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The US drift into Adam Curtis' broad thesis in hypernormalisation(a) continues apace I see. Great to see J Pow putting up a fight but I fear this is all going o

The US drift into Adam Curtis' broad thesis in hypernormalisation(a) continues apace I see. Great to see J Pow putting up a fight but I fear this is all going one way. (a) >We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie. They know we know they lie. They don't care. We say we care but do nothing.

mmooss 9mo ago
> I fear this is all going one way That belief isn't the consequence of the situation, but the cause. There is ample ability to change events, but people must believe they can act and act together, as they have for centuries of democracy and for all human history. They do it in Iran. The Republicans and MAGA movement have made changes that would have been unbelievable ten years ago.
- jordanpg 9mo ago
  Stated differently, if things really are so bad (and I would be the first to agree that things are pretty bad), then why are so many comfortable people (like me) not out on the street every day? There are a lot of reasons for that, of course, but the bottom line is that when things get bad enough -- much worse than they are today -- then more people will take to the street, along with whatever sacrifice that entails. We're just not there yet, because for many, there is far too much to lose.
  - Barrin92 9mo ago
    >then why are so many comfortable people (like me) not out on the street every day? because a lot of people have a kind of built-in main character syndrome and believe they're the protagonists of the world and things can't really go bad. They haven't internalized that there isn't some god behind the curtain that saves them. That's how it goes in every country that ends up in the dirt, they all thought they were special, they all thought "surely we're not there yet" and you can pick their remains out of the rubble. relevant piece from a few years ago: https://indi.ca/i-lived-through-collapse-america-is-already-there/ https://indi.ca/i-lived-through-collapse-america-is-already-...
  - amanaplanacanal 9mo ago
    Not sure being out in the street really does much. Gives the jack booted thugs an excuse for a little recreational violence. A general strike might have an effect, but I'm not sure how you organize such a thing.
    - kelseyfrog 9mo ago
      You can't, because everytime that happens, a group comes out of the woodworks that says X, Y, and Z need to be done before a general strike can even be considered. X, Y, and Z usually involve community building, mutual aid, strike funds, housing security, and other precarity reducing actions.
    - jordanpg 9mo ago
      > Not sure being out in the street really does much. I agree; this phrase was just a stand in for doing something -- anything -- about the state of affairs I don't like. Other than things I can do from my couch like commenting on HN.
    - mothballed 9mo ago
      If protests worked better than the alternatives then that's what megacorps and multinational corporations would be doing instead of bribes and lobbying. 'The people' still dont understand they're playing an entirely different sport.
    - Tanoc 9mo ago
      A general strike at the level required to change things requires roping in unwilling participants as well. Probably on the scale of breaking infrastructure like payment systems or over the road shipping. If nobody can ignore current events because it's not just impacting but impeding and quickly degrading their quality of life they'll get angry. However just so long as people can go home and play their videogames, or listen to their podcasts, or read their books, they'll be able to focus enough of their attention away from events and keep their stress below the critical threshold just enough that they won't do anything. Calhoun's Rat Utopia Experiment comes to mind in that the rats suffered any number of indignities, maladies, and stressors just so long as they had ample access to endorphin and melatonin sources in strong enough bursts to stave off the constant floods of cortisol and norepinephrine. Political theory is that ten to fifteen percent of a given population needs to actively rebel in order to enact change in a nation. The U.S. is fragmented enough by distance that you would need at least thirty percent of the national population to reach this state in order to get the ten percent in each of the six regions. Currently the number of people protesting is thought to be around four to six percent nationally, meaning it's less than one percent regionally. Part of that is because it's January, and most large scale protests happen in late spring or in the summer because schools are out and the weather doesn't suck. But part of it is simply because not enough people are motivated to act. Either pessimism or lack of direct harm is keeping them from caring. So no matter what you're going to have to piss some people off. But it'd be better to piss off the people who will share your goals and ask forgiveness, because the other group was pissed from the beginning and have no forgiveness to ask for.
  - fzeroracer 9mo ago
    People are taking to the streets. People are getting beaten, their property destroyed, their homes invaded and even murdered in Minneapolis as a result. The problem is that the US is massive; most people don't live in an active ICE zone where agents are going door to door kicking it in and pulling people out. But even then, people are getting angrier. The injustices in Minneapolis triggered waves of protests here in Seattle. Eventually these things compound and more people become aware that we're living in the Great American Collapse.
    - jordanpg 9mo ago
      People are, yes, but I'm not. I'm looking inward and trying to be honest about what it's going to take to get me on the street.
  - baubino 9mo ago
    People are (and have been) taking to the streets. Americans tend to think that a protest must involve everyone otherwise it’s pointless. They don’t realize that protests typically involve a tiny fraction of the population. The more, the better of course, but stop sitting around waiting for it to get big. Either get out there now or find other ways to contribute. There’s plenty to be done.
    - Anamon 9mo ago
      There was a study a while ago, analyzing previous events to estimate which percentage of a population needs to become active to effect meaningful change. The number was surprisingly low, I think less than 5%.
      - thechao 9mo ago
        It's about 3%, and the study had major flaws in its context; large westernized countries are out of scope. I don't remember paper, but I just lost this argument to a lawyer.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
  - oenton 9mo ago
    I was just talking to someone close to me about what to expect if (when?) Trump starts annexing Greenland. I truly believe a national strike is our best bet. But the reality is many (most?) people are living paycheck to paycheck and can’t risk that. But knowledge workers and especially software engineers can probably fare much better in the event of immediate job loss. Now that’s not to downplay or minimize that risk, especially if you have a family, dependents, or some unique circumstance. But I’d hope for the majority of workers in our profession, it’s the difference between “I can’t buy food next week” vs “I have about 4-8 months before I’ve drained my liquid / emergency savings” The sad thing is I don’t know what to do. Would this make headlines? Would they cover it? Would it get condensed into a single sound bite “big tech goes on strike”? I’m conflicted but I feel like the choice should be obvious and simple. Just do it.
    - bpt3 9mo ago
      I will say upfront that I do not condone or support annexation of Greenland, but I have to ask why on earth you or anyone else think that would inspire any meaningful portion of the US population to organize a general strike? Whatever happens in Greenland has no impact on at least 99.99% of the US population, and a general strike will have no impact on the small fraction of the US population that would support annexation.
  - eudamoniac 9mo ago
    A protest is meaningless without the implicit threat of violent revolution behind it. Trump et al can just ignore your protests, unless he thinks you might break in and start killing. Today's protests have no teeth. Nobody is uncomfortable enough to risk prison or death. Seriously, if you turn off the TV and the Internet, what is wrong with your life? Is ousting Trump going to fix that? Is it worth dying for? Nope.
    - aisengard 9mo ago
      I feel like you shouldn't get to criticize protests for not being violent enough if you're not already performing sufficiently-violent protests. "Firebombing a Walmart" meme really is evergreen.
- b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago
  If food keeps going up, it might get there but in the affluent west we run on our stomachs and as long as most of the middle class can still afford bread there won't be enough of a mass mobilization to affect any meaningful change.
- JeremyNT 9mo ago
  > There is ample ability to change events, but people must believe they can act and act together, as they have for centuries of democracy and for all human history. This is the political will of a plurality of American voters. They certainly can't claim they didn't know what they would get, and they seem unconcerned by any of these actions that many of us find terrifying. It is difficult to see how we can democracy our way out of this situation.
  - ta9000 9mo ago
    Frankly I don’t think Trump 1 vs Trump 2 admin wise are the same. Many people were duped. They’re idiots, but not malicious idiots.
    - Loudergood 9mo ago
      Plenty of them are malicious idiots. See quotes of them saying "They're hurting the wrong people"
      - ta9000 9mo ago
        You mean Boehbert, a congresswoman? Yeah she’s pretty awful.
  - Aurornis 9mo ago
    > This is the political will of a plurality of American voters. This fallacy gets repeated over and over, but it's obviously false. Have you really never voted for a candidate who went on to do things you didn't agree with? It's a quintessential fact of politics that voting for a candidate is not equivalent to an endorsement of everything that candidate does in the future. It's a premise that is obviously false when we consider our own votes, but it feels cathartic to force the claim on to the other side. This administration's net approval rating flipped net negative very quickly after his election and has been trending downward. It's just navel-gazing to pretend like what he's doing has high approval.
    - 9mo ago
- 01284a7e 9mo ago
  Divide and conquer...
- keybored 9mo ago
  > That belief isn't the consequence of the situation, but the cause. There is ample ability to change events, but people must believe they can act and act together, as they have for centuries of democracy and for all human history. True. But it’s very overwhelming since we are so democratically inept right now. > They do it in Iran. We know this because the local elites underlined it for us.
- casey2 9mo ago
  Most people, myself include, believe Powell has been a DNC puppet for his entire tenure. This has pretty much nothing to do with our republic. For most of this countries history you would have been laughed at if you used the D-word, and that's when the quality of voters meant something.
epolanski 9mo ago
[flagged]
- _DeadFred_ 9mo ago
  It's called 'kitchen table politics' (we used to just do it around the kitchen table) and is kinda a core Americanism. Welcome to this cultural insight about us.
  - Aeglaecia 9mo ago
    non americans call it a normal discussion about the events affecting our lives
- estearum 9mo ago
  Posting online literally is political activity. You think the hordes of young men who put Trump into power were convinced by mass public demonstration? No: posts on the Internet.
  - boringg 9mo ago
    More like convinced by podcasts whispering in their ears.
    - estearum 9mo ago
      Which is… people posting online…
  - epolanski 9mo ago
    Elections are a thing, they are marketing. I'm talking at expressing dissent. On that, internet achieves little.
    - estearum 9mo ago
      A little known fact is that the best way to have political power is to acquire it via the political process.
skissane 9mo ago
I think the real test will be, not whatever this administration does, but how much of that survives into the next one - how much is the new normal versus how much is a temporary aberration. That’s true even if the next administration is Republican (Vance or whoever), but especially true if the next administration ends up being Democratic instead-which while not certain, has decent odds-the more Trump defies norms, the more voters who will wish to go back to a “normal” Presidency
- afavour 9mo ago
  I think the test beyond that is how willing the next government will be to codify meaningful changes into law. After Trump’s first time it’s as if there was a big sigh of relief and a notion of “well, we just won’t do that again”. It’s very clear now that we need a lot more regulation of what presidents can and cannot do. Not to mention judicial reform. But if you’re a democrat theoretically getting power in 2028 you’re going to have immense pressure to move forwards, focus on kitchen table issues, yadda yadda.
  - Uvix 9mo ago
    Not sure how regulation helps when you have a Congress and/or Supreme Court willing to ignore it, alas.
    - dredmorbius 9mo ago
      Both institutions, and those who've failed them, must of course be addressed directly.
  - estearum 9mo ago
    And extremely severe punishment as a deterrent against future efforts. Instead of a bunch of slow-rolled court cases and deferral back to the political process.
  - Freedom2 9mo ago
    What's the point of law if no one is willing to enforce it?
wanderingmind 9mo ago
Hasn't this always been the case, what is different right now is that the tech enables to do this at scale, at much higher frequency that makes them more audacious, since no regular person can keep up with it. The over saturation of lies/fake news has lead to numbness and the hyper-normalisation. So, unless something directly is affecting us currently, we won't care
- acdha 9mo ago
  No. The modern Republicans want you to believe that because it’s an easy path to despair and inaction, which means they win, but the magnitude and degree have varied significantly in the past. Where we are now is something living Americans don’t have experience with unless they escaped somewhere like the Balkans in the 90s.
dredmorbius 9mo ago
Curtis's HyperNormalisation, a BBC documentary, for those unfamiliar: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation> Video, at BBC Online: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b183c https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b183c>
- smartbit 9mo ago
  HyperNormalisation (2016) 2h:46m for those outside the UK https://youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T07WfIhM https://youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T07WfIhM
- Fnoord 9mo ago
  HyperNormalisation is one of many great documentaries by Adam Curtis, many of which are available on archive.org [1]. Specifically, I can recommend The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares. No need for YouTube :) FWIW, these used to be able on Google Video back when that still existed. And via torrents. [1] https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Adam+Curtis%22 https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Adam+Curtis%22
- kayge 9mo ago
  And for anyone who is nervous about clicking that video link at work: BBC in this context stands for British Broadcasting Corporation, which is a fairly well respected news group.
  - throwawayPlus44 9mo ago
    No one was nervous. That might be just you. You might want to spend a little less time online.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
class3shock 9mo ago
When I first watched a bunch of Adam Curtis stuff I thought it a long winded way of stating bad things have happened and have resulted in these bigger, overarching, bad things. Thinking about it now 10 years later it feels alot different. The pervasiveness of tolerance of lies and fakeness has gone so far past anything I could have imagined being a big contributor to that.
- cal_dent 9mo ago
  For me, the key lies in the "We know they lie. They know we know they lie.". I'd argue that the transparency of lies is a fairly immature theme, relative to the long arc of history. Probably post-Iraq WMD is where I think it really started to ramp up and the emergence of virality/segmentation aspect of social media has really revved it up.
  - Terr_ 9mo ago
    I would view that kind of lying as show of force: "Everybody knows it, but nobody can do anything about it, we are above even these rules." Worse still is when it's an "affirm the falsehood to show you have been dominated by our threat of punishment" scenario: > 'The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.' He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: 'How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?' > Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said. > 'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.' -- 1984 by George Orwell
  - AnimalMuppet 9mo ago
    Perhaps post-Iraq in the west. It was that way behind the Iron Curtain long before then.
- topocite 9mo ago
  Curtis tried to make these statements on the downside of neoliberalism + postmodernism but I don't think he did a very good job based on the discussion on these films. I think his work is just too stylized. He has such an interesting style that it overwhelms the message. I barely remember what his messaging is in films. Just the interesting visuals and ominous music. If you read Undoing the Demos by Wendy Brown and Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition together you will understand exactly what he is going for. As a film it doesn't really work that well though beyond a kind of depressing entertainment. The themes are too subtle and philosophical along with most people don't have the background knowledge to really make sense of his points.
SilverElfin 9mo ago
This is clearly a fraudulent criminal investigation. Classic dictator strategy of charging opponents with trivial crimes to achieve political power grabs. US futures in stock market are way down. But I bet a third of the country will blindly support it. They will see it as a just investigation into a crime. And they won’t care about the consequences. Or connect cause and effect. And with that much support the administration can get away with anything. As for their various unconstitutional and illegal acts - what method is there to hold the executive branch accountable? It’s not like there’s a police force to arrest them right?
immibis 9mo ago
At least some selection mechanisms are still working. Every time he does something like this, the world dumps a bunch more US currency.
mindcrash 9mo ago
If I might add a couple of quotes: "What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century. The merciless process into which totalitarianism drives and organizes the masses looks like a suicidal escape from this reality." "Politically speaking, tribal nationalism always insists that its own people is surrounded by ‘a world of enemies,’ ‘one against all,’ that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man." "Society is always prone to accept a person offhand for what he pretends to be, so that a crackpot posing as a genius always has a certain chance to be believed. In modern society, with its characteristic lack of discerning judgment, this tendency is strengthened, so that someone who not only holds opinions but also presents them in a tone of unshakable conviction will not so easily forfeit his prestige, no matter how many times he has been demonstrably wrong." "Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness." "The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (that is, the standards of thought) no longer exist." -- Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism Also Arendt: "The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world — and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end — is being destroyed."
cmrdporcupine 9mo ago
> We say we care but do nothing. Historically this is always the case until it absolutely isn't. And things just boil over. Rupture -- often revolutions -- are entirely unpredictable, and cascading. They often occur after several failed attempts make it seem like the discontent has been at least partially contained (e.g. Russia in 1905 vs Russia in 1917). Maybe we're seeing this in Iran right now. The kind of governance that Trumpism is attempting is inherently unstable. My guess is its higher level adherents know this. They just want to get theirs while they still can. Should be obviously the case as its very figurehead is obviously not thinking long term as he only has a few years left to live.
jrochkind1 9mo ago
Who is "we"? I'm not doing nothing. Why are you doing nothing?
- margalabargala 9mo ago
  Nothing that effects real change. Evidence, the lack of change.
  - jrochkind1 9mo ago
    Nothing that has worked yet. to say it hasn't worked yet is very different than saying nobody is doing anything. All we can do is try to figure it out. If you aren't doing something, look for something to do. Everyone I know is doing something. How are you going to figure out what will work except for trying things and seeing what you learn from that? "Blaming" people for not being successful yet is very different than blaming them for not doing anything at all.
RobLach 9mo ago
People do nothing because they believe others are doing nothing and it's a suppressive feedback loop that's exploited. Repeating that people know and do nothing reinforces it and falls into the broad category of criticism for the the sake of social flagging and not towards actual growth.

mmooss 9mo ago

> I fear this is all going one way That belief isn't the consequence of the situation, but the cause. There is ample ability to change events, but people must believe they can act and act together, as they have for centuries of democracy and for all human history. They do it in Iran. The Republicans and MAGA movement have made changes that would have been unbelievable ten years ago.

jordanpg 9mo ago
Stated differently, if things really are so bad (and I would be the first to agree that things are pretty bad), then why are so many comfortable people (like me) not out on the street every day? There are a lot of reasons for that, of course, but the bottom line is that when things get bad enough -- much worse than they are today -- then more people will take to the street, along with whatever sacrifice that entails. We're just not there yet, because for many, there is far too much to lose.
- Barrin92 9mo ago
  >then why are so many comfortable people (like me) not out on the street every day? because a lot of people have a kind of built-in main character syndrome and believe they're the protagonists of the world and things can't really go bad. They haven't internalized that there isn't some god behind the curtain that saves them. That's how it goes in every country that ends up in the dirt, they all thought they were special, they all thought "surely we're not there yet" and you can pick their remains out of the rubble. relevant piece from a few years ago: https://indi.ca/i-lived-through-collapse-america-is-already-there/ https://indi.ca/i-lived-through-collapse-america-is-already-...
- amanaplanacanal 9mo ago
  Not sure being out in the street really does much. Gives the jack booted thugs an excuse for a little recreational violence. A general strike might have an effect, but I'm not sure how you organize such a thing.
  - kelseyfrog 9mo ago
    You can't, because everytime that happens, a group comes out of the woodworks that says X, Y, and Z need to be done before a general strike can even be considered. X, Y, and Z usually involve community building, mutual aid, strike funds, housing security, and other precarity reducing actions.
  - jordanpg 9mo ago
    > Not sure being out in the street really does much. I agree; this phrase was just a stand in for doing something -- anything -- about the state of affairs I don't like. Other than things I can do from my couch like commenting on HN.
  - mothballed 9mo ago
    If protests worked better than the alternatives then that's what megacorps and multinational corporations would be doing instead of bribes and lobbying. 'The people' still dont understand they're playing an entirely different sport.
  - Tanoc 9mo ago
    A general strike at the level required to change things requires roping in unwilling participants as well. Probably on the scale of breaking infrastructure like payment systems or over the road shipping. If nobody can ignore current events because it's not just impacting but impeding and quickly degrading their quality of life they'll get angry. However just so long as people can go home and play their videogames, or listen to their podcasts, or read their books, they'll be able to focus enough of their attention away from events and keep their stress below the critical threshold just enough that they won't do anything. Calhoun's Rat Utopia Experiment comes to mind in that the rats suffered any number of indignities, maladies, and stressors just so long as they had ample access to endorphin and melatonin sources in strong enough bursts to stave off the constant floods of cortisol and norepinephrine. Political theory is that ten to fifteen percent of a given population needs to actively rebel in order to enact change in a nation. The U.S. is fragmented enough by distance that you would need at least thirty percent of the national population to reach this state in order to get the ten percent in each of the six regions. Currently the number of people protesting is thought to be around four to six percent nationally, meaning it's less than one percent regionally. Part of that is because it's January, and most large scale protests happen in late spring or in the summer because schools are out and the weather doesn't suck. But part of it is simply because not enough people are motivated to act. Either pessimism or lack of direct harm is keeping them from caring. So no matter what you're going to have to piss some people off. But it'd be better to piss off the people who will share your goals and ask forgiveness, because the other group was pissed from the beginning and have no forgiveness to ask for.
- fzeroracer 9mo ago
  People are taking to the streets. People are getting beaten, their property destroyed, their homes invaded and even murdered in Minneapolis as a result. The problem is that the US is massive; most people don't live in an active ICE zone where agents are going door to door kicking it in and pulling people out. But even then, people are getting angrier. The injustices in Minneapolis triggered waves of protests here in Seattle. Eventually these things compound and more people become aware that we're living in the Great American Collapse.
  - jordanpg 9mo ago
    People are, yes, but I'm not. I'm looking inward and trying to be honest about what it's going to take to get me on the street.
- baubino 9mo ago
  People are (and have been) taking to the streets. Americans tend to think that a protest must involve everyone otherwise it’s pointless. They don’t realize that protests typically involve a tiny fraction of the population. The more, the better of course, but stop sitting around waiting for it to get big. Either get out there now or find other ways to contribute. There’s plenty to be done.
  - Anamon 9mo ago
    There was a study a while ago, analyzing previous events to estimate which percentage of a population needs to become active to effect meaningful change. The number was surprisingly low, I think less than 5%.
    - thechao 9mo ago
      It's about 3%, and the study had major flaws in its context; large westernized countries are out of scope. I don't remember paper, but I just lost this argument to a lawyer.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
- oenton 9mo ago
  I was just talking to someone close to me about what to expect if (when?) Trump starts annexing Greenland. I truly believe a national strike is our best bet. But the reality is many (most?) people are living paycheck to paycheck and can’t risk that. But knowledge workers and especially software engineers can probably fare much better in the event of immediate job loss. Now that’s not to downplay or minimize that risk, especially if you have a family, dependents, or some unique circumstance. But I’d hope for the majority of workers in our profession, it’s the difference between “I can’t buy food next week” vs “I have about 4-8 months before I’ve drained my liquid / emergency savings” The sad thing is I don’t know what to do. Would this make headlines? Would they cover it? Would it get condensed into a single sound bite “big tech goes on strike”? I’m conflicted but I feel like the choice should be obvious and simple. Just do it.
  - bpt3 9mo ago
    I will say upfront that I do not condone or support annexation of Greenland, but I have to ask why on earth you or anyone else think that would inspire any meaningful portion of the US population to organize a general strike? Whatever happens in Greenland has no impact on at least 99.99% of the US population, and a general strike will have no impact on the small fraction of the US population that would support annexation.
- eudamoniac 9mo ago
  A protest is meaningless without the implicit threat of violent revolution behind it. Trump et al can just ignore your protests, unless he thinks you might break in and start killing. Today's protests have no teeth. Nobody is uncomfortable enough to risk prison or death. Seriously, if you turn off the TV and the Internet, what is wrong with your life? Is ousting Trump going to fix that? Is it worth dying for? Nope.
  - aisengard 9mo ago
    I feel like you shouldn't get to criticize protests for not being violent enough if you're not already performing sufficiently-violent protests. "Firebombing a Walmart" meme really is evergreen.
b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago
If food keeps going up, it might get there but in the affluent west we run on our stomachs and as long as most of the middle class can still afford bread there won't be enough of a mass mobilization to affect any meaningful change.
JeremyNT 9mo ago
> There is ample ability to change events, but people must believe they can act and act together, as they have for centuries of democracy and for all human history. This is the political will of a plurality of American voters. They certainly can't claim they didn't know what they would get, and they seem unconcerned by any of these actions that many of us find terrifying. It is difficult to see how we can democracy our way out of this situation.
- ta9000 9mo ago
  Frankly I don’t think Trump 1 vs Trump 2 admin wise are the same. Many people were duped. They’re idiots, but not malicious idiots.
  - Loudergood 9mo ago
    Plenty of them are malicious idiots. See quotes of them saying "They're hurting the wrong people"
    - ta9000 9mo ago
      You mean Boehbert, a congresswoman? Yeah she’s pretty awful.
- Aurornis 9mo ago
  > This is the political will of a plurality of American voters. This fallacy gets repeated over and over, but it's obviously false. Have you really never voted for a candidate who went on to do things you didn't agree with? It's a quintessential fact of politics that voting for a candidate is not equivalent to an endorsement of everything that candidate does in the future. It's a premise that is obviously false when we consider our own votes, but it feels cathartic to force the claim on to the other side. This administration's net approval rating flipped net negative very quickly after his election and has been trending downward. It's just navel-gazing to pretend like what he's doing has high approval.
  - 9mo ago
01284a7e 9mo ago
Divide and conquer...
keybored 9mo ago
> That belief isn't the consequence of the situation, but the cause. There is ample ability to change events, but people must believe they can act and act together, as they have for centuries of democracy and for all human history. True. But it’s very overwhelming since we are so democratically inept right now. > They do it in Iran. We know this because the local elites underlined it for us.
casey2 9mo ago
Most people, myself include, believe Powell has been a DNC puppet for his entire tenure. This has pretty much nothing to do with our republic. For most of this countries history you would have been laughed at if you used the D-word, and that's when the quality of voters meant something.

epolanski 9mo ago

[flagged]

_DeadFred_ 9mo ago
It's called 'kitchen table politics' (we used to just do it around the kitchen table) and is kinda a core Americanism. Welcome to this cultural insight about us.
- Aeglaecia 9mo ago
  non americans call it a normal discussion about the events affecting our lives
estearum 9mo ago
Posting online literally is political activity. You think the hordes of young men who put Trump into power were convinced by mass public demonstration? No: posts on the Internet.
- boringg 9mo ago
  More like convinced by podcasts whispering in their ears.
  - estearum 9mo ago
    Which is… people posting online…
- epolanski 9mo ago
  Elections are a thing, they are marketing. I'm talking at expressing dissent. On that, internet achieves little.
  - estearum 9mo ago
    A little known fact is that the best way to have political power is to acquire it via the political process.

skissane 9mo ago

I think the real test will be, not whatever this administration does, but how much of that survives into the next one - how much is the new normal versus how much is a temporary aberration. That’s true even if the next administration is Republican (Vance or whoever), but especially true if the next administration ends up being Democratic instead-which while not certain, has decent odds-the more Trump defies norms, the more voters who will wish to go back to a “normal” Presidency

afavour 9mo ago
I think the test beyond that is how willing the next government will be to codify meaningful changes into law. After Trump’s first time it’s as if there was a big sigh of relief and a notion of “well, we just won’t do that again”. It’s very clear now that we need a lot more regulation of what presidents can and cannot do. Not to mention judicial reform. But if you’re a democrat theoretically getting power in 2028 you’re going to have immense pressure to move forwards, focus on kitchen table issues, yadda yadda.
- Uvix 9mo ago
  Not sure how regulation helps when you have a Congress and/or Supreme Court willing to ignore it, alas.
  - dredmorbius 9mo ago
    Both institutions, and those who've failed them, must of course be addressed directly.
- estearum 9mo ago
  And extremely severe punishment as a deterrent against future efforts. Instead of a bunch of slow-rolled court cases and deferral back to the political process.
- Freedom2 9mo ago
  What's the point of law if no one is willing to enforce it?

wanderingmind 9mo ago

Hasn't this always been the case, what is different right now is that the tech enables to do this at scale, at much higher frequency that makes them more audacious, since no regular person can keep up with it. The over saturation of lies/fake news has lead to numbness and the hyper-normalisation. So, unless something directly is affecting us currently, we won't care

acdha 9mo ago
No. The modern Republicans want you to believe that because it’s an easy path to despair and inaction, which means they win, but the magnitude and degree have varied significantly in the past. Where we are now is something living Americans don’t have experience with unless they escaped somewhere like the Balkans in the 90s.

dredmorbius 9mo ago

Curtis's HyperNormalisation, a BBC documentary, for those unfamiliar: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation> Video, at BBC Online: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b183c https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b183c>

smartbit 9mo ago
HyperNormalisation (2016) 2h:46m for those outside the UK https://youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T07WfIhM https://youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T07WfIhM
Fnoord 9mo ago
HyperNormalisation is one of many great documentaries by Adam Curtis, many of which are available on archive.org [1]. Specifically, I can recommend The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares. No need for YouTube :) FWIW, these used to be able on Google Video back when that still existed. And via torrents. [1] https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Adam+Curtis%22 https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Adam+Curtis%22
kayge 9mo ago
And for anyone who is nervous about clicking that video link at work: BBC in this context stands for British Broadcasting Corporation, which is a fairly well respected news group.
- throwawayPlus44 9mo ago
  No one was nervous. That might be just you. You might want to spend a little less time online.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]

class3shock 9mo ago

When I first watched a bunch of Adam Curtis stuff I thought it a long winded way of stating bad things have happened and have resulted in these bigger, overarching, bad things. Thinking about it now 10 years later it feels alot different. The pervasiveness of tolerance of lies and fakeness has gone so far past anything I could have imagined being a big contributor to that.

cal_dent 9mo ago
For me, the key lies in the "We know they lie. They know we know they lie.". I'd argue that the transparency of lies is a fairly immature theme, relative to the long arc of history. Probably post-Iraq WMD is where I think it really started to ramp up and the emergence of virality/segmentation aspect of social media has really revved it up.
- Terr_ 9mo ago
  I would view that kind of lying as show of force: "Everybody knows it, but nobody can do anything about it, we are above even these rules." Worse still is when it's an "affirm the falsehood to show you have been dominated by our threat of punishment" scenario: > 'The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.' He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: 'How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?' > Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said. > 'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.' -- 1984 by George Orwell
- AnimalMuppet 9mo ago
  Perhaps post-Iraq in the west. It was that way behind the Iron Curtain long before then.
topocite 9mo ago
Curtis tried to make these statements on the downside of neoliberalism + postmodernism but I don't think he did a very good job based on the discussion on these films. I think his work is just too stylized. He has such an interesting style that it overwhelms the message. I barely remember what his messaging is in films. Just the interesting visuals and ominous music. If you read Undoing the Demos by Wendy Brown and Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition together you will understand exactly what he is going for. As a film it doesn't really work that well though beyond a kind of depressing entertainment. The themes are too subtle and philosophical along with most people don't have the background knowledge to really make sense of his points.

SilverElfin 9mo ago

This is clearly a fraudulent criminal investigation. Classic dictator strategy of charging opponents with trivial crimes to achieve political power grabs. US futures in stock market are way down. But I bet a third of the country will blindly support it. They will see it as a just investigation into a crime. And they won’t care about the consequences. Or connect cause and effect. And with that much support the administration can get away with anything. As for their various unconstitutional and illegal acts - what method is there to hold the executive branch accountable? It’s not like there’s a police force to arrest them right?

immibis 9mo ago

At least some selection mechanisms are still working. Every time he does something like this, the world dumps a bunch more US currency.

mindcrash 9mo ago

If I might add a couple of quotes: "What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century. The merciless process into which totalitarianism drives and organizes the masses looks like a suicidal escape from this reality." "Politically speaking, tribal nationalism always insists that its own people is surrounded by ‘a world of enemies,’ ‘one against all,’ that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man." "Society is always prone to accept a person offhand for what he pretends to be, so that a crackpot posing as a genius always has a certain chance to be believed. In modern society, with its characteristic lack of discerning judgment, this tendency is strengthened, so that someone who not only holds opinions but also presents them in a tone of unshakable conviction will not so easily forfeit his prestige, no matter how many times he has been demonstrably wrong." "Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness." "The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (that is, the standards of thought) no longer exist." -- Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism Also Arendt: "The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world — and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end — is being destroyed."

cmrdporcupine 9mo ago

> We say we care but do nothing. Historically this is always the case until it absolutely isn't. And things just boil over. Rupture -- often revolutions -- are entirely unpredictable, and cascading. They often occur after several failed attempts make it seem like the discontent has been at least partially contained (e.g. Russia in 1905 vs Russia in 1917). Maybe we're seeing this in Iran right now. The kind of governance that Trumpism is attempting is inherently unstable. My guess is its higher level adherents know this. They just want to get theirs while they still can. Should be obviously the case as its very figurehead is obviously not thinking long term as he only has a few years left to live.

jrochkind1 9mo ago

Who is "we"? I'm not doing nothing. Why are you doing nothing?

margalabargala 9mo ago
Nothing that effects real change. Evidence, the lack of change.
- jrochkind1 9mo ago
  Nothing that has worked yet. to say it hasn't worked yet is very different than saying nobody is doing anything. All we can do is try to figure it out. If you aren't doing something, look for something to do. Everyone I know is doing something. How are you going to figure out what will work except for trying things and seeing what you learn from that? "Blaming" people for not being successful yet is very different than blaming them for not doing anything at all.

RobLach 9mo ago

People do nothing because they believe others are doing nothing and it's a suppressive feedback loop that's exploited. Repeating that people know and do nothing reinforces it and falls into the broad category of criticism for the the sake of social flagging and not towards actual growth.