It just struck me forcibly. The “polarization of American politics” we so often hear about, that the pundits lament, is the deliberate product of many many years of cynical agit prop by Republican operatives and their collaborators, demonizing “liberals”, especially via talk radio and Fox News. Remember, Fox News was headed by Roger Ailes, a Republican propagandist. And a large number of talk radio stations have been purchased by Republicans. Like the Sinclair group who are currently engaged in doing this.
Republicans have recognized that ownership of mass media is an extremely potent weapon in the fight to win elections. Democrats have failed to respond in kind.
Folks such as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, Hugh Hewitt, Laura Schlessinger, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity … (and lets not forget Mike Pence before he got elected to Congress) have made themselves a comfortable living demonizing liberals.
Many of them resort to extremely crude and childish demonization. Part of the shtick was outright lying of the worst sort. Ann Coulter accused liberals of being traitors, destroying America. I heard Rush in 2008 repeatedly calling Hillary Clinton a “femi-Nazi”. Another method that has been extensively employed has been a less strident but nonetheless one sided commentary on politics on talk radio, cutting off callers who are articulate in defending liberal policies and politicians. I can recall Mark Levin cutting off such calls by snarling “Get lost, you scum”. Crude. Rude. A prelude to Donald Trump’s cheapening of political dialogue, throwing logical and rational debate to the winds, in favor of …. demeaning adjectives.
We Democrats have sat by allowing this to happen, believing that a majority of voters will reject this kind of ridiculously stupid talk. Instead, the stupid talk has produced a large anti-liberal group of voters who can be trusted to oppose Democrats. Far too many people have been conditioned to be uncivil and illogical in talking about politics. To take pleasure in voicing profoundly infantile insults like “libtard”. This is all about tribalization. This is the kind of indoctrination that soldiers have been given when revving them up to kill opposing forces. Turning liberals into enemies. The kind of dumb tribalization that can transform football fans into a dangerous mob, capable of assaulting supporters of an opposing team.
The question is, how do we fight this ? Can we turn it to our advantage ?
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(One possible tactic that occurs to me is to single out and demonize the demonizers. For example, play sound bites of Ann Coulter calling us “traitors”, then responding with “Ann is a liar… a dangerous liar… don’t you see what she is trying to do -— poisoning American politics”. )