Our Government/Media Complex Doesn’t Serve Us. It Opposes Us.
What do you call a country whose government controls its citizens instead of serving them?
Our media was developed to serve the customer, the reader, the viewer, and the listener. That’s how capitalism works; you figure out what people want, you give it to them, and they give you money.
What a system! It guarantees the seller proceeds to buy shiny stuff and guarantees the viewer good stuff to view.
Simple and pretty close to bulletproof.
So how is it that today our media looks to be pretty much the opposite of what we want to see or hear? It’s simple – you are not the customer anymore.
In 1948 US senate passed the Smith-Mundt act.
It was designed to keep the government from using the media to brainwash the American citizenry.
After being exposed to the Soviet propaganda machine and the horrible effects it has on the citizenry (in Eastern Germany, according to Stasi German police records, 2 out of 3 citizens were registered government informants and the effect on the people was catastrophic), Congress acted to safeguard the people of the United States from the same fate.
“Such propaganda should be kept out of America to distinguish the US from the Soviet Union where domestic propaganda is the principle!” said Edward Zorinsky, the U.S. Senator from Nebraska, in 1985.
We like to believe that as free-thinking individuals we are immune from being affected by propaganda. The truth is we are not. Not really.
There are basic drives we’re all affected by and there are people who’ve spent their lives figuring out how to use them against us.
The study and manipulation of human behavior is a huge industry and it’s extremely effective.
In 2012 the Obama Administration reversed the protections of the Smith -Mundt act. They stuck it neatly in the National Defense Authorization Act and passed it without issue in 2013.
“You’re not going to vote for the Defense Authorisation act? You’re betraying our brave soldiers? How dare you!” That’s how it works.
President Obama described it as ‘modernization.”
Refusing to direct the American propaganda machine at Americans is so outdated.
That’s like bell bottoms and rebelling against the government, man. Not cool!
The monumental propaganda machine built to oppose Soviet expansionism was neatly flipped around and blasted at us Americans instead.
After all, it was a governmental organization. And when in the history of the known world have you ever seen an unneeded governmental organization closed down or its budget cut?
Once these guys realize how easy it is to live on your taxes, it’s hard to convince them to do much anything else.
Flash ahead to the modern day.
in 2021, as part of the Biden administration’s American Recovery Act, Congress authorized over $1 billion to “strengthen vaccine confidence in the United States.”
Not to research, not to produce cures or vaccines. To “strengthen confidence”.
To brainwash American citizens. Including you.
This open propaganda effort involved over 140 TV and radio stations, printed ads, social media campaigns, and a number of high-profile influencers.
The so-called medical experts and community leaders, like the world’s least favorite leprechaun, Mr. Fauci, did the deed for free. They were already making big bank off the pandemic. Fauci’s personal income jumped up by $16.9 million over the last two years and that’s not counting the $369,000-a-year retirement pension he’s aiming to receive as the highest-paid civil servant in the history of the United States.
Almost every news organization came out with stories pushing the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccines and the horrors of catching the Chinese flu, including the so-called right-wing stations like Fox.
Not one station has disclosed the tax money funneled to them to manipulate us.
Ad revenue is routinely reported but news stories are not supposed to be paid for or sponsored. So no law to report that.
News stories are supposed to be paid for by, well, you and me watching and advertisers exploiting that attention.
Problem is that the business model depends on producing quality content and then hoping it finds resonance with the viewers. Which is, to be frank, not easy.
It’s a heck of a lot easier to have someone buy that time. No worries about substandard stories, crappy production, or a small audience. If every channel is running the same story, you’ll get caught in one of them.
You get paid no matter what and with every channel bought, who’s going to bring to light that the story is bull and you’re a bought-and-paid-for snake oil salesman?
And for the government/advertiser buying that space, it’s a sweet deal as well.
If Home Depot dumps a million dollars on an ad and doesn’t sell those wheelbarrows and 2-by-4s to compensate for it, they’ll be out of business right quick.
The government, on the other hand? Well, you and me, we’re still here and all the government has to do to generate some more revenue for more propaganda is to up your tax rate. Or borrow it from China. Just as they did in the ever-humorous “Inflation Reduction ” bill.
We just broke records of the amount of taxes collected. And we’re still running up the national debt at a rate nobody would have ever believed a decade ago.
The government is doing good. A recession doesn’t make them wince much.
And this COVID-19 campaign? That’s not a one-off.
This is a propaganda machine, running full bore on all 8 cylinders and not about to stop. Think Trump smear campaigns, the mysterious invisible white supremacists, the global warming/cooling/warming/cooling/change.
If something works, why change it?
Essentially we’re paying to hire top-level psychiatrists and copywriters for the government to make us think and act the way the people running the government want us to. And if we’re not responsive enough, the government will tax us some more, or run up the debt some more, and put more money into propaganda aimed to warp our minds.
To you, the reader, does that sound like the government is working for us? Or are we the obstacle the government is working to overcome?
