At that time the BBC was still broadcasting in post-Soviet countries, and so I had an abundance of news in English. And, over time, I gradually learned to read the local papers.
But I did not face the daily barrage of propaganda which infects the minds of the citizens of the USA. To be sure, the propaganda machine is powerful, and its reach does extend throughout the world, but it is at its most powerful within the boundaries of the USA.
Now, by contrast, as I am once again (temporarily) forced to live within the boundaries of the USA, I have taken a step backward; my mind is once again dazed and confused by the absolutely overwhelming omnipresence of propaganda. I can scarcely breathe. To talk to a citizen of the USA is to hear countless words and phrases which are nothing but repeated propaganda tools.
For that reason alone, if there were not so many others (bad food--fresh mushrooms, something so average as that, are not to be found here!!! what a crime! What an utter lack of civilization!)----bad weather, too many cars, climate irresponsibility, Puritanism, the mindless absorption of capitalist dogmas) I could not imagine staying in this blighted land.
As an illustration of the propaganda machine in action, together with an astute response by Glenn Greenwald, I offer the following link (once again thanks to Brian Leiter) on the so-called "menace" of Iran:
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