Godstud wrote:Rush Limbaugh is an asshole. What he says is absolute drivel. Limbaugh quoting Fox News, as a news source...
We're all somebody's asshole. I don't think what Limbaugh says is absolute drivel. Some of it is: I mean some of what he is saying is to stoke up the flames, etc. That's his shtick. Robin Williams was part of the community when I lived in the city, and he was well loved. He was a lovely person. I'll bet you anything Rush had a soft spot for Robin Williams too. So how Limbaugh's processing his grief is to lash out at the left.
I don't think Limbaugh is 100% on target there, but I think he has a point. Something changed in leftist philosophy, demeanor, etc. I can't put my finger on it, but they're just not the same people they used to be. They're dystopian. They used to be utopian.
Here's what I mean: in the 1980s, a conservative could disagree adamantly with Pat Moynihan. Moynihan would listen, reflect, provide a counter argument, and that would go on and on. Then, you'd see the conservative having dinner with Moynihan and find out that they were actually good friends. Same same with Sam Nunn, Scoop Jackson, Bill Bradley, Tom Foley, etc. That's all gone now. If people don't agree with you, they try to destroy you personally.
I think the only big name Democrat that's really personable today is Bill Clinton, but he had a big hand in what some call "the politics of personal destruction." James Carville is that way. I don't agree with a majority of Bill Clinton's views, but he's a very smart and affable guy. By contrast, Harry Reid is not. He's an asshole--a really mean asshole. If you agreed 100% with his views, you still probably wouldn't want to hang out with the guy. That angriness is more prevalent today, and it's not just in Washington. It's infused in the media, and it's become sort of cultural. It was a bit of a relief when George W. Bush was no longer president, because all the anti-Bush propaganda was tiresome. It will be a relief when Obama is no longer president too, as it's a similar deal.
I remember in the 1980s, you could watch CNN Crossfire and Tom Braden and Pat Buchannan would go at it. I remember going to the World Affairs Forum in San Francisco and listening to George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher and Mikhael Gorbachev go at it with Bernard Shaw moderating. CNN isn't that way anymore. It's strictly left wing and practically intolerable unless you agree with that world view.
Heisenberg wrote:Some silliness about how conservatism makes you happy. When I suggested that, perhaps he'd got the cause and the result mixed up (i.e happier people are more likely to support the status quo) he said that this proved his point and started ranting about liberals.
That's not quite it either. I think it's more like this notion of "permanent revolution" where people are obsessed with finding some wrong to fix, even if they have to make it up--like the Washington Redskins. It just makes people weary. Nothing is ever good enough. That's the cultural milieu of modern leftism, and it is depressing.
Heisenberg wrote:Oh, Christ. Spare us the drug store psychology.
Well there's a lot of truth to the financial issues. It hits a lot of people hard, particularly celebrities. As much as I think things like "gay marriage" are complete bullshit, I'm not one to try to "preserve" civil marriage because to me it is primarily a wealth redistribution system now. So you take someone like George Lucas. He's brilliant, right? He gets married, he gets divorced like anybody else. He can put his family up in a nice $500k house with good schools, etc. Yet, that's not how it works. His ex-wife gets fuck tons of money he earned and gets to live in a palace he pays for. Is that really fair? Now someone like George Lucas isn't an actor or a musician. For actors and musicians, when people connect with them emotionally, it's rather easy to get into a relationship. If you are both rich and famous, beautiful women are more than happy to fuck you and tell you how great you are. It's pretty intoxicating. Sooner or later though, they figure out that you're just like everyone else, your shit stinks too, etc. And with a lot of celebrities, you get a few really big problems: first, a lot of what drives them is mania, which I mean in a clinical sense. It's their genius, but it has a dark side. Dopamine binds to tryptophan hydroxylase and shuts off the metabolic path for serotonin. So they get depressed.
You and I can get into a funk and work out of it. A celebrity has a very different challenge. Bipolar is very difficult by itself. A well off celebrity has so much to be grateful for in a material sense, but they can't enjoy it when depressed; and, many people's relationships to celebrity are what they would do if there were no financial constraints. So people expect you to be happy, a big spender, magnanimous all the time, etc. When you're depressed, they don't understand why. Then, you get people who aren't your friend, but they want to glom onto you because you are a celebrity. You got people who will take advantage of you financially, etc. The love of your life turns out to betray you and leave with the buff little pool boy in a beautiful house you pay for. It's rough.
A lot of celebrities start believing all the bullshit about themselves and they become assholes, or ridiculously narcissistic--like Sean Penn going down to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Robin Williams wasn't like that. He was a butterfly broken on a wheel ironically by the people who loved him the most.
Heisenberg wrote:Rush Limbaugh is a pig-ignorant wanker, and it saddens me deeply that anyone takes him seriously.
Like Robin Williams, Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. He's a raconteur, and often a bit of a comedian. Think of him as a court jester.
Dagoth Ur wrote:Also if he's so happy why is he an opiate addict?
Opiate addiction isn't as related to the manic-depression cycle. It has more to do with pain-pleasure. Rush likes his food and doesn't like exercise, so he's tends to get overweight and that's hard on the back. To address the back pain, he got onto Oxycontin, which is highly addictive. So when you take an opioid, the pain goes away. If the opioid also triggers a dopamine rush, it becomes psychologically addictive, and eventually physically addictive.
ThereBeDragons wrote:What he says is actually pretty normal except for the parts where he mentions the left, which are just surreal.
I think it's just the weariness of our media culture. It's relentlessly negative, fear inducing, etc. and it's largely populated by people on the political left.
I think another factor for actors is when they play dark roles. I think method acting kills in some situations. Like I think
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is ultimately what killed Philip Seymour Hoffman. If you get into a role playing a heroin addict and you want to think and act like a heroin addict, you almost commit suicide by accepting the role.
I've seen other things like that.
Michael Hedges was a brilliant guitarist/musician. He was also an absolutely lovely guy. I believe his wife left him for his manager. Those liberal artistic types are really gentle souls, and being used/taken advantage of really breaks them. It's a sad thing.
"We have put together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics."
-- Joe Biden
Dave, Potemkin, Ombrageux: the three pillars of Western civilization. - Donald
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