We Can Always Trust What the Pentagon Says, Right?

Jim Hightower
Tue, 10 Feb 2026 23:00:00 -0800
Opinion

Years ago, when I announced that I was leaving my job as editor of The Texas Observer to run for political office, I had to admit that into politics is the only downward career move one can make from journalism!

But being both a journalist and a politician does hone one's ability to detect the smell of BS — and we Americans are presently getting a noxious blast of that stench from our warmongering Department of Defense.

The vast, trillion-dollar Pentagon is the ultimate Big Brother bureaucracy, literally empowered to compel thousands of Americans to die in foolish military misadventures cooked up by political partisans and profiteering corporate contractors. That's why it's so alarming that President Donald Trump's "Project 2025" autocrats are now rushing to slam an iron door of censorship on reporters trying to inform us commoners about the militaristic schemes and corporate fraud that come from inside this government fortress.
Updated: Wed Feb 11, 2026

Years ago, when I announced that I was leaving my job as editor of The Texas Observer to run for political office, I had to admit that into politics is the only downward career move one can make from journalism!

But being both a journalist and a politician does hone one's ability to detect the smell of BS — and we Americans are presently getting a noxious blast of that stench from our warmongering Department of Defense.

The vast, trillion-dollar Pentagon is the ultimate Big Brother bureaucracy, literally empowered to compel thousands of Americans to die in foolish military misadventures cooked up by political partisans and profiteering corporate contractors. That's why it's so alarming that President Donald Trump's "Project 2025" autocrats are now rushing to slam an iron door of censorship on reporters trying to inform us commoners about the militaristic schemes and corporate fraud that come from inside this government fortress.

In the name of defending freedom, Trump's palace guards are banning media outlets that displease his royal highness. Also, "Pretty Boy Pete," Trump's made-for-TV Pentagon honcho, has even decreed that reporters must be tightly monitored by military escorts while doing interviews, reviewing documents and otherwise exorcising the essential Constitutional rights of our nation's Free Press.

The good news is that rather than kowtowing to the autocrats, dozens of media organizations have told Pete to stuff it, choosing to do old-school outsider digging into this insider war machine.

Meanwhile, the "Project 2025" authoritarians hail their clampdown on free press rights by touting their "fresh relationship" with what they call their "new Pentagon press corps." Right — it's their partisan press corps, not ours.

BEWARE OF AI BILLIONAIRES SPREADING "SWILL BUCKET" PR CAMPAIGNS

George Orwell spoke bluntly about the nefarious nature of advertising, calling it "the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket."

Even Orwell, though, would've been astonished by the cacophony of swill bucket advertising currently being blasted at us by Amazon, Google, Meta and other profiteering tech giants. What are they trying to sell?

Pure hogwash. Having spent billions to develop artificial intelligence so humanoid robots can displace workers, the tech geniuses are now rushing to build thousands of vast computer data centers necessary to power their Brave New AI World. Each center will suck up local water supplies, drastically raise people's utility bills, create monstrous industrial blight and pollution and enthrone such autocratic thugs as Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg as absentee bosses with domineering power over each locality.

But the billionaires forgot something: You and me. "We the People" are in open rebellion against this Orwellian future, with officials in multiple states and localities "Just Saying Hell No" to the profiteers' invasive scams.

Thus, the billionaire hucksters are frantically rattling their swill sticks. For example, Mark Zuckerberg — whose Meta goliath already operates 26 massive data centers and is now spending $600 billion to plop more of them in our communities — has launched a multimillion-dollar offensive to beat back local opponents. It's running BS television ads in state capitol cities, financing political candidates to hype the data centers, deploying untold numbers of lobbyists to rig the rules against opponents and hiring an army of "community affairs" agents to spread AI propaganda.

The swill bucket brigade has the fat cats, but a groundswell of us alley cats that has them on the run. To get involved, go to mediajustice.org/tools.