Barack Obama put in place many laws that changed America for the worse. If he couldn’t change the law then he just did it anyways.
Barack Obama changed America during his time in office in ways that were intended to destroy this great country. When he couldn’t legally change things then he just did it anyways. Opening the US border is an example of this.
In other ways, Obama worked with RINOs in Congress to get things through.
Back in 2013, Obama changed the law that made it legal to propagandize Americans. He was able to do this with the help of GOP RINOs.
Ben Swan shared this in 2018 in his Reality Check.
Obama did this through – H.R.5736 – Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012.
This insane piece of legislature was backed by GOP Members in the House and Senate. Representative Mac Thornberry from Texas helped sponsor the bill. He was from one of the most conservative districts in the country.
In May 2022 the Libertarian Institute reported on this act.
It is also true, however, that in 2013 President Barack Obama signed into law the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act (H.R. 5736), making it legal for government-produced media—such as was broadcast overseas by Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other outlets throughout the Cold War—to be directed toward U.S. citizens themselves. Needless to say, such government-penned narratives spin the news so as to reflect favorably upon the United States. To understand the sheer power of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, it suffices to do a quick Google of the name of this piece of legislation to see how it has generated a logical quandary befitting of Orwell’s Nineteen Eigthy-Four. For if it is true that the American people are being propagandized by the U.S. government through its control of the major media outlets and tech giants, then any assertion to that effect will be countered—and ultimately defeated—by yet more government propaganda.
The fact that the complete negation of the original Smith-Mundt Act was deceptively labeled the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act marked the first stage in what might be termed the Orwellian turn. Unsurprisingly, a lengthy list of articles calling out the alleged piece of “disinformation” that “Barack Obama legalized government propaganda against citizens” appears at the top of the Google search results. Among the critics who warned about the new Act was now-deceased investigative journalist Michael Hastings, who also, it is worth mentioning, expressed concern about the dangerous influence of the Pentagon’s “public relations” wing, which already by 2009 employed 27,000 persons full-time as war marketeers. A number of other notable figures who sounded alarms about the dangers of government propaganda and overreach are now dead, imprisoned, or living in exile.
The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 (signed into law as a part of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013) arguably set the United States on the path toward the erection of a full-fledged Ministry of Truth and the consequent shrinking of citizens’ liberty. Only time will tell whether this piece of legislation alone will suffice, as deployed by the new Disinformation Governance Board, to strip citizens of their First Amendment right to free speech when they attempt to reject the first premises of the DGB itself. If so, then Barack Obama will bear primary responsibility for the totalitarian system to ensue, whatever his intentions may have been.
For with the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act already in place, there are only two short steps to the complete squelching of dissent. First, the government controls the media through injecting many pro-government texts into the marketplace of ideas. This is obviously already being done, and has been unabashedly pursued since the ratification of the Act. (To dispel any doubts that this is happening, it suffices to turn on the mainstream network news.) Second, among the government-promoted ideas will now be the claim that the newly established Disinformation Governance Board does not violate the Constitution of the United States. Once lawmakers have been persuaded to believe this, then the DGB will have the power to eliminate what they themselves have identified as disinformation, including the very claim that the DGB is illegitimate. After that will follow the censorship of the texts of anyone who disagrees with the government and, ultimately, the criminalization of those who “persist” in promulgating ideas deemed “threatening” by the powers that be. The danger of all of this to free people is very real, as the plight of whistleblowers in recent years has already revealed.
Tyranny is when the government pushes propaganda on its people. We are seeing it today.
(BTW our understanding per a discussion with one experienced attorney is that this act has no effect on the Communications Decency Act Section 230.)