WHAT LIMBAUGH'S BOSTON RANT SAYS ABOUT DAY-TO-DAY POLITICS IN AMERICA

Via Mediaite, we get Rush Limbaugh's take on the Boston bombing:

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh called out a variety of media outlets on Tuesday for trying to "to Dzhokhar [Tsarnaev] what they did to Trayvon Martin." He said that showing images of Tsarnaev at 14-years-old is an effort to humanize him and frame him as a "normal" or "mixed-up kid," rather than a accused murder and terrorist.

"The news media are doing to Dzhokhar what they did to Trayvon Martin," Limbaugh observed. "They're regularly showing a photo of Dzhokhar that was taken when he was about 14. Soft, angelic, nice little boy. Harmless. Cute. Big, loveable eyes." ...

Limbaugh said that the news media is actively attempting to frame Tsarnaev as an innocent child by repeatedly showing the image of him as a young teen....

Apart from the obvious problem -- um, Trayvon Martin was an unarmed person who was killed, not a killer -- let's consider what this tells us about the right-wing mindset.

According to Limbaugh, it's impossible to hold the following two thoughts in one's head simultaneously: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev seems to have been a really decent kid and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is guilty of an unspeakable crime. But I don't know anyone who has trouble thinking those two things at once. Yes, there are a few idiot #freejahar conspiratorialists on Twitter. But even as we ponder Dzhokhar's very normal American adolescence, do you see any broad call in liberal America for him not to be in custody, not to be charged, not to be accused of a capital crime? Is anyone out in the street protesting any aspect of this? Are there petitions? Are there editorials? Is there a movement?

There was discontent when Dzhokhar wasn't read his Miranda rights for a couple of days. There'll be discontent from death penalty opponents if he's sentenced to death. But no liberal is going to be upset at the mere fact that he's been convicted and sentenced. None of us are going to be upset if he's held accountable for what he's done.

You see, we can simultaneously believe that a person is guilty of horrible things and is also a human being. We can believe that a person is capable of decency and can lose his grip on the ability to be a decent human being.

And Limbaugh's inability to hold those two thoughts in his head at once tells us a great deal about American right-wing thinking in general.

Right-wingers can't regard Barack Obama merely as a guy with whom they have very strong disagreements. No -- he has to be the Antichrist. He has to be literally committed to the goal of destroying America. He has to intend the enslavement and impoverishment of the population. He has to intend the dismantling of the nation as it's existed for centuries. He has to be pure evil.

The same for the rest of non-conservative America -- we're all Hitler. The media is guilty of treason. The universities are disloyal. Hollywood wants to destroy the nation's foundations. Democrats in Congress are tools of Satan.

This is the conservative mind in our time. To them, everyone is either saved or damned. They don't acknowledge the existence of any point in the middle. This is why we can't work with these people.