Q: "How can you tell if a politician is lying?"
A: "When his lips are moving."

"In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true… The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness." — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

The First Amendment assures us of a right to free speech.

It does not, unfortunately, explicitly assure us of a right to not be lied to by our government and its various officials. Any hope of holding government officials accountable for their lies rests with the political process, in the voting booths and through the impeachment process, which themselves have become so ineffective as to offer little real hope of transparency, accountability or reform.

We have been lied to so much, for so long, and on every subject, by government officials of every stripe that political lies have become our norm. It says something about the sorry state of our nation and the low bar we have set for those we elect to represent us.

However, although there are few consequences for government officials who lie to the public, the Deep State continues to wage war on those who challenge its lies, half-truths and obfuscations.

Case in point: Julian Assange.

Although the news of Assange's plea deal was quickly overshadowed by the drama that is the 2024 presidential election (the WikiLeaks founder pled guilty to a "single felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security material in exchange for his release from a British prison"), his persecution at the hands of the Deep State was a warning shot over the bow for anyone who dares speak truth to power.

The Deep State has embarked on a ruthless, take-no-prisoners, all-out assault on truth-tellers.

Activists, journalists and whistleblowers alike continue to be terrorized, traumatized, tortured and subjected to the fear-inducing, mind-altering, soul-destroying, smash-your-face-in tactics employed by the superpowers-that-be.

In an age of prosecutions for thought crimes, pre-crime deterrence programs, and government agencies that operate like organized crime syndicates, this is a new kind of tyranny being imposed on those who dare to expose the crimes of the Deep State, whose reach has gone global.

What happened to Assange was intended to send a message to anyone who dares to speak truth to power: don't even consider it.