CT Blue

Eduardo Porter of the New York Times takes notes of the rightward drift in the location of our political center:

Interestingly, Americans say their political ideology has changed little since the late 1970s. The share of voters who defined themselves as liberal was 20 percent in 2010, up slightly from 19 percent in 1980, according to polls by The New York Times and CBS News. The conservative share over the same time rose to 35 percent, from 30 percent.

But these polls ignore how much the meanings of the terms have changed. The rightward drift in economic thinking becomes apparent in surveys asking about specific issues. In surveys 25 years ago, 71 percent of Americans believed it was the government’s job to take care of those who couldn’t care for themselves, according the Pew Research Center. This year the share is down to 59 percent. And most of the shift reflects a decline among Republicans.

(via New York Times)

This is something about which I’ve written time and again, but it’s nice to see the Times catch on, and clearly identify the party that has promoted that drift. I would take issue only with Porter’s suggestion that the drift has been, to a great extent, the result of inexorable forces unleashed by globalization. Those forces may have provided some cover, but it’s really more productive to follow Deep Throat’s advice, and follow the money. Right wing drift began and accelerated under Ronald Reagan, who, before (and after, for that matter) being elected governor of California, was a wholly owned subsidiary of General Electric.

The rightward drift was, after all, accompanied by a massive transfer of wealth, which was itself accompanied by a massive propaganda campaign designed to convince us that government was evil and the rich, whether they be innovators, mere rent seekers, or heirs to the fortunes made by others, more deserving than the rest of us.

There is nothing about globalization that requires a tax policy that transfers wealth to the 1%, nor was globalization itself inevitable. It is, in the way it has been implemented, the result of policies of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations. It is odd, is it not, that trade agreements can include provisions to protect patent monopolies or prevent countries from protecting their own environments when it interferes with corporate interests, but they can’t protect worker’s rights. These were matters of choice and negotiations (at least on the part of powerful countries like the US), not forces of nature.

Since the time of Reagan the lesser minds among us have been exposed to a barrage of right wing propaganda, spearheaded by Murdoch, but aided and abetted by the choice made, under right wing pressure, to abandon the fairness doctrine (thus giving the entire radio spectrum to the right) and by the other corporate media, which, besides turning their news divisions over to the entertainment divisions, treated us to a parade of pundits that constantly adjusted their own “centers” to align with the moving target they themselves manufactured. Since the right owns the media, it’s not surprising that Randians are permitted to bloviate ad nauseaum, but actual socialists will never be allowed to join the debate. The leftmost position allowed today occupies a point somewhat to the right of where LBJ stood 50 years ago. It’s already considered unreasonable among the centrists, for instance, for anyone to take the mathematically sound position that there’s nothing wrong with the social security system that a slight upward adjustment on the taxes of the rich wouldn’t fix, and the idea of single payer health care for all-you know–Medicare for the rest of us–is considered too radical to take seriously.

When all one hears is one side of an issue, or, to be generous, one side and a slightly more rational version of that same side, it is quite likely that one will start to believe that there is no other way to look at the issue, particularly if one is a Republican or an easily manipulable fundamentalist used to being fed his or her opinions. If unions are constantly demonized, a certain percentage of people will begin to believe, against all objective evidence, that union members are demons. If we are bombarded with paeans to the free market, we can even be made to believe, against all the evidence, that it’s a good idea to let profit driven corporations teach our kids or run our hospitals. Not all of us, of course, but as I noted the other day, they only need to fool most of us to get their way.

There is nothing about globalization that compels rightward drift. Were that the case, we would see it everywhere. We don’t. We are a nation which practically gave birth to free speech, but we have created a society in which the range of opinions permitted wide distribution is extremely narrow. This is not an accident. The range of opinions we are permitted to hear, and permitted to perceive as reasonable, are those that are broadly in the interests of the corporations, bankers, and the rest of the moneyed elite. It serves their interests to push economic policy to the right. They don’t much care about social policy, which is why we can have a political system that delivers right wing economic policies while drifting “left” (for this is how we’ve defined it) on issues such as gay marriage.

In short, the center has drifted right because the right owns the media, and the media gets to define the center.