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Comment by Spooky23 | Hacker News Reader

The difference is that traditional chamber of commerce GOP types would hold back the anti-immigration stuff because it killed unions and made their mainstream donors happy. Your chicken slaughterhouse in the middle of Nebraska prospers with underpaid illegals who don’t get workers compensation.

The big money, big ideology people poured money into hard right conservatism. Investing in and advertising on talk radio being one key strategy. Your average blue collar worker/trucker/etc has been indoctrinated with conservative blather for 30 years.

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All I have to say about that is if you think everyone's being indoctrinated except you, you're probably wrong.

Didn’t say that.

When I worked on the farm in the 90s, the classic rock in the barn was swapped out for Rush every afternoon. When I go back home, it’s pretty much the same, except most of the farms are out of business.

If you’re from a white collar, suburban background, you just can’t understand. Most media is New York/LA centric, and conservative outlets reject that.

I'm not, actually. My own father was one of those three hours a day dittoheads.

It's easy to identify propaganda in microcosm, it's harder to see the same thing writ large. I find that most white collar suburbanites I meet have a great number of received opinions and rarely examine the sources of such.

Could be I just misinterpreted your comment.

I kept reading this and thinking, "Doesn't Rush count as classic rock???" Then I read the sub-comment and saw a reference to 'ditto-heads'. Ugh ok. I wouldn't enjoy an afternoon of Rush or Rush for that matter....

Of course. I think he has a good point though, that much of the centre-right discourse pays lip service to nationalism while supporting free-trade and minimal control on immigration. So many who would consider themselves to be anti-immigration end up voting for parties which support wholesale immigration in the interest of big business.

I suspect most people are voting for parties who have policies they don't support. The small-government people are often in a similar boat, for example. Or the hard-core environmentalists.

If the consensus position is broad-scale immigration is a good idea (which seems to be solidly the case in English-speaking politics) then voters who don't like immigration are out of luck.

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