There's a wise old maxim that says, "The first step on the road to wisdom is to call things by their right names." So, let's do that.

"Fake News" has been around a long while, The New York Sun's " Great Moon Hoax " of 1835 is a good (and amusing) example. An absolute falsehood and fantasy was published as fact to a credulous public who ate it up. This fake news story about the moon established The Sun as a major and highly profitable newspaper throughout the United States. Fifty years later, Hearst and Pulitzer were competing with each other for readership by publishing preposterous and sensationalist phony stories that  became known as "yellow journalism", or as I simply call it, "urinalism". Because the media that publish such swill, and the hacks that write for them, are fit only for cleaning toilets. But those carefree days are long in the past, and fake news is no longer funny.

The practice of publishing false stories for financial or political motives has probably been around much longer than that, but today it has been elevated to a science and an art form, a black art form, that is truly one of the greatest threats to the future of Humanity in the world today. It is mass brainwashing on a global scale, abetted by science and technology, a war on human consciousness, a concentrated and deliberate attack on people's ability to see reality, to discern fact from lies, it is a war against the truth .

It has been correctly said that a respect for the truth is the basis for all morality, so a war against the truth is a war against morality, against all that is good and decent. Without an ability to see reality and detect lies, without a moral compass, people are literally no more than dumb beasts, mules to be worked and exploited by their owners, or sheep to be led to the slaughter. "Fake news" is a term a bit too cute and cozy for the black art of intentionally erasing the very intellect and morality that makes us human. It seeks to dumb down and degrade Humanity to the point to where people are no longer human. And that point is fast approaching, and for many, is already here.