America 2009: The Circle of Strife

RUSH: I think the best way to describe what’s happening in America today is a circle of strife, you know, the old phrase is the circle of life. Circle of Strife. Obama attacks Americans at tea parties and town halls, Americans attack Obama. Obama responds by attacking Fox News. The comedians are now attacking Obama. So Obama comes back and doubles down on the attack on Fox News, the postpartisan, postracial, postaccomplishment, postdebate president who was going to bring everybody together.

Can you believe all of the strife that is in this country today? All of the strife, it is worse than I ever remember it, and I was alive during the Vietnam War era. Instead, look at what Obama’s done? He’s created about a dozen miniature civil wars throughout the fruited plain. He has written, produced, and is starring in his own miniseries, the Circle of Strife. Back in the spring, folks, Americans didn’t like the tax and spend policies coming out of Washington, didn’t like the talk of nationalizing the health care industry, taking over the car companies, so they exercised their free speech rights. They spoke out at tea parties and later at town hall meetings with their representatives in Congress. Obama, accustomed to being bowed down to, didn’t take kindly to criticism of the little people. Sensing his health care takeover was in jeopardy he released the hounds and union thugs on the protesters. This attack enraged Americans exercising their First Amendment rights, so they ramped up their protests against Obama and they marched on the nation’s capital.

The mainstream media saw it but tried to ignore it, but they failed. America’s seasoned citizens learned about Obamacare, rationing medical treatment, death panels, Medicare cuts. So they defended themselves. They launched an all-out attack on the AARP and the president. And not wanting to get left out of the business of ridiculing the ridiculous, late night comics began to lob comedy mortars on President Obama, and then CNN starts fact-checking Saturday Night Live bits. So Obama not wanting to pick a fight with professional ridiculers, the late-night comedians, he retaliated by attacking Fox News. Fox News has fired back. Late to the battle, the private insurance industry is firing back as well. Trying to get noticed, CNN exposed them by fact-checking that SNL comedy sketch, so the comedians have begun a hot war with CNN. Polls now show the White House losing the war of words. The White House is ambushing their own left-wing bloggers. This is a friendly fire mishap and now the left-wing kook bloggers are plotting their next move against the White House and when they find out that Obama has quietly and unannounced sent 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan, all hell’s going to break loose out there on the fringe left.

You talk about chaos, this guy, Obama, has agitated the entire country. Everybody is in a constant state of angst, tension, and agitation. He even has the French president disgusted with his weakness. Obama has, in the midst of all this, destroyed the economy, he has destroyed the job creation mechanism of the economy, he has exploded the deficit, he has angered every conceivable group in the country, and there’s no end in sight to this. The tension, the roil just increases. It was supposed to be just the opposite. How is that hope and change working out for you, folks? Here, from TheNation.com blog: ‘The Obama administration really needs to get over itself. First, the president and his aides go to war with Fox News because the network maintains a generally anti-Obama slant. Then, an anonymous administration aide attacks bloggers for failing to maintain a sufficiently pro-Obama slant. These are not disconnected developments.’

This is a blog, The Nation is a very left-wing place and of course one of the early supporters of President Obama. They write, ‘An administration that won the White House with an almost always on-message campaign and generally friendly coverage from old and new media is now frustrated by its inability to control the debate and get the coverage it wants. But before the president and his inner circle go all Spiro Agnew on us, they might want to consider three fundamental facts regarding relations between the executive branch and the fourth estate: 1. Since the founding of the republic, media outlets have been partisan. … 2. Presidents are supposed to rise above their own partisanship and engage with a wide range of media — even outlets that are hard on their administrations. When Dick Cheney kept giving ‘exclusive’ interviews to Fox ‘personalities,’ there were those of us who ridiculed both the personalities and the former vice president for going through the ridiculous exercise of lobbing softballs and swinging at them. Obama should be better than Cheney. But aides are not helping the president prevail in what ought to be an easy competition.’

My God, when they start comparing him to Cheney on the left, folks, I’m telling you there is utter chaos, total chaos. The sad thing is this is precisely what Obama wants. None of this is accidental, and if I say so myself, most of it was predicted, by me, from behind this, the Golden EIB Microphone. The Circle of Strife. I don’t think they’re happy with him being a target of jokes because I pointed out recently that when that starts happening to you, when those people start laughing, remember the brilliant analogy I gave of Johnny Carson, when Johnny Carson started making fun of you, you were dead. Not dead, but you were officially a joke. Now, the reason why is that Johnny Carson didn’t lead anybody. Johnny Carson had the knack of knowing when the time was right to lower the boom on somebody, the time being right defined by a majority of the American people already having arrived at the same point of view. Carson was not telling somebody months ahead of time that so-and-so was a jerk or a joke. He waited ’til everybody figured it out, and then he said it, and everybody said, ‘Wow, this guy is smart, he thinks just like I do.’

I on the other hand — and I’m not comparing myself to Carson — I on the other hand don’t wait for people to form opinions. I make opinion. I move opinion. I move the way people think. I lead them to where I want them to go. I am months ahead of the conventional wisdom. I have been suggesting that President Obama is a dangerous joke for a year-and-a-half, and of course predicting what was going to happen to the economy, predicting what was going to happen with all the racial strife in the country, it was only going to be exacerbated with his election because his supporters would attack anybody criticizing him as racist. And that’s happening in droves. And, of course, in the case of health care, I opposed Bill Clinton and Hillary’s version of health care, and they are not black, they are white. Opposition to Obama, as I said on the Today Show, has nothing to do with anything other than ideas, policy, and I disagree with his in a profound way.

Get this. More from the Circle of Strife, from Lakeview, Massachusetts: ‘The Secret Service is investigating after a swastika was found carved into the green on a Massachusetts golf course, next to President Barack Obama’s name. Authorities said the vandalism was discovered early Monday on the 18th hole of the Lakeville Country Club. The assistant manager of the club said the person or persons responsible may have used a cleated shoe or some type of tool to carve out the letters and symbol. The Secret Service has joined the local police in the investigation of the incident.’ The Secret Service is investigating somebody in Massachusetts, folks. I’ve got a picture of it here. The picture of it is on Drudge if you want to go to the Drudge Report, they’ve got a swastika next to Obama’s name. You know, like sometimes farmers will cut out certain symbols to freak out the conspiracy theorists, make them think the Egyptians landed there 4,000 years ago. It’s just like this.