This is good analysis Matt.

A few more issues which tend to be forgotten in the miasma of US corporate/military propaganda involve a reliance upon a form paternalism - a veneer of credibility whereby Doctors are sold cigarettes (1940s) and minimize their harm until it's too late (1970's). Chemical companies dump remnants upon unsuspecting populations until illness, and long term damage take root downstream. Pharma bros, drug companies, and cartels corner the market on all kinds of substances that foster addiction, permanent market share and daily mis-dosage of death. By the time we figure it out, the death pattern and the death of trust waft over all us all.

When we consider the Patriot Act, how our data is being used against us, and what has happened to voices who dissent in this culture, we see that the normal is abnormal or as Dr West says - propaganda helping us adjust to the new normal. We haven't reached death yet on the media front, even with Russiagate, Ukraine/Syria intelligence proxy wars and CoVid - but the patient is terminal. The last gasps from corpse of American media are being belched out - careerism, concision, repetition, and self-censorship.

Somehow, many of us Americans sense that this empire is over, has been over for a decade, but the corporate zombie-foreign policy-insider keeps pumping up dead like its the Federal Reserve after the Financial Crisis. The wonks are back-dating the documents, the press are ignoring the crimes and the people are splintered into atomized units that are to be ignored at the same rates to how their SES grows.

These networks (relations) inside the Empire have been corroded for the last 75 years - we just did not know how much. The first rule of any type of reader or citizen awareness is to know who to trust. The fact that this is so difficult now speaks to how far gone we are as a cultural and a hegemon. Trust should be incremental and reciprocal binding the parties together in self-interest and allowing for cessation. This is the exact opposite of the US media - being told what to think, trying to create a permanent revenue generating stickiness that causes all of the parties to die, to become ill, or dependent.