No Such Thing as Peak Trump: Rush and the Medal of Freedom

Last night, Trump gave the Medal of Freedom -- the highest civilian honor available -- to Rush Limbaugh.

Previous winners include Georgia O'Keefe, T.S. Eliot, Elie Wiesel, Aaron Copeland, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

What has Rush done to deserve such an honor?

• Invented the term feminazis
• said women who use birth control are sluts
• Promoted creationism
• said that evolution can't be factual, since apes in zoos don't "evolve" into human beings
• denied climate change, because "God wouldn't do that"
• promoted the anti-vaxxer position and blamed immigrants for recent measles outbreaks
• mocked Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease
• mocked a Chinese president in a racist segment
• told a black caller to "get the bone out of her nose" 
• said that "all newspaper composite" crime photos look like Jesse Jackson
• claims that Democrats deliberately keep Latinx and black voters poor and ignorant in order to create their base
• calls AIDS the "only federally protected virus"
• denies that AIDS has ever spread to the heterosexual community -- claims it's "just" a gay disease
• claims that, in sexual relationships, guys know that "no means yes" in most cases
• Likewise, thinks consent is nonsense -- guys don't need and shouldn't seek consent before sex with women 
• Defended the Christian terrorist group, the Lord's Resistance Army
• Spent years railing against those addicted to drugs, calling for harsher prison sentence, while himself abusing drugs pretty much non-stop

Said this about Sandra Fluke (among other, even worse things):

What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps.

He also frequently makes the claim that there are more trees in America now than there were when the Europeans first came to Plymouth. This was how I first became aware of his existence. My previously rational brother, who had started listening to Rush, came to my room to explain this to me. As someone who was even then being educated in how to judge and evaluate an argument, I looked at him like he had two heads. (No, there are not more trees now than there were then. See here for more.)

Rush was an early proponent of this sort of thing -- telling huge and obvious lies, which then people who should have known better would at least pretend to believe. Many people actually did believe his lies.

His success, because it turned out there was a market for people who preferred lies that made them feel better over facts and truth, led directly to Fox News and such vile hate-mongers as Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones. And that, as we know, led directly to Donald Trump being elected president.

In other words, Rush has done far more than most people to destroy this country.

But of course Trump gave him the Medal of Freedom.

We have always been at War with Eastasia, after all.

ETA:

Rush Limbaugh broadcast an actual 21st century minstrel koon show back in 2007, 'Barack da Magic Negro.' Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award a US Pres can bestow. Black folks shipped in from all corners to stand by as Trump honored this. #SOTU was a racist spooj dream. pic.twitter.com/ovpcMUZPDi

— Jeffrey Wright (@jfreewright) February 5, 2020