The Neocons still run US foreign policy. Neocon doctrine includes public manipulation through a pliant press. That the press has been concentrated after the Clinton years from 40 to 6 news organizations owned by major corporations makes that much easier.
The principal author of the neocon manifesto "Project for a New American Century" was Paul Wolfowitz, one of the Neocons who brought us the US Iraqi invasion, and 10 years of ruinous economic consequences for America. His mentor was Leo Strauss a professor at Chicago University untile his death in 1973.
"Not only did Strauss have few qualms about using deception in politics, he saw it as a necessity. While professing deep respect for American democracy, Strauss believed that societies should be hierarchical – divided between an elite who should lead, and the masses who should follow. But unlike fellow elitists like Plato, he was less concerned with the moral character of these leaders. According to Shadia Drury, who teaches politics at the University of Calgary, Strauss believed that "those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right – the right of the superior to rule over the inferior."
'This dichotomy requires "perpetual deception" between the rulers and the ruled, according to Drury. Robert Locke, another Strauss analyst says,"The people are told what they need to know and no more." While the elite few are capable of absorbing the absence of any moral truth, Strauss thought, the masses could not cope. If exposed to the absence of absolute truth, they would quickly fall into nihilism or anarchy, according to Drury, author of 'Leo Strauss and the American Right' (St. Martin's 1999).'
Leo Strauss's doctrine, as well as his profound influence on the Neocons, is so well documented, it took me about 15 seconds to find a reference to it, and the link between Neocon thinking espoused by Wolfowitz and his mentor Leo Strauss.
http://www.alternet.org/story/15935/leo_strauss'_philosophy_of_deception
nobody123, you ARE the sheeple, in that you seem to believe everythink that the mainstream media shove at you. I will give you an example of the mass media lying through omission. Last night on CBC's National, they had a panel that sought to explain ISIS. They were asked where the funding came from. One after the other, they claimed they looted banks and imposed taxes. But nobody mentioned that it was Prince Bandar's Saudi Arabia that gave them the financing to get going while they organized in Syria, when reports were coming out that they were welcoming mass defections from the Al-Qaida Al-Nusra front and from the US backed Free Syrian Army, and otherwise consolidating by wiping out these last two forces in Syria. Exposing Saudi Arabia as the principal instigator of the present unrest in Arabia does not support the passive agenda that the media are trying to portray the US and its allies. Saudi Arabia has been up to its neck in fomenting unrest in Arabia, to the point of getting the Iraqi state to actually collapse.
The US government has been lying continuously since the Cold War, and the mainstream media has been helping them along. Hell, even during WW2, Hollywood were making propaganda movies; but the US were the good guys then. Viewing alternative sources of information is important in order to start questioning mainstream media's take on the world. It's not so simply black and white.