"The ambient politics of America -politics you pick up if you're not paying attention - is far right

[Are_grits_groceries]

<snip>
I can't get over how John Emerson just nailed it in his Open Left post, Thanks for nothing! when he wrote, "The ambient politics of America -- the politics you pick up if you're not paying attention -- is far right."

So OK, what do we do to reach regular people, at a time when media concentration has, what is it now, 5 huge corporations with interlocking Boards owning all the media - the newspapers, magazines, networks, TV and radio stations, etc? How do we inform regular people of the benefits to them of progressive ideas, policies, values and candidates?

http://www.openleft.com/

This is the problem. People don't pay enough attention, and the noise they hear running in the background is wingnuttery. It will seep into the mind without challenge.

That is also what is behind the RW repeating the same memes. They are the ones you remember whether you believe them or not.

[annabanana]

1. This is the power of RW corporate "framing". The words the

commentators use before and after the commercial breaks... the little clues as to how a particular story should be approached. . That's where the "water that we swim in" comes from.

That becomes the "norm" that we can't see until we find an alternate information source.

[StarfarerBill]

2. True, but first we have to recognize that there *is* a problem.

As both you and Grits said, this right-wing propaganda is so pervasive that it's in almost everything we take in, media-wise. It becomes all we know, with counter-messages being marginalized...and that very marginalization rationalized as mass rejection, rather than deliberate corporate-media concealment. With nothing immediately obvious to counter the far-right paradigm and with few or no intellectual tools with which to dig for the truth, people find that paradigm to be a Mobius strip with all twisting-and-turning media roads leading back to it; no escape except to break the strip, which isn't likely without knowledge of alternatives which are themselves hidden. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.

The only real means that I know of for countering this insidious hall-of-mirrors is education, breaking through the fog with the light of real alternatives and hoping that the messages is or even can be recognized.

[struggle4progress]

3. "Agitate! Educate! Organize!" It works. Join or create a local group. Pick an issue.

Find a way to educate some of the public about the issue. Have an actual goal. Plan some actions. Don't get discouraged: rinse and repeat.

By talking to the public, you learn what they're actually hearing and saying. After a while you'll learn how to respond. If you recruit 4 really dedicated and maybe 100 occasional activists for every 10000 of population, you can make a difference

[hunter]

4. We are the top dog of the American Banana Republics.

We've been thus for a long time. Underneath the false trappings of civilization and democracy we are a developing nation ruled by right wing iron-fisted oligarchs.

"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater." -- Frank Zappa

[starroute]

5. One ray of hope is that people love to feel they're in on a secret

Positioning yourself as going up against conventional wisdom is an excellent way of getting attention.

The right knows this and they love to portray themselves as the brave skeptics defying the behemoths of political correctness, climate change "orthodoxy," or whatever else they want to oppose.

The bad news for us is that they've been very successful at it -- the good news is that it's built on lies and is therefore vulnerable.

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are trusted, especially by young people, because they're seen as outsiders defying entrenched interests. We could use to cultivate more of that outsiderness in general.

For example, it may feel nice to have Al Gore on our side when it comes to global warming, but Gore is one of the greatest assets to the right because he enables them to portray his crusade as a hoax designed to put money in the pockets of people who are already wealthy and powerful.

The right constantly links actions on the left to George Soros or one of a tiny handful of other wealthy progressives -- and the left hasn't been nearly as dogged in linking the right to its much larger array of ultra-wealthy uber-conservatives.

The right has managed to portray ACORN as something like Murder, Incorporated -- a powerful criminal organization with tentacles reaching into every corner of America -- instead of what it really is, an occasionally sloppy assemblage of the poor and dispossessed doing their best to help one another survive in a hostile society.

It's never easy to get through the media filters, but if the left can make people feel like they're going up against the Evil Empire, it will go a long way towards recapturing the narrative.