Lovers

Rush Limbaugh sees no evidence that President Obama loves America. It's an interesting concept, isn't it? How does a person show his love for America? With bumper stickers? Flags flapping near their gun racks? Support-our-troops magnets? Doing oxycontin? Not, evidently, by willingness to pay taxes to support those troops, or pay for what America needs. Or to accept the fundamental concepts of democracy. Like voting rights. Providing for a well-informed electorate. Respecting minorities, leaving religion out of our politics. No, evidently just saying you love America is enough. Actions aren't. Except for the action where you say you love America.

Not, with respect to our president, stuff like killing terrorists, saving the auto industry, ending the recession. Not increasing drilling for oil, proposing regulations to prevent another Wall Street meltdown and bailout. Supporting equal rights doesn't count. And, most assuredly, neither does trying to provide access to health care for those Americans Rush Limbaugh doesn't see as Americans. Poor people, non-white people. People not born here. Democrats. Liberals. Not Americans, that's for damn sure. Can't try to help those people while loving America. The America Rush loves fits into his studio, especially if he's not there.

Trying to improve American education doesn't qualify as love, evidently. Working to see to it that America remains part of the picture when it comes to innovation, research, energy independence. Doesn't count. Isn't flapping in the breeze like a flag, isn't in-your-face-America-fuck-yeah enough. Isn't on talk radio or sung by Ted Nugent. Ending wars isn't America-loving. Neither is reaching out to the opposing party and having his hand bitten off. Not America-loving. Not a shred of evidence.

Rush, on the other hand, loves America. Well, as long as you don't include its citizens; not the ones that disagree with him, the ones that support voting rights, women's health, or returning tax rates for the very wealthy to where they were when America was booming like a sage grouse in springtime. To Rush, America is white, male, and Republican; anything else is the object of venomous hate. But by golly he loves the country and Obama doesn't. The invective he spews toward Americans like raw sewage into a pristine creek is love, I guess; the efforts Obama has made aren't. Seems clear to me.

How do you love a country? Bring it candy? George Bush did just that, when he gave it drugs and didn't ask it to pay for them, took it to war for free. Do you sing loud and get teary-eyed, while refusing to countenance paying taxes at a rate that ensures the country's future? Is that love? And if it is, will you still love her in the morning? Seriously: what constitutes court-of-law evidence of a person's love of country? Like all of his RWS™ compadres, Rush didn't serve in the military like I did, so we know it's not that. What is it, I wonder, and, other than taking your lover's word for it, how do you know?

[Addendum: now he's upped the anti (yes, I know) -- it's not merely that President Obama doesn't love America: he hates it. I don't doubt for a minute -- having former friends who buy in like it was a cookie drive -- that his followers will eat it up. When you hear the despicable ranting, you see it's nothing but the weaving together of molecules of thin air. Wild claims, based on nothing. But there it is: America's most listened-to authority, guiding teabaggers and other crazies like the pied piper, the pie-eating prevaricator. This is our country. This is our politics.

And now, following Rush's directions, it appears, absent much in the way of specific and positive reasons for support of their own candidate, the operative meme for all of these mendacious Rs from now on, including The Rominee himself, will be to question Obama's Americanism.

Hate to say it yet again, but these really are awful people. There's no getting around it.]