Are you saying that those groups listed are not responding appropriately to the myth and are sitting on their hands then? Or are these groups outnumbered by their conservative counterparts who are more vocal and or more numerous so it appears they aren't responding? Or is it both?

And lastly, will you be letting us know what you think it is that we could do to change this?

There is a broader agenda at play here. There are three basic groups that can question the wingnut agenda with some authority: the media, the academy, and the cultural icons. There are two ways in which these groups can be subverted--they can be taken over, as they were in the Nazi Germany and the post-Lenin Russia, or they can be discredited, as they had been in the early stages of the formation of the Soviet Union (including the NEP years) and in the early 1930-1933 Germany. Note that once takeover was complete, in each of these cases, the discrediting yielded to purges.

It is clear that in the present state of the American society, purges are quite impossible. It has been tried in the 1940s and 50s and resulted in a serious setback to the right wing. Even their most inspired and unorthodox spokesmen became marginalized (think, Goldwater). Nixon attempted purges for personal reasons (paranoia), not ideological ones, but that too had failed.

So, the post-Nixon Republicans (well, at least the neo-con wing) started looking in a different direction. They knew that the human swamp that is the electorate would not support an outright purge of political opposition, because it is not only unconstitutional, but morally repugnant to most Americans. So they were forced to take the second option either intentionally, as a means to a far more devious end, or unintentionally, as an end in itself. They promoted the idea of the victimhood of the conservative clan and the oppression of the common man by the evil liberal forces who, as a matter of principle (ideology), oppose individuality and personal initiative. This may be a bit trite, but all these tactics have been perfected by the Soviet, the Nazi and the Italian Fascist propaganda and easily adopted in more backwards countries taken over by fascist regimes at one time (Argentina? Greece?).

Note that the attacks from the right against the three groups--the media, the academia and the culture icons--is very similar. I pointed out earlier that the term "cultural elite", as well as the corresponding "media elite", comes from a euphemism for "Jewish intellectuals". Although "ivory-tower academic" does not have the same origin, it readily appeals to anti-intellectualism of the masses (consider, for example, the term "egghead" in reference to intellectuals). Still, it is easier to paint academics with the same "cultural elite" brush as actors and writers.

The attacks have come largely along the same lines--all three groups have been identified as 1) predominantly Democrats, 2) largely liberal, 3) ignorant of the common man, 4) discriminating against the poor conservatives, 5) anti-Christian. I've chosen the specifc progression--the order is not random. The goal is to homogenize the masses at the same time as polarize them against the "cultural elite".

This general methodology has been so successful (at least, in the minds of the leaders of the lunatic fringe), that they've targeted an additional group (or two, depending on your perspective)--the lawyers and the "activist" judges. It is clear that the cultural takeover (or the Cultural Revolution) cannot be complete without complete subservience of the legal system. By all accounts, methodical extermination of intellectuals and free thinkers takes a long time before reaching into the judiciary, but it is clear that it is a serious goal. It is very clear from the rhetoric and the corresponding actions that complete control of all cultural and administrative insititution is the ultimate goal.

I am stating it here because I believe that simply talking about the media is insufficient. The attack is far broader than the media alone and follows a similar pattern across the board. It is also not limited to cultural institutions. The Schiavo case brought out the worst in these people and exposed them to overreach. However, there are other indications. AP (including NYT) has an article today concerning evangelical Christian dominance at the Air Force Academy. West Point and the Naval academy are not particularly different in this respect, although it is hard to believe that the majority of the career military staff, at this point, is sympathetic to this worldview. There is little doubt that the majority of the armed forces is Christian--far greater majority, in fact, than the general population. However, they have not been dominated, to date, by evangelical Christians. This may change. The career staff also has not been dominated by Southerners. This too may soon change. The paramilitary militias, often composed of white separatists or other radical brown-shirt groups have received no condemnations--and some support, in fact--from the right-wing politicians. As long as there is no uniform draft or universal conscription, there is always a danger of these groups forming an alliance with the military or simply taking over the military from within. Certainly, such a strategy would take years to complete, but, if the AP report is true, they are well on the way.

All of these indications taken together point out that this country is slowly sliding toward fascism and pseudo-theocracy. It cannot be a true theocracy because the country will never be governed by religious leaders--they may all be members of the same or similar religions, but the politicians will not be the same people as those who govern the churches.

I want to make two important disclaimers, however. First, simply sliding toward fascism does not mean that it will ever reach that point. But even if it does eventually get there, note that most fascist regimes have not survived for long. Franco's Spain lasted the longest of any European or Christian nation under a fascist regime. Cuba and China, at the moment, are the two longest current regimes that have many of the fascist elements, despite the fact that they are governed by the totalitarian Left. Cuba, in fact, is not even a good example because there is no alliance between the controlling government and the business class, as there is now in China.

The second disclaimer is that I am not pointing to a conspiracy. There is a clear trend toward fascism in the US. There have been similar trends in other nations (and countries). Generally, it is safe to assume that such trends are everpresent, but usually fail to crystallize in the more democratic societies. These elements tend to come together because of common goals and interests, not because of some underground conspiracies, where a single, hidden group makes the decisions and sets goals. The goals are set by the ideology, not by its individual practicioners, and the decisions are often ad hoc (even if dragged out over 30 years) and often prove the eventual undoing of the movement.

An example of a conspiracy would be the desire by the militias to penetrate and eventually take over the military, with the hope of eventually changing the political national identity. However, the potential "takeover" of the military by evangelical Christians is not a conspiracy, because there is a natural trend among the Christian Right to buy into the patriotic and nationalist slogans that they themselves profer, that is not as strong among other groups. Poverty and lack of education also contribute to the self-selection among the enlisted, but not necessarily among the officer corps, which accounts, for example, for an overrepresentation of non-Hispanic Catholics among the students at the three academies (non-Hispanic Catholics tend to come from well-established non-empoverished communities in the Northeast and upper Midwest and, as a group, are better educated than the average).

I think that you forgot one major other reason: There is a huge amount of conservative money going into think tanks who get quoted all over the place. AEI, Heritage, CATO all are heavily funded by Scaife and other right wingers to spout propaganda. What they do is substantially different than what Brookings used to do. Most of their money goes to lobbying, not to research. Cynically, a bunch of old rich white guys give a lot of money to organizations that come up with 101 reasons why rich old white guys should pay less in taxes.

And one convenient way to avoid discussing this influence is to scream ! Liberal Media Bias !

But take a look at where all these right wing columnists get their start and keep their careers. They get recruited in college to some paper like the Dartmouth review, then move to work for AEI or the Weekly Standard, and then slip into the old mainstream media.

That's the huge edge the right wing has. And the persistence of the liberal media myth is that you have a lot of these flunkies paid to just repeat it over and over again.

Emal,
I will provide details in subsequent posts, but I am saying that:
- "those groups listed are not responding appropriately to the myth"
And yes, I will be letting everyone "know what [I] think it is that we could do to change this".

Samuel,
Your point is valid, but the channel they *use* to repeat this myth is the media or blogs (which are covered in my list).

Buck,
Regarding your comments, especially this note:
"simply talking about the media is insufficient. The attack is far broader than the media alone and follows a similar pattern across the board."
-- I agree. The broad attacks on a number of the institutions and strengths of the left is clear, and that's something that requires a comprehensive solution (I am working on something currently). However, the media is the single most important arm that has been hijacked to purse the agenda of the radical Right. And not many people, even progressives, seem to be thinking of media reform in a comprehensive way. That's what I want to bring out in what I am doing right now.

Interesting, but I think you miss the primary reason the public thinks the news media is liberal. Most folks are not politics junkies, they just catch the news in bits. However, they are certain the news media is liberal because they know the entertainment media and pop culture is libertine. They blame or at least associate liberalism with the disappearence of broadcast censorship and standards of decency.

So what you have is some fuzzy thinking by the public that sees news as infotainment and infotainment as a subset of libertine pop culture; QED liberalism dominates the news media.

Wow. Very interesting thread here.

CMike, this morning NPR had a piece about the FCC and their crackdown on broadcasting. They noted that the one broadcasting station that was the worst was FOX - the bastian of unfair and unbalanced reporting. It pisses me off that liberals get blamed for the sins of Murdoch and his desire for riches and power. Of course, I also believe that the worst things about the media is how it coarsens our thoughts about each other - how it breaks down our faith in our fellow human beings making it possible to be more paranoid and more vindictive than we would be normally. This is NOT the type of thing the FCC is trying to fix.

CMike,

Your point is valid, but think of it this way. The public thinks a lot of things based on "gut" instinct, but not everyone of these things is reinforced by the media or people cited by the media in a routine fashion. Not every one of those things is left un-debunked in a routine fashion.

Mary's example is an excellent one. A media baron who owns a news channel that is the home of many conservatives, is also the one peddling all kinds of supposedly "unapproved" (by conservatives) behavior on his other channel(s). A while ago there was report of how much money prominent GOPers got from companies that are also in the porn business. My point is that there are many ways to make people aware that their "gut" instinct is not true. That is really what I'm trying to do with my current series (and the one that will follow it).