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3. Delegitimize skeptical inquiry and demands for transparency by dismissing our era's ubiquitous fraud and over-reach as standard practice that has always been the norm in U.S. history.

This approach is effective because there is a kernel of truth in every admonishment that greed in inherent in human nature. But this appeal to greed as normal (if not "good") masks the reality that previous eras of American history were characterized by robust negative feedbacks that limited financial fraud, deception and embezzlement.

4. Decontextualize scale. If the rentier-financial Elite pillaged $10 million in a previous period of unlimited financial looting and debauchery of credit (to grab a number from the air), then claim today's looting of hundreds of billions of dollars--adjusted for inflation, an amount a 100-fold larger than the past sum--is "no different than the past, it's just business as usual."

The goal is to mask the truth that today's over-reach and embezzlement is very different as it is two orders of magnitude greater and has reached its larcenous claws past the usual "den of thieves" on Wall Street into the heart of middle class wealth, housing and retirement savings.

This technique also effectively masks the very different scale of the U.S. military and its global reach. Prior to World War II, the U.S. military quickly shrank back to its prewar modest scale after the cessation of hostilities. The U.S. Navy was significant enough to defend sea-lanes for commerce and enforce the Monroe Doctrine (domination of Central America and the Caribbean) but other navies were larger. The Great White Fleet (14 ships) of 1908 which sailed around the world in a display of American seapower depended on friendly ports of call to refuel; now the U.S. maintains global fleets homeported in its own bases around the world.

(As a footnote, the "Splendid Little War" of 1901--the Spanish-American War--certainly opened up new bases for the U.S. in the Philippines and elsewhere; the annexation of Hawaii in 1898 also secured a key strategic Pacific base.)

Once again, the fact that the U.S. possessed a Navy and Army in 1908 can be used to mask the scale of the present military: "we've always had a Navy," which sounds much like " banks have always been greedy," etc. This language is designed to distract us from the realization that today's financial fraud and today's American Empire are unprecedented in their scale and reach.

5. Decontextualize history. By downplaying comparisons with legitimately prosperous eras in U.S. history, propaganda masks key differences between the past and present. Thus when banks were tightly regulated after the fraud and debauchery of the 1920s led to the crash of 1929, financial profits were a modest slice of total U.S. corporate profits. In the past decade of deregulated "financial innovation," financial sector profits have come to dominate corporate earnings. This is extraordinarily different from the prosperity of the 1950s and 60s in which profits flowed from producing goods and services, not financial legerdemain.

In the same manner, the fact that inequality has leaped since the early 1970s has been derealized to protect those who have benefited from this trend (i.e. the top 5%).

6. Confuse the taxonomy of profit and wealth generation. This can also be termed "purposefully confusing apples with oranges." Thus the neutral word "profit" is used to describe the legitimate profits earned by innovative enterprises such as Apple which earns money by providing greater value than the competition, and illegitimate profits reaped by fraudulent mortgage-mill lenders who sold "toxic" mortgages to unqualified borrowers.

Despite the visible difference in type and category of these "earnings," the mainstream financial media (a key arm of the propaganda/marketing machine) compares the numbers as if they deserve the same standing in the taxonomy profit and wealth generation. Yet one is clearly illegitimate as it ceases to function without deception, fraud, embezzlement,