Orcinus has the 10th (!) part of the
series on Rush, newspeak and Fascism up:
Take two neighbors, Joe and Bill. Joe is a good taxpaying family man and a Republican precinct committeeman. Bill is a Patriot who attends Preparedness Expos and “common law court” meetings and has declared his “sovereign citizenship.” Now, contrary to popular myths, most Patriots in fact are indistinguishable from any other average American — they hold jobs, raise kids, carpool, attend church. And so in most respects, Joe and Bill get along fine, as most neighbors might, though Joe thinks Bill’s ideas are kooky. Then he starts listening to Limbaugh, and after awhile, he begins to think that maybe his government-hating neighbor isn’t so kooky after all.
Meanwhile, Bill listens to the same broadcasts and begins to believe that maybe mainstream Republicans are finally starting to “get it.” The next time he and Bill talk over the fence, they find they have more to talk about. Pretty soon Joe is heading off with Bill to a Preparedness Expo, while Bill starts volunteering to work as a “poll watcher” for the Republicans in the next elections.
The result is that right-wing extremists wind up exerting a gravitational pull on mainstream conservatism — and by extension, the whole political continuum — that far exceeds their actual size or, for that matter, political viability. That the entire spectrum has shifted steadily rightward in the past 10 years and more could not be more self- evident. And at times, it has come with devastating results, as at Oklahoma City.