Alt Text: an image of Agent Smith from The Matrix with the following text superimposed, “1999 was described as being the peak of human civilization in ‘The Matrix’ and I laughed because that obviously wouldn’t age well and then the next 25 years happened and I realized that yeah maybe the machines had a point.”
The rise of authoritarianism and nationalism is happening in multiple countries like Hungary, Russia, China, and the U.S. Parties like AfD have grown in strength in the last 20 years, thanks in part to the ability of social media companies to prioritize “engagement” to enable them to make more money over societal health.
I was more talking about how this says “peak” when the 90’s were decidedly not peak for a lot of the world.
I think China and Russia are pretty far gone
Other countries we can still help save
I think there’s still hope for them. In the last 20 years China and Russia have become a lot more like us, too. There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen.
I personally don’t see anything happening without some sort of massive revolution. The problem with revolutions is they almost always just replace bad governments with dictators. It really makes me appreciate people like George Washington. Also with China there’s the tiny issue of trying to fight one worlds most powerful governments.
The other problem is that China and Russia brain wash there citizens to an extreme level. From birth they carefully restrict the truth in order to keep the current government in power. This probably means that most people in those countries would be fine with authoritarianism as they have never experienced full democratic liberties.
Life in China is immensely better now than it was in 1999, what are you talking about?
Weren’t they welding doors shut on people during COVID?
That was just a sensationalized story - they sealed the extra doors on a building but left one open, so they could do controlled screening. I think it was actually just that one building too. They didn’t weld people inside buildings to die 🙄
As a result they had one of the best COVID responses in the world and saved countless lives.
Thank you for the information, it was something I thought about for a while but that does make more sense.
LOL, shit-take - but not at all surprising considering the source.
Life is only better in China economically (even this is debatable), but people care about many other aspects of life as well. The limited liberties that the Chinese people had in 1999 are disappearing quickly.
They’re also living longer - smog has been greatly reduced and they have access to better healthcare than ever before.