From the beginning of America, we created the myth of the rugged individualist, the cowboy, the frontiersman. From Wild Bill Cody to John Ford and other Hollywood directors, we used John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Gary Cooper to drive it home.

That it was a lie was beside the point. As Heather Cox Richardson points out in her great book - "How the South Won the Civil War" - the western cowboy was a short-lived cattle driver whose industry depended on government-subsidized railroads and the military. People eager to criticize social welfare policies of the post-Civil War era turned the cowboy into a rugged white man of the soil who just wanted to be left alone. The truth is a third of them were black. But the myth was born.

Its powerful message has been used by charlatans since the founding of the Republic and brought home yet again by Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Rush Limbaugh.

As you have read by now, Limbaugh, the most powerful voice in right-wing talk radio, died of lung cancer last week. After decades of jaw-dropping, on-air cruelty, four wives, and a red meat Palm Beach lifestyle, Limbaugh received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump.

I started listening to Limbaugh in my car in the early 90s as he revolutionized talk radio on the AM dial. Eventually, he left the small market of Sacramento and moved to NYC. But curiously, he disliked the big city. He told interviewers that he had no friends, couldn't find love because he was obese and just felt lonely.

But on the air, he transformed into an entertainer. His right-wing followers loved the schtick, and liberals like me tuned in to understand the growing right-wing media.

Among Limbaugh's many cruelties were advising children out of school during the pandemic to scrounge for food in dumpsters and telling Native Americans that casinos solved their problems. He called a birth control activist who testified before Congress a "slut." He proposed that people on public assistance should be barred from voting. He called women "Femi-Nazis," and denied global warming.

His power was such that even decent Republicans like George H.W. Bush invited him to the White House. It must have turned Bush's patrician, Ivy League stomach.  

Limbaugh became, along with Rupert Murdoch, the most powerful voice in right-wing American politics. And he created a host of others.

An aside: What is it about right-wing Republican celebrity types? They decry welfare and government dependence and cheer the sanctity of marriage while treating marriage as a parlor game and growing fat on the corporate dinner circuit. Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, and Trump. At least 15 wives that I can count among that cast. So much for family values.

Back to Limbaugh. By 1994, he and the Internet had begotten Alex Jones, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and others. They became the outrage machine that fueled the conservative politicians in Congress who went after Bill Clinton, stopped the Obama program to repair the economy, and will now fight to slow Biden's rescue of the Trump disaster.

Before starting Fox News, Roger Ailes, another slothful, three-times married sexual assaulter, produced a TV show for Limbaugh that failed. Sometimes radio doesn't translate.

But Ailes got it right with Fox News a few years later and brought Limbaugh's audience to television. The result is where we are today.

And now Ted Cruz, similar to Limbaugh in his cruelty toward people less than, fled the Texas snowstorm/power outage to Cancun with his shivering family. When he was outed, he blamed his elementary school daughters for wanting a vacation, and then said he was just escorting them to Mexico. The irony of Cruz taking warm shelter in Mexico while demonizing the people of that country via his stance on immigration is rich.

But his wife's text messages later showed that the family was "freezing," and they invited their friends to join them at the Ritz Carlton in Cancun at $309 per night.

What bothers me most about Cruz and Limbaugh is not the hypocrisy. Most politicians and celebrities test those waters.

For me, it is the naked lust for wealth and power at the expense of others less fortunate and the lack of any basic understanding of the job of a U.S. Senator. Cruz actually tried to defend his Cancun getaway by saying there was not much he could do to help his fellow Texans, who are still shivering in the cold with little or no water. To date, 31 people have died. And Cruz is now back in the Senate without quarantining.

Cruz and Limbaugh, in different ways, recognized that there was power, money, and fame in inhabiting the fake western cowboy image and the rugged American, especially in Texas. No need for government regulation of electric utilities. People should be left alone to pursue the American dream via more freedom and less government intrusion. The cowboy myth. Maybe freedom from government intrusion means plowing the road in front of your house by yourself.

But the truth was different. Cruz and Limbaugh are and were cruel bullies, who beat up on those less powerful in order to enrich themselves (Limbaugh) and accumulate power (Cruz). And just like the cowboy myth of the American West, they turned out to be fake as well.

It is not just the hypocrisy of Cruz fleeing to Cancun during the Texas storm and lying about it. It is not just Limbaugh talking tough about birth control and Obama's birthplace. It is that they did it from the gilded safety of the Senate floor in Washington and a Palm Beach mansion. Imagine being so out of touch with your job as a U.S. senator that you claim helplessness toward your fellow citizens in a crisis.

Cruz couldn't hand out water, couldn't raise money, couldn't call local companies to set up shelters, couldn't even pick up a snow shovel, and walk the neighborhood to check on people. 

There was no more apt photo than Cruz, the faux tough guy, his soft belly spilling over his jeans, alone in the airport, knowing what he had done and trying so hard to fix it that he blamed his daughters. "I was trying to be a Dad," he said.

Good Dads don't do what Cruz did. These guys are the antithesis of the American cowboy or the rugged individualist - myth or not. They are gluttonous phonies who profited off the misery of others, the salesman of the old west who traveled from town to town selling fake remedies.

Cruz especially passes himself off as some John Wayne character who talks tough and prizes American freedom, like the role Wayne plays in the film - "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."

In the movie, Wayne and the sodbuster, played by Jimmy Stewart vie for the affections of Hattie, the romantic interest. But the murderous criminal Liberty Valance comes to town and challenges Jimmy Stewart to a gunfight. From the shadows, Wayne kills Valance, who was only tough because of the thugs who backed him up. But Stewart gets the credit and moves on to a career and fame in the U.S. Senate.

Cruz and Limbaugh wanted to be a combination of John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart. They wore the costume of the tough guy but didn't understand the substance of the character they were trying to play or what real life requires. They didn't get the reality or the myth of America. John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart’s characters saved the defenseless, killed the bad guys, and defended the town. Cruz and Limbaugh used that character myth to enrich themselves and gain political power from behind the protection of the Senate and radio booth. They could never be John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart because, in the end, they turned out to be Liberty Valance.