It's the 1984 approach.
We are at war with Euarasia. We are at war with Eastasia, actually. Anyway, two minutes's hate, but it's not Goldstein, it's a moving target du jour.
They're doing it. It works. Many people don't leave their home state, let alone country. They are content to hear phantom problems, attribute it to a local hardship, and go with it. Look at a Portland and Chicago. It's your own country, and they don't give a damn. It's their own state, and its urban vs rural values, they don't give a damn.
All you need is to distract them and validate that their hardships are not their fault or their solution. Look at that fuckass who killed the two classmates. It's not new, the right wing just commodified and up sold it with a veneer of Its Just Memes Bro, It's Not That Serious, which are today's War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength
It went from Wojak to Pepe to AI.
It's the Fahrenheit 451 approach
Censorship and alternative facts.
Anti-intellectualism and distrust of experts.
Entertainment and distraction .
Weaponized nostalgia / emotions.
Fear of the Other.
"You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."
"The televisor is ‘real.’ It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right."
People can be stupid. I mean that as definitive as possible - lack of intelligence. It's a willing ignorance. And then you realize there is no common sense as you believe it. As a kid I thought some adults were, but it's much worse than I thought and every day we see randos online or people in authority and we're like, "How do you even function?"
They function because at the core all you need to do is the above, and stupid self centered people with no emotional capacity for growth or empathy will obey it as long as you don't change their beer label graphic design, because that's their personality.
I can be optimistic and hold light for the future. But to question how they can get away with it or how much will people take. We've got books on that, too. Even in World War 2 it took immediate self interest to be proactive. We like to revise it as how heroic and Team America World Police we are, God's gift to Liberty. Nah. Sitting by that idly until then is the same as everything now. I'm not judging them. It's just how it works.
