Seriously:

If you think it’s normal for the CIA World Factbook to just disappear one day with no explanation, you’re not paying attention. Or you’ve been successfully conditioned not to care.

The World Factbook has been around since 1962. For six decades, it was the reliable source for country statistics—population data, economic indicators, security assessments, vaccine recommendations. Teachers used it. Journalists trusted it. Travelers relied on it. It was raw data with no agenda, no spin, no corporate interest trying to sell you something.

And on the same day the Washington Post laid off a third of its newsroom—including most of its international reporting staff—the CIA quietly shut it down.

No warning. No explanation. Just a cute little farewell message: “Stay curious about the world!”

Here’s what you need to understand:

This isn’t an isolated decision. It’s part of a pattern.

In the last year, your government has:

• Taken down or modified US health websites
• Removed references to slavery from National Parks Service materials
• Imposed political views on what gets displayed at the Smithsonian
• Eliminated USAID transparency
• Erased Black soldiers’ names from federal websites
• And now—shut down the single most trusted source of global data that everyone from high school teachers to CNN researchers depended on

You seeing the pattern?

Because raw data—factual, verifiable, non-partisan information—is dangerous to people who govern through manufactured reality.

Here’s the bigger problem:

The government’s job is to inform you. To help you understand the world. To provide reliable information so you can make educated decisions about your life, your country, your future.

Instead, your government is now systematically restricting information, controlling narratives, remanufacturing words and ideas, and saying demonstrably untrue things every single day.

Truth has been replaced by ideology. Facts have been replaced by whatever narrative serves power. And trust? The very foundation of functional society? Intentionally demolished.

To young people who think this is just how things are:

This is not normal. This has never been normal in America. We’ve never had a government that actively worked to make its citizens stupider, less informed, less capable of critical thinking.

I said to my 16 year old the other day: ‘Your generation has it so hard. You look up and see this Governor and think it’s normal. This is the opposite of what it should feel like. It must be a terrible feeling of hopelessness.’

How well are we going to be able to get data on developing countries?”

Teachers across the country are scrambling. They have to trust corporate sources.

This list goes on…

To be clear: This is deliberate.

When you eliminate trusted information sources, you don’t create a knowledge vacuum—you create a propaganda opportunity.

You force people to rely on partisan sources, corporate interests, and whatever narrative the loudest voice is selling.

You make an entire generation dependent on curated information instead of raw facts.

Do you think this is fine—that dismantling decades of trusted information infrastructure with zero explanation is just how governments operate?

If you’re not angry right now, at least wondering WTF, you’re not paying attention. And if you’re not paying attention, you’re lost.

KJS DC 2.26