A few years ago, before I spend so much time on dailykos, every day I would check the Washington Post for Dan Froomkin's columns. He aggregated other works and added some comments.
Dan was the star for generating internet traffic at WA Post and after he was fired, I deleted my account and have never been back to WA Post. (As am aside, I used to check the NY Times every day several times, but now do it only occasionally. I do get the Sunday times.) Dan was especially good at the anti Iraq war and the news of the attack on civil liberties by W. Bush.
Here is his tweet from yesterday
froomkin Dan Froomkin
Has the DC disconnect ever been worse? As the economy splutters and Americans suffer, the elite celebrate austerity. http://huff.to/...
Here is the direct link to his Huffington Post article
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
In 2008, the political philosopher, Sheldon Wolin published an important book "Democracy Inc: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism."
Well, the Specter has arrived. We have a managed democracy, not citizens.
Sheldon Wolin wrote this book when he was over 80 years old. His book from the 1960's was the standard text on political philosophy for 40 years.
I have an update from his observations.
He says that the greatest production of the media was the story to justify the invasion of Iraq. In a totalitarian state, the government controls the media. In our corporate media, they know exactly what to do and go about doing it without being told. The media becomes the propaganda source.
Here is my update. I think that the greatest production of the media has been selling the corporate state as the American way. The insane deficit debate shows how far the politicians are from the needs of the country. This will hasten the recession and increase joblessness as described in Froomkin's article linked above.
An important part of the deception is the modification of government statistics to hide the lies. Unemployment is at least 16% if the measure from the 70s are used and it is more likely like 23%. In the 8 years in office, W Bush created zero full time jobs. Likewise other measures are lies and this is being used as a cover for the political dismantlement of the New Deal and the Great Society. As someone pointed out, it is the eradication of the gains from the 20 th century.