RUSH: I got a great email here during the break. Somebody heard my story in the opening segment where I described watching the HBO show Big Little… what? Big Little Lies. I watched Little Lies last night. Just to refresh, the upshot of it is that in a second-grade school a student, a little girl, faints/passes out in a closet.

She was trying to get away from the classroom. I know it’s a TV show. Stick with me. It’s a left-wing TV show. It’s produced by HBO. For those of you who do not know, HBO is essentially the defining pop culture media element. If it’s on HBO, you can count on the fact that it’s hip, that it is either established or will soon be established as left-wing norm. That’s what HBO has become. Those are the people that they hire to star in their shows. That’s what the subject matter of their shows is largely about.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Robbie in my adopted hometown, Sacramento, California. Great to have you, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Thank you. Hi, Rush Limbaugh! So —

RUSH: Oh, I’m sorry. You’re not a “sir.” I’m sorry about that.

CALLER: (giggles) No problem. I’m a Millennial, and I so wish my generation could recognize and understand that this whole climate change scare is simply a manipulator’s tool designed to control us.

RUSH: Oh. Ohhh-ho, do I agree with that. I cannot agree enough, and I think one of the reasons why it works so well is because they have succeeded in making so many young people think their parents are to blame, that their parents are the culprits. So they have driven a wedge between the closest adults to them who can tell them the truth about things, to the point where they don’t believe them.

CALLER: Big Little Lies.

RUSH: Big Little… (chuckles)

CALLER: (laughs)

RUSH: It really is. You’ve just synthesized it down to its basic element. It really is frustrating how they do not realize how they’re just simply being manipulated for control. But, you know, it’s very clever how they do it, and let this be a lesson to you: If you ever want to manipulate and control somebody, here’s one of the best ways to do it. There are many ways to do it. But this is a way to do it without any kind of intimidation or force. You blame ’em for the problem.

You realize everybody wants to matter. Everybody wants their life to have meaning. You realize this psychologically. Then you blame them for something, but you don’t really blame ’em. You blame ’em, but then you give them the out that they didn’t know. But they still did it! They have been participating in the destruction of the planet. Even though they didn’t know, they’ve still been doing it. Then you offer redemption, and that’s where you’re offering them a life of meaning. You tell them they could save the planet.

What could be bigger than that? What could give somebody’s life more meaning than literally saving the planet? And how do you do it. Simple. You stop using plastic straws. You get on the oil companies. That’s the easiest thing in the world to do! Dredging up hate for corporations is a tactic the left utilizes daily. You blame Big Oil, you blame Big Tobacco, you blame big fossil fuels, you blame rich people. You exempt the Democrat rich because they have compassion and big hearts.

But the key is blaming them and shifting the blame to parents, other adults. But you blame ’em. You have to blame them, but give them the excuse that they didn’t know. They’ve been lied to. But they still have a debt to pay. They still have to make good. So you gotta go buy a Prius or you gotta do whatever the hell they want you to do. But you’re promising them that they can save the planet. This is how it becomes evangelical, it’s how it becomes religious, and that’s why it works. Thank you, Robbie, very much.

They push the envelope on profanity, obscenity, perversion. They are the defining place. I think, if you really want to know who the left is, where they’re headed in entertainment and pop culture, watch HBO. No. If you don’t own it, if you don’t pay for it, I’m not suggesting you get a subscription to watch it. I’m just saying this is how I see it — and I could be wrong, and you might disagree. You might think there are other elements of pop culture media that more define liberalism and pop culture than HBO.

But I happen to think they’re it, which is why what happened last night to me was so shocking. They literally portrayed a second-grade student trying to get out of a classroom during a discussion on how bad climate change is. The little girl, in the show, had… I acknowledge this is all fiction, but I’ll get to that in a minute. She passes out and has to go to the hospital after suffering an anxiety attack while the teacher is attempting to explain in detail how climate change is going to destroy their world, their planet.

You know they hear the same thing at home with their parents. Any time they turn on media, they see it. Now they’re seeing it in the classroom. So the doctor explaining this to the parents — who are head cases, typical leftists — explains that this little girl is scared to death that she’s not going to live much longer. She believes that climate change is killing her and everybody else and is gonna kill the planet. So the school has a big assembly to (impression) “discuss the school’s policy on climate change” and to let parents air their grievances, and it’s a…

Folks, it’s an excrement show the way it’s portrayed here. The point is that in this full… I mean, this is written, this is conceived, this is performed by classic uber-leftists to whom climate change is biblical. It is their religion. And this show is making fun of it! This show was ripping the whole way climate change gets treated, which is what was happening. That’s why I couldn’t believe it. So I got an email. “Dear Mr. Limbaugh: Were you scared to death and having anxiety attacks when you were in second grade?

“When you were in second grade, when I was in second grade, Mr. Limbaugh, nuclear war had the potential to wipe everybody and everything out. We were told about nuclear war. We were given lessons on how to hide underneath our desks. We had classes on it. We were prepared in Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts for survival after a nuclear attack. I myself, Mr. Limbaugh, did a science project in the seventh grade on the effects of gamma rays because of a nuclear attack. I spent the night in a bomb shelter, Mr. Limbaugh, in preparation for this.

“And in our town, they had bomb shelters that you could buy and put in your backyard. It was scary. And I don’t know about you, Mr. Limbaugh, but I was not afraid. I was not fainting in a closet from an anxiety attack. Were you?” Well, let me take time to answer. No. (sigh) I may be atypical here, but I have never had an active, ongoing fear of one of these calamities. I’ve had a full-fledged knowledge of it, full-fledged awareness of it, but I have never believed that the United States posed the threat. I have never believed that we were the bad guys.

I’ve never believed that we were gonna cause it. I have never… But even more than that, to me, I’ve always been, perhaps… You know, I’m the mayor of Realville, folks. If I have a curse, it is that I am immersed in reality and I don’t do much fantasizing at all. Well, a little, but, I mean, I don’t live outside of what’s real. I don’t create pretend cycles and try to live in them. I don’t try to create imaginary what-ifs and make them come true, except on vacation now and then. But, I mean, in terms of my daily existence, what “is” is what is to me, and I deal with it accordingly, and I always have.

I don’t ever remember being afraid of a nuclear attack. Yeah, I watched Dr. Strangelove and this stuff. I’m being as honest with you as I can. The point is… Well, back to the email. “I was always secure in my childhood, Mr. Limbaugh, in the knowledge that my parents and adults were gonna fix things and they were gonna protect us. I always felt that way — and, for the most part, I was right. But for that show to have been produced last night, Mr. Limbaugh — for HBO to have aired that show — means, I think, that kids today don’t have that natural trust of their parents or of adults anymore.”

You know, this is a good point. I never saw my parents scared to death. I saw them mad. I saw my grandparents mad at Khrushchev when he was pounding his shoe on the podium at the U.N. threatening to bury our grandchildren. I saw my dad livid at the communists and anybody who was sympathetic with ’em. But I didn’t see any fear, and it’s a good point. But the difference today — and this is why I think the person who sent the email has a very relevant point about kids not trusting parents and adults.

It’s understandable, if you realize that these Nimrods pushing this climate change are blaming the parents! As far as kids are concerned, their parents are who’s done it! Their parents are driving SUVs. Their parents have air-conditioning. Their parents don’t care about the polar bears! Their parents this; their parents that. And that point was made in this show last night. And look, I understand, and I very rarely treat a fictional show as reality, and I really kind of don’t like it when other people do.

But this is an exception because of where this was and who put this together, who wrote it, who acted it. I’m surprised the actresses did not object to this, ’cause this really blew up, blew to smithereens one of the primary sales mechanisms of climate change. To show that the way we’re doing it is scaring kids and turning them into anxiety-attack specials — and that their parents are part of the cause! You know, I could expect to see that on a conservative production of the subject matter, but not HBO.

This would be like CNN running a profile talking about how Donald Trump is the greatest thing we have going for national security. You just wouldn’t expect it. But this is a good point. Thinking back, I never… For my parents and our generation (there are exceptions, always), adults were looked at as protectors with confidence, and they were trusted. I mean, in a general sense. Every kid rebels and every kid’s got problems and every kid’s embarrassed about a parent now and then for one more thing or another.

But in the big scheme of things like this, it’s a good point, and this little episode last night made it clear that the parents are part of the problem. And not only that, don’t forget this: The proponents of this foolishness are blaming parents. I betcha I could devote a full day… If I did nothing but take calls from parents, certain kind of parents, I bet I could fill a week’s worth of shows, people calling here who’ve had their kids come home from school after having been told their parents are to blame for climate change.

Kids come home, “Mommy, why are you destroying the planet? Daddy, why do you have that big car? Why don’t you get rid of it? It’s destroying the planet!” That’s how you get commercials on TV during the Super Bowl with a polar bear following home some electric vehicle, so he can hug the owner when it gets to the garage. So it’s a good point about how young people now blame parents and thus have no trust in them. I’m just… I’m still floored by the fact that this episode portrayed it like this. I mean, I was rewinding 10 seconds here, watching this and that again, my were eyes bugging out, not really believing what I was seeing.