The Message of the Media Circus: Accept Without Question!
In an atmosphere of growing anxiety, in which the true causes of our national condition are deliberately hidden and obfuscated by the political establishment and corporate media, there’s confusion and anger everywhere. Americans are badly informed, and downright ignorant about most things that affect their lives the most; meanwhile, saturated with things that have nothing to do with our lives at all. The motive is obvious. A misinformed and ignorant populace is much easier to control, so, we are constantly distracted from the illegal wars we're fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, etc., the untold number of military bases around the world, and of the ongoing huge transfer of wealth to the top .01%.
Despite the advanced state of technology, and the enormous wealth of our nation, we, the 99%, struggle more than ever to keep our heads above water, either trying to get or maintain a job, holding on to our homes, etc., so it's much easier to simply regurgitate mainstream talking points or mainstream headlines without questioning or researching the validity of the facts that supposedly support these talking points or headlines. Yet, repeatedly, the controlled corporate press has proved itself as anything but reliable. Their methods for getting around the truth are as old as the hills. Manipulate the facts. Create the "facts". And/or suppress the facts, to one degree or another. Sometimes the suppression includes not just vital details but the entire story itself, and if it’s not reported, if it’s not news...it never happened! And anything reported outside the mainstream media outlets are just wild "rumors" of paranoid and deranged conspiracy theorists...how convenient for the political/corporate/ruling class!
However, sometimes the media is forced to come half-clean--creating the impression of candor and honesty--due to overwhelming evidence circulating, now, much more common due to the split-second, around-the-world, real-time communication available today. Keep "Operation Earnest Voice" and Online Persona Management in mind. The Internet is flooded with agents defending the government/military and/or the press, and/or corporations/banks that are paid to harass people who question official stories. I mean, really, what could possibly motivate a person to spend hours on the Internet defending the establishment/corporatocracy?
If that doesn't work, muddy up the issue in question and characterize it as impossibly complicated, thus, the truth, unknowable. At the same time, require that the "conspiracy theorists" solve the problem completely, answering all questions to this muddled controversy. If that doesn't work, "bread and circuses". Distract, entertain, and captivate the public with sensational dreck!
Would all of this be necessary if the government and the press were truly working in the best interest of its citizens? No. The State is, increasingly, playing the role of an abusive parent who provides constant contradictions in an attempt to split the personality of the child, who knowing the truth, is made to attack themselves by being fed a constant diet of lies. This immobilizes the person who can no longer establish the truth within their own mind.
Americans, especially, are indoctrinated to believe in sacrosanct institutions and ideas--military, religion, higher education, certain mainstream press outlets (NPR, NY Times, Washington Post, etc.) that are above criticism of the "mindless" masses. The "military-patriotic indoctrination" alone is enough to stop anyone questioning what's really going on behind the scenes.
Take the unprecedented suicide rate in the military. No one questions whether or not this is true; whether it is, in fact, suicide that's occurring, or whether or not, the rate of suicide is indeed, unprecedented. I accepted this as fact until earning about the "suicide" of Seal Team Commanding Officer, Job W. Price. Not that it's an impossibility, but a suicide of an Officer of this grade raises many questions, not to mention that over 20 Seal Team members involved in the questionable capture and murder of Osama Bin Laden are now dead. The bottom line is that it raised the question of the possibility that the exceedingly high suicide rate may incorporate some first hand witnesses to events our government/military rather the public not know. It just seems as if the so-called suicide rate of those who seek to "right wrongs" is really high and out of proportion to the norm.
Remember, the original COINTELPRO--FBI conducted more than 2000 COINTELPRO operations (tactics employed to "disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize" the civil rights, black liberation, Puerto Rican independence, anti-war and student movements of the 1960s...to essentially preserve "the existing social and political order") before the programs were officially discontinued in April of 1971 after the "Citizen's Committee to Investigate the FBI" removed boxes of files from an FBI resident agency office in Media, PA--are still currently in use by the FBI, CIA, NSA and other arms of the state. They've learned their lessons, further insulating their actions from public scrutiny. Domestic covert operations have become a permanent feature of U.S. politics.
"Regardless of the unattractiveness or noisy militancy of some private citizens or organizations, the Constitution does not permit federal interference with their activities except through the criminal justice system, armed with its ancient safeguards. There are no exceptions. No federal agency, the CIA, the IRS, or the FBI, can be at the same time policeman, prosecutor, judge and jury. That is what constitutionally guaranteed due process is all about. It may sometimes be disorderly and unsatisfactory to some, but it is the essence of freedom...I suggest that the philosophy supporting COINTELPRO is the subversive notion that any public official, the President or a policeman, possesses a kind of inherent power to set aside the Constitution whenever he thinks the public interest, or "national security" warrants it. That notion is postulate of tyranny.— Congressman Don Edward, 1975Cynthia McKinney said, "We would rather hold onto the myth than fight for the reality," in the documentary, American Blackout. That pretty much sums it up.
Links:
Guantanamo Attorney Found Dead in Apparent Suicide
Read more...
