The end of Donald Trump’s presidency has been occasion for lots of celebrating and even more commentary about the potential of reestablishing norms in Washington DC, resurrecting trust in public institutions. Yet the normal state of affairs in Washington is ruled by lobbying and public relations firms that thrive on the absence of truth, utilizing lies as strategic tools to prevent measures that could harm their bottom line.

Donald Trump lies to a ridiculous degree. But the factual balkanization of the American public is the result of our democracy being hacked long ago primarily in the name of profit. The major perpetrators are widely known — the tobacco industry, fossil fuel companies, big sugar, and the military industrial complex — and all find easy vehicles for their lies in the corporate media.

The link between tobacco and lung cancer was first suspected by the medical community as early as 1912. By the 1950s when John Hill, founder of public relations giant Hill and Knowlton, pitched the tobacco giants on a public relations strategy of deception that would continue for more than four decades, it was widely accepted in the medical community that smoking was dangerous. Yet John Hill understood as long as big tobacco could provide paid experts and false studies from a fake think tank, the media would cover their lies as facts.