{"id":7539,"date":"2014-12-12T19:04:41","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T19:04:41","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2014-12-12T19:04:41","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T19:04:41","slug":"the_obama_malaise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2014\/12\/12\/the_obama_malaise\/","title":{"rendered":"The Obama Malaise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Listen<\/a><\/p>\n

RUSH: There\u2019s a whole Stack of Stuff here<\/a> about the new malaise in America. I said the Obama administration will be the second term of Jimmy Carter. Now you got the media basically writing that very fact, not calling it the second term, but making comparisons to public attitudes during Jimmy Carter and public attitudes now. <\/p>\n

The New York Times <\/a>has a fascinating story. “The Vanishing Male Worker: How America Fell Behind.” It\u2019s a story about men, primarily in the 25-to-54 demographic. <\/line>This story details the deep changes in our country, culture, society, which have made it easier to live without working, and that\u2019s not good. <\/line><\/p>\n

Sixteen percent of men 25 to 54 are not working. Now, one of the reasons that they\u2019re not working — and there are many reasons. There are economic reasons, Obama economic policy reasons, feminism is a reason, fewer men attending college because they\u2019ve been chickified and why go to a place you\u2019re gonna be portrayed as a rapist or the enemy all day? Who needs that? It\u2019s tough enough, without showing up someplace and just because you have male genitalia makes you a predator and a bad guy. Who needs that? So they\u2019re staying away in droves. And that is having an impact on jobs, status, self-esteem, you name it. <\/p>\n

But there\u2019s also less pressure to find jobs because more and more men in this demographic remain unmarried and so there is no necessity to provide for dependents. Kids, no wife, no family, just you, okay. Sit around, drink beer all day, watch TV, watch ESPN, fine. You\u2019re not affecting anybody else. You\u2019re not letting anybody else down. Just yourself. But it\u2019s less pressure, less performance pressure, so you don\u2019t need to go out and focus on yourself as much, especially if a benefit here feeds you and a benefit over here gives you a phone and a benefit over here enables to you watch sports on TV. You got a TV set, you\u2019re fine. <\/p>\n

From the story: “Many men, in particular, have decided that low-wage work will not improve their lives –” In other words, entry positions, start out, not gonna help me. “– in part because deep changes in American society have made it easier for them to live without working.”<\/p>\n

You know, people misunderstand this. When I make the point we got 92 million Americans not working but they\u2019re all eating, that\u2019s not a criticism of them. Many people hear it that way, I have been surprised to learn. See, to me that\u2019s something that there ought not be any confusion about at all. The degree to which that is misunderstood has always surprised me. Ninety-two, 93 million people not working, and they\u2019re all eating, is not good. But I\u2019m not calling them sloths. I\u2019m not calling them worthless. What I\u2019m saying is, if you\u2019ve got 92, 93 million Americans not working and they\u2019re all eating, there\u2019s no need for them to get a job, and that doesn\u2019t help anybody. It certainly doesn\u2019t help them. It\u2019s not good overall for the economy and every derivative involved. <\/p>\n

But the liberals might look at it and say it\u2019s the greatest compassionate statistic you can come up with. “Are you telling me that we have a country with 92 million people that aren\u2019t working and they\u2019re all eating? Wow, we are good people.” No, that\u2019s not what it says. It means we\u2019ve really gone off the rails, because somebody\u2019s paying for it and we\u2019re going into deep debt that we can never repay paying for it. It\u2019s not all of our responsibility to make sure that 92 million who\u2019ve chosen not to work, eat. It\u2019s their responsibility. So if you take away responsibility from people then you are also taking away any expectations of them, and you are, by definition, saying you don\u2019t think they\u2019re worth much. And that\u2019s not doing them any good, either. <\/p>\n

Do you raise your kids telling them they\u2019re worthless? Well, some of you might. I\u2019m not saying every parent\u2019s good. But most of you don\u2019t want them to believe they\u2019re worthless. You may even go overboard in telling them they\u2019re special. But you certainly don\u2019t want them feeling worthless. You know that\u2019s not good for them. You want them to have a sense of purpose. You want the world to be a better place because they are in it, because you gave birth, they\u2019re alive, you want the world to be a better place because they\u2019re in it. Well, they have to do some things for that to happen. <\/line><\/p>\n

Ninety-two, 93 million Americans sitting around not working, but all of them eating and all of them on the phone and all of them watching television, is not what the founders had in mind. It is not the way you get to a growing, productive, satisfied, achievement oriented society. And if you don\u2019t have that, you\u2019re gonna have the opposite. You\u2019re gonna have a crumbling malaise with people wandering aimlessly through life, literally throwing away the one life, the only one life we are all given. <\/p>\n

Let me ask you, do you want to spend your life not working but depending on whatever comes your way for a morsel here or a morsel there? That\u2019s not how we are raised and it\u2019s not the natural yearning of the human spirit, by the way. So to explain it, what do we need? Well, we need a political party which profits from this and which justifies it, tells the 93 million not working who are eating, that it\u2019s not their fault, that it\u2019s the Republicans\u2019 fault, the country\u2019s fault, country\u2019s flawed, country\u2019s fatally flawed, doesn\u2019t care about people, what have you. It\u2019s not good. None of it is. We conservatives want everybody to be the best they can be.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: This New York Times piece that I quoted from, “The Vanishing Male Worker: How America Fell Behind.” This is a series on the unemployed that started after the elections, not before. Oh, no. They would not dare run these stories before the election. No, no. Now they are after-the-election stories, and they are meant to accompany the Republican victory. How rotten the job situation is is meant to accompany Republicans coming to power in the House and Senate, and having nothing to do with Obama. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: I mentioned earlier that the Drive-By Media today was filled with stories that get close to referring to the Obama administration as Jimmy Carteresque. One of them runs in the Washington Post today. It\u2019s by Aaron Blake, and the headline: “The New American ‘Malaise.'”<\/a><\/p>\n

The new American malaise. And I do recall, I said early on, even before Obama was inaugurated, that the Obama administration was gonna be the second term of Jimmy Carter. The Jimmy Carter presidency was an absolute disaster for this country, economically, in terms of foreign policy, it was an acknowledged absolute disaster. Everybody agrees. And now we got the Drive-Bys coming along and referring to the new American malaise. <\/p>\n

The malaise, that word was invented by Jimmy Carter after Pat Caddell presented him with a poll. Pat Caddell was Jimmy Carter\u2019s pollster. Pat Caddell had taken a poll and he was very, very distressed. This was back in 1979, near the end of Jimmy Carter\u2019s presidency. Pat Caddell explained the state of the American public in a memo to Carter. What he said was that for the first time we actually got numbers in our poll where people no longer believe that the future of America was gonna be as good as it was now.<\/p>\n

That really shook me because it was so add odds with the American character. Caddell, in other words, was admitting that he personally was distressed by the poll result. That here we were in 1979, the third year of the Carter presidency, and people are so despondent that they have concluded America\u2019s best days were behind them. And the same thing\u2019s happening today. You get the same result in polling questions today. People today even in greater numbers. That\u2019s what this business of “the American dream is over” or the American dream doesn\u2019t even exist, that\u2019s what that\u2019s all about. <\/p>\n

Gave birth to the Tea Party in 2010. All of this spending is robbing future generations of their opportunity to succeed and to create their own wealth. Caddell said back in 1979 that Americans were suffering from a crisis of confidence that needed to be addressed by the president. <\/line><\/p>\n

So Caddell got this poll. He looks at it, he sees the American people are in a state of despondence. They\u2019re thinking America\u2019s best days are behind them. He takes the poll to Carter and he says this has to be addressed by the president. We have a crisis of confidence. That\u2019s when Carter delivered what came to be known as the malaise speech. He didn\u2019t actually use the word, but the way he described the country was such that that was the word that people began to use. <\/p>\n

So now where are we? Well, today we have a New York Times poll that shows only 64% of the American people believe in the American dream. That\u2019s the lowest that number has been since 1996. Not even two-thirds believe in the American dream. Another poll from the Pew Research Center shows that 49% of Americans said they expect next year to be better than this year. And that\u2019s the lowest that has been since the recession. Just 49% think next year will be better. <\/p>\n

So to recap all this, Americans have hit low points on their belief in our country\u2019s main economic principle, and that main economic principle is, of course, hard work pays off in the end. People are losing faith, and the numbers on it are as low as they have been, 1996 or 1979. And their general feelings about life and their faith in government are also way down, and that just about covers it. And the numbers parallel or maybe are even worse than they were during Jimmy Carter\u2019s term, hence this being Jimmy Carter\u2019s second term. <\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s an accompanying story also in the Washington Post, and the headline here: “Democrats are Learning to Loathe Themselves, Just Like Republicans.”<\/a> And in this story, there is a reference to a general malaise. Democrats have lower self-esteem than Republicans, 76% of Democrats like their party compared to 78% of Republicans who like their party. The Democrat brand, according, again, to polling data, as expressed in this story, Democrat brand is at a three-year low. Thirty-nine percent favorable. <\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the paragraph: “Instead, the Democrats\u2019 increasingly dim view of their own side seems to be more about a kind of general malaise.” And then here\u2019s another story — (interruption) I know, they get everything they want, they\u2019re never happy. That\u2019s the point. When the liberals, when the Democrats get what they want, they\u2019re never happy. You know, the basic reason for that is what they want doesn\u2019t work. That has to be a reason why there is so much rage and anger now. I mean, they\u2019ve had six years of wonder boy, six years of this messianic figure, six years of hope and change.<\/p>\n

This guy was gonna change everything about politics. He was gonna get rid of all the bad stuff. It\u2019s worse than ever. Liberals are confronted every day with the realization that what they believe doesn\u2019t work. Now, they don\u2019t admit that to themselves. They blame everybody else for that, but it still manifests itself in a state of malaise, unhappiness, disaffectedness. And it never will work. They never will be happy. There never will be utopia. There never will be income equality. There never will be total, unending fairness. There never will be total, unending equality, particularly of outcomes. There never will be any of the things that they pretty much define their happiness as requiring. It\u2019ll never happen. The things they want are humanly impossible. <\/p>\n

Another Washington Post story: “Work Hard, Get Rich? Maybe Not Anymore.”<\/a> Last time the polls questioned America like this was the recession in 1983 coming off of Jimmy Carter. This is a Chris Cillizza story. This is three stories in the Washington Post. Now, the timing of these stories, they all come after the election. That\u2019s very important. They are meant to be tied to the Republican victory, folks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: There\u2019s a whole Stack of Stuff here about the new malaise in America. I said the Obama administration will be the second term of Jimmy Carter. Now you got the media basically writing that very fact, not calling it the second term, but making comparisons to public attitudes during Jimmy Carter and public attitudes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Obama Malaise - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2014\/12\/12\/the_obama_malaise\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"The Obama Malaise - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: There\u2019s a whole Stack of Stuff here about the new malaise in America. 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