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Darling's avatar

Just a little FYI

In 2015 or 16 a documentary came out called HYPERNORMALIZATION

It was about how we got here (back then), with massive income inequality and a feeling of nothing working and psychopaths at the helm

And Trump was at the center of it all. Even in the 70's and 80's and on

He kept being in the middle of all the collapse, all they psycho all the crime

After watching it, I KNEW if he became president we were going to have a dictator, I knew he was going to try to emulate Hitler

It was obvious to me

And after a surprise 4 year break where instead of his incompetence and cruelty we got milquetoast dementia incompetence, again, I knew we'd be back where we started but I also knew this would be the actual endgame

As Naomi Klein says - whenever a dictator gets a second term / chance, all bets are off

Anyhow, it's worth checking out HYPER NORMALIZATION

It's free on YouTube

I tried to get anyone and everyone I know to watch it. Not a single person watched it. Not one.

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Ej's avatar

A great Adam curtis doc I just watched it again for the second third time....

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Art Levine's avatar

do you have intelligent, educated book loving friends who also like imaginative cinema.I think with his analytic probing and iconoclastic views and sometimes surrealistic imagery, he's a cross between David Lynch, Noam Chomsky [but not so doctrinaire] and frontline, with a bit of Jared Diamond[sp?] thrown in, the author of Gun, Germs and Steel. Hypernormalisation should be the starting place.

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Art Levine's avatar

Thanks, another American fan? I've been telling everyone about it. And his follow-ups "I can't get you out my head" and "trauma zone," with a new style using signcads to explain timeline of events rather than his narration. His latest is on the decline of England since Thatcher called Shifty.

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T Sebastian's avatar

The "beginning" is deeper than all the surface movement. It's psycho-social. Dysfunctional people group together (identify) under the flags of culture or politics & try to control other groups they fantasize are a threat. A fear-based reaction to our groups survival. This dramatizing of the bad other is what I call malignant tribalism. We humans are inherently flawed this way. It's the story of the human race. Constantly fighting each other for dominance. For most, it takes a lot of inner work to overcome this inherent flaw & arrive at true sanity. The path is through a deep enough resolution of all our childhood trauma and deprogramming our dysfunctional minds.

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Amy Kaplan's avatar

Precisely!

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YourUnclePedro's avatar

Oh dear, if you can't spot sarcasm, you might not be ready for the world. Rosie is an annoying neurotic sad sack with the brains of a mule. She is addicted to drama over her perceived victimhood. There is no chance of any attempt ever being made to strip her her of her citizenship.

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P Kawake's avatar

Goosestep much?

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Virgin Monk Boy's avatar

This hit like a Zen koan wrapped in barbed wire.

The truth is, collapse doesn’t announce itself—it just quietly becomes the background music. One day you’re humming along to NPR, and the next, you’re watching ICE drones fly over playgrounds while your neighbor shrugs and says, “Well, at least the economy’s strong.”

The “beginning” didn’t start with Trump or even Nixon. It started with a Constitution that pretended liberty could be built on genocide and bondage. Hypernormalization is just the polite term for collective dissociation. And the middle class? They’re the chorus in this opera, always singing “Surely not here, surely not now.”

Dystopias don’t begin with horror. They begin with decorum.

With respect and compliance.

With smirking professors saying, “You worry too much.”

But there’s always a beginning. And if we trace the roots honestly, we might stop watering them with our denial.

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Gary Conner's avatar

It also allows enough room to pick & choose the myths we want to retain for agenda or other purposes.

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YourUnclePedro's avatar

Hitler much, sparky?

💩

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Art Levine's avatar

There's an entire Adam Curtis documentary movie, 2016, that uses as an underlying concept hypernormalization and connects many dots, like you -- a] as does his subsequent one I can't get you out of my head . almost everything he's done is on Youtube. check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T07WfIhM

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