Conservative alternate reality starts with the children

Rss@dailykos.com (dante Atkins)
Sunday, August 10, 2014, 11:56 am
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The conservative movement has spent years designing an alternate reality for its membership. It's a universe in which climate change isn't real, but the terrorist attack in Benghazi was a full-blown cover-up. In this universe, Mitt Romney had the 2012 presidential election in the bag, the Affordable Care Act is still a massive failure, and every single conspiracy theory about the left isn't just a theory: it is simply known, with no citations necessary. As Paul Harris wrote after his encounter with the 2013 edition of CPAC:
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At the conservative gathering CPAC last week the enormity of this media world was remarkable. The hall was packed with talk radio shows, conservative publishers and authors signing their latest books, many of which were bestsellers. This is a world where it is seriously believed that the United Nations is trying to take over the US, and Obama is a Kenyan socialist, an Islamist, a Marxist or the biological son of communist-sympathiser Frank Marshall Davis. This is a world where Obama wants to take away all guns, where he has dictatorial powers worthy of an emperor and where the US media is a liberal conspiracy pushing abortions and being gay. This is the world where Glenn Beck, former Fox TV host turned popular publisher of The Blaze website, is hugely powerful and shock jock Rush Limbaugh is king.

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The basic thesis behind the alternate universe is that the right-wing authoritarian personalities, perhaps best described by John Dean, feed off a media echo chamber that must become increasingly hyperbolic to gin up the necessary outrage to produce desired electoral outcomes. All the while, conservative media authority figures, chiefly Rush Limbaugh, enforce orthodoxy by keeping politicians who know better from bursting anyone's bubble. It's an adequate methodology for drawing in and permanently entrapping those who were already in conservatism's orbit, but not so good for attracting new followers to the cause. Unfortunately, for anyone with an appreciation for facts, however, it looks like the conservative media operation is no longer content just with selling its existing "nonfiction" wares to adults.


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