| > Thanks for posting this. The most obvious point (to me) is that it would be very hard to install a 1984-style regime in a nation where almost every educated person has read 1984. The fact that people think so is one of the reasons that its not true. > Anything that even has the slightest overtone of old-school totalitarianism gets mocked and derided by the media and the educated classes. Ineffectually, usually, and with a very big "boy who cried wolf" effect. > No-one intelligent takes the "war on terror" seriously, for example. Either there aren't very many intelligent people in the country (so that that statement doesn't matter), or that statement isn't true in any substantive sense that demonstrates resistance to totalitarianism. > We live in a weird society where most media outlets are controlled by big business, and yet most people who work in media are very progressive Its not all that weird that the serfs support the downward distribution of resources and power while the lords don't. The weird thing is treating it as if the influence of the former was actually a counterbalance to the latter. > Fox News/the Daily Mail/etc do not have some secret source of right wing humanities graduates, and so most of their reporters are typical young, metropolitan, educated liberals Who very quickly learn what side their bread is buttered on. So, they are practicially neutered, however they continue to self-identify. |