During the Cold War, the US government, via the United States Information Agency (USIA)[0] delivered all sorts of propaganda to our ideological adversaries, in

During the Cold War, the US government, via the United States Information Agency (USIA)[0] delivered all sorts of propaganda to our ideological adversaries, in particular communist countries. They usually tried to reach the average person and thus skew opinion in our (America's) favor. I got a glimpse of some of this because I was an exchange student in the 80's, in a program sponsored by Congress and considered relevant to said Cold War. It was pretty interesting! Plenty of eagles and big cars and class mobility, but also a lot of stuff about freedom of thought and expression. I remember at the time being quite miffed that they were not allowed to intentionally expose US citizens to any of this propaganda -- US expats were not even allowed to use the America-sponsored libraries abroad -- because it seemed like keeping it open would encourage the government to send a message that, broadly speaking, Americans agreed with. Now that I'm older, I'm not sure. I think maybe it was better for them to have a freer hand in propagandizing, without having to argue about every point in a domestic context. Nowadays, however, it's hard to imagine that secrecy working at all so it's just as well they gave up. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Information_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Information_Agen...