Americans will not watch old format CNN news anymore...
"Limbaugh Style" TV is keeping some people flipping between Fox and MSNBC...
If Hannity and ORielly went off the air...Keith and Rachael would not be far behind...
This type of harsh political environment was very common in the 19th Century...where a town of 2000 people would have five newspapers ...all devoted to or named after a political point of view..."The Democrat" The Independent" etc......!
Curiously...in the 1950s...there were only three networks...and they were devoted to an educated and liberal view of society... The memory of the Great Depression and the War was still fresh...so people went along with Cronkite and Brinkley and the others without question...
The uneducated were supposed to sit quietly and listen to their betters... Rational discussion made news dull...and only a few grownups where interested in it...since the nation was still prosperous...things continued...
After Raygun...the working people were under pressure... AM "hate" Radio provided "political entertainment" for the working class men during "drive time"...bashing their boss and "the man" , and civil rights, and politicians was something for the drive home after work...for many people...mostly white men...
Then Fox moved "Hate Radio" to prime time TV...and that changed everything...
No longer was Hate Radio...only for drive time...it was on prime time...and it made politics into a contact sport... This was really a reversion to the old cracker barrell politics of the 19th Century...!
So...the good old days of the 1950's when under educated people listened to the betters ... was over...
The problem is that by "enabling" the "know-nothings"...and "giving voice" to the uninformed and under educated...you unleash some potential problems... Namely the "mob"...which the founders feared in the Federalist Papers...that is why we have a Senate and an Electoral College...to avoid rule by the uneducated "mob"...
That is where we are today... We have reverted to a 19th Century political system...
But at a time when the nation is under serious economic stress...and highly polarized.
