Repetition works, Dave

I'm listening to Rush Limbaugh.

I'm not listening to him to get mad. I'm certainly not listening to him to learn anything about conservative politics. Instead I'm listening to him because I consider the right wing media, particularly Rush, to be the genesis for the modern hate we feel between right and left. It's a hate grounded in how he structures his claims and information and then presents them to his listeners.

All in all, this is part of my ongoing effort to dissect the increasing wedge driven between conservatives and liberals that keeps us from talking to each other and in many cases encourages us to hate each other.

When did it become wrong to disagree? When did the desire for a certain economic approach or spending plan or foreign policy become reason to turn a fellow American into a conspirator against the American dream and an enemy?

Rush doesn't lie per se. Rush interprets. But he interprets in a way that encourages the average listener to carry conclusions to extremes and more importantly to reach beyond a difference of opinion and to create an actual enemy against which the right can rally and fight as real and as threatening as any foreign terrorist. If he were merely entertainment, I wouldn't give it much thought except that Rush has been successful and influential in the current state of mismanaged affairs prevalent in American conservative politics. He has proven, by himself, through those who grabbed his ideas and ran with them such as Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck, and through a rising class of liberal pundit who feeds off the outrage his claims have generated in the opposition to build their own agendas.

His structure is amazingly transparent:

First, Rush provides a grounding set of facts or at least widely accepted beliefs: Quotes, a recently passed law, an item in the news, or a reality such as the tendency for academics or Hollywood to be liberal. This is rarely up for debate from anyone.

Second, Rush makes an unsupported interpretive statement. The statement makes a conclusion about how the fact will affect America without any concrete, measurable information to support that claim. "They're doing this in order to..." "They destroy our country this way by..." "This doesn't work." "And as a result, the ruling class of Obamanation takes another step towards domination."

What's important here is that the factual situation is being contextualized, which is to say it's being framed in language that creates the desired negative or positive light. There's no vetting going on, and often no effort to explain why the fact will lead to the conclusion. It's just stated out of hand as the obvious and colored in a way to ensure the listener doesn't critically think about when the statement of fact stops and the purely subjective opinion starts.

This isn't an accident. If you listen to Rush's cadence, his framing of the issue and the issue itself get blended into a haze that uses the verifiable fact (Obama signs 26 billion dollar state employee emergency funding into law) with interpretation. (...giving his union co-conspirators payoffs in Blue states in order to buy votes.)He is attempting, successfully, to get his listeners to presume that his interpretation is objective fact.

Third, and probably most dangerous, he delves into the motivations of the players involved in an effort to paint them not as opponents, but actual villains. (Obama wants to destroy this nation. He is the new ruling class from which he will serve his own interest at the expense of successful Americans and undermine everything that we hold dear.") It is here that the political partisanship ends and the attack on the personal character of the opposing point of view begins. Rush Limbaugh builds on his own unsupported interpretations and ultimately defines the left as enemies of the American way of life that have no place in our collective national journey.

One, two, three. One, two, three. The entire show can be boiled down to the constant repetition of this framework. Tell the facts so you seem to know. Frame the facts to paint the worst possible image of the other side. Interpret the motives to vilify the other side to the point of questioning whether or not liberals are traitors, criminals, conspirators, or monsters.

Now thoughtful and reflective people tend to understand the Rush Limbaugh is political ENTERTAINMENT. But the average voter is neither. The result has been that liberals are angry, conservatives are suspicious, and both avoid discussing politics with each other like the plague.

I also listen to liberal media including Rachel Maddow and Ed Shultz. These pundits can and do wander into the minefield of the Rush approach once in a while, but as a whole, they have made their careers out of picking apart this three step process that has become lock step with the conservative right's talking heads. They mock the Limbaughs and Coulters of the world by punching holes through their unsupported conclusions. But without the dialogue, their disproof of the wild assertions made on the Right don't undo the damage of the misinformation and instead build a sense of liberal self righteousness that closes dialogue from the other side.

I wish I had a conclusion for you here except to say this: Read. Think. Question everything you hear from anyone who shows up on TV or in Radio with a political slant. Take nothing you hear from media sources as god-spoken truth and whatever you do, NEVER shut down communication with the other side.

When our nation was formed, the debates and controversies were epic. But the questions brought forward were about policy, the future, and the merits of the positions each held. To demonize the PEOPLE who participate in the process - wherever they may lie on the spectrum - is the worst crime any of us could inflict on the country we leave to our children.