About sixty years ago as World War II came to a close, American officials -- military and otherwise -- arrived at the scenes of the death camps run by the Nazis. They were met with the most gruesome sights imaginable. They reported pile upon pile of emaciated corpses, starving, diseased laborers just barely holding onto the last strings of life, cramped and infected living quarters, and food barely edible to the foulest of animals. Nothing like this had been heard of in all of history, and America was astonished. However, there were many who doubted the legitimacy of the so-called Holocaust. They stated that it was quite convenient that America had waited so long to get involved, and that there was no real concrete proof that the Nazis had committed the henious crimes they were being accused of. They believed that the whole ordeal was a hoax to scare Americans, to kindle prejudices towards the Germans, and above all, to give the government undisputed supreme power. Although evidence appears to point in favor of the ones who believe it was a real event, there has been no concrete evidence to discredit the contrary.
Before the whole ordeal, before the war even began, governments were lying to their countries, and in full awareness at that. Adolf Hitler based his rise to power on lies of the assurances he could be controlled. He made a radical leader, but the advisors he had so cleverly placed in the German government assured the supreme leader that he could be supressed. Needless to say, very soon thereafter he got rid of everyone in the government who disagreed with him and declared himself dictator of Germany. The German government then lied to the Jews when they began to recruit them for the concentration camps, saying that Jews were needed for mere labor projects. When British official Winston Churchill was made aware of the lies the German government was telling the Jews and the horrific things they truly had in store, he warned his nation immediately. Sadly, they did not believe him; all due to lies the government had told before. To fuel patriotic spirit to get the British soldiers through the last bit of World War I, the British government spread massive lies about horrendous and grotesque things the Germans were doing to their prisoners of war. It worked, but word soon got out that the whole deal with the Germans was a hoax, and the entire nation lost trust in their government. So when a few years later Winston Churchill comes to the people and tells them of these awful things the German government is doing, they are more than a little disinclined to believe him.
These are only a few relevant examples of times that a nation's government has successfully lied to its people. What determines how easy or difficult it is for a government to do this is the trust they have previously installed in their people's hearts. Our American government has not been found guilty of spreading mass lies throughout the nation very often, and thus holds a fairly high respect in the people; this is undoubtedly a good thing, but it also allows the government to install lies in the nation's thinking with a relatively good amount of facility. For example, when people see information displayed in a federally-funded museum, they are inclined to accept it as truth because it comes from what they believe to be a reliable source. When the president appears on television and declares that our nation is at war with another country, just about everyone will believe it because the president said so. When it all comes down to it, the people running the government have supreme power over the ability of a nation. Some say that when a government gets out of hand, the people can simply overthrow it and install a new one. However, this is not as possible as it sounds. Overthrowing a government takes intelligence and knowledge; the way one gains knowledge and understanding of the world is through federally funded schools, and the intelligence and methods of thinking develop according to the environment provided by the government. Basically, the government controls all information that reaches its people. It is capable of sifting through it and distorting it for its own purposes, just as easily as it can review it and approve it as it actually is. When a force as strong as the United States government is controlling everything that is available to you, it is extremely difficult to overthrow it, for the simple reason that it almost undoubtedly has more knowledge than you; at the very least, anything you learn and try to use against them, they will already know.
I'm not saying that I particularly believe that the U.S. government is limiting or distorting the information available to the American people; it has my deep respect in the sense that it has stayed together and run smoothly for so long, despite the fact that it is maintained by mere men. What I am saying, however, is that if the U.S. goverment should for some reason choose to, it would be only too easy. A similar situation occured during the Holocaust in Germany; the government obviously did not want the German people to know what was truly happening to the Jews when they went off to these "work camps", and they also did not want them forming their own opinions about the way things should be run, so they simply brainwashed them. Brainwashed them from very young childhood to believe in everything the Nazis believed in, and when that happens, the people question very little. I think that the best possible way to defend ourselves against this is to keep inquisitive minds open to the possibility that the government IS capable of doing more or less whatever they please, and to be wary of trends in history, for as they say, those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.