hypernormalisation

Bennewitz and others chosen by the agency, were, it is alleged, given a series of forged documents. Many of them were top secret memos by the military describing sightings of unidentified aerial vehicles. The documents spread like wildfire. And they were the basis for the wave of beliefs in UFOs that would spread through America in the 1990s. But it also fuelled the wider, growing belief that governments lied to you, that conspiracies were real. What the Reagan administration were doing both with Gadhafi and the UFOs was a blurring of fact and fiction. But it was part of an even broader program. The president’s advisors had given it a name – perception management, and it became a central part of the American government during the 1980s. the aim was to tell dramatic stories that grabbed the public imagination, not just about the middle east, but about central America and the Soviet Union. And it didn’t matter if the stories were true or not, providing they distracted people, and you, the politician, from having to deal with the intractable complexities of the real world. Reality became less and less of an important factor in American politics. It wasn't what was real that was driving anything or the facts driving anything. It was how you could turn those facts or twist those facts or even make up the facts to make your opponent look bad. So, perception management became a device and the facts could be twisted. Anything could be anything. It becomes how can you manipulate the American people? And, in the process, reality becomes what? Reality becomes simply something to play with to achieve that end. Reality is not important in this context. Reality is simply something that you handle.