It's a paradox: the political center has clearly shifted; what used to be considered "left wing" positions have now become part of the mainstream, and the views of the Right are now at odds with the majority of the American public -- and with reality.
Yet, despite this seismic shift -- grossly underreported by the media -- the Right remains as powerful as ever when it comes to setting the national agenda and dominating the national debate.
Think about it: on Iraq and the exercise of American power, on economic fairness, on corporate responsibility, on the environment and climate change, on the universal right to healthcare, the progressive policies and positions long championed by the left have moved from union halls and MoveOn emails to the sidewalks, backyards, and kitchen tables of Main Street, USA.
Nevertheless, the traditional media -- and most politicians -- continue to insist on looking at every issue through a right vs left frame, then assume the answer is found by splitting the difference.
I've spent much of the last year trying to pinpoint the reasons for this startling disconnect in my new book, Right is Wrong, which is being released today (April 29).
And I concluded that there are three main areas to look at, not only to help us understand how we got in the mess we're in, but also to help us get out: the media, the role of fear in our politics, and the failure of political leadership.
These three factors have combined to allow the lunatic fringe that has taken over the Right to hijack our country, our democracy, and our Constitution. So that 28 percent of the population that continues to support George W. Bush no matter how many bodies pile up in Iraq, how many jobs disappear overseas, how many For Sale signs go up on their block, or how high gas prices get, continues to dominate our politics.
Let's take them one by one, starting with the media which remains hopelessly addicted to the false belief that in order to be fair and balanced every story needs to be given the "on the one hand... and on the other" treatment. But not every story has two sides -- and the truth is often to be found not in the middle but solidly on one side or the other.
The earth is not flat. Global warming is a fact. Evolution is a fact -- sorry Mike Huckabee. And not even Republicans still believe in the unfettered, free market. Look how they rushed to Big Government to save their beloved Bear Sterns.
Nor are there two sides to the proposition that Iraq is our generation's greatest foreign policy disaster. It is. Period. Full stop. Yet the same media that enabled the administration to sell us the multi-trillion dollar war are -- nearly six years later -- still pushing the Right's line that "the surge is working." Green Zone bombardments be damned.
Indeed, we are in the sixth year of an unnecessary and immoral war that has cost tens of thousands of lives, globally discredited the United States and has left us all less safe than the day Shock and Awe began. But the media are still debating the war's "progress," and describing the state of Iraq as "a mixed bag" -- which is a little bit like going to the doctor and having him tell you that you have a brain tumor but your acne has cleared, and you considering the diagnosis "a mixed bag."
What is behind the media's lapdog devotion to the messages and framing of the Right? It's a combination of self-loathing and abject fear. The media wear their dread like a cheap aftershave. The broadcast networks and the cable news channels live in mortal fear of a dip in the ratings, and newspapers are constantly checking their pulse -- convinced by their deteriorating profits and market share that the end is near. So they continue to offer the views of the newly marooned Right more than equal time.
Fear -- specifically the right wing's masterful manipulation of it -- has also come to dominate our politics.
In 2004 we had the whole sordid "al Qaeda really wants John Kerry to win" routine. And it's only April, but John McCain has already told us that al Qaeda will increase its violent attacks to try and defeat him, and that Hamas wants Obama to win. This is not only laughable but downright loathsome -- and there should be zero tolerance for such distortions in American politics.
Besides, why wouldn't al Qaeda want McCain to win? He's running to give a third term to George Bush, whose disastrous policies have been the terrorists' best recruitment tool.
McCain's "more of the same" platform should disqualify him from being allowed to use sharp scissors, let alone be president of the United States. But the mainstream media still treat him with kid gloves and continue to take his foreign policy positions -- however confused -- seriously.
You can be sure the Right will play the fear card again in 2008 because that's all that's left in its deck. And that's why it's incredibly important that Democrats take back national security as an issue from the Republicans, and why Hillary Clinton's latest attempts to out-bellicose McCain are so destructive.
The dynamic between the dithering Democrats and the reality-be-damned Republican Right calls to mind that great line from Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity."
The third factor in the continuing power of the loony Right is the abject, across the board failure of our political leadership to adjust to the fact that the game of "right versus left" has been rendered obsolete by the emergence of a new and vital center. But political movements and political shifts do not fully succeed without bold political leadership -- and if we ever needed that kind of leadership, it is now.
Democratic leaders need to re-define the center of American politics. Right is no longer the opposite of left. It is the opposite of wrong. And what used to be the left needs to redefine itself as something more than just an opposition force -- but rather as an active, positive, mainstream current that includes independents, Republicans aghast at what has happened to their party, and many new voters who are tired of empty partisanship.
Over this past year, it has seemed that America is ready to define a new center and to turn a new page and close the book on this tragic chapter of our history. The nomination of John McCain, however, could obstruct this transition. McCain is the Trojan Horse the Right desperately needed to put a faux maverick, faux independent, faux straight-talker imprint on the same ruinous policies that have taken us down this dark road.
Though the era of the Right has exhausted its historic course, collapsing in moral, political and economic bankruptcy, the transformation and co-opting of McCain from a maverick into the Second Coming of George W. Bush shows the durability of the Right and the lingering danger it poses. There is nothing automatic about its disappearance from the stage. Not unless we, together, give it -- and McCain -- a mighty push into the wings and right out the stage door.
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We don’t all gather at the town hall and vote on the laws of the land: we elect representatives to do that for us. In order for the system to work, we need to make sure that our representatives represent us.
We have to pay attention.
How many of us, the ones that vote at all, even know who their representatives are?
Of those that can name their Congressmen, how many know how they voted on important legislation?
How many even know what legislation is being considered?
Granted, Americans are a busy lot but there is more than sufficient opportunity for to take part in this government, or at least try to understand it, without losing precious quality time from golf and tv.
The reason that FOX and RUSH and COULTER can fabricate stories and have them believed is that so many of us have become complacent and no longer pay attention.
The only thing that separates the power of the voter from the power of the lobbyist is the fact that they DO pay attention, and then buy the government that THEY deserve.
30 years worth of Addington and Cheney's dreaming and scheming have gone into blowing smoke into the executive position and the executive branch. We're a hairsbreadth away from blowing right down that rabbit hole with them, edging closer with every ounce of energy and attention, with every cent of political contributions given to another minute of this ridiculously protracted presidential campaign focused on fluff and figureheads,
we are just like the inert tablecloth on which the centerpiece rests; when the centerpiece goes over the edge, it is the supporting table cloth that takes everything down with it.
For once we British were ahead of America in setting this trend. The once socialist Labour Party, known as the people's party, chased the voters of the aspirational middle class so far to the right, Labour are now more right wing than the Conservatives.
http://machiavelli.blog.co.uk/2008/05/02/the-great-conspiracy-and-the-parking-sca-4123172
But there’s MORE:
There are always people who want to think the pinhead press is somehow “acting in concert.” Instead, a variety of factors coalesce, without benefit of a "plan." The biases of so many in “news” are similar, thus creating the illusion of “acting in concert.” Biases which most of them don’t understand and to which few own up, even to themselves, so that they influence these dull, plodding “journalists” without restraint of conscience.
The result is an increasingly monolithic drone coming from our “news” organizations, born of mediocrity, witless bias and timidity, not nefarious intent. The ABC debate debacle is one example.
HOWEVER, FOX News, Limbaugh, The Weekly Standard, etc., etc., are all ABOUT intent. They give aid and comfort to those possessed of an ugly, hateful worldview which, at one time, was becoming increasingly untenable to express in public. These people have found, in “conservative media” (and religious fundamentalism) validation for a worldview that was being eroded, scattered and weakened.
For most of us, this was called progress. Progress toward de-normalizing racism, sexism, geo-military aggression. Progress in which we shrunk the more hateful elements of society like an oncologist shrinks a tumor: starving it off, limiting it’s ability to infect its neighbors. The role of conservative media is to throw America into “remission,” by promoting the spread of hate, indifference and xenophobia.
Ever wonder why the richest and one of the most modern country in the world ranks just about midway or below when it comes to education, and why this trend is getting worse?
Your "free market" observation is correct. I'm generally a fan of free markets and competition, but it doesn't work everywhere and rarely works without compromise on the "free" part, to regulate unrestrained greed, and the willingness of the greedy to do harm.
Media is a perfect example. There has been a steady erosion of the once impregnable wall between the editorial side of the organizations and the revenue/advertising side. Financial pressures and a weakening integrity on the part of upper management have allowed purely financial considerations to exert an ever greater influence on content.
Add to this the consolidation in the business and you have an ever more fragmented audience, but an ever more monolithic ownership of the various platforms that deliver content to that audience. The result: the mainstream media has been picking up speed along its path to irrelevance for years. People are increasingly aware that they are very poorly served by the mainstream media, so they’re taking their eyeballs elsewhere. You’re reading one of the places they’re going right now.
The ironic fact is, if you focus so much on revenue that you’re willing to corrupt your content (I.e., news), you kill the very thing that attracts an audience. And without the audience, you can’t generate any revenue.
The Cons spent years developing a message to mislead the public into voting against its interests. Meanwhile, they built an infrastructure to spread the lie; deregulation let corporations, media and religion merge, while lobbyists greased the system to keep any laws from getting in the way. Politicians and reporters who couldn't be bought were picked off one by one; nobody saw the big picture until it was too late.
Once the conglomeration of media and politics was in place, the rest was simple. People continued to believe the lies until the bank foreclosed or the insurance denied the operation. We have long been duped into thinking that government is the problem. Our enemy has turned our only effective weapons against us, then convinced us that the solution is to be unarmed.
This nation and its government were created to protect the public from the rich and powerful, not let them do whatever they want at our expense. No taxation without representation has been a mainstream American value since our inception. But everyone but corporations and the ultra-rich have gotten more taxation with less representation. the deregulated media have spun these events positively. For awhile, people bought it; none of us is immune to a well-spun tale. But as bankruptcies and foreclosures have piled up, people have begun to come back to what they knew all along.
I think America can look to history again for guidance on what our economic policies should be.. Once again the Republican party has bankrupted America and the historical precedent is the Hoover administration.
Remember the places people went to when they lost their homes, their possessions, and their jobs, they were called Hoovervilles. Republican administrations culminating in the Herbert Hoover administration broke this country before by insisted on ideology rather than reality. Yes the Great Depression was caused by stupid and stubborn Republican idealog leadership which was totally wrong and resulted in 25% unemployment, bank runs, and uncalculated hardship for American citizens. It took ten years to recover from the assinine Hoover administration policies.
This country needs another FDR. An intelligent, hopefull, positive, results oriented, pragmatic non ideology based president. The United States cannot afford to return to the politics of fear, gridlock, and personal destruction. Or policies based on ideology rather than compromise and hope.
Once again history has repeated itself and once again we must turn to the politics of hope.
Read "Seduced by Hitler" on how whole populations can be coopted, bought, suppressed, intimidated and played to turn their eyes away from--and consciously participate in--all sorts of barbarism, genocide, terror--all under all sorts of banners like patriotism, national security, defense against internal enemies etc.
The U.S., like all previous imperial empires built on greed and blood, has an appointment with the laws and lessons of history hence the parallels between the gladiatorism and Social Darwinism of American media and entertainment and that of Rome as that decadent empire was imploding for many of the same reasons as the U.S. empire is imploding.
Want Obama wear a flag pin on his suit lapel? Wear it upside down to show the real state and nature of the empire.