While we're offering theories about the disempowerment of the left,
how about this one: the right stole a march on the left during the
culture wars. While the the left was inventing the concept of
marginalization, the right was busily deploying it against them.
I'm toying with the notion of think tanks as the bio-weapons labs
of the ongoing meme wars, where the right invents highly infectious
memes that support their agenda, whittle them down to sugar-coated
bite-sized pieces, and release them on an unsuspecting populace,
who then goes around happily yacking up the talking points they've
been fed. The "liberal media" meme, for instance. The whole sad
farce of "liberal" being turned into a term of opproprium. When it
comes to spinning perceptions, the right seems to have a much
better grasp of the tools and how to use them than the left does. I
think the left will have to catch up if they're ever going to get
anywhere.
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