Propaganda and the big picture

Lately quite a few people have started to express their concern if everything they hear in the news is actually really true or not.

Most of us grew up with the belief, that the media has some kind of obligation to tell the truth and expose the wrong doing perpetrated by the rich and powerful

Many of us still believe they do just that, at least most of the time.

Historically, the media was used by the government to spread certain news to shape opinions about other countries and to get people to agree with doing stuff, like starting wars.

They usually succeeded.

And that's fine. It's OK to bend the truth a bit if it's for a good cause, right?
It's not really lying, right?
It's the positive intention that counts, right?
And after all, people make honest mistakes, it's only human, right?

To protect the people from too much propaganda, we had a wonderful act called the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 popularly called the Smith–Mundt Act.

However, this bill was amended with the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act
This Act was introduced by U.S. Congressman Mac Thornberry on May 10, 2012
in the House of Representatives.

The bills purpose is "to authorize the domestic dissemination of information and material about the United States intended primarily for foreign audiences".

In other words, it is now legal to spread propaganda and lie to Americans as if they were an enemy nation to further any agenda.

From this moment on, it was not only morally totally OK to spread propaganda, but also perfectly legal.

Since May 2012 the media does not break any laws by lying to you anymore, they have the perfect right to spread disinformation, it is legal

So, I am not making a statement whether the news are true or not or if certain events actually happened or not.
What I am saying is, they can tell you what the hell they want, it is all legal propaganda.

As legal as taxes, tickets, asset forfeiture, no knock warrants and killing unarmed people.

Whether they take your money to finance their wars, or if they fine you for not wearing a seat belt, if you go to jail for collecting rain water, if they take your stuff and call it "asset forfeiture", if they are spying on you, vaccinate you, microwave you, pollute your air, water and food - it is all legal.
And so is lying to you.

So, if someone points out that not everything the media reports is actually true,
he is not your savior who finally speaks the truth,
he is just screwing with your mind.

The media actually does exactly what it was designed to do.
To program you.
To create opinions, to induce fear, to rile up people against each other, to divide and conquer.
To make people angry and then use their anger to establish even tougher laws.
To normalize agendas through constant repetition until you are OK with something

The real question is not, whether anything reported in the media is true or not

The real question is:

Why are they telling us this NOW?