Limbaugh knows ...

Yesterday Sullivan posted a piece titled "Rush Limbaugh Knows Nothing About Christianity," which, while true enough, is also excessive in statement, by two words. He could have stopped at "Nothing," throwing much greater light on this prince of fucking pseudoconservative darkness, whom Sullivan alternatively labels "the Pope of the Republican party."

It's among the highest of human challenges not to hock up a wad of venom whenever pondering the powerfully evil Rush Limbaugh. In a way that feeds the monster--he thrives as much on reaction to his evil as on the evil itself--but it's a necessary feeding, in that Limbaugh undeniably represents a massive social force to be reckoned with, and repelled. In the constant repelling, perhaps some constituents of Limbaugh's wicked ignorance can be chipped away. 

Sullivan's key attack:

There’s something almost poignant in Limbaugh’s inability even to understand that material goods are not self-evidently the purpose of life and are usually (and in Jesus’ stern teachings always) paths away from God and our own good and our own happiness. Something poignant because it reveals a profound ignorance of one of the West’s deepest cultural inheritances in Christianity.

I'd venture, however, and in partial opposition to my own opening paragraph, that Limbaugh's profound ignorance is rather a profoundly knowing ignorance; a kind of Miltonian Arch-Fiend denial of raw goodness--a perfectly aware denial--for where else is the satanic fun of probing and poking goodness's tolerable boundaries? And of course one must know those boundaries before assaulting them in such a targeted way.

There's an even simpler test of my theory, though: Could anyone actually be as ignorant as Rush Limbaugh sounds? As evil, yes. But as stupid? It requires a deviously keen mind to sound so dumb--and earn millions doing it.  

Sullivan is of course correct in observing that Limbaugh promotes an "ignorance of one of the West’s deepest cultural inheritances in Christianity"--i.e., the human emptiness of pure materialism--but on the other hand Limbaugh possesses at least an equally deep cultural inheritance, which is to be found in Weber's assessment of the Calvinist Protestant Ethic.

And in that we have a classic thesis-antithesis, whose (dare I say) fundamentally Marxist synthesis is, no doubt, long but sure in Coming.

***

update: I have changed "Weber's assailing of" to "Weber's assessment of" so as not to conflate my biased reading of Weber with Weber's work itself.

 

Comments

[Peter G]

I think you err my friend. At no time in his life has Rush Limbaugh exhibited as knowledge of or practical application of anything resembling a protestant work ethic. You seek too far back in time my learned host. If you would model Rush's behavior on a level consistent with his exhibited intelligence and knowledge you have but to watch Forbidden Planet. I think you will recognize the Creature from the ID.

[Peter G]

Btw that was supposed to be Id and I will add that I have always found Rush's name to be extremely apt in that it never seems to operate above the limbic level.