[mindslight]

And yet many facets of the government were designed from an assumption that organizations do develop ulterior motives. Checks and balances, the adversarial justice system, and the Bill of Rights, to name some fundamental meta-topics. An abstract "don't tread on me" is deep within the American psyche, yet it very easily remains abstract, especially when steered that way.

I agree with your general point about human nature of blindly trusting the biggest stick, but that doesn't mean we should avoid blaming the scumbag mass media for abdicating their traditional duty of critical analysis and turning into pravda.us. If someone wants to ascribe this to an explicit conspiracy with an evil cabal while I simply see panicked well-to-do ignorants promulgating their bubble, I'm not going to let disagreements about details get in the way of agreeing on the commonalities. Any such dissenting viewpoint is a step on the path of extricating oneself from the infopocalyptic centralization we're finding ourselves being pushed into.