In my previous post I wrote: Why do Republicans hate the media so much? Is it because of those inconvenient fact checkers, persistent follow up questions or just a general media bias for the truth? When you don't have anything left to say, blame the fourth estate. In fact, why not destroy the trust the people have in government by making it look bad, blame the people for the Wall Street crisis and accuse the other party of being terrorists.
On Bill Moyers Journal, guest Brooke Gladstone from NPR's On the Media, made some interesting comments about public trust in our institutions. She observed that Americans can't trust in government, the president, in the media. "The public couldn't believe what they were hearing from anybody," when it came to the Wall Street bailout.
Thom Hartmann has said that Republicans believe that people are inherently bad, and Democrats think people are basically good. In that context, conservatives have essentially succeeded in destroying the public trusts in everything we look to for help, like the government, the president and media. It makes for a very nervous, but malleable citizenry.
Brooke also made this unsettling point: "It's a kind of government by emial and phone call referendum, rather than trusting the leaders to make the decisions we elected them to make."
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