Propaganda is dangerous. It is used to manufacture consent. Noam Chomsky has done a great dissection of propaganda in his book Manufacturing Consent. I urge you all to watch this documentary of Manufacturing Consent:

Basically what propaganda does is that it clouds our minds with misinformation or the distortion of the truth, until we accept such information as the truth itself, thus losing our ability at giving government an informed consent to run our lives.

An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned.

The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon, according to the summary of the law at the House Rules Committee's official website.

The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.

http://www.opednews.com/...

The new law would give sweeping powers to the State Department and Pentagon to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public. “It removes the protection for Americans,” says a Pentagon official who is concerned about the law. “It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.”

According to this official, “senior public affairs” officers within the Department of Defense want to “get rid” of Smith-Mundt and other restrictions because it prevents information activities designed to prop up unpopular policies—like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So what exactly would the new law do?We must remember that it was inaccurate information and propaganda by the Bush administration that got us into the Iraq war in the first place. The result! "1,455,590" dead Iraqis and 4,801 dead U.S. soldiers.

See the links below to see the figures for yourself:

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/...

http://icasualties.org/...

Propaganda is detrimental to our society, it gives us an illusion of freedom when in fact we are misled.

Also read this great article by Mediaite on the subject here

Please someone tell me that is is all a big fat joke, and I will delete this diary!