Competing Truth Claims

 It's a simple truism and becoming a bore to talk about the fact that we live in an era of Fake News. We need to understand where it comes from so we can put it behind us, or at least be done with all of the drama... I am frustrated with the frustration. 
The promise of the Internet is to include more voices in the global conversation, and the people who hate it are those with the most to lose. Those who previously enjoyed a hegemonic control over public dialogue and debate get nervous about the idea that not only are people disagreeing with their official narratives, but they are also daring to ignore their topics completely in favor of what us little people would prefer to talk about. At some level, even if you disagree with what they want you to think, they are still in control since they are determining the topics we are disagreeing about. But to ignore their garbage and instead choose to think our own thoughts really ruffles their feathers. 
We can think a little bit about how the majority of news stations all reporting in lock step the content that all of the rest are covering. A truly gullible soul might just think they all sound the same because they are all reporting on the same truths, but then you compare the words spoken and it starts looking an awful lot like straight up plagiarism. The thing is, they are not all doing their own homework; they are spoon fed the same stories from their corporate overlords and even encouraged to keep the same rhetoric across all platforms. It is more likely to be propaganda plain and simple, because yes, those with positions of power are very much interested in engineering public sentiment about a wide range of topics. It makes us easier to control and predict, which means in turn that they will be able to implement their desired social policies with little to no fanfare or reaction. 
On the other side of things there are what is known as "controlled opposition." These are those corporate news stations that supposedly form the diametrically opposed political stand. The problem is that their arguments tend to be sophomoric and easily refuted by the more mainstream press. There are no real challengers to what the corporations want us to believe. Those who do occasionally show up will end up being disappeared or otherwise deplatformed. The disinvitations to public spaces, the shadow banning in Social Media, the public shaming of unpopular opinions will end up causing you to get fired without a proper hearing. You will lose your friends and family because of your commitment to integrity. Those with power know what they are doing. They have no desire to be right, only to win the argument. They are rhetoricians, not philosophers. Socrates was killed for even being accused of it. How times have changed. 
It is very disturbing to me that so many otherwise rational people will take it on face value whatever the corporate news media reports on, especially since so many of them have no love for corporations generally, yet accept it hook, line, and sinker when the corporations tell them what is true or meaningful or whatever. They listen to the sheer repetition of the bubbleheads on the tv and are mesmerized by it. They accept without any indication of a moment of reflection when they claim that Trump is the one who is lying. All they really know is that he is saying something other than what they want to hear, or something other than what the bubbleheads have programmed them to want to hear. This is not to say that a simple reversal of the corporate position is correct. Remember they have you either way, caught in a trap of unreason and the inability to compromise anywhere. They win because they have controlled our emotions and have us working against each other rather than working together to discover any actual truth that might exist on the subject. Let alone whatever other subjects they are distracting us with by obsessing over the one they are covering. 
We are in a war without ever being told that it was happening to us. No enemy ever declared war on us, at least in any overt fashion. Yet there is a war, to keep us blind and stupid, and compliant in their games. We need to educate ourselves about what they are doing and how to sidestep the landmines they plant. There's a lot more we could be thinking about than what they would ever allow us to realize. They will not allow us the freedom to think if they can help it, and it starts with attacking the rights of free speech. It we cannot speak our own thoughts then we can never think our way into new ideas and conceptual frameworks. This is what they desire- it's what they need in order to keep us subordinate. So long as we continue to fight each other we are not fighting those who are truly to blame. So they stay in power. 
In short, they stay in power because we the people are too lazy to think for ourselves.