One of the things that has impacted our country to a greater extent is the influence of partisan cable TV news. Now I don't really watch cable news except during certain crises, but you know its there.
It sort of breaks down into CNN, the oldest and the most neutral, Fox and MSNBC. Of course, we all know that the actual news doesn't require 24 hour a day coverage so the rest of the day is filled up with commentary.
It seems that attacking the establishment as being trying to make you conform to some hidden agenda is a successful tactic. This is pretty much my impression of what the commentators at Fox news do.
It's got an appeal to be able to talk about how those unnamed "they" have an agenda they are imposing on everyone else and making schools stop saying the pledge of allegiance or disrespecting the police or letting minorities and immigrants ruin everything.
In fact the essential message seem to be the main part of the campaign run by Trump, a message about how we are on the wrong track and need to get back to what made us great.
Now there isn't really any empirical evidence to support the argument, some anecdotal stuff and some real problems caused by improving technology and world trade, but the message resonated with many people.
Now the point is that America is the largest economy in the world but it isn't the fairest. Some people have a lot more than others and in most countries they would be the ones that represent the "they" everyone talks about. However, this has been diverted here to the immigrants and refugees are hurting the working class person who lost their job in a factory and has to eke out a living.
The weakest people have caused all the problems because they are getting all that free stuff our taxes pay for (they don't) and ruining the economy.
The strategy has worked really well as we now see struggling Americans committed to providing tax breaks to the very wealthy. They want to use hard earned tax money to pay for a wall to keep out people who are a great help to our economy by paying taxes for things they can't get.
Facts are dismissed as fake news and fake news is widely believed.
There are people who are still convinced that Hillary was engaged in a whole lot of nefarious activities primarily because no evidence of anything exists, so it must have been covered up. There are still people who believe our prior President was a Muslim born in Kenya.
The fact that they saw someone talking about this on Fox is enough for them, and the hen house will never be the same.
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