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RUSH: Do you remember after George W. Bush was reelected in 2004 — some of you may not remember this — but we found out down in Boca and in Ft. Lauderdale and areas south that troubled leftists were going for counseling. They couldn’t deal with the fact that Bush had won and a number of therapists set up specific counseling sessions for Democrats who were near suicidal over the fact that Bush won. If it was an offshoot of what had happened after the Florida recount in 2000.

Well, the Washington Post has a story: “Trump Anxiety? Just ask the shrinks and massage therapists,” by Paul Schwartzman. “To the catalogue of anxieties her patients explore during therapy — marriage, children, and careers — psychologist Alison Howard is now listening to a new source of stress: the political rise of Donald Trump. In recent days, at least two patients have invoked the Republican front-runner, including one who talked at length about being disturbed that Trump can be so divisive and popular at the same time, said Howard.”


So we’ve got two people who’ve gone to see a shrink in their inability to deal with Trump, and this is a huge story in the Washington Post. And make no mistake about something. In Washington, the Washington Post is the Bible, not the New York Times. The Washington Post is what they all read. The Washington Post is what they all react to. The Washington Post is where they want praise. The Washington Post is where they don’t want to be ripped or criticized, for people who live and work in Washington.

So back to this story. Two patients have invoked Trump, “including one who talked at length about being disturbed that Trump can be so divisive and popular at the same time, said Howard, who practices in the District. What had happened to Trump during his childhood, the patient wanted to know, to make him such a ‘bad person?’ ‘He has stirred people up,’ Howard said. ‘We’ve been told our whole lives not to say bad things about people, to not be bullies, to not ostracize people based on their skin color. We have these social mores and he breaks all of them and he’s successful. And people are wondering how he gets away with it.’

“A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 69 percent of Americans said the idea of ‘President Trump’ made them anxious. For some, Trump’s diatribes against undocumented immigrants, Mexicans and Muslims evoke unpleasant flashbacks of dictators. For others, his raw-toned insults conjure memories of high school bullies.”

Are you kidding me? Two people have shown up with these complaints to a shrink, and somehow the shrink lets the Washington Post know, and there is a big story about this? You want me to explain this? Well, no. I will explain to them what they’re asking their shrink. Here you have a bunch of people who have enforced touchy-feely political correctness on everybody, and what have they emphasized? No competition. To these people, competition is the root of all bad behavior. Competition is the root of unfairness and inequality because one person wins and everybody else loses, or one team wins and every other team loses. It is the epitome of unfairness, competition.

And then you add to it saying bad things about your opponent and so forth, and I’m here to tell, this is another thing that these people in Washington and New York or wherever you find pockets of people who are essentially liberal, I believe what Trump’s candidacy is illustrating in this regard is that there is a sizable number of people in this country who are fed up with this. They are fed up with touchy-feely, no competition, no winners, no losers, forced equality, engineered outcomes. It stands in the way of the very definition of the country. It blows up the whole concept of rugged individualism. It brings in, ushers in the idea that some central authority made up of touchy-feely wimps is gonna determine who wins and loses under the precept that nobody’s gonna lose, when the fact everybody loses and they win, people who set the rules.

So here comes Trump, and Trump is no more an average guy. Trump’s speaking in ways that men today still speak, when they’re not hounded by the modern eclipse of feminism and its supporters. Men speak this way to each other. They crack jokes this way to each other. It does not make them bad people. And I think there’s a yearning for it among a whole segment of the population, women, men, they want this kind of gruff, fearless, tell-it-like-it-is persona. They don’t think it’s destructive. They don’t think it says anything bad about the country. They don’t think it says anything bad about the people who speak it.


The proof of this is that debate last night. That debate last night was the second debate in a row where we actually had the subject of penis length discussed in a presidential debate, related to the size of a candidate’s hands. And it was discussed as something to be proud of. Now you might think that’s aboveboard, you might think that’s going a bit too far, and I’m hearing all kinds of people, “I couldn’t have my children listen to this.”

And it may be over the top, but the reason it’s happening is because there have been so many invisible shackles put on people who are walking around on eggshells in this country for the last 30 years, afraid to be themselves, afraid to say what they really think, be who they really are, for fear they’re gonna get fired, for fear that somebody’s gonna lodge a complaint against ’em and be called before some tribunal to explain themselves, when there’s nothing wrong with them.

So here comes Trump. And he’s basically doing a (raspberry) to everybody, and he’s just discombobulating them and they’re wringing their hands, and they don’t know how to deal with it, and he’s even be applauded because of that. But again, the reason that he gets away with it is substantive. Whether his supporters are right or wrong, his supporters believe that he is going to fix what they think is wrong, and they don’t care what kind of personality — in fact, the more in your face and the more abrasive he is to people who tell him he can’t get it done, the prouder of him they are.

They don’t have the freedom or the ability to behave this way in their lives because somebody’s gonna come down on ’em, somebody’s gonna fire them, somebody’s gonna call them before some tribunal at the company, give ’em a bad recommendation or something. (interruption) No, I’m just trying to explain how it is happening, and why. I’m not endorsing any of it, folks. I’m sitting here, everybody’s — here, grab sound bite number eight. Bernie Goldberg on the Fox News Channel. He was on with O’Reilly last night. They played a video of Trump saying he doesn’t have small hands and what that means in relationship to penis size. Here’s what Bernie Goldberg said.


GOLDBERG: Imagine if a family is watching this debate with their 12-year-old daughter and she said, “What did he mean by that about size and there’s no –” Is there anything, anything that would embarrass his supporters, mainly his supporters on conservative television and radio who have fallen madly in love with Donald Trump and who slobber over him in just the same way as liberals in the media slobbered over Barack Obama?

RUSH: Apparently not. Now, we won’t know. Folks, this debate last night, we won’t know until the next set of primaries. We’re gonna learn a lot in the next set because four of the primaries on Saturday are closed, and I want to remind you again, that means that no crossovers are permitted. The only people that could vote in these upcoming four this weekend are Republicans, and there have been a couple of those so far. Trump’s lost both of those. Oklahoma was a closed primary, Republicans only, and Cruz won that.

But we won’t know. They’re worried about some of this stuff. It’s a legitimate question that Goldberg has. (interruption) Well, wait, wait, wait, wait. Snerdley is shouting, “But the moderator brought it up!” Yeah, I know the moderator brought it up, but what Goldberg thinks should happen is the candidates ought to put their hands up and say, “Stop,” control this thing, don’t let the moderators get away with taking this debate to the sewer, if that’s where you think it went. Don’t let the moderators get away with dumbing it down. Don’t let the moderators get away — stand up for and deny this kind of thing, and he’s says that they don’t, that they go ahead and talk about it.

I really think, folks, that what we’re witnessing here is a pent-up — it may be over the top — I think it’s a pent-up reaction to the censorship that has gone on in this country for 30 years, that it’s rooted in political correctness. I’m not saying that from the standpoint that a Trump attribute is that he blows it to smithereens. He does, but I’m not saying this as a means of supporting Trump. I think this is bigger than Trump in this sense, that this stuff is happening in a presidential debate and not being condemned. I think there are people that you can’t understand, well, these people can’t, who have been fed up for the longest time since the modern era of feminism hit.

People will never understand this unless somebody takes time to explain it to ’em. The modern era of feminism was one of the most transformative for the worst eruptions in our society that has happened in my lifetime. It totally, totally attempted to obliterate human nature. It took a bunch of central authoritarians using the power of government to enforce speech codes, behavioral codes that were in direct violation of human nature.

What was standard, ordinary just good back and forth between men and women ended up becoming criminalized. Fathers became known as “predators.” They were not allowed even to see their children in many cases. They were never granted custody. All kinds of horrible, rotten things happened, with just the advent of the modern era of feminism. And with all of these things like feminism and the other things that came along with it, political correctness was attached — and that was censorship.

People had to shut up. They had to stop thinking the way they think. They certainly couldn’t speak the way they could before, and all this is like a champagne cork popping after years and years and years of being shaken up with all kinds of pressure building and no outlet for it. There is more anger and frustration subdued, contained over what the left has done to this country, to this culture, to our society, and it’s just blowing.

And the reason it’s such a surprise to everybody is that the architects of this political correctness all think that, A, it’s wonderful and great — all this multiculturalism, all this attack on what has been known as traditional Americanism — and the people who believe this has been a good thing think that they’ve persuaded everybody to agree with them, that the way America used to be was rotten and mean-spirited and all these other things. And the people who have been silenced actually have been forced into shutting up and behaving in restrained ways, have never thought it was good.


They have never thought that all these things the left has imposed on people like no scores in softball games or football games in high school are good. And this is one example. But there are countless zillions of others. There has never been unanimous support for this. The people who oppose it have been bullied, threatened, blackmailed into shutting up and accepting it. And all it’s taken is one guy running for president to blow it to smithereens, and it’s providing an outlets for a lot of people, and the Republican establish scared to death that all this…

“Well, there’s racism out there. Look at all this bigotry!” It’s nothing of the sort, and because that’s been attached to it, those allegations have made people mad. People who are not racist have been called racist. People who are not bigots have been called bigots. People who are not homophobes have been called homophobes. People who have deeply held religious beliefs have been attacked as the problem in this country when they were not.

They are the solution to the cultural rot taking place. There’s a whole bunch of people from all these different groups that are finally erupting here, for whatever reason. It may not even be Trump. It was gonna blow at some point. It was gonna blow at some point. Seven years of Obama could well be enough to make it blow.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: One more thing about this. The people who are wringing their hands over all over this depravity and cultural rot in these debates, they don’t say a thing about it when it happens on a television show. I mean, I listen to the people on the radio routinely use the words I won’t use, the P-word talk about being anger and the A-word that describes the rear — the derriere. These are common words now, and nobody condemns it when you have this kind of vulgarity expressed on television shows or movies or music.


It’s applauded!

It’s said to be cultural expansion, art. It’s exploration of our deeper selves and so forth. When it happens here in a Republican debate, “Oh, no, we can’t have that! This is horrible.” Well, why is it horrible here and not there? The very people that promote it and defend it are the ones wringing their hands and act like, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! What’s happening to our country? What’s happening to our politics?”

You don’t think people are fed up with having to go to sensitivity training seminars at work, sensitivity training for race, sensitivity training for sex, sensitivity training for sexual harassment? You don’t think people are boiling over this? And all of it’s done because the employers need to protect themselves against lawsuits that come down the pike, thanks to the plaintiff’s bar which is owned entirely by the Democrat Party.

There are reasons all this stuff is happening.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I have to make one other observation ’cause I just got an e-mail bouncing off the things I said in the last two segments. And the e-mail: “Rush, do you really think Trump knows he’s doing all this? Is this what his game plan is?” I said, “No, no, no.” It’s a good question. Trump’s not aware he’s doing any of this. Trump’s not doing this for any of the reasons that I just cited here to explain what’s happening.


Let me share this, maybe to help you understand. Camille Paglia at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia is one of the greatest social critics of our era, and I will never forget all of the ways the articles, TV appearances and so forth that she has produced in analyzing Madonna. She analyzed Madonna in depth, in deep ways that would never occur to me, just a consumer of pop music back in the eighties, nineties, and so forth.

And after I got to know her, I made a point of asking her, “Do you think Madonna’s aware of all of this that you’re assigning to her?”

“Oh, no, no, no. Madonna is just performing.”

No artist is really, really aware. Many of the artists who will tell you they are, are really not telling you the truth. They’re just out doing their craft. That’s what makes them great artists. They’re not studying to try to do anything. It’s just the nature of their existence has that kind of power to reshape things. Madonna just wanted to be a success singing and dancing. She wasn’t out to change this or change that. She just wanted to forge her way, and in the process, in Camille Paglia’s view, massively important, artistic things happened.

She said that’s why it’s important for critics to analyze this, critics that are not performers who stand aside and observe it and have the sensibilities to understand what it all means to people who are interested in that. Well, by the same token, every bit of analysis I’ve offered you in the last 20 minutes to explain the shaking champagne bottle and this explosion of people, anti-political correctness, fed up with having to go to sensitivity training seminars and the modern era of feminism, all that. No, Trump is not aware he’s doing any of that. He’s just running for president.

I’m not assigning any motive to Trump. He’s just being who he is. But who he is at this point in time, at this particular confluence of events, you throw a presidential campaign in the middle of it which of course is gonna add additional attention and weight to it, but, no, don’t misunderstand. I’m just observing the scene and commenting on it and trying to explain it. People are sending me e-mails: “Why are we talking about things like this in the presidential debate. I can’t believe it.” I’m trying to answer it.

But Trump didn’t get into this to eventually be able to blow up political correctness. He’s got his own motivations for wanting to do this. He may be now as becomes aware of how he is reacted to and how his campaign is attracting supporters, but I don’t think Trump had any grand scheme here, other than to win, to become president. And who knows what his original purpose. Maybe it wasn’t that when he started and maybe it didn’t take long, he figured out he can. I have no idea.

But I don’t believe that every bit of this intricate analysis that I have given you is the result of a brilliantly conceived and flawlessly executed strategy. It’s just a guy being who he is that has come out of nowhere, even though everybody knows who he is. Who he is in the context of a presidential campaign has unleashed all kinds of things that have been pent up out there, I contend, for decades. And in many ways it’s all natural.

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