Occasionally I’m going to feature an examination of power in the US.

I’m not talking about the legislative, executive and judiciary as enumerated in the Constitution, but the real power that exists behind these documents. A starting point is Federalist Papers author John Jay, who stated that “the people who own the country ought to govern it.”

And so they have.

Since I’ve been hitting the propaganda beat pretty hard lately I thought the corporate media was a good place to begin.

The media, or 4th estate, as the founders envisioned it, was to provide a check on power yet it’s morphed into a a key node in the unofficial power center some call the deep state. The uncomfortable reality is the reason that the corporate media doesn’t touch any of this with a ten foot pole, and why there was such hostility at Trump’s ramblings about the existence of a deep state.

At this point the American people have come to the realization that the image that mainstream journalists have of themselves as “a crusading profession” who are “adversarial” and “stand up against power,” is a lot of nonsense, and it’s almost impossible for a good journalist to do so in any meaningful way in the mass media in America. “It happens because of groupthink. It happens because top editors and producers know — without being told — which issues and sources are off limits. No orders need be given, for example, for rank-and-file journalists to understand that the business of the corporate boss or top advertisers is off-limits, short of criminal indictments.

Or as Matt Taibbi says–“Reporters watch as good investigative journalism about serious structural problems dies on the vine, while mountains of column space are devoted to trivialities like Trump tweets and/or simplistic partisan storylines. Nobody needs to pressure anyone. We all know what takes will and will not earn attaboys in newsrooms.”

Just because a lot of the mass media’s propagandistic behavior can be explained without secret conspiracies doesn’t mean secret conspiracies aren’t happening. In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled “The CIA and the Media” reporting that the CIA had covertly infiltrated America’s most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who it considered assets in a program known as Operation Mockingbird. We are told that this sort of covert infiltration doesn’t happen anymore today, but that’s absurd. Of course it does. People believe the CIA no longer engages in nefarious behavior because they find it comfortable to believe that, not because there is any evidentiary basis for that belief.

There were no conditions which gave rise to Operation Mockingbird in the 1970s which aren’t also with us today. Cold war? As I’ve written about incessantly, the corporate media were instrumental, in league with the alphabet intelligence agencies, in fanning the flames of Russia-gate, all to ensure that Trump could not improve US/Russian relations. Hot war? The same corporate media has been cheerleading each and every escalation in the US/NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. A mad scramble to secure US domination and capital on the world stage as part of the American empire? Happening today. The CIA wasn’t dismantled and nobody went to prison. All that’s changed is that instead of hiding in the shadows the intelligence operatives are proudly presented as analysts on the TV shows and newspaper op/eds.

I know for anyone who has read Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s, Manufacturing Consent, where the authors detail a propaganda model of the mass media, all of this is old hat. We understand that the filters in place ensure that the corporate media represents and glorifies the plutocratic class that’s come to dominate all aspects of American policy.

I talked about it in a previous post but the way in which the corporate media treats unconventional presidential candidates offers a glimpse inside the desires of the plutocratic power centers in the US. It was obvious how horrified they were at the possibility of a Sanders presidency, but Trump’s election has really sent them over the edge. As a result, the corporate media has shaped a political sphere that is increasingly schizophrenic. A dizzying political realignment has fucked-up all of the traditional categories and left in its wake just two sides: not left and right, but establishment and anti-establishment. And no matter the substance of one’s beliefs, to the media, anti-establishment means “right-wing conspiracy theorist.”

On yesterday’s Twitter spaces conversation, the shift was lost on nobody, including Robert F. Kennedy. “The Democrats slowly became pro-corporate, pro-war, and pro-censorship,” said Kennedy, and “Republicans became anti-censorship, pro-civil liberties, and anti-war. There’s been this tremendous realignment.”

I don’t think I would go that far as there are still plenty of pro-war, pro-censorship Republicans, but Kennedy has a point.

Indeed, Kennedy’s rising profile ignited a media backlash yesterday that felt almost orchestrated. None put it as plainly as The Washington Post. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tests the conspiratorial appetite of Democrats,” wrote the Post’s Michael Scherer. Kennedy, Scherer alleged, “campaigns on the idea that powerful people have been working in secret to deceive you.”

Powerful people working in secret to deceive you? I’m aghast that anyone would suggest such a thing.

The Washington Post may believe that the public’s distrust of the elite is nothing more than a conspiracy theory. But if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that powerful people have, indeed, been working in secret to deceive us. And the corporate media has been there with them every step of the way. In fact, their treatment of Kennedy, and his campaign for president is a constant reminder of the hidden power structure in America. It’s more than ironic that the corporate media is labeling Kennedy “conspiracy theorist” when the term was invented by the CIA to ridicule anyone who doubted the Warren Commission’s report on the examination of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, his uncle.

As you can see, the corporate media, because of its ongoing propaganda program, constitutes a very powerful barrier to any political change.

The good new is that trust in the corporate media is at an all time low.