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Good counterpoint to keep in mind. I think there’s an element of truth to it, but overall IMO it overstates both the Brezhnev comparison and the pomo hall of mirrors idea, as you might expect from an Adam Curtis starting point. There’s a there there beyond symbols here.
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A tentative thread on the Biden speech Adam Curtis once leaned heavily on the book 'Everything was forever, until it was no more' by Alexei Yurchak - a slightly odd book about the way that language in the Soviet Union slowly degraded.
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Eh I think he undersells the extent that the speech explicitly referenced Jan 6, white supremacy, and the 5-6 existential crises facing the USA and was not just a string of "A more perfect Union" cliches.
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With Trump and Silicon Valley capitalists all headed to South Florida, I suddenly remembered the weirdest event in geopolitical history: the Roman Tetrarchy. No one ever tried that system in practice again. That’s when the Roman Empire collapsed.
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A good response in replies to that thread, in the vein of your reaction:
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Replying to @jacobreynolds
All flaws of contemporary America aside, comparisons of this kind between the US and the former Soviet Union could be made only by someone who has absolutely no idea about life under authoritarian regimes (and the disorientating trauma of their inevitable downfall).