Rush Limbaugh has advanced lung cancer.

[Bengalzona]

Rush and his show were part of a symptom of a disease, a disease which infected portions of American society about 30 years ago when FCC rules on equal time-sharing for opposing political views were trashed by the Reagan Administration and which has continued unabated since. It is a disease which has encouraged political isolation and insulation and our current trend of "choose-the-news-you-like" under the guise of "free speech", and that, in turn, has been a massive contribution to our partisan and bifurcated society.

Now, in Rush's defense, I don't think many ever interpreted his show as news. Rather, it was generally seen as political commentary. But the concept that biased commentary should be expressed without a response from opposing views in media was a new and flawed concept, championed by those who really do not want others to express their views: the opposite of "free speech". Rush and his show did not create that situation, but they did take advantage of it.

As for his illness, I would not wish cancer on anyone. And for those who would, I offer this:

I sometimes watch documentaries on the holocaust and they sometimes contain interviews with survivors. One of the things that has always amazed me is that, when they interview these survivors I almost never see them demonstrate bitterness. Sadness, definitely. Incredible sadness and loss. But not bitterness. When I was young, I did not understand this. Certainly, they must hate those Nazis for what they did with a wrath beyond hatred. But, that's not what I see.

Bitterness poisons the person who is bitter, not the person they are bitter at. I think that is why some of these holocaust survivors still survived into their later years: they didn't take that poison. They recognized it for what it is. In a sense, they 'survived' a second time.

I rarely quote Nietzsche, but he did have an appropriate quote about this: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

I think that if you want to fight hatred, bigotry, unfairness, dehumanization, etc., you have to start with yourself and make sure that you do not exhibit that: that you don't become that which profess to hate.