Liberals often wonder what, exactly, the appeal of Rush Limbaugh to the conservative movement is. Surely, his top function is to make fun of the left. The chief motivating factor behind Limbaughs 20+ years of broadcasting is to tell his fellow conservatives about the crazy things liberals did today. Sure, he invents facts, makes up narratives, and smears people’s good names – but you knew that already.

But the element of Limbaugh that the mainstream media and others tend to notice is the vital, deranged purpose the former disk jockey serves for many on the right: thinking for them.

Many in the conservative movement may have an idea of what happened in the world, but for many of them they don’t understand what to think about it until Rush comes on at noon.

And Rush knows this. He designs his program as an educational affair, and he explains to a population that largely consists of older, rural people who feel surrounded by an increasingly multicultural and tolerant world just what to think about it all.

Take “low information voters.” This is a concept, most recently lamented by the left, of voters who don’t pay that much attention to actual politics. In reality, both parties fight to get this unmotivated bloc voting in their favor and often must reach out of the existing political frame to get them on board.

But in Limbaugh land, he has decided to explain away the Romney loss with “low information voters.” In the hand of a skilled propagandist like Rush, however, these people are the easily amused minorities on welfare and other government handouts that have been magically converted into Obama devotees. It’s basically the same old tired argument the right makes about minorities being duped into voting Democratic (in conservativeland no minority could ever possibly assess politicians and come to an independent position – check out the smears of Colin Powell).

In just two months since the election “low information voter” has become a conservative mantra. You can see it on Twitter, conservative forums, and conservative blogs. Like the harebrained idea that the left strategically collapsed the economy (on Bush’s watch, no less!) to throw the election to Obama (later refined to blame it on mortgages for poor minorities despite the contrary evidence) this is now the one, true narrative.

Spoon-fed to them by Rush, they have taken it hook, line, and sinker. It also feeds into the narrative that conservatism can never fail, never mind that it has a combined 134 million votes against it in back to back elections.

Rush explained it all. They now “know” it was “those” people that diverted America from its established path, and the exclusionary divisive racist/sexist politics of the right live to (hopefully) lose yet another day.

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I love history, particularly American history. It is far and away my favorite topic, and I love watching books and movies that explore our unique roots as a nation.

But what I have discovered with alarming frequency lately is that my interest in history appears to be an outlier. I’m not saying everyone has to read multiple books on the founding and World Wars within a calendar year, but I feel like the basics of history – which often explains what we’re doing right now – is disregarded by far too many people.

This inability to place the now in a historical context becomes doubly troubling when the people involved are politicians and journalists. More than many other pursuits, those two jobs almost mandate a stronger than average interest in history.

I saw this failure a lot in reporting about the 2012 election. In part due to ongoing cost-cutting within the mainstream press, the networks had embedded reporters with the campaigns who often weren’t even eligibile to vote in the 2008 election, let alone put the current election in historical context. It’s why rote events were often reported on as if they were happening for the first time ever. And you can’t convince me that reporters not knowing that every candidate within the modern era had released detailed tax records didn’t contribute to the softball coverage of Romney’s opposition to releasing his own.

And yes, you can blame someone for not knowing better – because they should!

One of the qualities I admire in President Obama is that he understands that his presidency is not just about the day to day Washington fights. What he does has a historical context that will reverberate long after he is dead and buried. But I must also admit that as counterfactual as it may seem, President Bush often looked at events in this same way. While I don’t agree with the policy, much of his zeal to invade Iraq was about the historical consequence of his actions. Completely wrong on policy, but he often looked at what he was doing there in the right context.

Senators, due to their ability to politically breathe for longer periods than House Representatives, seem to do a little better at regarding their actions in a historical context, but I feel like most of our politicians don’t have this ability.

It’s why – for example – people like Michele Bachmann create anti-Muslim witch-hunts without the appreciation for the history on American governments demagoguing religious and ethnic minorities, from Mormon persecution to Japanese internment to redbaiting. I feel like she and others just don’t know better because they don’t appreciate the history enough.

In my consumption of historical information, I find that I’m always learning something new. A miniseries I just watched taught me things about America at the turn of the last century I never knew, and I’m a guy who has been reading about that era a lot over the last couple years. And there is much more to learn and it informs my opinion on what is happening now (I’ve become a lot less dismayed about Obama’s supposed indifference to progressivism as I’ve learned about garment-rending about FDR’s supposed indifference to the same – he’s now viewed as one of our most progressive presidents ever).

We’ve got to do better, I think. We don’t all have to be amateur historians (and God knows there’s a lot of crackpottery masquerading as history out there) but I feel we have an obligation, when talking about the now to have some idea about what happened then.

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*Did you see what I did there?

We live in an attention economy now, and in the news, entertainment, and information industry that means that you are in a constant fight for eyeballs. We have screens everywhere: TV, computer, tablet, phone, and beyond and that means everyone who generates content for those screens desperately wants you to look in on them for a second in order to sell your demographics to their advertisers.

I’m okay with all of that. But what has developed as a result is a professionalized style of trolling. Media has always attempted to get people’s attention – check out the history of tabloid media which was born at about the same time the printing press was – but it feels as if this style of media is more pervasive than ever.

In addition you’ve got the rise of the personal brand, which prompts people to be provocative to their own audiences in service of the larger platforms they work in (or for.)

When ESPN’s Rob Parker made his racial comments about Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III, the most offensive thing wasn’t what he said, but rather ESPN’s faux outrage over them. Everyone knows that Parker said what he said so people would say “oh no he didn’t,” clip it, then post it to YouTube, helping to increase his ESPN show’s notoriety.

Similarly, there isn’t any way that CNN didn’t know conspiracy theorist Alex Jones would make an absolute clown of himself – it’s what he does. And now, instead of people talking about how Piers Morgan’s ratings have plummeted since he took over for Larry King, they’re talking about that viral video with him and the gun nut.

Everybody’s trolling, driven to say more and more provocative things in order to rise above the media din in hopes that somebody pays attention, hits a social media “share” button and gets your brand – personal or professional – in front of more people.

It’s the same formula that Fox News, MSNBC, Huffington Post, The Drudge Report, and Business Insider have all ridden to success.

And I’m actually okay with a lot of it. I like the news to be exciting and dynamic. The problem, I think, is we’re going to soon enter a place where just being provocative isn’t enough. We may soon enter a world where unequivocal public declarations come across even dumber than today’s sort of comments.

If that were to happen, it would almost be worse than slavery! (I DON’T ACTUALLY BELIEVE THIS, I’M MAKING A POINT)

But you see what I mean. I’m not really sure how you put this particular genie back in the bottle and it’s only a matter of time before the stodgiest of media organizations realize its potential and everyone (and I certainly include myself here) feels a need to keep upping the ante.

It may be interesting – or at least look that way – but it might not be fun.

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A recent source of conservative butthurt appears to be liberals making fun of conservatives.

Bear in mind that modern conservatism, in the form of the increasingly Whiggish GOP consists of people like Louie Gohmert who warns us about terror babies, Michael Savage who wishes for a fascist, nationalist political party, and Rush Limbaugh who says acceptance of same sex marriage is related to mainstreaming pedophilia are doing a fine enough job making conservatism unpalatable without liberal help.

That said, here is Dennis Prager complaining that Richard Cohen says mean things about the right. While Stephen Hayes — yes, the guy who wrote the Cheney hagiography and the book falsely claiming there was a “Connection” between Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein — touts Jonah Goldberg’s latest book that nobody with a brain takes seriously, whose central premise is that stupid liberals are reality based and make fun of conservatives when in fact (of course) poopy-head liberals believe myths like global warming while conservatives know that Fox News said Al Gore is fat.

Prager and Goldberg write for National Review. Here are some covers for that publication.

Hayes writes for The Weekly Standard. Here are some of their covers.

In other words, as always, the right would rather the left sit there like it did in the late ’70s and ’80s and take it like a bunch of dummies and don’t you dare ever fight back. Never you mind that the reason the right hates people like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton stems largely from those two (and many others) being able to throw a punch and bloody the right’s noses.

A lot of us remember the first part of this century, with Democrats in complete retreat and the press parroting the GOP message du jour which boiled down to “Democrats who don’t sound like Republicans are out of touch with America.” (Fall 2002 edition: “Yeah, you voted for the Iraq War, but you’re still a terrorist sympathizer!”) It wasn’t until the left hit rock bottom in 2004′s election that it began to reassert itself.

Unlike the right, who has now adopted Rush Limbaugh’s mantra that “low information voters” were bewitched by Barack Obama’s magic, the left actually changed itself in order to be more in sync with America. This is because we are able to admit that liberalism is not perfect, that it must change in response to outside information and that we simply cannot bend reality to fit into what we believe.

Modern conservatism is incapable of this, and to point that out to the right makes them real mad and the write books and columns about liberal meanies not taking them seriously. And oh, by the way, they’re going to vote to repeal Obamacare for the 3,432nd time because Limbaugh will give them a cookie.

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Chuck Hagel was (eventually) right about the Iraq War and his apparent skepticism towards Israeli policy is refreshing (in Washington this means he actually considers what Israel says instead of approving it no matter what) but I still think he’s an unfortunate choice for Secretary of Defense.

It’s simple math. Since the position has existed, there have been 23 Secretaries of Defense. Of those 23, fifteen have been Republicans who have served under both parties. Of the remaining 8 Democrats, they have only served under other Democrats. Our two most recent Democratic presidents, Obama and Clinton, both had Republicans serve as Secretary of Defense.

You can’t tell me that Barack Obama can’t find a Democrat to serve.

There is an utterly false idea that Republicans are stronger on national security issues, but this just isn’t true. Our most recent foreign policy disaster, Iraq, was almost completely the creation of a Republican administration. By comparison, our triumphs – World War II, actions in Yugoslavia, Libya, and the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden, have come under Democratic leadership. (And I fully acknowledge that Democrats can screw up, as Kennedy and Johnson did in Vietnam.)

Democrats can, and should be trusted to lead on defense. The American people just ratified that at the ballot box, choosing Obama to keep them safe over Romney’s feckless, Bush-style foreign policy.

President Obama should look to his own party, to the party of national security, for the most important point-person on national defense. If he feels the urge to show bipartisanship in his new cabinet, he can follow in the footsteps of the Bush administration and put a Republican in charge of transportation.

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Yesterday, as the Republican party was voting for a tax increase for the super-rich, Grover Norquist was widely mocked for a tweet claiming that despite decades of his idiotic pledge, it would be just okay to vote for this tax increase.

It laid bare what people in Washington know about the conservative pressure establishment and its difference from groups on the left. They exist to prop up the Republican party and if that means betraying what is supposed to be their core beliefs, so be it no matter what.

We saw a lot of this during the Bush years and in the Obama years right after, when all these groups were mute on the issues of spending and increasing the size of government, but suddenly got religion when the presidency switched parties.

The NRA does the same thing, when you see them stamp their feet about a President who has actually expanded gun rights (to his detriment, in my opinion) – simply because he’s from the wrong (Democratic) party. Club for Growth, who never saw a tax cut they didn’t wax rhapsodic over, suddenly is okay with the GOP raising taxes in the fiscal cliff fight.

By comparison, progressive groups tend to rant about Democrats who aren’t progressive enough, lamenting (sometimes to their detriment) legislation that doesn’t go far enough to the left despite pracitcality. At the same time, groups like the Sierra Club are willing to back pro-environment Republicans (an endangered species), unions are okay with (the few) pro-union Republicans, and groups like NARAL have been fine with staying out of races if the Republican happens to be pro-choice (this is now down to about one person.)

They are not nearly as much in the business of being Democrats as they are in being progressive. Sure, they tend to have alliances with one party over another thanks to a shared agenda – but they aren’t just puppet arms of the associated party in the way it operates on the right.

Vote for a tax increase? Somehow that’s now okay… if you’re a Republican.

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“I saw a peanut stand,
Heard a rubber band,
I saw a needle that winked it’s eye.
But I think I will have seen everything
When I see an elephant fly.”
- When I See An Elephant Fly, Dumbo, 1941

There’s a lot of silliness associated with the whole “fiscal cliff” fiasco. Basically Washington backed itself into a corner and made a last minute agreement because the far right held a temper tantrum that led to the U.S. credit rating being lowered. It’s silliness from start to finish.

That said, I never thought I’d see the Republican party – overwhelmingly in the Senate – actually vote for a tax increase on anyone, let alone the rich. Sure, I would rather the thresholds be set at $250,000 instead of $400,000 and $450,000 but you pass what can pass now. We simply do not have a parliamentary majority to pass the legislation liberals would get in an ideal world.

We’ve certainly seen a template set here by the right, that no matter the outcome of a national election, never mind that their chosen candidate has yet again lost the popular vote by a margin of several million votes (over 5 million and counting), they remain wedded to their ideology and party over any sense of patriotism or civic duty. While I believe in strong progressivism, that is a bridge too far for any movement to cross.

But Obama and Biden got the GOP to vote for tax increases. Not perfect by any stretch, but a step forward.

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I was in a drug store the other day, and while waiting for a prescription I decided to thumb through a gun magazine. I confess, I’m certainly not the demographic for this publication. While I spend hundreds (thousands?) of hours virtually shooting bad guys in games like Call of Duty, I’ve only ever touched a real gun once – my late grandfather’s (unloaded) handgun.

I grew up with almost no toy guns, and while I’ve been exposed to tons of violent media and have a history buff fascination with war (particularly World War 2), it isn’t like guns mean anything to me.

So I open up this magazine and basically its selling its readers a nightmare world in which armed gangs are invading their homes and attacking/killing/raping their families. And of course, the supposed salvation is a handgun.

This is basically telling all gun owners that on some given day in the future they’re going to be Dirty Harry/John Wayne/etc. The problem, of course, is that most of the time when people get shot in the home it isn’t because they gunned down the mysterious dark figure assaulting their families.

This is like me thinking I wouldn’t poop in my pants because Call of Duty prepared me for actual war. So dumb.

Gun owners, particularly the diehard ones, are being sold a bill of goods. We have people in our society that are generally pretty good at taking down the bad guys – the police. What’s better is that they’re actually trained with their guns rather than simply having enough money to give to the teller at Wal-Mart.

The gun magazines show off their product in the same oddly fetishistic way car and gadget magazines do, except it’s a weapon designed to kill people. In addition to all the lax laws, etc. around the world of guns, there is a cultural problem that I doubt can be fixed.

Maybe just having less guns for people attempting to compensate for something else missing in their lives would be a start.

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Three of the top ten movies of 2012 were based on comic books and earned over $1.3 billion at the box office. Yet, somehow, the comic book industry continues to decline – and in an embarrassing way.

This past week came news that – stop me if you heard this before – Peter Parker was going to die. Parker, aka Spider-Man, joins the other iconic heroes to “die” over the last three decades – Superman and Captain America. It’s a lousy stunt designed to end the long-running Amazing Spider-Man and replace it with a brand new #1, Superior Spider-Man. Or some crap.

It’s a short term sales stunt (Peter Parker will be alive by the time Andrew Garfield has to play him in the next Spider-Man movie, trust me), designed to bring mainstream media coverage to comics and will have almost no effect in the long run on comics continual decline. The same thing happened when DC stopped all their comics and rebooted with “The New 52.” In the Superman line, it had the effect of making the character crappier.

At the same time that major media companies are making huge investments in iconic comic properties (Disney bought Marvel, Warner Bros. Owns DC) and seeing huge returns in other media (including games), the source material is suffering.

Marvel and DC are steadfastly interested in pumping out new #1 issues and getting an artificial pop out of them, while the underlying product declines. Its like a company floating new IPOs as the main company flounders. It’s not a sustainable model.

Even worse, it will come back to bite the industry in alternative media. The entire reason The Avengers was such a draw at the movie theater was that it was the realization of 60+ years of engaging comic book mythology. People were invested in Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, etc. because so many grew up with them – not because they killed them off for yet another #1 issue and a temporary infusion of money.

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Enjoy the day and appreciate the time you’ve got with family and loved ones, trust me.

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