Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck is good at his job.

I would like to state for the record that I believe that Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and a host of other conservative talk show hosts are amazing at their jobs. Really really good. Their job, of course, is to convince the Republican base that voting Republican is in their best interest, and get them scared enough of any other outcome that they get out and vote in strength. Those guys are good at that. What they are bad at is facts and legitimate debate. They state opinions as facts, they employ logical fallacies, they misrepresent statistics, and sometimes they just use scare tactics and lies. These are master propagandists at the height of their powers. And there's no effective was to fight them. There's not.

The human brain has an interesting reaction to fear. Have you ever woken from a nightmare, realized that it was just a bad dream, and then stayed awake for hours? Of course you have. I, myself, have on several occasions woken from a dream where my kids were in some imagined peril, and been unable to sleep until I checked on them asleep in their beds. It's silly, of course. My dream has little to do with the kids and is probably based on Dad's own insecurities about keeping them safe in a big scary world, but that's the power of the fear response. That's why these talk show hosts do everything they can to scare the audience. Scary scary! Nazi! Socialist! Kenyan! (Note the subtle racist slant to that one.) Why can't he produce a birth certificate, what is he hiding? The insinuation of some evil conspiracy plays right into the minds of people who want to believe there's a reason to get rid of Obama, or who want to believe deep down in their souls that environmentalism is a conspiracy to inconvenience them and drive down the prices of their stock in landfill futures. It's all a conspiracy against big business! They want to wreck the economy! And facts don't work against people who buy into this garbage.

I have a relative who forwards me these scary, ridiculous emails regularly. Sometimes I go through, correct all the lies, and send them back. So begins the debate, and we have a ball. But really, I won't ever change his mind because he doesn't want it to be changed. He votes Republican because he likes guns, so he believes that gun control doesn't work. Or that registration for firearms just gives "them" a way to find you when the super volcano under Yellowstone finally blows and destroys all government control west of the Mississippi. Seriously. Fear response leads to an irrational need for a way to maintain control in this incredibly unlikely scenario. So he has guns. That's ok, he's responsible with them. But if his guns were registered, and then stolen and used in a crime in the next state, there might be some additional evidence at the disposal of investigators looking for a murderer. He never responds to that argument. It doesn't fit his world view, so it doesn't exist.

So tell your dittohead co-workers that Limbaugh lies if you want. Heck, prove it to them with some quick Internet research. I'll probably do some of that right here over the coming days and weeks. Explain to the guy with the Glenn Beck T-shirt that Obama can't be both a Socialist and a Nazi, because the Nazis hated the Socialists to the point of killing them all. He won't believe you, and might not understand your argument. But the poor person whom "Beck-fan" is regaling with tales of Glenn's goodness? That might be the person to catch before they get on board the crazy train. (If I just got Ozzy Osbourne stuck in your head you're probably about my age. Sorry for the song bomb.)

Thanks for reading.