On second thought, while it would be satisfying to take the trolls down a few pegs, it probably wouldn't accomplish much. If someone began to report honestly, he or she would be immediately replaced by another troll. It is a real puzzle, what to do. How do we fight propaganda produced from unlimited resources?
Blackballing this or that newspaper or TV show isn't going to work. People still want local news that comes along with the political messages.
Protesters will just get harassed legally, thrown in jail, hosed down, etc. The water protectors didn't get far. Occupy Wall Street protesters didn't get anywhere. The West Virginia teachers got a small raise (5% after 4 years) by striking, but they had the state by the balls. Can you imagine the outroar when parents had to take care of their kids all week? But any kind of nationwide general strike seems unlikely and unwinnable against the government & big business money combine.
What to do?
I keep coming back to the phrase, "Don't play." The words keep popping back into my mind. Non-violent drop out, choosing positive alternatives personally and in groups, seems the best course. Building from the bottom up and changing with soft power like that of rain or flowing water would be maddeningly slow, but it might be the only way. Just don't play their game-- scrabbling for success (money). Worker coops. Block chain communications that can't be altered. Proudly independent, etc.
Private financing. All we really need is the vision and our own means of communication.
What do you think?
The internet would allow individuals to participate from anywhere (I am in Rhodes, Greece, at the moment). A doctor here, a few mechanics there, farmers & gardeners, journalists, home schoolers, people from every walk of life, in ones and twos and threes, choosing honor & truth, exchanging with each other and offering advice at large, a slowly spreading ganglia in the social body, unstoppable in the long run as the center is dispersed and intangible. Education would be fun (lists of recommended reading for all kinds of pursuits). Self administered tests for certificates of learning. In the real world, social & class war considerations aside, no one cares where you went to school. What matters is what you can do, what you know. I personally walked the walk on that one, having paid my son to drop out of high school. He worked his way around the world a couple of times and now does better than I ever did, managing large construction projects.
Don't play their game, play yours.
That is a better way to say it. I don't mean that you can drop into a utopian parallel society. You (just) change internally. If your position (job or personal life) requires you to lie, you refuse, you tell the truth, that's all. If that leads to divorce or mowing lawns instead of managing workers, so be it. It is a win either way: your position, your relationships, improve in place, or a negative situation is left behind and you are free to add your strengths elsewhere.
There is something simple at the heart of things that last. Roundness in the wheel, a read/write binary unit to represent a "bit" of information. Truth is at the heart of human connection, among ourselves and with the universe. When it becomes acceptable to lie, a society is doomed. This can only be changed from the bottom, one person at a time, from parent to child, from teacher to student.
Above, I used the word "ganglia" to describe the spread through society of people playing "their" game, telling the truth. I like the image, but it is too horizontal. Those who tell the truth are also connecting vertically, back through time, to those who also told the truth. So they are also connecting with their better roots. I think that a better image is a tree, spreading.