RUSH: There’s 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 now.
The New York Times has a fascinating story. “The Vanishing Male Worker: How America Fell Behind.” It’s a story about men, primarily in the 25-to-54 demographic. 
This story details the deep changes in our country, culture, society, which have made it easier to live without working, and that’s not good.
Sixteen percent of men 25 to 54 are not working. Now, one of the reasons that they’re 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’ve been chickified and why go to a place you’re gonna be portrayed as a rapist or the enemy all day? Who needs that? It’s 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’re staying away in droves. And that is having an impact on jobs, status, self-esteem, you name it.
But there’s 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’re not affecting anybody else. You’re not letting anybody else down. Just yourself. But it’s less pressure, less performance pressure, so you don’t 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’re fine.
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.”
You know, people misunderstand this. When I make the point we got 92 million Americans not working but they’re all eating, that’s not a criticism of them. Many people hear it that way, I have been surprised to learn. See, to me that’s 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’re all eating, is not good. But I’m not calling them sloths. I’m not calling them worthless. What I’m saying is, if you’ve got 92, 93 million Americans not working and they’re all eating, there’s no need for them to get a job, and that doesn’t help anybody. It certainly doesn’t help them. It’s not good overall for the economy and every derivative involved.
But the liberals might look at it and say it’s the greatest compassionate statistic you can come up with. “Are you telling me that we have a country with 92 million people that aren’t working and they’re all eating? Wow, we are good people.” No, that’s not what it says. It means we’ve really gone off the rails, because somebody’s paying for it and we’re going into deep debt that we can never repay paying for it. It’s not all of our responsibility to make sure that 92 million who’ve chosen not to work, eat. It’s 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’t think they’re worth much. And that’s not doing them any good, either.
Do you raise your kids telling them they’re worthless? Well, some of you might. I’m not saying every parent’s good. But most of you don’t want them to believe they’re worthless. You may even go overboard in telling them they’re special. But you certainly don’t want them feeling worthless. You know that’s 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’re alive, you want the world to be a better place because they’re in it. Well, they have to do some things for that to happen.
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’t have that, you’re gonna have the opposite. You’re 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.
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’s not how we are raised and it’s 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’s not their fault, that it’s the Republicans’ fault, the country’s fault, country’s flawed, country’s fatally flawed, doesn’t care about people, what have you. It’s not good. None of it is. We conservatives want everybody to be the best they can be.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
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.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
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’s by Aaron Blake, and the headline: “The New American ‘Malaise.'”
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.
The malaise, that word was invented by Jimmy Carter after Pat Caddell presented him with a poll. Pat Caddell was Jimmy Carter’s pollster. Pat Caddell had taken a poll and he was very, very distressed. This was back in 1979, near the end of Jimmy Carter’s 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.
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’s best days were behind them. And the same thing’s happening today. You get the same result in polling questions today. People today even in greater numbers. That’s what this business of “the American dream is over” or the American dream doesn’t even exist, that’s what that’s all about.
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.
So Caddell got this poll. He looks at it, he sees the American people are in a state of despondence. They’re thinking America’s 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’s when Carter delivered what came to be known as the malaise speech. He didn’t actually use the word, but the way he described the country was such that that was the word that people began to use.
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’s 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’s the lowest that has been since the recession. Just 49% think next year will be better.
So to recap all this, Americans have hit low points on their belief in our country’s 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’s term, hence this being Jimmy Carter’s second term.
And then there’s an accompanying story also in the Washington Post, and the headline here: “Democrats are Learning to Loathe Themselves, Just Like Republicans.” 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.
And here’s the paragraph: “Instead, the Democrats’ increasingly dim view of their own side seems to be more about a kind of general malaise.” And then here’s another story — (interruption) I know, they get everything they want, they’re never happy. That’s the point. When the liberals, when the Democrats get what they want, they’re never happy. You know, the basic reason for that is what they want doesn’t work. That has to be a reason why there is so much rage and anger now. I mean, they’ve had six years of wonder boy, six years of this messianic figure, six years of hope and change.
This guy was gonna change everything about politics. He was gonna get rid of all the bad stuff. It’s worse than ever. Liberals are confronted every day with the realization that what they believe doesn’t work. Now, they don’t 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’ll never happen. The things they want are humanly impossible.
Another Washington Post story: “Work Hard, Get Rich? Maybe Not Anymore.” 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’s very important. They are meant to be tied to the Republican victory, folks.