While the transition of power is currently stalled amid legal wrangling, Status Quo Joe is wasting no time in living up to his moniker, and ensuring very little real progress will be made, with the recent selection of Richard Stengel as a leader in the administration’s “U.S. Agency on Global Media.”

Stengel is a former editor for Time Magazine, and his speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, in which he argues in defense of propaganda, has gone viral after being featured on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now program on Fri. Nov. 13. 

Stengel told the CFR, “My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the chief propagandist job. … I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”

The statement is a ridiculous notion to all that believe in a decent, democratic society, and all that have read William Cooper’s book, “Behold a Pale Horse,” will find it highly ironic that Stengel made this highly authoritarian statement while surrounded by his ilk in the octopus-like political powerhouse Council on Foreign Relations. 

The appointment of Stengel is especially concerning given the fact that the Obama/Biden Administration repealed the Smith-Mundt act in 2012. This piece of legislation from 1948 served to protect the American people from the propaganda efforts of the Department of Defense and the American government. 

The Obama/Biden Administration essentially made it legal for the government to lie to its own people, and now Biden has appointed an individual that well fits the intelligence agency formula, and believes in propagandizing the people, to a position that oversees media policy. This is an unconscionable act that indicates an intention to lie to the public, and any objective observer would find it difficult to argue that this is a benign or coincidental appointment.

Stengel is also on the record opposing free speech. In an op-ed published in the Washington Post that raises serious questions, he wrote, ““All speech is not equal. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails.”

In addition to Stengel, a number of media professionals are leaving their positions to join the Biden administration. MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade is now on Biden’s legal review team, and the network’s health expert, Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, is joining Biden’s Coronavirus task force. The implications are astounding. Media executives and operatives are incentivised to provide coverage that favors one candidate or the other, in hope or in recognition that their favors will be repaid. 

Combine these facts with what is known as Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s attempt to influence the public by placing assets in high-level media positions, and you have a media environment that serves authoritarian interests while subjugating the citizenry.

While the agency likes to decline involvement with the secretive operation known as Mockingbird, publicly available Senate Intelligence Committee records from 1996 are titled, “CIA’s Use of Journalists and Clergy in Intelligence Operations,” and it is well known that intelligence agencies have numerous operatives working at various media organizations. William Colby, former director of the CIA, famously said, “The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.”

A fellow CIA director, William Casey, said, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

And now the upcoming administration is preparing to shield itself with master manipulators and seasoned veterans of the disinformation industry. These are extremely dangerous times, with power being usurped at all levels in the name of national security and the health of the people. 

It is easy to become focused on an individual, such as Trump, as the source of problems, but when the issues transcend administrations and continue to affect quality of life, there is clearly a deeper source of the trouble, and if we are to overcome the obstacles facing us, it will take a non-partisan approach that is capable of recognizing alternative courses of action and accepting responsibility for decisions made in the past. 

While it is understandable that people feel a sense of relief that a new administration will be taking power, it is imperative that critical analysis of the agendas and actions of both parties be thorough and objective. War crimes, inequality, lies and propaganda should never be tolerated from our elected officials, regardless of their party ties. We  do not have to settle for the lesser of two evils, instead we must demand democratic leadership that respects civil liberties.