Dissident Voice

April 24, 2003

I taught history for about 5 years in several schools across the country. One of the things I covered in my lectures was the importance, during war time, of utilizing propaganda in such a way as not only to garner as much popular support as possible for whatever cause was being pushed, but as well the use of disinformation in weakening the enemy’s position. Of course, the most useful way of injecting disinformation was to use a reliable source, someone that the enemy would believe, as the vehicle.

I would explain it to my students like this: “Let’s say that you wanted to poison someone. How do you do it? Do you put a steaming goblet of hemlock on the table, with a skull and bones picture on it and words printed below it that spell “poison?” No, what you do is find out what your enemy likes to eat or drink, and you mix that poison into it in such a way that he won’t suspect anything until it’s too late.”

Now, I know I wrote that essay a month or so ago entitled Rush Limbaugh and Other False Prophets (see sidebar below), in which I swore I would never listen to him again. And I’ve been good to my word. It’s been over a month and I haven’t listened to him once. But today, I was driving, and I turned on the radio and hit the scan button in search of something to hear, and low and behold, it landed right on the false prophet himself, who I now call the Father of Lies. I would have immediately changed the channel, the way I do when I’m on the internet and someone has been kind enough to send me a disguised e-mail that contains pornography, but as I reached for the button, I heard him saying the names “Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Abrams.” I let it stay for a minute.

Rush Limbaugh and Other False Prophets

by Mark Glenn

March 2003

I will never listen to Rush Limbaugh again.

At first glance the reader will assume that I am a left-wing type, or at the very least a middle-of-the-roader. Nothing could be further from reality. The left-wingers, with their religious devotion to abortion, communism, and sodomy are my sworn enemies. The middle-of-the-roaders are worse, because they believe in nothing. The fact is that I am an ultra conservative and have been for most of my life. I voted for Reagan twice, Bush the Elder once and Pat Buchanan twice. (once as a write in)

The reason I will never listen to Rush Limbaugh again is because he is a fraud and a liar.

Let me expand on this idea a bit. Included in this are other media “right-wing thinkers” such as Sean Hannity, G Gordon Liddy, Micahel Reagan, Bill O’Reilly, Glen Beck, and Michael Savage. They are all liars and frauds.

When I began to grow up, meaning when I was on my own and began the process of becoming a responsible adult, (which, by the way coincided with the election of Bill Clinton as President,) I was hungry to listen to anything that Limbaugh and some of the others had to say that would guide me towards the truth, because I knew that Clinton’s election signaled that things in this country were really in a mess. For over ten years I listened to him and learned a lot. He was obviously intelligent and funny, and explained a lot of things that up to that point I didn’t really grasp that well, being young and untested.

The more I learned, the more I understood. And as the years went by, I began a slight, repeat, slight departure from how Rush saw things, most notably in his blind devotion to anyone who belonged to the Republican Party, despite what their actual beliefs were. When he began pushing for Dole’s nomination over Buchanan’s in the ‘96 primary, I knew something was wrong with Rush’s thinking. I knew what Dole was like. Despite attaching a big “R” behind his name to denote his party affiliation, he was no conservative. He didn’t think like one and he rarely voted like one. Yet we, Rush’s devotees, were expected to “take his word for it” that Bob Dole was the man, and thus throw all our support behind him. A lot of us did, and, as history has shown, we lost the presidential race because of it.

There were other instances along the way. During the debates over WTO and GATT, Limbaugh towed the line for those who would surrender American sovereignty in favor of an international body when it came to trade issues. Anyone who protested, claiming that these groups, and other internationalist groups like them were a danger to American ideals and American independence were laughed at and called “kooks.” I knew then that if I, an unsophisticated, semi-educated individual could see that these groups and ideas were wrong for our nation and that he couldn’t, than there was something wrong with the whole “conservative talk-show movement.”

The final straw has finally come. And now is where we should expand this list to include the other “conservatives” listed above. The final straw has come over this issue in the Middle East.

The reader probably is asking him/herself “Middle East? He means Iraq, Right?”

Well, partly, yes. Iraq, today. The rest of the Middle East tomorrow.

After 9/11 happened, I, like many Americans, “rushed” home to our familiar stomping grounds, ie, conservative talk radio, to find out what they had to say about it, since we knew for sure that the liberal media wouldn’t give us the truth. And like many throughout history, we made the mistake of buying into that old adage that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Therefore, Rush and the others would be able to shed some light on the subject.

But they lied. Rather, they told half-truths. And here is how.

In this country, for the last 50+ years, we have gotten one side of the story as pertains the Middle East situation, and that is from the pro-Israeli side. After the commencement of the Cold War, when definite geo-political lines were being drawn, it was definitely in the interest of the US to maintain a stable presence in the area, given our dependence on oil. It seemed the most logical thing to do to side with the Israelis, given that there were American Jews who threw their influence into the political arena and the fact that many of the Jews emigrating to Israel in the early days were coming from “Cold War” countries within the Soviet Union and therefore could provide the US with vital intelligence on how things worked behind the “Iron Curtain.” So, despite the best efforts of the Arab countries, such as Egypt, who wanted a good partnership with the US vs a partnership with communist atheists in the Soviet Union, the US threw her support behind the Zionist vision of an Israeli state in Palestine.

After 9/11 happened, Limbaugh and the others, in the most indignant, surprised, and half-bewildered tone, explained the whole Anti-American sentiment on behalf of the Arab world like this, and I am paraphrasing:

“They hate freedom. They hate prosperity. They hate our success and our wealth. They hate other religions. They hate women and minorities.”

And not a mention of the fact that for the last 50 years, the Israelis have used American tanks, guns, planes, and bullets to run over a million people off the land they have occupied for over a thousand years. Not a mention of the fact that the Israelis have violated international law time and again in this process (that same body of international law violated by Iraq for which Bush justifies his going to war in the region) and not a mention of the fact that the “freedoms” that these Muslim nations detest in America can be summed up in a few short descriptions:

Abortion, Sodomy, Pornography, et al.

These are the “freedoms” that the Muslims hate. They do not tolerate these vices in their societies, and they don’t want them ever to arrive. So, when the Muslims talk about the “Great Satan” in the West, this is about which they speak. And given the fact that Israel has, of late, begun the process of “expansion” into the lands that she claims are hers, (all the lands between the Nile and Euphrates rivers, in short, the lands of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq) it is easy to see that this is not a “war of religion, “ as some well paid-off members of the Christian evangelical community may claim, but rather a war of culture and survival. When a belligerent nation who claims to own the land the Arabs are occupying gets cozy with the world’s most powerful military/economic power who, by the way, desperately needs the oil within those Arab lands, it is easy to see why some people in the region get nervous, and it is easy to see how people will be pushed into committing acts of desperation.

For Limbaugh and the others, their decision to “hide the ugly truth” from their listeners amounts to lying. Before a nation goes to war, the people, at least in a free society, deserve to know what they are getting into and why. And when Limbaugh and the others treat us like children, shielding the truth from us as if we were too stupid and incompetent to know the truth and decide for ourselves how we feel about it, well, then, he is plying the same tactics he accuses the left-wing media of using, which is, obviously, more than a little hypocritical.

These guys do manage to slip up a lot though. When the anti-war crowd claims that all this business is being done to further the interests of the oil companies and expand Israeli territory, Limbaugh and his coterie indignantly refuse this. Later, when they have a caller or guest on who is a fellow-traveler in support of the war, they talk seriously about how we have to “stand by our only ally in the Middle East,” Israel, at all costs, and as well how important it is to secure the oil wells in a country that has the 2nd largest reserves in the world. So which is it fellas?

In the four Gospels, Our Lord warns us of future apocalyptic times saying “Take heed that no man seduce you. Many false prophets shall arise, seducing many.”

Does this not ring true of today?

His topic was the fact that the Neo-Cons, as these men are called, are Jewish, and that they are all important advisors to President Bush and big-time supporters of Israel. The angle of Limbaugh’s argument was that the media was doing the outrageous thing of calling into question the possible conflict of interest in having men of the Jewish faith, supporters of Israel, advising Bush on matters having to do with the Middle-East. Limbaugh went so far as to say that anyone suggesting that a conflict of interest existed was anti-Semitic.

Now imagine the following as a parallel situation: It’s the trial of John Gotti, mobster of Italian descent, head of the Gambino crime family. Let’s pretend that the judge and jury are made up of Italians who don’t think that men like John Gotti are that bad, that they’ve been given a “bum rap.” What are the odds that Gotti is going to go to jail for his crimes? Better yet, what kind of a lunatic wouldn’t see the obvious conflict of interest?

As I listened to the Father of Lies, almost breaking a tooth in the process of clenching my jaw muscles, I reached for my cell phone. I knew the odds of getting through were literally a million to one, given the size of his daily audience. Imagine my surprise then when some guy in a heavy New York accent says to me “Whaddya wanta say ta Rush?”

I hadn’t been prepared for this. When the phone had begun ringing, I thought I had dialed the wrong number. I sat there for a second, thinking, and then gave him my thought. He told me to hold on, he was going to put me right through.

I looked at the clock, there were only about 15 minutes remaining on the show. I started thinking “Okay, the reason he’s putting me on in front of all the other people who have been waiting for hours is because he wants to make a fool of me, given the position that I stated to him.” I realized the damage that someone like Rush can do to the anti-war cause by making someone like me look foolish, and so I started to panic a little. I’d witnessed it before. People who have called before on various points got flustered at being on the show, and he would make it worse by badgering them, laughing, or calling them “kooks.” If I didn’t say the right thing, I would just validate his point. At that point, I just started to pray, remembering the words that Our Lord gave us.

“He who hears you, hears me.”

“I hope that includes me,” I answered.

Right after finishing a few prayers, my turn came up.

“Mark, from Cincinnati, you’re on the Rush Limbaugh program.”

My immediate words were to this effect. “Rush, your position that we should not consider the fact that these advisors of Bush are Jewish and supporters of Israel is ridiculous. If Bush had staffed his cabinet with Muslims, and as a result had adopted an anti or at least less favorable stance towards Israel, you would be having fits and calling into question the “undue Muslim influence” that was guiding Bush’s policies.”

He answered my words with an evasion. “That’s a hypothetical impossibility, “ so it won’t be discussed,” in reference to the idea that Bush would have staffed his cabinet with Muslims.

I must admit, I was a little surprised at this. I had never really seen an evasion by him of this sort. We bantered about a little bit more, and in due time he laid the bait for me that Israel firsters always do when cornered, which is, get the guy to say something so that he can be accused of being anti-Jewish. His bait went like this: “What possible benefit to Israel can there be in having men like the Neo-Cons in Bush’s White House? What’s the strategy?”

I knew I had to be careful.

My answer was to the effect that having all Israel’s enemies brought to heal should be obvious in its benefits, particularly when she didn’t have to expend one drop of Israeli blood, or fork over one shekel for it. He grudgingly agreed that there was some benefit to it, but not much. I continued by pointing out to him that it was pointless to make the argument against what that the rest of the world already knew. My suggestion to him was to read just a few of the daily newspapers printed in Israel that don’t make any pretense about hiding the fact that men like Wolfowitz and the others are doing the bidding of Israel, and that George Bush is being led around like a dog on a leash by them.

I knew he would be hanging up on me soon, so I tried it again. “Rush, if the administration were full of Muslims in advisory positions, and Bush took a view that was pro-Arab, wouldn’t you call into question the obvious conflict of interest?”

His answer was the same as before. “An impossible hypothetical, so we won’t go there,” and hung up.

My friends, this little episode is so small in its comparison to what this man and others like him do everyday that it is almost not worth mentioning. But let it be considered that these men, Limbaugh, Liddy, Hannity, O’Reilly, Savage, et al, are more dangerous than men like George Bush and his entourage could ever be, because George Bush would have no power over the American people were it not for men like them. They give him his power, by acting as the False Prophets described in the Book of the Apocalypse. And it is these men, I believe, against whom we should concentrate our efforts. I don’t mean “seminar calling” as Limbaugh refers to those who time and again oppose him on issues he supports. Just tell people, as many as you can.

Remember what we discussed at the beginning of this essay, killing your enemy by hiding the poison in something that looks appetizing? The ingesting of that poison into our political system would not be possible if it were not for the sweet tasting lies of these men, each one in his own way, a Father of Lies.

Mark Glenn is an American of Lebanese descent and a conservative Catholic. He majored in History at the University of Cincinnati, minored in romance languages, and has taught in several high schools and seminaries, ranging in subjects as varied as American history, Western Civilization, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish and German. Mark lives in north Idaho where he teaches, and is “trying to make a difference in what is going on by writing.” He can be contacted at: mbg147@yahoo.com