RUSH: Something that I always try to do during periods of time like this where we are either enraged or varying degrees of despondent or fighting off waves of negativism, I always try to stop, take stock, and realize how overall fortunate I personally am and we as a nation are.
Negativism is easy, and pessimism is easy. We are as human beings naturally inclined toward it. Thinking positively is something that requires a concerted effort. You know, the old saw, we don’t need to go to the library to get books on how to fail ’cause we all know how. But we go to the library or Amazon to buy books on how to succeed or how to think positively because it’s not something that most people are naturally inclined to.
So I think it always serves you well to stop in the midst of whatever’s making you think all is lost or we’re nearing the point of no return to actually take stock of things. And what this requires, if you are to do it successfully, is abandoning consumption of media for a while.
I’m telling you, the biggest assault on the self-esteem — I use that term loosely, but the biggest assault on the overall attitude of the American people is media. It is a never-ending drumbeat of negativism, pessimism, shock, sickness, perversion, despondency, and you have to pull yourself out of it. You have to extract yourself from it now and then to avoid being permanently, or for long periods of time, affected by it.
I do this. Even I, at times, have to actively stop myself from falling into this tunnel of spiraling down because I think I’ve gotta go there because people expect me to comment on it, but as a human being you need to pull yourself out, so I do. And I do it in a number of different ways.
One way is just to get real personal with myself and remind myself how damn fortunate I have been and how nowhere else on the planet could the things either I’ve done or have happened to me been done or happened. And many such things would be true of you too.
In the process of doing this, I came across a website that I had not heard of called Alpha News. And it’s a woman, I think. And she is a Millennial who doesn’t buy into the traditional thinking of today’s Millennials. She’s not a socialist, and she doesn’t want to be.
And it’s really a good piece, if I’m getting this right. Alpha News maybe a whole bunch of people. She just may be one person there, but this particular post, Alpha News, “Thoughts From a Hipster Coffee Shop,” by Alyssa Ahlgren. And it starts with this: “We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we’ve become completely blind to it.
“I’m sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis.” Don’t know where this is. Didn’t bother to look it up. Not the point. “I’m sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of Democratic candidates calling for policies to ‘fix’ the so-called injustices of capitalism.
“I put my phone down and continue to look around. I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook’s, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we’ve become completely blind to it.
“Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose. These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don’t give them a second thought. We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average.”
Now, don’t take this the wrong way. I have cited these poverty stats going back to my second year on this program, and when I did, I was destroyed by the Drive-By Media who claimed that I was a typical conservative, out of touch, that didn’t understand poverty. My point is that this isn’t new. What’s great is this is a Millennial who is seeing it and getting it. These things do recycle. The truth does recycle from generation to generation.
“We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average.” And that’s exactly right. And Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation has done the bulk of the work on poverty in America and comparing it to government elsewhere, defining it, putting it in context.
That’s who I quoted. “Limbaugh, he just doesn’t care about the poor, lying about povertym homelessness and all this stuff,” because the left mandates misery. There has to be misery. Even if there isn’t misery you’ve got to think there is because you’re supposed to feel guilty when you’re not miserable. We’re supposed to be equally miserable. Happiness, that’s a target, not a goal.
She says, “Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful.
“Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, ‘An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity.’
“Never saw American prosperity. Let that sink in. When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I’ve ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Now, I’m not attributing Miss Ocasio-Cortez’s words to outright dishonesty. I do think she whole-heartedly believes the words she said to be true.
“Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided. My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let’s just say I didn’t have the popular opinion.
“Let me lay down some universal truths really quick. The United States of America has lifted more people out of abject poverty, spread more freedom and democracy, and has created more innovation in technology and medicine than any other nation in human history. Not only that but our citizenry continually breaks world records with charitable donations, the rags to riches story is not only possible in America but not uncommon, we have the strongest purchasing power on earth, and we encompass 25% of the world’s GDP. The list goes on.
“However, these universal truths don’t matter. We are told that income inequality is an existential crisis (even though this is not an indicator of prosperity). We are told that we are oppressed by capitalism (even though it’s brought about more freedom and wealth to the most people than any other system in world history), we are told that the only way we will acquire the benefits of true prosperity is through socialism and centralization of federal power (even though history has proven time and again this only brings tyranny and suffering).
“Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? We have people who are dying to get into our country. People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they’ve never seen prosperity, and as a result, elect politicians dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism. Why? The answer is this, my generation has ONLY seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn’t live in the great depression, or live through two world wars,” is my point.
“We didn’t see the rise and fall of socialism and communism. We don’t know what it’s like not to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don’t have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it’s spreading like a plague.
“With the current political climate giving rise to the misguided idea of a socialist utopia, will we see the light? Or will we have to lose it all to realize that what we have now is true prosperity? Destroying the free market will undo what millions of people have died to achieve.
“My generation is becoming the largest voting bloc in the country. We have an opportunity to continue to propel us forward with the gifts capitalism and democracy has given us. The other option is that we can fall into the trap of entitlement and relapse into restrictive socialist destitution. The choice doesn’t seem too hard, does it?”
I think this applies to my generation too. The Baby Boomers. We were born to prosperity. We had to invent our traumas to make us think that there was stress in our lives. Oh, the stress was real, we invented it, but it was real, it had the same effect as real stress does, but we didn’t live through the Great Depression, either, and we didn’t live through two world wars and we didn’t live without air-conditioning, and we didn’t live without electricity.
We were the ones that benefited from the smartphone and all this technological gadgetry. Anyway, she’s right, and it’s always worth stopping and taking stock now and then, particularly in the midst of one of the biggest political scams and hoaxes in our lives, manufactured and perpetuated by some of the biggest, most dangerous lies our government has ever told us.