David Brock's book, Blinded by the Right, traces the beginning of the Right-Wing propaganda used on a national scale back to Nixon's Dixiecrat strategy in 1968, when he used code words to reach racists. A coalition grew within the anti-abortion movement in the '70s to become a viable electorate as Reagan's Moral Majority. Before long it became common practice that Evangelical Christians combined with Big Money fostered Talking Points that were carefully crafted around wedge issues in order to promote voter turnout among people who were concerned about abortion, federal spending, gay issues, etc. It is notable that Rush Limbaugh met with G. H. W. Bush in the Oval Office during the 1991 campaign. That's when I knew that this was indeed a "vast, right-wing conspiracy" as Hilary Clinton famously remarked a few years later.
My personal experience began shortly after Rush Limbaugh's four hour program first began being broadcast in our area in the early 1990s. Soon after that, a neighbor accosted me with a "speech" that was nothing more than an ignorant rant he had heard on Limbaugh's show. I dismissed that as an insignificant encounter until that kind of thing occurred more and more often among more and more people.
Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani facilitated a way for Murdoch's News Corp to get a foothold in New York City -- which was the necessary element for Murdoch to build his media empire here in the US. Thus, Faux Noise went on the air a few years after that.
By 2000, apparently, people on the Left finally figured out that there was a need to respond to the various and numerous media outlets promoting far right ideologies, so Air America was created as a radio outlet. And Al Gore came up with Current TV. The problem is that this kind of programming doesn't appeal to regular Dems, so these efforts have failed.
In the past ten years, I have noticed that it's not just my ignorant neighbors parroting right-wing nonsense. This kind of brainwashing has now infected my own friends and family. I grieve over the loss of these relationships.
But the problem with Frank Rich's optimism is that he doesn't understand that this propaganda is now deeply embedded in the public discourse and is growing. And his argument that Faux is not "tech savy" is discounted by the fact that it doesn't need to be. The situation is this: people are hearing the *same* thing all day long on various outlets and reiterated on the net. People wake up with "Fox and Friends." They listen to Limbaugh on the radio on the way to work. Check in at Red State or Free Republic on the net at their desks. When they get home, they turn on "The Factor" and "Hannity." So, by the time they run into a "lib'ril" -- perhaps at a family dinner on the weekend -- they are set to do battle, jazzed up by what they have seen, heard and read during the previous week. And those of us who have the capacity for nuance and thoughtfulness feel accosted and dazed by the vehemence and hatefulness spewed in our direction from across the dinner table.
And I have said for years that this mindless "group-think," this brainwashing instigated by Big Money on the Right is dangerous to our country. It's dividing the country in a malevolent way that may lead to the serfdom that you, OP, have described. All one has to do is to look at the policies enacted or obstructed by the politicians who were elected by these Dittoheads in recent decades. Then, it begins to look like a plan, doesn't it? And then, you can see that we ignore these practices at our own peril.
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