Great post, I would only add that Republicans and conservatives generally have worked hard and persistently and very successfully over the past thirty years or more to develop a powerful media apparatus to feed their base only what they want to hear and to keep them in a constant state of outrage. Fox News is the classic example - a pure Republican propaganda network that has developed down to a science the art of feeding their viewers the world as they wish to see it and creating enemies and faux outrages to keep them angry and frightened- but they now have other right-wing TV networks like Newsmax, they're buying up local TV stations via Sinclair Broadcasting, and they have developed a national network of right-wing radio hosts. And with the development of social media they have created whole new ways of reaching their base. And now they're simply buying up any opposing media and forcing them to move to the right - the Washington Post, LA Times, Twitter (via Musk), CBS News (via Skydance taking over Paramount), and so on. It's no longer just about spreading propaganda to their base, they're now trying to silence any opposing voices, which was likely the inevitable endgame for the people controlling the conservative/populist/authoritarian movement.
