The glory days for population control by the elites was when they held all the key information sources of the people in their own hands – such as the "Big Three" television networks. That all began to change with the proliferation of the Internet when people could access primary sources and other pre-processed information for themselves. This sea change culminated in the elites' partial loss of control in 2016. This is the reason for the entirely fabricated "fake news" crisis and the sudden emergence of information-control laws across the globe. The U.S., U.K. and Germany (i.e. the Soros/Obama core of elite power) are in the process of establishing what can rightly be defined as a global "Ministry of Truth" straight out of the pages of reformed socialist George Orwell's "1984."

It must be acknowledged that Orwell, who wrote this blood-chilling classic as a satire against socialism, has become in retrospect a prophet. His dystopian future of a society defined by perpetual war and thought control through propaganda is close to becoming our reality – despite the populist revolution. This stage play has by no means reached its final act.

We Americans consider ourselves the freest people from thought control and point to the Soviet model as the polar opposite of our system of a "free press" and unfiltered information sources. We mock and disrespect the Mainstream Media (MSM) while at the same time assuming that we are not being influenced by them – or that the elites who run them aren't smart enough to have deployed alternative media that creates the illusion of "fair and balanced" news coverage. But, how often do even the most cynical conservatives give credence to these same media in matters that dominate the news cycle which fall outside our areas of particular interest? We blast them for pro-abortion propaganda, for example, yet assume their reporting on things like U.S. military activity in Syria is objective and accurate.

The Syrian situation is representative of a much larger problem of information control by the elites that too many Americans still don't recognize, and how much the American press today not only doesn't differ from the old Soviet model but improves upon it.

Here's an example of how the propaganda works in the American version. I'm going to use as the example a normally trustworthy conservative-leaning source, the Washington Times. From the Dec. 26 article "Death knell sounds for Obama doctrine as Aleppo falls to Assad loyalists":

"There is no doubt [President Obama] will be hammered in historical terms. The question will be why he didn't do more," Aaron David Miller, a former presidential adviser on Middle East affairs, told Reuters. Mr. Obama's infamous "red line" warning in 2012 against Syria's use of chemical weapons against rebel forces pushed Washington and Damascus onto a collision course. … The Obama administration's approach to the ripple effects of the Arab Spring, which irrevocably changed the political landscape of the Middle East and North Africa, was tantamount to "a policy of calculated dithering," said one top regional analyst.

This article is, of course, red meat for conservatives, but notice how it unquestioningly assumes that Obama's fault was in not taking more military action in Syria, and subtly invokes the "red line" Assad supposedly crossed, which supposedly should have triggered direct U.S. military intervention, which in turn supposedly proves Obama's weakness as a leader. That's "the narrative" for the conservatives. The elites have a narrative for every interest group, it's not just a leftist thing.

Obama is a weak leader, but not because he didn't go to war with Russia. And everyone seems to have forgotten that Syria's alleged violation of the "red line" was one of the most obvious set-ups in the history of "black ops."

One of my favorite "fake news" sites is Zero Hedge, which recently warned that Trump will probably not be able to stop the globalists. I don't know if I entirely agree with this analysis, though I do know that assuming a Trump presidency represents anything more than a fighting chance will ensure our failure.

There's another international news story that has overly encouraged conservatives: the report that Romania's president has rejected the leftists' nomination of a Muslim for prime minister. Yes, that's hopeful on one hand, but in the article credit for bringing about this result was attributed to The Rise Project, a national journalist association funded by George Soros. The Rise Project is just one of the many nonprofit journalism projects around the world funded by Soros, and that should be greatly concerning to every truth-loving person on the planet.

It used to be a fundamental tenet of journalism that every news report should offer more than one perspective on the news, and that every perspective in dispute should be presented in a balanced way with opposing views honestly represented. Personal bias by individual journalists and editors had always tested that standard, but so long as it was in place and respected, the ethic of fair and balanced coverage uplifted the profession and justified the public's trust. Today, "advocacy journalism" (i.e. propaganda) is the norm, and omissions, misrepresentations and hidden false assumptions are ubiquitous.

Today the pretense of journalistic ethics by the MSM is laughable, and respect for the industry is in the toilet – a metaphor never so perfectly epitomized. Yet public scorn has not and will not bring necessary change. The public must demand – and enforce by pressure – the adoption of clearly and publicly stated standards for ensuring journalistic objectivity and the imposition of ideological balance in the newsrooms and editorial boards.

If the populists and conservatives do not force this change, we will never break our society free from the grip of the elites.