Congress
When wars break out, the first objective of all military commanders is to destroy the enemy's lines of communication and secure media hubs in zones of conflicts. Think back to both Iraq wars, the Ministry of Information was immediately deemed a high value target and was attacked mercilessly by a stream of Tomahawk missiles. This was done to neutralize the Iraqi government's ability to communicate with the public. The same way that media stations are coveted by war planners, military personnel who are involved in comms also have bull's eyes on their backs the minute the first shots are fired.

There is a reason why lines of communications are violently attacked and why TV stations are prime objectives when invading armies try to subdue a nation and the citizenry. From a tactical perspective, if the enemy's communication between command and troops is severed, the rank and file are beset by chaos and unable to coordinate attacks or position their defenses. From a strategic point, commandeering a nation's communications infrastructure and co-opting their broadcast stations is a severe moral blow to the general population. Bullets and bombs start conflicts but manipulating information and the ability to shape public perception is the most potent weapon possessed by any nation.

I write this not to show off my geeky side or to elevate my stature as an expert on military planning. I wrote the last two paragraphs to give context to the next sentence. The political and media class have declared war on the first amendment and the citizenry as a whole. One of these days, we will look back at what Congress did this week and realize that this was the onset of a stealthy campaign by the establishment and the debased in Washington DC to put a bullet in the head of the America we once knew. By making RT News register as foreign agents, Congress has effectively told the world that news organizations and personnel not owned by multi-billion dollar corporations will be treated as persona non grata on our shores.

Unlike the partisan hacks in corporate media and one too many people who have become political prisoners of the moment, I'm not going to lay the responsibility of this continued targeting of the First Amendment solely at the feet of Donald Trump. Journalism has been under assault in America for decades. But the small chips at free press turned into hacks with a machete once the Patriot Act passed. What George W. Bush began, Obama gladly took over the baton and made it his explicit aim to go after journalists. The Department of Justice, under the watch of Eric Holder, treated reporters like enemy combatants as they used threats and prosecution to intimidate anyone who tried to hold the powerful accountable.

A few journalists employed by corporate media muster the courage to speak the truth about the infringement on their rights and the harassment they face when trying to do their jobs. New York Times reporter James Risen noted that the Obama administration was "the most anti-press administration since the Nixon administration."
"Over the past eight years, the administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined," Risen wrote for The Times in a Dec. 30, 2016 column. "It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists.
Where Obama left off, Trump is now doubling down. This is why politics is such a distraction; we get so focused on personalities that we lose track of the fact that our government's policies are constant from one administration to the next. Democrats and Republicans are equally complicit in the erosion of our rights and the nullification of our freedoms. Yet, even in this context, what happened this week with RT News and the fact that a press outlet was made to register as a foreign agent is breathtaking. The bullshit Russia narrative was nothing more than a pretext to put a dynamite to the right of a free press in America.

Beyond their insidious attempt to suppress free press and, by extension, squash any attempt to hold congress and the political class in DC accountable, there is another aspect to this "fake news" and Russia narrative that is pernicious. What the arrogant gentry are proposing is that we, the commoners, need their guidance to decipher what is news and what is propaganda. Their big brotherism is downright insulting, they are saying that we are idiots who can't arrive at a decision without their paternalism. They are calling us toddlers who need their "adult" supervision. As they take Tiki torch to free press, they then turn around and pretend to be defenders of freedom-we are becoming the United Stasi of America.

I don't know why the DC establishment is resorting to this level of bullying and turning to the practices of tin pot dictators to silence free speech and gash at free press. Part of me thinks that this is nothing more than hubris; people drunk on power think they are untouchable and target anyone who dares hold them accountable. Yet I fear that there is a more sinister aspect to what Congress, our president and their corporate masters are up to. The moneyed interests in America see us, the people, as the enemy and are treating us as such. They know that people are only willing to take being taxed to death with diluted representation for so long. At some point, the masses rise up against a government whose reason d'etre is to extort money from us, transfer it to the gentry so that politicians and bureaucrats in DC can get rewarded for their larceny by their corporate patrons.

It is imperative that we put aside our political differences and the petty things we bicker about as a people and realize what is taking place. They are tightening the noose around our necks each day as they keep withdrawing one block of rights or another as if America has become a giant Jenga game. Congress needs a reminder that they work for us and not the other way around. Most likely they won't respond because our Senators and Congressmen are too busy whoring themselves to corporate interests and harassing their staffers to pay attention to us (read My Open Letter to Congress]. But get in touch with them anyway and let them know, one by one, that we don't need their big brother paternalism and we will not abide watching our freedoms go into the night.

A free press is the first and last line of defense between liberty and tyranny. We cannot depend on corporate journalists to be the firewall for Democracy; they are too vested in maintaining their status and getting paid by the powerful to speak truth to power. The silence and compliance of America's so called "fourth estate" in light of RT's marginalization speaks volumes. So it is up to us, the people, to do our part and hold politicians in DC and their corporate pimps in check. For almost a year, the "elites" have been prepping the ground by libeling anyone who dares question their authority as "fake news" and using censorship to diminish our voices, they are now turning up the heat and blacklisting free press. If RT can be suppressed, who's next? #CongressionalCoup
"The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press." ~ Ida B. Wells
This is the "menace" that our congressional leaders demanded be shut down, those who swim in corruption after all hate to be called on their actions.