Editor's note: Maitreya Bhakal is an Indian commentator who writes about China, India, U.S. and global issues. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God…"

In the Land of the Free, propaganda starts at an early age. U.S. schoolchildren learn, imbibe, and recite the above words in school – hand to heart – to pledge their allegiance to the U.S. government and its symbols. They grow up to become ardent foot soldiers ready for their government in many of its myriad wars and invasions.

On July 4, the nation celebrates "Independence Day". The occasion is accompanied by a significant propaganda push for the country, certifying its grip on power. The day is a federal holiday in the country to leave people enough time to consume government propaganda - unencumbered by their mundane jobs.

The heavily surveilled U.S. internet overflows with patriotic propaganda and videos of people singing the national anthem and waving the flag - especially on a popular microblogging site called Twitter, a xenophobic American version of Weibo.

Such propaganda is necessary both to create a vast patriotic army that is ready to contribute for the government, as well as to hide its vast abuses. For in essence, the U.S. is a Lebensraum-style settler colony built on land stolen by the government from a whole civilization. The nation was literally founded on genocide, and then subsequently built by slaves.

And it was almost certainly the largest genocide in world history, causing the massacre of millions upon millions of people. Accurate figures are hard to come by due to the passage of time and the lack of records. According to researchers at University College London, so many people were killed that it literally changed the planet's climate, causing global cooling.

The few indigenous peoples that survive in the U.S. today are treated as "second-class citizens". They languish in remote pockets of the nation, crushed by a political power that obliterated the majority of their ancestors and their culture.

Little of this history is covered in schools. Children are taught a highly sanitized version of history as part of their patriotic education, stripped of any honest discussion about the government's atrocities. They grow up knowing little about the massive abuses and horrific crimes ubiquitous throughout their nation's history.

Yet, outside the propaganda that seeks to portray a perfect picture of a Shining City on the Hill, hides a dark reality.

For many in America, life is a slog. Student debt crushes people's aspirations as much as it crushes their bank balances. Real wages have stagnated for decades. Depression and drugs are common, as is homicide. Racial minorities face widespread discrimination. Gun violence is a key facet of U.S. culture, which is violent enough even without it.

The judiciary – hailed as "independent" by government propaganda – is used by the U.S. to provide legal cover for its atrocities. Law enforcement is brutal; police is widely feared and mistrusted. And for good reason – it murders about a 1000 innocent people every year according to the Washington Post's police shootings database, with the actual number almost certainly being much higher. People of color are disproportionately targeted.

Those the government considers undesirable are incarcerated and held in a vast gulag known as "prisons". The country has only 4.4 percent of the world's population but about a quarter of the world's prisoners.

Surveillance is ubiquitous and speech is tightly controlled. Any deviation from the acceptable standards of political debate is punished, either by pushing such views to the margins, or by severely prosecuting them – using both legal and extralegal means – to the point of near oblivion.

Nearly all political activity is compartmentalized into the controlled-opposition, "two-party" system, with any unorthodox views treated as sacrilege and ruthlessly crushed. Problems with the nation – whether climate change or financial crises – are decried as foreign plots.

Through the skillful use of patriotic education and propaganda, people are made to believe they are "free" and can control their fates simply by "voting" and changing the figureheads in power. As long as the proles are kept in check by the world's most sophisticated propaganda system, the U.S. has little to fear.

This successful blend of co-option and coercion is the true secret behind the U.S.'s longevity. Both the media and the past are strictly controlled. As George Orwell put it, who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past.

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