There has always been a divide. People always had issues with guns and abortion, and other things.
As you correctly pointed out. The major change since the 1990's is the introduction of a dedicated, right wing propaganda ecosystem in the media. Conservatives knew as early as the 1960's that their policies and ideas were not popular with the majority of people. This is why they cobbled together their coalition or reactionaries and went all in on racial, gender, and religious grievance. Nixon was a mainline Protestant and Reagan wasn't even religious until Nancy Reagan pushed it. Pat Buchanan and Roger Ailes worked in the Nixon administration and were always pushing for a GOPTv idea. When Nixon resigned after facing certain impeachment and removal, they vowed never again to lose the framing of the narrative to traditional journalism which was NEVER biased against Conservatism, it was just preoccupied with presenting a relatively objective approach.
Fox News and right wing radio changed all that. There were always right leaning and left leaning outlets in media but the Big 3 legacy broadcasters tried a middle of the road approach and left it to the "editorial" segments to discuss "perspectives". Right wingers bought up most of the AM dial and Fox farmed itself out to cable providers for free, taking a huge financial hit in the early years, but establishing itself as the primary network of basic cable, airports, gyms, etc....while CNN, Headline News, and MSNBC sat behind expensive second tier pay plans. They can't win with their policies and message, so they needed to saturate the environment and push their agenda by lying and attacking the traditional Liberal institutions.
Right wing media began to paint all other outlets as "the liberal media" and imply that there was some conspiracy to cover up the truth. They operated almost exactly as a cult, convincing their dupes that they were privy to some special information that everyone else was being kept from. They have made everything into a "one side says this, the other says that" instead of the reality that the mainstream media, for its own biases, tries to report facts, while right wing media has no problem reporting lies and saying they are like facts.
They have neutered the mainstream media because the worst thing that the so-called objective outlets can be called is BIASED so all Fox and their ilk have to say in any argument is that CNN is being biased, and CNN will bring in a bunch of right wing hacks to spew their lies while other pundits and experts answer back with the facts. The fact that the specifically "Right wing" messaging is pumped out daily by this relatively organized media apparatus AND that in order to be "UNBIASED" mainstream outlets allow right wingers to come on to "debate", gives right wingers an outsized influence in the information that is put out to the public. If they remained fringe, then that wouldn't matter so much, but we tend to get a center right, if not clear rightward lean to a lot of the information that comes out, even if it is being mocked or fact checked.
We definitely need to do something about right wing propaganda. I mean we manage to keep left wing media to a minimum. How many actual socialists, advocating for the means of production do we see in mainstream media, or right wing outlets. They are effectively silenced except maybe for Breadtube and minor outlets that never get the time of day.
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