Writing for The Week this Thursday, Ryan Cooper contends that when it comes to the unending spread of the coronavirus, conservative media in America shares a large portion of the blame. While issues with state capacity and leader competence certainly played a role, Cooper says that conservative media has catered to a "small but nevertheless very loud and angry minority of Americans have had their ability to reason dissolved in a corrosive bath of crack-brained propaganda."
As Cooper points out, inflammatory claims get attention, and it's possible that purveyors of right-wing propaganda realize that "conspiracy hogwash is the only way to reconcile the belief that Donald Trump is the heroic savior of history with his monstrously incompetent performance — it must be because Deep State villains are undermining him at every turn."
Ultimately, the conservative propaganda machine is going to make this America very hard to govern in the future.
"Just as economic markets do not work when they are under the thumb of monopolist robber barons, perhaps it is time to bring some regulation back to the marketplace of ideas," Cooper writes.
Read the full op-ed over at The Week.
