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The
Right's Power of Infrastructure
by Robert Parry
iany on the Left have fumed about
President Barack Obama’s failure to reverse Bush’s national security
policies.
However, if one examines the relative power factors, it would probably
amount to political suicide for Obama or
any national leader to try to dismantle these interlocking
infrastructures.
While the Right has worked diligently over the past several decades to
strengthen its institutions and influence,
the American Left has marginalized itself, choosing to possess no media
outlets or think tanks that even come close
to rivaling what the Right has in multiplicity.
For instance, wealthy progressives allowed the liberal talk-radio
network Air America – a modest effort to balance
the Right’s enormous advantage in talk radio – to collapse this year.
Meanwhile, worthy Internet sites go begging,
while the right-wingers keep adding and adding to their media assets.
(Further revealing the asymmetry of today's American media, right-wing
Newsmax, run by conspiracy theorist
Christopher Ruddy, has put in a bid to buy the Washington Post Co.’s
financially troubled Newsweek. Though
best known as an Internet site, Newsmax already publishes a national
magazine.)
Besides the Left’s benign neglect toward institutions needed to fight a
"war of ideas" with the Right, there is also
the cumulative impact of the ever-expanding
military-intelligence-neocon arsenals that can level almost any
political
adversary who poses a significant threat. "Themes" knocking down a
political enemy can be put into play
instantaneously and will quickly reverberate through the Right's media
echo chamber into the mainstream press."