First, of course, all media must have advertising dollars to function, and it isn’t the people at the bottom who are buying ads. Second, for at least two decades now the country has been increasingly exposed to the politics of Radical Conservatives, people who want to either limit all public spending to areas that benefit them, or want to dictate a social agenda under which other Americans would be constrained to live. And sometimes the goals are intertwined. The Conservative Media has been so successful that the so-called mainstream media has taken up much of this agenda.

These Radical Conservatives have succeeded in making their message a large part of the nation’s dialogue, and the mainstream media has become so synonymous with the directly funded Conservative Media that it may as well be called the same thing; it certainly isn’t a “Liberal Media,” and its not even a middle of the road media any more.

The Radical Conservatives, of course, continue to use every medium, but a favorite is the proven success of right wing talk-show commentators like Rush Limbaugh, whose nickel-plated tongues are ready for hire. These "commentators" are people who are not at all scrupulous about their facts, and their integrity never gets in the way of their agenda. These propagandists trick working people, whether they are well educated or not, into being suspicious and contemptuous of other working people,  especially those who are at the bottom of the economic pile. By doing this they keep people from looking at the whole picture.

Huge government subsidies are available for a vast array of corporations, from airline companies to timber combines and coal mining corporations, to say nothing of agro-business; yet while sometimes there are good public reasons for government support, there are far too many instances where these subsidies are handed out no matter how poorly managed the companies are or how much money the CEOs and boards of directors pocket.  And this is not even to talk about corporate loopholes, when billion dollar companies like Enron pay no taxes; we wouldn’t even have known that about Enron if the corporate raiders at the top hadn’t been so greedy that they overplayed their hand and sunk the company beyond any ability for a bailout.

Such is corporate welfare.

                 But the Radical Conservatives and their paid shills like Limbaugh and his ilk want you, me and everyone like us to ignore those billions in unpaid taxes and government handouts and instead worry about how some poor fool on welfare might be beating the system for a subsistence amount of money. Only the tiniest fraction of the people who get welfare want to avoid work or the chance to better themselves; who wants to live on the bottom? But the Radical Conservatives want working class and middle class people to resent the people on the bottom, not the ones on top.

            The Radical Conservatives and their media flacks talk about America failing, America in crisis, and they try to make Americans angry about the help provided to the downtrodden while at the same time making them suspicious of their neighbors. What they’re really trying to do is make the average American blame everyone but the ones who are raiding the treasury, while simultaneously trying to make them feel that the only way the county can be saved is by Radical Conservative action.

If things are falling apart, they imply, it must be those bleeding heart liberals who are trying to solve social ills and who are giving money to the poor that are causing the problem. They would like everyone to feel American democracy is under siege from social radicals and that to keep from failing the country needs to look for stronger methods of government, and stronger government managers. But they are the ones with an agenda; they would like to control our tax money and us. They are the enemy within.

            But we’re still stronger than the Radical Conservatives and the Conservative Media, with all their Rushes and all the people influenced by them. All we have to do is remember that fact. As that great American, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “All we have to fear is fear itself.”