About twenty years ago, there was a bit of a flap about Augusta National’s policy of not admitting women as members. The spokesperson for the complaining parties asserted confidently that men spent a lot of time talking about women on the golf course. When my wife agreed with that statement, I assured her that, unlike her, I had plenty of experience talking to men on the golf course, and that women rarely came up during the discussion. The most common topic of conversation, in reality, was golf.
What does this have to do with Rush Limbaugh? He made a fortune by telling red Americans who didn’t know better that blue America despises them, and that they should hate blue America in response. In reality, blue America is vaguely, if somewhat ineffectually, sympathetic to most of the reds. It is the WSJ crowd that is contemptuous of them, not people like me.
Limbaugh was the first truly successful culture warrior during my lifetime. He effectively monetized hate and division with his heavy metal, take no prisoners rhetoric. He so successfully stoked the anger of the right with lies and conspiracy theories that GOP candidates are now compelled to run against the snooty elites even in jurisdictions they completely control. He was the template for Donald Trump. Trump is inconceivable without him. So is January 6.
That’s a lot to answer for.