Are We Being "Managed" By The Federal Government We Trusted?

The US government already has checks in place to dissuade perception management conducted by the state towards domestic populations, such as the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which "forbids the domestic dissemination of U.S. Government authored or developed propaganda... deliberately designed to influence public opinion or policy."[11]


Perception management can be used as a propaganda strategy for controlling how people view political events. This practice was refined by US intelligence services as they tried to manipulate foreign populations, but it eventually made its way into domestic US politics as a tool to manipulate post-Vietnam-War-era public opinion. For example, in the early 1980s, the Reagan administration saw the "Vietnam Syndrome"—a reluctance to commit military forces abroad—as a strategic threat to its Cold War policies. This caused the administration to launch an extraordinary effort to change people's perception of foreign events, essentially by exaggerating threats from abroad and demonizing selected foreign leaders. The strategy proved to be very successful.[12]

Beginning in the 1950s, more than 800 news and public information organizations and individuals carried out assignments to manage the public's perception of the CIA, according to the New York Times. By the mid-80s, CIA Director William Casey had taken the practice to the next level: an organized, covert "public diplomacy" apparatus designed to sell a "new product"—Central America—while stoking fear of communism, the Sandinistas, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, and anyone else considered an adversary during the Ronald Reagan presidential administration. Sometimes it involved so-called "white propaganda", stories and op-eds secretly financed by the government. But they also went "black", pushing false story lines, such as how the Sandinistas were actually anti-Semitic drug dealers. That campaign included altered photos and blatant disinformation dispersed by public officials as high as the president himself.[8]

The term "perception management" is not new to the lexicon of government language. For years the FBI has listed foreign perception management as one of eight "key issue threats" to national security, including it with terrorism, attacks on critical US infrastructure, and weapons proliferation among others. The FBI clearly recognizes perception management as a threat when it is directed at the US by foreign governments.[13]

For the full text of this article, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_management

You can also research Perception Management Firms, and the reason those firms exist. They do not 'spin" the truth, they create an alternate reality. Comforting? How much of what we "believe" is actually manufactured and how much is true? And how long have governments been "playing" their citizens? Decades? Hundreds of years?

Stay Engaged America, It's Time To Take America Back. It's Time To Expect More From Our Government. You Know, Like Complete Honesty...