[Apocryphon]

Funnily enough, just a few months before the Anglosphere dove into the current populist wave, people like Charles Stross were talking about a future of beige bureaucratic dictatorships dominated by financialization and security states:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9106983

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5187236

Not that we haven't departed too far from that future, but now we have the added problem of revived extremist tribalism and chauvinism of every type.

[ineedasername]

For those unfamiliar with Stross & his site, the site name is not "anti-pope" as in "against the catholic pope". It was a drunken mistake a few decades ago-- the site name was supposed to be "autopope" (specifically autopope.uucp)

Otherwise, just like his highly entertaining books, he often offers up incisive commentary on society. Whether or not you always agree with it, it always makes for an interesting read.

[yourbandsucks]

The tribalism is mostly grist for entertainment media, though. NC bathrooms are national news.

Who's writing the bills, the budgets and the RFPs?

Politics are fairly decoupled from actual policy at this point, the policy is marching ahead with your beige boxes while the politics express a desire to change that but no ability to do so.