"The first casualty of War, is Truth" -Aescylus

Access to high quality, reliable, sources of information. Is something that you take for granted while you have it AND miss like crazy when you don't.

I'm sure you remember the classic Twilight Zone episode where the lights go out on Maple Street and the "good people" turn into monsters. When people don't have anyone they trust, telling them what to think, they often panic and get ugly.

In the absence of information, FEAR prevails.

In the movie "Goodbye World" the country starts collapsing within days of the internet being completely shut down by an implacable virus. Without information people fear the worst and start acting on those fears.

The system we live in has an immense amount of "social inertia". It's a paradigm we have internalized so completely that we imagine it to be "reality". The way the world "just is" and "always will be".

That's an illusion. EVERYTHING in our world is a "social construct", and as such, can be changed. Sometimes overnight.

Empires and ways of life are "paradigms" as much as anything. Everyone BELIEVES in them, and that belief makes them the "law of the land". Until there's a PARADIGM SHIFT.