While much of the radicalization of young white men into hateful, far-right spaces continues to occur predominantly online and in video game cultures, many of the modern right’s perceived issues with their fellow Americans emanate from the cumulative effect of Fox News and right-wing media exposure, and normalization of its content.
While years ago the John Birch Society railed about water fluoridation in cranky letter writing campaigns from the fringes, today’s version of that far-right fringe has been brought into the mainstream by the internet, as its adherents cheer racist “pundits” like the late Mr. Kirk who laughed at elderly men being smashed in the head with hammers, disqualified grief from mass shootings, expressed bizarre “white replacement” nonsense, and even discredited empathy.
These are some of the effects of 30 years’ worth of shrieking Fox News headlines and manufactured outrage, with barely a connection to the shares reality of our neighbors and fellow Americans.
Prior to the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, and certainly since the arrival of Fox News in living rooms in 1996, Americans across the board broadly believed in democracy and basic, common realities that their representatives in government were obliged to adhere to. Fringe groups like the John Birch Society remained such. The Founders believed, even as they recognized inherent blind spots, that politicians’ sense of self-preservation would prevent them from fully giving themselves over to “flat earth” conspiracy theorists or a charismatic charlatan, as Patrick Henry worried would be the case when he voted against the Constitution at the 1788 Virginia ratifying convention.
Interestingly, parliamentary democracies that don’t have an overriding Fox News in their culture tend not to have the level of excessive polarization we do in the U.S., though that’s in part due to parliamentary forms of government requiring a constant shifting of alliances in order to form governing coalitions.
I often encountered the impact of the “Fox News effect” while canvassing homes and neighborhoods during my campaigns for office. You could always tell when Fox News, Newsmax, or the local Sinclair station was ramping up an issue or moving on to another hot button by what a subset of respondents at the door would be chomping at the bit to engage on. With their kids at their feet I’d ask people what they just saw on Fox News, and they’d look me in the eye and deny they were watching Fox News even as it played loudly on the giant, widescreen TV entertainment system behind them. They didn’t even realize it was on — it was just their background noise.
In presentations to community groups and in individual conversations over the years I’ve noted that Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck, and other graying right-wing media figures don’t engage in, and aren’t even interested in, actual journalism. Like the Hearst Press of the 1890s that cheered on and ultimately manufactured America’s war with Spain in 1898, they’re angling for a reaction, not accuracy. They’re not reporting “the news.” They’re not Walter Cronkite. They’re propagandists using the tools of their newsrooms to cherry pick its contents. They have no interest in weighed, investigative journalism. They’re not concerned about “getting it right” or being clear or even deliberately inflaming things — they just want you to tune in tomorrow. And every day millions of Americans dutifully and voluntarily comply.
The cumulative effect is a sizable portion of our population, under a sustained daily assault they welcome into their homes, has been robbed of their ability to reason, discern, evaluate, or see cause and effect due to non-stop exposure to angry, shouting right-wing media. Over 30 years so many of our neighbors have grown more and more agitated with a seething, rudderless rage, but are unable to articulate what exactly they’re angry about without sounding ridiculous. They claim to despise “liberals” and “the left” even as they agree on the principles of our liberal democracy. They have all the luxuries of modern America, but couldn’t be less happy about it. They face the same problems we all do, but are no longer able to find commonality or across-the board community without first confronting deep-seated suspicions and fears inflamed and exploited by Fox News to ensure they continue to tune in.
They’ve been sabotaged to hate their country, their government, the Constitution, their environment, schools, teachers, scientists, half of their fellow Americans, and even freedom and voting itself thanks to ongoing, deliberately irresponsible positioning, headlines, and commentators. They see nothing but ulterior motives in patriots with hard-won, battle-tested competence and capability.
They lived through the nation’s greatest pandemic and public health emergency in 100 years but still can’t see the miracle of science and effective government that came together to quickly develop and deliver vaccinations in record time that saved their loved ones’ lives, even as hundreds of thousands were tragically lost in the months before. They laud the bravery, heroism, and sacrifices of those at Omaha Beach or Khe Sahn, but recoil like delicate flowers at the idea of being asked to wear a mask to prevent the spread of disease to their family and neighbors. They then cheer violent, unprecedented paramilitary forces hiding behind masks as they defy the due process the blood and sacrifice those at Omaha Beach and Khe Sahn helped guarantee, as those paramilitaries assault and kidnap people going about their lives at home, at work, or even at immigration court where they may be literally attending to the normal process of becoming a citizen of our nation.
Over the last 30 years this segment of our population has so warped the basic tenets of the religion they claim to adhere to in order to excuse, enable, and ensure their Fox News-driven worldview is never challenged that it’s inverted their faith into the opposite of its intent, its obligations, and clear teachings.
They’ve been trained to discard We the People and the United States of America to think only in terms of us vs. them, red state vs. blue state, fight vs. flight, might vs. right, have and have not, mine and yours, and “liberal” vs. “conservative” — as though those words even mean anything anymore in 2025. They’ve been trained to believe that instead of each American enjoying the same extraordinary freedoms as any other American under the law, that when some Americans enjoy their freedoms it somehow takes away from their freedom, or makes their freedom somehow less than, as though freedom were some kind of physical possession.
They’ve been made to believe they don’t deserve health care that doesn’t break the bank of their family for generations if they’re in an accident or have a major illness or simply grow old, or that they or their kids aren’t entitled to the kind of world-class, free education that was once common in the U.S. before the nation’s wealthiest one percent complained about being taxed in order to fund a more educated, smarter, healthier, prosperous society.
The billionaires and “Big Men” who gave us everything from murderous railroad barons to the Great Depression to trickle down economics will always want more, and will always want us divided — the easier to rule over us, just as Dorothea Lange’s famous photo of a Kern County gas station warned in 1938. But it’s our nation’s liberty and diversity that enables the capitalism that fuels our economy that, until very recently, was the envy of the world.
Breaking the cycle starts by changing the channel. Better yet — by turning off the TV, computer, or phone entirely, and ridding oneself of the fevered egos that invade our homes and living rooms on the quarter-hour to program responses and press buttons to create more rudderless outrage.
Talk with a neighbor. Read a book or newspaper. Spend five minutes outside. Right now too many of our neighbors appear to be triggered just by the idea that some of their fellow Americans, somewhere, may be healthy, feeling good, raising their families, contributing to their community, enjoying their lives, and pursuing their happiness as the nation’s founders intended.
