I’ve fallen behind the last few days, having made a couple of spectacular hauls from local library – including Naomi Klein’s ‘The Shock Doctrine,’ which I requested, they ordered, received, and notified me it was there reserved for me faster than I could have gotten it mail order myself. Support your local library! A public library, when well run, remains our window to the larger world.

The web press – Locust Fork one of the regional stars there – has in a few short years debunked the establishment propaganda agenda of the “mainstream media” to an extent never possible when alternative news, analysis and opinion sources were limited to a few, poorly-circulated magazines and newspapers.

My own pet belief is that we have entered an era of a new paradigm, the first principle of which is understanding things at the core. The second, and equally important, maxim is truth. The third, militating in favor of soft power over hard power as the governing idea of human relationships.

This shift is not even remotely suspected by most in the “mainstream media.” They are uniquely unprepared to detect and explain it, and continue casting events in the same way, with the same analysis, as they always have.

A good analogy would be a kindergarten student asked to explain neurosurgery: after observing such an operation, the typical youngster would likely explain that someone in a blue scrub suit cut up someone else’s head while wearing a mask.

The web press, on the other hand, and a very few other venues, would explain clearly the patient is having brain surgery, why the surgery is being done, and what prompted it.

Nearly alone among media sources today, the web press, including many opinion and analysis bloggers, understand the paradigm shift, although, like any good group of small-d democrats, have different takes on what it means and what to do about it.

The web press will be remembered, decades and centuries hence, as the information-heroes of this era. I am not certain how the “mainstream media” will be remembered, if at all.