Noam Chomsky’s The Responsibility Of Intellectuals is a stinging rebuke to the Main Stream Media’s (MSM) role in spreading disinformation and the “spin” that accompanies all information which threatens the status quo. The piece was written back in 1967 at the height of the US Cold War with the Soviet Union and on the cusp of a huge military build-up in Vietnam. But it still rings true today.

In The Responsibility Of Intellectuals, Chomsky cynically examines the hidden agendas and exposes the outright lies and omissions prevalent in the media of the time. He cites Arthur Schlesinger from the New York Times and Walt Rostow – one of the war planners from the Johnson administration – for particular scorn.

Responsible citizens had a duty then as they do now to discover the truth behind the actions of their government and its motives, and not just accept the assurances and proclamations of known liars. Unfortunately, many of our fellow citizens have relinquished those duties to the so-called “experts“, making our perilous status as a democracy more tenuous than ever.

A vibrant, fully functioning democracy demands that its citizens be well informed and educated and clearly this is not the case in America. Since 1967 our fellow citizens have been manipulated, lied to and “dumbed-down” to the point where today many Americans believe in wholly un-democratic, fascistic ideologies which are totally contrary to Constitutional principles – while at the same time believing themselves to be “patriots.“

The current state of the MSM has a lot to do with this. The never ending stream of experts paraded before us on the major networks all have different versions of the same agenda to put forth, which invariably support the goals of American empire building at the expense of truth, reality, and in many cases – basic common sense.

American media is dominated by 6 major media outlets: Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann AG, Viacom, SONY and News Corporation. None of these ginormous multi-tentacled corporations have our best interests in mind. They exist only for the sake of their share-holders and they are only concerned with the bottom line: profit.

The MSM portrays itself as being “fair and balanced” when it is anything but. Even programs like Meet The Press and Washington Week In Review invite guests who will define the given arguments within the same extremely narrow framework. The opinions represented show different sides of the same coin and any views outside those parameters are not welcome. Noam Chomsky has never appeared on any mainstream US television network. Many Americans have never heard of him.

The role of intellectuals in such an anti-intellectual environment should be to look behind the façade of lies and deceit shoved down our throats every day by the MSM and the ability to see the reality of the situation we find ourselves in. It’s a shame that the only place to uncover any semblance of the true picture is on obscure ‘alternate news’ web sites and – gallingly – foreign news organizations like The Guardian and (soon to be defunct) Al Jazeera America.

All of the so-called experts in the US media – including respected publications like the New York Times – are essentially tools of the corporations who own them. The consequences for the average citizen are enormous because they are unable to see or recognize the ways which they are being manipulated by having their opinions spoon-fed to them by supposedly reputable sources. It is up to the intellectuals to find this truth, but as Chomsky points out, many of these so-called intellectuals are not to be trusted because they themselves are beholden to special interests: be they the corporation or the State.

Now more than ever we need an informed citizenry.

I don’t see it happening.