Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land

Is this who we really are? Is our own government lying to us, "protecting" us from a truth it thinks we cannot handle? Funny, I don't FEEL like a fascist... I don't recall being indoctrinated into hatred when I went to school. But the images are real, they aren't falsified propaganda. Taken in context or not, they present a very disturbing image of ourselves. I've been wondering, and I've posted about it before; could it be that the people in charge are really that corrupt? That clueless, that power-hungry? Stupid they are not; you don't become Chief of Staff when you're stupid. But if the Other Side can be deceived and deluded, isn't it entirely plausible that we, too, are failing to see the truth?