I’d like something more extended and literally episodic the way the word looks?
Idiocracy
They found the smartest person in the world and listened to them to fix their problems… Not at all accurate.
we’re in the “what if they didn’t” timeline…
You make a convincing argument.
Once zoomers can vote and Mr Beast gets elected, things will change.
Is he that Jesus Christ looking guy who’s really snarky about other YouTubers?
Over half of Zoomers can already vote. Gen Z is roughly 1997-2012.
Unfortunately the younger they are the more likely they are to be conservative it seems. More poisoned by the algorithms.
Yeah I’m a zoomer (97) and I’ve been able to vote for a decade lol
I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
We’re only 20 years after Joe got frozen and he hasn’t been thawed yet. We still have 480 years before things get that bad.
Pretty sure we’re speed running that part.
Who knows. We need a movie set in between the time frames we see to tell us.
They also tried to publicly execute him.
That is the typical internet response whenever that movie is brought up in this context. But that response fails to take into consideration that they only did that after not having done that for hundreds of years until the point where the movie begins.
The movie is about smart people not breeding. The smart people stoped existing. It wasn’t a decision to ignore smart people and listen to dumbasses, there were only dumbasses. The obvious problem with the movie is that it’s about eugenics (which doesn’t work that way), but your take changes the plot to be about something that it isn’t.
Andor
Whys that?
fascist top-down government that rules without checks and balances stripping away civil rights through exploitation of the vulnerable using fear-of-the-other propaganda and outright lies to further centralize its abusive, selfish control over society while a small dedicated decentralized band of civil rights activists fight the expanding power and influence of the dark side.
It’s extremely poignant right now
The problem I see is that in Star Wars, the goodies win because they appeal to the inherent good in people, their willingness to actually act
I fear that apathy and learned helplessness have taken root too deeply in the US. People just shrug their shoulders
I sincerely hope that I’m wrong
I mean, isn’t the joke that there are only like 20 people who really do anything that matters in Star Wars? The rest of the trillions of beings in the SW universe are apathetic too.
That’s also one of the underlying threads in Andor, Luthen is trying to agitate the empire so that they lash out and start really interfering with people’s lives. The more the Empire tries to crush dissent, the more apathetic people they disrupt, and the dissent only grows. That’s where we’re at now, most people’s lives haven’t meaningfully changed yet, but it’s coming.
Its insane that project 25 isnt taught in schools as the actual destructive blueprint for society, its too dangerous for people to be as ignornat of all this shit as they clearly are. Its suicidal
US schools have long been a disaster
Starting the day by saluting the flag and reciting some shit about it being the greatest country in the world is the behaviour of people being indoctrinated into a cult
Gotta get 'em young
Add the twisted version of the history of America taught, and the ignorance of the rest of the world and it’s not surprising that things are in a shit state
That’s actually a large point that Andor makes, interestingly enough. When Andor is being asked to fight against The Empire he says something along the lines of “it’s better to live and eat, isn’t it?” He is stuck in a mindset of just getting by, like most people are, until he can’t just do that anymore. He has a hatred for The Empire, but he’s too scared at first.
Andor is, by far, the best Star Wars thing that’s been made (at least season 1, I haven’t seen 2 yet) because it takes its world seriously, unlike the rest of Star Wars. There aren’t these perfect heroes and perfect villains. There are flawed people doing what they need to do, and bureacracies doing their jobs without considering what that actually means. It’s in the Star Wars universe, but it’s taking a realistic look at how The Rebellion could have actually started with regular people making it happen because they couldn’t stand by any longer.
When you say poignant, do you actually mean “prescient”? Poignant usually means emotional and like tender or tear-jerker kinda
Like of course its also extremley sad, but I feel like prescient is more appropos for what you’re trying to express
I meant “pertinent”
So basically yes
It’s all 3
Yup, dude even gets disappeared just for being in the wrong street at the wrong time.
Nah that dude was very mexican. Should have tried to not do that.
Just started watching that show recently and it’s so amazing I’m surprised Disney allowed it to be made. The parallels to the current state of society are so apparent. In one of the episodes of Season 2 a character says “Why can’t they just leave us alone” and that resonated with me so much
The Man in the High Castle.
1984 by George Orwell
Not TV (at least not that I am aware of), but it was the first thing to come to my mind. They made a movie if you prefer but, as always, you’ll get more from the book.
It’s not that long of a book either, and it’s an important part of our culture; for the wrong reasons I’d argue, as surveillance is what “1984” has come to stand for but is a more minor part of the book compared to controlling thought.
The historical precedent is the rise of Nazi Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. You should now be somewhere in the early 1930s.
And Canada and Greenland are Poland.
or Poland and Austria
To get spoilers, watch Downfall.
Not a good example, since that shows the happy ending where powerful countries are finally finishing off the fascist regime after years of war and millions of lives lost. That is the amount of effort and determination it took to rid Germany of its fascists.
No such prospects for the American fascist regime. On the contrary the most powerful countries in the world will happily support it, because it undermines Western dominance.
Nazi Germany was the template, so there can be no answer more right than this that isn’t based on Nazi Germany.
It’s a novel, but “It Can’t Happen Here” follows a scenario where a populist becomes President and removes all opposition.
The Prequel to Schindler’s List
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. Great book and a TV miniseries. An alternative history that has Lindbergh winning the presidency in the 30s and the US government enacting fascism domestically. The book does a great job of portraying the chaos that ensues. The series is also very good.
The bobiverse series (about a guy who is hit by a car right after signing up for a cryogenics thing and then wakes in the future to find out he’s basically been legislated to have no rights and is stuck into a self-replicating drone for space exploration, it’s pretty good) kind of starts off setting the backstory like it. The christofascism just started a bit later.
Obviously it’s not one to one but given Trump’s performative Christianity it was all I could think about around the failed coup on Jan 6.
on the non-political side, i recommend Mickey 17. the synopsys of bobiverse sounds like it has similar theming except this story focuses more on the character and less on the world (though the world is still there).
Ever heard of the rise of Nazism in Germany?
Idiocracy
Elysium; the Matt Damon movie where the rich live on a space station and leave the rest of us to rot.
I’m not saying it’s what’s going on right this moment, but it’s the end-goal of everything that Musk, Bezos, etc… are doing.
But who will do all the work?
Automation controlled by AI
The Ultra podcast has two seasons and goes in-depth into previous attempts by fascists at taking over the US government.
Sitting members of Congress aiding and abetting a plot to overthrow the government. Insurrectionists criminally charged with plotting to end American democracy for good. Justice Department prosecutors under crushing political pressure. Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra is the all-but-forgotten true story of good, old-fashioned American extremism getting supercharged by proximity to power.
When extremist elected officials get caught plotting against America with the violent ultra right, this is the story of the lengths they will go to… to cover their tracks.
Ultra is SO GOOD
It left me disgusted with the US’s long flirtation with fascism yet hopeful that we can overcome it.
I’d like her to do another season about the business plot.
I don’t know, things going how they’re going, how we’ll manage to defeat fascism and recover without violence, but I hope I’m wrong.
I talk big on the internet, but I am not ready for violence, and it’s not a road I want us to go down. But options appear to be dwindling, tragically. Without Rule of Law, where do we go from here? Judges can issue rulings, but without enforcement, we have fascism. What then‽
A lot of what he talks about prior to previous insurrections are pretty similar to what’s happening now.
They also have a podcast called It Could Happen Here. Originally it talked about what to expect if a civil war breaks out basically, but it’s now a news show about stuff going on and also with some leftist political discussion thrown in.
(Robert Evans created these, Behind the Bastards, and wrote the book It Could Happen Here.)
But, do you know who, allegedly, would never instigate an insurrection?
The wonderful people at BLEEEP. So long as you leave them and their child-hunting island alone they’ll never instigate an insurrection against anyone.
Oh hey, it’s the same host as Behind the Bastards. Thanks for the recommendation!
Take a serious look at the collapse of the Soviet Union, the gutting of the Commonwealth, and the rise of Russia under Yeltsin, then Putin. I’m not sure of any fictionalized works that examine this in any detail, but the aftermath and the new reality is well-described in Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev. Link is a 10 year old review in the Guardian.
The falls of other empires would also be instructive. There is an excellent podcast/YouTube channel, the Fall of Civilizations(YouTube Link)(Spotify Link). In listening, I found several parallels to the first Trump presidency. I haven’t listened in years.
A paper-thin skinned hegemon leads a dying empire against his staunch allies. I fed this prompt to ChatGPT and it handed me back Dune by Frank Herbert and Foundation by Isaac Asimov.
There is also Adam Curtis’s series TraumaZone, showing tons of footage shot in the USSR during it’s collapse.
Episodes are around on YouTube.
