I think this makes a lot of sense. Although I think sports are part of this as well. Most people in the USA don’t actually follow the news — at least not the important stuff. And so they really don’t even know what’s going on. They follow sports — and can often give pretty detailed analysis of the games, statistics for the players, and standings for the teams. They’ll follow celebrities— probably not quite to K-Stan levels, but for those into a particular celebrity, it’s pretty wild how far into it people get. Apparently Eilliam Shatner is stopped outside airport restrooms by entitled autograph seekers who apparently can’t deal with the word no. In the case of big movies, we turned every part of it into an event— we have teaser trailers for movie trailers, we have after the credits teasers for the next movie.

Although thinking a bit more im not sure if we’re not backwards. Maybe Americans have better movies, tv shows and entertainment in general as an escape from real life? Like maybe the reason we produce people who can quote the entire history of the Dune universe (all 50,000 years starting from the beginning of Earth history) but don’t know that RFK junior is building a medical dossier on just about everyone and everything and thinks autism means being useless isn’t that Dune is awesome (it is, BTW or at least the novels are) but because Americans live in an oligarchy where they just don’t have any actual power to change anything going on.

I expect my life to decline slowly. I expect my standard of living to decline. I don’t expect that to change. I don’t expect the government to do the right thing, and I don’t expect them to care about anyone who can’t drop a coll million on a fundraising dinner in DC. I know what’s going on, and probably unless Trump pisses off the oligarchy enough, none of it will change. Most of us plebs will work until we die. We know this. Most of us will lose purchasing power over time, and thus will have to put up with shittier food and clothing, older cars, and so on.

I still pay attention, but the call to turn it all off to escape to the Federation, Degobah, or Arrakis or even to listen to Monsta X or watch a period Kdrama is pretty high. I can get a bit of happiness from those things even if I live in a place where nothing I do will change anything. Even when we do bother to protest, most of them are laughably performative— the protests against Trump’s Fascism wouldn’t even jaywalk. They know it’s not really doing anything, but it’s nice to make-believe for a while.