Personally, I think he’s apolitical. But he is a showman, and he has singled out an audience that is good for his business. I think Rush would put out Liberal agitprop if he thought there was money in it, but there isn’t.

And why is that? Surely there are as many wackhead leftys as there are wingnuts. The reason is that there is a fundamental difference between Conservative and Liberal conspiracy theories. True, they’re both ignorant and paranoid, looking for scapegoats, but the motivations are different. Liberal wackos, just like their conservative counterparts, are constantly on the lookout for “evidence” of how evil the other side is, it reassures them that they have identified and exposed their enemies. But right wing crazies have an additional psychological component to their craziness: fear.

The right wing proles are afraid that they are being economically squeezed by their enemies. For decades they’ve been told that if they just keep their noses clean and work hard they will one day be all right; that the system will reward them with status and riches: The American Dream. The Lefties never accepted this, not from the start. Even the successful ones knew a scam when they heard one.

The problem is that the system isn’t delivering its promised rewards, is it? Every year it’s getting harder and harder, prices are going up, salaries are going down, jobs are getting scarcer, and good jobs are being reserved for people with specialized training or advanced skills, if they are still any in this country at all. The lower classes are losing the hope they’ll ever be middle class, and the middle classes are despairing they’ll ever be upper class, or that they might even slip backwards! The upper class is shrinking, but those still in it are getting richer than ever. All the traditional escape routes are closing, skilled work is harder to get without college training, and college training is skyrocketing in cost, so not even the kids will be able to escape the rising tide of poverty. That’s why Lockheed’s Texas STEM initiative fails to impress me much. Corporate America is only interested in keeping skilled worker salaries down, not empowering the working class. A little charity work on their part will pay off in spades with a downward pressure on wages for STEM workers. Look at me, I’ve got STEM credentials up the yin-yang and I can’t compete in the job market any more. I had to bail out.

There may be perfectly ordinary reasons for this; history, the times, demographics, a changing economy, technology–but that’s too hard to explain or think about. Rush’s audience wants someone to blame, not more to think about. It’s a lot easier to do what we’ve always done, blame it on the Communists, both at home and abroad. Unfortunately, there are no more overseas Commies, even Russia and China have turned Capitalist, and the rest of our economic rivals are capitalist states too. What’s a good homeboy wingnut to do? Let’s face it, we can’t all be entreprawnooers.

The only place to channel all this hate and fear is internally, to our home grown Liberals. Think about it. In the 50s and 60s, the Communist enemy were either spies working for the overseas Commies, or they were poor people like minorities, unionists and workers agitated by Party rabble rousers and outside “troublemakers”. Today, the Liberals are all depicted as rich “elitists”, kollege perfessers, Hollywood millionaires and other assorted artsy-fartsy intellectuals and other pansy rich guys, out to make it hard on us good, poor, hard-working cloth-coat Republicans. (You can look that one up ).

This is who listens to Rush, not traditional GOP folks like country club Republicans, business executives, or prosperous community leaders and Chamber of Commerce types. In fact, the traditional Republican has now morphed into the RINO, the Establishment, the (UGH!) Mainstream Moderate. He finds Rush and Donald a threat! My heart bleeds, it really does.

Rush knows exactly what he’s doing. Its Showtime! And these are fascinating times.