If government does a bad job, I can vote the bastards out every few years. I can punt them to the street and give the other guy a chance to make things better. If I get screwed by the corporate conglomerate who tries to weasel their way out of a severance package, or who outsources my job to India in order to make his stock options worth a few more dollars I have no recourse. I have no leverage. I have no power.
With power comes responsibility. I am responsible for learning about the candidates and the issues that are important to them. I’ve said elsewhere that the only deciding factor for a voter in an election is the answer to the question “Are you better off now than you were…?” and that’s true to an extent. No candidate agrees with every voter on every issue. In a two party system, you have a choice to keep going in the same direction or change direction.
Which brings us back to you, Rush. I can understand why you would not support Barack Obama on one level. He’s not conservative in any sense of the term. He is going to expand the power and scope of government, and I understand why that isn’t always a good thing. On the other hand, how in the world can you support John McCain? The Bush administration has been one of the worst examples of Big Government run amok in history. McCain has toed the party line 90% of the time and represents a logical continuation of the last 8 years. Is this the “get government out of our way” type of government you were looking for when I was young?
I might understand if it were a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils, but your demonization of Obama’s supporters is out of line. This weekend, I watched a respected former member of the current administration, General Colin Powell, detail his reasons for supporting Barack Obama. I watched him articulately state the reasons that Obama was a better choice than John McCain.
Then I watched you say “Powell is only supporting Obama because he’s black.”
Then I went back in time a little bit and remembered this bit from your brief stint on ESPN.
Then I went back and found some clips like this one…
Seriously? Really?
Rush, you have become a caricature of the very worst traits of the Conservative movement. Instead of acting as a leader for your audience and elevating the debate, you shamelessly pander to the most ignorant and uninformed among us. You march in front of a mob claiming to lead a great movement, but you spend your time looking over your shoulder to make sure that the crowd is still behind you. You are the most feckless, callow, and weak talk show host in a crowd of cowards. The only reason this upsets me at all is that I remember a time when I thought otherwise.
Then I grew up.
