Yea in the 90s proper Republicans knew things like Rush Limbaugh were just to get the rubes riled up, but now the rubes are running the show. Even the president sits around watching Fox News for hours a day.

I’ve been saying that about the Conservative movement for literally 40 years.

I started listening to Rush Limbaugh when he first came on the air in the late 80s. His listenership was growing rapidly, easily the biggest media story of the time. My Critical Thinking Skills are too well-honed to succumb to his nonsense, but I listened to caller after caller tell him that they’d never heard anyone that could make politics make sense to them before.

I knew he was lying about EVERYTHING, and wondered where America would be if he stayed on the air, with that level of success, for the next few generations. I thought that eventually we will have people growing up around the dinner table with Dad (or Mom) ranting about whatever Rush was lying about that day, and then those kids would grow up and raise THEIR kids the same way.

Eventually we would have a huge segment of the population who have been exposed to the worst bad-faith propaganda possible on an intergenerational basis, especially as the Conservative Propaganda Machine grew and became more experienced and sophisticated.

Rush Limbaugh, and the propagandists of his time knew they were lying, but their followers didn’t. They grew up believing the bullshit, and raised their children on the same bullshit. Now we have a large portion of America who actually live in an alternative reality, created by the Conservative Propaganda Machine, even though 2/3 of America, and the entire rest of the world, live in reality.

It’s bad enough that these people see America through these treasonous glasses, but now we have people running. For office, and winning, who were raised and politically educated exclusively by the Conservative Propaganda Machine. Gullible, delusional people are actually running America, based their decisions and policies on the bad faith propaganda that Russia has been steadily feeding to the Conservative Propaganda Machine, which then regurgitated to America.

IF we ever get out of this, it will be crucial to somehow reconcile the 1st Amendment and Freedom of Speech with highly-organized bad-faith propaganda, designed to literally destroy our nation.

Do we really have to tolerate such an abuse of our Constitution? If the answer is Yes, then we, as a nation, need to be stronger in resisting those who would would take advantage of our national morality. We have to agree that it isn’t a bad thing to harshly slap down those who have treasonous intentions.

MTG the person can go fuck herself. MTG the politician has the opportunity to do something good on behalf of everyone. boy, it’d be great if she stuck to her principles here and refused to compromise. unfortunately, we need resistance from every group opposed to our fascist administration. she ain’t welcome to the party but i have to begrudgingly wish her well on this alone.

Or maybe she is using Epstein as some sort of leverage and has taken it too far by gambling big. Or maybe she thinks she can get the majority of the republican base support behind her if she pushes this hard enough, maybe even eventually dethrone Trump.