Trump Stumbles Right On

Politics: Feeling Blue in a Red State

As Republican rallies descend into racist violence and rhetorical chaos, right-wing talk-radio’s angry baby of anti-government sentiment comes of age carrying a verbal assault weapon and a whole lot of attitude

By Carla McClain

OK, boys and girls, time to cut to the chase. Time to figure out why a once-functional nation like the United States of America is about to nominate for its President — arguably the most powerful political office in the world — a bloviating birther braggadocio blowhard, aka Donald J. Trump. How did we get here? What in the name of God has happened to us?

That’s not hard to figure out….

Welcome to the fruits of twenty-five years of the highly effective brainwashing of a good chunk of the American people — OK, let’s say it, the weak-minded sheeple among us, and there are lots of those throughout the human species — by right-wing talk-radio.

I happen to know how this got done because I — unlike most liberals, progressives, Democrats, lefties, call us what you will — have faithfully listened to right-wing talk-radio since the phenomenon first burst on the national scene somewhere in the mid-1980s. Most of my political buddies just could not stand to do that. It was too painful on the eardrums and bad for your blood pressure. But for me, it was fascinating, kind of like watching a slow-mo plane crash: Horrifying, violent, totally destructive, the blown-up body parts of a great nation plummeting to its inevitable decline and fall. During such a disaster, you had to figure out why this was really happening, no matter how awful it was.

Welcome to the fruits of twenty-five years of the highly effective brainwashing of a good chunk of the American people — OK, let’s say it, the weak-minded sheeple among us, and there are lots of those throughout the human species — by right-wing talk-radio.

So I listened to this stuff. Beginning with the original Wizard of all this dark Oz, Rush Limbaugh, the evil genius who launched the plane wreck, followed by the likes of Hannity, Beck, Savage, Levin and now a whole hornets’ nest of little Limbaugh wannabes yakking their heads off in local markets coast to coast, praying they will one day make it to the promised land of megabucks paid the top dogs in this hustle. Make no mistake about it: Right-wing radio, unlike the brief effort by progressive radio, is well-funded by a gaggle of ultra-conservative American plutocrats who have had everything to gain by the steady feeding of unfettered, anti-labor, unregulated free-market dogma — wrapped in none-too-subtle white supremacy and phony religious piety and patriotism — to the clueless masses, who had little to gain from it and much to lose.

But the big money boys found their mouthpieces — smart performers, as skilled at entertaining as they are at marketing their venal selves — with just the kind of dominating macho strongman swagger so effective at mesmerizing (yes, brainwashing) the millions who long to be dominated by a leader, no matter how obnoxious, no matter what he says, just how loudly and how often he says it, over and over and over, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, and now decade after decade. This shit works, at least on an alarming number of us.

Brainwashing: Conditioning somebody to behave differently; to induce somebody to believe or do something… especially by means of constant repetition. – Encarta World English Dictionary

And so, after more than a quarter-century of non-stop extreme claptrap beating our brains to mush 24/7, we have a major chunk of Americans — overwhelmingly Republicans — who believe the current President of the United States is an evil America-hating Muslim born in Africa, that “establishment” Republicans are almost as bad as he is and useless to the conservative cause, that the struggling economy has nothing at all to do with the GOP president who crashed it, that the very idea of one side working with the other to accomplish things is treasonous, that endless war and, yes, torture are glorious, that immigrants (especially the brown-tinged) are destroying the country, that poor people (translate minorities) have only their own lazy-ass selves to blame, that government is the root of all evil, along with labor unions, health care for the poor, Medicare and Social Security for the elderly and disabled and all that other pinko commie socialist crap government has foisted upon us. And finally, the entire country has gone to hell in the last seven years under the leadership of that you-know-what in the White House. And they soundly hate — not dislike, not disagree — all this stuff and those they blame for it.

Make no mistake about it: Right-wing radio, unlike the brief effort by progressive radio, is well-funded by a gaggle of ultra-conservative American plutocrats who have had everything to gain by the steady feeding of unfettered, anti-labor, unregulated free-market dogma….

I know. I have heard these mantras over and over and over for so very many years on talk-radio. Without a strong mind, it burns into your brain. The fans of this stuff are so very proud to call themselves “ditto heads,” happy to admit they automatically agree with every single thing Rush Limbaugh says, and they don’t even have to think about it.

And why should they? Limbaugh has loudly reassured them every single day that he is infallible, with “talent on loan from God.” Blessed are the meek. Not.

And so now we have the natural offspring of the whole well-planned right-wing plot to take over the airwaves a quarter century ago now barging toward the presidential nomination, a fascist-like jerk who actually has a shot at becoming the President of the United States of America. Old man Trump may be a lot of things, but a dummy he is not. He gets exactly how this playbook works, and knew if he picked it up and ran with it, much of this already brainwashed, easily led bunch of unhinged Americans — aka, the Republican “base” — would be his for the asking. And it is.

Trump plays the talk-radio-perfected character perfectly. He’s the smartest guy around, the best dealmaker, the wealthiest, the strongest, the biggest and best of them all. If he’s ever asked a specific question about how he’s going to achieve some of his nuttiest ideas — rounding up and throwing out 11 million people, making Mexico pay for the “Great Wall of Trump,” and on and on and on — he just says he’s the best and he can get it done and no one else can. Silly question.

Trump plays the talk-radio-perfected character perfectly. He’s the smartest guy around, the best dealmaker, the wealthiest, the strongest, the biggest and best of them all.

During one of the recent primaries, a TV reporter interviewed people waiting in line to vote, asking them who they were voting for and why. One woman proudly announced Trump was her man, saying, “When I heard him say ‘winning,’ that America is going to win again, I knew he was my candidate. That’s who I want running this country.”

Well, that was easy. No complicated policy analysis or deep thought needed there. She wasn‘t done, far from it: “He has balls the size of watermelons. The others have balls the size of grapes and raisins.” What the hell else do you need to know?

And so we have The Donald on the national stage during a recent GOP debate, if you want to call it that, reassuring the American public that his supposedly small hands (Rubio’s taunt) do not in any way mean his man-part is tiny. Oh no, no way. No problem there, I guarantee you, he bellowed about. Yes, the size of his pecker. (It’s yuuuuuuge, by the way.) The crowd there applauded wildly. My God. That’s the schlong we want in the White House, and that’s who will put him there and why. Whew. America can relax.

“They love the Trump swagger and attitude,” wrote longtime GOP pundit Fred Barnes, about a recent Republican focus group after one of the debates. “…Asked what they like most, the Trump persona or policies….persona got 23 votes, policy six. Showed a video of Trump’s insisting that he would be the greatest president ever, they were untroubled by his boastfulness. Several said Trump was merely displaying his confidence.”

Barnes, too, nails the forces in talk-radio for launching Trump toward the top of the GOP ticket. He notes the disgust among GOP voters after their party took total control of Congress in 2014, but failed to roll back everything Obama ever did. “The Republican base, egged on by conservative talk-radio, accused their congressional leaders of knuckling under to President Obama,” he writes. Managing to infuriate a major chunk of Republican voters has paved the way for Trump, he says. Now they’re stuck with him.

And we are stuck with a nation so polarized it is all but ungovernable. Nice work.

This bunch of devoted Trumpies — who Canadian psychologist Robert Altemeyer describes as “authoritarians” — may add up to no more than a fifth of the entire US population. But it’s enough to give Trump what may now be an unbeatable lead in the race for the GOP nomination in such a crowded field of candidates.

Authoritarians are “people who practice the creed of kiss up, kick down,” Altemeyer writes. “They vent their spite on those they fancy below them while attaching themselves to a bullying, charismatic leader figure.

This bunch of devoted Trumpies — who Canadian psychologist Robert Altemeyer describes as “authoritarians” — may add up to no more than a fifth of the entire US population. But it’s enough to give Trump what may now be an unbeatable lead in the race for the GOP nomination in such a crowded field of candidates.

“There probably has always been a relatively fixed percentage of hostile paranoiacs in the general population, but in the past they were isolated, politically immobilized, and doubtful others shared their world view. Twenty years of Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and other broadcast effluvia have handed them an insular group identity, stoked their rage and mobilized them.” Talk-radio kicked over their rocks and the lizards crawled out.

And so we have their Trumpenstein rampaging through America. At least some are starting to realize they have lost control of the monster they created, who may blow up their whole ugly world before he’s done. The tragic question is how much of the country they have torn apart will go down with them.

Carla McClain is recovering from a career in corporate journalism at her Southern Arizona home, and she shares her thoughts about all that in Feeling Blue in a Red State, an occasional column exclusively in The Ex-Press.