The reason this site exists, and the reason for all that I am saying here, is that I have watched the political landscape all of my cognitive life. From the first time I heard a news bulletin I was interested in what was being broadcast. As time wears on one realises that not all news is factual news, and as time further progressed, one then realised that factual news dwindled to nearly nothing and its place was taken up by fluff and guff that anyone paying attention found incredibly hard to swallow. This is not to say that news broadcasts were sound at the start of the 70's: this was in apartheid South Africa, remember. Thing just went from terrible to deplorable - and beyond.

It would take a generation passing to realise that much of what we heard as supposed fact was in fact state propaganda (as with every other single country on earth). Your government is never going to be honest with you. It is forever going to tell you what it needs to in order to remain your government. And this proved itself to anyone living under apartheid, when it became necessary to seek news outlets outside of South Africa's borders to know what was actually going on in the country.

A much loved and missed independent radio station called Capital 604, broadcasting from the Wild Coast of the former Transkei (homeland of the Xhosa tribe), was truly capital and instrumental in getting what was actually happening in the country, out to the people of a totally gaslit nation.

In testimony to the last paragraph, this deliberate gaslighting journalism was highlighted for me when the so-called 7/7 bombings happened in London. I was driving through Southall (just outside London) when the reports came over the radio. Every local news report was confusing, vague and ramping up fear. Luckily I had a journalist in my family back in South Africa and it took a direct phone call to them to find out what was going on right next door to me. I found out that morning (by calling across a continent), what was happening here in real time - as opposed the the greater British public who would only get that information via the evening news. How can a system that plays these sorts of games with its citizens, ever be trusted?

That said, simply look around and ask how many people are happy with the running of their lives and countries by their governments? I will not say every single last person is dismayed. Some countries fare better than others when it comes to actually serving the best interests of the men, women and children their governments claim to represent. Further, many have no idea how their thinking and real world perceptions are influenced by their governments - to the extent that many may actually become oblivious to obvious crimes committed by their governments.