![Orwell Rolls in His Grave [DVD]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61D8KQD3SFL._SX300_SY300_QL70_ML2_.jpg)
"They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality...and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening."
This quote from Orwell's "1984" is used in the opening sequence of this film, and sums up America's media structure frighteningly well. Media shapes and alters human consciousness, collectively, it shapes and effects the collective reality.
This film serves as a WARNING: the U.S. media is an ANTI-democratic force, a weapon of "doublespeak,", a subsidiary of corporate America which shapes and determines the legality, constitutionality, and 'facts' of democratically newsworthy events and issues from official, inside sources, instead of(and quite OPPOSED TO, in fact) true journalism, or even any vague sense of it. Specific, essential words/language are not used, not permitted, within our media, in order to reduce cognition. In America, truth is staged and 'managed' to that extent, the pattern with which stories and events are covered, dropped, spun or omitted, is strategically deceptive.
When you consider just how many people either don't understand that, or flat out don't care, or actually believe that we have a free, 'liberal' media....the mind boggles, yet you can't help but marvel at it's efficacy.
As Mark Crispin Miller makes the illustration with a quote from Nazi Joseph Goebbels: "What you want in a media system is ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity."
This doc, previously only available at Buzzflash, examines the consolidation of media(which=consolidation of voice=consolidation of 'one truth')and why certain stories are obviously NOT covered in our "free" press: the illegal behind the scenes actions of, and overall unconstitutionality of, the 2000 (S)election, Bush's SEC violations of insider trading, the WMD's: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION used by our media to get a supposedly democratic nation behind a totalitarian invasion/occupation, the Telecommunications Act, and even delves into the Reagan/Bush years, examining October Surprise(watch "Cover Up: Iran/Contra") their 'Orwellian' use of the term, "de-regulation," again, anti-democratic policies, and the killing of the Fairness Doctrine, which meant that media outlets no longer had to air opposing viewpoints.
This results in less knowledge, less facts, one widely accepted (un)reality, and reveals how the fascist right wing has been on the march for decades, infiltrating *every* aspect of the corporate culture. It's overt and underlying effects of how it's dumbed down collective reality and worked to induce frighteningly large percentages of our populace into chauvinsitic, hate-filled 'super patriotism,' greed, apathy, unconscionability, often through brainwashed fervor and manipulated ignorance(dumb as a stump & fightin' mad to prove it!)can be seen literally everywhere these days.
Imagine 1% of the population effectively conning and convincing the other 99% to support their wants and desires, and those wants and desires are grounded in greed, debasement and mass murder: the media, once a means of keeping power in check, is now the very tool to con and convince the 99% that greed, debasement and mass murder aren't 'really' bad, for such values are generally promoted and exhaulted within the corporate culture...and likewise(to further confuse and control)to convince the 99% that the obvious greed, debasement and mass murder *aren't really so.* This form of indoctrination has gone a long way in creating this widely adhered to perception of a 'reality' which simply doesn not exist: it's a euphemistic unreality.
Naturally, when you try to show evidence of this to people, there is a strong reluctance, a deep seated inability to be capable of understanding it, because the unreality has been accepted by so many, for so long.
Go back to the quote from Orwell: "They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality."
Accept Flagrant VIOLATIONS of REALITY.
If you care about and lament the death of democracy ~ and you either care or you don't ~ and are troubled over what terminal, pitch-black ending this could lead us to, please watch this obelisk of a documentary. The presentation is dead on, the sources reliable and seasoned. Those interviewed are plain speaking communicators who resist the 'kids gloves' approach/denial to the fascist, perilous dilemma which menaces our fragile democracy, and inevitably, civilization, and the fate of our species.
Also watch "Manufacturing Consent," "The Corporation," "The World According To Bush," and "Control Room," (about Al Jazeera's television news coverage of the Iraq invasion)and lastly, I'd recommended the brilliant and overlooked Tim Robbins mockumentary, "Bob Roberts," which chronicles the rise of a fascist, right wing, messianic senator.
