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some of us are still persuaded that it was a "noble war",and that the military was forced by liberals to fight with one hand tied behind it's back.
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which was obviously a favorite line of german extreme right groups after world war 1.
this might be a good thread for references to systematic work on media politics in the states---information that'd let us push beyond the anecdotal, beyond the repetition of various stock phrases that substitute for argument.
but even there, you have reed irvine type "analyses" that enable conservatives to indulge the "he said she said" game at this level.
traditional conservatives defended the status quo.
this defense of the status quo did not preclude accurate description.
american populist conservatism has a nihilist relation to information, and so are not in a sense defending the status quo in anything like the mode of folk like, say, edmund burke. they are doing something else...and if you think about it, what they are doing relative to information is quite radical and quite new.
so i dont think that people like roger ailes are conservative in the old sense---they are rightwing radicals. perhaps this is why there are so many symmetries that link contemporary populist "conservatism" to right radicals of the 1920s.