The North Korean Model

While watching the ongoing debate over the financial crisis, I've been struck once again by the insular nature of the right-wing discourse. All rhetorical reference points are contained within a carefully circumscribed (by whom? I can't tell) area, which contains the only allowable items that are allowed into their arguments. If you've been paying attention for the last thirty years or so, you know what those items are, the most prominent in economic discussions being liberalism --> socialism --> communism. What's striking is how comfortable the speakers are within this magical circle, and how proud they are of never stepping outside it. While I was watching all this, something was nagging at the back of my brain, and it finally came around to the front, knocked once, and came in.
What came to mind was a bit from an article I read awhile ago about North Korea. For decades, it was nearly impossible for any Americans to travel there. It isn't easy even today, but it was long nearly impossible. The stories that did come out described a world that seemed unimaginable: a constant relentless barrage of propaganda praising the Great Leader, who loved his people like children and presided over the best place on earth. The people who lived there had to be miserable.
Except they weren't, necessarily. The article I read was by a Western reporter who, when the doors finally opened a crack, went to North Korea. At one point she had the chance to speak to a teenaged girl. The girl was cheerful and open, and could not have been happier. She lived in a land ruled by someone who loved his people like children, and it was in fact the best place on earth. The reporter was shocked, but eventually realized that the girl was the natural result of decades of propaganda: she had never known anything else. She had never been exposed to any other version of reality. As far as the girl knew, what she had been told all her life was the truth.
There is now a significant segment of the current generation of grownups in this country who have been told all their lives that Ronald Reagan was the greatest president who ever lived, that liberals want to destroy America, that military force is the answer to all foreign policy problems, that AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality, that—you know the list. These people are sincere, calm, and frequently cheerful. They do not have any doubt that they are right. Often nowadays with thirty-something cable-news journalists you can detect real irritation when they are challenged. Their irritation seems to result from a suspicion on their part, not that they might be wrong, but that they are dealing with idiots, who simply do not have a grasp of obvious reality.
This is the world that the right-wing noise machine has created. Like the North Korean girl, and millions of her fellow citizens, there are people in the United States who have spent their entire lives in an environment which is all they have ever known, and more importantly, all they can imagine ever knowing. There is no need to argue the merits of conservatism versus liberalism—for them the issue is settled, was in fact decided long before they were born. FDR made the Great Depression worse. The war in Iraq has been a success. George W. Bush was the object of constant slander. The prison at Guantánamo is necessary. Again, you get the idea.
What to do? I have no magic answer. The one thing I feel sure of is that the post-World-War-Two era of heated but mostly courteous disagreement between right and left is never coming back. The last thirty years have happened, and there is no undoing them. The people who make up Rush Limbaugh's audience are not going to open their minds overnight. Or possibly ever. We are in for a long struggle, and facing that is the necessary first step. The steps that come after that we will probably have to discover as we go.