Reply #1: I think it might be a good thing...

[stillcool]

that the media has gone over the cliff. By questioning the reality of now, I am almost compelled to question the reality of history.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media_control_propaganda/PoliticsNewsMedia.html
The Politics of News Media
from the book
False Hope
by Norman Solomon, 1994
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Popularized renderings of reality, however phony, supply us with shared illusions, suitable for complying with authorized itineraries, the requisite trips through never-never lands of public pretense. Privately, we struggle to make sense of our experiences; perhaps we can create some personal space so that our own perceptions and emotions have room to stretch. But the limits of privatized solutions are severe. Public spheres determine the very air we breathe and the social environments of our lives. The standard detours meander through imposing landscapes. Beyond the outer limits of customary responses, uncharted territory is "weird"-certainly not familiar from watching TV or reading daily papers. Following in the usual footsteps seems to be safer.
Confusion about politics and power denies us clues as to where to go from here. Anne Wilson Schaef has identified pivotal results of such confusion:
" First, it keeps us powerless and controllable. No one is more controllable than a confused person; no society is more controllable than a confused society. Politicians know this better than anyone, and that is why they use innuendos, veiled references, and out-and-out lies instead of speaking clearly and truthfully.
Second, it keeps us ignorant. Professionals give their clients confusing information cloaked in intimidating language that lay-people cannot understand. They preserve their "one-up" status while preventing us from learning about our own bodies, our legal rights, and our psychology.
Third, it keeps us from taking responsibility for our own lives. No one expects confused people to own up to the things they think, say, or do, or face the truth about who they are.
Fourth, it keeps us busy. When we must spend all our time and energy trying to figure out what is going on, we have none left over for reflecting on the system, challenging it, or exploring alternatives to it.
These have the combined effect of keeping us stuck within the system. And this, I believe, is the primary purpose of confusion. A confused person will stay within the system because the thought of moving out of it is too frightening. It takes a certain amount of clarity to try new things, walk new roads, and cross new bridges, ~ and confusion makes clarity and risk taking impossible."
Mass media encourage us-viewers, listeners, readers-to suspend disbelief, willingly or otherwise. Stalked by propaganda wolves in chic clothing, we are the intended sheep. Conformity is disguised with appearances of diversity-just as silence about what matters most is in no way inconsistent with constant verbiage.
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The pretense is that You Are There, or you have choices; the reality, much more likely, is that you aren't anywhere, and/you can choose from the choices that have already been made for you. The delusion of "choice" from an array of televised (and corporately backed) programs is parallel to the delusion of choice from an array of pre-screened (and corporately backed) presidential candidates.
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In effect, "The TV newsman comforts us as John Wayne comforted our grandparents, by seeming to have the whole affair in hand.... Since no one seems to live on television, no one seems to die there. And the medium's temporal facility deprives all terminal moments of their weight."
Being numb to untoward events is in sync with being passive. For mass media, this is a perfect fit. Television, a powerful number, asks that we do nothing-"don't touch that dial"-except go out and buy things. Everything is well-produced, including the latest war; especially one made in the USA.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media_control_propaganda/PoliticsNewsMedia.html

Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence
a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr.
delivered 4 April 1967 at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement, and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
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We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.
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In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin , we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Martin%20Luther%20King/Beyond_Vietnam_speech.html