Rush Limbaugh : Has America Already Slipped Away?
July 09, 2012
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I read a couple of pieces yesterday that really touched a nerve with me. One of them was by Michael Goodwin in the New York Post. Let me set it up by describing something personal. And I’ve mentioned this many times during the course of this program. When I was in my twenties and thirties, and I saw people in their sixties and seventies, I vowed that there were certain things those people did that I would never do. For instance, I vowed I would never become, in the eyes of anybody else, an old fogy. I would never be someone who looked at the younger generations as the beginning of the end of our culture. My parents did. My parents, the Beatles and all of that, was just the end of the world as far as they were concerned. It was the long hair. It was the rebel characteristics, all of that.
This is true for every generation. Every older generation looks at the younger generation and thinks, “My God, they’re gonna blow it, country’s finished, we’re all done.” I vowed that would never happen to me. I vowed I would keep an open mind and try to remember always the way I looked at the world when I was in my twenties and thirties. Well, there are things that have happened here that befuddle even me. You and I — and I’m gonna take the liberty here of speaking for you, ’cause I think this is pretty accurate when discussing most of you.
You and I look at what’s happening to the country, and we are a multitude of things. We are appalled, we’re angry, and we’re really scared. Despite every effort not to be an old fuddy-duddy, an old fogy — despite every effort to avoid falling into that trap as I’ve gotten older, as I have matured and aged — I haven’t been able to avoid it. It’s not that the younger generations are to blame. It’s not that they’re at fault. That’s not my point. We’re losing the country right in front of our eyes.
It is astounding, the transformational changes leading to the destruction. It actually has me depressed at times. Now, you and I see this the same way to one degree or to a bunch of varying degrees. But then you realize that other people don’t! They’re living it, and they don’t. In what I would consider a sane, normal world, anybody from any party who had presided over this kind of not just economic destruction, but national transformation, wouldn’t be considered a serious candidate for reelection. Not at any time in this nation’s history.
Anybody who had been in charge during these three years would be looking at a 30% approval number or reelect number, in what I would consider to be a sane world. For the past two years, every Thursday we talk about the unemployment number in this country on this program. And on Thursday of every month, we look at it in great detail because we get the number for the previous month before it’s revised downward. And it seems to me that like it’s almost like a slow-drip water torture.
This is obviously cultural rot and decay taking place. There is economic decay taking place. But it is so gradual that it’s not accompanied by any shock value. And since there’s no shock value attached to it, there’s no high degree of outrage. There’s more like resignation. People are just resigned to it. We got 8.2% unemployment? “New normal! It’s not something about which you need to get excited about and make a big change; it’s just the way it is.” Not for you. Not for you and me, don’t misunderstand.
Not for you and me, but for a seemingly large part of the country. And of course this election is gonna tell us how large a part. This is the great unknown. This is the great unknown question. Just how many people in this country think this is the United States of America? This is all it can be. This is it, and this is normal. And how many of them vote. When you look at 8.2% unemployment — when you look at more people going on disability than getting jobs — folks, we are in uncharted territory.
We now have eight million people on disability.
We have 48% of the people in this country not paying income tax, and yet all of them… And this is important in trying to assess all this. All of these people are eating. They’re not going hungry. And they all have their cell phones. And they all are able to afford to use their cell phones. And they all have their plasma TVs, and they’re all able to sign up for cable and use them. Despite all of the economic malaise. Now, the reason for this is that we’re $16 trillion in debt. We’ve got an administration which is happily paying for this result.
There is no longer a stigma to being unemployed or a stigma to being on welfare. And so, just as we used to look at the younger generation (we who are seasoned and mature), and be a little worried about what they’re gonna amount to because they seemed to be such degenerates and reprobates, now instead of looking at it that way, this whole generational thing has become one view of the country versus another view of the country. Whereas I promised myself I would never look — as a seasoned, mature individual — at younger people as worthless degenerate perverts.
Like my parents looked at my generation and every other generation has. Now, instead of doing that, I’m sitting here looking at an unknown percentage of the country and asking myself how many of them know what it is to be an American. How many of them know what that means anymore? Or how many of them have a different definition of it entirely? And I worry because the architect of all this transformation, the architect of all this destruction, has a legitimate chance as winning reelection!
In a real, sane world this guy’s party woulda thrown him out and they woulda put Hillary or somebody else in there.
That hasn’t happened.
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