I saw a great comment on Reddit that suggested America will meet the same end as the Soviet Union: the bloated, staggering, farcical empire will just suddenly fall apart one day. No revolution, no fanfare, no real drama. It just collapses to the indifference of the vast majority of its citizens, who pick up and carry on in new countries.
I saw a great comment on Reddit
And that pseudo-intellectual the other pseudo-intellectual agrees with watched Hypernormalization, an average at best documentary that ignores a shitload of historical facts to paint a specific picture of history. Every time a doc goes to the top of r/all the redditards parrot it for the next few weeks.
All Adam Curtis docs are mostly 'stories'. Which is how each of them starts: "This is a story about <subject>"
He offers a different and interesting perspective to show that your perception does not always equal reality and does it in a subtle way.
A lot of what he says about 'shaping' reality combined with the imagery of Qaddafi is really powerful. Especially because just like with the live CNN Iraq gas attack bit... it's so obvious most of it is fake now.
But people in hindsight weren't paying attention to the right things.
His main thesis is that politicians paint a picture of the world that best fits their world view and ambitions and that before the 21st century the world they painted matched how most of their voters perceived the world.
But with rampant inequality and a breakdown of the classic rules (good vs. evil, right vs. wrong) and higher stakes (systems of power being more important than the people themselves) most people don't believe the politicians anymore.
Which in turn gives
A) room to others who are highly persuasive to shift the perception of reality and take control of that reality (Trump)
or
B) makes people uncertain and fearful and keeps them from taking risks and protesting the status quo (Putin)
