Why I chose to fight corruption and propaganda.
After five decades of studying, working, and traveling across the United States and many parts of the world, I slowly began to understand why so many Americans feel that the country they grew up in no longer exists.
When I was young, the basic structure of American life was widely shared. One primary worker could often support a modest home, raise children, and still leave room for savings and education. Neighborhoods were filled with families living at roughly the same economic level. There were rich people and poor people, but the middle class was the dominant reality.
For many Americans, that system created a simple expectation: if you worked hard, behaved responsibly, and stayed out of trouble, you had a fair chance to build a stable life.
Today that structure has clearly changed.
One way to see the change is through something as simple as housing. For much of the twentieth century, the typical home cost roughly two or three times a household’s annual income. Under those conditions, owning a home was financially manageable.
But when the same home costs six, eight, or even ten times annual income—as it does in many parts of the country today—the entire financial structure of family life changes. Housing begins to dominate every economic decision. Savings shrink. Debt increases. The margin for error disappears.
This is not a small adjustment. It is a structural shift in the foundation of middle-class life.
Anyone who has traveled across the country can see the results. In some places, enormous wealth is concentrated in gleaming financial districts and luxury developments. In many others, towns that once supported thriving middle-class communities now struggle with declining industries, stagnant wages, and fewer opportunities for young people.
Yet when we turn on the television or open our phones, we are told that the main conflicts in America revolve around ideological labels: liberal, conservative, socialist, communist, fascist. These invisible enemies appear everywhere, and we are encouraged to fear and fight them twenty-four hours a day. But as I began connecting the dots between what we are taught by our schools, our media, our government, and our business institutions, something troubling became obvious.
We are constantly told about serious national problems. Yet those problems rarely seem to be solved. Eventually I reached a disturbing conclusion. The endless battles between political labels are not the real story.
The deeper problem is that the systems shaping our economy, our politics, and our information have become increasingly vulnerable to two powerful forces.
Corruption.
And propaganda.
So where does that leave us?
None of the pressing issues that most Americans care about can ever be fairly addressed or resolved as long as we continue to ignore — or worse, deny — the real forces shaping our society. The true enemies of a healthy republic are not liberals or conservatives, socialists or capitalists. They are not the endless list of political issues that dominate our headlines.
The true enemies are corruption and propaganda. Corruption quietly reshapes the systems that govern our economy and our politics. Propaganda reshapes the information citizens rely on to understand those systems. Together they create a society where citizens argue endlessly with one another while the deeper structures determining our future remain largely invisible.
The tragedy is not simply that corruption and propaganda exist. The tragedy is that most of us never realize we are living inside systems that quietly reward and reproduce them. Once I began examining these systems more carefully, two forces appeared again and again.
Government Corruption: The One Thing Most Americans Agree Is a Serious Problem
73% of Americans agree that government corruption poses a serious threat to our nation. (GlobalAffairs.org). Upwards of $40 billion is spent each year by corporations and wealthy elites influencing and lobbying our political system. Yet almost nothing is invested in educating the public about corruption in government and corporations.
Why?
Because, like the Epstein files, widespread public understanding would expose the powerful individuals engaged in corruption.
Propaganda, Disinformation, Misinformation, and Malinformation:
Money Talks, BS Walks
According to McKinsey & Company, investment in digital infrastructure used to deliver information could reach $5–7 trillion by 2030. According to Roots Analysis, wearable and body-embedded technologies could approach a $1 trillion market by the mid-2030s. At the same time, almost nothing is invested in educating Americans about how information shapes their beliefs, decision-making, and social behavior.
Why?
On Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025, the administration directed federal agencies to end support for programs related to “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Shortly afterward, the National Science Foundation announced it would no longer fund research aimed at combating them.
Why?
Because confused people are easier to divide, and divided people are easier to control.
We are already experiencing the effects of information overload through endless device scrolling and AI systems capable of generating nearly undetectable fake videos.
What happens in ten years when millions of people wear—or embed—devices delivering immersive realities programmed with disinformation?