Beware Groupthink!

 

By Rush Limbaugh

 

One of Rush’s great strengths was his natural aversion to conventional wisdom. His impatience with the typical take on things informed his analysis on every issue. It was his starting point: whatever the standard, elite-approved opinion was on a news event or an idea, he rejected instantly in favor of his own honest intellectual scrutiny and evaluation. Originality takes far more work, and infinitely more courage, than parroting the popular consensus — but to Rush, that was the attraction. And so should it be for us.

 

I reject most conventional wisdom.

But this is what you have to know: there is paralyzing fear within the drive-by media universe. And let’s call that universe out. It’s no mystery: The New York Times at the top of the heap, then The Washington Post; throw in usa Today and The Los Angeles Times, maybe some of the other big papers; then comes cnn, along with abc, cbs, nbc, pbs, plus msnbc and all the little crumb-crunchers following around trying to pick up the refuse.

They are terrified of each other. They are scared to death to do anything differently than what they think the leaders of this pack are doing. So they are petrified of The New York Times and The Washington Post. They do not want to incur the wrath of others in the drive-by media. They are afraid to do anything to hurt Biden for fear of being ripped to shreds and ostracized. Folks, they are panic-stricken they’ll be scratched off the invite lists!

This is not an exaggeration. It is Groupthink 101. And the elite status that is conveyed to members of the drive-by media is contingent on them following the lead. There cannot be any independence. There cannot be any risk-taking. There cannot be any curiosity outside of the way the group is functioning. There must be total fealty to groupthink, conventional wisdom, what have you. They’re locked in. They’re especially locked into an anti-Trump stance for as long as Trump is alive.

Trump’s bad; Biden’s good. Biden must succeed; Trump must be ruined. No exceptions. Any story that might harm Biden is called a “distraction,” not news. It’s “Russian disinformation.” Any story that might harm Trump, no matter how ridiculous, is trumpeted from the rooftops.

Way too many journalists have been living in terror of being blamed for reporting stories that might reflect well on Donald Trump. So they go way out of bounds, way overboard, to be anti-Trump. To the point of trying to erase him. That’s where we are, and that’s why.

 

 

And it’s essential to understand: conventional wisdom is almost always wrong. What’s been happening at Google is an example, similar to what’s happening on college campi everywhere. The demand for “diversity” and so-called tolerance is actually leading to the destruction of free speech. James Damore, the engineer who wrote a “manifesto” and got fired from Google, made it very plain how things operated there, and he essentially said the same thing.

Damore explained he was not, as accused, “attacking” diversity. “I’m just attacking the fact that we can’t honestly discuss any of these issues, and that that is actually hurting the problem.”

You see, they can’t discuss. They can’t be open about what they think. They have to follow the Google groupthink, or they’ll be canned. They’re not allowed to dissent. Yet these are the people claiming to be the greatest defenders of tolerance. These are the people claiming to be the bulwark and the saviors, and yet if you don’t say what they want to hear or what they agree with, you will be shut down, you’ll be shamed, and you’ll be fired. This is how it happens, folks, and it has already taken over college campi and other institutions of the left.

The way you end up losing freedom of speech is actually by tolerating only certain speech, under the guise of diversity or equity or what have you. That’s how it happens, and it is happening.

Just check out surveys of college students. You’ll find a shocking percentage of young people who agree that speech be regulated so feelings are not hurt and so people aren’t offended. They’re perfectly fine with it — and that’s how it begins. Of course, all of this is happening under an umbrella that is sold as positive and compassionate.

“We are preventing people from being hurt. We are preventing people from being offended. These speech codes and this discrimination against certain views is a good thing.” That’s how it advances. It’s always under the guise of goodness that people lose liberty and freedom.

 

 

Then after a certain passage of time, powerful government entities begin to police the speech codes using force. But in the early stages, it’s very seductive. It moves under the cloak of politeness and fairness and decency.

Other Google employees have come forward anonymously. One said, “If you’re not thinking right about gender diversity and race diversity, they will take you aside and retrain you.” Folks, it’s exactly as I said. What’s really happening is the erosion of free speech under the guise of promoting it, and the erosion of diversity under the guise of promoting it. Freedom is being killed off by virtue of censorship supposedly designed to prevent people from being hurt or offended.

It’s being done purposely — deceptively — to get people to willingly sacrifice and concede their liberty and freedom to serve some nebulous common good. It’s hideous.

Caller Josh from Medford, OR laid out his experience with liberal professors enforcing groupthink when it comes to identity politics: “I’m a psychology major at a university in southern Oregon,” he told me, “and I am having trouble with the professors who declare what their sexuality is.”

He explained that they insist on announcing whether they’re gay or straight or bi or trans or whatever. “They want to make sure everybody knows. If this was in a corporate situation, that would be sexual harassment. It’s really bothersome. I want to know what I can do to stop it.”

I immediately said, “Oh, you can’t stop it. They’re going to keep doing it until you celebrate it. That’s the whole point. The objective is to force you: ‘You will not only like it; you will love it.’ That’s the attitude behind this. They want that to be their identity, and they’re using their authority over you as the professor to demand that you embrace it.”

That’s characteristic liberalism. I don’t mean to sound clichéd, as calling something “liberal” has become a cliché. Call it leftism or socialism. These are the people I’m talking about. This is the groupthink, the consensus. You will agree, you will accept, you will like, you will love, or else!

You see what happens to people outside the cocoon. This is a warning from such professors who declare, “I am x,” whatever “x” may be. It’s a warning: you’d better accept it. The normal reaction would be, “Why do you have to ram this down our throats? Okay, you’re trans, you’re bi. We don’t care. Why are you forcing this?” It’s a way to provoke. With the authority that a professor holds in the classroom over students, it’s a way to force acceptance. But it’s also rooted in identity politics.

 

This is one of the most harmful things happening to our culture, the whole concept of identity politics and grievance politics, because what it does is create victims. One political party benefits from victimology and promotes grievance politics and identity politics: the Democrat Party. They hope to capitalize on more and more people being aggrieved with America and feeling victimized by the country.

Once you believe you’re a victim the rest is easy, because nothing is your fault. You have a built-in excuse for failure. You’re not to blame; you’re a victim of racism, or sexism, or homophobia. You’re a victim of the white supremacy, white privilege. You’re a victim of the patriarchy. You are a victim of corporate greed. You’re a victim of whatever. And at the same time, you’re also hopeless, because once you’re a victim, you’re abandoning self-reliance. As a victim, you must believe there’s nothing you can do to alleviate your situation other than to raise hell and then demand “social justice.”

You join the crowd, you join the mob, and you feel good, you believe you’re doing something. Except you’re not; you’re sitting there as an abject failure. Then the Democrat Party comes along and wants to reward that abject failure by promising they’ll get even with the people mistreating you and victimizing you.

Identity politics is a way of attacking the majority. Now, the majority can be racial, it can be a numerical majority, it can be a way of thinking. But whatever the minority membership or the victim class, that’s the desired place to be. Way too many young people think so. You don’t want to be among the “oppressors.” You don’t want to be in the majority. You don’t want to be with these horrible people making life unfair.

So all it’s doing is dividing the people in this country. And the media, which shapes a lot of public perception, is always on the side of the so-called victims, because the media believes they’re virtuously “speaking truth to power,” that they’re holding the powerful accountable. It’s poppycock. Because when the powerful are Democrats and liberals, they don’t do that. They join them. The only people they “hold accountable” — that is, try to destroy — are people who disagree with them.

As such, groupthink isn’t even thought. It is the thuggish psychology of the mob, and it is pure ignorance in action. When you see it, go confidently the other way.

 

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