If you’ve been reading along on this blog lately, you know I’ve been highly critical of mainstream conservative talk radio, particularly for the negative affects I believe it has on our public discourse. These days, especially, many of the major conservative hosts have shown a remarkable penchant for divisive, alarmist rhetoric, fallacious arguments, crazy spin, and flat-out lies and/or blatant misrepresentations.

In a recent post, I wrote at length about what I found to be generally problematic with this brand of talk radio. But I didn’t offer specific examples from any particular show to illustrate what I was talking about. I didn’t really think this was crucial to the points I was trying to make at the time. As it turns out, though, I’ve recently noticed radio host Rush Limbaugh has been pretty much daily confirming what I was trying to point out, often with him in mind anyway.

It seems ever since Barack Obama entered the White House, Limbaugh has been growing increasingly intense, unhinged, and desperate in his resistance to and hatred for all things “liberal,” Democrat, and, well, Barack Obama. So much so that it seems he’ll now say just about anything critical and negative that comes to mind, whether it has any basis in reason and reality at all or not – a throw everything you can against the White House wall and hope it sticks kind of approach I guess. Really, it would actually be funny at this point, if he did not have such media influence, and if people did not actually mistake his opportunistic spin for insightful commentary.

But then again, it also kind of seems like the more he talks, the more he is turning himself into a boon for the other side. Or at least I can’t imagine how people can still take him seriously when he can’t seem to piece together an accurate, consistent, coherent, or educated argument on much of anything he is daily griping about.

Here’s a short list of some of the more completely illogical and unthinking points Limbaugh has made lately:

• He compared human healthcare to dog healthcare and kenneling options, saying, “there’s no federal dog healthcare plan out there, and [dog healthcare] is working just fine, and it’s based on the dog owner’s ability to pay.” (emphasis added) (Yes, I’m sure people will enthusiastically support a policy of euthanasia for all those people who could not pay or whose condition was too costly to be paid for. Just think of how cost effective human healthcare would be then.)

• After pointing out a report on a study that shows cooking carrots whole retains nutrients that may help in the prevention of cancer, Rush said it was all “absurd,” because “everyone who has eaten carrots in this world is dead or will be dead.” (Yeh, you gotta admit, he has a point there. Prevention of cancer has got nothing on the elixir of life.)

• Concerning the Waxman-Markey energy bill, after Rush proclaimed “there isn’t any global warming!,” he further warned, “Folks, we are made of carbon, and what this is is a carbon tax. Theoretically, we could be taxed because of the carbon dioxide we exhale. If they want to figure out how much that is contributing to Global Warming, we could be taxed on that basis. There’s no limit here once you start taxing carbon.” (As someone aptly commented elsewhere, “This…is evidence of either how desperate Limbaugh is getting, how stupid he thinks his audience is, how stupid they actually are, or how stupid he actually is.”)

The list of these kind of nonsense statements could go on and on. But there are bigger fish to fry here.

Beyond healthcare and energy reform, Limbaugh has recently been at his most negative and dishonest on the issue of our current economic situation. Indeed, it seems that most, if not all, conservative hosts have decided the best way to discredit the new president and destroy his early popularity is to stir up anger and fear about government intervention, spending, and deficits (conveniently now that Republicans are out of power). A key element of this strategy is an apparent attempt to absolve the Bush administration and Republicans by creating the impression that the Obama administration and Democrats are the only ones to blame for current economic woes and are only exacerbating the situation or creating problems that weren’t there before.

Limbaugh comes right out and says this about the Obama administration directly. In fact, right after Obama was elected in November, but, of course, three months before he would actually be in office, Limbaugh started calling the recession “the Obama recession,” blaming the man’s very ideas and presence for the downturn.

Flash forward from that to about a month ago, when Limbaugh ranted on air two days in a row about President Obama referring to the current recession as an economic crisis his administration inherited, one that “has been many years in the making.” At these widely agreed upon, accurate statements Limbaugh scoffed and spat with fury, calling Obama “gutless,” “childish,” and “immature” for blaming his predecessors.

According to Limbaugh, “[Obama] did not inherit a mess. He has created one.” Limbaugh went from that into a bombastic, blindly patriotic love fest, saying, instead of a mess,

“Barack Obama inherited…the opportunity to lead a nation of sheer exceptionalism… He inherited…the country that has successfully championed capitalism and widespread prosperity. … He inherited the responsibility to preserve and strengthen the free markets and economies that made this the greatest nation in the history of human civilization. He inherited the responsibility to continue the philosophy and the tradition of a country founded on Judeo-Christian morals, ethics, and principles.

He inherited the Constitution of the United States. He did not claim the right to remake it, to rewrite it, to change it. He swore to uphold it. And he’s in the process of wreaking as much damage to the Constitution as he can get away with… Barack Obama did not inherit a mess. He leads a mess. He inherited the United States of America, where anything is possible. …He inherited years and decades of stewardship from the Oval Office of the greatest nation in history.

So, as Limbaugh has it, “Obama is destroying what others before him created.”

I’ve heard Limbaugh say a lot of junk, and I guess this is the typical fare. But hearing this left me completely dumbstruck, wondering how anyone can now manage to take Limbaugh seriously without suffering a fully unbearable amount of cognitive dissonance. Regardless of how anyone falls politically, the way in which Limbaugh has chosen to dishonestly smear the current administration while letting the last one off the hook is fully unconscionable. It would be one thing if Limbaugh was merely arguing that Obama’s policies are serving to make the recession worse. Of course, Limbaugh does believe and assert this, as any member of the right does with pride. But it is unacceptable that he goes beyond that to deny that Obama inherited any serious problem at all, when everything did begin crashing down under the Bush administration, and the Obama administration is certainly not alone in responding to the problem in the manner in which it has.

The way Limbaugh is approaching the situation, however, is crucial to his divisive game. If he were to fairly admit that Obama came into office facing some very serious, immediate challenges, for which the previous administration must share much blame and had set a course, he might also have to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt in their intentions, though he may strongly disagree with their ideas for recovery. But by denying or downplaying the seriousness of the situation before Obama, Limbaugh can (and does) go off on all manner of wild, conspiratorial rants about how Obama is really just making excuses to implement his “real” agenda to destroy American capitalism and snatch up all the tyrannical power he can.

And yet, it gets worse, and very inconsistent at that. On the second day of scolding Obama for immaturity, Limbaugh, right after denying Obama inherited any mess at all, turned around and claimed that is was not Bush, but the Democrats in Congress alone that damaged the economy. Moreover, near the beginning of Obama’s presidency, Limbaugh argued that the recession was not such a crisis after all, because it wasn’t nearly as bad as the recession of 1981-82.

Now, as some might recall, Ronald Reagan, the all-time favorite leader of conservatives like Limbaugh, was president in 1981-82. So why on earth would Limbaugh compare the current situation with what he claims to be the far worse recession during Ronald Reagan’s first term as president? Simple. Because he lays the blame for that recession fully at the feet of Reagan’s predecessor, Jimmy Carter.

Hmm. So let me get this straight. Reagan came into office to see a recession last for two years on his watch. Yet, according to Limbaugh, his predecessor, Carter, is to blame for that entire ordeal. Obama has only been president for six months. But, according to Limbaugh, he is fully responsible for the current problems, because he either turned a nonproblem into a huge mess in a short time, or he and his Democrat cohorts are solely to blame for everything that started going wrong over a year ago and is wrong today as a result. Yet Obama’s predecessor, Bush, after eight straight years, gets off free and clear of any responsibility.

Sadly, that is only the beginning of Limbaugh’s shameful double standards. During the Bush years, Limbaugh often complained that the “liberal media” was bent on hurting the Bush administration and the country by reporting only negative news on everything from the economy to Iraq, both of which Limbaugh always held in a positive light. And Democrats, he liked to say, were “invested in America’s defeat,” economically and militarily, because it would result in political victory for them; that, and “they hate this country.”

But now, it is the reverse. Now Limbaugh complains that the “liberal,” or “state-run” media is always trying to make the economy look better than it actually is to help Obama. Naturally, then, Limbaugh now jumps at every opportunity to do exactly what he condemned the media of during the Bush years, i.e., talking about just how awful the economy is and how down everybody is about it. So as for “investing in defeat,” we know Limbaugh is invested in Obama’s. He, of course, directly said he hopes Obama fails.

Now all of this seems very inconsistent and hypocritical to say the least. We may turn the tables on Limbaugh and ask, “why does he hate America? Why is he now invested in America’s defeat?” And right we would be to do so. But I’m certain Limbaugh would deny any inconsistency on his part. Because there is a warped system – if we may call it that – of Limbaugh logic in which this all fits together, the inanity of his premises and conclusions notwithstanding.

It’s almost like a coded language, and I think I’ve got it cracked. When Limbaugh says “America,” he really means his idea of America, his own political views and interests only. Anyone with opposing views must then be out to remake America into something that isn’t “America.”

To put it into more detail, Limbaugh logic states that “conservative Republicans” are seeking to do only what is good for “America” and in line with “American ideals.” This, for Rush, apparently means things like tax breaks at and distribution toward the top; keeping environmental protections as loose as possible; maintaining a social environment that is safe for big business while attacking social services and the social welfare safety net at every possible angle; privatizing whatever can be privatized; maintaining the status quo in healthcare and most other sectors; and always maintaining a hefty dose of hawkish militarism, etc.

Now, when “liberal Democrats,” or anyone else for that matter, take issue with any of the above, well, that of course means they are opposed to “America” and want to see it fail for their own political benefit and perverse enjoyment. But then, when in power, these same Democrats not only still want “America” to fail, they wish to weaken it and systematically dismantle it all as a giant ploy to grab power and remake the country into something “unAmerican.” So says the bizarre logic of Limbaugh land anyway.

Thus, in Limbaugh’s view, Democrats’ success means “America’s” failure, and vice versa; as he recently said, “the country is failing because Obama is succeeding.” So; success is failure; war is peace; ignorance is strength; et cetera, et cetera.

You know, speaking of Orwell, I think he had a term for Limbaugh’s kind of thinking. And he best described it when he wrote the following:

His mind slid away into the labryinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be concious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself-that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word “doublethink” involved the use of doublethink.

(Much credit is due to Media Matters for their production of the Limbaugh Wire: their thorough, daily documentation of Limbaugh’s antics. All quotes and references made in this post can be read or heard at this site.)