Why can't we have a proper hate machine too? I'm tired of coping with unmechanized contempt on such a small scale!
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The right-wing machine enjoys several advantages a left-wing counterbot can scarcely hope to match, not least of which is its ability to rapidly replicate and refresh itself across the country because essential 'raw materials' are so abundant.
Raw materials such as people's lack of detailed information about their nation's actual role in international events, persistent belief in unquestionable national virtue and the near universal appeal of supremacist ideas.
By 'supremacist ideas' I'm not referring to easy targets like racism but a broader sort of supremacism -- a vision of the essential superiority of the US built upon a context free, quasi-religious awe of words like democracy, freedom and capitalism (which are widely understood as forming a concentric circle, diagramming our national perfection).
The right-wing machine can appeal to these ideas again and again, endlessly; perhaps even till the bitter end when our children's children are roasting mutant rats for dinner and staring in toothless wonder at the dark screens of old laptops -- when, in other words, whatever 'greatness' existed has long passed into the shadows.
Indeed, I believe that the tighter things become, the more tenaciously people will cling to these notions and the more successful the right-wing machine will be with its (quite large) constituency.
.d.