William Rivers Pitt: Controlling Your Environment

Dear Readers,

Hunter S. Thompson once said that politics is the art of controlling your environment. When you think of it that way, when you think of the whole process as being nothing more or less than figuring out how to have the final word on everything that happens around you, it becomes clear just how effective a job the corporate paymasters who stand behind the seats of political "power" have been at practicing the art of politics. They control their environment, and ours, with ruthless efficiency.

It is a difficult thing to miss. Sarah Palin, in two short years, has gone from being a backwoods governor to a national joke to a presidential frontrunner, and now to the star of what was, if the ratings are accurate, a wildly successful reality show debut. She is but one product of our corporate atmosphere, and the arc she has traveled from anonymity to political power player to TV star was entirely created and nurtured by the "mainstream" news media and the corporations that control them. She's not the only one, either, not by a long chalk. The fact that the so-called "Tea Party" went from being George W. Bush's devoted base to playing out absurd political theater in Town Hall meetings, and now to actual power players on Capitol Hill, would be too preposterous to believe if we all hadn't seen it with our own eyes.

These are but two examples of how the corporate power structure has its fingers wrapped around the throat of the American body politic, the media, the food we eat and even the very air we breathe. The cascading evil of the last forty years, the time during which this rise in corporate hegemony bloomed and then overran virtually every aspect of American life, has been caused by that takeover. Worst of all, the true facts of this rot are obscured by the same entities that are the cause, glossed over, wiped away in a torrent of televised idiocy that stands at the heart of our chronic national amnesia.

We at Truthout are not of that. We are against it to the knife, and we need your help to continue that resistance. You come to us for the straight story, the real facts, the unvarnished truth, and it is our great privilege and honor to deliver it to the very best of our abilities. In this ocean of corporate nonsense, we are your lighthouse, and we cannot do it without your support. They may control the environment, but we are not going anywhere, and neither are you. Please help us keep the light on.

William Rivers Pitt is a Truthout editor and columnist. He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is now available from PoliPointPress.

ENDS

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