Apparently Goering was correct. To destroy our system of government the regime in power needed an accomplice to “tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” Once the media and the government work hand in glove the government can get away with treason, because people who get their information from corporate media won’t recognize it as treason.
Never has there been an administration so disciplined in secrecy, so precisely in lockstep in keeping information from the people at large and – in defiance of the Constitution – from their representatives in Congress. Never has the so powerful a media oligopoly – the word is Barry Diller’s, not mine – been so unabashed in reaching like Caesar for still more wealth and power. Never have hand and glove fitted together so comfortably to manipulate free political debate, sow contempt for the idea of government itself, and trivialize the people’s need to know.
– Bill Moyers 2005 Keynote Address to the National Conference on Media Reform
“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first”.-- Thomas Jefferson
This government, more effectively than any foreign enemy could have succeeded, has seized control from within. It is that domestic enemy bent on destroying our constitutional republic which we must recognize. It is not the foreign terrorists who hate us because they hate our freedom who are to be feared. Just look at the freedoms guaranteed us under the Constitution which have been trampled on and then ask who hates our freedom. In six short years we have seen the utter contempt for all of our protected freedoms as one by one we have been systematically stripped of the very rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. The demise of our constitutional structure was inevitable once we lost our first amendment Freedom of the Press.
“There is one freedom on which all other liberties depend – and that is freedom of expression, freedom of speech, of print. If this is taken away, no other freedom can exist, or at least it would soon be suppressed”.
– Leszek Kolakowski, recipient 2003 Library of Congress Kluge Lifetime Award in the Humanities
A smattering of what’s been lost in the last few years:
– 1st amendment rights – in addition to the eroding and now loss of a free press in service to the people we have seen the disregard for our right to peacefully assemble, exercise our freedom of speech (how many have been attacked, arrested or harassed by authorities for attending peaceful demonstrations or wearing a t-shirt or having a bumper sticker on your car);
– 4th amendment right to be secure against search and seizure and to have a warrant issued only upon a showing of probable cause (this administration defiantly admits to warrantless surveillance);
– 6th amendment right to a speedy and public trial and the right to counsel (the administration deems this right irrelevant under cover of some bogus wartime justification);
– 8th amendment right to be free from the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment (this administration repeatedly and flagrantly flouts the laws against torture, violating not only our Constitution but all international law and treatises as well).
Our Bill of Rights, the foundation of our democracy, destroyed under the pretext of wartime: endless war which according to this administration trumps the Constitution. This illegal war – which our media refused to responsibly report on – is also the basis for this administration’s subversion of the Constitutions’ separation of powers by its unprecedented expansion of executive power. This so-called and trumpeted war on terror has been used to undermine the very essence of checks and balances. We have lost the ability to evict our government through election; lost the ability to stop our government from illegally attacking other nations. In short we have lost the ability to be our own governors and can no longer consider ourselves a free people.
“For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of 'brainwashing under freedom' to which we are subjected and which all too often we sere as willing or unwitting instruments. – Noam Chomsky
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How could this have happened? Precisely as Jefferson and Madison predicted – without a free press, without a separation of press and state, we will never get the truth we need to hold our elected officials accountable. Without a media that serves the public interest we have no means to control the government and assert the will of the people.
Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people -- John Adams
In order to maintain their power, media conglomerates have become the stenographers of the powerful. What the Constitution had intended as the media’s role has been so corrupted it is accurate to say that it has now become the media’s role to keep us in the dark. This media isn’t going to tell us about their conflict of interest. It’s not in their interest! And if they intend to continue to enjoy the free ride they get from the government at our expense, they’re going to continue to deceive us and prevent the truth from coming out.
Propaganda refers to the dissemination of information in a way which influences the opinions of people. Whether we’re being sold the government’s lies or whether we’re being sold products advertisers want us to buy, manipulation of information is essential to a mega corporation whose motive is by definition, mega profit. Until we understand media corporations’ modus operandi most Americans won’t recognize they’re being deceived.
