I visited an extraordinarily polluted steelworks city a few years ago. Even on a clear day, the air was orange, and as you entered the city you noticed the colour wash out of everything slightly, and the horizon over the estuary blurred out to a drab orange smear.

I mention this, as when I mentioned it to the locals, none of them understood what I was talking about.

You see, when your entire reality glows orange, that becomes normal to you. You cease to notice that everything is orange. You even vehemently disagree with anyone who’s just arrived and asks “why is everything around here orange?”.

This is how propaganda works. Degree by degree everything turns orange, and unless you get out of it once in a while, you never notice.

That is one reason why I'd like the media to recognize the part they themselves play in all this. Just by repeating the words of the demagogues for critical reasons they still give them another platform.

For example:

'Today Trump repeated a debunked hoax as though it were true'

is one thing, to say

'Today Trump said "The FBI didn’t take Hillary Clinton's email server. It was taken by somebody that, I guess, it’s CrowdStrike — that’s what I’ve heard.", which has been debunked long ago'.

Is another. The second may be more sexy and may draw more eyeballs and therefore ad impressions but it still gives Trump a platform for his BS and plenty of people will believe the president over some reporter saying that this was already debunked as an afterthought.

I'm curious to see how deep the media rabbit hole goes with this though given what we're learning about Hannity's involvement.

Agreed. We just would need to figure out who is standing in the clouds.

We all are. Our entire human world comprises overlapping subjective realities built by group consensus. What is true and rational to me is anathema to another, and the inverse applies. From cradle to grave our realities are sculpted by our experiences and those surrounding us. Recognising this is the first step to understanding an awful lot of why people think and do what they do.