Rush Limbaugh Demonstrated The Cruel Heart Of 'Taxpayer' Identity And Thought

Far too many ostensibly progressive people play the 'taxpayer' game, but it's ultimately a downward-punching weapon that exists to give license to oppression, bigotry, and cruelty.

“She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex," Rush Limbaugh, who died one year ago today, said on 29 February 2012.

Limbaugh said this about a young woman named Sandra Fluke, who had recently testified in an unofficial hearing held by some Democrats about problems stemming from lack of contraception coverage among employer healthcare plans, after saying that Fluke’s belief makes her a “slut” and a prostitute and after saying “She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford contraception.”

This Is The Actual Point Of ‘Taxpayer’ Mentality

The next day, amid harsh criticism for these remarks, Limbaugh doubled down in a way that helps to demonstrate the real point, the real, disgusting essence of, taxpayerism, the taxpayer myth, Taxpayer Identity Politics, things that need to be unequivocally and completely rejected by advocates of a more sane, progressive, egalitarian society.

"If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I'll tell you what it is: We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch,” Limbaugh said.

Clearly, this assertion is horrid, gross, and immoral, but the idea that funding something with your own hard-earned money entitles one to influence how that something is used or done is very common, and liberal and progressive people employ it all the time with statements like “I’d rather my tax dollars go to healthcare than to wars.”

Now, today, on the one-year anniversary of the death of Limbaugh, perhaps the most horrid person in recent US history and most influential to the toxicity of modern conservatism, I am imploring those progressive-liberal people among you who still don’t see why taxpayerism is societal poison and poison to universal social welfare causes and to justice to use this occasion to reflect on this matter.

Premises, Premises

Two days after Limbaugh - who, by then, was quite a rich man, subject to a high tax bill - made the claim about being entitled to sex videos based on “I have to pay for that,” someone running for President that year named Mitt Romney was asked of what he thought of Limbaugh’s comments in question and said, "I'll just say this, which is, it's not the language I would have used," which suggested that he neither disagreed with Limbaugh’s policy position nor the premise on which it was based.

Limbaugh asserted that “taxpayers” would be funding a woman’s sex life and that that meant that “taxpayers” were entitled to something from it.

Modern progressive-liberal people obviously disagree with the conclusion.

But they must understand how most of them contribute to the dishonest premise from which that disgusting conclusion is drawn.

You hear this all the time. “I’m want my ‘tax dollars’ going to universal healthcare!”

If you understand why men - and it’s almost always men - commenting on allegations of sexual assault by saying “as the father of two daughters” is so wrong, then please apply that same understanding to “I want my tax dollars going to ________.”

Whether you are saying that you don’t want your “tax dollars” “going to” X or are saying that you do want your “tax dollars” “going to” X, you are making a personal propertarian argument that is fundamentally different than making an argument for the public good.

Contemporary Anti-Choice Language Is A Big Tell

Now, fast forward from almost ten years ago, when Limbaugh made those awful, humiliating comments, to one year ago yesterday, one day before Limbaugh died, at that day’s White House press briefing.

A reporter named Owen Jensen of the EWTN Global Catholic Network asked, as he had already done before in a previous press conference in the less-than-a-month-old Biden Administration, about the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits US Government Dollars from funding pregnancy abortions and which Biden has signaled he has come to oppose, opening the door to an expansion of reproductive health-care services.

As I have asserted previously, it’s really important and reeeeallly instructive that the modern anti-choice movement depends so heavily upon employing “taxpayer” rhetoric to be seen as remotely respectable, especially as there is a large spectrum of the electorate that has the nuanced position of being bothered by the idea of a woman being able to get an abortion on demand while simultaneously being bothered by the idea of the government banning the practice; the anti-choice movement succeeds in influencing these people by sidestepping the touchy question of the legality of the practice in favor of encouraging people to think that “it’s YOUR MONEY 😠” funding other people’s personal choices.

The anti-choice movement knows that most people who harbor this nuanced position are okay with the practice in cases of rape, thus, it knows that the claim that “abortion is murder” is incompatible with exceptions based on the circumstances surrounding the creation of the pregnancy (because, if it’s not murder in the case of rape, then it can’t be murder in any other case either, because whether an act is murder does not and cannot hinge on the circumstances of how the supposed victim’s life began), and, thus, it knows that, if abortion is not and cannot be murder, then the case for banning it completely falls apart and thus becomes about a means of social control.

Which is precisely where Taxpayer Identity is invoked to do its inherently dirty work.

Watch How The Worst People Play This Game

“So, regarding the American Rescue Plan, groups like — pro-life groups, including the Susan B. Anthony List are very concerned that millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars will go to the abortion industry, in violation of the Hyde Amendment,” Jensen said yesterday to White House Press Secretary Jenn Psaki.

“We know where President Biden stands on Hyde Amendment, but that being said, can this administration right now guarantee, if the American Rescue Plan is passed, that no taxpayer dollars will go to the abortion industry?”

I hope, by now, following my writings for as long as you have, you see in Jensen’s question three things that might not have been obvious to you before you considered taxpayerism as even being a thing:

1.) How Jensen doesn’t even bother to even attempt to make a legal or moral argument against abortion itself.

2.) How Jensen’s entire argument is that “taxpayer dollars” shouldn’t “go to” abortions, not that, per #1, abortions should not happen.

3.) The proper, prudent, and strong thing for the pro-choice person to do here is to simply reject the “taxpayer dollars” premise, which would cause the rest of Jensen’s anti-choice argument to crumble like a house of cards - and I am imploring you to understand that this is how you respond when this “taxpayer dollars” objection is made for any progressive social welfare policy.

Now, is that what happened?

Nope!

Democrats Continue To Dignify This Fundamentally Conservatarian Dishonest Premise

Here is the rest of the exchange between Psaki and Jensen from that day:

MS. PSAKI: Which component of the American Rescue Plan are you referring to?

Q I’ll pull it up right here. “A $50 million funding increase for the Title X program.” “$750 million for global health activities and billions in funding for community health centers without applying the Hyde Amendment.”

MS. PSAKI: Well, the President’s view on the Hyde Amendment is well known, as you have stated in your question. He also believes that community health centers are a key part of addressing the pandemic, of ensuring that people in communities have access to vaccines, have access to treatment and information about — about making sure they’re healthy and their loved ones are healthy.

So that remains a priority to the President. He’s shared his view on the Hyde Amendment. I don’t think I have anything new for you.

Q Okay. To follow up on it though, can he guarantee Americans who don’t want their tax dollars — pro-life Americans who don’t want their tax dollars funding abortion, can he —

MS. PSAKI: Well —

Q Can the administration guarantee those tax dollars won’t be used for abortions?

MS. PSAKI: Well, I think, Owen, as I’ve just noted, three quarters of the public supports the components of the package, wants to see the pandemic get under control, wants to see people put back to work, vaccines in arms. So I think that answers your question.

Q (Inaudible.)

MS. PSAKI: Okay, we’re going to move on. Go ahead, in the back.

That Jensen and his questions may have deserved the dismissiveness and nonanswers that he got from Psaki is beside the point. Politics is about power, and words are how we convey information about that power.

In the small amount of time that he spoke, Jensen made three more references to “tax dollars,” but Psaki never once disputed the characterization, the dishonest premise on which Jensen’s claims were based.

That means that Jenn Psaki, press secretary for the new Democratic administration that ousted Donald Trump from the Presidency, essentially validated the premise of Rush Limbaugh’s claim about being entitled to sex videos from any woman receiving publicly-funded contraception.

Again, this is the point of taxpayerism, and it’s critical to understand this; it has nothing to do with saving money or having a smaller tax bill! It’s to assert control of other people, of people’s bodies. We all know that the real reason for opposition to publicly-funded medical pregnancy abortion is a desire to control the bodies of women, to control female sexuality.

Allowing Our Opponents To Choose The Field Of Battle

Playing the “taxpayer” game doesn’t refute that that is the reason for anti-choice sentiment; playing the “taxpayer” game validates the idea that it’s okay to control other people’s bodies thus! since, according to the “taxpayer” myth, it is “MY MONEY funding YOUR ABORTION,” which means that I have moral and legal authority over your personal choices! especially when you validate the premise by responding “well, I don’t want my taxes going to imperial wars and border walls.”

Don’t do that. Seriously, don’t do that. When you say “well, I don’t want my taxes going to [insert thing that you oppose],” you’re making a selfish individualist argument and not a communal argument, not an argument against the thing that you oppose itself, on its own merits.

Is “my money has to fund that” really the best argument that you can make against migrant detention centers, imperial wars, and overincarceration? If the answer to that question is “yes,” then that is a sign of a much, much deeper problem.

Taxpayerism is societal poison. Taxpayerism must go.

From Limbaugh’s horrible comments about Fluke, you know that slut-shaming is, particularly in this context, harmful and wrong (especially because wanting publicly funding contraception does not make one a “slut”), and perhaps you know why fat-shaming Trump is wrong, because it never actually harmed Trump but did harm countless people insecure about their own bodies who saw so many people fat-shame Trump, but, even worse, taxpayer-shaming and deficit-shaming Trump harms people and harms the planet!

Progressive-Liberal People Playing The ‘Taxpayer’ Game Results In Vacuous Partisan Posturing And Nothing More

I got horribly depressed and consider it a sign that modern US liberalism is broken every time I saw one of those memes criticizing Trump for his golf trips “costing taxpayers” on the liberal social-media pages.

First off, it’s not true. Your taxes “pay for” nothing.

Second, what do people posting stuff like that think that they are accomplishing? Was anyone who might otherwise have voted for Trump or not been motivated enough to vote for Biden moved enough by those memes to help rid us of Trump? Would someone who wasn’t sufficiently bothered by open racism, open misogyny, bullying, taking pleasure in deliberate malicious cruelty, migrant detention centers, forced hysterectomies, border walls, deliberate inflammation of societal tensions, and ripping children from families – and all of the federal funding for all of those things - have been suddenly awoken by the idea of Trump’s golf trips?

No. But what those idiotic memes DO accomplish is encourage people to continue perceiving sovereign spending as being of money that they earned and that was forcibly taken from them, all while we are desperately trying to get massive amounts of needed pandemic relief out to people, while we are trying to mass mobilize against climate change, and while we are trying to get universal healthcare enacted.

Conceding Consequential Premises

On the day that Rush Limbaugh died, this tweet was going viral.

No! Stop characterizing sovereign spending thus! Money is a social and legal construct, a unit of account that measures debt, something that we as a community, not each one of us as individual “taxpayers,” create with our collective political decisions.

The characterization made in that viral tweet has been made many times before by ostensibly progressive people; it’s based on a private insurance model.

A Self-Imposed Obstacle To Progress

We will never get universal healthcare enacted on the basis of “taxpayer dollars.” It’s like trying to meet vegans by hosting a meetup at a steakhouse. Taxpayerism and universalism are incompatible. They are like oil and water.

Advocates of social welfare policies of universal benefit, of a more just and fair society, who play the “taxpayer” game are selling out the war in order to win a battle. They are pissing into the damn wind.

As scholars like Vanessa Williamson and Camille Walsh have written, “taxpayer” is a term of exclusion, and “taxpayer” identity was developed and fostered by plutocrats and bigots as a way of poisoning the development of multiracial working-class coalitions, which is why it is no surprise that it’s used almost entirely by white people to this very day.

"Making claims to resources and entitlements on the basis of being a 'taxpayer' for most of US history has meant making claims that other people should not get resources, benefits, entitlements, and protections,” Walsh, author of Racial Taxation, said.

Rush Limbaugh understood and anti-choicers understand that exclusion and classist social control is the ultimate purpose of “taxpayer” identity, and Rush Limbaugh also understood that the so-called “deficit” is not actually a real problem.

What’s it going to take for most ostensibly progressive or liberal people to get it?

Can, on the occasion of the anniversary of Limbaugh’s death, as the planet burns while the Biden Administration absolves itself from inaction due to the supposed inability to “pay for it,” while we are trying to get massive amounts of relief to massive amounts of people, while we are trying to expand healthcare access, including reproductive healthcare, we talk about this?

“Taxpayer” thinking inevitably leads to a worldview based on hierarchy and exclusion. No advocate for the downtrodden should ever dignify it.