Thank you comrade! For spreading the good word.

If they fund catholic private schools...

Relax your body.

Yeah, and by a nefarious twist of fate only Russia has the proof. Sounds a lot like the nuclear and bio weapons pinned on Iraq...

Without an independent UN investigation, I label it as fabrication and misdirection.

I am not arguing pro or against something, I am discussing reality.

We can't turn back the clock to the industrial revolution. Things have evolved considerably.

While I agree that long term truth is better than a lie, there is a lot of censorship, manipulation, subterfuge, misdirection, outright lying, and funding being channelled towards this, trying to create, perpetuate the lies, or expand upon them. And lack of willingness from most people to experience legitimate suffering. All this gives rise to what is called willful ignorance.

Also there is an education system that shape us as tools to be used. Like mercenaries, to the highest bidder.

I like that metaphor a lot. But I think reality, unfortunately, is too corrupted and complex to have such an elegant solution, and people, due to upbringing and/or education, can take a great while to identify the truth, if at all.

It goes beyond just analysis... For example, in social media, they can abstain from puting posts on other people's feed, or decrease the visibility of them.

I mostly agree with you. Though there are two things:

1. Like in that quote I put, people start losing their ability to identify truth, with all the lies being spinned and submerged in;
2. If truth is persecuted, so are the people who say it, or maybe just even take it as truth, so many just shun truth and move away from it.

While true, like you said even without open censorship, things get censored. Or at least put on different light and given different focus.

The thing is truth rarely is left to speak for itself. A number of people have their hand on its throat, in one way or another.

If you say so, I believe it... I read mostly international press. American press is very divided and subjective. And social media!? Lol

Russia by itself has the power to put a subject in discussion at the UN.

I appreciate the ad hominem though.

Justice cannot be the natural result even without open censorship, because of economic inequality and the dynamics of power in the civilization.

Who will bite the hand that feeds them?
Or spares them?

All this discussion [Thank you for it!] made me realise how almost pointless is free speech in the big picture, when you can buy support for your cause and drown dissent, create heroes, pit others as villains, and keep or marginalize others still.

You appear to be speaking sincerely and I really appreciate that, but there is very little chance of natural blow-back when you control the information and the flow of it.

Stick to the sources of information you trust, until you don't.

And I have the habit of adding stuff to my replies, that expand on my points. I don't do so to change my point of view or frame you.

While that is true, putting all propaganda on the same level is disingenuous.

Given that all the countries who push that argument are just Russia and China, I don't think the US is "in a very bad situation".

You normalized current events with the blanket statement that all governments do it.

Apparently this blatantly, as Russia is doing it, no.

While l sympathize with your position, and agree with what you said, there are some things to consider.

Lying when employed as a strategy of war, not necessarily of armed conflict, but even in politics, in serious situations, creates casualties and collateral damage, like with invasion of the Capitol and the whole Qanon shtick. And that should not be forgotten.

And if someone manipulates the truth, it detaches it from reality, and with so many attempts at distorting the view of the observers, eventually, at least, some of these become corrupted, and their judgments based on a seedy swamp of truths, lies, mistruths, and semblances of truth, and so colored and alienated from reason. Colloquially put as drunk on the Kool-Aid.

"What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all."

from the Chernobyl miniseries

And this is a real danger that we naively sleep walking walk into time and again.

Actually no. We've seen with Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Kim Jong-Un, Vladimir Putin, and others, the pernicious effect of lying without conscience.

The problem with lying is that, when done without any sort of moral compass or ethical concerns - a kind of psychopathic disregard for others -, it is callous and cold, makes hostages and leaves them - that fall on it - deluded and alienated fighters in a war with their minds and the surrounding reality, engaged in a self-destructive spiral. Individually and collectively.

I'm all for using clichés, and some degree of naivety and romanticism, when appropriate, but enough is enough.

Also I noted you downplaying the Russian lies about the invasion of Ukraine.

Not everything, scientific articles, at least some of them, aren't. But I despise lying more than censorship, to be honest. And state Russian news has been nothing but a jumbled mess of lies and deceit since the invasion started.

I was one of the persons that observed the beginning hours of the Russian "military operation" in Ukraine. And saw Russia change official position in less than an hour.

So I won't cry wolf about them being censored and blocked.

Russian propaganda ahoy?

I believe we are at the beginning of great misery too.

Pandemics is just one of the major issues we are starting to face. Uncontrollable fires, a mass extinction, unpredictable and extreme weather, shrinkage of available food and drinkable water, mass migrations, the frailty of our economic systems, etc. will all test us in the next future...

Our leaders are failing us. It is time to assume our responsibility, and start organising socially and politically, and network.

It's also urgent to develop critical thinking, and to start straying away from distractions, into useful areas of knowledge.