How does the virus spread? 

Limbaugh’s commentary feeds on the most primal human tribal emotions; fear of the stranger and of the unknown. This is why his “ditto heads” (followers) do not display intellectual curiosity nor open minded dialog.  He places himself and his followers inside a “Wagon Train” defensive ring composed of “pure-bred righteous pioneers” - his followers liken themselves members of a wholesome and pure society that is under a vicious and continuous attack.

The political group that Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Beck and the like cater to, shares an extreme "us vs. them" mindset. They see themselves as the "Real America” their imaginary vision is of a Norman Rockwell 1950's country populated by red blooded Americans (victorious, white, church going, conservative, patriotic folks). Their ideology is one of "manifest destiny"; power for power’s sake - survival of the strongest. Their vision, is of the America of the heady victory of WWII, the strongest nation in the world - the world's most powerful empire.

These are not conservatives, they are radical revolutionaries willing to sacrifice all for their faith. All and all when the idealized notion of their America comes in contact with reality, with today’s America; a nation of immigrants, multiracial and multicultural; a powerful nation that cannot control the world by force; a nation that has known military stalemate and strategic defeat in Viet Nam. This real America is much removed from their ideal, its existence is in effect unacceptable to them; their reaction is to simply go into denial.

The creed of denial goes something like this:

1 - Viet Nam was not a defeat: we ran away because our politicians lacked the guts to fight and because they tied down our soldiers by not letting the army loose to fight without constraints.

2 – Joe McCarthy was a true patriot and he was ruined by the commies and liberals.

3 – It is perfectly fine to abrogate human rights and people’s privacy in order to defend the Nation, if that worries you, what is you need to hide?

4 – Torture shmorture! We should have the right to do to them whatever they want to do to us! And if we must torture them to get information.. so be it! And so what if it doesn’t produce good info, hell they deserve the punishment anyhow!

5 – We are strong, we have the most powerful weapons on the face of the earth, why not use them? We should show them a lesson or two just so they see who they are messing with! If God did not want us to rule, then why has He given us all the power?

6 – Invading a Country because it is perceived by our leaders to be a threat is not only right; it is the obvious patriotic duty.

7 – God has chosen America to be the new Empire and to spread the true faith the faith of unfettered markets and WWJD. (this one is specially hard to swallow with our current economic crisis)

In their minds there is no room to question neither our strategies nor motives, “My country! Right or wrong - my country!” is a slogan that they find both agreeable and acceptable – they see nothing wrong with that idea at all. 

They learned nothing of Germany's Nazi period when the German people were led into their own destrucction along with the rest of the world under that slogan. Their misguided sense of patriotism would make America's founding fathers shake in their revolutionary boots, this is what they tried so hard to avoid.

They perceive absolutely nothing wrong with “shock and awe”, the idea of “Kill them all and let God sort them out” is just fine and dandy. Scruples? What scruples? The admission of mistakes or errors is weakness in their “macho” reality. To apologize is to show weakness, to admit mistakes is feminine, defeatist.

Obama’s recognition of mistakes and blunders made by past US policy makers is in their minds taboo, even more it is to them a crime of mayor proportions and extremely unwise foreign policy.

Whatever misfortunes the “ditto heads” may be suffering are blamed on the things that are not part of the vision, minorities, other ethnicities, immigrants, gays, etc. Anything that is not a part of that idealized 1950’s America. 

Of course that idealized America never existed at all.

Though they are in large part members of the middle class they cannot fathom that the middle class was a born out of the heroic actions of the labor movement and of FDR’s progressive policies; not a product of America’s corporate management. Ignorant of history and fearful of the things that require complex thought, they yearn for a fantasy that never existed at all.

Their pseudo patriotism, xenophobia, bigotry and racism are not consciously arrived at, these spring forth from fear and ignorance.

As the old janitor at my high school in Atlanta used to say: “there is nothing more dangerous that a fool with initiative”. Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter (Beck's not included he is obviously a big dummy) are either intelligent people completely devoid of conscience or they just happen to be fools with a lot of initiative. Either way their message is composed of fear and their objective is divisiveness. Unfortunately their followers are in great measure good folks who just happen to be scared out of their wits.

As their delivery seems to find success by sheer repetitiveness – That old untrue proverb "Where there’s smoke – there’s fire" is generally accepted as truth; so it is that the endless repetitive predication of some lie, exaggeration or baseless rumor seems to convince people as proof of the existence of some grain of truth. After all some folks believe that Obama was not born in the U.S. and that they did find WOD in Iraq, despite the obvious. 

Antidote:

Common sense and clarity consistently delivered in plain no nonsense terms could be the antidote to this disease. Make no bones about it, these folks are not your ordinary traditional conservatives - this virus will give no quarter nor hold back in any way on its mission to either conquer or destroy the host; our Nation.

Those interested in healing and in the future health of our Nation would do well to continually repeat the message of unity, strength, human rigths and traditional American values; these should be held up continually and repeatedly so as to form a vaccine to this political swine's flu and it's viral agents. Vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate.