Americans need to get over the myth that we ever had a truly “free press” in the USA. The free press has been gone for a very long time. All US media – even most so-called ‘independent’ media sources – are owned by the same six corporations.

Don’t forget that the wealthy corporate elite of Italy placed Mussolini in power, just as their counterparts in Germany (and the US) funded the Nazi party and brought Hitler to power. The Japanese invasions of Manchuria and Southeast Asia were instigated by wealthy industrialists in that country for the same reasons: free access to resources and slave labor.

None of this could have happened without a compliant media happily spewing the government’s lies.

In those regimes – as in the USA – the label ‘communist,’ ‘terrorist’ or ‘anarchist’ was applied to members of any pro-worker organization. Hitler received millions of Deutsche Marks from war profiteer Alfred Krupp and other industrialists in return for outlawing the trade unions. Propaganda played a significant role in molding public opinion.

These same industrialists and bankers – aligned with a belligerent military – later made a killing [ahem...] when they took over the mines and factories in the occupied countries, along with an endless supply of slave laborers…which they then worked to death…

The American worker had a brief period of about thirty years of prosperity following WWII when the baby-boomers received a less unequal share of the profits of American affluence, but all that ended with Ronald Reagan and his loathsome ‘trickle-down’ nonsense. Again, thanks to a neutered, cooperative press these idiotic theories were given credibility. We are now operating like an oligarchy – which is closer to what the country’s founders had envisioned, anyway.

They did not want a true democracy with power shared with the unwashed masses, no way. So they invented the Electoral College…

Americans also need to understand that main-stream media (MSM) is controlled and heavily infiltrated by Intelligence Community [IC] operatives at all levels. Progressives like to believe that reading the New York Times makes them well-informed citizens. Nothing could be further from the Truth. The Times was referred to as the ‘CIA’s Newspaper’ by Bob Woodward many years ago in Rolling Stone magazine. He made that judgment because virtually all of The Times’ top-level editors are beholden to The Agency.

NYT propaganda works so well because its owners understand how propaganda works. The Times does have an excellent editorial section, and it does some good investigative reporting [sometimes]; but always well within the parameters of the very limited agenda demanded by the ruling Junta. Propaganda works because it mixes fact with fiction so well that the target population can’t even recognize it.

63 years ago our country was taken from us by an un-elected cabal of elite banking, corporate and military interests. Former president Eisenhower referred to this junta as the ‘Military Industrial Complex’ and that’s as good a term as any to describe the true rulers of this nation.

The reason America’s war crimes are barred from the political discussion in the MSM is because the USA is a military dictatorship, and they own the media. Like, duh.

Since 1963, the president of the United States has been a ceremonial position. The president is merely a figurehead who occupies the White House and does what he (or she) is told to do. Every president since John F. Kennedy’s very public assassination has known clearly that if they don’t take orders promptly and with enough feigned enthusiasm they’ll end up with a bullet in their head. Or worse.

People need to dig deep to find real news these days. It certainly is non-existent on the major US networks. They don’t even bother to “embed” reporters to cover our global wars anymore because the last thing the elite want is exposure of the War Crimes we commit daily. Besides, virtually every foreign correspondent on American “news” networks already works for The Agency…wink, wink.

Corporate media all sing exactly the same tune as the warmongers because the Deep State learned its lessons more than 60 years ago when college campuses across the country (and the world) violently rebelled against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s. America’s most respected news reader, Walter Cronkite, stated emphatically that the war was unwinnable – on national television! Today he would have lost his job – and probably be deported – but back then there was still some semblance of a free press, and the rest of the major media outlets eventually joined him in their dissent.

Our beloved Military-Industrial Complex never forgot – or forgave – that brief shining moment of Americans finally speaking Truth to Power. The Junta recognized a legitimate danger to their future war plans and so they quickly began recruiting journalists and buying up and consolidating major media outlets across the USA. The result is the colorful array of talking parrots that we now call the MSM.

It is alarming that much of the media is now being deployed to spread the impression this is all uniquely germane to Donald Trump’s presidency and not a long-term, bi-partisan reality which enabled the ascendance of a worthless scumbag like Trump.

Dictatorships flourish and prosper in part by re-writing history and replacing it with an a-historical, de-contextualized – and therefore permanent – present. Without understanding one’s own true history, it is impossible to take measures to correct it or ensure it does not happen in the future. This is effectively what the MSM has done with Donald Trump.

The GOP have no respect for the Constitution, despite all their claims about wanting to protect it. Much like The Bible, they ignore the parts they don’t like and deliberately misrepresent the parts they do; such as the 2nd amendment. If the Trumpanzees had their way, the 1st Amendment wouldn’t even be there.

The latest despicable attacks on the press are nothing new. Trump and his team know that such petty attacks score points with his moronic support base. Part of the problem is that the press isn’t a very sympathetic victim. Corporate media is all about profits, not an informed citizenry.

The MSM is controlled by Wall Street, the Intel community, the billionaires who own it, and the media corporations. The media is most assuredly NOT liberal. The myth of the “liberal media” is one of the most successful pieces of propaganda ever devised and it has been used for decades to manipulate public opinion.

That said; there are still many sources of news and commentary that are not bowing down to the Mercers and the Koch Demons and Wall Street bankers. You just won’t find them on the TV or on radio. Not in the USA.

MSNBC, NYT, Washington Post and the rest of the “nominally liberal” media are in reality more neo-liberal and neo-conservative. They support globalism, militarism, unregulated banking, and basically the whole agenda of the billionaire class. Both political parties – Democrats and Republicans – are in line with the major media.

The use of the term ‘Liberal’ to describe media like the NYT or WaPo was introduced by right wing blowhard William F. Buckley as a way of steering them harder to the right. He openly questioned their neutrality. The NYT, WaPo, MSNBC love big business, and they especially love big war.

There IS fake news, but it’s coming from all of the above. Our media is a tool of the establishment, feeding Americans pabulum, but more importantly NOT COVERING essential stories…

Our freedoms are under attack on all fronts. As a US citizen it’s frightening to see how the state works to control what we see and hear.

[edited reposts from 2017]