Bad Seed

Back in 1992 DC-area traffic was terrible and getting worse every week. And while there were plenty of aspects to recommend a career in outside sales for a single male quasi-degenerate horseplayer, daily exposure to gridlock frustration was surely not one of them. What to do while inching along Canal Road or crawling slower than a jogger on 395? I was never one for garish car stereos, and this was way before the Internet, let alone mobile streaming options, so there was the radio. One day I had had enough of “classic rock” repetition and other FM indignities – for me, a little “Greaseman” went a long way – and restlessly scanned the dial for something interesting. Impatiently turning the knob I came upon upstart Fairfax-based 106.7 and what do you know, who was holding forth but none other than G. Gordon Liddy.

My introduction to the infancy of Fox/AM sociopathic stream-of-consciousness happened just that randomly. Utter boredom led me to what would slowly, relentlessly abase and demean the national conversation, relegating issues for debate to endlessly circular sound blasts of white grievance, manna for totalitarian mania. But back then, to my ears, Liddy was little more than a guilty pleasure, a side show freak who came at you without apology as the Hitler-inspired zealot he had always been.

Twenty years after becoming synonymous with the inept fanaticism that would make the Watergate episode as absurdist as it was dangerous, part Keystone Cop incompetence and part unprecedented threat to US democracy, Liddy reveled in his culture war extremism. Obviously, had I realized his brand of lunacy would wind up as idolized dogma millions of previously apathetic but resentful nihilists-in-waiting would baptize themselves in to fully unleash their bigoted worst, I wouldn’t have indulged his on-air novelty near as much. Yet and still, he was a unique character, a genuine article, regardless of how unsavory or downright scary.

When Rush Limbaugh passed last month he was rightly recognized as a titan of AM malevolence. But it’s interesting and significant to note that back in the industry’s infancy, when the landscape was far less crowded, Liddy was much more entertaining to listen to. It was ironic that Limbaugh, a stochastic terrorist from the start, always disavowed any responsibility whenever a lone wolf adherent committed some atrocity by pleading he was just an entertainer. In fact, regardless of his lame “Snerdly” routines and idiotic dalliances with racist songs, Limbaugh always took himself far more seriously than Liddy. Back in ‘92, Liddy was having fun and holding forth as the larger-than-life reactionary legend he branded himself to be. And although Liddy was far more of an intellect than Rush could ever pretend to be, it was Limbaugh who was selling robust “conservative ideas” along with whatever his advertisers wanted him to hawk.

Most important though has been entirely lost in the countless retrospectives offered up since Liddy died Tuesday. It’s the unarguable fact that, the cartoonish banshee culture war and authoritarian posturing Liddy offered thirty years ago with tongue in cheek, consumed as more distraction than anything else simply because most all assumed it would never gain the necessary traction to be more, now reflects the worldview of 30-35 percent of the US electorate, not to mention three quarters of the GOP.

That’s right… the outlandish preening of a Nixon stooge, who served hard time for leading a bungled two-bit burglary he proudly fell on his sword and took full responsibility for, granting his White House superiors permission to kill him if they suspected he would rat them out – “just tell me what corner to stand on, and I will be there” – now more or less constitutes the basis of what the Republican Party offers both its most ardent supporters and detested enemies. Nobody knew it then, probably least of all Liddy himself, but thirty years ago Mr. “virile, vigorous and potent,” who once enthusiastically volunteered to assassinate columnist Jack Anderson, who Nixon himself mused “just isn’t well screwed on, is he,” is a founding father of today’s GOP.

Although Liddy was big on occupying his three hours of air time per day with jocular rants about his troglodyte sensibilities toward women and “hippies,” or a fetish for armaments nothing less than total deregulation would satisfy, the fundamental tenet of his untethered belief system was laid bare in one particular response he gave to a call-in question. Asked by a caller how he squared his support for constitutional conservatism and the police with the litany of felonies he committed and would have undertaken if asked by Nixon’s henchmen, Liddy replied without hesitation that the times called for extreme measures, the ends justified the means. It was striking how final his answer was, as if no other response ever occurred to him. There was an awkward silence as the caller seemed to understand nothing he could offer back would be recognized, so he simply thanked the G Man and hung up. And that was that.

That open-ended rationale for authoritarian descent threaded throughout Trump’s MAGA mob on 1/6; G Gordon Liddy’s legacy was on full display. Thousands of people convinced that only disorder could reconfigure things to make sense again. The silent majority demanding its due! In fact, much of Trump’s pre-insurrection spiel could have come directly from a Liddy monologue thirty years ago. The combat imagery, the toxic masculinity, the us-under-siege mentality, all of Trump’s pep talk was classic Liddy.

The difference between the two? When Liddy was ranting he understood how few actually took him seriously and thus felt free to let loose. Trump understood just the opposite, but felt just as liberated, wholly unconcerned with accountability for his actions. What was empty frivolity in 1992 has become deadly serious in 2021.

For all of his outrageousness, G Gordon Liddy was a thinker with at least a desire to pursue discipline for higher purpose, no matter how warped. His radio show was more a release, a reward he gave himself after suffering the consequences his principles created. Whether he appreciated how much his unhinged extremism would influence legions of AM trash talkers who followed him or the listeners they would radicalize isn’t clear. What is crystal certain is he was present at the creation of a format an Australian billionaire mutated into the most dangerous enemy America has yet faced, and that the fanatical sensibilities responsible for Watergate provided the seeds for 1/6 near half a century later.

Gordon Liddy is dead, but his mania has more than survived him, it now permeates the Republican Party. Fifty years ago the GOP ran for their lives away from Richard Nixon and lost 43 House seats. Today they are running at full speed to shine Trump’s shoes and believe it will win them back the majority. That will present a crisis the G Man could appreciate.