RUSH: This is 18-year-old Rosser in Atlanta. Great to have you. How you doing, sir?
CALLER: Thank you, sir. It’s a pleasure to speak to you again. I’ve been on once before.
RUSH: Oh, great to have you back, then.
CALLER: Yes. Well, as you mentioned, I’m 18, and I wanted to make a quick comment and I also had a very small question for you, but starting with my comment. For my entire life, and I’m sure longer than that, the left has totally insisted on identity politics. You know, politicizing skin color, sexuality, religion, whatever, the weather, whatever you want.
And, after a certain amount of time of that, I just really don’t think it should come as any surprise to anyone that the groups regarded as the enemy, so to speak, you know, white guys, want their own pride movement, if you will. And that’s just the result of victimhood based self-segregation. And, personally, I have, you know, no tolerance for identity politics or being a victim or whatever. But I do think that, if there’s any remaining legitimate white supremacist sentiment left in America, it has to be the left sustaining it and nourishing it. So I just want your thoughts on that and my question if you have time.
RUSH: Well, let me ask you to clarify. When you say “legitimate white supremacist sentiment,” what exactly do you mean?
CALLER: I mean people who, through time and being, you know, beaten up on, they say, “Okay. Well, you know, if I’m the bad guy, then maybe white people are better.” I’ve never found that appealing in any way, but I can understand someone who’s been —
RUSH: Well, you know, all this is rooted — you know, we have gay pride, we have black pride, we have trans pride. We have all kinds of pride, but you’re not allowed white pride, right?
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: We have women studies, black studies, can’t have white studies. You know why this is?
CALLER: Well, because the white people are the people creating these victim groups.
RUSH: Yes. And they did so because they founded the country —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — and they were the original sinners —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — the original discriminators, the original unfair bigots, racists, and all this stuff. And since they’ve never had to pay a price for it —
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: — they’re not allowed pride or white studies, because it has been proclaimed evil by virtue of the fact they have been the majority, and the majority in left-wing Democrat politics is always guilty and always evil.
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RUSH: Now back to Rosser in Atlanta.
CALLER: Yes?
RUSH: I didn’t mean to pigeonhole you there.
CALLER: No problem.
RUSH: But when you said “legitimate white supremacy,” I wanted to find out exactly what you meant. Your question, I think, incorporates the answer. You asked me if I think that the white supremacy that’s out there, if literally you can trace it to the left.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: I do! I do. I said so in the first hour. I think here you have these guys that haven’t done anything to anybody and they’re being blamed for victimizing all these people, everybody. And look at how many victim groups there are now.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: And all of it is to blame at the hands of certain “white males.” Which, yeah, I can totally understand that ticking them off. Absolutely.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: It doesn’t justify white supremacy. It doesn’t justify any of that. But I just abhor all of this. I abhor identity politics because it’s separates us.
CALLER: I do as well.
RUSH: There’s no unity. There’s no togetherness. It’s hopeless, in fact, with identity politics. It’s literally hopeless, which I think illustrates the total fraud that is the left-wing agenda, as they state it.
CALLER: Well, one thing that you had mentioned that I think correlates to this is if you think of victimhood as literally a currency that has social value, right? The more victim groups that get created, the more that currency becomes inflated, essentially. I think you see it all the time. That’s kind of what I talked to you about last time. I think it was May of 2016. But the quick question I had, well, first, like, I wanted to ask, you know, what you would recommend to young people do to avoid getting kind of caught up in this thing? And the second would be basically I have an iPhone 5 that’s falling apart, and I would kill to have a phone signed by you. That would be so amazingly incredible.
RUSH: (reading transcript) “New thing… Falling apart… Signed by me…” Hang on, I’m not getting you. Oh, you’re asking for a new phone, is that right?
CALLER: I would kill for a phone signed by you, Rush.
RUSH: Well, I don’t require anybody do that.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: Okay, look, first things first. What I would advise young people —
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: You have to understand, now, I am 66, and I’m flattered you’re asking. I fully understand that somebody 18 to 25 is gonna look at what I think as outmoded, outdated, and tainted by an experience that they will not share — meaning my life and its experiences. But I think, my answer to your question here is universal for everybody. How many of you…? Let me just ask a question open to everybody. How many of you take yourselves seriously? I don’t mean this in any way to relate to ego, that you’re a serious person or a jokester or whatever. But how many of you are self-confident?
How many of you think that your life has value to you and others, that you’re not just a placeholder? I think this is crucial. I’ve known so many people who have — we’re talking identity — identity problems, self-worth problems, who do not take themselves seriously because they don’t believe they’re ever gonna amount to anything. And they cover for this by joking around and appearing to be unconcerned and lackadaisical and so forth — good personality, you know, fun guy.
It’s a serious thing to take your life seriously because we all only get one, and there isn’t a do-over. Now, life itself features many do-overs after you fail, you screw up, you hopefully learn from it the next day, the next year and so forth. But your life in general, I think people who do not take themselves seriously — and you might find this contradictory — become highly susceptible to the victim entreaties. It’s so easy to be a victim. The first thing about being a victim is, it’s never your fault. Whatever is going wrong in your life, it isn’t your fault.
That is so liberating in terms of liking yourself. You know, failure and having problems doesn’t breed self-love, and everybody needs self-love. You have to love yourself to one degree or another. Nobody else will if you don’t. It doesn’t mean you have an off-putting personality or you’re arrogant or any of that. It just means that you take yourself seriously. It doesn’t mean you don’t clown around now and then, doesn’t mean you don’t joke around.
But it means that you have an awareness of the value of your life because of its individuality, because there isn’t another you no matter what you think. Every soul is unique and different. Even the souls of identical twins are different things. We’re all unique, and, as such, we all have individual promise and opportunity — and the moment that we decide to abandon that in exchange for victim status, we are essentially announcing that our lives are over and we’re turning them over to others who are committed or promised us to make things better, and they never do. Because they…
Be it the Democrat Party, be it a professor, they will never care as much about you as you care about yourself or should. Since nobody will ever care for you or about you as much as you will, you should always invest in yourself first. Not a political party. Not a political movement. But invest in yourself. In the process of doing this, you can’t possibly become a victim, if you do all of this. It’s something that people realize at different phases of their lives. I’m not saying at 18 you should have already come to the same conclusions here, Rosser, that I have.
You haven’t lived long enough to. You haven’t a body of experience yet. You sound like you’re ahead of the game. Some people never get to the point that I’m talking about here ’til they’re 50. Some people never get there at all. Some people have so little self-esteem that they just can’t think of themselves as special in the unique sense. They just can’t; so they don’t take themselves seriously, so they don’t think anybody else ever will. It’s also easy to do that. Then you have lesser expectations to meet and so forth.
Victimhood, victimology, especially when it’s manufactured, is just a killer, if you ask me. It just silences the very essence of people, and it converts them into angry. It codifies the anger, it promotes the anger, it fuels the anger. It doesn’t do anything good for anybody, and it isn’t necessary. The idea that there are so many victims in this country? It has to be manufactured. It just has to be. People would not naturally gravitate to it. People tend to be naturally pessimistic, but to convert the pessimism into a constant status of victimhood?
That’s something that has to be promoted and promulgated, and it happens in a college classrooms. This guy Lilla writes about it in, I think, a great way, if I have time to share a couple more paragraphs. He says, “Liberal political education, such as it is, now takes place on campuses that are far removed, socially and geographically, from the rest of the country — and particularly from the sorts of people who once were the foundation of the Democratic Party.” Exactly true. Now, you know, since the new iPhones are coming out in about a month, Rosser, I’m going to make an exception here.
Since you plaintively begged (while trying to suck up), I’m gonna fall prey to it. Since the new phones are coming out anyway and I’ve got a stock of 7. You tell Snerdley what you want, a 7 or a 7 Plus. (interruption) Don’t frown at me in there. I’m following my instincts on this. (interruption) I know. (interruption) That’s right. That’s right. You tell other callers, “Please don’t bring it up. This is a one-time, one-off thing.” I realize I’m setting a precedent. But I’m in charge of the precedent, so I can cancel it any time I want. But if this phone will keep this guy off the protest march and out of victimhood, then it’ll be worth it.