BIRTHERS and BUTTHEADS: where the *hell* did they come from?? (a brief TPM travelogue)
I haven't lived in USA in a really long time, but decades ago, if you drove through the hinterlands (much of Pa. even as an example), there was little radio, only a rare AM station spewing bible blather. Someone had the marketing idea to offer the ruralists Rush Limbaugh for free in the 1990s, the business structure being that the big company offering it to the stations got to sell all the commercial time except for a little bit that they let the local stations sell. Great deal for the local stations; at least somebody would listen, unlike the biblical baloney and the stations didn't need to generate programming and got paid for a little commercial time, too! And the listeners got rural-tailored Limbaugh (less-educated rural, of course), and his self-congratulatory ignorance. And the successful model was repeated: the bad guvmint and the bad immigrants and the bad minorities and they got almost no Second Amendment rights left and all those bad people who got good-for-nuthin' education wanna take that little bit away too. A place for the states' rights and George Wallace voters (bigots, that is) to feel comfy. Plus bad abortionists and anybody who is in office that doesn't agree with all of the above is also bad. People in cities, as well. Bad, almost all. And now Fox has got it all on TV.
So that is their education, their socialization: ancient prejudices mostly, except now they have organizers to validate those as good. And it ain't the bible; nothing about love thy neighbor or turn the other cheek. (Or fair play or responsibility either; ask Sarah about her "death panels.") More fun to nurse bitter resentments; spite is right!
They talk about the Constitution (these idiots did), how mad they get over it being abused, but they really don't know or care about it other than being a Big Word, not at all. Neither for the rule of law; just issues above that Limbaugh etc. hammer (and that's important to understand; they are not patriots and so they talk up secession as in Texas and Alaska and not only there). Thus, it matters not how someone who disagrees with Limbaugh got into office (like voted in maybe, who needs that?) - he needs to be taken out of office by any and all means. Cuz he might hurt the Constitution, for one thing! And gun-toting ruralists and curmudgeons shot up a whole bunch of stuff to defend that, by gum! Or so they recollect. And this really matters to them -- unless, of course, they secede, foist insurrection, or back a coup (their only limitation on those being their lack of ability).
