The Most Evil Man in America

I know I know…I write a title like that and most everyone can conjure up a quick image of the individual they believe fits the bill - and then may read on with curiosity to see why their choice isn’t the same as mine. Besides, the word evil itself is more closely aligned with comics or soap operas than real life. If I were to let my first image surface it would, of course, be Dick Cheney, the Darth Vader of American politics. With the news of Cheney’s most recent coronary I had an immediate picture in my head of Lucifer sitting in his fiery office, leaning back in a smoking overstuffed desk chair, and on the phone saying “…okay Dick, this is the fifth one I’ve bailed you out on. Now you either start a new war or I’ll be out of town when the Man hits you with the sixth.” But to really determine who most exemplifies the personification of villainy in America one must really define what evil is.

If evil were merely a relative concept, then for those who see Dick Cheney as a John Wayne understudy, he is hardly evil. They are right…but then, is anyone wrong? Despite the distain I harbor for Cheney (by the boatload), I actually think he is no more evil than most anyone else’s oxen you feel deserves to be gored. That’s because evil is not relative. Cheney participates in our national drama through his own self interest and lust for recognition in a manner which reflects his constituency. If he wasn’t feeding off public attitude Cheney would fall off our collective radar like a bronze medal winner. But is that evil? I think not. Maybe one might find what he does appalling, perhaps maniacal, or maybe even criminal…but not evil. He really doesn’t create opinion, he merely uses it.

Evil should not be misconstrued with its fruit. When one is told to think of an apple tree they naturally envision the apple itself and not the nature or description of the tree which bears it. There is a pervasive evil which has been growing in our country for long enough now that I, for one, have to concentrate back a while to realize that it didn’t always exist in my lifetime. It is an imbalance in the collective identity of our nation, which has permitted us to hate ourselves.

So who do I believe is the most evil man in America, and why? I give that honor to Rush Limbaugh III. Seriously…I consider the master of Conservative talk radio to be the dean, the linchpin, the standard by which a considerable handful of mostly conservative and some liberal commentators/entertainers/writers have watered the tree of divisiveness in our country, without which its fruit might not have found itself on practically every kitchen table in America. His influence has been extraordinary, or even greater than extraordinary based on Limbaugh’s own swagger. You have to go back to when it started, which some might find was not so long ago.

To say Limbaugh is smart would be a debate unto itself. I for one give the word “smart” a colloquial meaning which includes positive ethics. However, there is no doubt that Limbaugh has innate abilities that make him uniquely qualified for the roll he fell upon. His intelligence is validated by his pedigree. Father, siblings, grandfather, uncle, cousins are all jurists of note. A giggle of irony escapes me when I think that they are now all known primarily as the relative of Rush the radio guy. Rush III was an anomaly to the group. He was a bad student, his mother quoted to say “he flunked everything”. He managed his way into a lesser know state university in time to drop out almost immediately. He had to have been a black spot on the family refrigerator.

To his credit he focused early on a career in radio working a standard circuit of DJ jobs around the country and apparently, along the way, discovered his talent for glibness. I suspect that Limbaugh, a man with an ego the size of Montana, also discovered that in his chosen venue he could compete with his accomplished and certified family members at their own conservative game. Good luck, Rush. I’d guess that ultimately all his money, his influence, and his buffoonery never allowed him into the inner circle of Conservative lawyers and judges that is his family tree - just a guess, consistent with prescription drug abuse, and lawyers generally.

By the late 80’s his style of commentary had hit a cord. Freed by the repeal of the FCC Fairness Doctrine in 1987 (after being law for 38 years) he was one of the first to exploit bias as a form of entertainment. However, the use of a target as a means of gathering listenership had not yet gelled. During the administration of George HW Bush the Republicans had their problems even as they still rode the Reagan tsunami. His attraction was more his style and comedy which he intermixed with home spun commentary, a counter to the likes of Howard Stern. Although his reach through the number of participating stations was significant, his market was still not that large and actually pulled from a wider political segment which enjoyed his antics and clowning.

It was the election of Bill Clinton that changed everything. It was the 9/11 for Rush and the true beginning of his crafting the vilification of anyone not Conservative. As his listeners, comprised primarily of disappointed Conservative Republicans, began to expand exponentially, he saw the writing on the wall (and bank statement). The tone of his commentary notably changed. He was now selling fear wrapped in patriotism and he sold it well. So well in fact that for many today he has made the Clinton years of prosperity, surpluses, growth, and security a time of national shame, and the Bush years of preemptive war, terror, lost civil rights, political stagnation, colossal deficits, and near economic collapse a period of national pride. Can it get any more bizarre?

In the process of making himself a household name he also made a couple hundred million dollars, by some accounts. He certainly became in less than 15 years one of the richest men in America, simply by talking on a microphone. Incredibly, polling after the last presidential election also had him named as the Conservative Republican standard bearer, over everyone else…in America!!

His financial and influential success did not go unnoticed by others in the field. Such “commentators” as Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, and Sean Hannity jumped aboard the H&F (Hate & Fear) Gravy Train. They saw that by making “Liberals” the true enemies of “patriotic” America they could tap the kind of enthusiasm usually engendered by invasions. No wonder Sarah Palin recently got on board. Mark Levin, who renamed Liberals “Statists” because he thought the word “liberal” sounded too much like “liberty”, wrote the following in his best selling ($$) book Liberty and Tyranny:

"The Conservative must accept that the Statist does not share his passion for liberty and all the good that flows from it. The Statist does not acknowledge the tremendous benefits to society from the individual pursuits of tens of millions of others. The Statist rejects the Founder's idea of the dignity of the individual, who can flourish through ordered liberty, for one rooted in unpredictability, irrationality and, ultimately, tyranny." pp15

That kind of wholesale categorizing of people is the kind of dehumanization that can be found in Hitler’s Mein Kampf and his description of the Jews. That was a best seller too.

So just what is the Evil that I associate so closely with Rush Limbaugh and his disciples? It is what now pervades our nation, but more importantly our individual neighborhoods and even families. It is the new distain that we have for each other without the necessity of recognizing our humanity.

I remember hearing a Catholic priest once say in a lecture that if Satin could do only one thing to solidify his malevolence throughout mankind he would make us hate our bodies. He was suggesting that self deprecation of that which is the most basic and natural to us in this life was the surest way to abandon that which we revere in God. Rush has given this a socialogical twist.

As a nation and a society we have, since inception, had ideological conflict which has manifested itself into periods of tragedy and suffering. Students of the Civil War could successfully argue that period as the most obvious and poignant. At each such time there has been an imbalance caused by the demands of ideology requiring a dehumanization of those who don’t agree, essentially managing to get us to hate ourselves. Within the current health care debate there is so much hate that people virtually cannot see the problem to the point that they will actively work against their own self interest. Could anything make the devil smile more?

We are experiencing a civil war right now…and it is obvious. It began with people like Rush Limbaugh and has spread to the far left end of the spectrum in a vain attempt to create balance. It is aggravated by the nature of our political system which has currently become a manic struggle for power without substance and job security for its participants. This chapter in our history was made possible by a new age of communication, a new message of hate and fear, and was brought to you by the embodiment of the most evil man in America – Rush Limbaugh.