What’s the deal with Rush Limbaugh? That’s a serious question. I’ve been struggling with what makes the man’s ideas so darned attractive. There’s no consistency. A few years back when defending Bush’s war, he was adamant that anyone who stood against the President was a traitor. Now he’s openly advocating for Obama to fail. There’s no rationale. There simply aren’t any credible economists who believe we should handle the economic crisis by letting capitalism take it’s course. And should we try that, it’s Rush’s listeners who would suffer the most.

I’ve come to believe that it’s got nothing to do with what he says. It’s the only possible explanation for why sane people will eat up all the contradictory and self-destructive blather. Rather, it’s how he says it. A cable news pundit put it best the other night. “Rush does righteous indignation better than anyone on Earth.” And he does. And I think that’s the key.

People are suffering, and he gives them someone to blame. He makes people feel that this is not their fault. There’s nothing they could have done. All these guys over there are screwing it up for the rest of us. And he whoops them into his vigilante frenzy. This ain’t no thinking thing. But it sure feels good. A century ago, Rush would have been the one riling up the lynch mob to string up the innocent guy because someone’s got to pay. A few centuries before that he’d have been leading a mob of angry villagers with pitchforks and torches to storm the Gypsy camp.

It would be easy to blame Rush. After all, he’s got a talent, he knows how to use it, and I’m certain he knows what he’s doing with it. But he’s hardly the only one. These same tactics were used by the Bush administration to goad us into invading Iraq. And they were used by Hitler to launch the Jewish holocaust.

There will always be people able and willing to play to emotional weaknesses of the masses. The only solution is for the masses to get smarter so they see through this ploy. Play from the head, and not the heart. The cruel reality is that as a people, we’re not bright enough yet to deserve better than Rush’s ilk.