Does the ubiquity of faked photo evidence (going back decades) mean that stuff didn't happen?

From  a blog post earlier today "evidence" that this Sikh bloke - or, at least, his cut-out head - "mentored Eisenhower in WWII"

One of the benefits I have derived from reading Miles W Mathis is an habitual sensitivity to the use of faked photographs. 

Mathis is a professional artist and has a trained and expert eye for such matters - but so crude are most of the photo-fakes that detecting them is mainly a matter of considering the possibility. 

It turns-out that almost all of the visual evidence for almost all of the major mass media narratives, is faked. 

Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky - three cut-outs who did the Russian Revolution

And I am not talking about those undetectable "deep fakes" which the media have themselves been hand-wringing over recently; but crudely-faked pictures, videos and films - in top status contexts; and that are accepted by "everybody" in authority.  

It turns-out that these crude fakes go back over many decades, more than a century - even to the early usage of photography in providing "evidence" to back up the claims of the leadership class. 

If we just look for ourselves with a prepared attitude - the pictorial "evidence" is obviously bogus, in some way.  

These faked photos are so common that it is unusual to find a picture of somebody or some-event famous and important that has not been significantly tampered-with, in line with the narrative that is pushed.  

Perhaps most famously these include the space programme and moon landings - where many/ most of the iconic images were faked; despite that, as I believe, the space programme and moon landings really happened.

Now the same happens with SpaceX, but using (crude) CGI. 

So, what does this mean?

In the first place, it is proof of the routine dishonesty that has characterized the Western ruling class. Anyone who has been involved in the workings of large institutions and corporations over the past few decades will know that the imperative to be truthful is something completely alien to those who work in such environments. 

Their imperative to to say and show whatever serves their purposes - constrained only by watching their backs in case there is a "leak" or accusation. 

It simply does not occur to such people that they ought to tell the truth and be honest. Such a notion is not even aired then rejected - it isn't even mentioned: all efforts are instantly put into attempting the management and manipulation of perceptions. 

However, it was not always thus in all social institutions. For example, I can vouch for the honesty of scientists and academics in the UK during the middle 20th century. 

They were shocked and openly critical about the way that the media distorted and misrepresented their work. 

As a trivial but significant example, when BBC Horizon filmed at the lab where I later did my doctorate, they would only have men with beards in some of the shots, even when they had nothing to do with the work being reported - i.e. their idea of what scientists should look like.  

My best guess is that this is how the fake NASA photos happened - the media imperative was for pictures that were of the right kind to produce the desired reaction; and honest pictures of what happened were either impossible to get, or of too low a quality.  

And soon this became normal - so that a parallel "virtual world" of pictures, administered by the media, became detached from the engineering and piloting world of what actually happened. 

I saw the same in universities and laboratories during the 1980s into the 90s. At first there was a separation between the science and the public reporting - the science was still honest, and the fakery was applied afterwards. 

But once the strict habit of honestly had been broken, the truth about stuff was on a slippery slope to routine, pervasive, near-total fakery - which is where we have been in the West since around the millennium. 

Now the fakery is everywhere and all the time; everybody is dishonest with everybody else in public life; and nobody knows what is true. 

Our society cannot fulfil a functional purpose - or even know whether our purpose has been achieved.

Do the official crude-CGI fakes of SpaceX launchers mean that nothing is happening at all, or something different is happening, or is it just a matter of making better visuals for what really happened?  

Fakes are built on fakes in vast constructions; and we cannot ever know if or when we have reached the bottom. 

Everything significant we are shown is faked - one way or another - if not visually then by interpretation.*

All we can do with confidence, is identify that the evidence is fake, that we are being lied to - and the purpose is to manipulate us. 

But, spiritually-speaking, knowing that is enough. 

*Note added: The way that this visual evidence usually works is that - before seeing the images - people are told what the images will show. And that is what people then see. After which they suppose the image proves what they were originally told -- the circle has closed, the narrative has been proved; and anyone who contests it must be evil, insane or dishonest. An example of such circularity was the triggering-fake-visuals of "MLB" summer in 2020.