Postmodern Political Theater: Rush Limbaugh Rants About a Lack of Truth and Honesty in the News Media

I came upon this video of Rush Limbaugh's show and just had to share it. Here, "El Rushbo" is conducting a post graduate level seminar in Orwellian Right-wing new speak.

This is postmodern agitprop political theater: the master liar is bemoaning a lack of truth and honesty in the media while suggesting that conservatives did not engage in a campaign of character assassination against Barack Obama.

In the Exorcist movies, we are cautioned to never talk to the devil because he mixes truths with lies. The same rule applies when listening to Rush Limbaugh and his ilk.

One would think that the magical thinking, Fox News media bubble that undermined Mitt Romney's electoral chances would urge the bloviators on the Right towards some degree of moderation in their pathological lying.

If Limbaugh is a bellwether, the Republican propagandists are going to simply rewrite history and double down on this habit. I used to believe that the Conservative media apparatus was one of the most effective propaganda machines in recent memory. However, as I observe their behavior post-Romney, it would appear that the Right is simply continuing with the same old lies and not updating them for the new season.

Don't the lies have to be internally consistent in order to be compelling and believable for the Right-wing media's audience? Or is Conservative Red State America so out of touch, and its supplicants so disoriented from reality, that to embrace empirical truth is akin to an act of religious heresy?

The carnival barkers and flimflam artists on the Right are like End Times prophets. They predict that the end of the world will come on Friday. Said event does not occur. These seers change the date to next Wednesday. The world does not end (again). Their believers suffer no loss of faith; they simply believe that the schedule was changed and their leader has a special and unique relationship with god.

The Right-wing media's audience and the base of the Tea Party GOP are those very same fools. Is it even possible to have a politics of consensus, in the interest of the Common Good, when the basic facts of reality, and the terms of discussion, can not even be agreed upon?