"There Can Be Little Doubt That Dr. King Would Not Have Been Allowed to Speak..."

I didn't watch the coverage of the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington March, though I did read a thing or two about it. Here and there. Around the InterWebs.

Actually, there wasn't much about it from what I saw. It was as if the 50 year milestone of the March on Washington had turned into almost a non-event. Not even up to the standard of a Veterans' Parade of the handful of survivors of some doGforsaken war or other.

Of course those of us who have had anything to do with any of these things know how hideously the legacy of Dr. King and the rest of the Civil Rights community has been perverted in service to something else altogether, whether it be Rightist politics or Neo-Liberal Economics, or corporatism or imperialism or what have you.

A few words here and there, a few surviving icons, and that's pretty much it.

How To Control the So-Called "Debate"

[Note: It doesn't matter what the "debate" happens to be; we could be talking about the Summer Story of Century -- the NSA Surveillance Thing -- or closing a neighborhood school or building a new WalMart; the tactics are the same.]

I've written quite a lot about propaganda and its relative success in shaping and controlling people's perceptions of the world and those around them. We are immersed in propaganda 24/7, and having been born and grown up in the Post WWII Baby Boom generation, I know that has been true my entire life.

Discussing perception management with my parents (my father born in 1901, my mother born in 1911), I realized they, too, spent their entire lives being propagandized to believe certain things and to "know" certain things that I -- in the Ultimate Wisdom of the Adolescent in the latter half of the 1960's -- knew were manifestly untrue. In hashing these things out, though, they considered me to be the victim of propaganda, specifically of Communist propaganda designed to undermine my patriotism and ultimately to conquer the USofA.

When I told them that that was propaganda, it became clear to me that we were all immersed in the same stew of lies, half-truths, misdirection, and fabrications, and finding our way out of it -- if there was one -- could be a full-time job.

It was clear to me in studying history and journalism in this country that there has never been a time when most of the media was not the propaganda wing of the government and its corporate sector patrons. Never. Not even during Watergate, that Great Gate that famously brought down a President.

Radical and alternative publications have always had a place in the American media environment, but even when they are honest and wise and true (often incompatible objectives to be sure), they cannot be separated from their political and ideological perspectives or those of their publishers, and whatever truth one may find in alternative media must still be approached with skepticism and critical thinking, just as one must approach the often more blatant propaganda of the Major Mass Media.

Not even Ramparts (c. 1962 - c. 1975, RIP) was immune from the general propaganda of its era nor was it free of the urge to propagandize on behalf of its own objectives. (/s)

The use of propaganda by government was supposedly illegal until very recently, but any sentient being  should long ago have realized that the government is just as adept at using propaganda tactics on the People as any other institution in our lives, and it has never ceased doing so. A key to understanding the use of propaganda by government and the media is their institutional nature.

We all want media we can trust. We want a government we can trust. The horror is... there isn't any.