Disastrously, most Americans have yet to catch on that the United States -– attacked by radical Islamists - is at war, let alone for their and Western Civilization’s very survival.

It is the Global Terror War, being fought even in these initial stages on more fronts and on more continents than either of the World Wars, I or II.

They are the unknowing, unwilling, and (sometimes) willing, captives of mass-communications outlets that fill their eyes and ears with countless images and messages, unceasingly by day and by night. To one extent or another, POMs are to be found in every land, including this one.

The exploitation of POMs has long been road-tested. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, understood the technique of control of the masses through mass comm. So did Josef Stalin in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. So has every Chinese communist dictator since Cho En-lai and Mao Tse-tung.

The Silence of Darkness

It’s not a stretch too far to suggest that what they did in controlling the thoughts, and thus the actions and inactions, of entire populations is akin to what turnkeys and inquisitors have always done, and still do, to keep prisoners “in the dark” and thus vulnerable to manipulation.

Control what any sensory beings see and hear, and you stand a good chance of controlling their actions and inactions. Radical Islamist television channels understand this all too well.

In closed societies such as China, Cuba, North Korea and Iran, what POMs see and hear is severely limited, much like the fate of prisoners in solitary confinement. Truth and reality are rarely allowed to get through.

Just Try to Find What’s True

In open societies such as America, the problem is just the opposite but nearly as devastating. So many images and messages are assailing the eyes and ears of these POMs that it is almost humanly impossible for them to find a needle of truth and reality in such a smothering of hay. It’s no longer a needle in a haystack. It’s a needle in a barn overflowing with hay.

It gets even worse when the overwhelmingly leftist media manipulators bend and break the needles of truth and reality to suit their political agendas of what their POMs should see and hear.

Take one small, recent illustration: Condoleezza Rice, national security advisor to President Bush, received an award for public service and delivered the address to graduating seniors at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

Welcome to Vanderbilt

The university chancellor’s wife and a handful of leftwing faculty members opposed to the war in Iraq signed a letter of protest, blasting her appearance in advance. Leftist news media wallowed in this for days.

On the morning of Dr. Rice’s address, two preliminary events took place. More than 200 persons held a pro-Rice rally. Then fewer than 50 held an anti-Rice rally.

At the outdoor ceremony itself, some 10,000 persons attended and gave Dr. Rice standing ovations.

How Was This Covered?

Most of the media nationally dropped the story after harping on the insult to Dr. Rice and skipped the graduation ceremony. But in reporting the event, the Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel, a Scripps Howard chain daily, ran this headline: “Rice visit to Vandy lukewarm.” The sub-head: “Some on campus protest Bush staffer’s speech, award.”

The paper did not think enough of the ceremony to staff it, but ran an Associated Press story based on the Nashville Tennessean’s comprehensive coverage. The Tennessean headline: “Vanderbilt’s reception of Rice mostly cordial.”

However, the News Sentinel carefully omitted any mention of the pro-Rice rally attended by 200 and the standing ovations by the 10,000 who heard her address, thus fabricating the predicate for its totally misleading headline.

The Bad News Is ...

What it carefully left in the AP story were three paragraphs elaborating on the protesters (without mentioning how few they were) and their denunciations of the national security adviser.

Unless readers of the News Sentinel had independent knowledge of what actually happened at Vanderbilt they would have no reason to believe that Dr. Rice’s appearance had been warmly received. They would have been left to swallow the lie that her reception was “lukewarm.” The Scripps Howard newspaper in Knoxville held its readers as POMs.

This is a common occurrence in the News Sentinel, which allows a drum-beat of anti-American, anti-Iraq-war, anti-Bush sneaky news distortions like that.

It’s Everywhere

Is this merely an isolated example of an inconsequential newspaper-turned-POM-jailer? Hardly. Similar examples of the POM syndrome occur in communities all across America.

The problem – and what makes it so insidious - is that unless newspaper readers, radio listeners and television viewers in those communities have independent access to what the facts of a story really are, they have no assurance they are not being fed a POM diet by agenda-driven pseudo-journalists who are no better than de facto allies of radical Islam, the announced objective of which is to defeat America, its values and, in the 2004 election, its president.

What recourse is available to honest Americans who love their country? There still are needles of truth and reality out there in the barn full of hay. Keep looking, and when you find one of those needles hang onto it.

An Unmistakable Aroma

The best hope, however, is that Americans, no matter how much hay is tossed at them, are not easily gulled.

Horse**** is not a very nice word, but Americans, better than any other people in the world, have a keen knack of knowing it when they smell it.

That plus their moral convictions, common sense and patriotic grit are about all they have going for them right now.

But that is a lot more than their media jailers have going for them.

John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.

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