a speculative copium PSA:
while millions of adults will never recover from the trauma of two years of fear, lies, and manipulation, a generation of children and young adults will grow up waaaaaay above-baseline suspicious of authority and sensitive to incipient authoritarianism.
while millions of adults will never recover from the trauma of two years of fear, lies, and manipulation, a generation of children and young adults will grow up waaaaaay above-baseline suspicious of authority and sensitive to incipient authoritarianism.
as vaguely relevant observational evidence, consider formerly communist eastern Europe: while many such countries have had and still have ridiculous rules (where true, largely due to EU pressure) basically nobody actually cares. the rules aren't enforced and the only people ...
... upset by this are the precise cohort of young-ish adults who either didn't experience communism directly or, even though they did experience communism, attach themselves so strongly to the concept of "western values" (perhaps because of the elite positions they have ...
... inherited as children of former anti-commie dissidents) that they haven't noticed that what constitutes "western values" has markedly changed during their privileged time at the top of eastern European society.
but above a certain age threshold, and otherwise excluding those with atypical social and political exposure, everybody knows it's bullshit.
so my speculative copium boils to supposing that, in the west, we got a little ultra-concentrated bout of soviet insanity:
so my speculative copium boils to supposing that, in the west, we got a little ultra-concentrated bout of soviet insanity:
we got the massive wealth transfers to the politically connected and the wanton destruction of social capital, the spinning up of an incoherent and deliberately confusingly ever-evolving quasi-religion marketed as "The Science™" ...
... to justify unprecedented top-down social planning, performative rituals so transparently insane that their purpose can only be the profession of faith and allegiance via self-abasement and subsumption into the collective, ...
... coordinated media campaigns to instill fear and to be especially fearful of anybody *not fearful*, with emphasis on ratting people out so as to sever social bonds that might otherwise have provided psychological support and the catalyst of resistance.
BUT!
it's over! the narrative is collapsing!
hence, in due course - so goes my speculative copium - a decent proportion of westerners under 30 will develop similar attitudes to eastern Europeans over 50.
we'll have a generational window of herd immunity to authoritarianism 😉
it's over! the narrative is collapsing!
hence, in due course - so goes my speculative copium - a decent proportion of westerners under 30 will develop similar attitudes to eastern Europeans over 50.
we'll have a generational window of herd immunity to authoritarianism 😉
and note this isn't because they didn't fall for it (I fell for it for a while, fyi) but because i) they have the psychological and emotional flexibility to come to terms with having been duped and readjust, ii) they likely weren't in any positions of authority that required ...
... enforcing performative narrative adherence in others, so there is no guilt or ego encouraging ever deeper digging, and iii) they were the biggest victims, so this may well become a chip on many of their shoulders once this finally all becomes grudgingly accepted.
OR
this really is just speculative copium and things get way, way worse, idk 🤪
this really is just speculative copium and things get way, way worse, idk 🤪
p.s. even if this doesn't happen, or happens but takes too long for your liking, the alternative is well understood and well underway:
https://twitter.com/allenf32/status/1417086523044941831
p.p.s. related but separate PSA that is not *at all* speculative or copium: get people in your life who experienced real communism.
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