Imagine that you could turn the tables on mainstream media for a week, so that normally-blacklisted news reporting and analysis was all you got on cable and network news, whereas the type of content found CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News only reached niche demographics through Facebook and YouTube. I believe that most people, if they realized what they're missing, would step up and demand that mass media get its act together. Most Americans' values are compassionate and progressive, when you poll them on specific issues rather than on polarized labels like Left/Right or Liberal/Conservative. The problem isn't that people suck, but that society is in many ways designed to bring out the worst in people while stifling their better angels.
American mass media doesn't tell the "whole story:" it's a la-la land of lies, half-truths, and spin engineered by warmongering sociopaths. The most brilliant thing about this, especially when compared to political models where the dominant media organizations *openly* collude with state actors, is that America's "Velvet Curtain" is so well-camouflaged in partial truth and allowed press freedoms that most people don't see it right in front of them. This doesn't totally absolve individuals of the responsibility to think for themselves, but the pervasive influence of social engineering in media makes this very difficult. Ego differentiation—learning to think outside of a tribalistic mindset and question common social assumptions—is an arduous uphill battle, filled with disillusionment and cognitive dissonance. It's also a lonely road, generally being the one less traveled.
Why is the dark side so good at winning? The short answer is that those who are aligned with the more compassionate and logical aspects of human nature are always trying out new ways of doing things. They are always moving forward, adapting, and changing, which requires a lot of voices coming to the table and can leave progressive movements scattered and undirected at times. The dark side, on the other hand, has a single, ancient system of social control best summed up in the word fascism: their overarching purpose is dominion by the fewest people. To achieve this, they must continually ensure that the most morally compromised people co-opt media, government, and economy and merge them into ever-more-centralized autocracies.
The Dark Forces on Earth don't waste time arguing over methods or ethics, because they are an unchanging hive mind. They just do the same tried-and-true method over and over, which invariably produces increases in poverty, war, and social divisions along with lawlessness, totalitarianism, mob rule, and an overall breakdown of infrastructure and civil society. They know that they have this effect on human civilization, too; the messes they leave all over the world suggest something more sinister than ordinary incompetence. In the upper echelons, it is often their actual intent to make things worse for millions of human beings, in order to benefit a tiny few. One of the greatest long cons in history is Western media's default position of assuming that politicians are moral people. The line is "They're moral people just like you, who want what's best for the public. They just disagree on how to get there." No, no, no... when people act like straight-up sociopaths, we should call a spade a fuckin' spade.
In terms of the balance of good and evil, fascists ascend the ladders of power by hiding the fact that they don't represent status quo morality in the slightest. That said, I find it quite encouraging that they need to hide, because they know that they are actually outsiders who don't share most people's policy views or ethical values. They HAVE to dress in sheep's clothing, misrepresenting their actual agendas and ethical codes (or lack thereof) in order to garner enough public support to stay in power. They never stop influencing society in hopes of turning good people into cruel monsters like themselves (it's the only way to justify their depraved existence), as seen in MSNBC trying to make the Democrats over as an openly pro-war party. A lot of it doesn't take, because the human heart is magic.
