Ten years ago, if you asked people if the government was involved in manipulating public opinion or leaning on social media companies or spying on presidential candidates, very few people would have agreed. Those who did think this was the case were branded conspiracy theorists. Today, most people just seem to accept that this is now the way things are done in our democracy.
It is hard to know if this is really the case, but the lack of public outrage over the stream of revelations about government pressure on social media companies suggests people are not surprised by it. Maybe most people are still processing it, as no one was raised to think they lived in a police state. Possibly the lack of mainstream coverage lets the public ignore what they would prefer not to face.
When you look back at the last time the public learned they were secretly being manipulated and spied upon by the secret police, the reaction of today feels like capitulation in comparison to how people reacted fifty years ago. Back then, both parties and the media were outraged at the abuses, even though many in both parties and the media were parties to the corruption.
This new version of the Church Committee that the Republican House is planning is sure to turn into a circus. The reason is the Democrats will go out of their way to make it as ridiculous as possible. They will appoint their craziest members to be on the committee investigating the secret police. The media will be tasked with discrediting the whole thing as an assault on our democracy!
Of course, we can now see that the original Church Committee was a show to placate the public and did nothing to limit the secret police. When you look at the programs that were revealed during that time, you see that they never actually ended. They just became part of the standard operating procedure. In fact, the secret police are far more invasive and abusive now than at anytime in its existence.
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