A Call To Arms

Adam McKay, has one the best analyses of what's going on.

A must read.

So what is this house advantage the Republicans have? It's the press. There is no more fourth estate. Wait, hold on...I'm not going down some esoteric path with theories on the deregulation of the media and corporate bias and CNN versus Fox...I mean it: there is no more functioning press in this country. And without a real press the corporate and religious Republicans can lie all they want and get away with it. And that's the 51% advantage.

Adam McKay is a brilliant comedy writer and satirist. It is not a coincidence that he is also one of the most effective (and underappreciated) spokesmen for the liberal cause.

There is a reason why liberals are funny, and conservatives are not. The corollary to this is: there is a reason why conservatives are better at talking points than liberals.

The dominant ideology of the conservative movement is maintaining the status quo. The most effective way of doing this is repeating the same points defending the status quo over and over and over again until people believe this. We have another name for this: propaganda.

This is why non-conservatives are horrified by Fox News and their ilk. Why non-conservatives are horrified that conservatives don't respect science, or inquiry or pesky things like data.

In order for conservative messaging to work, information that is contrary to the conservative idea must be ignored.

The dominant ideology of the liberal movement is challenging the status quo. The most effective way of doing this is debate and argument. However, the most effectively delivery mechanism of debate is satire.

This is not a new phenomenon. This dates back to the tradition of the court jester being the only one allowed to speak truth to power (i.e., the King.)

Satire is used to challenge the status quo. That's why Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert exist on the left--and the Fox News attempt to mimic it end disastrously.